The Killer

The sound of gunfire echoed through the station. The bodies of innocents and guilty alike lay sprawled throughout the stairwell leading up to the daylight. Bodies were stretched out in poses of desperation, reaching hopelessly toward the surface. A foul wind swept the tunnels and made him turn up his nose. It had only been a matter of minutes before this busy underground connector had turned from bustling sub-station to charnel house. The killers had moved on. Now he was the only one left. He was finishing the job they had started. So far he had come across only two survivors. They were dispatched quickly and almost painlessly. From the surface he could hear the shouts and screams that told him the killers had made their way onto the street. They were moving quickly.

As he made his way to the stairwell that led to the surface, he whistled tunelessly. He blew off the head of an old man that the first team had missed. He looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes until extraction. He knew from experience he had no time to waste. He put a bullet into the throat of a woman sprawled face up on the ground, even though his sensors told him she had been dead for several minutes. He sighed and looked up towards the top of the escalators. That was his job after all. He started up the stairs between the escalators.

On the street, he could see the aftermath of the alpha team. Small napalm fires were burning, and the screams of the dying were still echoing throughout the street. Blood had begun to form pools and flow through the gutter into the drains. He shot a small boy that had hidden behind a newspaper box. The sky was overcast and he found himself hoping it would rain later. There were dying people everywhere. Most of them were in the buildings surrounding him but that wasn't his job. His job was the alpha trail, the path taken by the first team of killers. Later, after their extraction, there would be others. He shot a man dressed in a suit twice in the head. He stoppped to watch the blood and brains spray out the back of the mans cranium. When he started this job, the noises bothered him the most. The screams weren't as bad because everybody screamed. It was the almost inaudible sound of blood rushing out of the body from the gaping wounds inflicted by small arms fire. He knew that if it wasn't for the enhanced biosystem he wore, he probably wouldn't hear it but he also knew the penalty for not wearing government issue material.

That's what the training was for though. Those who scored high on the preliminary testing for aggressive tendencies were assigned to the alpha groups. The ones like him who placed in the second tier were sent for desensitizing. It helped if the candidate for a cleanup position was dim to start with; it just meant less time in the desensitivity training. In that sense he was perfect for the job. He knew he wasn't stupid, but he never could focus on things the way other people could. As a young man he could remember his peers talking about the politics of preemptive bioethnic selection or the moral implications of the new world government. He didn't care. He just wished they would shut up. He was perfect for this job.

This was his seventh drop on primary cleanup duty. Ordinarily, it would take three or four times that number of missions but he had shown a flair for this type of work that his preliminary assessment officer hadn't picked up on. He stepped on a woman lying on the ground. He put a round in her back just half an inch away from his foot. He felt proud of himself even though he knew there was no way the bullet would've penetrated his armoured boot. His sensors showed life still existed half a block ahead of him. He started walking towards the extraction point.

He shot three more people between the subway station and the office tower that was his destination. One of them, a boy in his early teens, had been conscious enough to beg for his life. This happened much more frequently with the alpha team, and they recieved special training to deal with it effectively. The cleaners did not have a high enough incident rate to justify another expensive, time consuming training session, so they were left to their own devices on these rare occasions. He watched the boy cry and plead with a bemused, detached expression on his face. The boy couldn't actually see his face of course, as the helm of his body armour was set to opaque, which was standard operating procedure for street level clean up jobs. He listened to the boy for awhile, wondering what it would be like if he was in the boys position, begging some shining black metal monster for mercy in the middle of such utter destruction, knowing there was no chance of it being granted, yet unable to resist the all too human need to exist. He listened to the boys pleas for several minutes before finally shooting him in the chest. Cleaner protocol usually dictated head shots, so the bodies would not be as easily identified, but he felt like he should do this boy the honour of leaving his face intact. Then he remembered the penalty for leaving an identifiable face, so he burned off the head of the boy with his napalm stick.

When he arrived at the office tower he was feeling tense and nervous, which was unusual because at this point in the mission, the worst was usually over and he could start to relax. He was standing at the front door of the tower, waiting for confirmation of extraction and wondering what would be served for dinner that night when he heard something. He froze instantly, his sensors at full alert. The noise had stopped, but it had been coming from the left side of the stairs leading up to the entrance of the building. He walked silently down the stairs scanning for life forms and straining to hear something. He heard nothing and his instruments showed the entire two block radius to be empty of any living creatures bigger than a cat. He walked around to the side of the building where a small park had been built for the employees that worked in the tower. Although there was nothing here that could possibly harm him with his suit operating at full capacity, he was nervous.

As he walked around the corner of the building, he saw five small shapes spin towards him and fire five shots simultaneusly towards him. He felt three of the shots from their energy weapons register on his torso. He was now operating at fifty percent capacity. He spun around and flattened himself against the wall of the offfice tower. He threw a plasma grenade blindly towards their last registered location and timed it carefully so he could look around the corner at the exact moment the grenade went off. He couldn't see them. He ran back towards the front entrance of the building and smashed through the glass double doors. He sent an emergency distress signal to his monitors. There was still five minutes until his extraction could be comfirmed. If he wasn't on the roof by then, it would take at least twelve hours for a recovery ship to be dispatched and sent to his location. He headed towards the the stairs.

As he walked through the door to the stairwell, he heard broken glass crunching. He turned and fired towards the door, just in time to see two of the things he had seen outside run behind a couch. He ran up the stairs dropping more plasma grenades at periodic intervals. He reached the top of the building just as the echoes of the explosions faded away. There were still three minutes left. He glanced around at the rooftop, comparing it to the map he had projected onto his visor. It seemed the same. He couldn't tell if his suits adrenaline shots had been activated yet. All bodily sensations were reduced to sixty percent of their normal levels to allow for more efficiency.

As he engaged his cloaking mechanism, he heard the beeping that alerted him to an incoming message. "Seven, this is twelve; do you copy?" He had never gotten a message from another cleaner before and he almost froze. "This is seven" he said. "Seven, I'm under atttack by something. I am unable to reach extraction. My termination sequence has been initiated. I am transmitting my mission log files to you now. My termination willl begin in three, two, one," The transmission broke off suddenly and he began to recieve the data stream.

He heard it before he saw it. The other cleaner would have been at least five miles away but he could still see the explosion from the roof of the building he was on. The blast radius would have been at least a mile wide. He reviewed the log files as he recieved them. The other mans mission was a hospital and the surrounding residential district. He saw through the other cleaners eyes as he carried out his mission. Twelve was efficient and quick, wasting no time as the patients in the hospital begged him for their lives. Seven fast-forwarded to the last five minutes of the transmisssion. He watched as Twelve was attacked by the same small shapes as he was. Twelve wasn't quite as good as he was though, sustaining over eighty percent damage before he escaped. Seven watched, transfixed as Twelve ran towards the house containing his extraction point. He made it with two minutes to spare, one minute and thirty seconds before sending his final transmission.

Seven had his sensors sweep the rooftop for life. He found nothing. He wasn't particularly reassured by this but his cloaking mechanism was working so he resumed his review of the other cleaners final minute and a half of existence. He was one minute away from extraction. He turned his attention back to his coworkers last transmission.

Twelve entered the house and made his way to the top floor. He tried to activate his cloaking field but his suit had been too badly damaged. He took cover in a bedroom between the bed and a window. With less than a minute remaining, the floor beaneath him gave way and he fell heavily to the kitchen floor below. He rolled onto his back and began to fire blindly. He felt himself being grabbed by the back of the neck. He started to turn around but before he could an energy blast sent him through the wall of the house and left him at just five percent of operating capacity. Five percent until termination would be initiated.

That was when he sent the message to Seven, aware he was contravening every rule of engagement he had learned in his training. He could no longer move, his suit barely functional enough to sustain life support. He caught a glimpse of his atttacker. There wasn't a lot of detail in his transmission. It was larger than him, about ten feet tall, black and almost translucent. That was where the transmission ended. That was when Seven heard the explosion. For a few seconds he heard nothing and he watched the fires burn what remained of the blast site. Shortly after that his scanners began to pick up life forms. Lots of life forms. Looking over the edge of the building he could see them pouring out onto the street. They were heading towards him.

He checked the time again. Off in the distance he could see the ship that would take him out of the city. He knew it wouldn't reach him in time to save him. He had injected as much painkiller as his suit would allow, enough that he wouldn't feel any of his limbs being ripped from his torso, enough that he could enjoy his last few seconds of life. He tried to reflect but the drugs made it hard to concentrate. He smiled, holstered his weapons and took off his helm.