"Subject Alpha, target is in sight. Confirm?" The tinny voice crackled in her ear for a second, drawing a frown of displeasure from the listener.

"Negative. Target is partially obscured by trees. Will aim for target at vehicle." She smiled tightly underneath her hood, gently adjusting the sights on the black sniper rifle she held. Looking through the scope, she saw her target. A young-looking man, carrying a briefcase and looking supremely relaxed for a world leader in corporate espionage.

Less than a week ago, he had stolen some information from the corporation. Payback time was to occur in exactly three seconds, though he didn’t know it. The three seconds ticked by in agonizing slowness as the target walked over to the car that he habitually drove to work. As the third second arrived, a finger twitched, and a thunderclap pealed through an otherwise clear day. The target didn’t get a chance to hear it though, as the bullet fired by the Zeus twelve-seven sniper rifle had impacted right behind his right ear.

The bullet was the size of Subject Alpha’s pinky finger, and was moving at close to Mach 4 when it hit the target. His skull had the same chances of stopping the bullet as a piece of tissue paper had in trying to stop a flood. The impact of the bullet cracked the target’s skull open like a restauranteur cracking open a lobster’s shell, only, instead of picking out the juicy bits, the bullet simply shredded them. The target’s brain literally exploded under the impact, separating into blood-covered chunks that sprayed everywhere in a hail of gore, which painted the front of the house in oozing chunks of greyish-red matter.

The bullet exited neatly in the centre of the target’s face, pulling outwards as it did so, which converted the man’s face into a red ruin of bone shards, shattered teeth, and blood. Before the dead body could even begin to collapse, a second thunderclap rolled through the area, a precursor to the bullet that split open the man’s chest with an impact that threw the corpse forwards into the garage door of the house. The corpse slammed into the door hard, then slowly slid downwards, leaving a trail of fresh blood until it finally slumped to the ground, completely unrecognisable as human.

"Target one terminated. Orders?"

"Terminate the wife and child as well. Be inventive."

"Yes sir." The rifle was slung over one shoulder as the sniper stood up, and started to walk towards the house where the corpse of her still-bleeding target lay. Calmly, the sniper pulled out her backup weapon from a hip holster. The big handgun was a semi-automatic, and looked like it fired .50 calibre slugs.

She walked over to the corpse first, quickly checking the carotid artery for any pulse, though the body’s face had been virtually liquified by the first shot that had been fired less than two minutes ago. Finding no pulse, the sniper then walked over to the front door, and shot a bullet through the lock, splintering the wood and weakening the door enough so that a hard kick smashed open the door.

Inside, just standing up at the splintering crack of the door being knocked open, a woman in her early thirties opened her mouth to say something, and got a bullet in her mouth as a response. The second thru the sixth intercostal vertebrae in the woman’s neck were shattered by the impact of the bullet, not to mention the physical trauma of having a chunk of lead moving at high speeds pay a visit to her spine via her mouth.

The woman collapsed, spitting chunks of teeth out as the bullet blew a softball-sized hole through her neck, severing her spine completely. Death would come slowly for her, if at all, but she would be paralysed from the neck down for the rest of her time on earth. The sniper stepped over the pool of blood that was spreading outwards from the woman’s neck, pausing only long enough to stomp down on the woman’s back, which cracked half of the woman’s ribs, and probably broke the rest.

"Mommy?" The small voice was nothing more than a target, as the sniper spun quickly, pointing the handgun at the forehead of a tiny child, no more than six years old. The little girl, unconcerned about the prospects of death staring at her, hugged her teddy bear to her chest and looked at her mother, who had stopped breathing.

"Sorry, but she’s in a better place. Do you want to join her?"

"Yes! Mommy always said we’d go somewhere nice. Can you take me to her better place?"

"Yes." The report of the pistol seemed to be louder than the last time it had been fired. The little girl slumped over her mother’s head, a smoking hole in the middle of her chest showing where the bullet had entered, obliterating her tiny heart.

"Secondary objective complete. Want me to kill their little doggy too?" An undercurrent of anger had entered the sniper’s normally unshakeable tone, shining through in a viciously sarcastic assault.

"No. Get to the extraction point before the police show up. They’ll be there in just under three minutes, by the way."

"Hmm. What if I decide to stay put, admit to the murders, and get tossed in jail?"

"Then we’d spend twenty minutes to break your skinny ass out of the local cinder block they call a prison here, and end this little excursion with a neat collection of firebombs on the way out."

"Huh. Fun. Where to next?"

"Africa. Looks like some slavers contracted us for a recon mission, and you’re the first one in the rotation."

"Whee. I ever tell you how much I hate slavers?"

"Yeah. Now get back here so we can give you the rest of your gear back. I’m afraid that your other handgun’s gonna turn around and bite me."

The only response was a barely audible grunt. The sniper turned towards the back door of the house, kicking it open after another pistol bullet shattered the lock. Walking calmly away from the bloody remains in the house, Subject Alpha wondered how long it would be before the chance to escape showed up.