by Martha Twine
I could see Stuart, the local manager, a small, bad-tempered bully of a man in his late thirties. He belonged to an IRA family, hence his position. He had been a works manager, preparing rented accommodation for the unit’s increasing stream of visitors, but now he commanded the weapons divisions as well. He had two cars, both displaying his name on their number plates.
A group of low-level criminals and IRA cronies were gathered around the drinks table, to watch an elderly man being urged to attack me with an electronic weapon. Like Bill, the poor man had been a whistle-blower to his senior management, reporting internal corruption, but senior management decided to punish him for this foolhardy act. From then on, the guy was always fair game for other terrorists.
‘Please don’t make me,’ he begged, as he was hustled forward.
The manager shot him in the rear with a laser weapon, to motivate him further, and the others roared with laughter. A wave of anger rose up inside me, that I had never felt before. I reached out to the evil manager and started punching and hitting him. I wanted him dead. Using the power of the electromagnetic system that I was linked up to, I tore his jaw apart with my bare hands. I started tearing his head apart in strips, in an effort to prevent him torturing the poor man. I found that blowing at his body made it shrink back, as if burned, and I did so repeatedly.
After a while I stopped. What was left of his body fell to the floor. I turned around and saw the rest of the evil crew in full flight. It was my first killing. They had to send in some men to pick up what was left of the manager. Apparently, I had burned parts of his body to ashes, and there was a white scorch mark on the stones where he had been standing.
I spent some time thinking over what had taken place. Was the man really dead? If so, was there a possibility that I could repeat what I had done sufficiently to remove some of the prime movers behind the terrorist unit? It seemed unlikely, and I didn’t relish the idea. It was tiring bashing people about from the electromagnetic dimension, which was at a remove from our reality. But there were serial killers living not far from me, and they were still trying to kill people.
The British military now had the IRA’s technical activities locked down, but the terrorists could still wield some limited power, authorise killings, and profit from the money that Al-Qaida so generously provided. I remembered the deaths of neighbours, people in the town that I knew, and the death of my aunt. I wanted to kill their murderers.
There were three people in particular that I singled out. The first was an elderly woman called Rosemary. She was the grandmother of the Faeces Group, who had worked in Al-Qaida’s death camps in Algeria and North America, and belonged to an elite North American mafia family. The second was the well-known female torturer and IRA terrorist called Esme, who acted as Rosemary’s personal assistant. The third was a man called James, who worked in the secret research centre. His job was to supervise the termination of nonconsensual human research subjects, when no more money could be gained from carrying out experiments on them. He called upon the services of specialist technical staff to assist him in this work.
I had never tried to gain access to the premises of these people, but I knew where they lived. Using my mind to navigate the electromagnetic architecture, I entered the house where Rosemary and Esme lived. I could see everything clearly. I found them both on the second floor. They could not see me. Esme left the room just then. I struck Rosemary as hard as I could, and began to demolish her body. She fell to the ground, motionless, and I hoped that she was dead. Then Esme returned, and I did the same to her.
Still uncertain whether I had achieved what I set out to do, I went next door, to find James. He was busying himself with papers out the back, a secretary was hurrying in and out with even more papers and refreshments. I waited till he was alone and began to attack him. He realised what was happening, and fell to his knees in prayer.
‘What a pity you didn’t pray earlier on, before ordering the deaths of all your innocent victims!’ I shouted.
He could hear me, and turned his eyes heavenwards with a shrug of his shoulders, as if to say, ‘I guess this is it.’
That is how it ends for terrorists. Those who live by the sword know what to expect.
After that I went to bed, still unsure whether I had managed to make an impact in our ‘real’ world, as opposed to the sometimes-illusory dimension of electromagnetics. When I awoke next morning, there was silence. Nobody attacked me. Later, I heard the Syntel team whispering to each other. It was a peaceful day. I was never able to confirm for sure what had happened, but James’s car disappeared for three weeks. We learned that he was on holiday. Later, I saw his car being driven by a man I recognised as his understudy or lookalike. James was never seen again, and nor were Rosemary or Esme.
One afternoon, when it was still quiet, there were military helicopters over the secret research laboratory. That was usually a sign that Daesh soldiers were being entertained in there. I mentally logged on to the electromagnetic system to see what was happening. Sure enough, I found a room full of Afro-Asians, receiving refreshments. But my interest was caught by what was happening in a gracious adjoining room. Who would have thought that the research centre had anywhere so grand to entertain its guests?
There was a circular table, with all kinds of refreshments, and sitting round it were the big, the bad and the ugly, plus their partners. They were in the middle of a discussion about return on investment, and it seemed that business wasn’t doing so well. They were talking about the trauma-based ‘Child Super-Soldier’ side of the business, which the North American mafia were taking forward. They were working with teenagers, as well as young kids, and had to pick up a number of cases initiated and left unfinished by the American man who died of a self-inflicted heart attack earlier.
These children had been personally ‘developed’ by the dead American, and would not respond to programming from other scientists. The question was what to do about it. I looked at these elderly moneyed people, none of whom were British. They did not care about the human misery their investments created. But profits were not going up, and that was serious.
Leaping onto the table, I wished I had a long staff with a wooden knot on the end. I tried to imagine myself holding it. I had it. I whirred it around, knocking all the participants on the head. Some of them noticed something.
‘Did you feel a breeze just then?’ an elderly American remarked to his companion.
‘Yeah, I did as well,’ replied a man sitting across from him.
‘Good!’ I thought. ‘Let’s try something else’.
I imagined a large meat cleaver. Standing in the middle of the table I hit every alternate person on the head, disclosing a section of their brains. There were about thirty people there, so I must have hit about fifteen of them.
‘Ow! I’ve been hit!’ a woman jumped up from the table.
‘Honey, I don’t feel so good,’ cried another guest.
‘Look, there’s someone on the table!’ shouted a third.
The guests all stood up and stepped back. Their hosts suggested that they should go to their rooms and rest before dinner. The suggestion received general support. After that, I saw medics discreetly passing between the guest rooms, with transparent gauze to wrap round the heads of the wounded. Some of them reported feeling liquid oozing from their heads, even though nothing could be seen.
I sat down and thought over what I had learned. It seemed that I could do a fair bit to the terrorists, just by wanting to, provided that I was in an electromagnetic environment wired for ultrasound. The best results came when I blew or breathed at people or objects. I was not sure why that was, but - OK, great! I would try that again, next time someone attacked me.
Pretty soon the opportunity came. A weapons operative was ordered in to try and give me an involuntary bowel movement. This was a fairly routine attack, for which I was always prepared. But with my new-found powers I turned on him, slicing his head open with an imaginary meat cleaver, and brea
thed into his brain with force several times. To my surprise, he fell to the floor, and was pronounced brain dead. It only took two minutes to do this, and didn’t tire me out. A technician arrived with a couple of syringes, one to anesthetise him, the other to deliver a lethal injection.
I looked around the room where this scene was taking place. It was a typical office, set in a private house that had been turned into business premises. I blew at the furniture, pulling it up to the top of the house via the central stairwell. There were papers flying in all directions, and then a moment later, chairs came crashing down, hitting the terrorists, and damaging fixtures and fittings.
I moved my attention to the house next door, where the child brothel kids were having their meal. The room was rather refined, with cabinets full of cut glass and porcelain. I smashed the display cabinets. Then I went into the kitchen which had lots of mugs and plates displayed on a Victorian style dresser. With one whoosh, all the china and cutlery went flying in the air, landing with a crash. The kids came running in, exclaiming delightedly at the unexpected entertainment. The well-heeled IRA female who owned the property also came running in.
‘Oh, my cut glass! My cabinets!’ she cried.
‘Right!’ I thought. ‘It looks as if I can hit the bastards where it hurts, in their pockets. They didn’t much care about loss of life, but hit their property and they suddenly begin crawling out of the woodwork.’
THE DEATH CAMP
When the terrorists realised that I could fight back, and win, the IRA, ever alert for a money-spinning opportunity, began to call up other units, offering them a new service.
‘Bring your unwanted staff, and we’ll downsize your business, for a fee,’ was the message they were peddling.
This was timely, as since Al-Qaida’s withdrawal from the British Isles, it was becoming clear that the Revolution wasn’t going to happen, and that the covert part of the war had been lost. There weren’t going to be large numbers of civilians in prison camps. All those ground troops, carefully amassed over time, were now an expensive embarrassment.
Every day, a new group of criminals arrived to be led out before me, and ‘motivated’ to attack me. They included the oldest, the grossest and the least employable of the criminal community, plus the most bolshie unwilling young trouble makers, all objecting to their lot and demanding special treatment. I could see why the terrorist units wanted rid of them. But if that’s what they wanted, why hadn’t they the guts to do it themselves?
Some of the units just wanted their staff bashed about a bit, to toughen them up, so that they could write that they were ‘combat ready’ on their CVs. They sent in their young braves, who had been in training for the event, eager to achieve advancement.
I decided that where possible, I would remove the bosses and managers, and not touch the slaves and youngsters, unless really necessary. That would put a stop to the money-making element in our terrorist unit’s strategy, because other units would think twice about participating if they lost their managers but not their staff.
At first, this worked well. A mixed group of male and female terrorists arrived in the valley, and took up their positions excitedly. The females were seated around tables in synthetic telepathy rooms, while the males were lined up to attack me with electronic weapons. As the first one hit me, I cast my inner eye into the area. I saw a tall supervisory figure wearing black reinforced shielding gear. He looked a bit like a biker. I hit him, and breathed into his head. After half a minute, he fell to the ground unconscious, with no hope of recovery. The men from the research centre would soon be on their way to dispatch him humanely.
As their leader fell, the visitors let out a wail that echoed around the hills. The second in command bade a stiff goodbye to his hosts, and the entire team left, taking their money and their teenagers with them.
The local terrorist unit made a loss that day. But in the days that passed, they got wise to my tactics. The deal was now, ‘Bring out your legacy managers and we will free up your workforce’s promotion prospects.’
The junior terrorists were getting over-confident.
‘It’s all right, we can rip her apart. I’ve heard she only goes for the bosses,’ they chortled.
They often arrived tanked-up, which wasn’t so clever really, but considering the lives they led, and their future prospects, maybe it was understandable. In the end, I got fed up with the whole lot, and began laying about me, irrespective. If they attacked me, they got it. If they ordered attacks on me, they got it. If they mistreated each other, or preyed on victims, they got it.
My score went up from six to eight per day, then to fifteen to twenty, and, on one occasion, to over thirty in one day. I exceeded the two hundred mark. The men from the research centre who had to tidy up the bodies, found their business booming. At first, they buried bodies underneath the underground walkway, over thirty feet below ground. Soon this was no longer possible. The bodies were piling up, and had to be sprayed with preservative to stop them decomposing, while a long-term solution was developed. The research centre developed a laser cremation process that left no traces, and caused no inconvenience to local people. They charged other units a fee for these services, and made a profit.
But something was wrong. No matter how many terrorists I hit, there were more than ever the next day. The IRA’s local crack cocaine trafficking business was located in a valley just below me. Every day, small-time distributors would arrive to collect their little parcels, but they were being forced to spend a day in service to the IRA as payment for the drugs. The IRA was using these people as cannon fodder. If they died, then the IRA could keep the drugs.
The IRA had a contractual arrangement with Al-Qaida which stated that, if any of their troops were killed in action, they could claim ‘restitution’. This meant that they could get financial compensation in order to replace the lost personnel. In practice, unit heads regarded this as an opportunity to cash in their chips, and use the money for other things. All the units were heavily over-resourced, and they had to give their staff free board and lodging. Getting them killed was a great opportunity, and the prospect of restitution as well made the death camp business very attractive. It also gave IRA henchmen chances to earn bonuses on all sides. They were being slipped sweeteners to get particular staff killed first. Unpopular managers, unruly teenagers, and ageing retirees - they were all on the list, and ‘never would be missed’.
I decided to permanently remove the bodies of those I killed, so that restitution did not happen. At the same time, I had developed better methods of killing lots of them at once, quickly. I would draw a large net around a group of twenty perpetrators, and sealing the top of the net, would transport it to the African desert, where, from a height of about five hundred feet, I would open the net, and drop the people out of it. They all landed dead, saving me the trouble of dispatching them. I started doing this in a big way, and my tally quickly rose to three thousand.
Also, as described in the chapter on drug trafficking, I came to an understanding with those behind that side of the business. After I attacked their London HQ, they had moved to an underground warehouse by the Thames, with several floors below the river level. But their staff were still being used to attack me before collecting drugs for distribution. I hunted them out by their frequency, and appeared in the office of the big chief. He shrank back in shock, knowing that the hooded figure in the long black robe, holding a stick like a shepherd’s crook, could remove him and his staff.
‘I am not here to kill you,’ I said.
He relaxed.
‘What is it, then?’ he said.
‘The IRA are exploiting your staff as unpaid attackers, most of whom will not live long enough to collect their drug packages, and the IRA are then pocketing them instead,’ I said. ‘Is there some way you could do things differently?’
The big chief thought for a moment. Then his face brightened.
‘Leave it with me,’ he said.
A couple of days
later, the entire system had changed. The drug distributors no longer had to put in a day’s work for the IRA in order to earn their crack packages. The drugs were paid for in advance at high level, and all the distributors had to do was to go to the valley depot and collect them. I was impressed at the efficiency with which this arrangement was executed. It shot the IRA’s fox, and I never had any more trouble with that particular population of drug-trafficking villains.
The IRA had to look elsewhere for cannon fodder to come and attack me, so that they could make a profit on the dead bodies. They had their funders to consider. They continued to offer downsizing opportunities to other units, with the lure of larger financial inducements, should their staff prove successful in vanquishing me. I adopted a new tactic.
Using a device that looked like sugar tongs, I removed an arm and leg from each attacker and disposed of the limbs in the North Atlantic Sea. This method did not cause pain, but it prevented the IRA from claiming restitution, because operatives missing an arm and leg were not dead. But they could not continue in employment, nor could they be released alive into the outside world, where they might speak of what they knew. They had to be humanely put down by lethal injection, by IRA paramedics.
About this time, the technical staff employed by the nearby North American mafia underground research base all lost their jobs. The British military discouraged their bosses so much that they closed down, and withdrew from the British Isles. At first, they maintained a token presence, renting out their facilities to the IRA and Islamic State, but that attracted even more interest from the British Military, and, in the end, the buildings were left empty.
The unemployed technicians - IT and radio electronics specialists - went into business on their own, offering services from a building rented from the IRA. By now I had learned how to select entire buildings and drop their contents into the sea. This did not remove the bricks and mortar, but it wiped out the electronic architecture that supported the electromagnetic systems. You could tell when a building had been wiped, because, to those of us on the system, it looked like interference on a television screen, and an electronic wind current was blowing through, dislodging office papers that lay scattered on the floor.