Trace swapped out the wireless energy receiver for a slightly larger model that would handle the power requirements better. He would still need to add some proper cooling to the suit at some point, but with this, he could now wait a little longer.

  As for his weapons, he had integrated them beneath the light armor panels on his thighs. They now stuck out a bit, and he had been forced to print some spacers and holsters, but the CD-10 and revolver could now be hidden from view.

  At the same time, he had printed a sheathe for his knife that was strapped just above his rear. The paint would hide everything but the handle or grip section, which was unfortunate, but not terrible. The thing was on his back, after all, so he wasn’t too worried about it being seen.

  With the new wireless energy receiver, the stealth function worked even better than before. It took an additional twenty minutes for the control module to start getting hot against his back, putting him at forty minutes even. In his opinion, that was plenty of time to sneak in and find a closet and then wait for the suit to cool down again, if nothing else.

  He would still need to work on the cooling system, but it wasn’t as much of a concern at the moment. That said, he still hadn’t tested the stealth function against overly complex backgrounds. However, he figured that they would cause it to heat up much faster than normal.

  Just for the sake of leeway, he imagined that he would have thirty minutes of use under those circumstances. Still, plenty of time, though it was beginning to get on the low-end in his opinion.

  Trace took off the suit and began putting the finishing touches on it, impressed with how much work he had made on the thing.

  It was almost time for him to turn in for the night when Monroe called.

  “How’s it going, Monroe? Have you figured out which of the sites I gave you still have items worth picking over?” He asked as soon as he answered the call.

  “Yeah, that’s actually why I called. There’s a problem there.” A message notification pinged. “I just sent you a photo. Why don’t you take a look at it?”

  Trace looked at the photo for several long minutes, not quite understanding what he was seeing. “Uh, Monroe, what exactly am I seeing here?”

  “It’s a team of gangsters, from the east side, the ‘Blood-Dogs’. They’re emptying out one of the scav dens on that list you gave me. One of the ones that hadn’t been hit yet. I found their people at several of the locations I have gone to check out the past couple of days. It seems like the scavs are pulling up roots, and this gang is helping them all move.”

  “Have you been able to follow any of them?” Trace asked, angry that anyone would be willing to work with the scavs.

  “Yeah, but they haven’t been bringing the equipment to new sites, instead it's all going to a couple of warehouses for now.”

  “What? Are they holding it for the scavs while they look for new locations to set up their operations?” Trace demanded in disbelief.

  “That’s my guess.”

  He was silent for several long moments while he thought over what they could do. Getting one or two semi-trailer loads from full warehouses would still be a lot, but they would still be leaving a lot behind. He didn’t dare to think that they would be able to get more than that. Someone would ring the alarm on them at that point.

  They could set fire to the warehouses after that, and just burn everything. It would still set the scavs back quite a bit. Which would be intensely satisfying in its own way.

  “Is this something that we want to keep to ourselves, or get other people involved with?” Trace asked him after he was done thinking. “If we do it alone, I think we’ll be lucky to manage two loads before they lock down everything, and that is if we are lucky. On the other hand, if we bring in other people…”

  It was Monroe’s turn to go silent on the other end of the line. Trace was making a guess, while he was the one who had actually seen the warehouses and how they were setup.

  “If we had two more teams with sizable rigs, it might be doable. Us and another team would be able to hit the two warehouses, while the third would act as interference and help load as needed.”

  “Then when we’re done, we blow both warehouses, and everything left behind to one of the goddess’ satellites.” Trace finished for him.

  The exact details could be worked out later while they were actually planning the job.

  “The question is, who should we ask to help?”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I mean, I only know the team we worked with down in the pit, and then a few people I helped rescue afterward. They all seemed like decent edgers though.” By which he meant they had at least acted trustworthy. “Well, I also met your girlfriend finally. I think this job might be a little below her paygrade though.” He teased.

  “So, she mentioned,” He grumbled. “Send me the information on everyone and I’ll have Revlock send me their details. If they check out, then there are our two teams. I’ll keep monitoring things on this side and gathering information. I’ll come see you tomorrow in the afternoon after I’ve heard back from Revlock.”

  “Sounds good. Be careful.”

  That explained why no one had ever purchased the server information from him. The scavs had gotten wise and begun moving on their own. His information was soon going to be worthless. Of course, another method would be to tag everything and simply let it go to the new destination. However, that required patience he just didn’t have.

  Sure, it would probably do more good in the long run, but that just wasn’t his style, not yet at least.

  That night, Trace spent extra time on each of his enhanced teaching modules. The new perk was actually turning out to be more useful than he had first imagined. He had been too focused on the reading part of its description and ignored what it said before that.

  ‘Knowledge that you have seen, heard, or read.’

  Seeing and hearing, there were a whole lot of both of those things going on inside the learning modules. It wasn’t immediate, but by the next night, when Trace was in the learning modules again, he was always able to perform better than before. The information just seemed to stick around in his mind better now, as though he was finally starting to get a hang of this learning thing. The enhanced learning modules had always been helping him learn the information through their own special methods. Now he was also learning the information in the normal way as well, increasing the speed at which he learned the information.

  One enhanced module after another, each one running at a compressed time, which allowed him to get more done than normal. Programming and engineering courses, his guns and knife courses, vehicle maintenance, module, and weapon design. Then there was also stealth steps. He had so many courses to keep himself busy at the moment that it was simply a matter of figuring out which ones to concentrate on first.

  He was trying to learn so much, in as little time as possible, and it was a strain. Still, every night felt more rewarding than the last as he continued to make progress on the different subjects. He had come so far in only a few short months.

  The next morning, he had a message from Sevorah come in right as he finished wiring up the last light in the main part of the warehouse. He had already installed the ones in the basement. Now he had finally gotten around to doing the same for the warehouse itself.

  No longer was it going to be all dim inside because there were too few lights. Now, it had some proper lighting inside.

  At the clinic, he found the front section empty save for Anna at the desk, who motioned for him to go on back.

  Sevorah and Ko were inside the former’s office, sitting around her desk and looking at something when he arrived.

  “Where are all the sick people? Did they take a day off?” He quipped.

  “No, I put out a bulletin earlier, letting everyone know I would be busy for the next couple of hours,” Sevorah told him seriously. “I discovered the cause of your problem and something that will help to keep it under control.” She rubbed her temples. “The problem is odd, Trace. You were doing well for so long and now you aren’t. If we could figure out what has caused the change, that would be for the best. However, barring that, I’ll be implanting a device that connects to your vagus nerve.”

  Ko scooted back from the desk and handed him an ink-sheet with an image of a device and a person’s neck on it. “Your NetConnect will control the device and help to regulate the electrical activity inside your brain.”

  He handed it back in confusion. “Okay, but what does this all mean? What’s the cause?”

  “You appear to have a form of epilepsy. Not one I have ever seen before, but it is still what I would classify it as,” Sevorah told him after a moment. “Epilepsy generally involves the signals of the brain becoming altered in some way. Suddenly stronger, weaker, etc, anything that would throw the normally orderly system out of whack. With you, it appears that your baseline energy was increased, and certain actions are what accomplish that instead.”

  “Like the excessive chatter of a large crowd?” Trace asked, remembering what had happened the last time he had gone down to the black market with Monroe.

  “Sure, that could be one of the triggers. They can really be anything, and you won’t know until you run across one. They don’t typically tend to change at least from what I was able to understand,” Sevorah informed him.

  “So, I get this implant, and what? Everything is suddenly better?”

  “No, more like any problems in the future will be much more manageable.” She admitted.

  Trace took that in, slowly nodding. If it worked in conjunction with Deckard’s fix, then it sounded like he would be more or less back to normal again. As long as he was careful during his knowledge upgrade packs, then hopefully he wouldn’t have any more issues.

  “Alright, let’s do it. Is there anything else I need to be aware of?” He asked as they headed to the operating room.

  “Yeah, you don’t have any plans on becoming a system ghost, do you?”

  “Huh, no. Why?”

  “Well, this could mess with your ability to use your spark in the net. Either way, I mean. The net requires a lot of mental control, in addition to the hardware you would be sporting. It wouldn’t be uncommon for it to increase certain things during use.”

  Trace stopped short at that, a sudden thought coming to him. “What about learning modules?”

  “Uh, maybe? It’s a possibility, I guess. I hadn’t thought of looking into them.”

  “What about learning modules where the time inside passes four times as fast inside as it does outside?” He asked, hinting at something that most would have considered impossible.

  Ko abruptly facepalmed. “Wait, do you think the enhanced learning modules are causing this?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’ve had this since I was a kid, remember? But it has only started getting worse again once we got them and I started using them.”

  The mender coughed, reminding them that she was there. “What are you two talking about? What are enhanced learning modules? And it’s impossible to have learning modules with time dilation effects exactly because they mess with the mind.”

  Trace quirked a brow at Ko. “Have you been using them at all? Maybe we should get you checked out as well.”

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