Two men in their late twenties, early thirties were leaning back in ergonomic chairs. They looked up at me in surprise as I came through. I shot the first one in the face. Three rounds made a tight triangular pattern where his nose and mouth met. Brains, blood, teeth fragments, and pieces of his skull went all over the computer screen, keyboard, and fancy trackball thing. Not to mention the wall, the desk, and partly his buddy, who sucked in once and began hyperventilating.

I said, “What’s all this?” Although I could already see from the picture up on the screen. The guy couldn’t speak, could only attempt to breathe, sucking the air for oxygen like a drowning fish. I said, “Take your time.”

The guy was getting closer to being able to say something, but Miriam had seen the screens, and her H&K got there first. She put two bursts into him, one after the other, like a parade ground drum roll. The guy’s muscular skeletal system collapsed, slumping him off the chair and onto the floor. I looked at Miriam. She was looking at one of the screens.

She said, “Pigs.”

The screen was a big professional graphics monitor. Something that a guy like Blomstein might use for monitoring data feeds. But, here they weren’t using their high tech gear for intelligence.

The screen real estate was divided into boxes, seemed like what a video editing interface should look like. One of the boxes showed an image of a young girl in a fancy-looking bedroom. The furniture looked old, like from the Middle Ages of knights and princesses, aristocratic and expensive. Above the bed was an open window looking out on green hills and forests with a river valley snaking off into the distance. The girl was naked except for a black hood, which wasn’t very aristocratic. Her arms were tied and attached to the ceiling, braced in what looked like a very uncomfortable position. And that didn’t account for other aspects of the position, which left her even more vulnerable. Miriam stepped up and pressed a button on the keyboard. The video started playing. For a couple of beats, the girl was just there, kind of swinging from the ceiling, shifting uncomfortably under the strain. Then two men entered the frame. They were dressed in long robes and wore white masks with large hooked bird beaks.

I said, “What’s with the masks?”

Miriam said, “They’re dressed as plague doctors. I don’t know why.”

“Plague doctor, how do you know that?”

“I read a book about it.”