> Washington, D.C., The U.S. Capitol, Before the Great Collapse
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> "Madame Speaker, keep away from the door please!"
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> She didn't pay her security detail any mind and walked past where they were standing, guns pointed at the door ready. She peered out the glass in the door and saw the Capitol Officers struggling to keep the Herd from breaking through the door into her office suit. It wouldn't be long now. There was no way out. They'd been cut off from the emergency escape door located in another part of the suit.
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> "Madame Speaker, please--" Mitch repeated and she nodded and stepped back, getting behind them. Her three men detail were shaken and they should be. They were all about to die.
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> She knew what she had to do. She just wasn't sure she had the strength to do it.
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> She went to her desk and opened the bottom cabinet, revealing a coded safe with a biometric lock. She pressed her thumb to it and the door popped open. She pulled out the satellite phone. It could call one number and one number only. That's all she needed.
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> She heard crashing from outside the door.
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> "They broke through the glass" Oliver told Mitch.
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> "Ma'am, please stay behind the desk" Mitch replied, his voice was filled with nervousness. She nodded.
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> Her entire security detail were men. She had the opportunity to get a woman once -- one she was told was "the best". She had declined and ordered the official never to say a word of her refusal. It would have been used against her if it got out. Despite all of her feminist horseshit and even changing the rules to demand proper gender pronouns on the House floor, it was mostly for show. She knew she didn't want a goddamn woman protecting her. People wanted her dead. She wasn't going to take the chance, but now it seemed not even the three men could save her.
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> The entire Capitol Mall had been blocked off with a giant wall, manned by National Guardsmen, but it hadn't stopped the Herd. She'd heard some of the Guard were infected and had turned, causing the fortress to break down and fall. What the truth was she didn't know and didn't seem to matter now.
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> More crashing from outside the door. Oilver turned and looked at Mitch with a grim face, but said nothing.
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> "Make a run for it to the other side?" Oilver suggested quietly.
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> Mitch shook his head. "Even worse there".
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> Oliver breath in and put his eyes back out the window in the door, watching and waiting for the end.
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> She looked at the phone in her hand and looked at it and then at her grand office with a painted portrait of her on the wall, muttering to herself as she thought back.
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> "I was new here once... just a Freshman with ideas... good ideas. I just wanted to make things better, do the right thing... what happened?..."
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> "Ma'am?" Mitch asked.
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> She shook her head solemnly and waved a dismissive hand. What happened is she'd let it all go for promises she'd made. Promises in exchange for playing a role.
>
> The President was dead although she was only one of a few people that knew it. The Vice President was in charge, although she wasn't even sure if that was true anymore. He'd been flown out to Mount Weather days earlier. She sure hoped that Bible Thumping idiot was still in charge, because if not that meant she was and she didn't want it. She had at one point. She'd run in 2004 for President -- finished second to last in the primary. "Too liberal" was what they told her. She couldn't help but laugh at that. By today's standard's she was practically a Conservative.
>
> NYC had just been overrun two days prior. The President had been killed not by the virus or a Herd, but by the supposed "cure" -- the vaccine. It didn't work. It some ways it had no chance of working. The virus was such that it required actual anti-bodies from an individual born with a natural immunity. So far they hadn't found that and most men who had gotten the earlier weaker strains of the virus had become impudent.
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> There was a rumor though.... there was a rumor that one existed and before the shit hit the fan they were closing in. Now, she knew if they did find it she would never know.
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> But the vaccine that they had made had been a total joke. The problem was that it killed the person injected slowly, so they didn't notice at first. It also mimicked the virus so people just thought the patient had gotten the virus and the vaccine was ineffective -- after all, they'd put only a 50% success rate number on it.
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> It turned out, though, the vaccine was a death nail. It had killed the President and it had killed everyone over 75 in Congress because that's who they'd given it to. They'd kept this fact a secret, but it had started to leak out onto the Internet thanks to a Congressman's 20-something mistress posting some dumb shit on Facebook about it.
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> There was a cosmic irony to the President's death. He'd been a believer in the virus, and the vaccine, since day one. He'd done all the right things. He'd closed borders, he'd rushed the PPE production, jump started research into a cure... And now he was dead. The Vice President, meanwhile, at undermined him at every turn. He'd denied the virus even existed, calling it a "hoax". He'd shacked up with the "Immunity Nazi" screaming crowd. Yet, not only was he (as far as she knew) very much alive but he was now President and the reason was he had refused to take the vaccine -- which he called "the Devil's Semen" at one point. Turns out, the crazy motherfucker, who had at a child been part of a church that practiced snake handling -- had been right about one thing.
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> She'd made the smart move not to trust the vaccine too. She didn't know about all that "Devil's Semen" stuff and she was actually an Atheist -- although she kept this quite and put on a God-loving show when she had to do so -- so it had nothing to do with religion. She just knew it was rushed and the science did not back it. She decided to let others jump on the hamster wheel first and that was the right decision. Of course, the voices had told her not to take it too.
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> A loud crashing interrupted her daydreaming and Mitch screamed at her to stay behind the desk. They'd gotten through the door. She heard scream and soon they were upon the door they were behind. The glass begin to crack almost immediately and then shattered as her security detail began to pop off rounds, each a head shot, but as one of the Herd went down more followed.
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> She quickly pressed the button on the phone to make the call and put it to her head. It rang once, twice and then someone answered.
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> "How may I direct your call?" a man on the other line said.
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> The Herd broke through the door and began to rip her security detail into pieces. A tear rolled down her cheek.
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> "Execute. 378-Alpha-7-Echo-9-Yankee-Zulu-Bravo"
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> "Confirmed" the voice said before the Herd cracked her skull in half.
>
> ------------------------------------
> Cris set down the phone and took a deep breath. He knew who that was and he could see on the TV what was going on so he knew what had happened.
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> This was it. He was the only one left there and it was on him. How he had been put in charge of this he would never know but everyone else had just left and now the Herd was outside their non-descript building in Northern Virginia too. The location and what it was had leaked online. That's all it took.
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> Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
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>
> It was all up to him now and he supposed he had always known it would be.
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> "Everyone has a role to play" he'd been told and this was his. But he didn't want it. For years he'd rejected it but oh how it had haunted him every time he resisted: the beast. It had even given him a name -- Xir.
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> It appeared in his dreams. It appeared in visions. It taunted him. It cursed him if he didn't do what he was suppose to.
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> But if he did -- he was constantly rewarded and his ultimate reward had been to go from being a loser nerd no one cared about in high school to being wealthy, successful and even getting a hot girlfriend, although she was probably dead now.
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> He sat down at the large computer terminal and began to go to work, executing the order.
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> This building was officially the offices of a digital consulting firm known as Evergreen Consulting -- a consulting firm that consulted for all the major tech companies, especially the social media ones. Unofficially, and truthfully, it was known as T.H.I.C. -- Technology Hazard Information Control.
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> It was a way to control, suppress or even shut down, all of it. Originally it had been created as a way for all the tech companies to coordinate policy and share information about bad actors that may be on multiple platforms. The idea was to prevent things like uprising or terrorist attacks. T.H.I.C. was central command and would help coordinate the joint efforts between the companies.
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> Government wasn't even involved at first, but inevitably it got involved. Ironically, it's involvement came from a growing cry from those complaining that the tech companies had become too powerful and needed oversight. Little did they know this oversight had created a monster -- more powerful than they could imagine. After that T.H.I.C. became more about the government telling tech companies what to do in secret and Cris had access to all of their platforms and full control. He could manipulate them in anyway. He could even shut them down completely. He didn't have to ask and he didn't even need them to do it anymore like the old days. He had all the power and it was power he did not want.
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> The Herd was going to be inside the building soon, he knew it. Sweat poured down his forehead. He didn't like this, not one bit.
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> He typed frantically. They had been working on this for months now ever since the virus started. The T.H.I.C. software could be used in a variety of ways but one way was to target certain things, ideologies, beliefs... across the entire Internet. Fearing the Herd mentality and the potential for civil unrest they'd built a plan to censor it all if it needed to happen. Users would have their accounts blocked or deleted that expressed certain views. Posts would be removed. All of this was done with sophisticated A.I. software and algorithms. They could even remove images this way.
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> It had been meant to stop the spread of misinformation -- or even truth in some cases -- and prevent chaos. But Cris had modified the program in secret, making it much more broad in its scope and reach. He'd done so because it had been the task -- the role -- he'd been assigned by the beast that haunted him who called itself Xir.
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> The way it was now it would virtually shut down all the public, mainstream social media sites. It would also shut down specific pieces of information from spreading. Cris didn't understand why for much of it but he had figured out it was any information that could stop Xir and spread the word about him before it was time.
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> It could all be stopped and reversed but the problem was Cris was the only one left and he could now hear the Herd downstairs. They were inside the building.
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> Once he was dead, who would reverse it?
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> The only thing that would remain untouched was the Deep Web, where Cris loved to spend hours reading juicy information posted by people like Dante. The system did not reach there and could not manipulate it, only the public mainstream websites -- but that's all that was needed really. Very few even knew about, let alone got on, the Deep Web. Also, the government used the Deep Web for most of its operations coordination now anyway, so they didn't want it messed with.
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> He continued working as fast as he could.
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> Why am I doing this? he thought to himself, but then the headaches came. They always did when he tried to resist, so he continued. What the beast didn't know was he had built a backdoor into the system and he had a plan. He had discovered things over the years researching the curse that had befallen him and he'd learned a great deal about the beast called Xir and its weaknesses. He'd compiled it in a secure file and he knew within minutes years of planning would culminate.
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> He just hoped he'd have the strength to pull it off.
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> He thought about how he got here in those final moments, as the Herd made their way closer to him. He'd let Xir guide him and put him into the upper echelons of power. Xir had promised if he did what he asked of him than he would be rewarded. He did everything the beast said, and it had worked for him. He'd gotten into Harvard. He'd had to pretend to be a non-binary pansexual to get there, but Xir assured him in his dreams they'd never find out. They hadn't. He'd become a Rhodes Scholar the same way and like so many, afterwards, had went to work for McKinsey for several years where he had been recognized, lauded and met many powerful people. It was what landed him the job at Google and then he'd been placed as their liaison inside T.H.I.C., moving from sunny California to the D.C. Metro area. When the government took over T.H.I.C. he'd thought he might even be put in charge but they'd brought in someone knew from the CIA. In his dreams, Xir assured him one day he would be in charge and now here he was only it wasn't for his own benefit, but just for this one day to do the beast's bidding.
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> Cris sneered in anger as he hit "Enter" for the final time and the software began to run. Filled with anger to help him pull it off, he ran over to the other terminal where he already had his browser open to the Deep Web and the message board where Dante posted. He started to attach the file containing his research file and how to access the backdoor to a message he'd typed for Dante.
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> Suddenly, the headaches started and his hands began to shake. He struggled to control the mouse.'
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> What...are...you...doing!?
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> The angry voice shouted in his head. The beast knew his plans.
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> Cris grunted and screamed and fought the pain, attaching the file.
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> He saw drops of blood hit the keyboard. It was coming from his lose.
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> STOP!!
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> Cris didn't listen and with all his strength forced his finger to the "Enter" key. It was like a force was pulling his arm back but he was winning.
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> Suddenly the door to the office splintered open and the Herd came scrambling inside and towards him.
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> KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW! HURRY!
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> But Xir's commands to the Herd were for not because Cris managed to press the key and send the message. As soon as he did the hold on him was gone. He reached into a drawer of the desk and grabbed a pistol. He started to point it at the Herd but then sighed, put it against his temple and pulled the trigger.
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