The Ministry for the Future

33

They killed us so we killed them.

Everyone in our cell had helped to clean up after the heat wave. You don’t forget a thing like that. I myself didn’t speak for three years. When I did I could only say a few things. It was like I was two years old. I was killed that week, and had to start over again. Lots of the Children of Kali had gone through similar experiences. Or worse. Not all of my comrades were human.

It was a question of identifying the guilty and then finding them and getting to them. The research and detective work was done by another wing. A lot of the guilty were in hiding, or on fortress islands or otherwise protected. Even when identified it wasn’t easy to get near them. They knew the danger.

Methods were worked up over many iterations. We took a lot of losses at first. Of course suicide bombing is often effective, but this is a crude and ugly way to go about it, and uncertain. Most of us didn’t want to do it. We weren’t that crazy, and we wanted to be more effective than that. Much better to kill and disappear. Then you can do it again.

For that, drones are best. Much of the job becomes intelligence; finding the guilty, finding their moments of exposure. Not easy, but once accomplished, boom. The drones keep getting faster and faster. The guilty often have defenses, but these can often be overwhelmed by numbers. A swarm of incoming drones the size of sparrows, moving at hundreds or even thousands of meters per second—these are hard to stop. The guilty died by the dozens in those years.

Eventually they stayed indoors for the most part. At that point, a decade into the campaign, they knew they were in trouble. Security redoubled. It became a question, or several questions. Were there still people left so guilty they deserved to die? Yes to that one. Could we get to them? Harder.

We sometimes joined domestic staffs or landscaping crews, and worked for years. Other times it was a matter of breaking and entering. Sometimes they could be caught during transit, while less protected. Sometimes their bodyguards would have to be killed too. They shouldn’t have taken work like that. Protecting mass murderers makes you complicit in mass murder. So we didn’t worry about them.

The only thing we worried about was what the guilty ones always call “collateral damage.” In other words, the accidental killing of innocents to kill your target. The guilty do it all the time, it’s one sign of their guilt, but we don’t. It’s a principle. Kali is very fair and very meticulous. If to kill a hundred guilty you had to kill one innocent, no. It’s against the law.

So it was often very tricky. One time I had to crawl in through air ducts. One intake had been left unmonitored, a mistake. All in the dark, but the building’s plan was clear in my mind. I got to the intake not monitored. Broke into it and crawled and crawled. Left right, up down. I had with me a plastic knife, pliers, and screwdriver. So. Unscrew the screws holding the master bedroom’s ceiling vent screen in place, from above using the pliers, in silence and moving very slowly. Took two hours. Then get to feet, making sure feet have not gone to sleep, confirm location of guilty one by night vision goggles and micro-periscope looking through vent slots. This one was a weapons manufacturer. There are a lot of them, but the ones at the top, who own majority shares, they aren’t so many. Several hundred identified at this point. All death dealers. Mass murderers for cash. You may know some.

Leap in the air, come down on the vent, crash down into room right on bed, trailing rope ladder. Stab the guilty one in the torso quickly four times, then the neck, several times. Night vision goggles make blood look black. Guilty one dead for sure.

Back up rope ladder, ignoring the other person also in bed, now on floor, shocked into immobility, or perhaps trying to avoid attention. Good idea. Back through air ducts, crawling fast. Out onto compound wall, up to roof, drone waiting to carry me up and away like packaged goods.

Now to spread the headset photos, spread the story. The guilty need to know: even in their locked compounds, in their beds asleep at night, the Children of Kali will descend on you and kill you. There is no hiding, there is no escape.

One down, several hundred to go. Although the list might get extended. Because Kali sees all. And the Children of Kali are not going away until all the guilty are gone. Be advised.