It had taken him some time to locate the base, but terrorists are industrious men. Sadly. The base was underground, as such top-secret bases so often are, and it was lined with reinforced concrete walls, and titanium-alloy floors. Floors that sparkled mutedly beneath the halogens set into the white ceiling at twenty-foot intervals down the length of the corridor. He, the terrorist-a domestic terrorist, now stalked down that hall. It should have had guards patrolling it, but he guessed he had snuck in and climbed down during some kind of break period or something. Regardless, it didn't matter now. What mattered was getting to the center of the subterranean compound and deploying the weapon. The secretive, powerful, ultra-destructive weapon that was housed within this bunker. His face shone beneath the halogens and the occasional, chest-high fluorescent bars set into the walls at unconventional angles. It was shiny with sweat. The perspiration of fear and anxiety that displayed itself as some odd badge upon his slightly tawny, swarthy features. Yet, despite the tawniness of his smooth skin and the swarthiness of his thick, greasy hair, he was not in any way Middle-Eastern nor Islamic, as so many of the murdering, cowardly, inhuman bastards were. No; he was an American, a truly domestic terrorist. And now, fearful, he crept along those corridors. He slunk, serpentinely, against the wall, afraid at every moment of the appearance of a sentry and his discovery. Yet it was as if the compound had been emptied; perhaps his explosives set at the gate to the aboveground base that housed the underground bunker...perhaps, perhaps that had somehow distracted them enough, so that the whole based, aboveground and below-ground, was on high alert. Good, that is just what he and the situation required. Yet still, a mad arc of occasional fear enveloped him and thrummed through his frame like a tuning fork.

Within the deepest and most central portion of the compound, however, fully 50 heavily armed and uniformed men stood, in a protective circle, in the circuit that housed the device. It was a metallic, computer-clustered room. It resembled, despite it's high, rising ceiling that soared up for dozens and dozens of feet, and despite its cylindrical form, a submarine's control room, yet it was not nearly so dark as one. It was positively blinding, as some of the supercomputers housed within and flush with the metal panels of the walls, required clean, bright light of a nearly unendurable quality-at least, it was nearly unendurable for humans. All the humans, soldiers and scientists and officers, that stood and sat and walked to and fro in that room, they all wore a very special, very thick sort of dark-lensed goggle. Pairs of goggles, in fact, that loosely resembled sunglasses. Everyone wore shades in that room. They needed to. And, in the very center of the room, surrounded by guns, and computers and men and women of a scientific and soldierly character, stood the accelerator, the catalyst for the device. America's top-secret and deadliest weapon. The button that engaged and deployed it, for that was what was actually set on the raised podium-like platform, not the weapon itself, but merely it's trigger. The button that, when depressed, and the keys, that, when turned, actually started the death machine. Sweat clung to the brows of the people in this room, too. And that might have been attributed solely to the intensified temperature and anhydrous air of the room that was required for the optimum functionality of the electronics in that room but it was also the fear and anxiety that characterized the lone terrorist (of whose presence they were only too well-aware and for which scenario they had diligently, rigorously, continually trained) that swept across their faces and brows, male and female alike. One man, resplendent yet nondescript in the white lab coat of the scientist, sat on a red-padded seat chair, set upon a tripod-like platform that faced the doomsday weapon's button. In front of him was a glowing panel of lights and buttons, set at a 45 degree angle. Indeed, some of the buttons lit up, and a sequence of lights, blinking on and off, danced their way across the many-buttoned panel. They were red, green, white, yellow. On the panel, above the dancing, lighted buttons, was a long, thin red strip that was a tiny screen. In front of the panel was a retracted armature composed of titanium alloy. Ten feet beneath the floor of the tripod-like platform, men, women, officers, scientists and soldiers bustled in a continuous line that always passed by that grave and deadly weapon which they guarded and, at the appointed time, would engage, trigger and deploy. A soldier, standing near one of the many computerized wall-panels that encircled the room, said: "Subject AQ is headed down Corridor V-B-1, sir." He was speaking to the commander supreme of the room, the man who had on the tripod-like platform. "Message heard. Deploying neutralizing agent 45R-T. Movement-restricting nerve gas." His fingers then danced their own swift yet deadly dance across the keys, and the exact message that he just spoke, was then flashed in red digits across the tiny screen. The caged lights in the walls then blink to blink red, and that same blinking red then spread throughout the entire compound, except Corridor V-B-1.

Subject AQ, the terrorist, crept still along the lenghty, seemingly unending passageway of Corridor V-B-1. He had something like 550 yards to go, and even then he would have to climb up to get to the corridor which truly led to this compound's control room. The only warning of the movement-restricting experimental nerve agent that was about to be unleashed was a series of the paralell fluorescents began to turn, in an arc, and to blink, twice and then every other one would go dark. This odd occurrence happened fully two minutes before the sprinkler-head-like spigots descended in unison from the white ceiling, and the metallic guards or stoppers set in them were retracted, thus exposing the bore of the deadly faucet. Soon, without any other warning, thick plumes of yellowish gas descended to the floor in loud whooshs, for the heads were pressurized and they released the toxic gas at a rate of 450 psi per second. The force of the pressurized gas was strong enough to tear the skin off anyone unfortunate and stupid enough to be caught under one of the heads. Yet, it was stronger even than that. If one was fully exposed to the nozzle, their bones would be severly dented or possibly fractured, too. Subject AQ (so code-named due to the installations belief in his affiliation with a certain Islamic terrorist organization), began, just before the release of the deadly gas, to crawl along the floor, his nose practically scraping along it. Unlike the floor of the control room, the corridor's floor had a light coating of dirt on it, and this smudged onto his nose and face, making him appear even more tawny than he already was. Then, the gas began to descend. Thankfully for him, he was in the interval between two nozzles when the gas was first released. It clouded his vision and obscured the corridor with it's fogginess, but he recognized it for it what it was and pulled out the oxygen-mask that he kept concealed within his jacket. He pressed his to his face, and began to swiftly but intermittently make his way down the corridor, for the nozzles kept releasing the gas after the initial burst at the rate of once per every minute. Subject AQ was a resourceful man, as unfortunately all terrorists are or seem to be, and he survived the gas via these two methods.

In the control room, outrage and shock seized everyone, except the commander-scientist, as they saw by the giant monitors set into the walls a few feet above the computerized panels that the terrorist had avoided the gas. However, calm and steely, the commander-scientist had been expecting this. He radioed the kitchen from a transmitter that was set into his own personal computerized panel's side, and said: "Galley, have the traps been emptied?"

And this came back, the rich, thick, happy, full voice of someone who could only be a jolly black man:

"Oh, yessir. We served BLTS for lunch today, you know. It was the special and damned if I didn't make 2000 of those things, so they was plenty of bacon, must have 10000 strips, and plenty, also, of-"

"All right, enough, Lieutenant. Just ready the hoses."

"Oh, yessir. Yes, indeed. We're readying them right now and damned if I didn't...."

The commander switched his two-way microphone off, cutting off the remnant of the conversation. His fingers once again danced across the lighted keyboard, and he engaged their next defensive measure. Measure GO1. The bacon grease.

Subject AQ stood in the corridor, catching his oxygenated breath, watching the gas dissipating (for it was a weak variety....it was strong and deadly enough, sure, but it's shelf-life was about four minutes). He replaced the oxygen mask in the pocket of his jacket and trudged on, unaware of the next horror that awaited him. Further on, the corridor, which had been almost square in shape, lowered itself, becoming almost rhomboidal, and had an arched ceiling that was far lower. Also, here the whiteness of the floor, walls and ceiling was replaced by a thick, dark brown. Soon, the wall panels here in this new corridor retracted, and dozens and dozens of brass nozzles protruded. There was no warning this time, and the hoses burst their brownish fluid in unchecked surges upon the already-brown floor. The smell was slightly fishy, and the floor became slippery. Several times the terrorist; or, Subject AQ, fell down onto the thick, hard brown metal floor, and his progress through this corridor was slow and silly. He capered, involuntarily, to and fro, trying to avoid the blast of the nozzles that were clearly spraying pressurized bacon grease on the floor; and, in other circumstances, those watching him from the monitors in the control room would have laughed. But laughter seldom echoed in that silent, busy, sterile chamber-and this time was no exception.

So, grease-besmeared, Subject AQ emerged somehow from this latest horror-a horror that was more a comedy. He made his way down the hall further.

Back in the control room, the room descended into a frightful, fitful panic, for this room had only two major preliminary defensive tactics to employ and employ them it already had: the nerve gas and the bacon grease-hoses. The commander-scientist screamed: "All arms ready. Proceed to kill if necessary!" "Everyone weapons ready! Weapons ready! Weapons ready!" It became almost an insane, unstoppable, rising, broken-record shriek that eventually lost all meaning. The soldiers turned to face the door, which, while impressive, was not electronically-controlled or coded or anything-it was easily opened. And, easily opened it was by the greasy specter of Subject AQ. He kicked open, with one congealing boot, and proceeded into the room. Everyone froze, guns at the ready, but unfired. Apparently, if not fearful, they were awaiting the order to shoot. The death of the commander, as the terrorist fired his concealed pistol at his head and penetrated, somehow, the bullet-proof glass that encircled and enclosed his tripod-like platform. His head exploded in a furious cloud of red, a red which then sprayed and spread itself violently in an arcing, dripping smear across one of the glass panels of his platform. This brutal, vicious, swift, and shocking attack and the single report of the pistol's killing shot, echoing off the walls of the chamber, while it should have paralyzed the defenders of this room all the more, it forced them, somehow, to swing into action and they fired...but erratically. They shot walls, glass, panels, computers, keys, the door, each other...everything and everyone but the deadly intruder. Machine-gun fired arced across the room and those struck fell back, wounded or outright dead, against the panels, which supported them. And electrocuted them, for the pierced panels had exposed wires and circuits that spewed deadly electric-blue flashes and shocks and surges. Many a body did a horrid dance, even after it was dead, as the electricity descended and animated them. Animated the wounded and the dead into violent action. Some dead (and wounded) trigger fingers spasmed jerkily and weapons sprayed more bullets, but these hit the floor or the legs and feet of the wounded, the dead and the shooter themselves.

Through this hideous maelstrom of mechanical and electrical death, the terrorist strode easily, swiftly, calmly, his object just in front of him, only a few paces away from him-the trigger for the doomsday weapon. He was nearly upon it, when one soldier (one of the very few that was not wounded, dying, dead or electrocuted), saw him, realized his intent with slowly dawning horror, and turned his machine gun on him and fired, just as the terrorist reached out his finger to depress the button. As the terrorist watched his finger descend, slowly, slowly, oh so slowly, he was struck by a hideous hail of death, that ripped him apart, from head to toe, and he turned in his dying to face his killer, his back to the button. Through a blood mask that was his shattered face, he tried to gaze at his killer, but could not and his eyes closed for the last time, even as one last burst of staccato gunfire rippled once more through his dying body. The soldier that killed him breathed a sigh of relief as he witnessed the terrorist's horrid yet deserved death, but then his eyes widened in shock and horror once more as he saw the direction that the descending body of the dead terrorist was heading. Then he closed his own eyes, but that was not enough of a blind to block out the horror that roared, unleashed at last, as the doomsday device's trigger was depressed, and the device subsequently, instantaneously activated, by the falling body of the dead terrorist who had gone through so much and who had caused so much destruction and death.

And the world was consumed in an all-encompassing burst of white light that devoured all.