• "JAAAAAKE!" came the roar from down the hall.
    Ah s**t...what did I do now? thought the recipient of the enraged call. "What now? I'm working" Jake snapped back.
    "To hell you are! Since when is surfing the internet work?!" his boss bellowed as he stormed into the tech office. It was a large room with benches against all the walls and several in the middle of the floor. It was unlike any other room in the building in one rather flashy fashion: every bench was steel and bolted to a matching rough steel floor. Computer components littered the benches and several had running workstations. Jake sat at one of them with three desktops and a laptop in front of him. He quickly closed out the web browsers he had open on his laptop, making the motion look as casual as possible, but his boss' keen eye caught what he was doing. The tall, large bellied man stormed around the bench to peer at the monitors, all of which showed a windows installation screen.
    "Don't know what you're talkin about. Just doin some standard reinstalls Mr. Herman" Jake said casually, remarkably calm with his boss almost literally breathing down his neck. His boss ignored him and tapped a few keys on the laptop, bringing up the recently closed web comic page. s**t...shouldn't have taught him that Jake swore silently. He'd only told him that because a few of the accountants liked to surf porn on their down time which naturally sent dozens of tech calls to his office a week. "Oh? And what is this?" his boss asked smugly, his face wearing a grin that would send a wolf running with its tail between its legs.
    "That?" he asked innocently. "Just a little sanity insurance. It does get rather boring staring at loading screens you know" Jake knew he was caught and didn't think his boss would listen to reason anyway, so he figured he might as well add a little bite to his logic.
    "I'm not paying you to be amused! I'm paying you to WORK you worthless slob" his boss roared, once again going from the triumphant hunter to the raging bull.
    Jake just snorted and rolled his eyes. "No, you pay me to keep your whole empire here from falling down around your ears. A job which, I might add, I've done successfully for the last six months and you are not interrupting. So, if you dong have an actual tech issue I'd appreciate it if you'd go shout at someone else thanks." Jake swiveled his computer chair back to face the monitors and wiggled a couple of mouse's to wake up sleeping screens.
    "That's IT! I've had it with you and your disrespect. I knew you were too young for this job. You're fired" And with that the red faced man stormed out of the IT office.
    Jake stared at the retreating back, stunned. "Fired...?" he muttered in growing horror. This job had been his big break. I was fresh out of college, nothing but an internship for experience, and he managed a systems admin job. Sure, it was a fairly simple job for a rather asinine employer, but it was the first step to working for a big corporation. And now that step had been yanked out from under his feet.
    Jake didn't bother wondering if he should finish out the day or leave then and there. He just gathered what few pieces of equipment he'd brought to the job, canceled all the jobs he'd had going, and logged into the system. He went through the server and removed every last patch or line of code he'd put together personally and logged out. Panicked yells were like the sound of applause to him as his last vindictive act brought his ex-employers precious system to its knees. But oddly Jake didn't feel any better. It wasn't enough to cripple the system he'd all but built over the last half year. No, he wanted more.
    "I'll kill the b*****d. Kill him I say!" he swore softly under his breath as he passed the vending machines on his way to the elevator.
    "If you can do that, you can have half his bank account" came a soft voice behind him.
    Jake all but jumped out of his skin. He hadn't seen anyone, though the box in his arms might have blocked someone sitting from his view, and was surprised when he whipped around to come face to face with his ex-boss's wife. "Veronica! Sorry, didn't see you there" he muttered red faced at being caught muttering death threats in range of the mans wife. he didn't have anything against her. In fact, he got along with her quite well. She often found her way into his little known hidey hole and simply talked while he worked. She said all sorts of things about her husband that made Jake dislike the man immensely. From what he'd managed to gather, his boss had slowly stopped paying attention to her over the last couple years and now barely even looked at her. He now went out for late night trists with barely legal women at seedy hotels. She even had (rather graphic) photographic evidence. Jake didn't see why the man felt the need to go elsewhere when he had a beautiful wife at home. If nothing else he could save himself some money, a thing he was notorious for throughout the office. Despite being in her early forties she still looked like she was perhaps in her late twenties. Her skin showed little signs of aging, her breasts didn't show any sagging, and her body still had curves that would make any straight man's eyes pop out. Jake himself had seen precisely how neglected she'd been in recent months by way of a couple of long but quiet romps in a nest of cat5 cable.
    "Oh no worries Jakey boy. I take it he finally found an excuse to get rid of his best employee?" she asked with a glance at the box in his arms.
    "Yeah...i guess you could say that. Not much of a reason either" he grumbled, his anger flaring back to life.
    "Well...you just remember what i said" she said mysteriously as she closed the magazine she'd been reading and walked toward him from her spot leaning against the side of the vending machine. "The world would be a much better place without him" she added, running a finger along his cheek as she walked off the opposite way down the hall.
    "Uh...yeah, I'll do that ma'am." he said, still playing it off as a joke. Unfortunately, she didn't give any impression that she was joking. And as much as he tried to prevent his mind from walking down that road, he couldnt help but think of a few different ways to carry out his threat.
    The rest of the trip to his car in the large company parking lot (in which he was assigned the most remote parking place) was entirely uneventful. He carelessly tossed his belongings into the messy 'trunk' of the little Subaru and started the vehicle. The drive home was a lot more aggressive and jerky than his usual trip and it was a slightly shorter trip than normal before he pulled into the small apartment that he rented about a half hour out of the city. The smell of warm engine, hot brakes, and abused clutch wafted up to his nose as he set the alarm and walked into the apartment.
    He got to the door of his basement room when he remembered he had extra stuff to bring into the apartment. He swore heavily as he returned to the car for the boxed items and returned to the room.
    Jake sat down at his computer as he always did, but try as he might he couldn’t get into the usual mindset that he required to relax. He didn’t even log into his messaging and chat clients. He just couldn’t take the company. His mind just kept going back to the man he’d love to kill at that moment in time and the offer his wife had made. After about a half hour of staring at a screen saver, he took out a sheet of paper and wrote down a name: Derin Herman. Then, as if the pen had taken on a life of its own. After a few minutes of frenzied writing he had a nicely numbered list of twenty-three names. He realized that he had just made a list of people he wanted to kill. “s**t…I’ve made a hitlist…” he thought partly in horror and partly in exhilaration. He had never done anything quite so…rebellious before. He stared at the first name on the list and ideas rushed through his head. He knew how to do it. He knew how to get away with it. It would be simple. In a split second decision Jake logged into his computer and opened a browser.
    It was a simple matter to hack into the Onstar GPS system. After all, who wanted to hack a GPS feed? Well, as it turned out one person did with purpose most nefarious. He knew his boss would be on his way to see one of his late night mistresses and he also the location of each meeting changed. His finger hovered over the enter key, that fateful key that would lead his boss plunging off the side of a dark cliff into a fiery death. He closed his eyes and his finger fell like a guillotine. And so, with a single click, he began the long downward descent into depravity and crossed off the first name on his list