Ko arrived a few minutes later in her new SUV, and with Deckard’s help, unloaded several portable scanning machines.

  “Hey, Ko,” Trace greeted her dryly with a wave of his matte-black arm.

  She raised a brow at how casual the motion was for him and nodded her head. She was too busy to respond as she concentrated on setting the machines up.

  Ko hummed softly as she arranged the various scanning devices around Trace's form on the bed. Having her there brought a sense of comfort and normalcy amidst the strangeness that had come with upgrading his NetConnect.

  "So," Ko began, her voice laced with curiosity, but strictly professional. “You decided to upgrade something big, and it’s doing something odd.” She attached a couple of electrical leads to his NetConnect, followed by a host of smaller ones on his scalp and neck. “Deckard mentioned that the speed at which you are able to control your arm without the NetConnect has been noticeably increasing. Well,” She flicked the first of the scanners on. "Let's see what we can learn about your situation from this. It’s possible that there was some unforeseen interaction between the upgrade and your unique neural condition.”

  “Is that likely?” He asked.

  She stopped what she was doing and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’m not sure,” Ko said slowly. “I have a feeling that it’s more likely than not though. The issue is these things don’t come for free. I know it has caused you a lot of problems growing up, but…” She shrugged.

  Trace shifted on the bed. He was uncomfortable talking about a problem that they didn’t fully understand and couldn’t fix. Over the years, he had learned to cope with the issue for the most part, and until recently, that had been enough.

  He sighed. “Whatever. What do I need to do? Anything?”

  Ko nodded, her gaze fixed on the readouts flashing across the various screens before them. She tapped a few keys, adjusting the parameters on two of the scanners. "That's fascinating," She murmured. “The signals are… erratic. It’s almost as if your nerves are…” She tilted her head as she searched for the right words. “Being overclocked in some way, in an attempt to adapt to the upgrade in real-time."

  “Um, I’m not an expert, but I don’t think that’s the way nerves work,” Trace complained, only then noticing that there was an ever -so- slight tingle in his shoulder and behind his eyes.

  “You’re right, it’s not, normally. There are, of course, drugs that can mess with how your nervous system reacts. What do you think adrenaline is? It’s just the body’s natural drug for doing that. What we’re talking about, though, is something completely different. It doesn’t help with how a person adapts…” She trailed off and shook her head. “I can’t explain how your body is doing this, not with the equipment I brought anyway.”

  Deckard, who had returned to the reinforced chair at the desk, chose that moment to speak up. “From what Trace has told me; the issue with his brain came about due to some corporation experiments when he was younger. Is it possible that other, um, mutations occurred at the same time? As you said, while it has caused him problems in the past, it was always under control until the GHOST System began to cause problems for him.”

  “What are you thinking?” Trace asked him.

  “I’m just wondering if the older cyberware could have been actually helping you keep the problem under control. Your NetConnect is off right now, and judging by the readouts on the screen, you’re undoubtedly becoming more stable. Perhaps the same thing happened in the past with your old eyes, making them more effective than they otherwise would have been?”

  Trace glanced at the machines that were hooked up to him in confusion, until Ko pointed to a specific one.

  “He’s right. Your numbers are closer to normal right now than they’ve ever been in the past.”

  “Huh, can we modify how much help the NetConnect gives me? Would that work?”

  Deckard nodded while Ko shook her head. “It won’t matter, not for long anyway. It would be a Band-Aid fix and could do more harm than good in the long run. Your body has already gotten used to working under that exact scenario while you were growing up. Then we suddenly changed the need for it to operate in that manner and started it up again now. Confusing your system like that is not a good idea and will cause more harm than anything. It won’t know when to stop and would keep growing stronger over time.”

  Before they could continue the discussion, Sevorah finally arrived in her little car. She had been in the middle of an operation when Deckard called her.

  The middle-aged woman glanced at the android for a moment, offering him a nod. “We meet at last, Deckard. I’d love to talk to you for a while after this.”

  Inside the apartment, Ko quickly showed her ex-mentor everything she had learned and what they had discussed.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “There are a few leaps of logic that you all were taking, it seems that, despite that, you still managed to reach a decent conclusion. Modifying the NetConnect in that way would indeed be a bad idea.” Sevorah bit her lip. “For now, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Your system should return to normal after the upgrade is finished. However, we’ll need to check on you a few times over the next week and make sure that the amount of energy hasn’t increased.”

  Trace nodded, his thoughts drifting back to the new stealth suit he had in the basement. It was so close to being finished, and then he could move on to another project.

  He glanced at the two women who were glaring at him and offered them a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry,” He said softly. “I’ve got plenty to keep myself busy for the moment.”

  Trace lay on the bed, feeling the odd, warm sensation in his neck where the NetConnect was completing its upgrade. It had been working at it for three hours by that point, and he wasn’t sure how much longer it would take. His arm had taken a long enough time that he had fallen asleep while it was still working. The NetConnect was smaller, but more complicated in its own way.

  All he could do was hope that it wouldn’t take forever to finish.

  “This is interesting,” Sevorah murmured, highlighting a particular waveform on the display showing a virtual representation of his brain.

  The pads that were hooked up to that particular machine had metal discs on them. It was a portable electroencephalogram that recorded the electrical activity of the brain, while also providing enough spatial resolution for them to map the brain. Or at least the full-size unit did. The portable model looked as though it didn’t support enough pads to cover the entire head. That obviously limited the amount of spatial coverage they could see at any one time.

  Originally, it was a medical device that he had been completely unfamiliar with. Now, it was Sevorah and Ko’s favorite instrument to attach to his head.

  Ko looked away from the screen she had been studying, in preparation to shut it down, and hurried over to her.

  “Look at this. The readings for his nerves around the NetConnect, they’re off the chart.”

  Trace felt a chill at her words. It was true they had told Sevorah a lot about the system, but not everything. Its ability to smooth nerves was not something they had told her yet. While all three of them considered her trustworthy, they were also realistic. The woman had a serious drive to save people. If she knew the full extent of the G.H.O.S.T. System’s abilities, it would drive her mad. The version that Trace and Ko possessed was not the same one that the public would see.

  That version would be far more limited and only contain a couple of entries in the menu. At least that had been the original plan. Who knew what the plan was now?

  “They were high the last time I looked at them a couple of months ago, before you became a hermit, but this is new.” He almost let out a sigh of relief. He had forgotten that she had done a scan of his brain after he had performed the nerve-smoothing upgrade on his brainstem.

  Ko looked over her shoulder, taking a few seconds to understand what she was seeing. While she may have become a full-fledged mender, she still possessed decades less experience than Sevorah. “The organic tissue and the synthetic-nerves look like they are combining. It’s a little hard to say since it’s right on the edge of the scan.” She reached out and pointed a finger, tracing a line he couldn’t see.

  Her teacher nodded, and spread her fingers, zooming in on the section Ko had pointed out. “Trace, I know you don’t like talking about it, but what experiments did that corporation do on you back then? Do you remember any details about the experiments or the corporation itself?” Sevorah asked after a moment.

  “Why?” He asked suspiciously.

  “Please, Trace?” His girlfriend requested softly. “This is important.”

  Trace ground his teeth for a moment and then sighed, barely stopping himself from running a hand through his hair. Something that would have torn all the pads Ko had carefully placed earlier. “I need a haircut,” He muttered to no one in particular. “Fine, whatever. Which time do you want to know about? I was part of two different experiments for different corporations.”

  Ko nodded along. She and Deckard had heard this much before. “That’s right. You mentioned before that you thought the first one was what had helped you digest the rotten food and unclean water you would eat and drink to survive.” He nodded. It hadn’t improved their taste or smell, but he had never gotten sick like everyone else. “Then the second time was more focused on experiments on your brain and nerves.”

  He nodded again.

  “Hold up before we get into that,” Sevorah interrupted. “What do you mean, it was two different corporations? I was under the impression that the corporations typically declared a section of territory theirs. Were you moving around that much as a kid?”

  “I moved around some, but pretty much stayed in the same section of the city,” He said, shaking his head. “Maybe that’s the way it is now, but from what I remember back then, all the kids were just hunted down whenever a corporation needed subjects. Some of the more desperate ones volunteered, especially if it was winter, but usually, they just grabbed whoever they could find.”

  “Hmm, I would like to know more about what they did during the first experiment, as it could have had implications for your development. You must remember that everything they were doing back then hadn’t been tested for long-term viability. In other words, just because the initial effect was to help you survive, doesn’t mean new properties haven’t appeared over the years.”

  Sevorah shook her head in wonder. “Genetics, and well, experiments of any sort aren’t my specialty by any means, but frankly, I’m amazed these corporations that do these experiments haven’t kept better track of you all. I would think they would want to conduct checks every few years.”

  Trace scratched his cheek, looking away. “Street meat kids don’t exactly have the best chances of staying alive long-term, if you get what I mean. They do make a token effort at tracking us. Not really sure why they bother though, since all the kids know about it.” He tapped a spot on his thigh. “The spot changes, but the tracker is used to identify which corporation took us and which experiment we participated in. If you have one, you typically won’t get selected for another experiment. So, everyone would end up removing them, either because they want to be chosen again, or because they don’t want to be tracked.”

  “And they’ve never improved the design on these trackers?” Ko wondered.

  He shrugged. “Maybe they have now. You have to remember I’ve been off the streets for a few years now and avoiding their experiment recruiters for even longer. Besides, like I said, back then it was mostly a token effort. If Sevorah is right though, then yeah, I’m sure they’ve changed things up since my day.”

  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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