Slay

“Move fast…” Beth Hays said with a cruel grin.

“…And break things!” added Nadine Chappell, alternating off ‘safety’ on her assault rifle, to ‘semi’.

It was, as predicted, a light security detail on the lodge perimeter. The two women, in full arctic camo gear, had already slipped through the blind spot in the surveillance and were crouching metres away from one of the two daydreaming bodyguards, who was pacing nonchalantly back and forth next to the covered underlit pool and steaming jacuzzi.

The suppressor on her rifle was not that quiet, yet muffled enough to get away with murder on that chilled spring night in the alpine wilderness. A couple of rounds and the figure, whoever he was, fell heavily forward into the pool cover, so it wrapped around his body in a crinkled white shroud as he sank slowly to the bottom, with a spiralling black leak from the hole in his heart spreading and gravitating toward the filters.

The two moved like a single organism with four legs, sliding from the cover of cold-resistant foliage, toward the multimillion-euro three-level residence. It was a forged matrix of glass, steel and angles, the kind of ostentatious building that any locals would have sneered at, if anyone had been permitted to live anywhere near the outpost.

The second thick-set guard in a black overcoat and tie spotted their movement, his eyes widening as they snuck forward in one slick manoeuvre. By the time his brain had decided to react, his windpipe was cleanly severed, his hands clawing in vain to seal the permanent detachment.

The two middle-aged women, buzzing a little with the ‘contact’ they had missed since their time served in Afghanistan all those years ago, took a moment to observe the trio of social media CEOs sitting around the triangular dinner table through the huge window. Both were aware they could not be seen themselves, so they took a moment to diffuse, to let their energies balance out to level again, for control, for composure – and for their online audience.

Beth detached her GoPro for a few seconds of close-up vlogging, pointing it back at her own face, which was mostly covered by a white balaclava.

“Tonight, people, we are putting the mother back in motherfuckers,” and instantly out there in the ether, little digital emoji hearts, fists and explosions gushed out in admiration. Their new platform was accelerating into fame with viral madness.

As she sat and clicked the camera back on to her chest mount, she realised, to her amusement, that all the phones were ringing inside the building. Their people were desperately trying to reach the three men to warn them, but no one was within an hour of the lodge. It had been chosen for its remoteness to keep their annual secret meeting from prying media. The women had already drugged the chef and the three service personnel who resided in a smaller building nearby, and stashed them in a locked woodshed.

With his chunky snowboarding boots crossed irreverently on the designer table, Mack Samson, boss of LookMe had his finger interlaced behind his head in alpha-mode and was snickering about something one of the other two had said. Sam Stiller, who owned TackyDo, was draped in an ill-fitting Hawaiian short-sleeved shirt, looking pensive while the biggest fish of all, Ted Crowley, owner of BuzzBox, stood stoutly at the globe drink’s cabinet – selecting a rare 2002 Middleton Irish whiskey.

There was a thick door to the narrow section of brick wall right next to the window, which would not be locked.

“Let’s slip into their DMs,” whispered Nadine to the mic on her camera, and they both swooped elegantly down from their hidden perch, a snow-peppered crevice in a shrub-dotted rockery of boulders, completely unnoticed by their prey, flanking to the left until they were at the heavy door to the room and pushing it open.

“Hiya!” Beth beamed loudly as the penetrating cold from outside switched sharply to the womb-like warmth of the room. A flurry of icy air followed them in, and the door shut with a reassuring ‘clunk’, effectively making a seal for a box containing three of the most powerful men on planet Earth.

Mack Samson was the fastest to react, unlacing his fingers and standing bolt upright, so his chair toppled backwards with a clattering protest for being abandoned.

“Who the fuck are you?!” he roared.

His volume was impressive; some people just filled the room with their voice, and he was such an individual, like he demanded you must only listen to him.

“We’re just two mums, no one special – big fans of your work!” said Nadine, her muzzle pointed at his head, one eye lined up over the gun for perfect aim.

Beth lowered her gun momentarily while she was covered by her partner, pushed back her fur-lined hood and peeled off her balaclava. Under the guise, she was ruddy-cheeked, her face full of presence, like she had seen everything and was unshockable. She held herself with a dignity that you could tangibly feel from a distance.

They swapped roles without communicating, so Beth aimed her gun with threat to let Nadine reveal herself – a mousy-haired, middle-aged woman, whose line-etched face also looked like it harboured an older soul than her years on Earth.

The man was gesticulating, strutting a little too, like a pheasant.

“So, what is this?! A kidnapping? You guys made a big mistake coming here tonight. You are way, way out of your depth…” boomed Samson, taking the lead as king of the kings in the heat of the ambush.

Nadine tutted, letting her trigger finger off the hook for a second to waggle it at him. “Time for you to shuuu..” she said. To save time with the expected to-and-fro of dialogue, she popped off a single round that hurtled into his whisky bottle next to Crowley, so dagger-like shards of glass exploded into the three business titans to their palpable shock. Two thousand euros of liquid splattered the room.

“Your front-of-house men are dead, and we have about fifty-five minutes at a guess till any kind of rescuers can get here, so we’re going to make the most of the time we have together – isn’t that one of your slogans, actually? We can do a little community engagement, make a little content… To pass the time… I mean, it’s harmless enough, a bit of content… And Mr Samson, you just volunteered for the first challenge…”

“What is this then, a prank? If this is for a TV show, I’d urge your lawyers to stop this right now.”

“TV! That’s so yesterday’s media… To your question… A name that you won’t really know, that would mean nothing to you, until today… Peter Chappell. This name is now very important to you, and to your future.”

With the stock of her assault rifle embedded into her shoulder, her left hand moved to her coat pocket and whipped out a square polaroid picture. It was of a teen boy blowing out birthday cake candles, a huge cat-closed-eyes smile across his face in faded, crinkled joy. He had jet-black curls and bright eyes, exuding happiness in its rawest, purest form. He was revelling in adulation for one day, his day. In the over-exposed picture, he was surrounded by jubilant college friends. There was a typical suburban house kitchen backdrop. The marble worktop was a mess of crumpled pizza boxes and shandy cans. She held it up to Mack Samson, so he was inclined to glance at the vision of a moment in time, before she plunged her gloved fist, clenching it, back, deep into the pocket, concealing her treasure safely.

“You like a dare?” she asked, curling the corner of her lip, shuffling on her boots’ heels as if this was a critical moment, “You want to try the cinnamon challenge?”

Samson knew exactly what she was talking about – and that’s when he remembered the name, Chappell, from the lawyer’s summary and the blip of media flak that fizzled almost as quickly as it sparked.

He began to mount his defence, confident he had the answers already scripted.

“You know,” he began, “that our platform has nearly four billion users, we can’t ever manage every little fad and crazy viral fuckery. There is no way – and we’re trying. I can’t just ban challenges either. What about the ice bucket challenge that raised a heap of cash in donations for the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis? You want a world without free connections to each other – you can’ turn back time… I’m sorry about your boy, but that was his bad decision, that’s all – some people reach for a gun with one bullet in the chamber and spin it, that’s what he effectively did… I can’t be accountable for that…”

“Let me stop you right there,” she said, “Let’s get back to your challenge. You know the rules… Beth, can you reach into my rucksack, please and pass the test tube of cinnamon to my nominated participant, Mr Mack Samson?”

Peter Chappell’s grieving mother watched with an appetite of distilled rage as the CEO lost control of the narrative, and she drank the vision in, enjoying his helplessness, seeing his inability to stop himself under the intense pressure of the situation.

He reached out and held the test tube of fine brown-orange powder because what else could he do? It was the expectation. There was a gun to his head.

“What if I don’t?” he asked, to give himself a moment to prepare mentally.

“Then, I shoot you somewhere on your body. I will shoot you… Believe it.”

“How do I know you won’t shoot me anyway – you’ve clearly come here to finish us off…”

“Nope – that’s not how this might go. One of you might live through this, all of you might, but we have about forty-five minutes now to work out if you are chicken shit, and if you would prefer to be shot. The world is watching. I have an audience here to keep interested – time is media,” she glanced at the GoPro on her chest mount, “You too chickenshit to try out the best of your own social media… Shame on you!?” she giggled mockingly.

He gulped audibly and stared down the tiny circle of a lens on the GoPro, as viewing figures escalated by the tens of thousands a second.

“Fine – one challenge… You know you’ll go to jail for this, don’t you? And people don’t normally die of this one, you realise. He was unlucky…”

Mack Samson, the multi-billionaire, took a deep breath for resolve, and began to slowly pour the tube of powder into his mouth. It puffed into a cloud about his lips in an ungainly spill.

She watched him like a hawk from the air, watched his lips quiver as he gagged and choked. For a second, she froze, and then she shook herself and unfroze.

“Ah-aa!” chastised Nadine, “Don’t spill or we’ll just start it again from the beginning.”

She could sense his discomfort, and his eyes began to water immediately as the power drew the moisture from his gums.

“Let me give you some stats and details on this particular challenge, of which I am sure you are aware… I found out a lot after Peter died in my arms that night of his birthday… The challenge has been going on for over a decade, that’s right – over a decade… During that time, the number of hospitalisations of teenage children has increased fourfold. Cinnamon is a caustic powder that causes burning sensations in the mouth. If you have an allergy or pre-existing respiratory condition, this can be lethal, as it was for my son. You could have stopped this… But you didn’t… We also have the TidePod challenge, but hey, one dare at a time… I’m not cruel…”

Mack, who had finished decanting the powder into his throat, was coughing hard on the designer table in puffs of orange dust. He was in severe pain, throwing his head from side to side as if trying to escape it.

“…Cool…” said Nadine flatly, “You passed the challenge.”

Mack Samson stumbled toward the globe of spirits and grappled for any bottle his shaking hands could grab, knocking a couple over, now apparently blind and deaf to any external situation.

“Ouch!” said Beth, studying his panic in a measured pleasure, winking at Nadine, who was not smiling at all, just staring like her face was in freeze-frame at what she had witnessed, dragging back some horror from the darkest place in her troubled mind.

“Your turn, Beth,” said Nadine, stepping back to let Beth step forward.

Beth slid forward gracefully, her gun scanning the three targets as if toying with their fear.

“Now, this challenge is for… Mr Sammm Stilleeer!” she announced, like it was a game show.

Stiller frowned, squaring up to the two from where he stood, in a feeble rebuke.

“You crazy fucking bitches… Now what? What are you gonna pin on me?” he sneered. “You know something, maybe it’s the parents’ fault that their kids are too distracted on their devices, maybe, the fault lies with you two – too busy with your own lives to check on your kids…”

Beth’s eyes flickered with something, like the mask fell for a moment, like his comment was a bullet he had fired and clipped her with.

“Very apt… Very apt…” she replied, and the seconds of dark silence that followed made Stiller regret his bravado.

“Okay, okay”, he added, “Just tell me what you want?”

This time, Nadine pulled out a handheld tablet.

“Talking of parental responsibility, Stiller, you know what your son is doing, right now? I thought not… Let me show you…”

Sam Stiller froze, his face sunken with the jibe.

On the screen was the face of his teenage son, Mikey Stiller, sitting hunched awkwardly in the dark at his computer; the feed was from his own computer camera.

“I never let my son on TackyDo. What’s he doing?”

“He’s disobeying you, daddy,” she said sarcastically, “He’s been using a false Identity on his daddy’s platform for three months and guess what, he’s found a website… Blue whale… Blue fucking whale… He’s depressed… Did you even notice?”

The boy’s face was grey, ashen, sullen, like the life was drained out of his eyes. For the first time in his life, Sam Stiller was genuinely terrified.

There were sharp hairdresser’s scissors in a pot meant for pens, just at the edge of the camera’s scope on his son’s desk. He could see his boy’s eyes flitting to them as he typed and awaited a response from some vile stranger trying to push him further in a place too bleak to escape.

“Blue whale – that site encourages self-harm…. And worse…” mumbled Stiller, his bottom lip shaking. “Stop him… stop him…” he begged.

“I suppose, I could help stop him…. I could…” mocked Beth, as if twisting a blade in his heart.

She switched the slim black device off and dropped the tablet, clattering onto the floor. She wanted Stiller to understand a pain, a special kind of acute pain of helplessness that her audience of parents was in tune with already.

“This is what it feels like, this….” She said, and for a moment she considered shooting him for mercy.

Stiller let himself ‘flump’ like a sack of stones to the wide Venetian floor tiles, staring in disbelief at the small screen that was broken nearby on the floor. He was lost for words, paralysed by mental shock.

Beth slowly moved her crosshairs to the tallest man in the room, the celebrity asshole, despised and revered in equal measures, Mr Ted Crowley of BuzzBox fame. The giant had a square face topped with a crop of spikey white dyed hair, perfect skin from nights in an oxygen tent, and the ice-cold blue-eyed gaze of a killer. He did not seem remotely phased anymore from what he was facing – an adapter to anything, a game changer and a mover of mountains under any circumstances, that was his carefully moulded reputation – at least.

“You…” snarled Nadine from behind Beth.

He leant against the wall nonchalantly, waiting, not prepared to reveal his hand.

Nadine continued.

“You… Your arrogance for experimentation caused a war. As well as my son, my unit is all gone but for Beth here… You know what I’m talking about…”

Crowley crossed his arms, as if they were some minor nuisances to his day unfolding, like flies that had fallen into his soup.

“You’re talking about BuzzBox’s AI video campaign of the false insurrection in a certain Eastern European country – the one that never really happened. It led to the wholesale execution and mass punishment of eight thousand citizens of said country by the man-monster in power, and in turn, the failed intervention of covert forces – such as yours, I assume?”

“You made some bullshit up to stir up a dictator, to give the Western allies a reason to fight him, to invade, as no doubt he didn’t give you what you really wanted in some deal, so you punished him, but not just him… That’s what we are talking about here… They didn’t invade with a big public spectacle, too risky – so they sent three fucking special ops teams to take him out in his palace as he slept, but he was ready for us… It was a bloodbath.”

He clapped his hands slowly. “Bravo…” he smiled. “This is very impressive, what you did here tonight. But you can do better than this… You will always be chess pieces, as soldiers, it’s the job, so why not change your destiny? What I can offer you is a new job, instead of a black site prison cell and lots of unpleasant torture, you understand… Which is what will happen soon unless you think this through. My contacts are arms dealers, politicians, captains of industry – and yours? Just each other, I assume. Let’s start negotiations, with say, a high six-figure salary each and terms that you work for me alone, as my personal team… You’ve already stress-tested my security, and hell, you passed with flying colours! Come on, I can make all the future pain go away and replace it with more money than you’d ever make in the forces.”

The two women said nothing, but Nadine was unclipping her camera to do a live ‘to camera’ vlog for the still-growing, burgeoning mass of viewers.

“You heard that?” she said. “What do you say… I think… Next challenge…. The blackout challenge… hmmm… No… I know… Fight to the death… Last man standing, anything goes!”

The three CEOs glanced at each other to search for reactions, tells and giveaway body language. They knew she was serious – but could they be? Would they be? Murder, that was something you don’t just do on request.

“Let’s take this down a tad in temperature. We can see you are both very upset, but hey, this is crazy, you can see that?” said Mack, clawing the sludge off his turgid red tongue. “You’re insane if you think we’re going to kill each other. You’ve lost your minds.”

“You’d be surprised what a little peer pressure can do…” said Nadine. She marched two steps forward with purpose and clarity, aimed her gun at Mack Samson and pulled the trigger without so much as flinching. She caught his eyes widening for a moment, and a thick grimace of realisation. Five high velocity bullets ripped, burned and exploded the head of the celebrity businessman. A billionaire’s brain had become a series of fleshy streaks on the walls and ceiling, as his headless body stiffened and toppled into the drinks cabinet, so the remaining bottles rolled off, onto the floor.

She could feel her heartbeat a little faster, but in truth, it was broken and would never heal. This was just the aftermath of her life, the tidy up when it was too late to really care about anything much anymore.

“I’m serious…” said Nadine slowly. “You two, fight to the death… I will not kill the one who survives… But if you don’t, I’ll shoot you both now…”

Ted Crowley and Sam Stiller were looking at each other differently than they had a moment ago. Crowley was still incredibly calm; it was clear he was a psychopath. Stiller was trying to shake off his funk from seeing his son online. Both of them had a different edge in their eyes, like they were coming to a realisation fast at the same time, about their own survival, and the critical nature of acting soon.

“Who you betting on, Nadine?” asked Beth loudly so the mic on the camera picked it up.

“Crowley seems like the favourite at first glance, but Stiller has a son; he has a lot more to lose… Stiller. My money is on Stiller…”

Crowley turned slowly to stare at the two women, finally betraying something to them which almost shocked them, eyes so black it was like evil seeping from his pupils, trapping them both for a second in the dark hole of his gaze. It was not rage they could see, it was black-hearted determination. His sheer will looked like it could manifest demons.

“So be it…” he mumbled, reaching for a broken bottle as Stiller, still slumped on his backside, kicked the floor to propel him away from the aggressor looming over him. Crowley stepped carefully over and between the lumps of brain matter and skull fragments, so as not to stain his expensive Italian slippers, edging closer to Stiller, who was now fumbling himself up on his feet while still backing away. It was like observing a calm lion, readying to bite the neck of a wounded deer.

“Crowely, we’re friends… For fuck’s sake, this is madness!”

Crowley kept advancing, so slowly, so precisely in his steps, his eyes fixed unblinking at the prey, his grip tight on the neck of the sharp, half-smashed vodka bottle he had chosen.

As he lunged at Stiller, Stiller blocked his face with his hand and the sharp glass sliced into it, so a jet of blood pumped back into his attacker’s eyes, momentarily making him squint. Stiller, in pain but now reacting instinctively, found a solid silver media award with his working hand, an abstract trumpety object with a sharp edge, that was sitting on a floating shelf on the wall. With an animalistic grunt, he smashed it with all the power he could muster into Crowley’s ear. The most famous CEO in the world seemed to freeze, like he had been switched off somehow, and he dropped the broken bottle.

Over his ear, a cut seemed to peel open across his head, and through his white hair, red liquid irrigated his neck in a fast flood. His eye seemed to flicker closed, as if his brain instructions had become corrupted.

“… Strategic… Next level… Next…” he drooled, his cognition and speech malfunctioning with serious brain damage. He fell backwards, hard as a dead weight, smacking into the chips and shards of glass that were like a thousand diamonds glinting across the flooring.

“Look at that, I was right…” quipped Nadine, almost surprised at her prediction coming true.

“And he’s still in the boardroom in his head… Nobody will miss him…” added Beth.

Stiller was now shaking with the onset of shock and his own blood loss, pleading in his eyes to them to let him go.

The sound of a rapidly approaching helicopter began to fill the room, the gyration of rotors shaking the glass window.

“They’ve come, this is the rescue…” gushed Stiller, pacing back and forth in agony with his dripping wound.

“Nope,” said Nadine, now lowering her weapon. “This bird is for us… You’ll have to wait… Who knows, you might not even bleed out, and maybe you’ll see your son before he does anything stupid… One little catch, though… You’ve just committed murder on live stream. That might go a little viral. I think it’s likely with the algorithms as they are, don’t you?”

The helicopter was black, sleek and clearly taken from the military. It was landing on the private helipad nearby, normally reserved for hopping back and forth between other luxury retreats the CEOs owned. The two mothers left the room like they had arrived, in a smooth, singular movement, like they were programmed to glide in and out of other people’s lives, trained killers that never paused to question their job. But this time, it had been their own private mission, their own agenda, as founders of a revenge media for parents everywhere, who were sick of having their children, family and friends hunted by callous business corporations for a share price.

Just before they had left, Stiller, turning pale with blood loss, had asked Nadine one last question.

“What’s your platform called?” he said.

He had that little look in his eye that business types get when they are scheming.

She had smirked, like she was expecting him to make an offer for it, or maybe he was dreaming of how he would track them down through some easy hacks. She would look forward to seeing him try. The social media channel would be shut down the minute they were clear. It would, by now, already be all over the internet in other ways and on other platforms.

“Slay”, she had replied. She looked down at him with complete unwavering dominance, like she had never once doubted her ability to hurt him and the other so-called ‘untouchables’. Her satisfaction with the revenge she had reaped was palpable.

He listened, like he was in some odd dream, as the large machine vanished high into the air of the night, heading at speed for the cover of the near jagged row of mountains.

The End