Trace used the stealth steps he had been learning to full effect as he walked toward the gate-locked gate in the fence. A dozen steps behind him, he could hear Kenshin’s soft-soled shoes brushing aside the pebbles and other debris in his way. The noise he created wasn’t actually that much, but in the quiet of the night, Trace was overly sensitive to any noise that they made at all.

  That was one more thing he would need to add to the suit at some point, a sound dampener. It wouldn’t go in this iteration, but the next, and he would need to figure out how tech like that even worked first. Unless he managed to get lucky and was able to klep it from someone so he could reverse engineer it, he wasn’t getting his hands on one anytime soon. Advanced tech like that was out of his price range.

  The suppressors on his guns used an extremely basic and crude form of the technology, but that was all he knew about it.

  Regardless, with his night camouflage set, he was nearly invisible, and his stealth steps helped him to create as little noise as possible while walking. Kenshin, though creating more sound, was also doing an admirable job of blending into the night.

  They stopped near the gate, while Trace activated an S&R scan. Seeing no one close by, he motioned for Kenshin to cut the lock.

  As soon as they were inside, they shut down all external communications, pre-maturely blocking all outside access to their systems. There were still a few methods for them to be breached, but they were far harder to do and naturally took more time. Unless they gave the system breacher time to go through several options first, thinking to go for the more difficult options shouldn’t even occur to them.

  Originally, Kenshin had been coming inside to guard his back. Now that speed and eliminating everyone before the alarm could be raised was the main goal, they had decided to split up.

  Trace was heading directly for the wannabe system ghost and the auged-out bruisers. He would be taking out as many of the normal gangsters along the way as he could.

  Kenshin would be trying to find the two blitzers and doing the same.

  Monroe and Sonar had given them a decent interior outline of what the place looked like. It was an old logistics facility of some sort. You had the mechanics area with a few rusted out lifts and ancient tools. Near that was a lounge, where a lot of the guys inevitably found themselves, and then there were a couple of offices with a large outdoor area that had been collecting trash for decades. There had also once been an attached warehouse for all the products they were going to ship that had been destroyed and turned into apartments years ago. Off to the side was a large parking lot where all the trucks and a bunch of other vehicles that belonged to the gang were parked.

  Sonar had been forced to deal with a rocking headache after turning the sensitivity on his ears way up, but he had managed to map out the place for them.

  The two nodded to each other and separated.

  Trace upped the gain a little more on his eyes and switched modes on his suit to active stealth mode. It wasn’t needed quite yet, but it was better safe than sorry. The yard itself was full of shadows. However, it was still inside the city where there were plenty of neon lights all about. All it would take was being glimpsed at by someone from the wrong angle, and the alarm would sound. With active stealth mode, the cameras would hopefully make that less of an issue.

  Only time would tell. This was the suit’s first real-time being used, and a lot was riding on it. Just to be safe, he was going to hug the walls and do his best to remain undetected. The suit might work perfectly, but he would rather not count on it one hundred percent if possible.

  Especially not on its first test run.

  Tapping the plate on his right thigh, it unlatched and revealed his suppressed CD-10 with its extended magazine. Pulling it out, he pushed the plate back into place with a click and began walking, maintaining his stealth steps.

  The gun was fully visible, but you couldn’t have everything. Not yet anyway. Perhaps that was part of why the wraiths wore the cloaks? He would need to ponder that more later. If that was the case, it might also allow him to wear the backpack again. Assuming he could figure out how to make the whole cloak-thing work with the stealth suit.

  Trace shook his head, clearing it of the extraneous thoughts, and focused on the mission at hand.

  He performed another scan and immediately crouched down next to an old shipping container. He was getting close to three gangsters. Two of them were taking a leak, while the other was drinking something from a bottle. None of them were paying attention to their surroundings.

  With the new scope on the pistol, he was able to remain in hiding while aiming around corners, and if there had only been one enemy, that is exactly what he would have done. With three of them, there was no way that he would be able to aim quickly enough while remaining hidden.

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  Instead, he trusted in the suit he had made, raised his pistol, practiced switching between the three targets a couple of times, and then squeezed the trigger.

  It all went off without a hitch. How much of that was because of his suit, versus them, simply not paying attention he would never know. The important thing was that three of them had been eliminated quietly.

  Hurrying over to their bodies, Trace dragged them into the shadows, one by one, not even bothering to pull up the pants of the two who had been busy. All he did was swipe the credits from their crypto-vault and move on. An action that, in and of itself, was rather hard to perform due to being completely off the network. He was forced to hardwire into each of them, which posed difficulties with the suit on.

  Trace hated to say it, but he might actually have to leave the credits behind this time around. At least for the moment, anyway. He would have Monroe come through for him later and collect it all.

  Going back to where he had first found them, he crouched back down and again started moving toward the entrance. Each time he saw a lone gangster, he would take the shot and then hide the body. By the time he neared the door, four more had been eliminated.

  Unfortunately, above the door was an active camera. His eyes hadn’t automatically highlighted it due to it being on a private network. However, the device was in plain view. With any luck, he had stopped soon enough that it hadn’t detected any odd motion from his stealth suit.

  Trace selected ‘Active Camera’ scan and watched what it picked up.

  The normal scan merely saw the cameras that were connected to the main network of a given building. There was so much data flowing through it that it was easy for them to identify connections, if not necessarily gain access.

  The active camera scan, however, looked for private or closed networks and data connections. These needed to be nearby and would have only a comparatively small amount of information being passed through them. The normal scan worked great in public and commercial spaces. The other worked far better when it came to personal apartments or security-conscious people.

  A system ghost trainee would obviously fall into the second category. A few seconds later, a line began to appear in his vision, showing him where the camera connected to the server. Hopefully, that would also be where he would find the troublesome target. It then split off, revealing the presence of more cameras.

  Going in through the front entrance was no good, not while it was in direct view of the camera.

  Climbing on top of a nearby shipping container, he began inspecting the building, something he hadn’t done before. There were cameras at each of the corners, as well as above the closed doors to the parking lot.

  It would require some fancy footwork and jumping on his part, but going in through the roof was the best choice.

  It was a good thing that the stealth steps module had been training his balance, otherwise, there was no way he would have even attempted this. Trace liked to think that his sense of balance had been fine before, but that was in relation to other people. He wasn’t tripping over his own feet, and he could walk across the thin strip of concrete next to the road in the older sections of New Denver without a problem.

  At least he had been able to when he was younger. Typical kid stuff, even for street meat and beggars. Not every minute of every day could be filled with trying to fill your belly or finding another piece of warm clothing.

  What he was trying to do now though, went far beyond childish games. Walking out on a steel beam that was loaded down with junk from the closest container, he jumped to the bucket lip of an ancient tractor, his feet somehow landed firmly on the rusted steel tines. From there, he walked to the opposite side of the bucket and launched himself into the air.

  He couldn’t screw up now. As soon as he had reached the tractor, he had been just above the view of the cameras.

  His arms stretched out above his head, reaching for the old amateur antenna tower, praying that he could actually reach it. The jump had been done from a bad angle and at a standstill. He had almost nothing working for him, except for one thing.

  The tower was close, only a few feet away. It might as well have been hundreds of feet for all the good it did him.

  He plummeted down six feet before his right arm snagged a rung of the tower, arresting his fall. At that point, he was clearly in view of the camera. He looked over and sighed with relief to find that he was once again worried about nothing.

  Back at the tractor, he would indeed have been in the closest camera’s view. Where he was now though, he had just barely moved beyond its stationary field of view. Someone might have caught a split second of blurriness on the very edge of the camera, but that was it.

  Feeling slightly better and reminding himself for the nth time that he needed to be more aware of these things, he climbed up the tower. The top of the amateur antenna tower was tilted toward the top of the building. It would be a fifteen-foot drop, along with a slight push-off to cover the distance involved. At least it would have been if Trace hadn’t been carrying his vibro-blade with him. Some had removed the old antenna wiring long before from the bottom half of the tower. The top half of the tower, on the other hand still had plenty that he could use.

  All he needed to do was cut it loose, make sure it was secure, and then slide right on down onto the roof. Which is exactly what he did a few minutes later.

  The roof of the building was never meant to be accessible to its inhabitants. That meant that there was only a small access hatch instead of a doorway. The knife took care of the ancient, rusted lock -which under any other circumstances he could have broken with a solid tap from his finger- and a second later he was climbing down a ladder and inside the building.

  The suit was nearing twenty minutes of usage in stealth mode, but it had been in such easy conditions that they had barely registered for the most part. Beginning from then on, that would change.

  Trace took a cautious step further into the empty closet, getting closer to the door before he used an S&R scan.

  The plans Sonar and Monroe had given them were correct, except for one thing, there were two levels. This place had a basement, one that connected to the sewer system, and there were people constantly coming and going from it.

  That wasn’t good news, but it was something to worry about after they had secured the first floor.

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