“This version works good,” Deckard announced as he came to a shaky stop still several feet above the floor.

  The main thruster ports beneath his feet stayed steady, while a series of flaps around the side-controlled ejection ports that steered the boots.

  Deckard drifted lightly around the basement before settling onto the floor, soft as can be. A large grin was stretched across the face of the android’s head, which had been reformed thanks to Ko’s and Trace’s efforts to match the face Deckard preferred.

  Now, adding thrusters to the new stealth suit wasn’t really needed. That’s why they were attachments. They were cool though, and definitely useful, perhaps not all the time, which was again why they were attachments. A proper wraith planned properly for their jobs before going in, and while he had been terrible at it thus far, he hadn’t given up on his dream. He would be a wraith, and these thrusters would be useful to have on jobs.

  There had already been several jobs in the past where they would have been handy to have. Though only the job involving the pit and the job above Pushman’s apartment, would he have been likely to carry them.

  After regaining a body of his own, Deckard had become far more open to showing his emotions. Of course, the fact that they had recently received word from his parents had likely also contributed to the change.

  A lot had happened in the last few weeks, which had helped to finalize the direction of their next actions. All that remained was waiting for Trace to finish healing. He was almost in a state where he could become active again. The jobs he would be taking would hardly be anything great, but after being useless for two months, he would need awhile to get back into form.

  Besides, he could use these to practice his stealth properly and to take things slow. Since he had to worry about injuring his back, Trace would need to avoid any strenuous fights.

  “Wait, how much hydrogen is left in the tanks?” Trace asked before Deckard could begin to take off the large boots. “And how long is it going to take them to refill?”

  The android had been hovering around the basement for a good twenty-five seconds. While they had estimated the fuel in the tanks would only last around thirty-seconds. That was only an average and didn’t take into account any extra variables, like simply hovering, which naturally burned less fuel than getting lift.

  However, Deckard’s android body was easily twice Trace’s own weight, even when he was wearing his new stealth suit.

  The humidity around the boots dropped dramatically as twin funnels formed around the suction ports that had been installed on the back. “Uh, well, it had been down to about twenty percent remaining, but in this humid basement, it looks like it will take eight minutes to refill.”

  Trace took in that information, thinking about the general humidity of Colorado versus the basement. “So, that’s what? About thirty minutes for a complete refill anywhere else?”

  “That’s about right, yeah,” Deckard replied as he finished pulling them off. “I gathered some good data on the firing program, stabilizer control, and fuel efficiency management. With this information, I’ll be able to refine the overall control program I created for each one.”

  “Before you get busy with that…” Trace tapped his NetConnect. “Do you mind? You said you were going to do the update when I finished fixing the android body for you. Then we got caught up on all the tweaks and little fixes, and one thing led to another.” He bobbed his head from side to side as he spoke.

  Deckard had promised him a gift when the body was finished. He had revealed what it was when those repairs had first been completed. One of the projects Deckard had been working on for a while at that point was a complete update to the OS of the NetConnect system.

  He had a list of requirements for the OS before he would even begin to consider it completed. It needed to be backward compatible, at least to a certain extent. More than that, he wanted it to be ultra-efficient, compatible with future devices, and not something that corporations could easily take control of.

  As part of this project, Deckard had also begun working on an update to the basic firmware for all cyberware. It was an ongoing effort, but he had concentrated on the cyberware that Trace currently possessed. These two projects had resulted in the heaviest loads on his time-dilated virtual environments. Working through the countless problems they had presented had required far more effort than he first estimated.

  It still wasn’t to the stage that it would qualify as a completed update. When it came to Trace’s specific hardware, it was more than enough.

  Deckard sighed. “Fine, I had wanted to get it a little closer to completed, but now that these thrusters are mostly complete, I know you’ll be wanting to start doing jobs again.”

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  Trace looked over at his new stealth suit that was lying on the nearby workbench and nodded. The suit was almost completed, though at this point it was nearly more accurate to call it a stealth armor than a simple suit.

  With everything he had added to it, calling it anything else would be a lie, and it still wasn’t finished. This particular stealth armor was on a whole separate level of complicated from the first version.

  “Where do you want to perform these upgrades?” Trace wondered.

  “Upstairs, in your apartment. It will be best, as you will need to be unconscious for the firmware updates. The ports for the cyberware are all in locations that can only be reached during surgery, normally. The nanites in your body will allow me to form a temporary data connection to them, but it will still be an unpleasant experience for you.”

  “Let’s do that then,” Trace was eager to get this over with as there was another matter he had been putting off for a while now as well. With the matter of using the healing nanites on his back completed, he was free to perform a regular upgrade again. He obviously couldn’t go for a knowledge dump as he wanted to do, so he was left deciding between upgrading his NetConnect and his eyes.

  Truthfully, his eyes were tempting, but the NetConnect was the control node for everything. If he improved that, then his eyes would also improve, not a lot, but a small amount. He had experienced it when his NetConnect was replaced both times to differing degrees.

  In any case, he had decided that the NetConnect came first. Next week, he would do the same to his eyes, assuming nothing else came up. He had managed to scan a decent number of cyberware parts, of which eyes and NetConnects were included. Unfortunately, that meant the cost for the upgrade had gone up significantly.

  If you thought about it normally, then you might be inclined to think that the cost would go down. After all, the system already possessed all the relevant information, and you would be right. Research costs are a large part of any new technology. If you take that away, then it would naturally be cheaper.

  It was only one cost among many. In the case of cyberware, especially in regard to what the upgrade was doing, it became… tricky.

  Without any additional cyberware parts of the same style that the G.H.O.S.T. System could use as sufficient research material, it only performed a basic upgrade. All this basic upgrade did was make the mod in question work better. It cleaned up all the micro-solder connections inside, slimmed down control-units, and strengthened the synth-muscle inside, among other things. Just a bunch of basic upgrades, nothing special.

  However, when the system had research material, the matter changed entirely. It went from performing a basic upgrade to integrating all the best parts from the different cyberware of that style that had been scanned. That was why the number of items scanned was important. If there were only two scanned sets of eyes in the library, then when it came time to upgrade them, the result would be little better than a basic version.

  As for how much the item’s capabilities would change? Well, Trace would need to wait and learn afterward. When he had performed this upgrade on his arm before, he had been in no position to test how much had changed.

  Either way, performing the upgrade after the OS and firmware updates had been done could only be beneficial.

  Trace carefully walked up the stairs, while Deckard came up behind him. The android’s boots each had dense soles specially made to deal with his weight.

  The bed frame creaked and groaned as Deckard sat on the corner, stretching out his hand toward Trace. “I apologize for this, but I will need to take temporary control of your nanites, as they will be used to form the connections I mentioned before.”

  Trace swallowed and lay down. “I can’t say I like knowing that there is an option for someone to take control of the nanites.”

  “Only my mother or I have authority to do it, and direct touch of some form is needed. We needed an insurance policy in case something ever happened, and the corporations changed them in ways they shouldn’t have.” The man scoffed. “Not that it ever mattered, since they were never even released into the public outside of creating the aberrations.” He finished bitterly.

  “Has Atraxia made any progress in contacting the other personalities?” Trace normally tried to give his friend space and not inquire too deeply or often about his family.

  Deckard wrinkled his nose and pursed his lips. “I… don’t know. I’m beginning to feel like there is something else going on, but I am hesitant to put my thoughts into words more than this. For now, I’m hoping it’s just a feeling.”

  There was an odd, slightly electronic-sounding sigh and then Trace felt a hand on the back of his neck. “I’m going to put you to sleep and then start the first upload. I’ll begin with the firmware for your NetConnect, followed by your eyes, and then your arm. Only after those are done will I update the OS.”

  “Just do it, and I hope you can use these same firmware updates on that tincan we fixed up for you.”

  “Hmm, that is actually a good point that I hadn’t thought of; talk about a blind spot. There are several components that naturally cross over. I can’t perform the update for everything, at least not right away, but I can do it for some of them.”

  That was the last thing Trace heard before Deckard put him to sleep.

  ***

  He rolled over with a groan, glad that he was still wearing the back and hip brace. Opening his eyes, he noticed Deckard sitting on a reinforced chair in front of his desk. The schematics for the coilpistol design he had settled on were spread across its surface and had gained dozens of new notations since the last time he looked at the physical copy.

  “Ugh, don’t you ever turn off your brain? I mean come on, man? I’ve already made the thing; it works. You don’t see me thinking about how to improve it obsessively, do you?” Trace sat up, feeling a twinge of pain in his back. “Did everything go alright? Am I supposed to notice a difference from the firmware updates?”

  “Everything went fine, and I doubt it. The improvements are there, but they’re designed to make them work better and more efficiently overall. It isn’t like your arm suddenly gained extra strength, but it might react to your nerves a tad faster. As for the other item, have you checked the changes to your NetConnect yet?”

  Trace shook the fog from his mind and blinked slowly. He might be awake, but it didn’t seem like he was actually awake yet. The HUD was always there in a person’s vision, but when you weren’t focusing on it, all the icons became transparent and easy to ignore.

  Flicking his eyes to the upper right corner of his vision, he brought the icons into focus.

  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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