Alice Webb’s fingers scuttled over her keyboard, jumping from her laptop to the control panel of the Norman & Joan Tyler Convention Center’s external security measures.  She’d put the finishing touches several hours ago on a definitive block to keep out the pesky team of Aegis tech wizards trying to retake the building, but she had also been given strict orders by a mortally paranoid Halle to make regular manual checks of the layout regardless.

            It hardly mattered now, though.  Even in her brief seven months under Aegis employ more than three years before, Alice had scooped up just about every trick she needed to tango with the best the Omegas had to offer, at least on a computer screen; in person would be an entirely different story.  Luckily, Alice’s arena of choice was in cyberspace, where the only size that mattered was measured in bytes.

            None of them had ever appreciated her there, anyway.  The fact that she’d remained in an entry level position for more than half a year was infuriating enough, but to have to stand by and watch in the unpunished aftermath of her best friend’s house being attacked by an Omega all to win back some Beta scum’s furniture… well, that was just about all the convincing Alice needed to learn she had been on the wrong side.  When the invitation for fulfilling alternative work with the Paradise sisters came through, it wasn’t much of a debate.

            “Alice,” came the call through her direct radio to Halle.

            “What’s up?” the girl said, clicking the button on her device.

            “We’re about ready to lay out the terms for our friends outside.  Go ahead and patch the same camera back through, if you please,” Halle said.

            “Will do,” Alice replied, tapping through a few screens on her laptop and opening up security just wide enough to let Aegis break through once again into the feed.  “There.  Done.”

            “What would I do without you?” Halle chuckled, cutting the communications line again.

            Alice shrugged in answer to the question even though no one could see her, idly tapping the rubber heel of her shoe against Max Lawson’s bound unconscious form still flopped on the floor like discarded butcher’s scraps.  With the VTOL nearly here, this whole escapade would soon be over, and she could finally get out of this room, which the Alpha was very much looking forward to because of how sore her butt was becoming.  More importantly, it would be time to cash her check, and judging from the number Halle had so casually pitched to her during the covert job interview, there were going to be many glorious days of lounging in the months to come.  Or weeks, depending on how fast she spent the cash.  Alice’s mother had always been a real stickler about “saving for the future,” but given how easily the girl could get what she wanted with a few clicks, it sounded awfully damn petty.

            She surveyed the blinking display screens around the room and leaned back in the swivel chair that served as her throne, folding her hands behind her head as a pillow.  If today really was going to be pulled off as smoothly as it was looking and the jobs continued to roll in, she knew she’d realistically only need to work for a combined total of maybe ten days for the rest of her life.

            The gleeful pontificating in Alice’s silent computerized sanctuary was rudely interrupted by the slamming of a metal grate in the ceiling, the view of which was blocked by a humming cabinet stacked with hard drives.

            Choking back a shriek, the awkward Alpha stumbled from her chair, nearly tripping on the wheeled lower legs, and made a dive for her loaded pistol resting on a side table.  Her fingers groped at the edge of its surface, but by that time Taylor already had snagged Alice by the ponytail.  The intruder slammed her victim’s head hard enough into the table that spatial awareness was suddenly slightly more impossible than defying gravity by blowing bubbles.  Ben, huddled in his new friend’s pocket, was rattled by the impact, but held tight to the fabric of her pants, knowing this was necessary to have any kind of chance at retaking the hostage Betas.

            Alice, sputtering back tears of shock as she flopped to the floor, attempted to distinguish shades of the color spectrum around her.  She wobbled back to her haunches to retaliate.  Taylor acted quickly and tore the radio off the techie’s jacket and slid it over the tabletop.  From there, she delivered a knee to the unprepared Alpha’s head that conked her back to the floor, where she remained in a fearful curl.

            “All right, buddy,” Taylor sighed happily.  She gripped the utility belt around her waist that she’d ripped from Roger’s unconscious and now-conveniently incapacitated body and pulled loose a roll of duct tape she’d yanked from a toolbox in the north wing.  “I’ve got a couple easy questions that you’re going to give me easy answers to.  If not, we’ll talk about pulling some of that hair of yours off.  Got it?”

             “So you see, Madam Director, or whatever the hell they’re deciding to call you now…” Halle sang into the auditorium camera in plain enough sight for Abby Lindon.  “…it’s really a pretty good deal for you, when you think about it.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

            There was a stinging pause on the other end of the comm line.  “Just tell me your terms one more time,” Abby ordered stonily into Dawn’s laptop microphone.  Once again, Omegas and Alphas of Aegis alike crowded around on all sides, holding their breaths at the possibility of this whole nightmare coming to an end soon.

            “With pleasure,” Halle said, holding up her fingers to count through each.  “Number one: you and all your super-friends back away from the building.  All the way back, off the freeway and over the hills.  I don’t even want to see you in the camera feed.  And then when our ride gets here, you’re going to stay right where you are, and let us leave nice and quiet-like with our boxes of little friends.”

            Abby shut her eyes, clawing her fingers into the opposite palms.  Claire’s hand squeezed her mother’s shoulder.

            “And?” Abby grunted.

            “Number two: after we leave, you’re all going to go into the city and take down every Beta school.  Every elementary, every community college, and every goddamned daycare.  Not with your bare hands.  With fire.”

            “All right,” came the frigid reply.

            “And number three: you’re going to wipe every existing computer record for every single Beta.  Not just the ones we have.  Everyone.  A clean slate.  No identities.  Nothing,” Halle explained, taking a deep breath and extending her arms amiably toward the camera.  “And once you can prove you’ve wiped them all.  Once we can turn on a TV to any channel and see a Beta school going up in flames.  Then you’ll get your precious vermin back.”

            Abby’s eyes flashed up to the sky a final time, already savoring the look on the faces of these monsters once Kayla returned with the might to hurl them all high enough to see the curvature of the globe.

            All this was temporary.  Everything these people wanted was replaceable.  They simply needed to buy time now for those kids.  The Omega locked her lips, wrestling back a slurry of words intended to skewer the pious terrorist grinning broadly at her through the monitor.

            There would be time for that later.  And plenty of it.

            “You’ll have your terms,” Abby said numbly into the device.

            “So happy to hear you’re coming around to our side finally,” Halle commented.  “Start backing the fuck up now or we’re going to have some in-flight snacks on the way out of this shithole of a city.”  With that, the silver-eyed vixen pointed a pistol into the camera and fired, shattering the lens and snapping the feed to black.

            “Well?” Sonja said earnestly to her boss as she dug through her duffel bag and removed a grenade launcher longer than her arm, balancing it against her shoulder for support.

            “It’s show time,” Halle confirmed.  “Gail, you’re up.”

            “Whatever you say, boss,” her sister grunted without looking Halle in the face.  Her fingers danced over one of her kerambit handles, stroking underneath the blade as she marched up onto the stage and navigated between the aisles of Beta gas chambers toward the utility exit.  Sonja followed eagerly behind, already loading ammo into her clunky ordinance.

            “And for shit sakes, Sonja, don’t put one of those into an Omega unless they get too close.  We want this clean, just like we planned, clear?” Halle warned, having seen the hungry glint in her hired gun’s eye.

            “Whatever you say, boss,” the woman called back mockingly, echoing Gail’s tone as the deadly duo slammed the door behind them.  Halle, shaking her head jovially, came up next to Alma.

            “You’ve done good work, Warren.  Really,” she said, patting the disgruntled convict on the back of the head as she gazed adoringly over the silent stacks of Beta containers as though it comprised a gorgeous mountain landscape.  “And believe me, I’m not easily impressed.  You’ve really outdone yourself with all this.  I mean, I’d read about some of your handiwork, but… Christ, were they holding you back before!”

            “They were holding all of us back,” Alma said with a hint of mania.  “It’ll be different after today.”

            “I expect it will, yes,” Halle replied, running a finger down the length of her chin as she studied each and every towering execution stack.  “This will just be the start.  We’ve got a lot of work still to do.  Like my mom used to say, knock ‘em over, and kick ‘em while they’re down.”

            “After today, they’ll be too afraid to try getting back up anyway,” Alma said, at last shutting the cover of the mechanical access panel in the center of her device.  She looked into her own deadened eyes in the brassy reflection, realizing she couldn’t quite recognize it as herself, and felt gladder for it.

            “I hope you’ll consider coming with us after this is all over.  The pay day is nice, especially from the people who chose to invest in us, but… that’s never been your game, has it?” Halle posed softly.   “You’re like Gail and me.  You believe in something more important.”

            Spreading her lips as she narrowed her eyes, boring into the image of her sunken face in the cold metal, Alma exhaled a hellish fog that blotted out her mirrored visage.  Satisfied, the Alpha rose back to her feet and repaid Halle with eye contact at last.

            “When do we start?” she asked simply.

            “Immediately, if you can,” the Paradise leader smirked, patting her bloodthirsty recruit on the back.  “Unless you were planning on taking a vacation first, of course.  Which, truth be told, I could use one myself after sitting in a dusty little basement for a year with nothing but a shitload of blueprints and my sister’s knife collection.”

            “Not a vacation,” Alma responded, placing a hand delicately over her heart.  “There’s… someone I need to see before we go dark again.  Someone I’ve waited a… very, very long time to visit.  It can start to get awfully lonely in prison when you don’t get to see your family, you know?”

            Halle’s pearly irises flared as she finally understood.  “A reunion, huh?  I think that could be easily arranged.  After all the fun’s over here, we’ll lay low for a while, take you to see your little princess, and then get back to base again.  Trust me, there’s some real magic cooking over there.  I think you’re going to have a ball.”

            “I’m sure I will,” the cadaverous inventor agreed.  She gave her machine a last loving nudge with the tip of her boot and then stepped away with Halle, sauntering back up onto the stage.  “Give me the toys and I’ll make you something beautiful.”

            “If it’s half as beautiful as this, I don’t think we’ll have any problems finding you work,” Halle sighed as the two spent a few moments admiring the architecture of Alma’s annihilation artistry under the dim theatre lighting that seemed to catch them all at their most haunting and dramatic angles.  Their eyes worked over each deadly edge, their ears straining to make out the intermingled anguished cries of a generation, so much so that both glossed over the creak of the rear exit in the auditorium.  “Imagine it, Warren.  Anything you can dream up, we’ll be able to do.  Smoking out an entire city, sticking whatever’s left of them up on poles for the cameras to see…”

            “…scrubbing the shit out of your prison toilet?” Taylor suggested helpfully as she tiptoed closer to the women, by this time already halfway up the velvety carpet en route to the stage.

            Halle pivoted back around before the sentence was even out: her handgun drawn, cocked, and aligned perfectly with Taylor’s nose.  The latter couldn’t even take another step.  Recognizing the threat without further prompting, the dark-haired intruder stopped walking and winsomely raised both hands over her head in supposed surrender but kept her eyes locked onto the barrel of her former employer’s weapon.

            “You know, maybe I didn’t make this clear before, but when I fire someone, it’s kind of a done deal,” Halle simpered, hopping off the stage but keeping her firearm steady and level to blow a hole through Taylor’s cranium if the mood should strike her.  “Perhaps I didn’t explain myself well enough the first time.  Though I thought Gail might’ve done it better for me.”

            “I know.  I was surprised she didn’t kill me, too,” Taylor chuckled good-naturedly.  She eyed Alma upon the ledge, as the woman remained stock-still, her marble-black eyes twitching cautiously at the young Convention Center worker.  Taylor knew the catlike death designer was high-strung enough to suspect something was amiss, unlike her over-confident boss, who by now was close enough to smack her target across the face with her weapon as well as just gunning her down.

            “And to think she’s accusing me of going soft,” Halle sighed with a shrug, tapping Taylor in the forehead with the shaft of the piece before looking over her shoulder to Alma.  “Oh well.  I guess this is what makes me the smart sister.”

            “Is it, though?” Taylor challenged quietly, lowering her hands just enough to snap the night-vision goggles she’d stolen from Roger onto her eyes.  The sound startled Halle, prompting her to turn back around and face Taylor with a confused frown.  All she received in reply was a bizarrely victorious grin and a casual salute.

            A cacophonous fireworks display of spurting sparks and crackling outlets spread instantly across every wall and ceiling.  Ben, who’d just managed to crawl his way back into Sonja’s duffel bag while Taylor stalled for time, heaved with all his bodily strength, miniscule though it was, into the activation plates on the portable short-range EMP.  With a blinding flash that deep-fried the lights and fizzled out the remote control connection to Alma’s device, the auditorium was plunged into darkness.

            Halle, panicking for perhaps the first time in her life, fired a round into the void and hit only air as Taylor landed a right hook across the Alpha’s pristine cheek.