Inside Bertha’s Salon, Sheriff Meadows slammed a phone receiver down on the countertop. Sitting a foot away, a burly deputy named Anthony tried his best to look busy behind his laptop. As the department’s only tech guy, it was his responsibility to patch the salon directly into all lines coming out of the bank.

  He was failing.

  “Are you sure this is working correctly?” Meadows tried to reign in his anger, but the situation made it almost impossible. “Tony!” The burly deputy’s head raised about two inches above the back of his laptop. “Did you hear me? Are- you- sure- this- is- working- correctly?”

  “I thought it was.”

  “You thought? You thought!” Before Tony could respond with a lame excuse, the front doors flew open. Justine, Mosley, and Saunders filed into the room then made a beeline to the makeshift conference table. Saunders immediately saw the frustration on the sheriff’s face, so he directed Mosley toward the salon’s sparse waiting area.

  “Sheriff,” Saunders motioned for Justine to step forward. “This is my partner, Justine Rushing.” The two quickly shook hands in the manner of people meeting under stressful circumstances.

  “Nice to meet you, Agent Rushing.” Meadows looked down at her muddy pink shoes. Instantly, his hopes for a swift resolution to the situation dropped. Why the hell did he get out of bed this morning, he thought to himself. “So, exactly what type of help can we expect from the FBI today?”

  “Well,” Justine said, practically bursting out of those same pink Nike’s. All she wanted to do was go in there and kill that bastard. “I think…”

  “Sheriff,” Saunders broke in before his young partner could get started. “Agent Rushing is our tactical expert. I’m confident she can brief your team on the best way to enter the bank and subdue the subject.” He could feel her penetrating stare but paid little attention to her theatrics. “As far as any direct intervention, I’m afraid that is not something I can authorize now.”

  Meadows thought about saying something like that’s all the government is good for anyway when the front doors to the salon opened once again. This time, only a single person entered. A man, with a tablet tucked under his right arm, casually strolled over without any regard for anyone.

  “Sheriff Meadows,” Foster grasped his hand as tightly as he could. Meadows barely felt it. “I understand you’re having a little trouble seeing inside that bank.”

  “Yes,” Meadows tried to make eye contact with his technician. But Tony was too embarrassed to even look in his direction. “My computer expert tells me that the system is completely internal. Nothing short of being in the bank’s security office will suffice.”

  Hurt by his boss’s words of condemnation. Tony finally mustered enough courage to return his gaze. “The bank streams their video files offsite to one of those cloud security firms. I’ve tapped into the data stream, but it’s encrypted. We don’t have the hardware capable of cracking it.”

  The sheriff scolded the deputy with a contemptuous look that sent the burly kid back to doing busy work on his laptop. Meadows turned around and confessed the painfully obvious. “We’re not exactly set up for this type of operation.”

  “Well, you’re in luck… because we are.” Foster found an empty spot on the table and laid his tablet down. With everyone watching, he slowly backed away as the four panels slid open to reveal the tiny hologram emitters. Hoover automatically knew what Foster had in mind, and his reaction was one of prideful surprise.

  “Shock and awe,” Hoover commented as the emitters began to fire up. “That’s your plan?”

  Justine, still with her earpiece in, once again had been brought into the loop. “What does Shock and Awe mean?”

  “What does that mean?” Foster fought back the urge to yell at Hoover. Hadn’t he given him explicit instructions to keep the line just for them right now? Shrugging off his anger, he smiled at an easily excitable Justine. “Just a concept I picked up in prison.”

  Before anyone could respond to such a loaded statement, a holographic orb flashed to life in an explosion of bluish white light above the small tablet. Pulsing to some unknown beat, the projection cast an eerie glow across everyone in the salon.

  Foster moved forward and touched the sphere with his forefinger. The globe reacted violently, splitting in two before stretching out evenly in four different directions to form a perfect rectangle. At the center of that rectangle, another image appeared, marked by the words FIRST TRUST.

  Foster pressed the blinking photonic icon.

  “Saunders,” Meadows stumbled backward into one of the salon’s decrepit hair drying units. “What is that?”

  “Well,” Saunders fumbled around, trying to find the right words.

  “This is a new tactical briefing device the FBI’s field testing.” Foster noticed the agent struggling to come up with a plausible lie and he was more than happy to provide one. “You know? For when you need to run a PowerPoint in the field.”

  Meadows laughed nervously as the blue rectangle took on a black hue before morphing into four smaller screens. Marked by sequential numbers, each screen contained various feeds from inside the bank. Except for the fourth one, which was from the ATM camera because it only displayed police cruisers.

  But it was the second feed that drew everyone’s attention. A rotating view of the bank lobby, the pictures streaming through the holographic interface were devoid of anything worth seeing. Anything except the two bodies that laid sprawled across the floor.

  “Do you recognize them, Sheriff?” Foster asked.

  Meadows took a cautious, unwanted step forward toward the unbelievable situations. “Not really,” he pressed his shaking hand up against the image, and it expanded to fill the entire projection. “Wow,” he pulled back his hand. “This thing is responsive!”

  “It reads your mind,” Mosley interjected sarcastically from the couch, having already seen this little dog and pony show. Foster’s cool act was really starting to grate on him. Sheriff Meadows, on the other hand, was fascinated by what he was seeing.

  “It does?”

  “Not really,” Foster drew the sheriff’s attention back to the bodies on the screen where Hoover had enhanced the image for low light conditions. “What about now?”

  Meadows stared at the much brighter picture. “The one right there,” the sheriff was careful not to touch the hologram again. “His name is Andrew. He is… He was the new security guard at the bank.”

  “Are you positive?” Saunders asked somberly. “This isn’t the best quality image.”

  “I personally ran his background check for the bank. You see that uniform?” Everyone could plainly see the man’s blue and grey uniform. “I was there the day they issued it to him. He’s got a baby on the way.” He pointed to a dark stain that covered much of his slumping back. “And if I’m not mistaken… that’s a gunshot wound.”

  “Yes, it is.” Foster pressed just below the square. Instantly, footage from two hours ago began to play. After it finished playing, Sheriff Meadows was practically in a panic.

  “That’s it.” The middle-aged lawman reached out and tried in vain to manipulate the image to no avail. “There’s no other angles? What happened to the rest of the employees, the customers?”

  “No, the rest of the footage shows him herding the remaining tellers off toward the rear of the building. From that point on, there’s no real usable footage.”

  “Nothing that shows where they're at right now?” Foster asked and relayed.

  “No.” Hoover said sullenly.

  “No, Sheriff” Foster informed.

  Sheriff Meadows radioed for a couple of his deputies to station themselves a little closer to the front entrance since the lobby was clear. “Show me the other cameras.”

  As asked, Foster cycled through the other two feeds which included the area in front of the vault and a reverse angle of the lobby. Each grainy black and white video was devoid of life and movement. He was about to move on when Justine noticed something suspicious on the vault camera.

  “What’s that dark stain on the floor?” She moved next to the hologram and pointed to what looked like dark jelly smeared across the tiles. “Can you enhance it?”

  “I don’t know.” Foster enlarged that portion of the image until nothing else remained. “Can we?”

  After running a few different programs, Hoover snorted into their earpieces loudly. “No, this bank’s cameras are barely equipped with one CCD panel. The resolution they provide is barely one level above an Etch a Sketch.”

  “Pixels,” he said quietly to himself out of frustration, remembering the talk he had with Mouse a couple of days ago when pixels were the most essential thing in the world. But now, as he looked around at a room full of scared and anxious cops, he knew it wasn’t. “That’s as good as we’re going to get.”

  “What about where it came from?” Justine leaned so close to the beam that her chin turned blue.

  “Maybe,” Foster tweaked the hologram again until the entire scene reverted to its original framing. Then, with another subtle tweak, the video began to rewind at a furious pace. Until eventually, the screen filled up with the blurry images of the hostages.

  “Stop!” Justine shouted. “There they are.”

  “Got it,” Foster pressed another holographic button. The video instantly slammed on the brakes before returning to normal speed. “It looks like they’re being herded toward the back of the building. But why?”

  The room watched the visibly shaken bank employees trudge across the air in front of them from right to left. Until, at the very end of this subdued procession, a young man in an expensive suit stopped near the edge of the camera’s viewing area.

  “I know that man,” Sheriff Meadows admitted quickly. “That’s Lonnie Brewster. He handled my house loan last year.”

  “What does he think he’s doing?” Saunders asked in disbelief as Lonnie spun around just as the stranger entered the camera’s view. Seemingly unafraid of consequences, the suited man took a step toward him. “Is he trying to be a hero?”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “No,” Meadows knew the man well from their past dealings, and what happened next was not all that surprising. “Lonnie has a temper. He doesn’t like it when people push him around.”

  This statement was immediately reinforced by Lonnie stepping forward and saying something inaudible to his captor. Since the feed was video only, the group could only guess what he said. However, from the demeanor of his body language, it was not a plea for mercy.

  At first, the stranger ignored Lonnie’s threats. He motioned him to move forward with Andrew’s stolen gun. Lonnie ignored the stranger’s warning. Defiantly, the bank manager took another step toward him. “Damn fool,” Meadows howled at the screen. “Why do you always have to push things, Lonnie?”

  In response to this brazen act, the stranger raised the gun and leveled it at Lonnie’s face. A minute-long standoff ensued, interspersed with disembodied hands coming from somewhere off-screen, trying desperately to pull Lonnie away from danger. Still angry, the banker struggled against their attempts.

  In the scramble, Lonnie stepped within an arm’s length of the stranger’s gun. Then, apart from Lonnie’s screams, nothing happened. The stranger just stood there, seemingly stunned into inaction by the man’s unwillingness to be afraid in the face of certain death.

  “Why doesn’t he just move on?” Saunders asked the Sheriff. “He’s unarmed.”

  “Because” Meadows sighed heavily. “He’s Lonnie.”

  But just when it looked like nothing more would occur, the stranger lowered his weapon and fired two quick and silent shots into the floor. The muzzle flashed, and chips of shattered tile sent Lonnie hopping backward out of fear.

  The stranger, wasting no time to see if that did the trick, lunged forward and cracked the 9mm squarely up against his prisoner’s head. His strike was so forceful that his prey crumpled to the floor without so much as a defensive move.

  “Jesus!” Meadows exclaimed in horror as the stranger knelt over Lonnie’s defenseless body.

  Like a wild beast, he began to viciously strike every vulnerable spot available to his malice. Face, neck, stomach, groin, nothing was forgotten or spared. The scene didn’t even look real. It looked like a horror movie.

  Then, just as quickly as the violence began, it stopped.

  Satisfied, the stranger stepped over Lonnie’s beaten form and pointed his gun at the others. When their disembodied arms vanished from sight, he knelt and without concern or care, flipped Lonnie onto his stomach. Then, this madman snatched him up by the collar of his jacket and dragged his still twitching body out of frame.

  “Now we know where the smudge came from,” Justine whispered softly.

  No one in the command center said anything for what seemed like forever. And for a group of people trained in the psychology of killers, this scene left them very little to go on but anger and loss. Eventually, Foster turned to the group and broke the silence.

  “That’s all I’ve got on him. If he’s in the bank, he’s hiding them in one of the building’s blind spots.”

  “Agent Saunders,” Meadows pulled him away from the group, toward one of the aging hair rinse stations. “My men are fine under normal circumstances. But you and I know this is not a normal situation.” Meadows wished he was back by his tiny window. “Are you sure there is no way you could help? Maybe scramble an HRT team out of DC.”

  Saunders thought about that possibility for a second. Under normal conditions, he could call in a Hostage Rescue Team no problem. But like Meadows said, this wasn’t a normal situation. The director’s orders were completely clear. Keep a low profile and keep any interaction with the locals to a bare minimum.

  “Sheriff,” he started to say no, but Foster interrupted.

  “Agent Rushing is HRT certified.”

  Saunders turned around to see Foster and Justine examining a detailed schematic of the bank. Each victim’s body was marked with a dot, and each dot was connected to the front door by a line that provided an exact measurement of distance. “She could enter the building here and ascertain what is going on without putting anyone in harm’s way.”

  “Except,” Sheriff Meadows cautioned. “Wouldn’t she be in harm’s way?”

  Foster smiled. “I don’t think she would mind all that much.”

  Justine nodded like a puppy dog ready to go on a walk. “Jeff,” she pointed at the two lifeless bodies. “You don’t want to send locals in there unprepared. You saw how detached that attack was. They’ll be torn to shreds.”

  “You’re probably right, Justine. But I have my orders. You have your orders.” He moved between her and Foster. “I don’t want to rehash old arguments, but the director was exacting when it came to your loadout specs.” Saunder’s eyes drifted back to the screen and the two dead bodies. “Do you really want to go in there with nothing but a stun gun?”

  “Depends on the stun gun,” Foster said, pulling out that unusual piece of equipment from his satchel. Looking like something from a science fiction movie, the weapon was the perfect mix of high-end art and 70’s action flick. He presented it to a slightly dumbstruck Justine.

  “What’s that?” Justine said in a high pitched, crackhead tone of voice. Her fingers involuntarily twitched. “That’s not a stun gun.”

  Foster swiveled the gun around so both agents could get an unhindered view of the weapon.

  “Not technically,” he admitted proudly. “Given the firing system, the more accurate term to describe it would be ‘rail gun.’”

  His interest piqued by the words rail gun. Mosley temporarily freed himself from his doldrums and joined Foster by the conference table. “Rail gun?” He quickly glanced at the weapon with a disbelieving eye. “There’s no way something that small could be a rail gun.”

  Made from the same jet-black material as the tablet, the weapon’s curved, oversized barrel measured approximately eight inches in length. Bolstered by two smaller tubes, the barrel tied into a rectangle shaped piece of metal that on a regular gun would be the slide. But instead of a cocking hammer, the end of the slide contained a small, touch-sensitive screen.

  Also, the oddly curved device reflected almost none of the room’s ambient light.

  Justine stood there, hands extended, like a child waiting for their Christmas present. But before she could receive it, Mosley made a somewhat skeptical conclusion. “Rail guns require a large barrel to work properly. The math on that is pretty exact. I don’t see how something that compact could be called a rail gun.”

  “It wouldn’t.” Foster sympathetically shook his head at his friend’s mistake. “That’s why I said technically. Actually, the techs at Meade liked to refer to it as an electric slingshot.”

  “An electric slingshot?” Justine asked with a twinkle in her eye. “That’s not a cool name for a hand-held rail gun.”

  “Then what would you consider a cool name?”

  Justine considered it for a moment. “How about calling it a ‘Slinger’?”

  “Slinger? I guess that works.” Foster pointed to the largest part of the newly christened Slinger. “This is what you might consider the barrel of the weapon. In truth, this is the launch apparatus. See these two small housings, right along the x-axis. These are high-frequency magnets. The magazine…”

  From a narrow space between the touch screen and the grip, Foster ejected a spring-loaded piece of transparent plastic. “Inside this magazine is a semi-metallic solution designed to work with this weapon.” He slid the clip back into place then ran his thumb against the touch screen. “Once the solution is charged, the magnets accelerate it down the length of the barrel.”

  Foster twisted the gun around. “You see the two readouts on the touch screen?” Two numbers appeared right on top of one another, 100 and 3. “The top one is your shot capacity, and the bottom one is your charge indicator. Unlike most stun guns that have only two settings, this weapon… this slinger has ten.”

  Mosley maneuvered around Foster so he could see the screen. “Why would a stun gun need multiple settings and what in the hell does it fire… electrified water?”

  “First, you can never have too many settings on anything. Secondly, electrified water,” Foster looked at him with sad eyes. “I thought you were a physicist?”

  “A theoretical physicist,” Mosley said through clenched teeth. “And a very good one.”

  “Well, then consider these reality-based physics.” Without saying anything else on the subject, Foster went back to his demonstration. “One through five will take down your average criminal… fast. Settings six through nine will pacify a target even when they’re wearing body armor. Number nine will take down a bodybuilder on meth every time.”

  Always seeking the limit of things, Justine instinctively asked. “What about setting ten?”

  “Ten?” Justine’s excited face caused Foster to hesitate. “Setting ten is currently locked out, Agent Rushing.”

  “Why?” She asked in a half pleading, half telling tone. “Anyone who uses an unknown weapon needs to be fully briefed. That’s just a safety concern.”

  Foster spoke very slowly, wondering whether she would try and snatch the gun out of his hand. “Because if you shoot someone on level ten, it will stop their heart.”

  “You mean this thing can kill?” Mosley raised an eyebrow. “Stun guns don’t kill.”

  “Tell that to a person sitting in an electric chair.” Foster cycled the power settings until the readout read nine. Then, he tried to push the weapon to ten, but the gun wouldn’t respond. “It’s a weapon, Dr. Mosley. In theory, any weapon can kill if used the right way.” He thumbed the weapon back down to four. “But as I said, level ten is currently locked out.”

  “You still didn’t answer my question. What exactly does this thing fire? Water, even semi-metallic water won’t hold enough of a charge to do anything like you’re describing.”

  “This weapon doesn’t fire electrified water, Dr. Mosley. Though, something like that would make a terrific addition to one of those Super Soaker line ups… preschool crowd control?”

  Foster’s mind drifted away until Justine punched him in the arm, snapping him back to reality. “Ow… uh no, this weapon fires electrified plasma.”

  Justine couldn’t stand not touching the thing any longer. So, with the skills of a ninja, she relieved Foster of his toy and began fiddling with the settings. In the meantime, Saunders was thinking hard about Fitz Hume’s warning. Only weapons that run on electricity, that’s what he said, and that’s what this Slinger ran on. Right?

  Besides, he knew all too well about losing men in the field. If he could help it, he wasn’t going to let Meadows suffer that fate.

  “I’ll send in Agent Rushing, but just as a recon element and nothing else. Is that understood, Agent Rushing… Justine?”

  It took some coaxing, but she finally stopped playing with her new toy long enough to answer him. “Yes, sir.”

  Meadows and Saunders peeled off from the group to another part of the salon to prepare. While a visibly upset Mosley returned to the couch, sat down and closed his eyes tightly. He regretted not staying back at the mobile lab with Barbara. Numbers and women, he said to himself, that’s my specialty. “This is why I don’t do field work.”

  All alone, Foster tried to tell Justine something important, but the enticing Slinger had her much too enthralled to think straight.

  “She’s in love,” Hoover interjected over a momentarily private feed. “At least you won’t have to buy her a ring.”

  “Shut up,” Ignoring his friend’s taunts, he placed a gentle hand beneath the agent’s chin then tilted her face up to meet his eyes. For a second the weapon’s spell was broken. “There’s just one more thing you need to know about the gun.”

  “What?” Her awe turned to raw excitement. “There’s more?”

  “To fire it, just tap the trigger like you were clicking a mouse. Don’t hold the trigger down for any length of time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Foster took back the Slinger from her envious hands, pulled back on the trigger and didn’t let go. “This will happen.”

  Justine watched in amazement as the tip of the barrel started to faintly glow the same shade of blue as everything else in his menagerie. Then, the burgeoning light began to crackle like a highly electrified fence in the rain. “Once the weapon is charged like this, it has to be discharged before you can fire it again.”

  “How do you discharge it?”

  Foster saw the unattended police laptop, and he thought this would be the perfect way to demonstrate.

  “Like this.” He barely pressed the Slinger’s barrel against the keyboard. Instantly, the weapon’s stored electrical charge transferred to the laptop, and the device exploded into three large pieces of charred plastic.

  “What the hell!” Mosley sat bolt upright. Upon seeing the remnants of the explosion, he laid back down. “Are you trying to kill yourselves or worse… me?”

  “No way!” Justine squealed, grabbing the gun back from Foster’s startled hands. She had always dreamed of something like this. “So, this thing works like a regular stun gun as well?”

  “That feature was designed for close quarters combat. But after seeing what that man did to Mr. Brewster, I wouldn’t recommend trying to use it up close. This thing fires at a velocity equivalent to a high-powered rifle. All you have to do is pull the trigger, and whoever killed those people should be on the ground.”

  “Saunders,” her mind stuttered. “He said I should just gather intelligence.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to get you into any more trouble. But I need to talk to that man. If the locals go in their guns blazing, no matter how incompetent you judge them to be, they might get off a lucky shot.”

  “Don’t kill him?” She weighed her options before speaking. “You think he’s related to everything else we’ve seen today? You think he’s related to your signal?”

  “It’s a possibility, Agent Rushing. One I can’t overlook.” He glanced back to the security feeds and the two dead bodies lying motionless on the floor. “I’ve waited eight years, Agent Rushing. I’m not willing to let someone I can’t completely trust handle this.”

  “And you trust me?” Justine found the idea of someone trusting her with something that important after less than two days laughable. “Don’t you know, Foster, I’m the shoot first and shoot later type of girl?”

  “I do.”

  The young agent’s excited, almost childlike gaze suddenly transformed into a death stare.

  “Foster,” her words were parsed with meaning and dread. “Normally, it takes people a few weeks to understand this about me. But since we’re on a tight timetable, I’ll give you the cliff notes. I will not allow innocent people to be put in harm’s way. I don’t care what Saunders says, what Fitz Hume says, or even what you say. I will not allow that psychopath to kill anyone else.”

  “Agent Rushing,” that sly grin erupted across his face, and Justine couldn’t decide whether to punch him or shoot him with her new ray gun. “If you don’t kill him, I could care less about what you do to that son of a bitch.”

  Justine returned his smile. “Now that’s an order I can live with.”