May the chips fall where they may.

Stage 16

May the chips fall where they may.

Zechariah was at his workstation when the silent alarm was triggered. Though a variety of security systems protected the physical layout of his department on the 28th floor, the building also housed other industry and business offices. This particular silent alarm only triggered when specialized sensors picked up a Gifted individual with a rate level higher than three. He knew that a breach was bound to happen, but for there to be so many plus three's threatening his little slice of heaven…

He keyed in a very specific sequence on the intercom.

"Lian…"

"Yes?"

"Make ready as planned, only the essentials."

There was a tense silence, after which came her reply,

"Copy, Charlie."

~*~

Lian knew this was going to cause a ruckus. She reached up to key off her earpiece.

"Everyone, only essential bug-outs. Place everything else in the thermite disposal bins and activate the consequent detonation sequences. This is a complete sanitization."

After a long moment of heavy silence, one of her subordinates finally said what everyone else surely was thinking.

"Everything? That's insane, Doctor!"

"This is the reason we have strict source code and backup protocols. The raw data is still viable and sanitary. Anything that hasn't meet Section 10 vetting by the previous month will be destroyed. Anything pending vetting will also be destroyed.

Pet projects, worth thousands of man hours, would be lost. Those that knew Lian the best, could tell that her current orders and the execution thereof had affected her deeply.

She glanced up at the clock.

"Double time, people. We don't have much time."

~*~

Zechariah was hard at work, verifying that all data had been successful backed up from the night before, and that the emergency sequencing had taken care of anything that had been vetted and saved for that day. Though Lian knew about some of the offsite backup locations, only Zechariah knew about all of them. It wasn't a matter of trust. But if Lian were ever to be captured…

He knew better than to think that. Lian wasn't just…

He heard Miranda stirring from the couch.

Glancing at his monitor, Zechariah watched as his enemies broke through his security measures one by one. He was now sure of what he had told Lian.

Infractus.

How or why Carmen thought it was a good idea to release that band of hell-beasts was beyond him. It truly called into question her sanity. The situation had changed faster than he had expected and he needed more intel on the current situation.

Almost as if on cue, his phone started buzzing. One of his encrypted lines.

"Hey Metro! Long time, no speak. Still writing bets on that ledger of yours?"

Zechariah's code name rang in his ear,

"What's going on, LoveHug? Thought I'd never hear from you again. Yeah, yeah. I've got that ledger pen wet and ready to scribble."

"Good, good to hear. Say, what's the ullamaliztli like these days?"

"Ah, you know. The home team seems to be having a bit of a run, though there's hope that they'll pull it off in the end."

"That sounds optimistic at best, Metro. I've been hearing the away team has them over a barrel, to the tune of thirty to one."

Zechariah was speechless for a moment.

"Come on, LoveHug. Did I hear thirty to one?"

"Oh yeah, you heard right. I'm thinking of placing a bet on the away team, but I'm hedging my options."

"Well then, we should grab a beer sometime, talk about it and see what sort of line we can come up with."

"I'll have to talk to the wife about that. She doesn't really like me drinking with friends or friends of friends anymore. She says I get too rowdy and forget that I'm a responsible, married man."

"That's pretty harsh, LoveHug, any other pearls that you might have for me?"

"Yeah, speaking of hedge, that last bit I owe ya? I sent you a wire, I think we are even now."

"Good, good… I'll be sure to write that off."

"Yeah, Metro. Keep in touch."

"Will do, LoveHug."

The line went dead.

There was a small likelihood that his enemy had already breached their communications network, but this transmission couldn't be helped. From that point on, there would be strict, 72-hour communications silence.

With a few swift strokes of his fingers on the keyboard, he queued up a plain looking program dressed in the guise of a music application. A faint smile appeared on his lips when triggered the application's true and intended purpose. The view was simple: line graphs showing various statistical data and wordage that spoke about the health of the network, backup operations and production applications. He typed a few more keystrokes. The instructions and warnings were clear.

Warning!

All Operational, Production Applications, Databases and Data Will Be Destroyed!

Do you wish to proceed?

The only moment of hesitation came as he turned his attention away from the monitor and focused on Miranda. She had awakened; perhaps Zechariah's trepidation had prompted her to rise or maybe it was her heightened situational awareness.

"Bad news?" Miranda asked with a level voice.

"Yeah, seems like we're outmatched thirty to one."

Miranda was stunned to hear such an unfavorable metric.

"How deep are we in the hole, then?"

"A segment of the Colonial Military has been tasked to move against us."

She felt a sudden plunge into the deep, with a heaping helping of vertigo to match.

"Any good news?"

"We haven't been disavowed… yet."

"I guess that's always a good thing. Who was that on the line, if you don't mind me asking."

"A friend of mine who owed me a few favors. He works for the local militia and is the liaison with the police force. It seems he felt it was time we were on equal terms."

Miranda gave him a small, sad smile. "The peace was nice while it lasted…"

Zechariah turned his eyes back to the monitor and exhaled. Miranda could hear his finger tap the keyboard three times before he turned to look at her again.

"I pray you don't hate me for thinking otherwise, Miranda. What I found nice is having finally been able to introduce myself to you."

With one last and definitive tap, he stood and walked over to her.

"I hope you feel like running, my dear. Sixty seconds and three hundred yards to cover comes quickly in time, slow in distance traveled."

Miranda didn't have a moment to think before Zechariah took her hand and pulled her off the couch. Within seconds, they were running in the main hallway. She heard shouting and an explicit command to "Halt!" but she knew not to turn and look. Instead, she started running faster. Zechariah loosened his grip on her hand, but never released it.

The second shout of "Halt!" brought a warning shot, and for all the world, Miranda was certain that bullet whizzed right past her left ear. At that exact moment Zechariah released her hand and shouted, "Second door to your right!"

Zechariah was only a few meters ahead of her, when she saw that he was holding a pistol with his other hand, within seconds he took aim and fired three shots at a closed door. Miranda using her forward momentum, pivoted on the ball of her left foot and threw herself at the door shoulder first. The weakened latch shattered, sending the door flying open. She caught herself just before she lost her balance.

As Miranda was busy further destroying Branch Cell property, Zechariah had come to a complete halt from his dead run. In that motion, he had spun so that he was facing those who were firing at him. His once empty hand now holding a pistol, Zechariah started firing shot after shot down the corridor, his purposed filled movements walked him over in the direction of now busted-open door.

As Miranda watched him, she felt a clench of urgency. Precious time was ticking away. She had a bad feeling about it even as he ducked into cover

The hall erupted with the sound of heavier weapons fire.

Zechariah reloaded his two pistols on the run as he turned toward the open door.

"I suggest you cover your ears, my dear."

With a smooth motion, he holstered his two pistols, as a blast door come crashing down where the opening use to be. He stepped closer to her and placed both hands over his ears.

A low rumble was followed by a violent shaking and the sudden pressure created from the explosive device rocked her so badly that had Zechariah not been standing there, she would have taken a tumble.

"What in the hell are you thinking?!" she shouted above the din.

"Not to worry, Miranda my dear. The explosion originated from my office, so most of the force went through the windows. The remaining energy then carried itself through the hallway. I can assure you these blast doors contained that energy to the hallway. It's not the end of their pursuit, but it will give our unwelcome guests a reason to tread lightly."

Miranda watched Zechariah in complete disbelief as he moved to the far wall and smashed an elbow into a weakened section. As he reached into the gaping opening, a previously hidden section of the wall yawned open to reveal an elevator.

"There's one more delicious surprise left, and that one we shouldn't be around for."

Just as he finished speaking the alarm system for the building went off.

Something about the tone of his voice told her that his final performance was going to be a show stopper.

~*~

Lian and her teams were already in the emergency freight elevator when the explosion shook the building. She knew that Zechariah had setup a predetermined amount of explosions as a means of communication. It was highly unorthodox, but she had been assured that this particular blast wasn't powerful enough to destroy the building or the integrity to support the floors above. The first explosion was meant to destroy the main hall and slow the intruders. It also served as a signal that she had ten minutes to get out of the building.

Zechariah and Lian had originally created a plan of exfiltration back when they were still working for the Corporations. There were three plans in all: Plan Alpha, Plan Bravo and Plan Charlie. Each plan had a specific set of routing points, all synchronized to either timed events or minutes passed from the previous event wave point. Each plan also had its own set of fail-safes in the event of delays or complications. Every team member had a thorough understanding of a portion of each plan, briefed to remember one specific action. In this manner, no team member knew the entirety of any plan. This was to safeguard against someone turning traitor and using the information against them.

Lian didn't like the endgame of this course of action, but Zechariah had always been suspicious about a double agent within Branch Cell and such caution was certainly wise.

There were three teams of six people in Branch Cell's mobile force. Each team had one expert each in technical, medical/research, demolition and strategic know how; the remaining two were Gifted individuals hand-picked by Zecc for home base operational duties.

"So Plan Charlie, huh? That's a hell of a run and gun."

A large man wearing an Explosives Demolitions Expert or EDE patch grumbled as he squared his shoulders under the weight of his gear.

"We'll be executing Plan Charlie, but only up to the third wave point, then we'll move to Plan Bravo, execute one, three and five, then we'll execute Plan Alpha in its entirety."

There was dead silence until another equally large man from Team One rumbled with a drawl so thick, it was like a perpetual wad of chew had been tucked between his gum and bottom lip.

"I'll be damned…"

"Shut it, Brucey."

A young woman, half the man's height, but sporting a higher rank than him, cut him off. A few seconds passed and a buzzing noise was heard. Brucey removed a small rectangular container and opened it. He slid the side open and to reveal two shiny pills. He popped them in his mouth, chewing on them before he spoke up.

"I know y'all think'n it. I just happen'd to speak it…"

Zechariah could always find the curious ones. Lian wasn't sure what sort of pills Brucey was popping, but the going rumor was that it wasn't drugs at all - that it was merely candy. Random drug tests always came back negative, so she didn't have cause to force the issue.

"What the hell was the point of learning those plans if we…"

The medic of Team Two was elbowed in the stomach by his team commander, a lithe man about the size of the woman that shut Brucey down.

Lian spoke up.

"Simply put, so that we rely on one an another. Now the playing field has evened out, and if we wish to get out of this alive, we'll have to trust each other in action instead of just the spoken word."

Team Three was notably quiet, but then again Team Three consisted of the more senior members of Branch Cell. They were the only team that knew of Zecc's suspicions about the existence of a double agent. One of them spoke up.

"Is Teresa aware of this change in plans?"

Everyone knew that Lian favored Teresa, but as the medic in Team One, even she had a look of shocked surprise.

"No, only I was aware of its original intention. If this is going to be a problem, I'd be more than happy to listen to anyone's grievances."

She tilted her head and cast her eyes over her shoulder.

Everyone took to being stone at that precise instant.

Those who worked for Branch Cell knew to respect Zechariah because of his big boss man status. They respected his authority. Everyone knew that if they had a grievance with him, they could approach him without fear.

Lian was a totally different matter.

Zechariah was the only person who could give her any lip. A well-known fact around the office. Even so, if Lian didn't want something done, it wasn't done.

The inflection in her voice and the look she gave them made it clear this was that moment.

"I trust there won't be any trouble from here on out? Am I clear?" said Lian.

There was a unanimous, "Yes, ma'am."

"Good, because we have exactly seven minutes to get all our gear into three vehicles. I want double quick time the second these doors open."

And just like that, the freight elevator stopped. The second the doors opened, her three teams were on the move.

Lian was the last to step out of the elevator. As she removed her lab coat, there a moment of pause to her action. How many years had it been? She couldn't recall the last time she had removed her lab coat in order to call upon the training that she had received so many years ago.

Those hard days came back like a flood of rushing water.

As she approached her designated vehicle, she stopped at a stack of equipment about waist high. Reaching out she caress a particular plastic weapons case, then opened it to reveal a gun belt, two matte black pistols, and two matte black hawk-billed combat knives.

She put on the gun belt.

It fit just like she remembered. She hadn't gained a single ounce after all.

She pulled out her pistols and tested their weight in her hands. She used a flick of her wrists to slide the receivers back to reveal the bullets that were still in each chamber. She inhaled the familiar scent of gun oil and it brought a flush of memories: the bad old days, the scent of powder and sweat, the air filled with the sticky decay of blood and guts.

She let the receivers slap back into place and smiled.

They were an old design, nothing like the new caseless weapons that the young ones used. Then again, those two pistols were designed for a singular purpose, as were the knives that she slipped unto the sheaths attached to her gun belt. They were solely for close quarters combat; weapons meant to make a personal and lasting statement.

She turned to look at the faces of those she considered her colleagues and sighed at what she knew was to come.

One or more of them were going to end up dead.