Saturday, December 18th, 2021: Undisclosed Location, 10:33AM
"The world accelerates and it devours, what people remember now will be forgotten tomorrow. Our game is the same, we need to accelerate and devour. Jim couldn’t do that, he was complacent, comfortable. That was why he had to go.
"Wilson had to go as well, he was too attached to the old way, to outdated procedures. But both were too slow to adapt to the acceleration and they were devoured. I have no intentions of slowing down, and I trust that you think the same.
“Rai, I want you to go and speak to Dennis, tell him his services are no longer required and give him his severance package.”
As he finished speaking Tracen slid a handgun across the table to her.
“He’s already dead.” Cecily chimed in, speaking up from the corner of the room she’d been sat in. “Me and Donald saw him in the corridor, looked like he’d bled out from a wound he got during the strike.”
Tracen raised an eyebrow and assessed Cecily then shrugged.
“Interesting, the location doesn’t make sense, and Donald seeing is less than worthless, he’ll go along with anything if he thinks it’ll help him. But if you did kill Lourvey it saves me the ammo I suppose. Go get Donald on the console then. Congratulations Cecily you’re in charge of that for the rest of this operation. I’ll sort out a more interesting role for you going forward from now.”
Tracen drummed his fingers on the table as he continued to think and consider plays.
“Abby and Josie won’t be coming back now, it would be stupid of them to try, but Abby can take over game monitoring moving forward. She’s a reliable and hard-worker. Sonia, make a note of that please. See if you can get a message to Abby and Josie to go to ground as well.”
He shot a meaningful look at Cecily.
“We need to keep as many people who are proactive in play as possible.”
Saturday, December 18th, 2021: Undisclosed Location, 12:45PM
A dark plume of smoke rose dejectedly from the ship as it floated listlessly in the open ocean. Sargeant Dillon Lillard looked out of the remains of the bridge window at the horizon, contemplating the events of the prior few hours. The consistent hum of the Pave Hawk's rotors as it circled the boat refusing to let any sort of hush fall. In the background behind the persistent sound of the helicopter, the light crackling and popping of a fire could be heard. The end result of a drone strike that had been made before their arrival. It looked like the terrorists had been intent of continuing on even with their ship on fire, which was almost a respectable doggedness Lillard supposed, almost. As he watched the fire continue to burn his radio crackled to life.
"Hey Sarge, got something down here, seems important." Came the voice of one of his men. With a low sigh, Lillard lowered his head at a slight angle to get close to the radio.
"What you got?" He asked, wanting to make sure he was being given a workable amount of information before heading below deck.
"Looks like the whole monitoring setup," Came the reply, he heard someone else grunt something imperceptible in the background. "And the body of one of these fucks."
That made Dillon raise his eyebrows. "I'll be right there." He looked up at the 'copter as it continued to lazily patrol around the boat and signaled that he was going below deck, then set off at a trot down the stairs. He could hear his men before he properly found them. Their voices echoed around the metal staircase and bounced around the corridors as he jogged his way down to them. When he arrived at the floor they were making their way through he found the three other members of Charlie Team loitering in the corridor, seemingly debating what to do with their discovery. There were some spent shell casings on the floor and the smell of gunpowder lingered in the air, reminding Dillon of a particularly rough bar in his hometown of Odessa, where all the bikers liked to hang out and smoke.
"Ok, let's see who you fuckers have picked off." He said with a grin as he pulled the deck of VIP cards out of one of his pouches.
"That's the thing," Corporal Rice said, looking somewhat sheepish. "He was dead when we got here." The information made Dillon stop and raise an eyebrow before he continued walking towards them.
"Alright, regardless, one of these bastards being dead is still good enough for me." As he stepped around the door he saw the scene and the room and realised why his men had wanted him to head down and take a look. As far as he could tell it was some sort of surveillance room. There was the low hum of many computer fans and monitors all running at once and the room itself was as warm as he would have expected given all the electronics. The key aspect of the scene though was the body that lay partly on the floor. The legs were still draped across a wheeled computer chair, but the torso had managed to fall between one of the arms and the backrest, meaning the head and arms lay on the floor. It was a ridiculous-looking pose, but Dillon didn't feel a thing for the man. Instead, he stepped forward and over the pool of blood that was forming around the body. Red streams of blood were running down both arms and pooling around the hands, dip-dying the tips of the corpse's hair red. Dillon crouched down next to the body and started sifting through the cards.
"Who are you then?" He muttered to himself as he went through each card and held it up next to the face, its eyes open and staring blankly at the ceiling, eventually, Dillon got his match.
Dennis Lourvey, collar designer and head of island surveillance.
Dillon signaled for Rice to come over and passed him the card, "Hold this next to his head." He instructed as he fished around for the camera he had been provided. Once he'd found it, he snapped a photo of Lourvey's face and the card. Proof of a confirmed kill. "Thanks Cam," He said as he took the card back and shuffled it back into his collection before pocketing them all.
As they were ascending the stairs back to the deck a loud boom echoed from up above. The men all exchanged glances and sprinted back to the top of the stairs, their boots clattering and echoing around the confined space. Dillon was relived to see the Pave Hawk still in the air, but it had turned and was focused at a point in the distance.
Turning the entire group walked over to the side of the deck and stared and the shadow of the island in the distance.
There on the horizon, they could see a new, fresh plume of smoke.
