Weapons of the Gods

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

She drew out the remainder of the day, avoiding “beer o’clock” with the nerds and finding several opportunities to siphon off information. They rarely left the lair. They had more than one plot ongoing, but nothing as big as the one they called America. She spent the night with one eye open, lying uncomfortably on a cot and trying to avoid any contact with the sheets. Two others snoozed in nearby alcoves, snoring and talking in their sleep, restless.

The next morning, she roved the basement, storing every scrap of information related to the place, everything from external data storage boxes to plug points. Questions such as: “Do we have weapons?”, “Do we have an escape route?”, and “Do we have protection?” were asked and answered quickly. Piranha, Manta and Moray showed her what evils they were up to in their spare time and it was all she could do not to tear their heads off right there and then.

Ruining lives via social media, through doctored emails, messages and photoshopped prints. They lived for it, and utilized a points-scoring system to see who wrought the most damage. Their laughter grated on her nerves.

Again, she was called upon to implement a mini-crisis, but fortunately it was nothing that totally affronted her morals and she managed to live with it. Later that morning, after their ten o’clock chocolate break, Barracuda called for everyone to listen up.

“Time to move ahead with the prison break,” he said with an excited lilt to his voice. “Initiate step two!”

Some clapped, some hooted, but one — a kid called Pacu — shouted up: “In front of the bitch? You sure, man?”

New Karin wanted to shove the kid headfirst through his own computer screen, and she would have done it — but Old Karin put the op first.

“I’ve done everything you asked.”

Pacu grunted. “Too early, Piranha.”

“I’m right here,” Karin said. “Not going anywhere. Why not use me?”

“We’ll just keep her here until the mission succeeds,” another one spoke up. This one’s name was Goonch, Karin recalled. “No risk. Then, we know she’s one of us.”

Barracuda watched her. “You okay with that?”

Karin nodded but then raised her hand. “I’m cool, but we have to get one thing straight.”

Eight faces stared.

“The next one that calls me a bitch will get Error 404’d.”

The room broke out into laughter at the little nerd joke. Error 404 was usually followed by the words: Not Found. Even Pacu grinned.

“All right, then,” Barracuda said. “We’re going all in with this one. Opening every supermax facility in the United States simultaneously. Cells, inner doors, outer doors. And we’re gonna keep them open. It’ll be a total fucking blast!” He cheered.

Karin coerced another smile to appear. “Will you have eyes on that?”

“Shit, of course we will. That’s the whole point. Some of these supermaxes are way out in the sticks, sure, but the prisoners will get to the closest town at some point.”

“Cool. Where are you so far?”

Barracuda held up a hand. “Soon,” he said. “First, we have to initiate Stage Two. The grunt work’s already done. Coding, programming, all that cool stuff. But we still need to install it discreetly on their systems. You can help with that, Karin. Shit, what are we gonna call you?”

“Praying Mantis,” Goonch suggested.

“That’s not a vicious fish, dickhead.”

“I know, but it’s cool and kinda describes her, don’t you think?”

“Too much of a mouthful. How about Payara — the vampire fish?”

“It’ll do,” Karin said. “How can I help?”

“Like this,” Barracuda led her to a terminal. “First we need to embed the code and then implant a common trigger to start it all.”

“I can do that. What date did you have in mind?”

“There’s nothing in mind,” Barracuda said softly. “It’s happening in two days.”