“Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, Mary had a little lamb, its fleece as white as snow.”

“Who the fuck let her in the damn building?!” I demanded, smashing the intercom button with my fist.

Gunfire, shrieks, and that same wailing song over and over again were my only response.

Sixteen floors up and here she was, cleaning house. You’d think after all the money and equipment I’ve spent on this crew, someone’d be able to take her down! Freaking cyborgs! Whoever the hell thought it was a good idea cyberizing this crazy broad must’ve been insane! I mean, I know getting the implants changes you, some more than others, but for a person’s mind to break this much? She would’ve had to have been unstable before! Nonetheless, here she is! Standing victor over seven dead bodies!

Every now and again I’d get a snippet of her, staggering unsteadily into view of a security camera, instinctively avoiding the pursuing led. How she made it this far was beyond me, but it couldn’t have all been luck. Either she was hiding one hell of a skillset, or someone was helping her. Either way, all that money I’ve spent on those morons downstairs has obviously paid off. That’ll teach me to be more selective in my hiring principles, though they are doing quite a good job of buying me time before my ride comes.

I tried the intercom again to no avail, just the screaming voices of my men panicking down below. If things keep going as they are, I’ll be safe for a little while longer, even if I wasn’t locked away in this room. These steel doors certainly make a sturdy barricade. Almost makes me sad to keep it all to myself, but that’s the reason I’m paid the big bucks. All I have to do now is wait for my extraction team to arrive and get me the hell out of here!

With that creepy ass song sung in that mourning voice playing along as my soundtrack, I decided to kill my time by stuffing all the goods and valuables of my safe into several bags and suitcases. I don’t really have the arms or strength to carry it all, but that’ll be sorted when my team gets here. Now, while the money stashed away was a supremely neat bonus, the most valuable things here were the information stored away. All those scraps of paper and external drives contain a far more valuable currency than any printed bill. If nothing else, holding onto all that is going to buy my life after this debacle.

“Señor,” a voice crackled over the intercom, forcing my attention to the screens hovering over my desk. I rushed over to see the masked face standing before the camera outside the roof access door and put her on loudspeaker before returning to my safe.

“What took you so long?” I demanded immediately. “We’re under heavy assault by a cyborg! And it takes you an hour to get here?!”

“The carrier only just return-”

“I don’t care about your excuses!” I shouted in return. “Just get down here and pull me the hell out!”

“Señor, we can’t.” she told me emotionlessly. “We’ve been locked out of the building. Our codes aren’t working.”

The lockdown. I sighed in frustration, moving back to the desk to enter in my passwords. I frowned at the screen. I typed them in again. Entry denied.

“Señor?”

“What’s the matter with this thing?” I growled, trying again. I narrowed my eyes at the words now displayed, telling me to contact support to retrieve my password. “The system’s locked me out!”

“Actually, that was me.” a crystal clear electronic voice suddenly cut in. My screens were instantly filled with a simply drawn, 2D face with red crosses for eyes and triangular teeth forming a wide smile that almost reached the edges of the circle. The word Anon was written clearly underneath.

“And who the hell are you?!”

“Someone with a sense of humour.” the voice laughed, shaking the image with every syllable. “You know, it took me a while to get into this system, had to piggyback off those guys on the roof when they tried to bypass the lockdown. I’m fairly impressed actually.”

I closed the communication immediately, switching back to the troops up top. Their image came into view for a mere second before it cut back to the wicked smiley face.

“That’s a little rude, cutting me off like that. Especially when I’ve come here to warn you about your imminent doom.”

“Please! That woman down there won’t make it this far, and even if she does, that door is solid steel! You’d need a railgun to even put a dent in it!”

“I’m not so sure you know what a railgun is actually capable of, but that’s beside the point. I’m not talking about sad little Mary down there.” Mary? Why does that sound so familiar? And not just because it’s a fairly common name. “I meant your extraction team.”

“They’re here to get me out! That’s what I pay them for!”

“But you don’t pay them, not anymore at least.” As the voice spoke, several tabs opened up on the screen, each listing several large transactions of money, most of them being deposited. And who was depositing all this money? None other than Alexi!

“That rat fuck! Where the hell’d he get all that money?” The bastard works under me for fuck’s sake!

“There’s a whole trail I can show you, but it’s mostly from smart living and wise investing. Seems he bet against your construction group in favour of a rival. Looks like a pretty good choice actually!” the voice whistled in amazement. “Check out his bank account!”

And then I was shown just how much wealthier the prick was. At least another three 0’s, making my eyes wide in jealousy and triggering a memory of what was once a very unimportant event in my life.

He’d come into my office one day, looking all proud and smug, that damn newby swagger like he was untouchable.

“Hey Señor!” he started, all chipper and eager. “I’ve got some leads on investments you might wanna get in on with me!”

“Get the fuck outta my office!”

And that was the end of that!

“Who the hell are you? How are you so easily able to get this information?” I asked, turning my attention back to the smiley face.

“No one special really, just someone who’s a little curious. Someone who likes a good joke every now and again. And those bank records weren’t so difficult to get anyway. Anyone with half a brain can get through those run of the mill security systems. It’s the custom jobs, like the one you guys have, they’re the tricky ones.”

“You mind telling what’s so funny about this situation?!”

“Oh, heh, sure. It’s kind of by my own making, this one, but if you can’t laugh at yourself, right?” the voice chuckled. “Well, turns out I didn’t need to go through all the trouble of getting Mary here! I could’ve just waited until your underling decided to turn on you, which, judging by what I’m looking at here, was about to go down any day now! Hmm, but then I might not’ve known they were planning a coup, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to have Mary owe me one somewhere down the line, if she has any sentimentality left of course. Still, pretty funny right?!”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

What the fuck?!

“You planned to kill me with that woman?!”

“Not exactly, she was just a tool used for bargaining. The original plan was to let her get to the door, then threaten to open them if you didn’t do as I asked, but now a better opportunity has presented itself. I’ll help you get out of this mess, in exchange for something you’ve got in that safe there.”

“How the hell are you going to do that? I’ve got a madwoman murdering her way up the floors unimpeded, and a squad of highly trained troops ready to put a bullet in my head!”

“Just relax. Mary’s basically a wild animal right now, just following whatever path opens up for her. Alls I gotta do is open her a path to those soldiers, and she’ll take care of ‘em. In the meantime, you get to the carrier and I fly you out! Easy peasy.”

“Speak for yourself!”

“Just trust me on this. I got you.”

“You’re trying to blackmail me!”

“Yeah, and until I get what I want, I need you to stay alive. So what’ll it be?”

“Do I even really have a choice?”

“Good, then it’s settled. Now, I’m going to need you to upload a file. It should be an exchange of emails dating back around two years ago.”

I waited.

“You’re going to need to be more specific than that!”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure. It should be an exchange of money involving three groups. Yours, the facilitator, and two others, I’m just not sure who the other two are. I have a hunch, but I’m just not sure.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for you to just look up our bank records like you did before?”

“I tried that, but someone’s gone through a lot of trouble to hide it all. I know you have it though. Someone was able to mine the data before it – no, that’s probably why it was buried. At any rate, the breadcrumbs your broker or hacker, whoever, left behind were pretty obvious, to me at least. Actually, that’s probably why that lot upstairs have a bullet with your name on it. Ah, it’s starting to make sense now.” the voice hummed. “Anyway, it would’ve been a massive transfer, and I’m guessing you guys took half and the other half went to that third party.”

The moment he’d said there were three parties, I’d already known which exchange it was. I’ve even got the email trail setting it all in place, and I can sure as shit say they didn’t try to bury those records because I found it. They were just trying to cover their asses, trying to contain the damage by feigning ignorance. Problem was, he didn’t give a shit. He already knew, and has been a great big thorn straight up in all of our asses ever since!

“I know which one you’re talking about. There’s the bank deposit that goes along with it, but that only has the contractor and us in it. You get that now.” I told him, plugging in one of the harddrives I’d dug out of the safe. I held up another in front of the screen. “You get the emails once you’ve gotten me someplace safe.”

“Deal! Don’t worry about a thing Señor, I’ve got you covered. Now just sit back and watch the show!”

The screens then split and showed me two different images. One was the troops up above, where the door opened and they trudged on in. The other was the woman, Mary, and what remained of some luckless underling.

“Mary! Had! A! Little! Lamb!” she sang, grunting has she continuously plunged the knife into the face of her victim. Her attention was quickly drawn away however, by a short siren, probably the fire alarm. She stood, still singing, and wandered off in its direction, reaching a doorway to the stairwell and began climbing.

The camera angles for both kept shifting about as they moved out of focus. Mary couldn’t climb any higher, so she’d exited the stairwell and was now back to following the short blasts of sirens. The others were having a pretty hard go of making it to this room, finding one locked door after another. Neither were any wiser of their impending meeting. Then they both rounded a corner.

Shots were immediately fired, bullets dodged or deflected off those metal arms. The troops remained calm, tossing a grenade at the target when their first attempts failed. Mary seemed aware of the danger, showing some unnatural speed in darting forth to her newest victims, crashing in among them with that slashing knife. Then, and only then, did the panic set in. One fired their rifle, missing Mary and putting down their own. Another was tossed aside, pancaked into the wall. The rest immediately backed out.

“What the hell is that monster?” I muttered to myself, apparently a little too loudly.

“She was once a pretty ordinary woman, full of love and life. I can assure you, her reasons for being here are well justified. It’s the reason I used her after all.”

“What possible reason could she have to launch an assault like this?”

“Wouldn’t the better question be, what possible reason could she have for not launching an assault like this? Just really think about what you do for a living, I’m surprised nobody else’s taken you on before.”

Well, they had me there!

“Still, isn’t she a little insane to be working with? We’d never do business with something so broken.”

“And that’s the reason why all your men are dead on the floors below. But enough of the chitchat, you should get moving. I’ll open the doors and give you a safe exit, so just make it quick. I’ll do what I can, but it’s not certain they won’t find some way to bypass the locked doors.”

The monitor switched off and the heavy steel doors slid open. I turned around and hurriedly grabbed the bags with the documents. I could always make more money with them later, or buy my life back. There’s always someone wanting to purchase information somewhere.

I ran out the door, looked to my left, then right and found the open door. Off I went, my life dependant on it, running through a maze of hallways until I froze still. At the other end was one of extraction team members. I hadn’t been noticed yet, their attention and ammo focused down the connecting hall, but that changed quickly enough. Through bursts of fire, and a limp body hurtling by, the soldier turned their head, saw me, and quickly pointed their weapon in my direction. Was it that important I die that they’d ignore the greater threat in front of them? Steel shutter doors quickly dropped from the roof before any bullets found me. The metal clangs against my solid barrier stopped soon enough, replaced instead by a horrible scream.

“Whoops, my bad. To your right.”

I followed the voice’s commands and continued on, my heart racing at the near-death experience, and also my poor fitness. I was guided to the stairwell, the door sealing shut behind me, and moved up to the roof. I opened the door, found the heli-carrier and no other resistance. I ran towards it, climbed in the back and was greeted by one of the pilots.

“Señor? Where are the rest?”

“They didn’t make it.” I puffed, dropping the suitcases to the ground. “Quickly! Get us outta here!”

The pilot looked at me for a moment, then swiftly went for the sidearm strapped to his leg. He drew the weapon faster than I could blink, but barely made it out of the holster before it dropped to the ground, his hands instead reaching towards his helmet as he cried in pain. He dropped dead to the floor a second later.

“What? Just who else is after my head?”

“I’ve overloaded the electronics in their head causing an electrical discharge. There aren’t anymore alive onboard, so it’s about time we get – oh no.”

“What? What is it?” I cried, looking about for a seat to get strapped into. “Get me the hell out of here!”

The carrier shook slightly and quickly ascended. The backdoor closed slowly as we left the building, my office, behind to drown in the blood of its staff. I didn’t spare it a second glance.

“Tell me quick, who was the third party? You know, don’t you?”

“I do, but not until you’ve gotten me out of here. Once we land, I’ll upload the drive and we can be on our way, otherwise what guarantee do I have you won’t just drop this thing out of the sky?”

“And everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.”

I turned my eyes in horror at the back door, still in the process of closing. The cyborg slid down the surface, knife in her hand and a big smile on her face.

“Shit!” I screamed. “Do something! Scramble her brain! Kill her!”

“I can’t do that.” the voice muttered in disappointment. “Those aren’t cybernetics. They’re biomechanical. She doesn’t have any outgoing or incoming connections. You’re on your own now, so just tell me who it was that hired you?”

“Get me out of here and I’ll tell you!”

“I just told you I can’t. Dammit Wiz! And I was so close! Ah well, who’d’ve thought my very own plan would be the cause of my downfall? Pretty funny right?” it chuckled slightly.

“What the fuck?!” I shrieked in confusion.

The voice just sort of crackled out sharply right then, almost like someone had ripped out the jack to some speakers. Strangely, the carrier didn’t begin to nosedive, it just continued cruising through the skies.

I bolted out of my seat but was immediately flattened and pinned to the floor. I could only stare at the ceiling, my view quickly filled by the madwoman’s terrifying grin.

“I guess he’s still holding out hope you’ll be alive once I’ve gotten what I want from you, but between you and me, there’s only two ways this will end: slow or quick. Tell me what I want, and it’ll all be over. First though, I’ll make you feel what I’ve been feeling since it happened.”

“Since what happened?” I cried in a panic.

Her grin only widened as her knife dug deep into me. I screamed. I howled. I cried. I prayed for the relief of blacking out, but it never came.