Ciphers, Matt Rogers [a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT] 📗

capable. You’re smart, you’re efficient, you understand persuasion, you understand how to get what you want. But you were never able to use it. Maybe you didn’t have the social skills, maybe you just couldn’t put it together at the right time, but you were typecast as a spoiled brat and you never shed that reputation. So you were angry. Then you lost what little respect you had in the first place when your family fell apart. So, yes, I can see how that led to this. You thought, “Fuck it, I’ll bring the whole world down with me.” You saw a flaw in the system and you recruited people who were the same as you. Probably in their early twenties, probably incredibly smart, probably unemployed. Kids with the same ego complex as you. Who thought they were smarter than everyone else but never had anything to show for it. Kids who’ve sat at their computers for twelve hours a day for their entire childhood, who taught themselves everything about the digital world to compensate for their misery in the real world. Am I right?’

‘Yeah,’ Gavin mumbled, staring at the floor.

‘You used every trick in the book to convert them. I can see how you might have done it. They already hated this country for denying them opportunities. They thought they were brilliant, and they probably were, but not in every way. So, deep down, they despised society, and you tapped into that. You convinced them that it’s better off being ripped apart. You made them extremists, and they’re too young to know any different. They’ve spent all their lives inside with computers, and they don’t understand people. So you fed them your bullshit until they bought it hook, line, and sinker. They’re sitting in that vault now, probably imagining this whole thing is a giant game. They’ve got no hope for the future, just like you.’

Slater could tell he’d struck a nerve.

Gavin stood there, his psyche laid bare, his closest secrets revealed.

The kid thought he was a manipulative genius.

Really, he was just a piece of shit.

Slater said, ‘Maybe you feel bad now that someone else has realised what you’re up to. Maybe you’re hoping you could take it all back.’

Gavin shrugged, and then gave the faintest hint of a phantom nod.

Maybe hoping Slater and King couldn’t see his shame.

But they did.

‘Too bad,’ Slater said. ‘Dozens of people died tonight at the very least. Think about the home care patients who need their machines to survive. And that’s just scratching the surface. If the looting gets worse, it’ll turn violent. It’ll be man on man. And if we didn’t come, you would have relished it.’

Gavin said, ‘Wait. Let me come in with you. Maybe I can—’

‘You crushed your hopes earlier, Gavin,’ King said. ‘You told us yourself. They won’t listen to you.’

Gavin went mute.

He opened his mouth to say something.

Slater realised he didn’t care.

He pulled the trigger.

Put two shots into Gavin’s gut, and then backed him up to the window and threw him into it with enough force to crack the pane. Instead of cleanly breaking into a million pieces like the movies, the pane splintered and cracked, throwing huge jagged shards everywhere, and Gavin tumbled over the lip and fell six stories to the pavement below.

Slater peered down to confirm the results.

They were as to be expected.

75

Slater leant back inside and stared at the vault door.

Apprehension fell over them both.

King said, ‘Now for the hard part.’

‘You think they’ll be armed?’

‘I doubt it,’ King said. ‘If they are, it won’t be much trouble.’

‘But we don’t want to scare them.’

‘No,’ King said. ‘We don’t.’

‘How do we play this?’

King thought it over. ‘You know how to cut through to the core. But I don’t think that’s what we need right now.’

‘I agree.’

‘Let me do the talking.’

‘And if you can’t convince them?’

‘There’s always the finger breaking method.’

Slater shook his head. ‘You said it yourself. It won’t work on them. They’re like Samuel, only it’s not an act. Samuel was crazy, but he did care about his own life. These kids stopped giving a shit about their own wellbeing a long time ago.’

‘Then let’s hope I’m persuasive,’ King said.

‘You know what happens if it doesn’t work, right?’

‘Yeah.’

King shivered, and steeled himself. He wasn’t usually nervous in the heat of combat. There were too many variables, too much chaos, to truly be able to pay attention to everything. Now, in the quiet of the antechamber, he could feel his heart thumping, his head pounding, his blood running cold.

If he chose the wrong words, he would fail eight million people, maybe more.

If there was ever a time to be flawless, it was now.

He held his MP7 at waist height, the barrel angled forward, but emptied as much aggression from his posture as he could manage. The gun was a precaution in case one of the kids was sitting in there pointing a pistol at the door, but he didn’t think it would be necessary.

He took one step forward, gripped the thick steel handle of the vault door, and eased it open.

76

Slater loitered, opting to go in behind King.

For good reason.

He reminisced on their last two operations and how they’d both ended. Here, he’d broken Gavin Whelan, making the man realise the gravity of his own mistakes, and crushed his soul in the process. If Slater hadn’t killed him, Gavin might have killed himself, which is exactly what happened in Nepal. Aidan Parker, an ex-black operations coordinator and future presidential candidate, had gotten his own daughter killed in a ludicrous plot to acquire funding for his campaign. Slater had highlighted, piece by piece, the devastation he’d brought to his own family, and Parker couldn’t handle the scathing words. Slater had tossed a gun at his feet, and Parker had done what was necessary. Slater hadn’t pressured him into it. The man had simply broken.

Slater knew he had a way with words. He could cut deep. But he recognised his own flaws. He despised the scum