Chapter Fifty-Seven – Assassination

Chapter Fifty-Seven – Assassination

“Assassinations are–of all the black jobs–somewhat expensive.

It’s a very competitive business, after all.”

–Interview with Professor Hands, President of Off-Corp LLC, 2048

***

I glanced up and found the man immediately, the red outline that Myalis was painting on my augs helping to spot him.

He was a normal-looking kind of guy, a bit sweaty in his six-figure three-piece, but otherwise he didn’t stand out from the other corpo-likes attending the gala. Just another guy here to chat it up, drink some expensive crap, and listen to Burringham talk about how great he was.

The difference was that most of the other corpos in the building didn’t have guns mounted on the inside of their forearms, and if they did, they weren’t aiming them at Burringham.

I reached my arm around and shoved Lucy back. Her chair tipped over and she screamed as she flailed. “Sorry,” I said, but my attention was elsewhere.

Lucy was safe-ish, at least I hoped she’d be out of the way of any shooting. My augs locked onto the assassin and my cyberwarfare software cut through his security as if they were little more than cobwebs. I had a lot of options from there, but turning all of his augs off seemed the easiest.

He noticed, it was obvious, the way his eyes widened and his arm went limp.

Burringham was safe.

Then the asshole grabbed his prosthetic arm with his meaty one, tugged his wrist down at an angle that looked frankly disgusting, and he aimed it towards the podium.

The bang of the first shot was like… well, a gunshot in a crowded room. People screamed, some ducked under tables, and Burringham’s speech cut off with a scream.

The railguns in the back of my suit deployed, unfolding with smooth efficiency before both of them fired, leaving twin lines of smoke in the air connecting me to the gunman.

“Shit,” Gomorrah said in a very unnunlike fashion. She stood up, grabbed an indignant Frannie, and moved her closer to Lucy. “Go,” she said to me.

The implication was clear. She’d keep Lucy and Frannie safe while I went out and took care of all the more troublesome shit.

I nodded to her and jumped onto and over our table.

There were two choices here. Either I took care of the gunman, or I tried to see if I could do anything for Burringham. In the suddenness I didn’t see if he was injured or not. The gunman might give me answers, but Burringham’s health mattered more.

That decided it for me.

I shot off towards the stage and arrived just as the first of Burringham’s security detail reached him. I found some beefy guy stepping up ahead of me, but I shoved him to the side and dropped to one knee next to Burringham.

He wasn’t shot anywhere nice and romantic like the shoulder or in the leg, instead he had a nice pinprick wound right in his side. His arm was probably raised to gesture when he got hit.

“Take off his jacket,” I said.

“Ma’am–” one of the security guys started to say.

“I’m healing him here and now,” I said. “But I need to know more about the wound.”

“‘S fine,” Burringham said. He waved the security off with an arm.

“We should at least move him to somewhere more secure,” one of the guards said.

I considered it for a second, then nodded. “Get him up. Is there a medical station we can bring him to?”

“There’s a nurse’s station one floor down,” the guard said.

“Is the kitchen closer?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Kitchen then,” I said. “Myalis, can you tell me anything about Burringham, the gunner?”

The gunman’s being moved out of the hall by security, he’s currently attempting to trigger a suicide device planted in the base of his jaw, but you deactivated it.

I chuckled as I backed up and let one of the guards scoop Burringham up. We ran past his secretary, who was so pale I was afraid she might faint, the trail of blood we left as we ran past didn’t help.