The scent of blood sat in the air, heavy and foul. It mingled with the metallic dusty scent of old machines. Lubricants and acid spat out from the hissing depths of machinery. Now blood splattered, the cabinets upon cabinets of servers were struggling along. Several had bullets in them now. Shell slumped against one of them, his flesh now pale and drained. His shirt was soaked through with blood. His face was almost relaxed, blissful. His fingers curled protectively as though he'd been clutching something to his chest as he died.
"Shit," said Heart. They could feel the bile rising, the nerves shaking into their hands. They could still hear the screams echoing outwards, penetrating the warm night, running through the cigarette smoke down their throat. The bang bang bang of bullets flying, their own feet hitting pavement, rubber burning, cars squealing, the chaos of the moment. they'd been lucky to be outside. The op was clean, smooth, fast. All entrances. Dozens of aggressors.
Lucy was in the office, facedown. Mack sprawled in the corner, clearly kicked aside from where he'd fallen. JJ was missing and for a moment, hope flickered in Heart's chest. It was a delicate feeling. Light. Airy. Like the way their head pounded, dizziness from shock kicking in, sweat coating their skin. They were cold. It was never cold in here, the wasteheat from the server farm cooking the room until they took turns inside, each enjoying the warm night air as a break. But the servers were dying out one by one.
Heart glanced as one of the control machines. There was a drive plugged into it. It was running something from the drive. Fuck. The entire farm was dead. Worse, it was compromised. Their laptop was where they'd left it on the table, still running a cracker on that corporate datavault. It felt so unimportant now. They closed it slowly. It had been connected to the network. It could no longer be trusted.
Slowly, Heart logged into their machine. The script was exactly where the group had agreed, untouched since they'd first written it. Dozens of old accounts across social media, hundreds of new ones registered at a button push, all these and more whirred to life at their command.
"We have fallen. Any further messages should not be trusted. Keep holding the torch. Eat the rich." This was followed with a long string of seemingly meaningless numbers and letters which any of the other pods could use to identify it as them. Slowly, they closed the laptop. God only knew what harms the servers had wrecked.
One by one, the plugs came out. Everything shut down slowly. They sighed as they started making a pile in the abandoned carpark out back. Going through the pockets, they found all of Shell's spare phones, Mack's custom wearables, anything technological. Out came their phone, their main, their backup. All three of the burners came out from drawers. They went through all the drawers, pulling out phones, abandoned laptops, project machines, mini computers. The collected detritus of four years of activism went into the pile. Heart took the time to pull the SIM cards out of the phones and crush them up. It probably wouldn't help. But it made them feel a little better, like they were poking the eye of whichever tendril had caught them.
When it was done, Heart removed their glasses slowly, their screens shutting off. Pages of pages of data. The real world felt almost too empty, too inefficient. The glasses crumpled as they hit the pile. The gasoline was where they remembered, in a jug in the closet. JJ had replaced it a couple months ago. Hopefully it was still good. The room seemed empty now. Almost broken. After some thought, Heart pulled the corpses down too.
It was 4 am. There were no onlookers as the fire started. There was no one to witness the tower of flame, all that accumulated knowledge vanishing into the either, smoke coiling into the atmosphere. They threw the keys to the flat in as a final touch. They cried a little as they watched.
"Fuck the rich," they said. "Fuck the monsters. Fuck the hate. I love-" and then they broke down sobbing. Stammering, they struggled to finish. "I loved you guys. You will not be forgotten. You hear me?" They screamed at the sky, rage and grief overtaking their voice. "They won't be forgotten!"
As they stalked away in the wee hours of the morning, they passed the guards. Mercenaries from the assault intended to catch any stragglers. They lay on the floor now, convulsing gently, eyes distant. Heart stared down at them.
"Huh," Heart said. They ran a hand over the shiny implants, the nerve connectors that turned a man into a killing machine. Now, they only served to spam electricity into muscles turning a man into a pulsating sack of flesh. "Probably should've turned that off before I burned all my devices." They gave a single bitter laugh. "Tell your bosses to update their security. Or just like, use normal people. One or the other, you know?"
Hands in their pockets, Heart walked into the night. Everything they owned was on their back.