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

Trace awoke with a groan, his body popping and cracking repeatedly as he stretched out. Everything ached, reminding him how much he had pushed himself the day before.

A blinking message was waiting for him in the corner of his vision as soon as he was coherent enough to read it.

- Scan of the user’s body completed

- Energy reserves of nanites falling below acceptable levels, connecting to wireless energy source

- Construction of additional nanites has begun (non-medical grade titanium found mixed with aluminum, steel, bronze, and other trace metals)

- Repairs to skeletal bones have begun

- Time Until Completion: Unknown due to lack of required materials for repairs

- User’s body has suffered significant damage to the skeletal and muscular framework from years of malnutrition and abuse.

- More nutritious matter will be needed to perform the needed repairs.

- Provide the various matter resources through the stomach receptacle as soon as possible

He took a moment to take all of that in while he continued to stretch out. It wasn’t really all that surprising he supposed to learn his body was in bad condition. When you were raised the way he had been, and could barely take care of yourself, was it any wonder that his body had suffered some of those effects?

Still, he’d do what he could to fix the issue now, he supposed. “Alright, I’ll eat some more later when I head out.”

- More metal is requested

He raised a brow at that and then thought of what other items he had left in the apartment. Despite the crate being full, there were actually still plenty of items he could take apart. However, as he had discovered the night before, that wasn’t exactly an efficient method.

He would check prices on actual titanium while he was out, and swing by the junkyard and trash-heaps. Maybe he would get lucky and spot a few things that he knew had the metal in them. The new eyes had different sensors. He hadn’t looked through them all just yet, but there might be one that would work for this. He doubted it would detect the metal itself. That would be too specialized for the military. But maybe he could set it to detect or scan for something else. Like an item that he knew would have it.

He would need to go through the sensor-suite and see what all it was capable of before he got to the trash-heap or junkyard.

Trace had a small hiding place under his bed where he had loosened some boards a year earlier. It was there that he hid the braincase after taking one last look at the nutrition mix level. It had gone down in the hours since he had last looked at it. The nanites were burning through the materials in it as they attempted to wake their host. That meant he would need to buy some more while he was out. It was a terrible hiding spot, and he was only now realizing it with his new eyes. Places like that were easily highlighted if a person had the right cyberware.

He put the bed back on top of the loose boards and then began to gather up all the remaining tech from the apartment. Everything he could find went on top of his bed or fell off around the edges. It was a basic disguise, but if anyone looked into the room, all they would see was a storage area.

With any luck, no one would come by while he was gone anyway, but it was better to be prepared in this instance.

He found an old duffel bag while he was doing all of that and brought it to the table where all the guns were. The original plan had been to clean them up and then sell them. Now he was wondering if it was worth the trouble.

He needed credits right now more than he wanted to waste the time cleaning them. Thanks to the nanites that had infested him, he now had to actually eat properly. Added to that was the need to find a new apartment.

Yeah, spending the time to clean them had definitely fallen low on his list of priorities.

The massive revolver was still in his courier bag, where it was going to stay. He was keeping that powerful monstrosity, no matter what. He didn’t care how hard it would be to find rounds for it. That revolver was his ace in the hole.

In the meantime, the semi-auto pistol with the extended magazine fit the old holster on his thigh just fine.

That meant all the handguns automatically went into the duffel bag. At least that was the case until he came across one in decent condition with a few mods. He might not need to carry more than two, but it never hurt to have more at home. Besides, it would be a shame to simply sell all of this ammo.

He set that gun to the side and stripped the mods from a second one that looked like it had been left outside in an acid bath. There was no way he was going to make any decent money from the sale of these guns he was beginning to realize. It wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest if he had taken the time to clean them.

Trace took a moment to look at the rifles and sub-machine guns before shaking his head, selecting one of the rifles, and then sweeping the rest into the bulging bag. He had originally meant to get rid of some of the items from the crate by the door on this trip, but that just wasn’t meant to be.

He packed the items for Jonas the Slick into the courier bag as well, after going over each one carefully. The best he could figure out was that they contained information on the other scav dens that were part of the cell.

If someone wanted to try to get rid of all those scavs, then that was fine with him.

Strapping his courier bag on, he hefted up the duffel bag and left the apartment, making sure the door was locked securely behind him. The first stop was the gun shop, then some food. After that, he would meet up with Jonas the Slick. Finally, after all of that was done, he would head to the junkyard and trash-heap if needed. On the way home, he would buy some nutrition mix, assuming he had enough credits to afford anything at that point.

The holes in his legs may have been patched up, but walking on them still made them ache. Unfortunately, the elevator wasn’t working that morning. He was lucky that it had been working the day before, as it only seemed to function two days out of the week.

The weight of the duffel bag seemed to grow the longer he carried it, and he was tempted to just dump it all into the abundant waste piles more than once. Trace hadn’t realized that his body was in this bad of condition still until he left the apartment. He had been feeling fine ever since he got back from Sevorah’s the day before.

It was only now that he remembered the body took time to heal from surgeries and bullet wounds. She must have given him some good meds to keep him going like that without messing with his mind. At least, that is what he assumed happened.

Maybe he had just overdone things later on and was now paying the price. That seemed less likely, though.

He was certainly going to be overdoing things that day though, and he was not looking forward to how much everything was going to hurt later.

The gun shop was thankfully only a few blocks away and hidden in the shadow of some nameless corporation’s megastructure. The megastructures were a blight on humanity, but the corporations loved them. They had absolute control inside the giant buildings. Once you entered one, you were giving yourself over to their law, not whatever laws and rules the rest of the outside world followed.

Megastructures were towering skyscrapers that could house more than fifty thousand people at a time. Considering how large their footprints were, that was probably a pretty conservative estimate. They had floors for everything you could think of, apartments, shopping, agriculture, R&D, and more. The giant things were practically bio-domes at this point. Self-contained ecologies where the inhabitants rarely seemed to interact with the rest of the world. Once you went in, you almost never came back out.

Still, they served a purpose and kept a lot of people employed and housed that wouldn’t be otherwise. He wanted to hate them more than he did, but couldn’t for those simple reasons.

The inside of the gun shop was brightly lit when he entered with his heavy bag. Turrets mounted to the ceiling automatically began to track him, waiting for an excuse to open fire.

All the guns and ammo were on the other side of a bulletproof glass screen that was also protected by a steel cage on both sides. Despite that, there were obvious marks when idiots had taken their best shot at it. If the divots in the floor were anything to go by, they had definitely not succeeded.

“What can I help you with?” A large man asked from behind the glass. He had a secondary cyberware attachment that could be flipped down over his right eye.

“Uh, I have some guns I need to sell from a recent job. I was going to clean them first, but I’m not exactly feeling one hundred percent right now.” Trace found himself telling the man more than he meant to.

The big fellow wiped some grease from his hands with a nearby rag that had been placed there for that purpose and pointed to a pass-through chute. “Load it up. Let’s see what sort of drek we’re dealing with here and then we can haggle.”

A minute later, the duffel bag was empty, and the man had a thoroughly unimpressed look on his face. “Scavs?”

Trace nodded. “They came back while I was in the middle of a different job. They weren’t supposed to be there at all.”

“Figured as much. Scavs are the only ones who treat their guns this way.” He flipped the secondary augment down over his right eye and began to examine each of them in detail. “Lots of grime; could have definitely used a cleaning. The inside of the barrel is showing some rust from where it looks like blood got inside. The rest of the internals are in pretty good shape though. A couple of these are complete write-offs, but I can still use their few good parts on the others.”

He pulled back and flipped the augment back up. A meaty hand scratched the thin layer of stubble on the underside of his chin while he thought. “They’re not great, and I’ll have to clean them, obviously, but there are also fifteen of them. What would you say to five hundred credits for the lot?”

Trace hardly dared to breathe for a moment. That was more than he had dared to hope for, at the same time, it also meant he hadn’t properly understood their worth. That was something he would need to fix before he sold something to anyone again.

“Six-fifty,” He returned after a moment’s hesitation.

“Five-fifty.”

“Seven hundred.”

“Seven?” The big man blinked in confusion. “That’s not how this works. We’re supposed to be working to meet somewhere in the middle.”

“I know. I’ve just always wanted to go up in a negotiation and see how the other person reacts. Anyway, six-twenty-five.”

The fellow shook his head in good humor. “Fine, let’s call it six-hundred deal?”

“Deal.”

The credits were deposited into the account on his NetConnect a few moments later.

Now it was time to spend everything he had just earned. Actually, would he have gotten more if he had promised to spend the money at the shop? Trace groaned and shook his head at forgetting to do something so simple.

It was a rookie mistake and not one he had made in a long time. He didn’t usually sell weapons though either, so the mistake was at least somewhat understandable. He was out of his depth here.

The clerk returned from putting the guns in the back room. “What else can I do for you?”