Tag: Short Story

Short Story: Triggermen

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Spotlights threw their beams and heat across two-rows of computers, situated back-to-back before pinstriped Racer chairs. The high-power LAN was accented by LED peripherals that inflected slight hints of color over the otherwise bright white. Beyond them, along the three sides of the arena, the crowd roared in, riled by the convention taking place outside. They sat in their seats as restless and bloodthirsty as any crowd could be. Cube-like displays of flat-screen televisions hanged scatter-shot from the ceiling, ensuring no-one missed a second of the mayhem about to commence.

Slideshow of teams about to enter the arena with short bios and photographs flickered past. Digital banners ceremoniously proclaimed, “Triggermen World-Champion Clan Match: Icewind [ICWND] vs Phantom Cobra [PCBRA].” Triggermen, arguably the greatest E-Sports title ever created, had grown from a few groups of fanatical fans to millions of players, and countless clans, in only a few short years. The first Triggermen championships forever changed competitive gaming.

Mechanically, the game was nothing special; simple team or free-for-all game modes, and a few others more cult-favorites than competitive. The real prize was the immersion. Triggermen managed to suck a player in, as if they were really there, fighting for base-rights, hostages, or bombs. Either from the expertly crafted-atmosphere, the absorbing environments, or the pitch-perfect sound effects, there was something about Triggermen that had captured every player and transported them to a new world.

The two teams filed in. Cheers nearly staggered them. Some players waved or made vague gestures of gratitude or love. Others remained straight-faced, unaffected, too focus to let the crowd gain purchase in their minds. They took their seats, fitted their headsets, and keyed in their credentials. With their profiles loaded, each player chose their load-out and prepped for game-play. The start counter began at 10, prompted hands to make their last, minute adjustments.

Among the teams was Brandon Dodgson, also known as BurntVenom, or just Venom. It was only luck that his gamer-tag had slotted him a place on a team where Venom actually made sense, though he hated the first part of the ages-old gamertag. None of that fronted Venom’s mind though. Like always, Triggermen had completely taken over. He sat amid the rest of Phantom Cobra, taunted by into a rabid fury by a downward tick of a digital clock; “3” coursed fresh adrenaline through Cobra. “2” readied them for bloody gun battles, flowing improv-strategy, and hostage rescue. “1” poised them forward, ready to beat Icewind to their hostages and back to base first.

The teams found themselves at opposite sides of a large map, lined up like their seats in the long dissolved area. “0” flashed as boots hit dirt and beat a cloud of dust with headlong-sprints, Venom among them. He knew the map well, better than most; three, main paths were laid out between the two bases. Cobra’s hostages were sequestered inside the opposing base, just behind Icewind’s spawn. A few shortcuts here and there cut diagonal paths between main through-ways to give players ambushing options– or ambushee options.

Venom knew the cuts well, but he wasn’t about to start the shit-storm of close-quarters fighting. He kept his sights forward, broke into pairs to assault the three, main paths. Slicer was with him; the only girl on the team, and more ballsy than most of the other guys. She insisted on being called a tomboy, wearing the label as something of an achievement. When Slicer’d joined Cobra, Venom cared less about her genitals than if she’d be an asset. A few matches later, she’d smoked the rest of Cobra in 1-vs-1s– Venom hadn’t let anyone else cover him since. She was always at his side, he at hers, and this championship wasn’t going to be any different.

They sprinted through the foliage of the first path, followed its decline, and slowed near its mid-point. They vaulted over a fallen tree, dropped into cover between it another, knowing the play. They’d run it more times than they cared to count. Venom covered slicer with his rifle as she slipped over the tree beside him, shouldered her way along a ruin’s to the short-cut’s opening. She crouched at the passage’s mouth jutting from the jungle around them, and slapped down a proximity explosive.

The first sounds of gunfire erupted in the distance. Slicer hopped back into place beside Venom. Someone on Cobra radioed “C” was breached.” Venom ignored it, B-route was his. So long as they did their job, everyone else would do theirs. He vaulted over the tree as Slicer had, repeated her actions at the mouth of the passage’s opposite side, then knelt to cover Slicer’s advance.

She sprinted past the passages, Venom on her tail. The sloping ground continued for a quarter Klick, leveled out in a low brook gurgling with a shallow current. A few tall stones and toppled trees scattered around the area provided cover. Venom dropped into a crouch behind a stone, angled sideways to see the path forward. Slicer threw herself to her belly, crawled for the cover of tall reeds along the brook’s far-edge.

Rifle fire chattered over the low booms of explosives and shotguns. “A” was being fought for, hard, “B” seemed desolate. There was no way to be certain I-W wasn’t lying in wait, or worse, causing a distraction to extract their hostages. Venom and Slicer could only wait so long before forced to advance on I-W’s base, and their own hostages. When that time passed, they knew of only one way to play it.

Venom was out of cover in his crouch, weaving a random zig-zag to keep anyone watching from predicting his movements or hitting him with gunfire. When he reached the far-side of the brook’s clearing, Slicer jumped up and sprinted for his side. She crouched again beside him, followed in-step to begin the forward advance toward IW’s base.

The ground sloped up, a perfect place for an ambushing sniper to wait for them to appear. Slicer dropped prone, inched upward along the left side of the trail. Venom mirrored the movements at the opposite side of the path. Slicer’s head peeked over the rise. A distant rifle barked. Debris dusted the air a few feet forward. Slicer inched back down, heart racing. Venom knew what to do: it had to be him. The only way to force the sniper to shift his aim would be for him to run– without that split second misdirection, Slicer couldn’t get a shot off.

“On three,” she whispered. “One.”

“Two.”

“Three!”

Venom was sprinting in his zig-zag. Erratic barks traced his path forward. He bobbed and weaved in the open, no cover in sight. A lone shot rang out and the sniper-fire went quiet. A kill fed over the reel of player names above an audible rise in the crowd’s roar. The pair regrouped, went in guns blazing. Muzzle flashes lit darkened corners of I-W’s bunker-base. The crowd’s din rose with each animated spray of blood or sound effect of death. The pair littered a pair of bodies with lead, and with a quick command, the hostages ran for Cobra’s base.

Venom slapped in a new mag as someone spawned before him. His pistol out, murdered the guy before he could react. Sweat beaded on Venom’s brow as he sprinted after the hostages, pulled ahead to clear the path. They made for C, trampling over bodies of both sides for the narrow short-cut back to B. Slicer ran Vanguard, Venom one-shotting an I-W rifleman with his back turned. The darkened passage gleamed at both ends from the daylight scattered over the jungle and its ruins.

“They’re on our tail,” Slicer said, hustling out onto B route.

A burst of fire swallowed her words. She dropped prone, rolled sideways. Venom wanted to stop, knew he couldn’t. He led the hostages nearer toward Cobra’s base– almost there. Slicer was up, rocketing after him. The first proximity explosive went off. A pair of names popped up on the kill-feed. Slicer swiveled, laid suppressing fire on the path’s center. Another pair of I-W troops appeared. Their fire whizzed past Slicer, aimed at Venom’s hostages. She growled, tossed a grenade.

Venom stopped at the doorway to their base, heart pounding. Slicer back-stepped toward him, firing. The first hostage hit the rescue threshold and the first I-W soldier appeared. Venom splattered his digital blood across foliage. The second hostage hit the rescue zone, Venom forced to reload. Slicer kept her eyes forward, blasted the last I-W that tried to take advantage of Venom’s state.

The last hostage hit the rescue zone and the screen popped up with “Mission complete.” Cobra were instantly on their feet, headsets off. The crowd roared, “Co-bra! Co-bra!” Slicer and Venom leapt, hugged. She kissed his cheek with a giddy laugh, and hugged another team-mate. Cobra shook random hands with I-W between monitors, now world champions with more than a few grand to remember the win by. Venom didn’t care so much for the money or the title, he was in it for the game– though he wasn’t sure he’d ever wash his cheek again.

Short Story: A New Age Begins

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

It would be the first in the next-generation of prosthetic That was how everyone at Cameron Mobility Incorporated saw it. They’d been designing prosthetic devices since the 1940s; from an old man’s scrap wood in a garage, to the custom fitted, laser-cut, hand-assembled metals and plastics of billion dollar industry. Needless to say, the precision-engineered chrome and carbon-fiber had come a long way from the whittled bits of wood Arnold Cameron had first created for his son.

The company hadn’t operated out of a garage in nearly a century, from any one location in decades. The global enterprise had been built on a foundation of one man’s dream and hope for his son. When Arnold died in the late 1980’s, that son stepped into the role of overseer, both poster-child and client from a childhood accident, he took the company public with an image bolstered by his company-replaced right arm and leg.

Public-trading brought investors, stocks, money as the prosthetics became more complex, more specialized, elegant, elaborate. Sturdy, proto-plastics, later replaced again by fully articulated poly-alloys and carbon-fiber “joint and bone” designs.
The heir to the fortune fell ill, forcing his daughter to replace him as head of the company. That was when everything changed– for better or worse was merely dependent on one’s view-point. The company’s stock plunged until measures were taken to secure its future. What those measures were, only one fluent in legalese and corporate intimacies might say. All the world knew was that Cameron Mobility was suddenly growing again, and to new heights.

But until the forth generation Cameron sat on the board of directors, nothing truly astonishing took place. Evelyn Cameron changed that. Like her mother, Evelyn was a trail-blazer, but also a certified genius with a hands-on approach to research and development. On top of her duties as jet-setting business woman, she worked long nights with engineers and technicians in the labs, designing what would come to be known as the most revolutionary prosthetics known to man.

And so, when the culmination of four generations of eager, forward-minded Cameron men and women– and the collaborative toiling of Evelyn and her R&D team– finally came to fruition, they stood at-the-ready for mass production. Their factories in Taiwan and China had already received the plans, and if all went as Evelyn hoped, in a matter of hours the first line in bionic, augmentation prosthetics would be manufactured.

There were already whispers of elective surgeries– voluntary amputations for augmented replacements that would be stronger, tougher, sleeker than human parts. A new black market was ready to form, both around the sale and installation of the new “augs.” No matter the repercussions, there was no doubt this was a new-age. Augs were not just prosthetics, replacements for those poor souls who’d lost part of themselves. Now, they were true to life upgrades, the next step in man’s apex-predatory nature that would see the food-chain and natural evolution forever left behind.

Evelyn and her team had one philosophy; why just return function when it could also be augmented? A decade of research centered on thought-controlled interfaces, superalloys, and miniaturized hydraulics, came next. Then, another five years of prototype construction and programming trial and error that resulted in a line of limb prosthetics that, when installed and routed to the brain via wireless, neural-controllers, exceeded anything an evolved creature could hope to sport.

Everyone had heard the talking heads on Info-Corp’s pseudo-news entertainment channel debating augment-ethics. Most learned people saw them as spouting uneducated nonsense. Evelyn agreed. She’d nearly plunged her company into the red, but somehow retained investor confidence. The rumors spreading of her receiving a Nobel prize didn’t hurt, and were she in any other position, she might have argued them. Instead, she remained silent, watched them bolster investor confidence and keep the money flowing.

She stood now before her first, real test subject. The factories in Taiwan and China were poised for a sprinting run on the first, mass-production line of augs. The man before Evelyn wasn’t someone who’d lost their limbs in an accident, or been born with a corrupted genome and no limb. He was an elective, someone willing to replace limbs with Cameron Mobility’s newest augments.

Evelyn chewed at the tip of her thumb behind a pair of windows. The small observation corridor looked out on the muscled, naked body of the subject. Chrome and carbon fiber rippled from his torso where his limbs should be, as if someone had taken his flesh-less arms and legs, dipped them in steel and carbon-fiber, then replaced the muscles and tendons with criss-crossed mini-hydraulics, actuators, servos, and good, old-fashioned tongue-and-groove gears.

Around him, were masked and suited doctors who’d entered through a clean room. A nurse appeared, wheeling a cart of metal panels and Allen-wrenches. The doctors took places around the body to fit the panels over the augments to hide and protect their innards. For what seemed like hours, but was only moments, they worked the wrenches along bolts. When they stepped away again, the carbon-fiber panels had given the man an intimidating patchwork and a futuristic gleam.

All but one doctor left, the nurse with them. The last prodded the naked man’s neck with a needle, set it aside on the cart. Evelyn waited, breath held. She’d was dimly aware of her team beside and behind her, lined up along the windows in silence. She sensed their own refusal to breathe through the unnatural stillness of the corridor.

The man’s eyes flickered open. The group leaned forward in expectation. He blinked hard, as if waking from a pained sleep, and sat up on an elbow to rub his eyes. The corridor echoed with a half-dozen gasps as the doctor’s mouth moved in silence from the sound-proof room. Evelyn knew from protocol he was being questioned for residual pain.

The man sat up, back to the group, as the doctor carried out a physical exam. After a minute or so, the doctor stepped to the side with a thumbs up. The corridor exploded in cheers, congratulations. The team shook hands, hugged. Someone patted Evelyn’s shoulder and she deflated into her exhaustion.

The truth was, she’d never known if it would really work. Not when it came time to test it. Now, Taiwan and China could begin manufacturing, and in a matter of days, the first augs would ship to awaiting patients and electives. Only then could they know of blow-back from the masses, if any. As the others celebrated around her, she thought rationally; more testing was needed, as was careful monitoring. The man needed to be watched for signs of rejection or other, unpredictable complications.

Time would come to remember those feelings as only footnotes, but even then there was no doubt; a new age had begun.

Bonus Short Story: The Plague

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

That horizon ahead? It used to be alive. It was more real than the stars and a million times brighter, like someone had cut holes through reality to the multicolored fabric beneath. The glow could be seen for miles, and it would’ve rushed toward you as soon as it would’ve appear from nowhere. That was before everything; before the misery, before the plague, before the end of the world.

It didn’t happen like we thought it would. There was no nuclear exchange. No zombie outbreak. No horsemen. There was just sickness, death, the stink of poverty and grief. Even the war didn’t really hit us in the States, not until the retaliation strikes wiped us out. It was our own fault.

I remember hearing the air-raid sirens; It was one of those typical Tuesdays, or as typical as they’d become with the state of things. The media were screaming nonsensical ravings about imminent destruction. They’d always done that though, the narrative had just changed, the rhetoric shifting from general to pointed. Instead of offhandedly implying certain things would cause a certain end, news-anchors and pundits began to say this would cause that end. It was all very intentional, charismatic fear-mongering, but no-one thought they’d be right.

It wasn’t like we’d have been able to do anything about it anyhow. The US economy had collapsed, just like most others’, and the rest of the world was following more by the day. Most of us had leveraged our national assets to the Chinese in exchange for debt relief. After all, they had the largest workforce in the world, and with their communist-state becoming more democratic by the day, they were on the rise. Debt relief came in the form of trillions of dollars, but with the obvious caveat that those whom defaulted forfeited those leveraged assets. What a fucking mistake. It was the worst bargain ever, and no-one I know– or knew– thought otherwise.

But the politicians and governments thought it was the greatest thing since sliced-bread. The propaganda, media-machine kicked into overdrive, and we started hearing more about how good it all was and would be. All the while, people were getting more and more angry, protesting and threatening to riot, feeling more and more as if they’d been sold into slavery. Eventually, they were proven to have a point, but at the time, everyone was too angry to speculate.

We should have though. All of us. Maybe then someone would’ve hit upon the kernel of truth in what was to come. Maybe, just maybe, we’d have seen the shit-storm on the horizon and been better prepared to batten the hatches when it arrived. We weren’t and that’s ultimately how that horizon died.

Every country has its own story, but as far as the US goes, it was the steel industry that went first. American steel had built the world for almost two hundred years, but coal had become scarce, oil more expensive, and exportation more difficult. Tariffs and embargoes, imposed by the UN countries, eventually forced us to close up shop, but not before our number one industry was bled dry by money-hungry vultures.

Hundreds of thousands were suddenly, and immediately, out of work. Their Unions threw them to the wolves, then fought for the scraps before ending up euthanized by political mistakes and missteps. When the unemployment rates came in, they’d tripled. The next election cycle proved to only be a catalyst to the chaos, with both sides proclaiming to have the answer. They were easy answers to extremely complex problems though, and everyone with sense worth a damn saw it. Funny, it still didn’t save us…

The problems spread; without cheap, easy access to steel, the auto-industry went belly up. It didn’t hurt that our Chinese “saviors” were the new, number-one steel producers, and were hiking their prices up higher than a whore at a garter-convention. It was probably the first time in history the Chinese had managed to piss off both Americans and Russians in such equal measure.

Of course without the auto-industry, public sectors began to break down. Everything from public transit to car-dealers felt the blow. The big three were dead, and like big-steel, had taken a large portion of the country with it– to say nothing of the culture around them. Then, because of the lack of vehicles, big-oil took the hit too. They rode out the end of the world in style, of course, still able to export most of their stock, but to an utterly discarded reputation state-side.

Only a few of the newer, electric-car manufacturers seemed to hold to any scrap of hope, but the tech still wasn’t there, and the cars cost twice the average salary. In a country with a 30% unemployment rate, it wasn’t hard to see how fast they were going to fail if they didn’t compensate. Eventually, their compensation killed them off anyway. With them went any hope of renewable energy alternatives– and a few-hundred-thousand more jobs.

With all of that upper-middle class money gone, simple things like supermarkets and department stores started closing down. Unemployment shot up to 50%, the rich got richer, and the poor were so destitute most were dying. Even the government couldn’t help anymore. Most of their biggest money-making assets had been snatched up by Chinese companies to pay back the debt. It wasn’t long before it was merely simpler to close-up shop a world away and bring the businesses home.

It was total, economic collapse. The only thing we had left was the military, and it was the only time their bloated, runaway budget had ever seemed like a good thing. It had given them fiscal padding, enough to keep soldiers, sailors, and fighter-jocks in chow and shelter. Eventually though, the bombs fell, and none of that mattered anymore.

I couldn’t tell you who shot first. Maybe it was us. Maybe it was them. Both sides had good reasons. We were biting the hand that fed us, bitching and whining alongside the rest of the world, while the Chinese were trying to slap us down for it. I guess I don’t disagree with their stances; we made the deal and failed to uphold it. They merely enforced the terms and we turned on them for it. Whoever shot first seems less important now that everything’s gone. Or rather, now that everyone is gone.

We thought they were nuclear ICBMs when we saw them on the news. A couple of sat-images and alarms came blaring in over the televisions on emergency broadcasts. The Air-force scrambled squadrons to intercept, but the Chinese had been expecting it. They weren’t nukes. They were chemical bombs filled with something called Substance-42. It was like a combination of chlorine gas and Ebola. The first people dead were the pilots, but it didn’t matter, we’d done exactly what they’d wanted.

We blasted apart those ICBMs mid-air and the resulting debris contaminated the entire country. In less than a month, it was the continent. Four-hundred million people died in the first two months. Most of the rest went in the next few; twisted, mangled corpses of either retching poison-victims, or blood-drained casualties. It was like someone had opened a vein on the world, replaced the oceans with blood.

Those of us immune were considered lucky. Sure, lucky…. Lucky is dying in your sleep after a long, full life, or hitting the lottery and retiring early. Nothing about this was lucky. The ones that died were lucky. They didn’t have to watch the world go to an even deeper hell than it had been in.

But I did, because I survived.

Without industry, and with most of our country dead or dying, the war ended. Before the TV-stations went off-air, they’d said that the infection had just hit mainland Asia and was sweeping Europe. Even some dumb bastards who’d fled their countries had managed to infect Australia and most of the world’s islands.

I don’t know how many are left, but I know we’ll never survive. The virus they used mutated, killed off most of the animal life. If you can even find it to hunt, you eat it raw or over pioneer fires. Nothing else in this world works anymore. All the fuel is gone, all the public utilities, all the power, water, and heat.

I don’t know how long I’ll survive, but I’ve only seen a few people since the war ended. Terrifying, considering how dense and overpopulated Chicago used to be. I know there aren’t many of us left now. There isn’t much of anything left, really. Maybe the Chinese didn’t unleash a plague, maybe they’d just harnessed it– or maybe, just maybe, they’d eradicated that last true plague on the planet; humanity.

We were a blight on the universe, it seems. I guess now that we’re all dead the scales are balanced again…

Short Story: Bad Business

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 4 Comments

Rain pelted the ground in sheets of cascading waves just beyond the alcove of the Flaming Hat Pub & Grub. The place was one of those dives built on sincerity and hope, and when that died, it attracted the same flies every elderly tavern’s corpse was prone to.

Yan Federoff wasn’t one of the flies though. In fact, he hated bar flies and the Flaming Hat more than most people stuck there against their will. Part of it was the name; it was a stupid name, more than likely a contributor to its own downfall. It was never intended as a homosexual establishment, and that made “Flaming” all the more pointless– especially given the bigoted owner that often tended the bar.

Maybe it was the air that always stank of stale beer and stagnant piss. That seemed more likely, Yan thought. He exhaled a long plume of smoke through the waterfall pouring out decades-neglected gutters. His smoke disintegrated into the sheeting rain, and he suddenly knew that was it.

The place was like an old cesspool of bile and death, and you couldn’t smoke in it. That was why he hated the place. It didn’t help that every time he was supposed to contact someone there, everything inevitably went tits-up.

His mind started to broach the subject, but he stopped before it could. Too many bad memories, too much life left to live. Dwelling wouldn’t change the past, and he didn’t believe in regret anyway. As he saw it, if you hated life, you changed it. Otherwise, quit bitching, ’cause hindsight’s always 20/20.

A new-model auto-car rolled along the street from somewhere in the distance. It was sleek, all curves and plastic, like a beauty pageant contestant with more intelligence. The door opened unceremoniously. In the dim recesses of the car’s rear bench-seat, an old, white-haired man was leaned sideways. He looked into Yan’s eyes, gestured him into the car.

Yan did his best to appear formal and stiff as he plunged through the storm for the car. Last thing he wanted was to be wet, but appearing soft in even the slightest way could spell death for his business. The last thing he needed was someone joking with wannabe world-dominating buddies about the guy “afraid of a little rain.”

He slipped into the car, directed to the bench-seat opposite the man’s. Even after twenty years, it was eerie to sit in a car with no driver or cock-pit. All of that stuff had been phased-out, replaced by state-of-the-art computer processors and navigation software. Most cars were just a couple of bucket-seats and a pair of doors now, everything else was under the hood. Pissed the auto-mechanics off something fierce when their industry went totally belly-up, save those few lucky enough to be employed by corporate garages.

Yan took his seat across from the man whom thumbed a cell-phone to punch in an address. Its information was transmitted via wi-fi to the car, read by the processor, and its door shut. A short ding sounded, and the car began to roll forward.

“Mr. Federoff,” the old man said. His voice was gravel in a tin can, rattling out sounds rather than speaking. “You have something for me?”

Yan reached into his jacket pocket, produced a small flash-drive. He handed it over, “As requested, everything to be found on Moscow’s heads of state.”

The old man took it, slotted it in the car’s armrest. A holo-screen appeared in front of him, projected from a diode in the ceiling. It tracked his eye movements as he shuffled through active windows for the drive’s contents. He settled on one, nodding slowly to himself. Sub-folders opened in a cascade of detailed documents and various, image files.

“Very good, Mr. Federoff,” he rattled off. “Very good, indeed.”

“And my payment?” Yan asked, his face blank.

The old man fished a similar flash-stick from his front blazer-pocket, leaned through the projected screen to hand it over. Yan took it. The car rolled to a stop and the door opened on pouring rain.

“Thank you for you work, Mr. Federoff,” the old man said stiffly, cutting off the diode’s projection. “Now, please leave.”

Yan remained still, indifferent, “After I verify the credits.”

He dug a cell-phone out of his pocket, hovered it over the flash-stick. The old man chewed his teeth with a half-snarl, aggravated at the implication that he might stiff a man for his work. Yan didn’t care. He’d seen enough weasels in high-end cars with caviar tastes on off-brand, box-wine budgets to know cred-transfers were the only ways to verify their stories.

A bar flashed on the screen to acknowledge the old man’s claim. Yan leaned forward and half-walked along the car and out into the rain. He stepped out, instantly soaked by the storm.

“Pray we never meet again,” the old man warned.

If Yan were younger and more flagrant or arrogant, he’d have laughed at the insinuation. It was posturing, a lashing out of wits at his implication. Yan had learned the hard-way what that could do to future prospects though– or even present bodily blood-content. Instead, his jaw tightened, added a harsh angle to his left jaw. He gave a micro-nod, and the door shut. The car pulled away along the street.

Yan stood, drenched, on the sidewalk to rubberneck the area. A couple of younger Asian women were hobbling together beneath an umbrella, trying to keep in-step with one another, but it was otherwise empty. He slipped into the shadows of an alley before they could get a glimpse of his face or figure, keyed up his internal comm with a thought, and dialed a number from his mental directory.

A tone sounded a few times before a tin-rattling gravel voice answered. He was silent as the old man repeated “hello” a pair of times.

He sensed the tone about to go dead, “Izmennik.”

Thunder cracked as if a lightning had struck the street ahead. A fireball erupted through the downpour. Windows shattered along the buildings. Glass shards melded with rain, indistinguishable. Screams from the Asian women told Yan all he needed to know. He slipped under a door-way’s overhang to light a cigarette, then fished the hood of his sweatshirt from beneath his jacket, pulled it over his head.

“Piz da,” he muttered.

How could the guy have really expected him to blackmail every one of the heads of state? That was as good as declaring war on Russia. More importantly, it was putting himself directly in the cross-hairs of every agency in the country. He needed them more than the payday. The SVR alone was one of his best suppliers of information, his trade. The last thing he needed was some brown-nosing rich bastard trying to make a name for himself by outing politicians, or worse, puppeteering events through them.

But he couldn’t turn down the money. Who could? Who would for that matter? Instead, he cooked up the scam with a few friends in the FSB, fattened his bottom line, and took out a problem for the government. No one would be anymore the wiser for his betrayal, and if it did come out, it would only seem logical. After all, anything else was just bad business.