CHAPTER 2

After five assassinations in four countries over twenty eight days, the Media Platforms are lighting up about billionaires being targeted by assassins. The minions of the Media Platforms discuss, debate, argue, yell, sing, sign, act and dance about the assassinations for anyone who will watch or listen and billions do.

The Authorities say little. The Authorities release statements but none that say billionaires are being targeted. They also stay quiet about the fact that their investigation is going nowhere. The Authorities do not divulge that medical examiners are finding no foreign matter in the victims' remains, or that crime scene investigators are finding no projectile fragments at the various sites. They are also hush-hush about their experts in ballistics having no evidence to analyze.

Unlike the Authorities, the Military makes a discovery that would have provided the first breakthrough in the case but as usual the Military says nothing. Nemo scit cacas.

The Military realizes that the weapon being used in the assassinations is the Glitchitovitch, a classified weapon, mysterious and cloaked in secrecy, that was stolen from a Military compound, about which the Military also said nothing. The Glitchitovitch won't be identified as the weapon being used in the assassinations because no one knows the Glitchitovitch exists. Even though people are being killed by this weapon, the Military isn't talking.

The Glitchitovitch isn't just stolen, the Glitchitovitch is stolen from a YDJ Military bunker off the southwest coast of Norway that is located six meters beneath the surface of the North Sea. Shelled in radar-deflecting aquatic camouflaging, this near-invisible underwater fortress is patrolled by a security contingent no human would ever wish to encounter. Robotic hammerhead sharks lash out from fixed cybernetic orbits at any shift in water density or blip in thermohaline circulation deemed abnormal. The slightest off-kilter ripple and these chomp-first-ask-questions-later marvels of pelagic security attack with pre-programmed prejudice.

Relax, that's a joke.

The hammerheads.

A joke.

People who work in Black Ops are known for their sense of humor. The hammerhead security force is a story told by the few members of the Military who know about this fishy fortification and its legendary impenetrability.

While cyborg sharks may not patrol the bunker, a near invisible electrically-charged barricade does. The barricade produces a voltage gradient with more than enough sparks to fry uninvited guests. The bunker and its electrified security system is then surrounded by a maneuverable dynamic perimeter that emits high frequency radio signals to deter ocean life from venturing too close, which is a humane gesture on the part of the Military, much nicer than electrocuting every fish in the North Sea to protect their stash.

What a stash. In addition to the now missing Glitchitovitch, there is a large classified inventory of end items and components including advanced biological and chemical weaponry, fully operational nuclear munitions and a room housing mechanical entrails of all sizes and shapes, some of unknown origin. The highest level of Top Secret digital intelligence is also stored in the bunker. Defence system encryption codes, data collected from network espionage and satellite reconnaissance, strategic combat operational plans and response scenarios, the Sensitive Compartmented Information containing the identities of Black Ops personnel around the world, all flowing by the millisecond into the facility's quantum computer complex.

A point of interest for the few who know about the Glitchitovitch is that no other item was taken. Whoever infiltrated the bunker knew exactly what they wanted and where it was.

As the Authorities continue their investigation and the Military hunts for their missing weapon, the group responsible for the assassinations of the five billionaires comes forward and identifies itself. The group's statement verifies what the Authorities were hoping would not be verified, that billionaires are being killed because they're billionaires. Along with an untraceable weapon that no one knows exists, billionairism is the only link victims share. The group posts its announcement to the Media Platforms and the message is immediately picked up by news and media worldwide. The statement provides the group's motive and implies the assassinations will continue.

The statements reads:

***

Billionaires are a cancer upon the earth. That the ignorant few rule the many is humanity's greatest threat. The wealth disparity billionaires generate brings poverty and death to thousands of people every day, millions every year. Billionaires are killing us. We need to defend ourselves. We must fight back. Only the condemnation of billionaires to death will bring change. Pleas for restraint have long been ignored. We will no longer be ignored. We have your names, addresses, schedules. We know where you are.

-The Billionaire Condemnation Society

***

The story breaks around the world. All news and media outlets lead with the story that had already been circulating on the Media Platforms, that billionaires are being targeted by a group of assassins. Now it's official and the group's name is known, the Billionaire Condemnation Society.

The announcement, especially the group's claim that they know the billionaires' whereabouts, a claim obviously supported by the first five hits, leads to what becomes known as the Great Yacht Exodus. In ports around the world, yachts are fuelled, stockpiled with supplies and piloted at top speed by expert crews to locations far from earthly shores. Believing their yachts the safest place to be, the rich, en masse, flee to the sea.

New York Harbor and environs could be called The Superrich Demolition Derby as upwards of three hundred yachts form giant bottlenecks as they make their way to Lower New York Bay and the perceived safety of the Atlantic Ocean. Traditional yacht spots like the French Riviera are equally calamitous. The marinas of Caligulan ports like Cannes and Saint-Tropez, usually lined with yachts like motorcycles at a biker bar, are deserted. From the coast of the Mediterranean, from Spain to Greece, yachts take to sea. News outlets pool their speculative numbers and estimate that in the first twenty four hours since the Billionaire Condemnation Society released their statement, more than a thousand yachts have set sail for the Pillars of Hercules and the assumed sanctuary of the Atlantic Ocean.

In New York Harbor, with such a high concentration of rich people not wanting to die, the result is chaos. Surprisingly, there is only one fatality that day as yachts of all sizes and dimensions batter and bang in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam of cartoonish proportions, a theatre of war with the accent on theatre, complete with the rich screaming at each other through megaphones.

"Move!"

"I'm next!"

"Screw you, that spot's mine!"

"Fuck you, I'll crush you like a rowboat!"

"Fuck you! If you don't get the fuck out of the way I'll buy every one of those crappy steel plants and sell them to China!"

"Fuck you!"

"Screw you, that's my spot and I'm taking it!"

For twelve hours, these white whales of pomposity clog the waterways. The madness would have lasted longer had the Authorities not arrived, accompanied by tugboats, to instill some order.

As word spreads of the Great Yacht Exodus, droves of people arrive to witness and chronicle this shameless event. The influencers, the mainstream media, the independents, the gawkers, the curious, all converge in a splashing, swirling frenzy of content creation as motor boats and other small craft start to outnumber the yachts and overtake the harbor.

Nightfall makes the scene stranger. Low flying news helicopters, sirens, air horns and megaphones create a war-like soundscape. Smaller boats, now the majority, heave on the waves, their lights slicing through the darkness as they zip between the towering yachts. This is the scene for the rest of the night, the miserable rich stranded with each other in a hellish setting, locked in a scuffle they're not built for, bumping and pushing each other, crying in disbelief, shouting their shameful metre, as the great poet says, as if they carry upon themselves all the woe of the universe.

Plus there's a dead body in the water.

There is a fatal accident and the body is not recovered until hours later, when the majority of yachts have vacated the harbor. The person killed that afternoon is Wanda "Wylie" Becker, the twenty four year old wife of the seventy four year old grocery store tycoon, Homer Becker (net worth, $58.2 billion), founder of the Home Food grocery chain whose yacht, Aisle 3, is one of the world's largest. Wylie jumps into the water to save her French poodle, Amadeus, after mommy's little darling is knocked off the deck when Aisle 3 is bumped by another yacht. With a piercing cry that turns heads on land and sea ("Amadeuuuuus!") Wylie leaps off the deck of Aisle 3 and belly flops on the surface of the water forty feet below. She does not resurface.

The yacht that bumps Aisle 3, which is named Záhuò, is a vessel equal in proportion to Aisle 3 and owned by Homer Becker's arch rival, Za Huo Dang (net worth,...