The Assurance of Mutual Destruction
Winston Churchill once said; 'You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is Victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror. Victory no matter how long and hard the road may be.'
To be fair, Winston Churchill had an army. I had a PFY and a flash drive with enough illegal dealings on it to constitute a crime in simply possessing it. The good news was that I didn't have the Luftwaffe bearing down on me, just a psychopathic Head of HR (HoHR) that was hell bent on getting some twisted sense of revenge against me. I had talked to my wife and Motorcycle IT Guy about it, and they both agreed what I needed to do. I took a deep breath, taking in all the courage that I could muster. The day prior I had given Skip instructions to take a week off, to hopefully keep him out of it. I walked into HoHR's office and shut the door behind me.
"Had I wanted the door shut, I would have shut it."
"Yeah, you and I need to have a little chat." I threw a folder down on her desk. She flipped through it quickly and immediately stopped.
"Where in the hell did you get this…"
"That's irrelevant. What's important here is that I have a copy of that, and if you want to keep playing this game then I'll make sure that gets around."
"That's blackma-"
"Really? All I'm asking is that you back off your personal vendetta against me."
"How dare you" HoHR stood up and pointed at me. "Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?" My smile gave away my answer.
"I was somewhat hoping you'd ask that. Do you happen to remember what happened to Intern a couple years back?"
Intern was, quite aptly named, an intern. He had worked here for a few weeks one summer, before my time. Apparently, he slipped and fell on a staircase and died. It was a pretty huge fiasco in the building at the time, police inquiries and the like.
"Do you remember that? Intern's untimely death. What would you say if I told you I had a video of you, in the staircase, right as you pushed him."
"You're lying." I was, but she didn't need to know that.
"Admit it!" I yelled at her, I'm sure that everyone in the nearby offices was standing outside of the door at this point. "I saw it, I saw you do it. You thought you were so clever, making it look like he slipped. Did you really, honestly, think that you'd get away with murder?"
"What do you want…" She whispered, a broken shell of the plume of hatred she had been up until that point. I almost felt sorry for her, knowing what was about to happen. She was
"What I've always wanted, to do my job and have you leave me the hell alone." I paused "Unfortunately, that's not in the cards at this point now is it?"
It was at that point that the Detective walked into the room.
Chapter 14 – The Aftermath
The coming months were arduous, to say the least. I had made a deal with the Detective beforehand, I plead guilty to being an accessory to a crime and my sentence was five years of probation. I pulled the trigger on everyone, all at once. They arrested the Head of HR (HoHR) for murder, and she was convicted several months later. To the best of my knowledge, she's not only still in jail, but won't be up for parole until my children can vote. The CEO was convicted for insider trading, which is the blackmail that HoHR had on him. Money somehow escaped the laundry list of convictions, which I'm not sure how that happened.
Really Cool VP and several other VP's spun off into their own firm, and when they did they presented Skip and myself the opportunity to work with them at $NewCompany. We're both still there to this day, the PFY and myself. Work here is rather uninteresting compared to the events that happened at $Company, but I'd rather not be interesting. Motorcycle IT Guy decided to move out of the area, and settled down somewhere in Arizona. The last I heard from him he had gotten married and was expecting a little one of his own.
Unfortunately, the events at $Company were completely true. When I decided to write my tale, as unbelievable as it sounds, I first contacted the Detective to ask if I should even bother. He has read over and given his blessing on this version of events. I wish I could say that I didn't have to change things to protect the innocent, no matter how few of them there were. Both Skip and the Detective read over this story, and both of them agreed that it's detached enough for it to protect ourselves.
Since I know you won't appreciate a cliffhanger. Dan is currently retired. When $Company went under he decided that he was done. He survived a heart attack not too long ago, so I suppose he can't be in that great of health.
Oh, one last thing before I close this tale. The PFY has instructed me to write both a set of tales involving $Company before I was given Sword or MITG quit, and another set for the events at $NewCompany. I'll be starting those soon, so this isn't the last you'll hear from me.
Cheers, rstrt
Edited
There's some discrepancies here that I didn't notice the first time I posted this. This is the unedited version, but I do intend to eventually get around to fixing them to make slightly more sense, especially at the end.