Kill Order
"Riley, how much longer?" the general asked, checking the silver watch strapped to his glove.
"Ten minutes, sir," the lieutenant answered quietly, hovering at his side. "Then the attack will commence."
General Howard Townsend exhaled, breath swallowed instantly by the frigid Siberian air. Snow hammered down relentlessly and the cold, sharp night wind whipped at their cloaks. The sound of engines roaring and boots crunching could barely be heard.
"We've finally cornered him," he muttered, tucking his chin deeper into his long coat.
His hands, wrapped in thick leather gloves, fumbled with a cigarette, and after almost setting himself ablaze he succeeded in screwing it into the hole beneath his nose.
"Today… we will put an end to your antics… '0xJ'."
Four hundred fully armed special forces units waited in the dark. Another thousand soldiers were stationed further out, forming a perimeter that stretched for kilometres. Radars, seismic meters, signal jammers, drones, air support, scanners - a nations' worth of resources, all aimed at one man.
No one even thought of considering it overkill.
Because the target was '0xJ'."
The world's best hacker.
No bombs, no warheads, no missiles had caused as much fear in the modern era as that one, infuriating alias scrawled in green font across hacked screens.
He had breached nuclear defence networks like children's puzzles, thrown top-secret government databases wide open and outpaced every counter-hacker alive.
The FBI, Interpol, MI6… none of them could claim to have stopped him, only to have fallen victim to him.
A true Cyber Overlord.
Countries begrudgingly began to call him the King of the Digital World, because, undeniably, in an age where the net meant everything, he held it at his fingertips.
But today was different. Today, 0xJ was cornered in that remote warehouse before them, in the middle of a harsh Russian snowstorm, surrounded by the world's finest soldiers.
Townsend took a long drag of his cigarette. The ember glowed for a moment, sending up a faint plume of smoke that was immediately torn away by the wind.
"He must know we're here," Riley murmured.
His voice trembled only slightly, quickly stifled behind discipline.
"Of course he does," Townsend replied gruffly. "He is 0xJ, the man the world has been chasing for half a decade."
The general tossed the cigarette into the snow at his feet.
"Time's up," he said into his radio. "Commence operation."
***
A soft humming droned on in the centre of the dark warehouse. Machinery whirred and clanked, and a forest of tangling cables strung down from the ceiling and covered the walls. A thousand armed soldiers were advancing outside in the howling snowstorm, but nestled in the centre of the cables, surrounded by the pale glow of monitors, Jack Mercier looked almost peaceful.
He sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, navy hoodie half-zipped, heaters blasting him full in the face. His messy brown hair dropped over his sea-green eyes. One hand balanced a mug of lukewarm coffee on his knee, and other drifted lazily over the keyboard laid out in front of him, whirring out lines of code as casually as one might scratch their heads.
"Another security protocol," he muttered under his breath.
Rows of encrypted data shivered, split apart and folded under his commands. Another lock broken. Another secret exposed.
He exhaled through his nose, unimpressed. It had been a long time since anything online had managed to surprise him, even among the thousands of requests he'd taken on as 0xJ.
"…I'm tired," he said, rubbing his face with both hands.
This was gonna be my last request anyway. After this, I'll retire from my life as 0xJ, and live a peaceful life on some remote island with the fortune I've made.
…is what he told himself he wanted.
Reality was different.
He was bored, bored out of his mind, bored to death.
He couldn't enjoy the freedom ordinary people had to go about their daily lives, he couldn't go out with friends, he could do nothing but be constantly on the run, hiding from the world.
If the alarms outside bothered him, he didn't show it.
Somewhere in the nest of cables, a shuffling noise was heard. Jack paid no heed to it, but two seconds later a hand came down on his shoulder.
"You're here."
A soft breath of warm air brushed against his ear as the young, dark-haired woman hung her arms loosely around his neck from behind.
"Lena," he said, touching her arm. "Not now."
"You heard the sirens," she murmured. "They're coming."
"I'm not deaf," he agreed. "You two should've left ten minutes ago. You don't have to stay by me."
His other bodyguard, Leo, stepped into view from the shadows.
"We won't leave you," he said simply.
Lena and Leo, the twin bodyguards that followed 0xJ around everywhere. Respected and feared in the underworld, they had entered a contract with him five years prior and Jack had terminated it an hour ago.
"Please," he said. "The contract's ended. You should at least save yourselves, there's still places for you to be."
"What places except by your side?" Lena asked, pulling Jack closer. "You know as well as us nowhere will accept us."
"We've been together for five years," Leo agreed. "Aren't we family? Don't tell us to run away and leave you behind when you know we never will."
Jack sighed again and rolled his eyes across his screens. A muffled explosion went off in the distance as the enemy forces ran into the first row of traps.
"…yeah, I know," he said heavily. "How long can you give me?"
"As long as you need," Lena said, letting him go and standing up.
Leo nodded, a faint smile tugging at his lips, and checked the dual pistols hidden under his long coat.
"Leave it to us."
The twins turned to melt into the shadows, but before they did Jack said,
"You two. I… no, we… I think I'm having second thoughts now that it come to it. But I won't back down. Just… thank you."
They smiled at him, and then disappeared.
Jack watched the place where they'd just been standing for a moment, then turned back to his screens, green eyes flickering like dying embers.
"Almost done…"
***
The east door blew off its hinges. Snow gusted in and boots pounded on the concrete.
"Move, move!!"
Seargent Daniel Kessler tightened the grip on his M4 Carbine, breath fogging beneath his mask. He'd been in the special forces for barely two years, and he'd trained harder than anyone in his unit, waiting his entire career for a mission like this one.
A real mission against him. 0xJ, the most dangerous man alive.
His heart thumped in his chest as he followed the others in front, guns ready, through the dark concrete corridor.
This was it. The bogeyman of the digital age, who arguably held the whole world at his fingertips. If he felt like he could collapse stocks in an instant and send the world economy spiralling into destruction.
Up ahead, someone's breath caught.
A floor tile clicked. The ceiling far in front of Daniel detonated and a blinding cloud of shrapnel rained down - glass, nails, shards of metal - shredding six people in an instant.
"BACK UP!!" someone yelled, and radio static filled his ears.
"ENEMY ATTACK!!" someone from the back shouted, and then bullets tore through the corridor.
Daniel hit the ground seconds before he was riddled with bullets.
A second squad appeared behind them, grabbed him, pulled him roughly to his feet, and they pounded down the corridor behind riot shields, and broke out into a larger area, surrounded by cable, crates, and rusting machinery.
"Eyes up, stay sharp," the squad leader said. "Comms are dead."
Daniel's breathing was ragged. Half his squad had just been wiped out in front of his eyes. He gripped his gun.
Then Leo dropped down next to them, and before they could even react a Mark XIX silenced Desert Eagle was pointed right them. The shots went off and two more soldiers hit the ground.
"What the hell-!?" Daniel gasped.
"One of the twins spotted in the eastern storage room!"
"Spread out!"
"Search for 0xJ, catch him by all means!!"
Leo sprinted around them, dodging bullets and rolling behind a forklift. Daniel and the attackers bunkered down behind other obstacles. Lena fired from a walkway near the ceiling, sub-machine gun flashing. The whole warehouse filled with rattling, pinging bullets.
It was like they were fighting a whole army, like they were being fired upon by a hundred people and not just two.
How can their coordination be that synchronized?
It was a slaughter. Helmets exploded like bloody cabbages. Lena was pelting grenades at them from above and Leo was running circles around them.
But numbers were numbers and highly trained special forces were highly trained special forces.
Reinforcements were flooding in from all directions. Ballistic shields. Heavy armour. Grenade launchers. Stun grenades.
Daniel breathed a sigh of relief as the other squads began to arrive. He had narrowly escaped death and he knew it.
Lena's jaw tightened as she saw the new formations. Leo snapped a fresh magazine into his rifle.
"Leo," she said.
"I know," he said quietly.
Gunfire tore through the warehouse, pinging off metal and sparking across the walls and floor. Grenades banged off, lighting up the dark, and night-vision goggles focused on to figures.
"They're out in the open!!" one voice yelled. "FIRE!!"
Bullets tore through them and blood sprayed.
Breathing heavily, Daniel lowered his gun, looking at the two corpses, blood pooling beneath them as the rest of his squad moved on.
They were enemies, two ghosts guarding the devil.
But god, had they given a hundred elite soldiers a fight.
***
Jack heard the firing stop from his nest and he knew it was over.
Whatever he was feeling, he didn't show it, but for a second his hands stop moving on his keyboard, before resuming their incessant tapping.
The heavy bootsteps echoing in the distance were drawing nearer.
"You're too late," he whispered, entering the last line and watching as the database crumbled before him. "I'm in, and your secrets are revealed to the world."
He leant back, and stretched his arms above his head.
His enemies were closing in, but he was unafraid. As someone who was constantly on the run from the whole globe, he had long lived in the clutches of death, but never had it felt so real.
My hands are shaking, and my heart is beating fast. Is this what it feels like to die?
Adjusting his hoodie, 0xJ stood up slowly, and a hundred fully-armed soldiers crashed through the cables, surrounding him, riddling his body with laser sights.
"We finally found you, you computer rat!!" a voice yelled. "0xJ, your reign is over!!"
Jack didn't hear them, but sighed one last time.
"In the end," he muttered softly, "It really was such a boring life."
He spread his arms.
"I am ready to die."
The last thing he saw was the flash of light reflecting off the scope of a rifle.
***
"Mission successful, target eliminated. 0xJ is dead."
The room erupted into cheers, claps on backs, and out in the snow, General Townsend grinned. Only one person wasn't in a celebratory mood. Daniel Kessler looked down 0xJ's lifeless body, eyes half closed, and face serene and peaceful.
He couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old, barely older than Daniel himself.
All that time hunting him, and now he was looking down at Zero Ex fucking J.
For a long time, Daniel had been building up the monstrous King of the Digital World 0xJ in his head. How much of a monster he'd be.
But the thing was, when he finally laid eyes on the devil, is was much less impressive.
Just a man.
Average height, tired green eyes, bloodstained navy hoodie.
At least,
That was Daniel was thinking when a mechanism under their feet clicked and the entire warehouse went up in a magnificent fireball.