Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 88 Gloria (19th update)

In this process, a key figure played an important role – Gloria Martinez.

Gloria is an emergency medical technician at Night City Medical Center.

She was about thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old, and her face showed signs of fatigue from long hours of working late into the night. Even with makeup, the dark circles under her eyes were difficult to completely cover.

Her hands appeared somewhat dry and pale due to frequent washing and wearing of medical gloves.

Gloria is about 1.65 meters tall and has a slender build, but she displays strength that is disproportionate to her actual size when moving medical equipment and wounded people.

She usually wears a faded blue medical uniform with a multi-functional vest stuffed with first aid supplies and personal items over it.

She is raising her son David, who is in high school, on her own.

To provide her son with better living conditions, she works more than twelve hours a day, and the shift system makes her work and rest extremely irregular.

Gloria lives in a mid-range apartment building in the Haywood district, where rent is relatively cheap but the security situation is so-so.

Her biggest wish is to send her son to Arasaka Academy so he can escape his dreary life at the bottom, but this requires a huge tuition fee.

To raise the money, Gloria took advantage of her job to engage in a shady profession—corpse collector.

Unlike those scavengers who have no bottom line and would even harm living people for the sake of cybernetic bodies, Gloria's targets are limited to the wounded or corpses that have been confirmed dead.

She would carefully remove the still intact and valuable prosthetics from the deceased, taking advantage of the technology and opportunities available, before formal medical procedures or NCPD handling of the scene.

This work also skirts the line between law and morality, and is fraught with risks.

She needs to evade the attention of her colleagues and law enforcement, face bloody scenes, and deal with black market buyers.

But she had no choice; this "extra income" was an important source of income for her to support her son and raise tuition fees.

Mann's team reconnected with her through past collaborations.

Six months ago, Gloria encountered a group of thugs who wanted to double-cross her during a nighttime house call.

Mann's squad, who happened to be on a mission nearby, came to her aid and helped her out of her predicament.

After that, they were attracted by her stable access to "first-hand" prosthetic bodies, while she was attracted by the fact that the Mann team offered fair prices and was relatively "rule-abiding" and would not easily steal her goods.

As Mann's team's demands increased, Gloria worked even harder.

She took a greater risk, using her informational advantage at the medical center to monitor every unexpected event or violent conflict that could potentially yield "high-value goods."

She would arrive at the scene as quickly as possible, like a vulture, or learn about the route for transporting the body in advance through internal channels.

“Got another one, a ‘Thousand-Type 4’ Sianwistan. It has some burn marks, but the core unit should be intact.” During a secret handover at the city outpost, Gloria handed a sealed refrigerated box to Mann. Her tone was weary, but also relieved that the deal was done. “It came from an unlucky little boss of the ‘Animal Gang.’ He got hit in the neck by a stray bullet during a shootout with the Mox Gang in the docks.”

Mann opened the box and inspected it. The neural drive device inside, soaked in biological preservation fluid, was intricately designed and, despite some damage, exuded the aura of an expensive technological creation.

He nodded and handed Gloria an envelope full of non-consecutive euros. "Thanks for your help, Gloria. The price is ten percent higher than we agreed last time; these things are in short supply lately." Gloria quickly counted the banknotes, carefully put them away, and a rare, genuine smile appeared on her face. "Thank you, Mann! David's tuition for next semester... I've scraped together another portion." She paused, then added, "I heard things' been a bit turbulent around Charter Hill lately. Apparently, a cyber surveillance official was caught in his home. If you're interested in the 'goods' from there, I can give it a try."

"Contact me anytime if you have any messages, same old encrypted channel." Mann didn't ask any further questions, but emphasized, "Safety first. If anything feels off, stop immediately."

Gloria nodded, stuffed the envelope into the inner pocket, and carefully zipped it up.

She had done this countless times. Every time she received the money, she would immediately plan how to use it: how much to deposit into the tuition account, how much to use for the month's rent and utilities, and how much to save for David's tutoring fees.

She rarely buys new things for herself; the coat she's wearing has been worn for three years, and the soles of her shoes are badly worn.

But every time she saw David's report card and saw that her son had grown a little taller, she felt that it was all worth it.

On her way back to the medical center, Gloria habitually checked her equipment.

She carried a small-caliber handgun, hidden at the bottom of her medical kit, a self-defense measure she had to take after several close calls.

As a medical technician, she knew better than anyone the fragility of life, but as a mother, she had to live on strongly until she saw David successfully complete his studies.
-
With their newly acquired cybernetic bodies, Mann's team returned to the abandoned town.

They brought these items, along with various weapon modules, electronic brain plugins, and reinforced tendons collected from other sources, to the entrance of Chen Yu's workshop.

They usually just place the items in the designated receiving area and then leave quietly, not daring to easily disturb the contemplation and research of the being deep within the workshop.

They could sense that Chen Yu approved of these "tributes".

Occasionally, Chen Yu would transmit brief instructions through the servo skull, such as needing a specific type of prosthetic or showing additional interest in a particular sample that was delivered.

At this point, the Mann team will act as if they have received a royal decree, and will do everything in their power to search for and fulfill their needs.

This collection work is not without its costs; they inevitably become embroiled in more street disputes and underground transactions.

On one occasion, when Pila and Rebecca took over a "gorilla arm" that had come from the black market, they were ambushed by another group of unidentified mercenaries who were clearly also interested in the enhanced prosthetic body.

A fierce firefight broke out between the two sides at an abandoned gas station in the Badlands. Ultimately, thanks to the threat of Rebecca's plasma pistol and Falco's precise driving skills, they managed to break through with their cargo and a few minor injuries.

This incident made Mann even more vigilant.

“We were being watched,” he later concluded. “Not just by the company, but also by other forces in the city. They probably guessed that we were collecting a large number of high-performance prosthetics, either wanting a piece of the pie or trying to find out our background.”

Nevertheless, they did not stop.

Their desire for customized modifications, coupled with their awe of Chen Yu's power, drove them to continue their adventures.

Each time they sent their precious prosthetic bodies to the workshop, they harbored a sense of anticipation. Perhaps next time, the boss would think that their accumulated "contributions" were enough and would summon them to begin the long-promised, transformative modification.

The abandoned town's stronghold became increasingly fortified, gradually taking on the outline of a "home".

But they knew that true security did not come from these thick walls and defense systems, but from the silent figure deep within the workshop and the powerful technological force he represented, a force that transcended this era.

(End of this chapter)