And the bomb… His addition to the plan, against orders. A good thing. But not good enough. The President had lived.

When he was clear of the uplink location, and the logfiles had been magnetically wiped and his slate and mission phone wiped, shorted, and dropped into the bay; when the cutout machines had all suffered mysterious data loss, and the members of his virtual team – Ava and Hiroshi and the Nigerian – had all scattered to the wind; when he was on the move, walking through the noisy crowds on Market Street, only then did he pull out the encrypted phone reserved for the next conversation, and dial his superior, the head of the Posthuman Liberation Front, the man code-named Zarathustra.

I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

The tone sounded in his ear. One-time cryptographic pads aligned. He had sixty seconds of talk time.

“Mission failed,” Breece said softly. “Interference of some sort. Cause unknown.”

“The bomb was out of plan.” Zara’s voice was distorted, electronically warped to prevent voice print recognition.

“Don’t worry about the bomb,” Breece told him. “Worry how we were stopped. Worry how someone knew we were coming. Worry why the target lived.”

“I tell you what to worry about,” Zara replied. “Not the other way around.”

“They detected our asset. They knew we were there. They were ready for us.”

“You killed dozens against orders.”

“They were the enemy. FBI. ERD. DHS, all of them.”

“I tell you who the enemy is. Stand down until you hear from me again.”

Breece cut the connection in frustration and kept walking.

What have you done to overcome him? Nietzsche had asked.

I’ve killed, Breece thought. That’s what I’ve done.

What about you?

The man called Zarathustra leaned back in his chair and stared out at the bustling city beyond the windows. He was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, broad-shouldered. A man accustomed to physical action. Yet history would know him – if it ever truly knew him at all – by what he did through others.

Breece would need watching, at a minimum. The man was becoming more and more extreme, turning into a liability. Not now. Not in the immediate wake of this. But soon.

Seventy men and women dead. The President still alive. The collateral damage was high. Messy. Very messy. But in the end, the mission had been accomplished. The American people, and the world, would know fear.