So he was no longer a demigod of walking destruction, but then again stealth was no longer a priority. It wasn’t like he needed the suit to wipe the floor with these peons anyway; his callsign wasn’t The Machine on account of his gear.

MC strode past the VR pods and was at the room’s exit when he saw the door handle start to turn, yet by the time his mind fully registered the threat, he’d already drawn his slung railgun, sighted up and put one hypersonic round through the door.

It didn’t open any further.

He kicked the door and found a somewhat predictably bloody mess - a gaping hole four inches across the goon's torso, right at the center of mass.

Life is simple when you don’t need to worry about friendly fire.

He continued through the facility with efficient brutality, dispatching peons with the most gruesome tactics at his disposal, all while deploying mini point-defense turrets along the way. The size of a chunky grenade, their purpose was twofold: to wreck any living organism unfortunate enough to cross their path, and to sync to his helmet’s HUD, giving him live holographic audio and video telemetry.

It was even better than that; he could focus on individual video feeds to get a full view of the room the turret was in, looking through its eyes to control it remotely with retinal movements and blink patterns. They even had Radar and Lidar, and when synced with the map projected onto his HUD, gave him an omniscient view of the battlefield.

It was an unfair advantage, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Overwhelming superiority bought safety, and safety was a precious commodity in this line of work.

He dispatched another guard who'd popped into sight before he had a chance to call for help. That’s not to say they died quickly though.

No – many of the guards he left behind were still alive, paralyzed and bleeding. To say they were alive wasn't quite right; they were all dead, they just didn’t know it yet, the neurotoxin rounds fusing their nervous systems into a lump of slag. They had the distinct experience of watching themselves bleed out, yet they couldn’t do jack shit about it.

Payback’s a bitch.

MC ejected the lithium battery from the buttstock of the railgun and replaced it with another from his belt. The only downside to rail rifles - they dined on both ammo and juice.

He made his way to the security control room, helpfully marked as such by brightly-lit signs, still somehow undetected despite being neither cautious nor quiet about his killing. Likely on account of the bunker buster; orbital bombardment did tend to have that effect. That and his sister’s rather flamboyant exit had helped him slip by. Perhaps they thought the threat had already left.

The door to the control room was overbuilt, as you’d expect from a respectable security room. Too bad the wall next to it wasn’t. One good smash with his cybernetic left was all it took to bring it down. It was comical how many ‘Security’ doors he’d taken down in this fashion.

The goon’s expression was priceless – frozen in shock and fear, smartphone in hand, a quesadilla in the other.

“You rat me out, you take a bullet to the head and your brains decorate this fancy room. You kick the phone over to me and help me out with a small favor, you live – scout’s honor. Nod once if you understand.”

Sweat trickled down the guard’s neck as he nodded and gingerly placed the phone on the ground, kicking it over to him. MC promptly crushed the thing with his armored boot.

“Good, thanks for cooperating. No need to be so stiff, what’s your name, bud?”

“He-Hernando… who are you?”

“Ok Hernando, I just need you to retarget your automated defense’s IFF to friendlies only, think you can do that for me bud?”

The guard’s eyes went wide in utter horror, “But if I do it, everybody will die!”

“Uh, yeah. That’s kinda the point.”

“No, please, don’t ask me this… I do anything, anything but this. You want drugs? We have drugs. Or, or maybe nice slave to fuck? We have many, take—”

“So... you do have a family, right? Maybe even a few kids?”

“Eh? Yes, I have family. How does that matter?”

“Just think of how hard it’d be for them if you were to disappear. It’s a cruel world out there, you think they’d survive without you?”

“I… do not know… ”

“Think carefully about this decision, Hernando. It may very well be your last.” MC cut him off, finger now on the trigger – a movement the guard did not fail to notice.

He applied pressure, bringing the trigger right up against the sear. A feather’s weight of pressure and Hernando’s neck would be missing a head. It seemed like the man himself realized this though, because he gulped and slumped down in resignation.

“No… I will do it… for my family.”

He turned around and spoke into his terminal, lifeless. Like a robot missing its personality module.

“And please don’t try to pull any stunts – this is an old Formas unit, right? Nine-thousand series? I know exactly how these things work.”

The guard’s hands froze for a split second before resuming, albeit at a far slower pace.

MC would’ve done the job himself if only it didn’t require voice authentication. So old, so easy to spoof, but it did mean the guard had to be alive.

“It is done… ”

“It sure is,” MC replied as he looked up at the monitors above. Mayhem was the word for it, or perhaps Massacre. MC watched as turret after turret ripped into flesh and countless screams played out on countless screens in a silent comedy of death.

“Damn, it’s getting hard to keep count. I think that’s what, ninety-seven now? How many of you in this facility?”

“One hundred and eighty-one,” the guard replied, resigned to the fact that he’d just betrayed dozens of his friends.

“Shit. Still so many to go. Well, best get to it then.”

“But you will let me live, yes?”

“No.” MC responded as the screens dyed a deep shade of red.

“Ninety-eight.”