Created G.H.O.S.T. System - A Cyberpunk Story

It had been close, with how fast he had needed to move to remain out of sight. Even then, he had barely made it around the corner in time. The tips of his fingers were screaming at him because of the abuse he had put them through. His hands were trembling, and his fingers refused to straighten for several seconds after he climbed through the first window he came to.

That had been a little too close for comfort, in his opinion.

It wasn’t like he had escaped, either. No, all he had done was go a single room over. He wasn’t exactly in that much of a better place than a minute earlier.

A quick S&R scan showed no one had started moving in the direction of the room he was in just yet. With that information in hand, Trace did two things. He removed the rope from his bag and took a quick second to toss a few of the random data prisms and other items that were laying around inside it. Then, tying off one end of the rope to the nearest sturdy object, he tossed it out the window and climbed down it to safety.

It was a tad annoying to lose the rope this early in the job, but he valued his life more than the length of climbing rope. It had served its purpose, and he could take solace in that fact.

As soon as he hit the ground, he began running, ducking around the first corner he came to in order to keep himself out of sight. His entire plan of attack against both gangs needed to be reworked if these were the type of people he was up against. He also needed to determine if he even wanted to remain on this job.

Then, after doing both of those things, he needed to call Stick-Point and chew him out!

No, actually, he would do that first.

“Stick-Point!” He growled when the older man answered the call. “What is going on? How am I supposed to collect information from an android? Even if it wasn’t being puppeted around, it doesn’t exactly have a need for a computer or any other external systems to keep track of everything.”

“I’m looking into the matter right now, Tune,” He replied, using Trace’s official edger name. It let him know that this call was on the record and that he needed to be careful with what he said going forward. “What else can you tell me about the job so far?”

Trace told him about the expensive cyberware which both the people and the android had been sporting and the supply of crappy guns they had been loading into the vehicle.

“I don’t know what is going on with this gang, but none of it is adding up.”

The other end of the line was silent for several moments as Stick-Point looked things up. “Have you heard of the corporation RyZyx?”

Trace looked around the room he was holed up in, wondering if he had heard right. “RyZyx? Of course, I’ve heard of them. They have their hands in everything. Weapons, cyberware, sensors, and more. They are one of the corporations closest to being considered a megacorporation after Koarden Enterprises.”

“That’s correct, except for the last part. The steel goddess will never let another megacorporation besides hers exist. Anyway, the two people you saw talking with the android work for RyZyx. They are part of the corporation’s external security team.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means this gang is being funded by RyZyx for some reason. I can only assume that the other gang is being funded by them as well, or by a rival corporation. They must have never expected anyone to actually go out there and attack them.”

Upon hearing that the two were corpo security goons, Trace ran his Search & Rescue scan. You didn’t escape those sorts of people, not with the kind of skills and cyberware he possessed at least.

Sure enough, as soon as the scan back, it revealed that he was surrounded.

A curse slipped out, as he forgot he was on a call.

“What’s wrong, Tune?” Stick-Point demanded.

“I’m surrounded. They found me. I’m going to have to get back to you later.” Trace hung up and began desperately looking for a way out of his current predicament.

He couldn’t see one. The building he had chosen didn’t have a basement or any sort of escape hatch. It was a simple abandoned mechanic’s garage, nothing more. The closest thing there was to a safe place for him to hide was the pit in the floor people once used to stand beneath cars as they worked on them.

It wasn’t exactly a great hiding spot.

Nevertheless, he also wasn’t just going to stand around and let himself be captured. That wasn’t who he was. Trace had just started to make headway in his life and there was no way he was going down without a fight.

He initiated another S&R scan and saw that they were all in the same positions as before. The range of his scans wasn’t the best, so it was doubtful that he was seeing everyone. Still, he found it odd that those he could see hadn’t moved at all.

There was no one trying to come in from above, though there were a few people on the roof that he hadn’t heard arrive. As far as he could tell, all they were doing was surrounding the building and ensuring that he didn’t leave. Which made him want to leave all the more.

They obviously knew he was there, yet they weren’t doing anything but keeping him in place.

It was the sort of situation he feared the most. One with nothing but unknowns, no matter where he turned.

Trace kept looking around the garage, trying to find anything that might help. There was no leftover oil or other handy combustibles. Those had all been phased out in the 1950s when electric motors took over. That was when Tesla’s wireless grid had first covered every portion of the United States.

There were a few pieces of tech from ancient motors, but nothing he could use. Even the coils had been stripped from everything.

He stopped and took another, more careful look around the place. Where was all the wiring?

Please, let it still be here. He begged internally.

In the corner, with a fine coating of dust and a few moldy blankets, he found nearly forty pounds of bare copper wire. It was perfect, as long as he worked quickly, and they continued to not make a move.

Tracy found a long metal pole and began winding the copper around it. He left a long lead on each end of the pole and brought it to the super capacitor that was connected to the power grid. The power had been off for a while, so hopefully, the capacitor was fully discharged. Otherwise, this next part was going to suck.

Taking the copper wire, he wrapped it around the exposed legs of the super capacitor. With that completed, he flipped the switch for the grid power and ran for the hole in the floor while covering his head.

Strictly speaking, what he was attempting to do needed a momentary switch on it. One that would tell the capacitor to dump all of its energy into the coil. However, he was banking on it simply pulling more and more until it melted down.

With any luck, that would create a nice little explosion above his head. It was all a side effect of what the copper coil was already doing to a certain degree, which was creating an EMP field. One that was growing in strength.

It wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t as effective as it could have been, but with any luck, it would do the job. Assuming the walls of the building didn’t contain everything.

When it all melted down, the super capacitor would send out an especially strong blast of EMP at the end. That would be his chance to act.

His mil-spec eyes had some EMP shielding installed. The NetConnect, on the other hand did not. He didn’t want to risk it getting damaged, so he powered it down and kept his head covered while he waited.

He waited a minute and then risked running an S&R scan without the NetConnect as an intermediary. His mind handled the process alright, but he could immediately tell that he wouldn’t be able to run another one for a few minutes. With the NetConnect, he could spam the scan dozens of times before he felt it heating up. This one time was enough to make him feel as though he had developed a sudden fever.

Sevorah might have believed he could use it with just his brain, and he had proven that was possible. It didn’t seem to be a viable long-term solution, at least not without something that kept his brain cool. Just being able to use it with a regular NetConnect was plenty for him.

What he saw going on above and around him filled him with hope. All of the previously stationary people had either fallen to their knees or were beginning to tumble about in pain.

It was working.

The scent of ozone filled the air of the garage as the super capacitor reached its limits. That was his cue to lay down flat and put the bag over his head.

In the corner of the room, where the power panel was, a high-pitched whine developed. It grew in volume alongside the smell of ozone. Abruptly, the super capacitor gave out, blowing its cap completely off, even as the insides melted down. Beside it, the liquified remains of the copper coil bubbled away on the floor as they slowly cooled.

At some point, there had been so much electricity going through it that it had melted the copper right off the metal pole.

Turning on his NetConnect, he waited for its boot-up sequence to finish before climbing out of the hole in the floor.

As soon as it was up and running, he ran an S&R scan and found himself grinning.

Hurrying out of the building with his CD-10 in hand, he went to work. One after another, he double-tapped helpless gang members. Each one had been blinded when their eyes short-circuited and left without a way to call for help when the same happened to their NetConnects. Some had low-end cyberware replacement arms or legs. The augments hadn’t been completely short-circuited, but it was obvious that more than one internal microprocessor had been damaged.

It was on the very edge of what he considered the EMP’s effective range to be, that he found them. The two RyZyx security officers. They had been coming straight toward him when the super capacitor blew. That was why everyone hadn’t been doing anything. They had been waiting for these two to arrive.

Both were awake and crawling along the ground when he found them.

“You can quit the act,” He said, staying out of their line of sight. “I know your augments weren’t damaged by the EMP burst. This doesn’t have to go any farther than it already has for any of us. I was hired to do a job, one that was supposed to be simple. Now, obviously, this has not been a simple job. I was not expecting corpo’s out here. However, I have also done enough damage that I think I can argue I have fulfilled the terms of my contract.”

With a snarl, they both pushed themselves off the ground and to their knees, only to pause when Trace put a bullet between them.

“Let’s remain calm, and I’d rather if you didn’t see my face. I don’t want either of you getting any ideas about coming after me for this mess.”

“You’re wrong about our augments not being damaged. It turns out our eyes weren’t shielded. They’re completely fried. Not just damaged, but beyond repair.” The larger one snarled angrily, turning his face enough so Trace could see the blackened augments and nasty burn marks around their eyes.

“Calm down. Now, as you can see, us coming after you isn’t exactly a major concern at the moment. However, if you want us off your back permanently, you’ve got to give us something in return. After all, you did destroy a rather expensive piece of equipment.” The smaller of the two said, keeping a hand on his companion.

“You mean that android?” They nodded. Trace snorted. “You corpo’s have a weird sense of priorities. Fine, I’ll tell you all I know about this job, but don’t go acting on it for a couple of days. I want to be able to turn in what I have and get paid first.”

After telling them everything he knew, he slipped around a corner and ran away. Now all he had to do was find a vehicle and make it back home in one piece.