As soon as Trace finished with the stealth suit, they had planned to begin exploring the sewers. Everyone who had been there that night wanted to know what the blood-dogs had been doing in the basement. Unfortunately, he kept getting distracted by Deckard.

  The matter with Meredith was beginning to gain more traction on the daily talk shows, and her son was not at all happy about it. He was working as quickly as he could, but preparations took time. Until he was ready, all he could do was vent to Trace about the different things they were saying.

  Eventually, he did finish the suit and even took the time to perform the finishing touches on it. There was no more room for any changes, and the new cooling system, pumps, gel, and ammo holders had added a bit of weight to it. All told, the entire suit, fully loaded, now weighed just over sixty-five pounds.

  It wasn’t crazy heavy by any stretch of the imagination, but it would certainly start to build up after a while. However, the cooling system would allow him to stay inside it and run the active stealth mode for longer. He had yet to test just how long that was, but it was on his list of things to do.

  The mask he had made got used anytime he left the apartment, but he was growing increasingly annoyed with the need for it.

  Now that the stealth suit was finished, he could begin his own investigation into RyZyx and look into whether the android man even belonged to their corporation. The operation he had interrupted had belonged to them, but the woman had made it sound like he was part of a different corporation. That he was the owner of a corporation, not a simple midlevel dog.

  The suit wasn’t perfect, as it only hid him from the visual spectrum. Sensors of pretty much any kind would still be able to detect him. It would make it easier for him to sneak into places, but he would still need to be careful and aware.

  RyZyx could wait a few more days. He wasn’t going to go into a place like that with a freshly completed suit, besides; he hadn’t forgotten the androids that also happened to be stored in one of their megastructures. If he screwed up, it would ruin Deckard’s chances of retrieving those.

  Regardless, exploring the sewers was the first item on the list, and Trace was glad that the rebreather worked on his suit.

  Later that day, they were gathered around the destroyed logistics building. When they weren’t selling the items, a couple of the guys had been working to clear away a path to the basement. Most of it had been done by Monroe since his cyberware arm was so strong.

  They were all dressed in dark armor and with full weapon loadouts. Trace was in his stealth suit and would be taking the lead. Kenshin, in his ninja garb, would be serving as the main team’s shadow.

  Everyone stopped just in front of the stairwell leading down. There were a few more pieces of concrete that needed to be removed before they could actually descend into the basement.

  A short while later, and by working together, they had the stairwell cleared, and the basement was revealed. Parts of it had collapsed, and there were bodies everywhere. Regardless, they were able to work their way to the partially collapsed sewer opening after a few minutes.

  Thus far, Trace hadn’t been using any of the functions of the suit outside of the cooling system. As soon as he stepped into the sewer, he activated one of the non-active camouflage modes and turned on the blackout vision for his eyes. With him in the lead, he didn’t want to risk using a light of any sort and drawing undue attention to the group.

  It was easy to find the correct path and follow it. They had expected there to be blood or bodies, something that they could follow. Instead, that portion of the tunnel was the cleanest one around. The rough concrete floor practically sparkled with how clean it had been licked.

  The same sewer monster that had gotten the bodies outside of Trace’s basement had been here as well. Either that or, as was more likely the case, there was more than one of them.

  No matter what, it made the path easy to follow, at least for a while.

  Eventually, it seemed as though all the bodies had cleared up as the sewer returned to its normal filthy state. At that point, things became slightly harder for Trace, but only by a little. There were still the past remains of hundreds of footsteps to follow.

  The acid-eaten concrete had been down over the years by passing debris, feet, tire tracks, and monsters stomping over it. As a result, in there parts where it hadn’t been worn smooth, traces of past visitors tended to linger until they were washed away. Luckily for them, that hadn’t happened just yet.

  The cooling system of the suit helped to keep his NetConnect from heating up prematurely. He would have liked to include the system on his head as well, but that would have been far more complicated. Maybe, in the next version, if he was lucky.

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  Until then, he had at least extended his use time some, while he was inside the stealth suit.

  Trace had a map of the area aboveground pulled up in the corner of his vision as he walked. He stopped at an intersection in the sewer, and first enlarged the map and then the traces of feet on the ground.

  There were more traces of people going to the left, but there were also a few who had gone to the right. The problem with that was that direction heading directly to downtown and the primary corpo towers in New Denver. Not the megastructures, but the towers where only their own people were allowed in and out.

  Turning off blackout mode on his eyes, Trace instead turned on his flashlight and waited for the others to catch up. There hadn’t been any sign of living people, cameras, or other detection equipment around that he had seen or detected thus far. So, stopping here for a quick chat felt safe enough.

  Kenshin joined him a few seconds later, followed by everyone else shortly after that.

  “What’s up? Why did you stop?” Monroe asked, shining his flashlight beam all around the area.

  “That’s part of it,” Trace said once they had seen the intersection. “I have a map of the area pulled up as well though. The tunnel on the right heads to downtown Denver and the Corpo Towers. There are fewer people heading in that direction, versus the other one, but some of them are going that way. What do you think we should do? Split up, or choose one of the tunnels over the other?”

  The group went over to both tunnels and carefully inspected both options. It was hard for them to make up their minds, as cases could be made for pursuing both of them.

  “Do you want to go down the right path?” RapidStrike asked Trace after they had pulled back.

  He slowly shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. This suit is only good for the visual spectrum and would be nearly useless for everything else. I don’t have the skills to handle anything that is overly complicated or advanced.”

  “I guess that’s it then. We follow the other tunnel,” Mel-Gear said with a shrug.

  Sonar raised his hand. “I might be able to help detect a few items down that path.”

  Kenshin tapped the hilt of his blade and appeared to make up his mind. “I’ll do it. I have more experience than Tune, and though I lack his obvious advantage, with Sonar’s help, I should be able to overcome any other issues that might arise.”

  With that, they decided to split up. One group went one way, while the other two headed down the other.

  Turning blackout mode back on, Trace turned off his flashlight and started down the left-handed tunnel.

  As he continued on his way, minutes became half an hour, which then became an hour and then two. Finally, after a long while of walking, a light began to appear in front of Trace. He had turned off his blackout mode a while earlier, as he, even with the cooling system, didn’t want to push it too much. Instead, he was just using low-light mode with his flashlight.

  As he continued to draw closer to the light, he had to continually lower the gain, which had initially been raised extremely high.

  By the time he reached the opening, his vision was back to normal. They had reached an exit to the sewer. There were a couple of small carts that had been parked haphazardly to the side, amongst the dozens of footprints.

  “Where are we?” SpitFire asked as they hopped out of the sewer, gingerly avoiding the wet pool of nastiness directly in front of them.

  Trace, who still had his map up, answered right away. “We’re in the Edgewater area. It’s between Wheat Ridge and Lakewood. I don’t think I’ve ever spent any time in this specific neighborhood though. If we follow this runoff water, we should find a lake.”

  “Great, that answers where we are, but not why,” Monroe muttered, craning his neck. “Is there an extra-large scav population over here? Another gang that was working with them? What?”

  RapidStrike quickly waved them over to the walkway up the embankment that he had found. “Well, if we don’t find anything now, then we can come back another day. At least we now know where they were all headed. It’s only a matter of time before we find out why.”

  A long matter of time.

  The buildings that lined the area where they first emerged were all occupied, but not in the best shape, and word had already spread about where they had come from. The people in that area knew about the people who came out of the water runoff tunnels, and they wanted nothing to do with them.

  In time, they might be able to convince them that they didn’t belong to the same group, but it wouldn’t be that day.

  They called a couple of taxis and decided to split up for the day. It hadn’t been the most productive of days, but they had still gotten a few steps closer to learning what had been going on in the basement. Now it was just a matter of time and a small bit of luck.

  Back at the warehouse, Trace was in the process of cleaning out his suit when he got a message from Kenshin.

  ‘Sonar and I followed the remnant footsteps past the old Union Station for a mile. At that point, the security inside the tunnel became too advanced for us to progress any farther without triggering something. I placed a marker on my map -Thank you Tune- and we backtracked to a point where we could head safely above ground. After that, we went back to where the pin on the map was located, only above ground this time. The particular tunnel that we wanted appears to belong to a section of mega-corporation wannabe’s tower block. There are five of them all nestled somewhat close to each other. It might not belong to all of them, but we couldn’t get close enough to tell. They were Sekmore, Vinna-Kwoi, Koltech, Lexoya, and MaxGear.’

  Trace scowled at that list of names. Each of them was indeed a big corporation, and he happened to like several of them. Sekmore was the company Pushman had a problem with. Vinna-Kwoi was the company that had attacked his warehouse. Koltech specialized in designing rifles. Lexoya… he didn’t really know anything about them. Outside of that they were also a weapon manufacturer. They had made Monroe’s 10mm pistol.

  Then there was MaxGear. They created a lot of cheap, low-end cyberware. The type of item he would have been forced to buy if he hadn’t gotten lucky with his arm. They made good money from it, but still, it was an odd place to position your tower. The other four at least made respected quality goods, for the most part. MaxGear was typically bottom of the barrel, you got burned by the dealer and this is all you could afford type of equipment.

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