And so the day came. How long had she waited in this dark labyrinth, 10, 15, 20 years?
She pushed her chair away from the console of the Susan 300 workstation and surveyed the vast, gleaming engines of destruction that would soon devastate all the land between the mountains and the sea. She smiled.
And what of the architects of her design, whose loyal servitude had been bought with lewd, unspeakable promises? All dead, sealed off in a far anti-chamber of the great corridor where they had been lured for a celebratory feast on the completion of the project. How heartily they had ingested that vile paste that she, herself, had collected from the feeder-receiver valves of the Brant compression compensators. With what relish they sucked at the tubes attached to the fetid leather vessel containing their final poisonous repast. Unaware that the door to the room was being sealed, trapping them within. She had sat for seven days outside the annex listening, stone-faced , to their crys, screams and fever muttered mumbling until all was silent. And now, standing on the bridge of the vast chamber, she adjusted the vents on her iron mask, brushed aside a few strands of her fushia hair, wrapped her cloak tightly about her and, with her gauntlet clad hand, threw the switch. . . Z day had begun.
