Ko had finished examining her mother a few minutes earlier and found nothing seriously wrong with her. Meduci’s equipment was lacking compared to what she was used to. What mattered was that it did the job, which it did, though there was a fair bit of interference in the readings.

  After poring over the information, she decided that everything was more or less normal. The drugs that they had been sprayed with had indeed had an adverse effect on her mother. It was to such a degree that the deep sleep she was in was more akin to a coma.

  At least it meant she was safe. Ko’s condition, while painful, wasn’t serious either. It was Trace that she was worried about.

  What the medical examination equipment revealed about his condition was another matter entirely. He had lost a lot of blood, far more than she had originally thought. Really, it was no wonder that his balance was on the fritz. He had suffered from far too many bullet holes, and he had been laying on the floor for several minutes before she was able to help him. The real issue was the damage done to his spine.

  He truly had gotten lucky there.

  At the same time, the bulging herniated disc was just as bad as she thought it would be.

  The nanites had done a good job of stabilizing his condition, but they weren’t able to fix the already damaged nerve. Not to mention that it would take some time for the nanites to finish healing the damage that had already been done to his spine.

  They had gotten lucky up to that point, but she doubted it would last much longer. If Trace received an attack or fired his massive revolver, and as a result, his body and spine were forced to twist in just the wrong way…

  Well, more than just a single leg might become useless.

  Trace ground his teeth when she told him the news. “Does Meduci have the supplies to create a belt brace? Something I can use to keep my spine in place. As soon as those original two guards appear, we’re going to have a fight. There isn’t any question.”

  “I know,” Ko pointed to a nearby chair on wheels. “I already asked him and this was his answer.” She held a pair of regular belts in her hands as she motioned for him to sit on it. “I’ll strap you to the chair, which will mostly restrain your spine since you won’t be able to move about.”

  Trace unholstered the revolver and pulled out all his extra ammo for it. Both went into a pocket he would still be able to access if he were sitting in a chair.

  After that, he limped over to the chair and placed the sword across his lap.

  Ko gently rearranged his hips and shifted his back firmly against the rear of the chair. With that done, she whipped the first of the belts around him and quickly cinched him into place.

  It was hard to breathe, but at least this way, the odds of further damage happening to his spine were much lower.

  With him strapped in place, she wheeled him into the room with her sleeping mother and the two guards.

  “I think it’s about time we woke them up,” Trace told her, as she began checking them both over again. “I know we still need to wait for the other two guards to arrive, but these two have access to the network this place uses. We don’t.”

  The building network required special permissions to access which they didn’t have, and it had been further locked down after the attack had occurred. It was all just another way for the corporations to remain in control.

  “They won’t be fighting anytime soon, not at the level they were before anyway. Whatever they were using that allowed them to move that fast, it really did a number on their joints. It’s no wonder that they had all been replaced previously,” She finished with a shake of her head. “The synthetic cartilage and gel separating them has all been melted away because of the abuse they put them through. Barely any of it remains to support their joints. I don’t think that whatever modification they used is supposed to be used was meant to be engaged for as long as it was.”

  Trace winced at the image her words brought to mind. He didn’t know a lot about how the body worked, though he had been learning more simply by being around Ko and Sevorah. What he did know was that moving around without cartilage or the gel that separated the joints would not be comfortable.

  “We’re going to need more chairs,” He muttered, trying not to think about how they would get back to the elevators.

  Ko chuckled, and taking a cold can of soda, placed it against the side of the first guard’s neck, who began to stir after only a few seconds. As soon as she opened her eyes, Ko moved the can to the neck of the other guard.

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  “You survived,” The woman rasped, behind her mask her tongue flicked out and licked her dry lips. Her eyes shot over to her companion, and she sighed in relief.

  “We all did, just barely. Your bodies are in terrible shape, but you’re alive. A couple of guards found you and brought you a healer on the eighty-fifth floor before we could do anything. They were hoping to extort some favors from Cerys, who still hadn’t been caught at the time. You might want to contact her if you can,” Ko told her while helping her sit-up.

  Trace explained to them everything that had happened, as he had heard it from Ko earlier. While she was again checking them over now that they were awake.

  The one who had woken second began to laugh as he finished the tale. “The greed of building security just saved our butts!” She laughed even harder and began to wheeze and cough.

  Trace shared a questioning look with Ko, and then stared at the first woman, wanting answers.

  “My sister and I have been rather outspoken against the corruption inside the security forces of Siren’s Rush. Cerys has continually tried to convince us that while it is bad, it does serve a purpose. We’ve never believed her until now, that is. That exact corruption, even if it belonged to the building guards and not necessarily Siren’s Rush security forces, just saved all our lives. The irony is more than a little hilarious.” She chuckled softly and reached for the nearby soda can. The simple movement caused her to wince in pain.

  After the other sister stopped coughing, she leaned back with a grin. “It’s a little late, but I don’t believe we were ever introduced. I’m Jam, and that’s my younger twin sister, Ram.” She pulled off the mask she had been wearing that entire time, revealing her face for the first time.

  It was a move her sister, Ram, mirrored as she held the drink to her lips.

  Trace stared at them in surprise. “Wait, why do you look like-”

  “Cerys?” Jam asked with a grin. “She’s our older sister, from a different mother. That whole mistress thing from before is just something we do for fun while we are working. Having us become her personal guards was the best method Cerys could think of to keep us safe as she continued to move up the corporate chain. The two of us are the ones who decided to get all the extra cyberware mods done.”

  “Huh, I guess she really would have owed those two guards a favor then. You might want to hurry up and message her if you haven’t already. I might be immobilized for the most part, but I can still shoot this beast just fine.” Trace patted the revolver sitting in his lap. “As long as they don’t bring any backup, then we’ll be fine.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that you just jinxed us?” Ko quipped, stepping back to relax for a minute.

  He grinned, but shook his head. “Not this time. They want that favor for themselves. There is no way they will be willing to share with others, not if they can help it.”

  The four sat around talking, simply getting to know each other as they wasted time waiting for the two guards to reappear. In the end, they waited for a little over two hours before Meduci came back to the room they had been using. The odd, slightly crazy man had been kept busy with patients nearly the entire time they were there.

  “One of the local kids I had watching for those two men just came into the clinic. They stepped off the elevator a minute ago, and they weren’t alone. The boy said there were four of them, three men and a woman.” Meduci patted the walls of his clinic and home. “I appreciate you staying to ensure this didn’t come back on me, but if you are going to attack them, do it outside, not in here.” He finished with a wry grin.

  Trace chuckled. “You’re an odd one for sure, though I don’t think you’re as crazy as you would like us to believe.”

  Jam and Ram had gone completely still at the man’s appearance. “Doctor Grey… Is that you? We all thought you were dead.”

  The older man sighed and waved to the two women weakly. “Hi Jam, Ram, I’m guessing the woman with the guards will be Cerys, then. These two had mentioned you were assigned to them by her, but I never bothered to pull down your masks.” He chuckled lightly and shook his head. “I thought your mods seemed familiar, but I figured I had just seen so many of them that one cyberware was starting to look like another.”

  “I take it you all know one another?” Trace asked, motioning between each of them.

  “You could say that,” Ram muttered, glaring at the old man. “Doctor Grey was the one who did all the work on us. There was no doctor that big sis trusted more than him. Then, a few years ago, he suddenly disappeared. He left work on us unfinished, and none of us has heard anything from him since.”

  “He didn’t run very far,” Ko muttered, before frowning as her eyes stopped on the man’s clunky cyberware. “Then again, I doubt this was his first stop. I’ve never heard of a corporation-employed doctor using MaxGear cyberware.”

  “Regardless, we’ll let the three of you catch up. Ko, want to push me outside so we can take care of this matter? Jam, Ram, would one of you please contact your sister and let her know that we are nearby? Don’t give her any details more than that just in case, but I want her aware.”

  Jam nodded, and a moment later Ko was pushing him out of the apartment.

  “How do we want to do this?” She asked as they reached the open corridor they had come down a few hours earlier.

  “I should be able to shoot both guards quickly enough, though I’ll start rolling each time I fire. I’m more worried about the third person.” Trace admitted, not liking how it felt to be this weak. “This revolver isn’t made to shoot fast, though I can manage somewhat. It will still be slow enough that by that third shot, the third person could have grabbed Cerys and used her as a shield.”

  Ko frowned, found a chunk of hard trash, and stuffed it underneath the wheels of his chair. “Here, now you won’t roll away. I’m going to hide inside one of the apartments a little farther up. Then, when the chance arises, I’ll use one of my finger whips to decapitate the third person.”

  She rarely used them, but she had monofilament whips stored in the tips of several fingers. The whips were incredibly sharp, but due to the nature of how thin they were also very delicate. The wires were fragile and easily broken. They had extreme cutting power, but little actual tensile strength.

  Thank you to all the people who have taken the time to rate the story and to my latest Patrons! I have other stories up on my Patreon, including my current WIPs. Which are now Created G.H.O.S.T. System(My Cyberpunk story), WetWorks2, plus The Restaurateur and His Daughter and DungeonFall. :)

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