Genesis
Chapter 8

Derrick King was a defeated man.
He sat in his office, the sprawling city of Los Angeles laid out beyond his window. The lights of the skyscrapers stood like lances planted in the ground, pointing to the Heavens in a testament to human natures desire to do big things for very little reason other than the glory of the act. Deep in the city the young enjoyed the pleasures that a city could after the lights had gone down and the people slept. Across Santa Monica Bay a slither of the sun could just be seen, balancing on the rim of the world, unsure whether it might rise or fall as if it was in the process of deciding.

King loathed it.

This was the only remaining Itexicon building not being watched by an outside government and aside from a skeleton crew there was no-one below in the outfitted labs. No progress being made, no schemes and no profit. Itex had been broken into a few exiled scientists running as far as they could before the UN brought Itex into the open. Deep down King knew this was going to happen, but there was no point trying to rationalise the fact, someone had leaked massive amounts of data to the UN, someone high up with extensive know-how with at least a level 9 clearance to the Itex Grid. Experiment manifests, Robotix Plans, old documents about the failed By Half experiment.
But luckily nothing about AIRES.
King snorted to himself.
They may as well have thrown AIRES into the mix along with all the stuff about the Mainframe and Jonathan Crowe. King had no vaccine to immunise the Itex leaders against the AIRES virus so the project was a failure along with everything about Itexicon. Maybe it was time to vanish, maybe head to Russia, he liked Russia. And Russia would like him with the 16 Billion US Dollars in stolen funding sitting in a secret account in Zurich.
All he needed was a way to avoid the Secret Services that were baying for his blood. A brief smile crossed his lips and he picked up his mobile, turning to look out of the window into the sprawling mess he had vowed to reduce to dust, all in the name of order and the planet. His only enemy had been the world itself but one adolescent freak had reduced his plan to nothing with the help of a bunch of British gun monkeys and a baby.
He took another long contemptuous look at the chaos below him and was about to dial his mobile when something caught his eye.
A pair of bright blue dots, travelling through the air, darting between the spires of buildings and always centring again in perfect unison. Realisation dawned on him like the sun outside his window as the sky flashed red with blood as dawn arrived with all the drama Mother Nature could muster.
King turned and ran.

Many people say that justice is a figment of the imagination.

A lie designed to justify the acts of a supposedly higher power who controls the lives and actions of the lower beings that roam the Earth. What ever power people believe in there is an element of possibility, how will the situation turn out? What will the effects be? Who will suffer and who will benefit? We place trust in a system of chance which is un-bias, devastatingly fair and invisible. A system that is governed by the movement of trillions of atoms as they are governed by the exact same system of chance and probability. There have also been many points in the life of the world where this system has enacted its terrible judgement based on the movement of a tiny clutch of atoms. The bullet that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and began the 1st World War. The single atom split by the Manhattan Project and heralded the age of the nuclear bomb. The single rock that became the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.
So it might interest those reading to know that if the glass-maker who made the widows of Derrick King's office hadn't added a secondary covering to the panels the missiles would have passed through the glass and killed Derrick King, therefore reducing the chances of the human races survival to nearly nothing.

So it goes to show, that sometimes, ever so rarely, God gets it right.

Derrick King dived through the door, slamming into the far wall as the missiles detonated against the glass and sent a wave of compressed air that dashed King further down the corridor before he came to a stop, winded and a gash in his scalp. His world span for a moment before he staggered to his feet and lent against the wall groaning. His hearing returned not long after his sight and sense of balance, so when the sound of pneumatics reached his ears it took a moment to connect the sound to his memory. He glanced round briefly, yelled out and ran, the Robotix Soldier grinding into motion, tight joints squealing in an unearthly chorus. Jumping over toppled filing cabinets and desks King was the more agile of the the man and machine but he could already feel his legs seizing up.
But as his legs worked, so did his brain.
This can't be a malfunctioning robot, this was planned and coordinated. The missiles, the soldiers, the location. His brain pieced together the facts and the truth crashed down around him, sending neurones into sparks of logic and terrible realisation. The leak to the UN, the Hyde Park Incident, the malfunctions.
Only one possibility, but that was impossible. A tiny voice rose up in the back of his head.
Only improbable.
He turned sharply down a set of steps as the Soldier navigated a fallen water dispenser. King dived into the lab he had spent so much of his working life in and punched in a twelve digit pin code into the bio freezer next before picking out a single test tube with a red strip of tape round the top. The words "AIRES VIRUS: STRAIN 01" were written in black felt tip on the tape. The Robotix Soldier entered the lab, blue eyes whirring in to focus on King in the half light.
"Don't try and do anything, this smashes, all of Los Angles is dead in 15 minutes." He shook the vial as if it was a detonator to a bomb. "Back off." He ordered the robot. Outside the door more sets of blue eyes flashed in the light. They knew he was going to end up down here. Cornered like a rat.
"You will also die? Correct?" The closest of the robots intoned in its flat voice.
"No! I want you to..."
"By releasing the AIRES virus you would also die. Our objectives are the same. Proceed." You can't argue with the logic of a robot. Even if it was flawed.
"Then I won't do it!" King nearly whimpered.
"Then you will die." The robots advanced, weapons sliding down into grooves in their arms and hands. King screwed his eyes shut and clenched his fists tight.
Then something hit him in the side of the head.
"Ow!" He yelped, looking around for the projectile before he saw a small cylinder with a series of blue LED's set along the edge, each one quickly turning red. The effect on the robots was more profound.
Every hair on King's body stood on end as Electromagnetic energy flooded the room and gutting the lights. Instantly frying the delicate circuitry of the Robotix Soldiers, turning rigid and toppling backwards. King would have laughed if he wasn't yelping from the electric shocks as they raced along his body. After a while the shocks stopped and from outside a single flash light looked inside.
"Sir?" The face of one of the lab techs came into view. He didn't even know the young man's name. "Are you alright?"
"Yes. Of course I am." King said, quickly slipping back into his usual arrogance despite the near death experience he had just been through. "Shall we get out of here?"
"I guess so sir." The young man lead the way up the steps, casting his light forward and stepping over the fried carcasses of the Robotix Soldiers. "Little EMP grenade sir. Been working on them for a while. Saw you running down the corridor and grabbed a few. Worked though didn't they sir?" Derrick gave the man a look and he didn't speak again.
"Don't suppose your phones working?" Derrick asked as they entered the stairwell and headed down. The young man handed him an iPhone and they continued wordlessly until they got to basement level.
"Go get me a car. Your my new driver for the day." The young man's mouth opened in argument for a moment before leaving the stairwell leading into the underground car park. King dialled in a number and put the phone to his ear.
"We have a situation......yes.........I know..............at this point we have very little choice......I will be leaving Los Angeles in the hour.........hopefully this will draw them out......if it is him, which I'm sure of........I'll get into contact with Angela.......they'll need me..........we should be back on track if this swings my way.........well then that is our only option...........as soon as I'm clear, release the virus into Los Angeles. With any luck we'll have the vaccine in the next 24 hours, or we're all dead." He looked down at the vial sitting in the palm of his hand. "Including the Flock."

Sorry about the whole weird monolouge about justice, I was feeling dramatic. Anyhoo, next chapter may take a while, in the middle of GCSE's and life is generally getting in the way. But more is defo on the way. Peace out!