The UH-60 Crash Hawks chopped out a sound so deafening it offended god. In our headsets our pilot switched on Dream Theater’s Pull Me Under to drone out the blades. Our whole formation, a liquidation squadron, was loaded with jet turbines drinking taxpayer dollars and Venezuelan kerosene faster than I popped down our daily supplements of Lexapro and Pervitin.
That’s why they assigned me to the gun.
Shoot first. Worry about it—never.
A routine invasion.
Sayonara LLC hadn’t paid their corporate protection fees for the third quarter in a row, so they faced the same fate as Samsuiza and NVTechrome—full American liquidation.
Not just money.
Blood.
Due to procedure and Social Security budget cuts I was authorized for no conservation of ammunition, so I let the M134 mounted in the open door eat.
With a brrrzzzzzt, a skyscraper of glass began to shatter. The other units opened fire in a chorus of damnation. Panels spidered in every direction before bursting into chiclets of green-tinged tempered quartz.
“Hit ‘em with another sidewinder too.”
The bird let another $500,000 government death machine fly into the building. Blowing off panels that weighed tons onto the streets below. Civilians knew when they heard us to get out of the way. Our procedure required forty-eight hours of notice. Some corporations or foreign governments got cute and ignored it. After the 1950s banana republics, they stopped fucking around.
The rules were simple—take no prisoners.
Anything organic? Desecrate it.
Any pride left? Denigrate it.
Any bodies remaining? Cremate them.
Did I feel bad?
No.
It kept my family alive. That was all that mattered.
Half the formation touched down on the roof. Five mercs per bird. Thirty professionals earning a paycheck. Like washing a new car—start at the top. Work your way down. Sure, sometimes they blew the building. That used to happen. None were that bold anymore. The supercomplex of PR, founded by Freud’s nephew, owned everything that still mattered. They got the message across.
“Rourke! Plant the charge. Yeah!! Let’s fucking go baby!”
I placed the C4 and ran.
The roof access door ceased to exist.
We moved in. MP5s steady. Red dots glowing. Retinal implants tracking. A red holo overlay—biometrics, organics, blueprints. We weren’t destroying buildings. We were securing the last assets. Once a corporation received notice, procedure was clear. You placed your S&P 500 token at the center of the MDF. Not digital. Real mint. The entire C-suite present. If anyone was missing? Their family lineage was destroyed. Blood, legal, distant—didn’t matter.
We descended into the heart of what used to be a glamorous headquarters. Desks abandoned. Screens still glowing. Logged in. Procedural compliance. In all my years with liquidation, I’d never seen survivors. I’d heard stories from the early days—one hundred years ago.
I felt nothing but excitement. I’d never been assigned to the core team.
This was it. Final promotion. Highest paygrade. Real steaks instead of printed ones. I’d be rich. Just keep going. Work harder. We cleared corner after corner. My HK raised and ready to fire 9mm compliance. I felt no fear beneath layers of neo-woven armor and Qualified Immunity.
“Hold position. Alpha moves in.”
My team of five approached the core door. Macevale entered the code. Steel parted with a hiss.
We stepped inside. The doors sealed behind us. The chamber was stainless steel, illuminated by a single vertical beam of light. A lone figure stepped forward from behind thick bulletproof panels—the CEO of Sayonara.
“Gentlemen,” he said calmly. “Here are your suits.”
A panel slid open. Five business suits. Pressed. Labeled with our target C-suite names.
Everyone lowered their guns.
“You’ve reached expiration,” he added.
I fired into the glass.
I heard laughing.
Chrome mechanical arms swept from the floor and tore our legs out from under us.
“Haha. Liquidators. So dense. I love these guys. Thinking we use physical tokens.”
Four new lights illuminated figures from behind the panel of glass. It was the CEOs we’d been told were long dead. They remained motionless, faces calm, curious. Each wore a 666 badge, embossed with three black letters and orange glowing nixie tubes:
NWO.
They turned to each other, “The last few mergers went smooth, what do you think, make Sayonara not cooperate? Boost the speculative buyers and ride the put options?”
“Sounds good to me, I’m leveraged on either side.”
“Eh, I’m late to my driving range lesson, flip a coin.”
“Heads.”
They looked down at us on our backs, vulnerable, exposed.
“Oh that’s too bad for you, you should have worked harder, no one in the C-suite gives up power. It’s all political theater. Enjoy your promotion. Don’t worry, AI will replace each of your dead faces nicely.”
One of my squad sobbed, “But… I have a family.”
They paused.
Then spoke together.
“It’s been a pleasure doing business. But you know how it is.”
They smiled.
“It’s not personal, just Public Relations.”