A Baited Trap Now Sprung

The lift doors slid open. There were two quick, rapid thumps; like a ball hammer hitting a thick slab of meat. Blood sprayed the walls, and two security guards fell to the floor. Their SMGs fell from their hands and skittered across the floor. They were both quite dead. Agent Max Peril exited the lift. He knelt down and snapped the lanyard from around the neck of one of the dead guards. Pocketing the key card, he crept into the heart of the facility, gun raised.

Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly

A woman stood in the gloom of the surveillance room, lit only by the glare of the monitors. Her hair seemed a dark, deep red; like the colour of freshly spilled blood. She watched Agent Peril traverse a maze of corridors, deactivating security doors, dispatching guards, raising merry hell.

“Sweet creature!” said she, the spider in her web, “You’re witty and you’re wise! Come to save poor little, helpless me from the big mean men.” She flicked a small red switch on a panel in front of her, sending a foot-thick security bulk-head shuddering across a corridor that Agent Peril had just vacated.

“Come ever onwards my brave little hero. Come deeper into the trap I have set for you.”

She pushed a small blue button and activated the laser grids, choking off egress through the air vents and service hatchways.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive!

Agent Peril plunged through the facility, borne forward on the wings of duty, chivalry, love, and an all-consuming and entirely irrational sense of judgement and self-worth. He went willingly towards his end. A fool rushing in, where angels feared to tread.

A fly

Into a web