Business Class

Devin Blassingame stepped off the elevator onto the 95th floor. Cutting through the stratotower maintenance walkway, he approached a private reception where lab coats mixed with suits in sanitized self-congratulation. Psyonic’s Chief of Executive Security anticipated nothing more intoxicating than the standard punch-bowl of budgetary wrangling as the crowd celebrated the firm’s latest software launch. A couple of decades of dodging these conformist initiatives taught him the precise choreography: suppress his naturally gruff composure, drape his scarred frame in a sport coat, sweep back his too-long dark hair, and nod on the way out.

Psyonic’s Quantum Core 8.0 would be starring at the C-Suite’s first look at marketing displays. The corporate literature boasted of “non-intrusive causal abstractions.” Precisely the kind of tech-jargon designed to satisfy customers and investors alike while doing little for their CSO’s medieval mandate: prevent rival megacorps from poaching the Psyonic’s biological capital of eccentric engineers and ambitious executives.

The reception room back door opened into the corridor. Dr. Owen Goolsby, an overfed computer scientist, emerged, cradling his 3D coding helmet under his arm like a seasoned motor-circuit champ lumbering off a champagne-soaked podium. He held the helmet before him, flipped out the straps, then ran a hand inside the proprietary development rig. It was likely the same immersive hardware development environment that birthed PQC 8.0, colloquially known around these floors as Eight.

Behind him, a blonde junior researcher melted into the doorway, her pristine lab coat stark against the party’s decorative lighting. “Dr. Goolsby, we’re about to toast you. We’re honoring you just as much as Eight.”

Goolsby ignored her during this too-theatrical display for a man merely heading to the men’s room. He shifted a few steps and faced the back boardroom door across the hall. Then waited, standing before the esteemed room that required this top floor to be one of the most highly secure in the Psyonic Building. Devin had checked that it had been locked down himself first thing this morning.

“Congratulations on the release launch, Doctor,” Devin called out in his gravelly voice as he quickened his pace.

Both Goolsby and the tech locked eyes with the security chief, holster bouncing as the “stifler of a free market of ambitious job-hoppers” hiked up the hallway. The nosy junior researcher ducked back into the festivities. Recognition flashed across the doctor’s sweaty face, followed by raw panic. Goolsby shoved the helmet over his head, snapping the chin strap into place with a definitive click.

Psyonic’s org-chart enforcer picked up the pace.

Shattering glass rattled the unadorned walkway as a shockwave spread from the hallowed boardroom, throwing both Devin and the scientist off balance. Goolsby snapped his visor down, grabbed the door handle, and threw it open to step into the corporate throne room. The company’s overfed crown jewel vanished into interior-design devastation and a piercing electric whine.

Devin hooked two fingers into his coat pocket, pulling the fabric wide of the mic on his old version Seven comms. “Ninety-Fifth-Floor Breach!”

He sprinted for the same escape route, stopping just short of the high-velocity blowout venting into the maintenance walkway. Dropping low as the electric jet turbines spooled, the chief jammed a pair of tactical earplugs, holstered his taser, and drew the unofficial rail-pistol tucked in the back of his pants.

“I’ve never lost a Psyonic employee.” Devin peeked around the corner. “And I’m not about to start.”

The boardroom churned like a Midwestern farmhouse in a tornado touchdown. The vortex pinned the ornate interior door to the frame while a backdraft of pressurized air blasted into the hallway, delivering a slurry of glass, dust, and gilded coasters. Squinting into the maelstrom, he cursed his missing goggles. Goolsby stepped onto the deployment ramp of an unmarked, stealth-black SkyBlade aerodyne hovering just beyond the exposed ceiling-to-floor window frame.

Devin aimed at the helmeted figure. Goolsby spread his arms wide for balance as he navigated the rickety plank without handholds, standing dead center between two exhaust cones blasting torrents of air. To either side, heavy leather conference-table chairs piled up against the wall. The low-pressure slipstream yanked Goolsby forward, forcing him down the gangway faster than he dared to walk like a distorted Judas inside a wash of thermal haze.

Blassingame planted, lined up the horizontal starboard turbine, and squeezed off a single supersonic round.

The hyper-velocity slug punched clean through the starboard casing, shattering a turbine that pulled air from Chicago’s Loop. The sudden loss of rearward thrust sent the dark airship pitching. Goolsby tumbled forward onto the aerodyne cabin deck. Inside the boardroom, former fixtures changed course as the violent pressure shift yanked Devin off his feet, then slammed him flat on his stomach.

Lucky him. While the railgun began its slow, high-pitched recharge cycle, the crippled SkyBlade adapted. Automated defense turrets panic-fired an erratic spray of countermeasures, punching a constellation of jagged holes through disintegrating drywall across the corridor. Devin flattened against the carpet as a follow-up volley drilled into the boardroom, showering the hallway in plaster and debris.

The plane eased away. Two aerodyne vertical-firing turbines slowly reoriented to join the lone operational horizontal engine.

A prone Goolsby vanished behind a shutting hatch as the craft eased forward into the open sky. The asymmetric shriek of the three remaining engines buffeted Devin’s face and hands harder still. The railgun’s digital recharge meter touched the minimum firing line. He aimed out through the missing window, where the raw Chicago wind now cornered him and kept him prone.

Three engines had been enough to extract the betrayer.

The SkyBlade cut and dove as it accelerated, weaving aggressively to present an unpredictable target. Its avionics adapted to the ruined engine with ease, searing across the skyline like a great alien predator escaping with its prey. Devin guessed at the pirate ship’s bob-and-weave and fired a spiteful round. The hypersonic slug ripped through empty sky while an unmarked black silhouette faded into a distant haze.

On his stomach, he buried his face in the tattered carpet. In all those years of high-level asset protection, Devin Blassingame had never suffered an executive extraction. Until today. And right out from under his nose. “I’m finished.”