David Leadbeater - Weapons of the Gods

Sixteen eyes locked on. “Like what?”

Three minutes.

Karin wandered across the room to pour a coffee, deliberately taking it slow. She knew they’d be watching. “What’s left to do, Piranha?”

“Upload the virus. Launch the code. A few seconds after that—” he made a whooshing sound “—doors opening all across the homeland. Special doors.”

“Drink?” she asked. “How about a beer? Let’s toast and then we can get down to party.”

Several expressions of interest crossed the gathered faces, but Goonch wasn’t about to be delayed.

“Cool, cool,” he cried. “But let’s press the button right now! I can’t wait to see what happens to the guards, and when they reach the first few towns!”

Karin strode over to his workstation, planted her hands on his shoulders and then used his seat to swivel him around. Her eyes were two inches from his.

“You can’t wait to see who they maim or murder first?”

Goonch nodded, breathing the stench of garlic mixed with candy into her face. “We are FrameHub,” he said.

“From now on,” she whispered, “you should consider all your systems crashed.” She had hopefully uttered the last geek-line of her life.

An explosion ripped the door off its hinges; the metal rectangle spinning like a dice into the room. Goonch stared with wide eyes whilst the other geeks all threw themselves onto the floor. Karin had been expecting it, but shielded her face for a moment before throwing the contents of her cup at Goonch’s face. The boiling hot liquid scalded. Goonch screamed, tipping over and hitting the floor with a crash. Dino and Wu darted into the room, semi-autos raised. Karin paused for a moment as Dino threw her a weapon.

Piranha jumped up, reaching toward a desk drawer. Barracuda and Manta did the same. Moray stayed with his head between his hands, ass in the air. Another geek made a break toward the open door.

Karin turned the barrel of her gun onto Goonch. “You wanna know who’s the first to murder?” she asked. “I am.”

She squeezed her trigger twice. Goonch’s face exploded and he lived no more.

Karin ran over to Piranha’s computer just as Dino and Wu yelled out for the geeks to stand down. Karin shouted without looking up.

“Kill ’em,” she said. “They’re only ever going to be trouble in the real world.”

“Wouldn’t it be worse for them in prison?” Dino grinned.

“No,” Karin said. “I’ve seen what they can do and what they are doing. The best they deserve is a bullet to the brain, Dino. Just do it.”

Karin focused on closing Piranha’s program down. It took several minutes, careful keystroke after keystroke. She was aware of Piranha pulling a handgun to her right and Dino sweeping in to disarm him. Closer still, Wu smashed Manta across the brow, sending him reeling into the banks of machines, and then lifted Barracuda by the collar, preventing him from reaching his own small gun.

“You weigh nothing, boy,” Wu said. “How you like flying?”

He hurled Barracuda overhead, throwing him at the floor. The geek hit hard and then skidded further, face scraping across rough concrete. Karin still hadn’t heard a gunshot. To her left, three other geeks stood bolt upright, unsure what to do. When one yanked out the drawer of his desk, Karin stopped what she was doing and shot him in the chest. The feel of his blood spattering across their faces made the others retch violently. Karin took a little while longer to finish what she was doing.

Piranha, with no weapon, ran at Dino. The soldier should have shot him then and there, but elected to bash him across the head with the butt of his rifle gun instead. Piranha went down. Karin stepped away from his computer.

She lined up her weapon and opened fire, destroying the monitor, the hard drive and everything attached to it. She glanced over at Wu.

“The storage cabinets are back there,” she said. “Go fry ’em all. And I mean comprehensively. Bullets and fire, Wu.”

“We’re not handing all this in to the authorities then?”

Karin regarded him as if he were mad. “Don’t be ridiculous. Not counting all the private shit these assholes have hacked into and stored, there are dozens of active enterprises happening here. I wouldn’t bet on any authority not sifting carefully through them, would you?”

“No,” Wu admitted. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Karin turned back to the main room. The geeks to the left were still retching, white faced and terrified. Dino had Piranha by the hair, holding him upright, and pointed his gun at the rest.

Karin strode over to them. “I thought about this,” she said. “I honestly did. I tried to see the good in you. I tried to imagine you didn’t know better. I even tried to see if some of you were being coerced, which is why I checked all your jobs. But it just isn’t there. You’re all like-minded. All the same. Nobody can help you.”

She raised her semi-auto, training it on Moray and Manta, with Barracuda cowering behind them.

“You are FrameHub,” she said. “Think on all the civilians those missiles murdered. All the families you destroyed. Think on the irony of this — how many will be saved by killing you?”

Karin had no compassion left. In her life, she’d already witnessed the worst, seen loved ones die, murdered at the hands of a madman. Whatever dregs of kindness she had left would be saved for those that deserved it.

The gun bucked in her grip. She held tight. Bullets riddled three bodies, made them collapse bleeding to the floor. Behind them, computers shattered; wires, plastic boxes and broken glass dancing across the wilting desks. The wall billowed plaster dust where the lead finally came to rest.

Piranha screamed. Beside him, only two others remained — Stingray and Bull — and their blood-stained faces ran with tears.

“So,” Karin said. “How do you like me now?”

“Wait,” Dino said. “This is cold blooded murder.”

“What did you think you signed up for? Our original agenda was to kill Matt Drake.”

“He’s a soldier. They all are.”

Karin shook her head sadly. “So are these wankers,” she said. “But you don’t see it. Why? Because they’re young and inexperienced? Because they’re not firing bullets? Their fingers, Dino… their sticky fingers can do more damage across the world in sixty minutes than your trigger finger can do in a month. Do you understand?”

Dino frowned. “But—”

“Shit.” Karin shot Stingray through the head. “They were loving every second of the damage they did. Right here, right now.” She shot Bull through the head.

Only Piranha remained.

“Cowardly, emotionally deficient psychopaths with no morals,” she said. “Delighting in the slaughter that they wrought.”

She pressed the cold barrel right up against Piranha’s head.

“Excited to their core. Emotionally. Sexually. Physically.” She started to squeeze the trigger. “By the misery and the pain of others.”

The last bullet echoed sharply through the suddenly silent room. Piranha’s body made a sickening wet flopping sound as it struck the floor.

She stared Dino in the eyes. “Thanks for helping.”

Carefully, he inclined his head, clearly not completely on the same page. Karin checked on Wu. “Let’s go. Now that FrameHub are out of the way, and their evil nullified, we can complete our agenda.”

“That hasn’t changed?” Wu asked.

“No. Why do you ask?”

“We’ve been there. You had a chance. I thought… maybe you’d had a change of heart.”

“Everything I did since joining the Army has been with this goal in mind. I explained that and you still came. If you don’t like it you can walk away, but now we go to finish this.”