Daemon

call them AutoM8s.’
    The Major stared at the large central monitor on the control board – seemingly the only monitor not at present depicting mayhem.
    On-screen the intruder was busy moving his arms – manipulating invisible objects. He glanced up at the security camera. His voice came over the speaker. ‘I’ll let myself out.’
    Just then, some ten yards behind the intruder, the steel doors were staved in by a shredded mass of metal. The whole building shook with a dull thud, concrete dust sifting down through seams.
    The intruder barely flinched.
    The car that had smashed in the steel doors was now entirely blocking the exit. But then another unseen vehicle cut in from the side and ripped the first one out of the hole with a deafening crash.
    The opening was now clear.
    Merritt heard the first crash and saw sunlight streaming in from beyond the sealed ballistic doors. He loaded the UMP and by the second crash he was rushing toward the glass doors.
    Gragg emerged into the sunlight through the shattered opening of the main door.
    As he did so, a silver BMW 740 with blacked-out windows rolled up to meet him. Its rear door opened, and he slid inside, pulling the door closed behind him. The BMW screeched off toward the wrecked fence line, followed close on by a pack of domestic sedans.
    Merritt emerged from the dark, smoking doorway screaming, ‘Loki!’ He stopped, clutched his UMP’s fore grip, and opened up with three short bursts, expertly tagging the tinted rear windshield with a dozen closely grouped shots. The .40-cal bullets left small divots but not much else. The car was obviously a security model.
    ‘Goddamnit!’ Merritt lowered his gun and watched a sizeable pack of unmanned vehicles converge like a singleorganism, surrounding the BMW to shield it. They accelerated toward the distant fence line, running over several bodies in the process. The pack of cars was heading for the distant hangars at high speed.
    Merritt glanced around at the carnage surrounding Building Twenty-Nine. There were bodies, streaks of blood, burning vehicles, and debris littering the tarmac. Columns of black smoke billowed skyward. There wasn’t a guard in sight – or any intact unmanned vehicles for that matter. They had all left with Loki.
    Merritt spotted a racing motorcycle parked along the wall in the staff parking lot. He rushed over to it and searched for keys – nothing. He slung his UMP over his back and pulled his Berretta pistol, aiming it at the ignition lock. He turned his head away.
    Boom
.
    Pieces of plastic and metal parts clattered across the pavement. Merritt holstered the Berretta, then mounted the bike. He turned the shattered lock cylinder to Start and kicked the engine to life, revving its powerful engine. He grabbed the helmet hanging from the handlebars and pulled it on. He flipped down the mirrored visor, and a moment later he screeched out after the pack of automated cars receding in the distance. He accelerated madly through the debris field and rocketed out onto the runway in hot pursuit. He could barely make out the silver BMW in the middle of the car pack, but he targeted it with every ounce of horsepower he had at his disposal. The bike engine howled.
    After buckling himself in, Gragg looked back toward Building Twenty-Nine.
    Directly over the building a bright red glowing sign towered in D-Space sixty stories tall, rotating like a neon sign and visible for miles around to anyone on the Daemon’s darknet. It proclaimed in giant letters with an arrow pointing down:
Top-Secret Anti-Daemon Task Force
. Gragg laughed, then raised one black-gloved hand. He drew another glowing red box across D-Space to encompass the entire facility. With a click of his pinky he brought up a pop-up menu, then selected
Kill Everyone
.
    Merritt’s motorcycle howled across the decommissioned runway. He leaned into a swerve at a hundred mph to avoid a pothole, but as he came out of it, he noticed a second wave of unmanned vehicles streaming in toward Building Twenty-Nine. Thirty vehicles, including a couple of white Econoline panel vans. A detachment of mid-sized domestic sedans peeled off from the main group and vectored in on Merritt.
    ‘Oh shit …’
    The sedans were almost on him – and still accelerating.
    Merritt’s youthful passion for fast motorcycles finally paid off. He thrust his body up and over the left side of the gas tank – expertly pulling into the hardest turn he could manage at high speed.