A.L.I.C.E.

by

Bek D Corbin

an Erinyes story

‘The problem with going to a high-priced private school,’ Preston ‘Kallie’ Wyecross mused to himself, ‘is that the tuition doesn’t vet out the bullies. You just get affluent-going-on-wealthy bullies who don’t think they can be hurt.’ The Athletics- you couldn’t really call them Jocks; they scored too well on tests- were for the most part all right sorts. The basketball, baseball, swimming and Track teams were actually pretty good guys. But the Football team? Right out of a 1980s ‘high school comedy’ movie. Those that Pres had seen, anyway. The real problem was that Pres was almost textbook Bully Bait. Short, slender, straw-blonde hair- all he needed was a pair of soda-bottle glasses to be a perfect victim. Thank God, his parents had had his eyes tweaked.

But that just meant that the Thugball players had to pick another, slightly silly target for ridicule. ‘ooohhh, look at that cheek,” Lance Chandler sneered as he rubbed his knuckles across Pres’ cheek. “No zits, no blackheads, no rash, no NUTHIN’. How DO you keep that peaches and cream complexion, Peaches?”

Actually, it was due in equal part to the regimen for Pres’ flesh mask to be ‘Kallie’, which required regular lasering, proactive of clearing out blocked pores and elimination of infections, and the effect of the stemiderm(c) flesh mask itself. Not that Pres could tell them that- or that it would interest those yahoos in the slightest. Pres knew exactly how it would go down, by the numbers: Lance would set him up, Gavin would put words into his mouth, Vivian would egg them on, and Ethan would double up as the big threat and keep anyone from interfering. Lance Chandler was almost a textbook high school Jock/Bully, with enough dark good looks to be arrogant, and physical enough to be dangerous. His buddy Gavin Harker was smaller, faster and thought that he was smart. Ethan Bradden was the big lug, and he was just plain dangerous. Lance’s girlfriend was cute and blonde enough to a stereotypical cheerleader; IF Milken Academy had cheerleaders. She had what might be called an ‘unfortunate sense of humor’.

But Pres knew something that these knuckle- draggers didn’t: that Melendez, one of the security guards, was about 10 minutes ahead of his rounds. All Pres had to do was keep calm for maybe four more minutes, Melendez would come along, the bullies would let up (if only for a minute) and Pres would attach himself to Melendez until they got to his locker, where Pres had a few surprises stashed.

Then there was a blood-curdling shriek from down the hall. All four turned from their familiar melodrama to something out of a horror movie: Security Guard Jesus Melendez was standing there, clutching at his throat, which was being sliced from behind. Blood poured down his front, and Melendez drooped, revealing the knifeman responsible. The killer was average height, but his build couldn’t be told from his bulky, probably armored jacket. His face was covered by a holo-mask in the form of an evil grinning skull. He shifted the large, barbaric appearing knife to his off-hand and drew what Pres estimated to be a 9 mm automatic pistol with an attached sound suppressor. Pres wasn’t sure of the make or model. Not that mattered. Like every other student in the hallways, Pres beat feet as fast as he could. Pres could hear the Thugballers behind him, but then there was a sharp but recognizable gunshot. They all stopped and looked back to see big Ethan slump against a wall clutching his thigh. Then the man in the skull mask trotted up to Ethan and sank the knife into his neck. Pres didn’t wait for Ethan’s scream to fade, he just RAN.

Milken Academy is configured as a squarish ‘figure eight’, with classrooms clustered around large airwells with a courtyard and a sports area at the ground level, and hallways around the edge of the building and another separating the two ‘squares’. There were four stories, with the classrooms in the upper three floors, the office and cafeteria on the ground floor, and the engineering departments in the basement. The main stairway was at the northern end of the dividing hallway, and there were two narrower stairwells at the southern edges of the building.

Pres rushed to the eastern stairwell, and the other three, lacking any better option, followed. Halfway down the stairs, Pres stopped and pulled out his smartphone. Lance, Gavin and Vivian did the same. “SHIT! The reception’s blocked!” Gavin frantically jabbed at his phone, trying to find an open band.

Pres took a deep breath, focused and applied himself to the situation. He asked Vivian, “Where’s the building in-house communications panel?”

“How would *I* know?” she sobbed back.

Pres shot her a ‘we don’t have TIME for this bullshit’ scowl. “You and Rachel Bradden pulled that prank PA announcement two weeks ago; you where nowhere near the Office. So you know where that panel is- or whatever you used, which will be just as good.”

“How’d you know that?” she demanded.

“Everybody knows,” Pres answered in the tones of spelling out the obvious. “Nobody could be bothered to rat you out. Besides, it was funny.”

Viv gave a nervous nod and visibly concentrated, playing her ‘finger keys’ to access her ‘Palace of Memory’. “Got it.” She hurried down the stair to the second floor, where everyone was in the halls, asking about a noise. Viv led Pres to an unmarked panel at the corner of the exterior hallways and the dividing hallway. She did something to make the apparently locked panel open. Pres gave her a ‘good job!’ thumbs-up, and connected his smartphone to the panel with a cable at the bottom of the case.

When he had this connection, Pres stated in a firm, clear but not shouting voice, “ATTENTION! ATTENTION! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A PRANK! WE HAVE AN ACTIVE SHOOTER IN THE BUILDING! SECURITY GUARD MELENDEZ HAS BEEN KILLED, AND A STUDENT HAS BEEN ATTACKED! DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT TRY TO EXIT THE BUILDING! GO INTO A CLASSROOM AND BARRICADE YOURSELVES IN THE ROOMS! DO NOT ALLOW ANY NEW PEOPLE INTO YOUR ROOM. IF YOU FIND YOURSELF LOCKED OUT OF A ROOM, DO NOT TRY TO FORCE YOUR WAY INTO THAT ROOM; GO TO ANOTHER ROOM AND BARRICADE IT. A CRISIS INTERVENTION PROVIDER WILL BE ALERTED, AND THEY WILL RESPOND IN LESS THAN 30 MINUTES. KEEP CALM AND LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHER. I REPEAT THIS IS NOT A PRANK, PEOPLE HAVE DIED.”

And, give them their due, the students of Milken Academy followed those orders and scurried into the classrooms, leaving the hallways empty except for one or two panicked students who were running around in circles.

Pres disconnected his phone from the panel, which prompted Gavin to ask, “WELL?”

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you gonna call that Crisis Whatever you were talking about?”

“Not with this phone,” Pres said. “We gotta get to my locker.”

“Why?”

“To get something better.” They ran roughly halfway around the building, spotting another of the Academy’s 8 security guards lying in a pool of his own blood.

“Fuck, this guy gets around,” Gavin muttered.

Pres ‘called ahead’ with his cell phone and his locker was unlocked and open, waiting for him. As they approached the locker, Pres shed his blazer. He reached into the locker, rummaged around a bit and pulled out what appeared to be an off-white long-sleeved jersey shirt. Pres pulled the jersey over his tie, put his jacket back on and started rummaging again. He produced an elegant brooch (which he pinned onto his blazer), a bracelet (which he slipped onto one wrist), what looked like a high end water pistol with two tubular reservoirs, and finally a phone.

“What IS this?” Lance demanded, “You already HAVE a phone!”

Turning to the general direction of that panel, Pres said, “No, this is a Personal Telecommunications Node.”

“That’s just a high-end phone.”

“This is to a Smartphone what a Main Battle Tank is to a pickup truck,” Pres stated authoritatively. “With this, I can use that panel to bypass whatever they’re using to jam the cell phone bands and call for help.”

“And the rest?”

“Later.”

They hurried to the panel, and Pres quickly connected his PTN to the panel with a few wireless connections. He fiddled around, bypassed the jammer, connected to the Net and found THEMIS’ phone tree. Using his Employee ID scrambler, he bypassed the crank filter and found the Erinyes’ phone list. Pres paused; time was essential. Who to call? Vangie? Chai? Not Kait, not even on a bet... Mike? Cleo? Julia? Oh, of course! Elisa Diaz! She was an Erinyes, she knew Kallie, and best of all, she was a Field Supervisor, which meant that Pres could contact her without the usual stall for someone of Diana’s status.

Pres hit the contact, waited an eternal 6 seconds, and got, [Kallie? What’s up? Why aren’t you at school?]

“Listen up, this is an emergency! There is an Active Shooter at Milken Academy. He’s injured, maybe killed three people so far. He has a large knife and a suppressed 9mm. And he has something slung on his back that I think might be a rifle or assault gun. He’s wearing a lightly armored dark red jacket and possibly armored stiff gray pants and black cross-trainers. Oh, and a hologram skull mask.”

[How were the victims killed?]

“I saw him cut Mr. Melendez, the security guard, his throat with a knife. Then he shot a student in the leg and started hacking at him. I didn’t see the second security guard die- Thank You, God!- but I think that he got his throat cut from behind too. Lots of blood everywhere.”

[What PSP has Milken’s Rapid Response contract?]

Pres managed to get onto the Academy’s website and find it. “Burgess & Whitehead Investigations and Security.”

Elisa cursed softly in Spanish. [Pres, go to the Emergency board and hit the Butt & Wipes alert.]

“But-”

[DO IT]

“Nuthin’,” Pres grumbled. “No Response, the building is sealed, except for this.”

[The call has been recorded. There should be a notation of that. Now type in that the call has been made and there is no response. B&W has defaulted on their contract. Now make a notation that THEMIS has been contacted, answered and is picking up the contract.]

“Done.”

[Have you initiated ALICE?] ‘ALICE’ being an acronym used by Police and Security services for the general procedure for dealing with Active Shooters. A= Alert; tell the people in the building or complex that there is an Active Shooter operating. L= Lockdown; the occupants are to take refuge, lock themselves in and secure as many access points as they can without endangering themselves. I= Inform; contact 911 or the local responsible Emergency Contact, and tell them the situation. C= Counteract; do what you can to impede the Active Shooter without endangering yourself by confronting them. E= Escape; as soon as possible, remove yourself and as many others from the situation without endangering yourselves.

“First thing I did. This is ‘I’.”

[Is anyone in the school yard?] I sent Viv, Lance and Gavin to check. They all came back saying that the yards and parking spaces were empty. [If he’s slick enough to jam the school’s comm bands and no one’s tried to escape the building, it follows that he’s sealed off the building somehow. Kallie, I need you to eyeball the building exits and the school gate- see if they’re locked or visibly booby trapped. Get back to me with the facts. BUT, once you do, find a place to hide and barricade it. Do NOT try to take this asshole out by yourself]

“Oh Gee, and here I was so looking forward to getting filleted.”

[GO. We’re on our way. We’ll be there in 15 minutes, or your pizza is free.]

*****

Elisa let out a heavy breath, did a single centering rosary, and assembled a strike force, starting with the Erinyes, proceeding from there to involve as many THEMIS field forces as she conceivably could. Then she sent out a Respond All cattle-call. Then she alerted the Motor Pool and did not requisition but ORDERED a selection of skopters, sledges and skips to get them all to the Academy, out on the launch pads ten minutes ago. She really girded her loins and sent a ‘heads up, I’m coming in’ notification. Then she marched, yeah as though into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, into the Shark Tank, aka Diana Davenport’s office.

*****

“What? Are You? Doing?” Gavin demanded as Pres scurried down the hallway, locking classrooms and storage rooms, and checking restrooms.

“This is Lockdown,” Pres said and he came to another panel. “The idea is to limit the Unsub’s access to… well, everything. Do you know how to access the interior security cameras?”

“Why would I know that?” Gavin asked warily.

“Look, you asswipes never get caught when you pull one of your stupid bully ambushes,” Pres said staring into Gavin’s eyes with an icy mien. “That suggests that you keep tabs on the security guards, teachers and staff with the interior security cameras. Am I right? ‘Cause if we can access the cameras, we don’t have to go around and check them all, which would make it easy for Skullface to find us and chop us to bits. Which would suck. Well?”

Gavin just scowled at him, opened the panel and uncovered the socket for the camera system. ‘What are we supposed to be looking for?”

Pres stifled a groan at Gavin’s willful stupidity. “Exterior entrances, like the front gate, the loading dock gate and the parking lot gate. We need to see if they’re locked or chained or barred or anything like that. And the building exits, same deal. Point being, nobody’s out on the front steps or at the alley access; why not? Why aren’t people running out of here, tryin’ to get away from the homicidal maniac?”

Gavin grumped that this was all-too common sense and cycled through the camera shots. “Hey, what’s that at the main gate?”

Pres expanded the shot until it filled the PTN’s hologram ‘screen’. “Shit,” he grunted and quickly cycled through a rough selection of shots. “Double shit.” Then he down-shifted to allow for another phone call. “Elisa? Not only are all the exits barred shut, but they have spoilsport charges on them. How am I sure? They have ‘Danger! Explosive! Do Not Tamper!’ on them.”

*****

“Malidicion…” Elisa groaned. “In the Skopter, in the skopter!” she snapped at the eleven Erinyes who’d be going with her. “I don’t wanna have to pay for the pizza!”

“What are you doing?” demanded Nikolai Velikovski, the big Myrmidon heavy who’d be coordinating the various outfits on this mission. “Who’s paying for all this?”

Elisa gave him an indulgent smirk. “Burgess & Whitehead. They defaulted on an emergency Rapid Response, and we picked up the call.” A look of delighted surprise washed over Velikovski’s face. “Tell all your friends.” Then Elisa hauled herself into the skopter, just before it lifted off.

Velikovski briefly wondered who in the Themis command structure he could squeeze into this who wasn’t already on this payroll. Then he remembered that he was in the middle of a mission launch. “Get in the sledge!” he roared, “Why is that harness flapping in the breeze?”

******

“Will you finish UP?” Lance demanded.

“We need to check every entrance,” Pres said clinically as he checked the cameras for the First Floor. “If even one of them isn’t barred and booby-trapped, then that’s a way in that won’t cost 3 or 4 minutes we can’t spare.” Then he checked on the doorway to the exterior courtyard, which was in the cafeteria. There was a large square box of some sort in the middle of the cafeteria.

That image was quickly brushed aside by the sound of an ear-splitting scream. Pres dashed in the direction of the scream. Gavin yelled after him, “What are you DOING? Go THIS way!” he pointed in the opposite direction. “That’s where it’s SAFE!”

Around the corner, along the northern hallway, three girls that Pres had seen around school, but didn’t know their names, were being forced into a space between two banks of lockers. The guy was dressed like the guy who’d hacked Ethan to bits, but he was wearing a ‘hockey mask’ hologram mask. He had a knife- different, flashier, with nasty looking but pointless flanges, the kind you find in a head shop- and was waving it at them, making them flinch, clearly digging on it, all but giggling.

Then again, he might have been giggling; it was impossible to tell under that stupid mask.

Pres charged up to about five feet away from him. ‘HEY! Wussie-boy! Grow up a pair!” Pres roared at Hockeymask. Well, he tried to roar; it’s sort of hard to roar when you’re taking androgen blockers to keep your voice from breaking. And the insult wasn’t Action movie quality. But then Pres didn’t have a paid staff of writers to come up with zingers.

Hockeymask turned, shifted his knife to his off hand and drew a pistol almost identical to the one that Skullface had. Before Hockeymask could draw a bead on anyone, Pres detonated the magnesium flare in the ‘brooch’ on his lapel. Hockeymask’s mask went dark, blinding him. Lance, showing that while he wasn’t the daring TV hero he fancied himself as, he did have some legitimate guts. He tackled Hockeymask, being very careful to avoid that pistol. Pres used their wrestling match to twist the pistol from Hockeymask’s hand (making sure to block the pistol’s hammer with his thumb).

Lance was a football jock, but Hockeymask was a full grown adult. Not having his good hand full of a pistol that the close quarters would let him use, Hockeymask shoved Lance away. He switched his knife back to his good hand and squared himself to got at it with Lance again.

Pres put three rounds point blank into Hockeymask’s center mass.

In pointed difference to his old-time slasher movie ‘hero’, Hockeymask went down and stayed down.

The three girls goggled at Pres and skittered away. Pres stood stiffly for a moment and visibly gathered himself. He did a quickie ‘mind calming’ mudra, and took the hologram mask off Hockeymask. The man was an utterly unremarkable 30ish male of uncertain ethnicity, except for the fact that his face was flushed. Pres felt the man’s neck, and the pulse on his carotid was thundering. Pres noticed a certain chemical tang to the smell of the man’s breath. Then he checked the area where the bullets had hit. There were bullet holes, but no blood. Instead there was an off-white thick cream. Pres took a whiff of it, but didn’t recognize the smell. Taking a deep breath, Pres said, “He’s not bleeding. He’s just stunned.” Then he took the knife from Hockeymask’s hand, and pulled the carbine from the over-the-shoulder holster.

Keeping his lunch firmly under his belt, Pres pulled out his PTN and contacted the Erinyes. “Elisa? We just put down one of ‘em. Yeah, ONE of ‘em. This one was wearing a hockey mask holo mask. The other one- IF it’s just one- is still running around. And it gets weirder. EVERY access point in the building is blocked with those booby-trapped spoilsport things. And there’ something in the cafeteria- SHIT, THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE CAFETERIA!” Remembering what he’d almost forgotten, Pres turned and galloped down the hallway to the main stairway.

*****

“KALLIE!” Elisa yelled into her phone, “Talk to me, talk to me, will you calm down and TALK to me? Okay, okay dulcita, what do you mean ‘you put him down’? You shot him?” she asked with a sick note to her voice. “Oh, you didn’t kill him… he was wearing a vest? What kind of vest? What did this ‘cream’ look like? Ah-hah, what did it smell like? Weird. Anything else? What did it smell like? Yeah, that’s weird. It sounds like he’s using some combat enhancement drug. It’s more likely that he’ll pop a blood vessel than bleed out from your bullet. Okay, we’re about five minutes away, so this is important- what does the roof of your school have? Heavy HVAC, or a sports area or a lounging area or what? HVAC, crap.”

Then Pres was preoccupied for one reason or another. Talking to herself as much as the other Erinyes, Elisa muttered, “Something is very wrong here. Active shooters don’t operate in groups. And when they do, there’s a dominant one keeping a tight rein on the other. They don’t go off doing their own things. And active shooters either are raging against some offense, or they fetishize the shooting and killing. These guys aren’t acting that way they’re…”

Suddenly she looked at Kitten Carlyle, who was holding onto one of the straps. “If Milken Academy has Burgess & Whitehead running their security, then they have the fences fitted with Suspensor Antagonists. Maybe the roof, too. But with all the HVAC vents on the roof, they don’t really need them. We could drop one at a time, but that’s not the best use of our strengths. We’re going to have to disembark outside the school grounds and go in en masse. But having someone inside is always good, especially if the Shooters are looking to take hostages. Kitten? Do you-” With a minxish smirk, Kitten raised a clothing bag. “Bonus,” Elisa said with satisfaction. “Definite bonus.”

*****

Pres was panting with exertion when he burst into the cafeteria (that carbine wasn’t exactly light), but what he saw gave him a big shot of adrenaline. “NO! Mister Vasquez! Don’t!” Arnold S. Vasquez, Pres’ Civics instructor, paused in mid-prep for cutting down the exit door with a fire ax.

“Why?” Mr. Vasquez asked. “We gotta get out of here! There’s fucking MANIAC running around!”

“We know that!” Lance snapped back. “We saw one of them hack Ethan to death!”

“Look, Mr. Vasquez, those things are booby-trapped-” Pres started.

“I know that!” Vasquez snapped back. “That’s why I’m gonna chop the door to pieces, not the bomb!”

“Bombs like this are fitted with a mercury switch anti-tamper measure, SOP,” Pres spelled it out. “That goes off, which triggers THAT, whatever it is.”

“It’s only a bluff,” said Mr. Kramer, the Grammar instructor, a slight rather clenched-loking man who had issues with being taken seriously, said stiffly, clearly miffed that a student was questioning a teacher. “It’s only full of flour, obviously put there to buffalo us into not leaving the building.

“Flour?” Pres stuck his hand and scooped up some of the white powder. Yes, it was just flour. But that kicked in an annoyingly elusive memory.

“Yeah, the flour was delivered yesterday,” one of the lunch ladies said. “Bromton, one of the security guards and five outside contractors put it up this morning, said it was security sensitive.”

Then the penny dropped. “SHIT Get out, everybody GET OUT!” He waved at the inside door, and indeed a few of the 30-plus students left the cafeteria.

“What are you blithering about,” Kramer groaned, “It’s only Flour.”

“It’s a Fuel Air Explosive!” Pres tried to explain.

Kramer shut him down, but Ms. Kamal, one of the Chemistry instructors over-shouted him and explained, “It IS an explosive. Flour mills and other such structures would explode when the mills kicked up too much flour dust, and the dust hit an open flame.”

“Exactly,” Pres took back the discussion, “That explosive,” he pointed at the spoilsport demo pack, “triggers a mercury switch on this,” he pointed at a post rising from the corner of the box, “triggering an explosive under all the flour sending it all over the room and triggering another mercury switch on that,” he pointed at another post rising from the opposite corner, “which probably is connected to an incendiary device. The delay for the second switch is just long enough for the first to kick loose flour to every corner of the cafeteria.”

“And WHY not just use a normal demolitions pack?” Kramer asked plaintively.

“Because the explosion isn’t the worst part of a Fuel Air explosion,” Kamal spelled out with sick realization. “People could survive the explosion. But the flour burning would consume every molecule of oxygen in the room. Even those who survived the blast would suffocate.”

“It wouldn’t even need the incendiary,” one of the lunch ladies said. “We got enough open flames back here to set off an explosion, no problem.” Ms. Kamal nodded and tired of Kramer’s posturing, started herding the students out of the cafeteria.

“Do you have any dry ice in there?” Pres asked the lunch counter workers, who answered with dry ‘ah, yeah’. Pres clapped his hands as to say ‘throw some here’. The lunch staff obliged, wrapping bags of dry ice to keep various offerings cold in towels and tossed them to him. At Kramer’s peeved demand for explanation, Pres said, “Mercury Switches work by completing a circuit when they’re jostled. BUT, while Mercury has a low melting point, it’s still higher than dry ice. So…” Pres set the bags of dry ice against the posts, as to let them freeze the mercury solid so it wouldn’t close any gaps. The lunch staff showed that they were on their marks; they bustled in buckets of water that they carefully poured onto the flour. Wet flour neither flies very far or burns very bright.

Even so, Pres put his PTN to his ear and asked, “Elisa, patch me over to whoever’s the best bomb disposer on the team. The best way to survive an explosion is for there to not be an explosion.”

His miff having evolved into a huff, Mr. Kramer snatched the phone from Pres and demanded, “Who is this? We’re in extreme danger and-”

[Give. Pres. His PHONE. Back. IDIOT,] Elisa said in a flat annoyed tone.

“LOOK, I AM A-”

[I’ve been listening in,] Elisa cut him off with a tone of ‘you’re wasting my time, little man’. [You’re in state of near-panic, you’re on the verge of wetting yourself, you have no idea what you’re doing, nor do you have any idea what to do from here. What you have tried almost got everyone there killed, and you don’t sound like you’ve calmed down any. Preston may not be calm, but he’s focused, in control of himself and clear on what needs to be done. He’s been in high risk situations before and he’s shown to me that he can think on his feet. ALSO, as part of his duties as an intern at THEMIS, Pres has taken an introductory Demolitions seminar. And he’ll be coached in remote by an expert in Demolitions Defusing. Tell me, Mr. Kramer, have you even seen a demo pack anywhere except TV?] Kramer wilted and handed the PTN back to Pres.

Kramer, Kamal and Vasquez shepherded the rest of the students back into the hall, with the lunch staff joining them. The lunch ladies remarked that they’d extinguished the pilot lights in the kitchen. Over the PTN Kait instructed Pres as how to carefully slide the triggering chip out of its socket without imbalancing the circuit’s charge.

When that was done, Pres let out a deep relaxing breath. “Okay, I’m not gonna press my luck with that bomb on the door. Just… stay just outside the door in the hallway and you should be okay. I got in touch with THEMIS, the PSP that I intern with after school, and they’re en route. They should be here in a few minutes, 6 minutes at the worst. Just… be cool and look out for each other, and it should be okay. Once they send in the Erinyes, the only problem will be cleaning up the mess.” Pres gave out a gusty breath and looked around. “Does anyone know where Astrid Becker or Ibrihim Benjalloun are? Having their bodyguards here would really help if one of those murdering assholes came down here.”

One of the female students said, “When we all came down here, I saw Helena Carmago being taken up to the second floor by her bodyguard. I heard that the Language Lab is set up to act as an ‘ultra-secure’ room for the ‘high risk students’.” Pres connected that to the cynical rumor that the school had special accommodations to protect students with ‘politically sensitive’ parents or parents who were extremely wealthy. Which was a little distasteful but all-too pragmatic and-

-and the penny dropped for Pres that whoever was behind the ‘shooters’ was very familiar with Burgess & Whitehead procedures. And if the average kids at the school knew about the Language Lab, then anyone even vaguely interested knew too. There were five students at the school who traveled with bodyguards- whose SOP in a situation like this would be to deliver their charges to a specific room. That the brain behind the shooters knew all about.

“SHIT!” Pres shrieked. “Mister Vasquez! Come with me!” And Pres sprinted out the door, presuming that Vasquez would follow. And hopefully bring that fire ax.

Pres was at the landing to the second floor, when there was a loud feminine scream. Pausing only for a rage-cringe of frustration, Pres charged off in the direction of the scream. This was gonna be the longest five minutes of his life.

Worst of all, just as he was turning, Pres spotted a guy dressed as one of the sickos ducking around the corner. He had a vague impression of the jacket and pants the Shooters wore, but he was only able to catch clear sight of the white traction slippers before they disappeared around the corner.

Suppressing another rage-cringe of frustration, Pres headed to the scream, hoping that he had the backup to handle a sicko. A sicko who had, as best Pres knew, had a loaded gun. Ironically, it would be better if the Shooter had a carbine; most people reflexively went full-auto, which was a sure way of missing. At the corner of the staircase to the second floor, Pres found one of the shooters, this one wearing a ‘Wolfman’ mask, who was tearing at Vivian’s blouse. Pres paused, and then it registered that Vivian hadn’t followed Lance and him down to the cafeteria. Why? Well, why would she? Simple, she might get caught by one of the shooters, Duh.

“Hey! Get OFF HER, ASSHOLE!” Lance yelled.

The Shooter threw Viv down to the floor, where she wrapped her arms around her chest, sobbing. ‘Wolfman’ drew his pistol, but made the fatal error of pausing to wonder who to take out first: the shrimp with the assault rifle, the adult with the fire ax, or the big kid who looked like he was stupid enough to actually jump him.

Then Pres really confused ‘the Wolfman’ by tucking the assault rifle under his arm and pulling a bracelet off his wrist. Pres held up the bracelet and tossed it to ‘Wolfman’, who caught it out of sheer reflex. Then the super-charged magnetic pulse kicked in, and the bracelet attached itself to the steel banister of the staircase, pulling ‘Wolfman’ off-balance and dragging the pistol along for the ride.

Lance pulled Viv up off the floor and away from any further action. Viv buried herself into his chest sobbing, relieving him of any obligation to further heroics. Vasquez slammed ‘Wolfman’ on the side of his head with the flat of the fire ax’ blade. That broke the holomask, revealing another gutter-dweller, and really rattling his brains. But it cost Vasquez the ax, which was stuck to the banister along with the bracelet and pistol. Pres brought out his web-pistol and webbed up the Shooter’s feet and hands.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST SHOOT HIM WITH THAT GUN?” Lance roared as he inched Vivian even further from the Shooter.

“’Cause I dumped the bullets for this gun- and the pistol- and the knife- in garbage cans,” Pres explained as he picked up Wolfman’s pistol, ejected the magazine and ejected the cartridge in the chamber. “I know just enough about shooting to know that I’m not a sharpshooter. “

“But you shot that hockey mask guy three times,” Lance said.

“That was at point-blank range,” Pres pointed out. “And I don’t want to have to argue with a bunch of guys who were bigger’n me, who want to play Big Damn TV/Movie hero.” He threw the pistol, magazine and bullets into the trash can near the staircase.

“Then why did you bring the rifle?”

“Threat value,” Pres said calmly. “Beside, even if the threat doesn’t work, I can use it as a club.”

Then a high-pitched feminine voice called out, “PRES! You okay?” And a very cute girl with a shaggy dirty blonde ‘do, a nice body in a Milken Academy uniform, and long legs with knit warmers on trotted up. “Everyone ok-aaaggh!” ‘Wolfman’ tore out of the webbing, grabbed the girl in a classic hostage-taking hold and held his knife to her neck. ‘Okay, so no unsolicited testimonial for the web gun’, Pres thought dryly to himself.

The reason for Pres’ calm became obvious when the girl smoothly threw Wolfman over her shoulder, disarmed him of the knife, and dislocated the shoulder of his good arm with an almost audible ‘pop!’ As Wolfman gave out a gasp of pain, the girl pulled his arms behind him and secured him with binders.

“Hey Kitten,” Pres greeted her with a smug smile. “Dare I assume that the Cavalry has arrived?”

*****

Burgess & Whitehead^tm Representative Kevin Lindstrom was the only B&W employee out front, but he was making his presence known like a full battalion. “Withdraw RIGHT NOW, or your entire company will lose its license to operate in the District for infringing on another company’s contact! This is a BURGESS & WHITEHEAD contract, and we-”

The Erinyes paid him absolutely no mind as they piled out of the three skopters. Mike Holtman streaked away from the press, jerked to a stop and aimed her light machine gun at the building. She let off a 30-round burst that shattered six panes of glass, two each next to each other, in a box with two panes on each of three floors. A round in each corner of the pane and a round in the center, cleanly clearing that pane. Letting off their patented Fury War Shriek, the Erinyes leapt over the exterior wall and flowed up the exterior of the school like a river, entering the empty windows on each floor, and moving in three directions to secure the building. Kait ‘Boom-boom’ Marksbury effortlessly jumped over the front gate and started disarming the spoilsport charge.

Diana drove up in a sled and engaged in verbal combat with Lindstrom, freeing Elisa to liaison with Velikovski as the rest of the THEMIS forces arrived. Skopters, Sledges, Sleds and Skips from as many THEMIS divisions as corporate weasel-speak could allow gathered and took up positions around the school.

*****

Not many people are relieved when they hear gunfire, glass breaking and nerve-rattling screams. But for Pres, this was the equivalent of the bugle call announcing the arrival of the 7^th Cavalry in an old Western.

“We need to guide them,” Pres told Mr. Vesquez. “Every second they waste is a chance for the Shooters to find someone and, well, shoot them!” Vasquez nodded and they ran in the general direction of the sounds of the Erinyes, leaving Lance to take care of Vivian.

Gavin was nowhere to be seen, and hadn’t been seen since (or even just before) going into the cafeteria.

Pres, Kitten and Vasquez had only gone a couple of yards before they almost ran flat into the Shooter tacitly known as ‘Skullface’. Pres had last seen Skullface carving on Ethan. Skullface had changed both his attitude and his armament. He had traded his knife for a pistol, and he was clearly scared out of his wits. Seeing Pres blocking his path- with an assault carbine- Skullface reacted by shooting Pres before the kid could shoot him. He even pegged Pres squarely in his center mass with three rounds. The other three rounds went wild.

Still, Pres clutched his chest, grimaced and went down face into the tiles of the hallway. “KALLIE!” shrieked an Enrinys at the corner that Skullface had just cleared. Skullface reflexively turned to the sound of that voice. Kitten recognized the voice as Vangie Blake, who regarded herself as Kallie’s first Big Sister. Vangie’s expression was unreadable through her tac-helmet. But her temper was clearly expressed by the speed with which she raised her trademark Colt 1911A semi-automatic and put five rounds in a 1-inch grouping at the gap in his armored jacket precisely over Skullface’s solar plexus. The rounds didn’t penetrate his odd ballistic vest, but they succeeded in knocking the wind clean out of him.

Of course, Kitten and Cleo, who were of the same sentiment regarding Kallie as Vangie, were immediately on him. So Skullface might have actually preferred being killed straight off.

After shattering Skullface’s mask- and several of his front teeth- Kitten joined Vangie in checking on Pres. Vangie opened Pres’ blazer and almost melted with relief. “He had the kinetic jersey I got him for the Smithsonian Job on,” she said gladly.

“The… Smithsonian job?” Vasquez asked. He vividly remembered the incident at the Smithsonian Institute, but he’d spent the duration of that incident in Protective Custody, and was completely out of that loop.

“Later,” Vangie said in a way that suggested ‘never’.

Preston gave a groan and came to. “How’re you doing, sweetie?” Vangie asked him.

“I feel like someone tried to play the xylophone on my ribs with a ball-peen hammer,” Pres moaned.

“Way too close,” Kitten said as she helped Pres up. “Here,” she said as she handed Pres a couple of tablets and a nasal inhaler.

“What are these?” Pres asked.

“Pain killers,” answered. “First take the pills, then fire the inhaler. The inhaler will numb the pain until the pills kick in. Trust me, you WANT these to work before the adrenaline wears off.”

*****

“Okay, the parking lot gate has been de-booby trapped,” Elisa told the assembled students in the cafeteria. “Do NOT leave yet. Ajax, our Rescue and Evacuation division, is moving sledges in to move you to safe locations. The reason you have to leave- besides the fact that you no doubt desperately want to- is that we can’t take the risk that the Active Shooters didn’t leave some sort of ‘last up yours’ measure- explosives, Bio-Agents, chemical warfare agents, incendiaries, dangerous animals- the list goes on and on. And YES, people like that have done things like that and worse.”

The Milken students, who had been paying far more attention to the gorgeous, fit women wearing skin-tight outfits than they ever did their teachers (especially the boys), were even more surprised when Preston Wyecross was carried in by two Erinyes, followed by Mr. Vasquez, Lance Chandler and Vivian Blake. Pres, who was generally regarded as a grade A wimp, looked like he’d been beaten badly.

“Pres?” Elisa asked with concern. “You okay?”

“He took three bullets in the chest at point-blank range,” Vangie said as she shooed a student from a chair so Pres could sit. There was a general ‘WHAT?’ reaction to this. Those that hadn’t been in the cafeteria for the Fuel-Air incident hadn’t believed those who had. But Pres the Pitiful was just walking away from three bullets to the chest? “But he’ll survive. He’s tough.” Viv and Lance just nodded.

As the students were wrapping their collective heads around that, a gurney being pushed by two Medical Response EMTs elbowed their way through the crowd with a student who Pres sort of recognized through the breathing mask strapped to it. There was something about the medic’s… shoes? A few moments later, the gurney came with a lone medic and clattered up the stairs. As he watched the medic shove the gurney up the stairs, things started coming together for Pres.

“Shit!” Despite being exhausted, Pres jumped up and scurried up the stairs. He sprinted to where the Language Lab was. He shoved the door open and looked in. “oh crap,” he breathed. As Kitten and Vangie caught up with him, Pres pulled out his PTN and made a call. “ELISA!” he screamed into the phone.

*****

The ‘EMTs’ carefully guided the gurney with the girl on it down the staircase. Just as they hit the first floor, a lovely girl with exquisite Mediterranean features stepped out of the hallway. She stopped them in front of the supplies closet and asked, “Excuse me? Have you seen a girl with springy dark hair and cafe au lait skin come through here?”

On pure male reflex, the two EMTs stopped and thought. And Wanda sprang out from the supply closet, gave the closer of the two knife-hand strikes against the base of his skull. “Oh! There she is.” He shuddered and would have fallen across the girl on the gurney, but Wanda pulled him into the closet. The other EMT responded instantly, taking a taser from his tunic. But Julia instantly disarmed him and used it on him.

Julia shoved the man over the gurney into Wanda’s waiting hands. Then she pushed the gurney after him. She sighed, “And I promised myself I’d never go back in the closet.” As she closed the door, she notified Elisa, “A.”

*****

The EMT looked anxiously at his watch. This was the worst part, especially since the plan had gone off the rails so badly. And worst, he was alone with three kids. He wasn’t worried about the kids; he was worried about being found with three unconscious minors. He’d managed to avoid getting bloody on this job- at least not where anyone could inform against him without fingering themselves worse- and he didn’t want to spoil that by drawing his gun.

Then there was a dull thumping against the door. It wasn’t anyone knocking: if his partner was there, he’d call like a normal person. No, it was more like someone had parked something against the door, and some part of it was loose and banging against the door. There were too many ways that could draw attention to that room. So he cautiously opened the door to see what it was-

- and got the door kicked into his face.

Big Kate Elder pushed the door in. The lanky, leggy redhead was an Erinys, but she was also a hair over 7 feet tall, and leverage does count for these thing. she steadied the door, giving Chai Ariyundakata room to enter. Chai didn’t use her trademark mono-edged katana, but she still didn’t waste any time putting the EMT down. Chai quickly made sure that the counselor’s office was otherwise empty and signaled it off to Big Kate. Kate notified Elisa, “B.”

*****

“GET! THESE! OUT OF HERE!” Lindstrom demanded as though he could get around the cool blonde with sheer volume. “This is a Burgess & Whitehead operation! Clear these heaps of junk out of here NOW!” Diana, who had been going toe-to-toe (verbally) with Lindstrom since she relieved Elisa of that noxious duty, ignored him. She knew that B&W’s default of the Milken Academy contract had been confirmed, accepted and notarized the second that Preston had restored database contact.

Then she got a message from Elisa Diaz. “Oh Christ, THAT old groaner?”

She looked at Velikovski, who gave her the thumbs-up. With a sigh, she pulled two hockey puck-shaped EMP grenades, primed them, dropped them to the ground and kicked them so they were each under one of the B&W Medical Response sledges. The EMP grenades detonated, shorting out the sledges suspension system, sending the ambulances bucking as the systems tried to re-balance themselves.

As the ambulances bucked, Myrmidons and Erinyes gathered around, guns drawn and ready. The suspension systems burned themselves out and the two sledges. Diana casually drew her gun as she opened the driver’s door to the nearest sledge. She dragged the driver out of his seat and set her foot on his dazed neck. She pointed her 9mm at the driver in the ‘shotgun’ seat and said coldly. “DON’T.”

Myms forced open the rear doors and held LMGs on the occupants. Dallas Rogers kicked at the rear access door of the other sledge and yelled, “C’mon out, yer covered worse’n tar on an armadillo! Get out here and grab two handfulls of SKY!” She set there, ready with her hands on the two Personal Assault Systems on her cross-belts. The door opened and the EMTs started to react. But they looked, blanched at the vision of a 1960s Sitcom idea of a cowgirl and held up their hands. Though the two Mym Heavies with HMGs on their hip pivots may have had something to do with it.

Dallas, who’d been looking forward to a rousing gunfight, spat, “Wimps.”

Diana calmly informed Elisa, “C.”

Lindstrom recovered from the shock of all this, and sputtered, “This is an OUTRAGE! How DARE you-”

Diana gave the driver over to a Mym Light and strolled over to the side of the ambulance. She picked at the sign designating it as a Burgess & Whitehead Medical Emergency Response unit. Then she picked a plastic label off, revealing that the unit actually belonged to the Go-Mart^tm grocery delivery service. “What?” Diana mocked Lindstrom, “You never bothered to check that your ambulances were broadcasting their Vehicle IDs? And you never wondered WHY the only B&W divisions responding to a 4-alarm and sirens emergency were two ambulances- and YOU, Mr. Lindstrom?”

Diana’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “That is, if your name really IS Kevin Lindstrom.”

*****

A couple of hours later at the Mission Debriefing, Velikovski asked Diana, “So he was a shill for… whoever?”

Diana let out a rueful sign. “No, he really IS Kevin Lindstrom, a representative of Buboes & Warts. He had nothing to do with the con; he was alerted in the field to go right to Milken and to not let any outsider interfere. Best guess is that he was supposed to let the two bogus ambulances into position while keeping anyone else at a distance. He wasn’t guilty of any of the things I threw at him, but at least it shut him up.”

“And we could have used that!” said a female voice at the entrance.

Pres was wheeled into the auditorium seating debriefing room. He was taken in by an Asklepios field medic with a trim middle aged Professional Class couple, obviously his mother and father, following close behind. “That hooligan Lindstrom almost ruined Pres’ statement to the Washington Police, accusing him of every swindle you could think of!”

“Annoying, I’ll admit,” Diana said. “But he’s Boils & Welts man on the spot, and since Pres contacted District Emergency Dispatch and alerted them that Botch & Wankers had defaulted on their contract, then B&W is liable for paying for every division we fielded. Every. Single. One of them.” There were smug smirks of satisfaction across the entire auditorium. The word from Accounts Receivable was that almost half the division in the Washington office had made their monthly projected profits for a half-hour’s work. And best of all, Burgess & Whitehead was on the hook for every cent of it. “So he had to do something, anything, to discredit the party who made that happen.”

“Why you in a chair, kid?” asked one of the Hercules operatives, who had been busy helping to clear the school of- well, the usual high school contraband.

“I was going to help the Erinyes as a faithful native guide, when one of the shooters came out of left field and shot me three times in the chest. I was wearing a kinetic jersey, but my front is a mass of bruises and this guy,” Pres jerked a thumb at the field medic, “says he thinks one of my floating ribs is cracked. I got some over the counter pain killer, but after I make my statement for this debrief, this guy is gonna give me one of the *fun* painkillers and I’m gonna spend the next few days in la-la land.” There was a noticeable reaction within the Field Divisions. The story of Pres shooting the ‘Wolfman’ had gone around. The kid had joined the elevated if not elite ranks of People Who Have Been Shot At. Not only shot at, but shot and shot back. In addition, even after being shot, he’d acted responsibly and effectively. Sissyboy or not, Pres had made his bones.

“Okay,” Velikovski, “The body count is: 4 students, 3 teachers, 2 Staff and all 8 security guards dead; 2 students, 1 teacher and no staff injured. All wounded currently in stable condition. The PTS counselors are having a field day. The good news is that it was 12 minutes, 6 seconds from first alert to last disembark, and NONE of those casualties happened during or after those 12 minutes 6 seconds. Now let’s cut to the chase. This whole thing was basically a kidnapping attempt. Our Unsub hired a bunch of borderline whackos to play Slasher and got the school in an uproar, with everyone ducking for cover. Our Unsub obviously knows the B&W playbook very well. He planned for five students to be escorted to an alleged ‘Safe Room’ by their bodyguards. Three guys who were NOT the three slimebags, but were dressed as them down to the Halloween masks, were waiting for them and took out the bodyguards one at a time. Then, after that fuel-air bomb you defused was supposed to go off, they’d evacuate the kids in gurneys to the mock ambulances, and they’d leave while Lindstrom was frantically trying to make B&W procedures work. But that went off the rails when YOU called it in to THEMIS instead of B&W, K- er, Preston.

“But the thing is: they almost slipped past us with the gurneys. How did you spot the bogus EMTs?”

Pres cleared his throat. “I’d love to spell it out, all Sherlock Holmes style, but to be honest, there was a bunch of stuff that I put on the back burner ‘cause people were getting killed all around me. Then, after things calmed down, I noticed Bass Prizker being evacuated on that gurney.”

“BASS?”

“Hey, don’t sneer- his family is so rich their dog farts gold dust. Look, there are five kids who have bodyguards; Astrid Becker, the daughter of the German Head Consul here in the District; Ibrahim Benjalloun, the son of the Moroccan Minister of Finance; Helene Camargo, grand-daughter of some Brazilian magnate; Peterson-Baptiste Delva, the son of a political player in the Haitian community here in the district, and Bass Prizker. The thing is that they all have bodyguards of the same sex, so they can be covered even when they’re in the bathroom.”

“Well YEAH,” said one of the Cerebus ops. “The john is a great place to pull a snatch, especially in a high school, where everybody’s so busy minding their own business.”

“Exactly,” Pres said. “But there’s Bass, strapped to a gurney, with no bodyguard. In that situation, Bass’ bodyguard should’a been all but welded to his side. And then it registered to me: the gurney.”

“What about the gurney?”

“It was an old-fashioned wheeled gurney. With the stairs they got at Milken, real medics would have used a suspension field gurney and not jostle around someone who might have a concussion or something. But they were making a racket getting up and down those stairs. Why they used that instead of a real suspension field gurney, I dunno.”

“Room,” said Jake Dodson, who’d been one of the Mym Heavies who took the ambulances. “They only had those two bogus ambulances to make their getaway, and they had to make room for five Ops and five hostages. A suspension field gurney would’a taken up too much space.”

“Okay,” Pres nodded, “That works. When I realized that they were pulling a game, I went to the Language Lab as fast as I could. There were the five bodyguards, laid out and not looking good. And lastly, there were their shoes.”

“Their shoes?”

“The shooters had dark shoes, nice cheap clogs you could buy at any website. But I spotted a guy dressed as one of the shooters- who was wearing white shoes. I didn’t make anything of it at the time, but as I was checking out that gurney, I noticed that they were wearing white shoes. Which had blood on them. And their medics’ uniforms were spotless.”

“The armored jackets and pants were baggy enough to wear them over the scrubs,” Chai spelled it out. “And the holo-masks could be tossed easily enough- once the killing was done.”

“And there’s another piece to the puzzle,” Vangie added sourly. “Kallie, those ‘vests’ that kept you from blowing that Hockeymask creep away? It’s Oobletek. It’s a 6^th generation descendant of oobleck, a non-Newtonian fluid that acts like a solid under certain conditions. A solid that has the sheer strength of steel. It’s lighter and cooler than most conventional personal armor. But it has problems. One of them is, especially in the later iterations, is that very flammable. Mahfouz?” She called up to one of the Theseus ops that had been at the Milken site. “Have you analyzed the oobleck?”

“Yes,” he called back. “Just a quickie, but there’s an additional compound that reacts with the carbohydrate base to make it especially volatile; simply put, the stuff is a very powerful fire bomb.”

“And when I examined the vest itself, I found that one of the clasps- the lower left hand clasp to be precise, the clasp that would be the least likely to be casually examined by the wearer- had a small but sufficient magnesium detonator. We managed to get at all of them before the brains behind it all detonated them, but if even one had gone off, it would have been hellaciously nasty.” Vangie finished with a ‘this isn’t over’ flat tone.

“So our Unsub was planning to kill dozens of students, teachers and school staff,” Mike said. “And not only her leashed psychopaths, but her saner goons. She’s subtle, devious, treacherous and totally unconcerned with collateral damage and bystander casualties.” A look of sour disgust crossed Mike’s face. “Sounds WAY too familiar.”

“It sounds like this isn’t a job for Major Crimes,” one of the HEKATE ops jeered at the THESEUS contingent. “Let us over in International Terror handle this one.”

“No, it stays with THESEUS,” Diana corrected them with one of her freezing glares. “It stands to reason that they loaded their hostages in order of their importance to the raid. Since they had only one gurney, they’d load the prime target first, and then load in order of priority. The Prizker kid was loaded first, then Helene Carmago. The Prizkers have been one of the richest families in America for over a hundred years. The Carmagos have one foot firmly in the old planter aristocracy and the other in Brazil’s industrial boom. The politically important kids were still in the Counselor’s office, so our Unsub was going for the Deep Pockets. The Benjalloun, Dalvy and Becker kids were snatched because, well, they were there, so go for it.”

The THESEUS crowd cocked snooks at the HEKATE set, the first crack in the general esprit decorps that had permeated the meeting thus far. “CHILL,” Velikovski ground out. “This is the Erinyes’ party; they’re just graciously allowing the rest of us a slice of their cake.” That settled the friction a bit, but the inter-division rivalries in THEMIS ran deep. Even the Myrmidons, who often worked with the Erinyes, had rivalries with the Furies.

“AND speaking of slicing up the cake,” Velikovski began his critique of various individual’s performances and assigning bonuses. It was agreed that usually as an intern Pres normally wouldn’t be assigned a bonus. But his was clearly the star turn in the action, from securing the contract in the first place, to alerting the Erinyes as to the ‘Trojan Hearse’. Pres was awarded a near-record $25,000 collective bonus for his various laudable efforts. This was met with general approval. And those few who objected were snarled down by the Erinyes.

Pres sighed, “At least I won’t have to go through PTS therapy this time.”

“AFTER you heal up a little,” his mother corrected him sternly. She gave the Asklepios medic a significant nod. He pressed a plunger that injected Pres with that ‘fun’ pain killer he’d mentioned.

But as he started to slip into medicated oblivion, Pres grabbed his mother and whispered something to her while he was still lucid enough. Mrs. Wyecross paused, considered and nodded. Turning to Velikovski, Mrs. Wyecross said with the glitter of a professional haggler in her eyes, “Pres was wondering, what with the expense of all these bonuses, if his bonus couldn’t be in the form of INFAX stock.”

FINIS