Project Xenon - First Attack

Automatic gunfire from the direction of the receptionist area launched me out of my chair and straight through to the hallway where I found co-workers streaking past with faces reminiscent of the tortured soul in that Munch painting, ‘The Scream’.
Behind me someone shouted, “Call 911,” but the plea was answered with another explosion of gunfire followed by a nerve-rattling, banshee-like wail.
Chaos, hysterical cries, paralyzing fear. Despite my panic I needed to act. Everywhere I turned people were fleeing, but to where?
Frantic thoughts of diving under a desk or maybe clawing my way onto the ledge of one of the office’s twenty-second floor windows evaporated when I heard the sharp crack of metal against metal. Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted a man in black boots and camouflage fatigues gripping an AK-47and staring in my direction. He advanced down the corridor firing first to the right then swinging to the left and firing again, laughing at the whistling chards of glass and swirls of smoke heralding his arrival as the Angel of Death. I bent low and headed the other way praying he was distracted enough not to bother with me right away. Just as I turned the corner a man’s scream echoed off the walls only to be cut short by another nerve-shattering explosion delivering instant carnage.
Keeping close to the ground, I crab-crawled a few more feet and bumped into about a dozen co-workers huddled together in front of the network server room. Leaning into the knot of distraught humanity, I pushed my way through to find Phil Upton, the VP for marketing, punching the security keypad like a maniac on amphetamines. My voice was shaking when I yelled that I knew the password. Numbers danced in my head, but my brain was on overdrive, and it took three tries and several precious seconds before I heard a sweet click signaling the door was unlocked.
Once everyone scrambled inside, I closed the door, relocked it, and immediately started to help create a barricade. Pushing the heavy server units in front of the door first, we followed with anything that wasn’t bolted down. Questions of who and why bubbled up in my mind, but I filed them away and focused on plotting the next move.
Retreating to the windows along the rear wall, we gazed down at the parking lot. Stretched out before us was a field of black and white squad cars with doors wide open, serving as protection for the policemen kneeling behind them with guns drawn. The SWAT team’s van slowed to a stop on the grassy expanse between the parking lot and our building where picnic tables had been placed for workers who wanted to commune with nature during their lunch hour. Upending the tables, men and women clad in bullet-proof vests dragged them together to form a fence on either side of the vehicle and started yelling into their communication devices. Veering off towards the rear of the building, another armed squad could be seen racing single file to their assigned positions.
“Who the hell are they?” Phil asked pointing upwards at a flock of ink-black, futuristic looking helicopters descending into view from over the top of the building,
“X-force,” someone announced and I recognized the steely voice of Nick Brody, the company’s product guru, resident cynic and lone Marine veteran, who never shared anything about his background and laughed at the rumors floating around the office that suggested he’d once belonged to an elite squad whose mission was to carry out assassinations of certain foreign leaders, and though I didn’t believe the stories, I knew there was something strange about the not infrequent phone calls he’d take during meetings that were immediately followed by unexcused absences invariably explained away by his vague description of some improbable home emergency.
“You have any idea,” I whispered, “of what our chances are for getting out alive?”
“Zero,” Nick replied, “if I’m right about who sent these whacks to kill me.”