Ko’s mother, Park Su-Min, was waiting for them on a bench near the elevator when they arrived. She was looking less put together than the last time Trace had seen her, and the edges of a bruise peeked beneath the long sleeve of her shirt.

  Ko gasped softly when she saw her mother and rushed over to her. “Mom, what happened to you?” Her hands pulled up the woman’s sleeve so she could inspect the bruise. “Why don’t you look like you have been eating, right? What’s going on?” Cold steel entered her voice, as it became apparent her mother wasn’t being treated right.

  Trace patted her on the shoulder. “You might want to have AdeKreed get that paperwork pushed through on the triple.” He nodded at a few imposing-looking people coming toward them, led by a well-dressed woman and a particularly smarmy-looking man.

  Ko stood up, placing herself in between them and her mother. “Is there something we can help you with?”

  “Miss Devko Park, I presume?” The woman asked, her eyes scanning her up and down, only to nod simply. “Yes, you’ll do.”

  The smarmy man next to her performed the same inspection, only this time, Ko felt as though her skin was crawling with revulsion.

  She stepped behind Trace, unable to handle the feeling. “What is it that you want?”

  “It is time to renegotiate the terms we have in regard to the custodianship of your mother.”

  “You don’t have custodianship of her,” Ko spat back through gritted teeth. “I do, I always have. We made sure that clause was removed from the contract when we signed it.”

  The smarmy man leered at her, and flicked out his tongue, as though trying to taste the air from her mouth. “Yes, you did, but it wasn’t hard for us to change it after the fact. It was slightly harder to do these sorts of things years ago when everything was done with physical media. Now, with digital copies, it’s laughably easy to change pieces of information at will on a contract. The hardest part is gaining access to the record again, after that, well, a decent net breacher can change all the information without leaving a speck of evidence.”

  “Then I’ll just have someone do the same!” She growled back. “I have copies of what the contract looked like back then, including photos of it being signed. I have no idea what you are trying to pull, but it isn’t going to be as easy as you seem to think it will be.”

  The woman discreetly winked at her before her face went back to a more neutral expression.

  Meanwhile, the man next to her looked as though his head was going to explode. He pointed a shaking finger first at Ko’s face, and then at Su-Min behind her. “This isn’t over.” With that parting remark, he spun on his heel and strode away, having to struggle to push the large bruisers behind him out of the way.

  “What is all of this about?” Trace asked the woman, who seemed to be the calmer and more collected of the two.

  She stared at them for a moment, her eyes flicking to the edges of the large space they were in.

  Right, they were in a corporate-owned megastructure. They were likely being watched at that very moment. Trace could take a hint when it was offered, at least when he recognized it.

  “Actually, hold that thought. It’s clear that Ko’s mom needs to be looked at. Why don’t we get her back to her apartment first and continue this conversation there?”

  Ko shot him an uncomprehending glance, not having seen the woman’s earlier hint. He bumped her with his hip, urging her into motion. By his estimation, Su-Min wasn’t actually in that bad of condition, however, it never hurt to be careful. Someone had been rough with her, at the very least, along with withholding her food. Having Ko check her over for more injuries wouldn’t hurt.

  The woman nodded and waved away her escort and all except two turned around and left. The two that remained also happened to be the most heavily armed of the bunch. They were wielding dual plasma swords across their backs, with short-barreled shotguns strapped directly beneath them. Both had twin thigh holsters, the same as him, along with an SMG strapped to their chest. It was only when he took in that last detail that he realized they were also both female. The masks they were wearing, combined with their cyberware and suits, had hidden any other feminine features from view.

  Su-Min sighed and nodded, pointing them toward the elevator.

  The two guards followed the group to the elevator and went up two floors. Despite that, there was still a large hole in the middle of the floor where the tree that was planted below extended upwards.

  Ko and her mother led them to a door, five apartments down from the elevator.

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  Su-Min unlocked the door and invited them all inside. Trace, Ko, and the woman who had yet to introduce herself joined her, while the two guards took up position outside.

  This was Trace’s first-time seeing Su-Min’s apartment, and he was less than impressed by the generosity of the Siren’s Rush corporation. It was better than the squalid apartment he had been living in before he moved into the warehouse, but only by a couple of degrees.

  Ko’s teeth ground together as she took in the sight of her mother’s living conditions. “Is this why you haven’t wanted to let me come up here the last few visits?” She demanded angrily. “Where is everything? Mom, what is going on?”

  “Devko, chae-ga-”

  “No,” Ko interrupted her without hesitation. “In English, not Korean. We have guests.”

  Her mother ran a hand down the side of her face in irritation. A ragged nail caught on her cheek and drew a red line that had her hissing in pain as blood welled to the surface.

  Ko threw her hands up in the air and quickly found the first aid kit she had left there before. “Don’t mind me, I’m just going to clean this as well, then check your arm. Now, start explaining, both of you, what is going on?”

  Her mother licked her dry lips and began explaining. “I don’t know what her tale is, but mine is simple, and began three…” She blinked and tilted her head, to Ko’s annoyance. “Maybe, four months ago, I don’t remember. You know how bad my memory is these days. Anyway, at that time Siren’s Rush informed us -by which I mean myself and the other two that were here due to similar circumstances- that they felt they had paid their dues.”

  Ko wasn’t the only one who caught the past tense of her phrase.

  “What do you mean, were here?” Trace asked slowly. “We were under the impression that you three were more or less never allowed to leave unless it was for work.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. They told us that, then they began taking our things, one by one, claiming it was payment for food and housing. Then I was asked to switch jobs. When I got back from my first shift, they were both gone.” Su-Min looked her daughter in the eyes for the first time in a long time. “I couldn’t say anything to you. I’m monitored at work, and the same goes with my NetConnect. I was ashamed to bring you up here where we could talk alone…”

  Tears fell from her eyes as she swallowed thickly and continued speaking words that she had been holding back for years. “I’m just so tired of being a burden on you, and I can’t apologize enough for what I did to you. I thought it was better to just take it all in silence and let it all just happen. It was better that it be done to me than to you.”

  Quietly, Trace pushed the corpo woman toward the bathroom, intent on giving the mother and daughter some privacy. “Alright, how about you tell me where you come into this, and why they want Ko?” He whispered to her as the door closed behind them.

  The woman put her back to the mirror, immediately making him suspicious of whether there was a hidden camera behind it. No cameras were lighting up automatically, but that merely meant they weren’t on the public network. However, he was feeling cautious. Connecting to his NetConnect, his eyes pulsed a single time, sending out an active signal that searched for everything with port access within his radius.

  The normal automatic scan merely saw the cameras that were connected to the main network of the building. There was so much data flowing through it that it was easy for them to identify connections, if not gain access.

  The active scan, however, looked for data connections that had less information being passed through them. Strictly speaking, that meant it was possible he could also pick up connections to other people’s NetConnect’s. However, that function needed additional hardware to actually be enabled. Regardless, for the purposes he used it for, the scan worked great.

  A moment later, he had his answer as he picked up a camera behind the mirror, along with two others inside the apartment.

  He scowled and shifted his own position until he was out of sight as well. “Really? You people are watching whoever lives in these apartments on top of everything else?”

  She shook her head. “Siren’s Rush doesn’t own this megastructure, not entirely anyway. We own the floors we specifically operate out of and the floors our people live on. However, we only rent a few apartments on this floor. In this case, the watchers aren’t us, but the actual owners.”

  Trace shook his head; he really had no idea what to believe anymore. “Fine, whatever. Let’s move on for the moment. You were going to explain everything.”

  “My name is Cerys Code. I am a supervisor for Siren’s Rush, and Miss Park’s mother, and the other two were under my purview… after a fashion.” She admitted. “There are several managers separating their affairs from my desk. As such, I never even knew they existed until recently. When the previous two were disposed of, as a matter of fact.”

  Trace nodded, motioning for her to continue.

  She clicked her tongue at him. “Despite what you might think of us, not all corpo-stooges are the same,” Cerys said with a hint of humor. “For some of us, this is actually just a job, though I admit, the number becomes smaller each year. Some of the projects the corporation is involved in will make that number shrink even more.” She sighed and shook her head. “Never mind, we might as well all be the same.”

  “What does this have to do with Su-Min and Ko?”

  “I assume you remember that trashy-looking smarmy idiot who was with me before?”

  “Yeah, the one who looked like he was licking Ko with his eyes? I was this close to cutting something off the guy.”

  “His name is Harvey Putts, and he is the actual cause for everything. He was the one who convinced the council of heads that there was no reason to keep paying for the mistake the corporation made and that it was time to move past the incident. So, they began to confiscate their belongings and made plans to erase all three of them. Then Miss Devko came to visit.”

  “Uh, I’m lost. What does her coming to visit have to do with anything? Did the pervert fall in lust at first pervy-ness or something?”

  “I admit the girl is rather striking, but no. I believe that was more something that came about as a result of his later activities. The other two never had visitors. After the incidents that led to them being here, they were effectively abandoned. Whereas Devko-”

  “Comes to visit her mother each month.” Trace finished for her.

  “Exactly so. The other two wouldn’t be missed, however, Miss Su-Min would be. At that time, Harvey began to investigate Devko and learned that she was a mender of some skill. It piqued his interest, and then when she graduated recently, he became obsessed with the idea of bringing her into the corporation and making her a doctor.”

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