surrounding
towns…are they all under the control of the bikers?”
“Their leader is being brought to me as we speak.
Our proxy war is about to get underway and, with our backing, they will be able
to crush any resistance in northern and central Arizona and help us close the
noose around the man we’re looking for. We only control a portion of the city,
at present. The rest is still over run by the undead mutants. Containment
efforts are impossible at this point other than around our immediate facility
and the downtown area, which has been barricaded.”
“Once you are done employing the local thugs,
incinerate the HQ and dispatch the bikers however you see fit. Despite the
distraction posed by the global pandemic, it’s never a good thing to have any
loose ends. Are we clear Nikki?”
“We sure are darlin’,” she smirked, then clicked the
video conference off and closed the laptop. Nikki walked over to a table beside
the wall of the stark room. The oblong mirror, with its wood trim, seemed out of
place amidst the rifle magazines and ammo cans on the floor below it. Standing
in front of it, she pulled her shoulders back and glanced down at her arms,
then moved her gaze slowly up to her neck and face. She exhaled and brushed a
lock of hair aside from her temple. Her lithe figure was that of an athletic
thirty six year old but the parallel scars on her neck, from an IED blast and a
deep furrow on her left temple, made her look much older.
She stood transfixed on her eyes, lips, and hair.
She tilted her head, trying not to focus on the unsightly scars. Nikki scanned
the contours of her face and powder-blue eyes. She knew that her lovely figure
and southern charm were only surpassed by her brilliant intellect. She was the
best of the interrogators in a largely male dominated agency. Her track record
during the past nine years of rogue operations had caused her employer to
recognize her considerable psychology skills and, most importantly, moral
flexibility when it came to completing assignments.
Nikki grabbed a Sig Sauer pistol off the table and
walked towards the elevator doors at the far end of the room. She wasn’t used
to being in such modern settings. Most of her work had been spent in psy-ops in
third-world countries with little more than a handful of crude instruments and
a few vials of persuasive meds to peel back her subjects psyche.
She walked through a series of steel doors and then
down a dimly lit hallway to the library. Inside were three of her men. One of
the men was leaning against the concrete wall, flipping a toothpick between his
fingers. The other two stood in the center of the room around a burly figure that
was zip tied to a wooden chair. Each of Nikki’s men had their MP-5 rifles
strung against their chests in a relaxed fashion. Two of the men had neatly
trimmed beards, while the man by the wall sported a mustache with a single stud
earring on his left side. On a nearby table were several walk-talkies, a neat
stack of MREs, and trauma kits, alongside a single row of rifle mags.
The man squirming in the chair was a bear-sized figure,
clad in a leather jacket, who went by the name Enrique. He had formerly headed
up the Sanchez Cartel in northern Mexico and his claws ran deep into Tucson and
Phoenix, before the collapse. His massive, hunched form barely fit on the seat
portion of the chair.
Nikki strode up to him. He squirmed his wrists in
the zip-ties and threw his bearded chin up, revealing a smile as she approached.
“Hey, alright. Now this is the kinda action I was
hopin’ for,” he said with a heavy accent. “I ain’t done it tied up in a while,
not since last week and that was in a backstreet, not at some fancy college.”
Nikki moved closer. The burly man’s breath and body
odor were overpowering. “Your putrescent demeanor reminds me of a hostage I
once tortured. I left him tied at the bottom of a mass grave in the desert heat
for a few days before his mind peeled back.
towns…are they all under the control of the bikers?”
“Their leader is being brought to me as we speak.
Our proxy war is about to get underway and, with our backing, they will be able
to crush any resistance in northern and central Arizona and help us close the
noose around the man we’re looking for. We only control a portion of the city,
at present. The rest is still over run by the undead mutants. Containment
efforts are impossible at this point other than around our immediate facility
and the downtown area, which has been barricaded.”
“Once you are done employing the local thugs,
incinerate the HQ and dispatch the bikers however you see fit. Despite the
distraction posed by the global pandemic, it’s never a good thing to have any
loose ends. Are we clear Nikki?”
“We sure are darlin’,” she smirked, then clicked the
video conference off and closed the laptop. Nikki walked over to a table beside
the wall of the stark room. The oblong mirror, with its wood trim, seemed out of
place amidst the rifle magazines and ammo cans on the floor below it. Standing
in front of it, she pulled her shoulders back and glanced down at her arms,
then moved her gaze slowly up to her neck and face. She exhaled and brushed a
lock of hair aside from her temple. Her lithe figure was that of an athletic
thirty six year old but the parallel scars on her neck, from an IED blast and a
deep furrow on her left temple, made her look much older.
She stood transfixed on her eyes, lips, and hair.
She tilted her head, trying not to focus on the unsightly scars. Nikki scanned
the contours of her face and powder-blue eyes. She knew that her lovely figure
and southern charm were only surpassed by her brilliant intellect. She was the
best of the interrogators in a largely male dominated agency. Her track record
during the past nine years of rogue operations had caused her employer to
recognize her considerable psychology skills and, most importantly, moral
flexibility when it came to completing assignments.
Nikki grabbed a Sig Sauer pistol off the table and
walked towards the elevator doors at the far end of the room. She wasn’t used
to being in such modern settings. Most of her work had been spent in psy-ops in
third-world countries with little more than a handful of crude instruments and
a few vials of persuasive meds to peel back her subjects psyche.
She walked through a series of steel doors and then
down a dimly lit hallway to the library. Inside were three of her men. One of
the men was leaning against the concrete wall, flipping a toothpick between his
fingers. The other two stood in the center of the room around a burly figure that
was zip tied to a wooden chair. Each of Nikki’s men had their MP-5 rifles
strung against their chests in a relaxed fashion. Two of the men had neatly
trimmed beards, while the man by the wall sported a mustache with a single stud
earring on his left side. On a nearby table were several walk-talkies, a neat
stack of MREs, and trauma kits, alongside a single row of rifle mags.
The man squirming in the chair was a bear-sized figure,
clad in a leather jacket, who went by the name Enrique. He had formerly headed
up the Sanchez Cartel in northern Mexico and his claws ran deep into Tucson and
Phoenix, before the collapse. His massive, hunched form barely fit on the seat
portion of the chair.
Nikki strode up to him. He squirmed his wrists in
the zip-ties and threw his bearded chin up, revealing a smile as she approached.
“Hey, alright. Now this is the kinda action I was
hopin’ for,” he said with a heavy accent. “I ain’t done it tied up in a while,
not since last week and that was in a backstreet, not at some fancy college.”
Nikki moved closer. The burly man’s breath and body
odor were overpowering. “Your putrescent demeanor reminds me of a hostage I
once tortured. I left him tied at the bottom of a mass grave in the desert heat
for a few days before his mind peeled back.
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