Bradbury's Jar Week 99 Prompt: JOINT

Fanfiction by KFM, 2013.  Characters Copyright Tatsunoko Productions, Sandy Frank Entertainment, and KFM.  Please don't reproduce without permission.

"Don't trust him to comply," Jun Himuro warned.  

"I don't."  Mareccu Dumenau, the commander of G-Force, inserted a new magazine into the rifle he'd seized and chambered the first round into place.  Around them were scattered Gallactor operatives—some drastically sliced open by the edge of his boomerang blade, others gunshot.  Beyond them down a brightly lit access was their quarry in hiding, Dmitri Drakos.  A statistician and programmer who had willingly allowed himself to be immersed into Gallactor's ranks and was since paid handsomely by the Earth Defense Command for each clandestine data transfer he'd sent to them.  Before Jun had realized that he'd allowed Gallactor to track each transfer and thereby attain access to their own servers.  

"I mean it.  He'll expect to see you with that.  He'll be prepared for it."

Raising the weapon one-handed, Marc gave a grim smile.  "He's never dealt with anything like this."

---

"Don't come near!" Drakos screamed when Marc found him right where he was expected to be.  Standing at the far end of the Gallactor base's control center, clutching a tablet computer with his hand poised millimeters above its touchscreen.  Where if shot, the weight of his hand going down along with his body might activate the malware he'd delivered to the EDC's command and control systems.  

"Dmitri," Marc spoke back.  "You know why I've come.  It's time."

"Yes, and you owe me safe passage."  Drakos edged farther back.  "You promised me this."

Marc approached anyway, deliberate and calm.  "I did."  

"Then I will go out that door," Drakos motioned to his left.  "You will not follow.  You touch me, I open everything."  He gave a wild roll of his head to indicate the expanse of the room and everything that laid beyond it.  "All your souls, I bare."

"Gallactor's too?"

Drakos glared at him.  "Gallactor's too.  All the world to see, what bastards you are.  All the world to see what depths you go to kill each other, all the world stuck in the middle."

Marc stopped, quiescent.  "Then you've been wasting your time.  If you've seen what we have so far, you'd realize this."

"And what is that?  Bloodshed, horror upon horror?"

"That the world already knows it's stuck in between.  And that all it wants is for it to be over."  Marc's gaze, even and impassive before, suddenly turned cold.  He lowered the rifle.  "To that end, you're not helping."

Jun leaped out of nowhere, a lightning flash of crimson behind Drakos's body.  In one fluid motion she wrenched his arm away from the tablet and then open-palmed struck him, and with it came the sound of bone and ligaments snapping as loud as the crack of a whip.  Drakos dropped, howling, the joint of his elbow shattered beyond hope.  

Jun picked up the tablet, confirmed that the malware remained inactive, then deactivated the device and tossed it aside.  Marc came forward and pressed the muzzle of the rifle against Drakos's chest.  "Now it's time to take you home."

*****