In the cigar room of a private club on Fifth Avenue, Victor unbuttons the third button of his shirt. The quantum chip implanted in his skin began to blink, compiling the keys to 23 offshore banks into a rhyme from Dante's Divine Comedy.
"I'm going to buy the death option on the entire dark web." He said to the Russian arms dealer in the shadows, his finger tracing a 700% volatility curve on his iPad, "Especially the kind that doesn't leave a body behind, like that attorney general in 2016 who liked to play rope bondage."
The arms dealer's gold teeth flashed with a dark red shimmer, "The newest model is a nanoscale ricin drone that can disguise itself as pollen to get into the congressional ventilation system. But the price..." He glanced at the Patek Philippe on Victor's wrist, "It would require a full chain of bribes from three federal judges."
The deal was finalized on a yacht in the Hudson River. Victor used a laser pointer to draw coordinates on the other man's chest where the subcutaneous detonator that induces myocardial infarction was buried." The down payment is a video of a wife-swapping party in Manhattan DA," he said as he inserted the flash drive containing nude photos of the Attorney General into a champagne bucket, "and the final payment will be paid when you see the obituary of the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee."
On the return helicopter ride, Victor ripped off his simulated mask. The burn scars flow like lava in the moonlight, a souvenir of the "accidental fire" at Ravenloch. He opens his encrypted e-mail, and the latest message is titled "Vulnerability Analysis Report on the Seventh District Transmission Grid," and in the attachment lies the code for a virus that could shut down the New York Stock Exchange for 72 hours.