The soldier darted forward, sliding into cover behind a support column near the east elevator. He set himself, shaking his head. They were pulling off a classic flanking maneuver, and this mercenary was just letting it happen. For all his shrieking and firing, he had the tactical competence of a mushroom.

How had someone so clueless lasted this long?

It didn't matter. He settled himself into his new position and raised his rifle, sighting on the stone planter. He spit some more rounds at it, watching as the continuous autofire ate away at the thick-walled decoration. It was solid and well-built, but it was in no way designed to withstand the kind of hammering they were giving it.

His partner hopped up and widened their arc around the mercenary. Once his partner was set and firing, he took a moment to reload.

He slapped the magazine home and pulled the bolt handle to chamber the first round. Something hissed by him along the floor. Following it with his eyes, he saw a block of plastic explosive slide over to the grand column of glass and brass that surrounded the free-standing elevators.

To a normal person, the elevators looked like stately, beautiful architecture, glorious in their scope and size, breathtaking in their tasteful decor.

To Little Timmy, they looked like a stack of knife blades eighteen stories high.

The explosion hammered out two of the steel supports from the base of Column East, shattering the glass into a starry cloud thirty feet up and spraying jagged shards across the atrium. The soldier's body rag-dolled through the air, crunching to a stop against the reception desk as razor sheets of structural glass smashed down around him. Bleeding and barely clinging to consciousness, he raised his eyes, his gaze traveling up the elevator column.

The elevator car at the top rocked and knocked back and forth against its glass enclosure, rattling the panes in their slender brass frames, dangerously close to knocking one loose. The whole tower swayed as the steel of the remaining supports groaned, bent, flexed, and hung for one moment, seeming undecided as to whether they would hold or give.

The soldier held his breath as he watched the steel supports, blackened by the explosion, twist and begin to buckle. He willed the supports to hold with every erg of mental energy he could muster.

He watched in horrified fascination as the whole tower shuddered slightly, bent a little more, made a laboring sound... and held.

He was breathing out a watery sigh of relief and disbelief when a second brown block of explosive slid toward the tower. It sailed through the area where the glass wall had been and dropped into the elevator shaft.

The second explosion echoed deep within the bowels of the building. The elevator cables snapped loose and whipped around, singing out through the atrium with deadly speed. The elevator car smashed through the glass at the top of the tower eighteen floors above. It hung out of the tower at an awkward angle. The panels that made up the tower rained down, shattering and spinning deadly sheets and shards of razor-sharp glass on the atrium below.

Soldiers scrambled, trying to find cover from the deadly rain while Little Timmy stood on the planter, firing his SMGs crazily around and shrieking with mad glee.

The elevator car creaked and leaned and finally snapped loose, pinwheeling free of the tower, trailing deadly whip-cables and flying free for three glorious seconds before impacting the floor of the atrium like a bomb. Brass panels sizzled and spun through the air, one neatly decapitating a decorative tree, another nearly smashing through a support column.

The glass settled, tinkling and crashing its last hurrah, as lighter debris drifted down and the collapse of the elevator tower finished. Little Timmy had run out of ammo, and was simply standing on the planter, drinking in the destruction, his face lit with unholy delight.

He waited to see if any more shooting would come, but none did. Whether from the falling glass, the elevator, or Little Timmy's mad firing, the squad of reinforcements had been silenced.

"I have, a golf putter!" Roger exclaimed. "Furry and lovable!"

"Yeah," breathed Little Timmy, rapturous. "Yeah. That's exactly right, man."

----------------------------------------

The six suitmen surrounding Fleer were of a type: slim, athletic, in trim suits and identical neutral expressions. They escorted him, two with grips on his upper arms, and four bracketing him, two ahead and two behind, perfectly spaced. They'd thoroughly shaken him down, taking his datasink, panic button, and, annoyingly, his shoes. It irked him more than he expected to be escorted through a professional office in his sock feet.

There didn't appear to be much likelihood of introductions passing around, so Fleer named his escorts for himself. The two in front he'd already dubbed Larry and Curly, based on their hairstyles-- the man on the left had curly, receding hair, so he was Larry, and the fellow on the right was bald, so he was Curly. The pretty fellow with the loose but alert grip on his left arm had carefully coiffed hair, but a long nose, so Fleer decided he would be Shemp. The man with the grip on his right was Moe. He was dark-skinned, thickly muscled, and bald, but Fleer was running out of Stooge names. He couldn't see the two men behind him very well, so they were Joe and Curly Joe.

"So, you guys do this much?" Staring ahead as one man, they all acted as though they hadn't heard him. "I used to do this too, you know. On my way up the ladder. Not bad work if you can get it." Still no response. "Of course, I eventually broke through. Made director, you know. Fun times." Nothing. "I was an assassin," he mentioned, "top of my field, for a while. Maybe you've heard of me? David Fleer? Concordium Regional Assassin of Note two years running? Executive Quarterly did a piece on me. I was bucking for VP. Ring any bells?"

No bells appeared to be ringing.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"I was pretty quick," he said, talking a little faster now. "I can't talk about the contracts of course, NDAs and all that, but I was quick on the draw. I could snatch a man's gun right out of his holster without him even noticing." Larry glanced back with a sneer, and squeezed his left arm slightly to his side, as though checking that something was still there. It was progress, of a sort. "You guys are sharp, though. Got a lot of practice in, I can tell."

With smooth ease, they bustled him to a freight elevator at the back of the building, gracefully placing him in the exact center and surrounding him.

"Little warm in here," he said, talking faster. "Wish they'd turn the A/C up in these buildings. Am I right?" He grinned uneasily, worrying at his socks with his feet. "Can't be comfortable for you goons-- I mean, you guys, in those tight suits. Gotta be pretty warm. You guys warm?"

They did nothing to indicate their current state of distress, or lack thereof. The elevator dinged, and the suitmen moved him smoothly out of the elevator.

"So, uh, what do you guys use? Injection? Execution-style headshot? That one's messier than you'd think. Not as messy as cutting the throat. That one's really messy. Strangling? That's slow, and not very pleasant. Uh, or do you have, like, a machine or something?"

Nobody indicated if they had a machine or something.

"Wow, you guys are really good at this." Fleer was nearly babbling now. "I can't remember the last time I've seen such, uh, professionals. Six escorts for one guy, though, it's a bit much, right? Don't need that many professionals for little old me. So I don't guess you guys would want to take a break? Check your messages? Boss might have rescinded that order, am I right?"

They arrived at a blank steel door in the middle of a nondescript hall. A small sign nearby read "Processing and Disposal".

Curly, to his front left, rapped out a pattern. The door opened.

Fleer was escorted into a cheerful reception area. Tinny, annoying Muzak dripped from the speakers in the ceiling. Cheap potted plants stood in the corners, and a bland, neutral-colored pattern covered the walls. The wall to the right was dominated by a window, tinted with the tell-tale silvering of a one-way mirror. Cameras were mounted above the window, pointing into the next room, which was dark and quiet.

A bank of computers sat against the far wall. They were manned by a weedy, spotty man with an incredibly narrow nose, sitting in a cheap swivel chair. He turned around as the guards entered with their charge.

"One for processing, straight from Adler," Moe said.

"Oh hey, wow, you guys talk! That's great!" Fleer yammered.

The narrow-nosed man rolled his eyes.

"I've got two in the fridge now, and pickup's not until Tuesday. You tell Adler that if he sends me any more, we'll have to start transferring bodies to the basement facility."

He peered at Fleer.

"Now what do we have here? Can I have a name?"

"Oh, yes! David Fleer, owner of Riotfish, Inc. I think there's been a misunderstanding, these gentlemen were meant to escort me out of the building. Ha ha! No worries! Mistakes happen!"

"Hmmhmm," the narrow-nosed man said, turning and putting the information into his computer. "Any special instructions?"

"Ha ha! No, he just said to get out and never come back! Go figure! Me and my mouth, the trouble I get into, ha ha!"

"Just disposal," Moe said. "Nothing fancy."

"Hmm." More data entry.

"Really, it's no trouble. I'll just head right out and you'll never see me again! Scout's honor!"

"Well, the bottom fridge is free. Use a bag. It took me three days to clean it out last time."

"Ha ha ok, wow, you guys are serious. You know what? This is all just a big misunderstanding. There is no way this is what Adler meant. I mean, just a little conversation between old friends, am I right? Right?"

"There you go. Don't forget to file the forms after. Gotta have the paperwork."

"Sure thing."

The narrow-nosed man pressed a button, and with a sharp mechanical buzz the door beside the window opened, and the lights in the next room blazed on. The suitmen pressed Fleer toward the door.

"Hey, you know what? Check your records! I think you'll find that--" but the suitmen pushed him into the room.

The room was covered floor-to-ceiling in glazed slate. There were three small, stacked doors in the far wall, about the right size for mortuary refrigerators. A cabinet to the left bore a sign marked "Body Bags". A large round drain in the floor was poised to catch the flow from shower heads hanging from the ceiling.

The center of the room was dominated by a restraining device, mounted to the floor. The operation was clear: the subject would be pushed in face-first, leaning forward, then the head, arms and legs would be locked into place with adjustable clamps. The subject would be rendered helpless and immobile, with all the critical areas exposed. Execution could then be carried out any number of ways.

"Oh boy, that's a Botano Forward Restraint system, that is a fantastic piece of equipment! You guys ever get a chance to--"

The door clicked shut behind them.

Fleer jammed his bare feet onto the floor. His handlers stumbled at his sudden stop. Fleer snapped his right arm forward, breaking Moe's grip, and spun his left arm around Shemp's, trapping it and locking it in a painful hyperextension.

Fleer spun to face Shemp. Faster than thought and close enough to kiss, he rammed his hand into the other man's jacket, pulled his pistol out just far enough to get a finger on the trigger, and fired through his holster and jacket at the men behind Shemp.

Four shots rang out, bambam bambam. The back of Shemp's jacket was shredded open by the escaping gasses. Joe took two rounds in center mass, dropping like a stone. Curly Joe caught the other two, one in the liver, curling him around the wound, and the other in the face, just to the left of his nose. He toppled sideways.

Shemp, unable to free his right arm from Fleer's armlock, got his left arm up, reaching for Fleer's face. Fleer disentangled himself just enough to get some space between his chest and Shemp's and put a round straight through his heart. Shemp's eyes flew wide, and immediately glazed over.

Fleer spun Shemp's falling corpse into Moe, who was just starting to reach into his jacket. Moe and Shemp sprawled to the floor.

Now standing back-to-back with Larry, Fleer drove his heel back up between Larry's legs. Larry gave a sharp grunt and doubled over.

By this point, Curly had drawn his gun and was turning to face Fleer. Fleer fired twice more, aiming for the head, and Curly dropped, his face cored. The slide on the gun locked open. Out of ammo.

Seven rounds? Fleer grimaced. These guys needed bigger guns.

He frisbeed the empty handgun into the face of Moe, who was still on the ground trying to get free of Shemp's body.

Larry was staggering with one hand still on his privates, but had managed to pull his handgun out. Fleer turned and leaped forward, planting a knee high into his side. The gristly crunch of contact told Fleer that he'd broken or sprung at least two ribs. He snaked himself behind Larry just as Moe started firing.

Larry soaked up the three rounds intended for Fleer. Fleer grabbed Larry's gun as it dropped from nerveless fingers and returned fire, silencing the gunman on the floor.

Spinning and dropping to one knee, he put a single bullet through the mirror, just to the right of center.

Breathing heavily, Fleer waited for a moment.

Nobody moved. No alarms sounded.

Everything was silent.

"Yes!" Fleer shouted. "Seven at once! That is a personal record!" he crowed. "I've still got it!"