Geracht entered Del’s office. His hands were still bloodied from the encounter earlier in the night. Del looked him up and down.

“Geracht. You’ve done it again,” Del spoke in slow measured tones.

Geracht looked down at his hands, “So I have.” Then he looked up at Del, “Why have you called for me?”

“I need you to take me to the place where you’d disposed of Gradius’s body. My gut is telling me that there’s something worth finding there.” Del walked up to Geracht, “Tell me, Geracht. In all of your surgeries, how many included a data cable?”

“None, sir.”

“Exactly. Yet, a data cable was found in the operating room where the Byun boy was enhanced,” Del paused. “What do you suppose they needed that cable for? You see, I think it was to transfer files into those cybernetics. That means you would have files in the cybernetics we’d installed in you from that operating room.”

Geracht’s eyes flashed with light as he did an internal systems analysis, searching for any undocumented file systems. An alert flashed in his vision.

“[DETECTION] New cybernetics memory allocation detected. Data cannot be decrypted.”

“I see it now. Files using cybernetics memory addresses, but they’re encrypted,” Geracht mumbled beneath his breath.

“Exactly,” Del spoke excitedly. “I think Gradius stored CellarDoor in those pieces, and knowing him, I think he had the encryption key on him when the surgery was being performed. He was in the room during the surgery, so he must have facilitated the data transfer and encryption. I need that key, Geracht. Take me to the body.”

Geracht nodded and led the way to his IFV on the top level of the garage. He entered a set of coordinates to a location far into the dustlands where an old abandoned garbage dump could be found. Del followed Geracht through the dump. It was covered in dust and rotting materials. Sheets of plastic blew in the wind, and rusted I-beams, concrete, and rebar stuck out from a pile of rubble that was once a building. Home refused and wasted from ages past lay in sun-bleached piles, reaching great heights.

The stench of this place still remained, having soaked into the blowing dust itself. It didn’t take long before Del and Geracht were confronted with a new scent.

A sickly sweet smell punctuated the heavy odor of decay wafting ahead. Geracht lifted a large sheet of corrugated steel to reveal a pile of bodies, some that Del recognized, and many that he didn't. While most of the bodies were dessicated and covered with dust, there were a few that were fresh, including the mutilated and dismembered corpse of Gradius Byun.

“This is what was left after he fell,” Geracht assured.

Del rushed to the body and searched through the pockets for anything he could find, but he came up with nothing. He then looked at Gradius's shoes, sitting neatly next to the body; feet still inside. He sloughed the guck from inside to find a memory key within. He held it up with a smile. “Geracht, slot this in. Let’s see if it works.”

Geracht opened an arm panel and slotted the key into a port there. His eyes glowed and flickered as he tried time and again to access the data. “It’s password protected. The encryption key itself is encrypted.”

Del kicked the remains of Gradius’s skull into the side of a rusted out car. “Find me the Byun boy! I don’t care what it takes. Get him to me alive!” He typed on his cell, sending a message to his P-Sec officers. The Vens weren’t working fast enough.

Del took the key from Getacht and pocketed it. Then he sanitized his hands and started walking back out of the dump towards the IFV.

Geracht turned to look at his hoard. His desiccated pile of memories. He stood a moment, looking over each one, but his eyes came to rest on a small skeletal hand. He gently rested the corrugated steel sheet back over. A tear cresting the edge of his cybernetic eye.

- - -

Leary studied the armature within Darius’s arm holster. He finished sawing the handle off of a handgun, filing the edges, and then slotting it onto the metal. A helictical track ran through the arm, around the metal bone. He loaded thirty rounds into the track and pressed the gun down into the arm.

A whizzing sound and vibration came from within Darius’s arm. He clenched his right fist and angled the knuckles down, causing the gun to erupt from the arm.

“Hey, don’t shoot in here,” Leary said, stepping back.

“Sorry,” Darius said, admiring the weapon.

“That’s how you arm it,” Tinker walked around to Darius’s shoulder. “To fire, you clench your fist as tightly as you can. There’s a flat panel in your palm that will trigger the gun to fire. If you hold it, it’ll keep firing. Best I can tell, it’s about two rounds per second. The problem is the reload. It takes time to pop rounds into the track one by one.”

“I see. Okay,” Darius took a deep breath.

CURL sat in a chair, eyes glowing as she navigated the deep web. “I’ve found three different doctors currently employed by SaeSyn. Two have been logged as missing, meaning the last one must be the one we need. His name is Pascal Rubonne…”

“What’s the doctor for?” Darius asked.

CURL looked up, “So that we can find the rest of your missing parts.”