Walker moved quietly up the hall. He’d seen the back of Webster holding the pistol to Jasper’s head. They were twenty paces away, and slowly moving toward Monica and Paul. He kept crouched down, out of sight of Monica and Paul by the two standing bodies between them.
Walker watched them trying their play of hostage-and-captor again.
He saw it work on Paul.
Then Monica hesitated.
Then Jasper said the words that Monica had always been desperate to hear.
Then she passed over her pistol and Paul put it on the floor.
As Jasper headed for Paul, Walker knew he had a second, maybe two, until Webster turned.
Walker moved fast.
Webster turned, bringing his pistol up.
•
“You always were the better coder,” Jasper said to Paul, standing over him. “But you never were much use at chess.”
Paul was silent.
“I organized your new ID via that Tor site,” Jasper said to Paul, his pistol pointed at Paul’s head. “And I got you that interview and made them take you on at the security contractor that looked at the DoE and other government agencies. That’s been the exercise. Not this. Don’t you see? This was all preordained, by someone far, far smarter and much more insightful than you, and many, many steps ahead.”
Paul’s face fell.
Monica’s hands balled into fists and she screamed as she launched at her brother.
•
Walker jumped the final few yards, his fist outstretched.
Webster brought his pistol up to fire before Walker’s fist found its mark—against Webster’s head.
Walker fell.
Webster stood over him, smiled, and brought the pistol to aim.
•
Paul caught Monica and held her back. He could see commotion over Jasper’s shoulder, and recognized Walker.
“See,” Jasper said, a smirk on his face. “That’s the girl. Always needed a little . . . direction.”
“The hell with you!” Monica screamed. “This was all you! You’re attacking your own country? You’re pathetic! A monster!”
Jasper shook his head. “You have no idea. This will make us all so much stronger—so much stronger. We need a Cyber Command that is equal to the other branches of the military—and this will bring that, you’ll see. People will thank me. Play your part, and they may even remember you.”
•
“This is where you—”
Webster was standing over Walker, pointing the gun at him, and stopped mid-speech. His left hand went up to the side of his head, where Walker’s right hand had landed the blow. He felt the impact point, and touched the end of the screwdriver that had imbedded through the temple, that point where the skull is at its thinnest. Webster’s mouth opened and closed, once, twice, three times, then he fell back and landed with a thud.
Dead.
The sound alerted Jasper, who turned around and took in the scene. Webster on the floor, killed silently but for the fall. And Walker, on his back, scrambling away, toward the door to the server room.
Jasper shot at him. The glass wall shattered but held—huge panes of laminated tempered glass, each sheet an inch thick and made up of plastic sandwiched between layers of lead-free glass.
“No!” Monica yelled.
Walker got to his feet behind a server. He ran down the row, took a right turn and doubled back. It was dark in here, and Walker thought he was onto a good thing until he realized it was about as bad as he could imagine: the lights overhead came on as he ran, motion sensors lighting the way. Wherever he ran in this room, it would be lit up for a predetermined period of time. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Another gunshot rang out.
Then—darkness.