“There has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.”

Iain M. Banks

Jake stood in the middle of the meeting room of the Ministry building, staring around at the devastation. There was only one word for what had been done here… extermination.

The attackers had shot every person they could find, executed them. No matter if they had tried to fight or to hide, to attack or to appeal, each one had been gunned down with one or two carefully placed bullets, an efficient, steady process of killing that had gone on for almost a quarter of an hour. Jake had been able to watch it all through the video feed on Ray’s phone, impotent as they drove madly back towards London in a commandeered police car quickly acquired through Ministry contacts.

Even at such a pace, it took more than three hours to get there. The gunmen had long since gone, making their escape well before the rapid reaction task force could get there.

The very secrecy surrounding the Ministry had been its downfall. The sheer scope of the attack, its merciless methodicalness, had prevented any possibility of calling for help from within the building, and Ray and Jake simply did not have the ability to get through the security checks quickly enough to get help mobilised any sooner. Now the belated rescue team was left with nothing to do but sweep the empty rooms, their steps leaving bloody footprints behind them.

Ray had disappeared further into the building, searching for survivors or anything that might give some clue as to who the attackers were, what their goal had been. Trials didn’t bother; it was already clear to him. They had been seeking to kill as many of the Ministry employees as possible, nothing more. No files or computers had been touched, nothing taken. He could remember every moment of the attack as it was relayed to him over the camera feed, could replay every moment with the swipe of a finger.

He could replay the moment the bullet shot through the back of Paul’s skull.

Fucking Mike.

He could hear Mike’s words playing again and again through his head, offering up nothing but the fact that it was through him, and through Trials, that this had happened.

He’d been so damn naïve. He hadn’t even considered that one of his friends could be involved in this, and now it turned out his friend had given up the very location of the Ministry to people who would do this. They’d both heard it, him and Ray, and drove in silence as he played the clip over and over again. Ray got out of the car without looking back.

Trials stared down at his phone and watched the scene again, Mike’s futile lunge at the brutish figure standing behind Paul, the spray of blood, Mike lying on the floor as if forgotten, shoulders heaving. He had lain there sobbing, coughing, for minutes before another body-armoured figure came in and dragged him away, not bothering to untie him from the chair but pulling him along with it.

Ray came back in, face impassive.

“They got Jo. She’s a few doors down. Took one of them with her, though.”

Trials felt a sharp pain in his chest.

“They left the body?” he asked. Ray knew he meant the merc’s.

“No, they took it with them. It’s obvious he was dead before they moved him, though. Too much brain left on the walls,” Ray growled.

Trials let out a pained breath. He didn’t know how to continue, so they stood in silence as the sounds of the clean-up reverberated around them.

“What is this, Jake?” asked Ray, not looking up from the blood pooled on the floor. “Who the hell are they?”

Ray’s phone buzzed in this pocket as if in answer.

“Well, we know who one of them is, at least,” he continued, scrolling through the profile on his screen. “The big guy who looks like he’s on steroids. Name of Korez Marais, South African military contractor and mercenary. He’s worked in Nigeria, Libya, Eritrea, and Iraq – that we know of. His last few jobs are ‘soft’ roles, training and so on, and the final thing on his file is some security work in Italy. I’d have thought that meant he was giving up the hard life…”

Ray stared at the scene at his feet.

“… I guess not.”

“I need to speak to The General, Ray,” answered Trials. “Maybe he’s got something more by now.”

Ray held out his phone, the previous calls list filled with red.

“He’s not answering. Must still be in the bunker – I’ve been trying to get in touch with him.”

There was a private line, Trials knew, and he knew Ray knew this too. The connecting phone, though, lay through one of the main record rooms below, and the record rooms were where the majority of people worked. This meant it was where the majority of the bodies lay.

“I’ll go,” he said, and left Ray standing there, lost in thought.

It was rare for Trials to come down here, down the narrow stairs at the end of the main floor and into the low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit area below. Long rows of desks filled a wide room, the room partitioned with thin, temporary-looking walls.

Red-stained documents and still-powered computer screens cast strange shadows at Trials’ feet as he stepped carefully down the aisle, trying but failing to keep his gaze from the bodies lying slumped against their desks or piled in corners where they had tried to escape. The scent of death hung strong in the air, and sound seemed to be sucked up into some deep dark hole. Trials had encountered many times the effect that sudden, brutal violence has on its surroundings, the feeling that everything has been encased in a thick, suffocating glue of intense pressure, but this time it was so deep he found every step difficult to take.

After a long, interminable time, he made it to the small room wedged in at the back. The door was ajar, and he had to struggle to remove the two bodies that lay in the place where they had hopelessly sought sanctuary. Two faces he recognised, but could not name.

Finally, he stood in front of the row of phones, each cryptically labelled with no obvious clue to where they dialled. He picked up one of those closest to the wall and held it to his ear, focusing on the click-click-click of the connection and shutting out his surroundings.

No answer.

He slammed the phone down and stared at it, holding his bunched fists to his sides. He felt as if he must be shaking, though he was not. He knew his metabolism and pulse rate even now were being controlled, paced and limited to his current activity level. The tension he felt, the knot in his gut, all of it was psychological, not physiological. It felt the same, nonetheless.

One more time.

The clicking of the phone once more, taunting him with its unchanging, unfeeling tones. He let it ring for minutes, envisioning the phone at the other end of the line sounding out, filling the halls of the bunker with its call.

He smashed the phone into its receiver, causing the desk to shudder and the phones along it to jump into the air with the force, and stood there in the gloom, eyes unfocused as he looked inwards. He didn’t know what to do. He had always prided himself on his independence, on his ability to get things done, but now he realised he had always been working to someone else’s goal. Though he might choose the path, he had always been given the destination. Now he was rudderless, adrift.

Where the fuck was The General?

He forced himself to breathe, and headed back upstairs.