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Emmy nodded to Sky, and Sky stepped back and sliced the pie. First, she established her reference point—the left-hand doorjamb—then she inched forward on an imaginary circle, using the doorjamb as the pivot. With each step she took, she was able to see another small slice of the room beyond, all while revealing as little of herself as possible. Tactics 101.
“Clear.”
The perfumed air turned musty as we moved into a mess, and I was talking literally, not metaphorically. The customer-facing areas might have been tidy and spotless, but behind the scenes, Willard’s Department Store was an homage to poor discipline. Boxes of stock were stacked haphazardly, armless mannequins stared from the shadows, and dust coated everything. A cork board held a picture of the employee of the month—a thin-faced blond guy named Chris P Bacon—a reminder of the staff dress code, and a discount voucher for Moe’s Diner. Blackwood sure paid attention to detail. As they should.
The sobs became quieter as we headed in their direction. The hostage was travelling faster than us, which always presented an interesting dilemma. What if there was a second hostile? Should we push on or move more cautiously? Where did this hallway lead? Where were the exits? What if the hostile doubled back and flanked us? I glanced upward, noting the suspended ceiling. If I were alone, I’d be in there by now, watching. Waiting. Something didn’t feel quite right.
Ahead of me, Sky stilled at the sound of a falling box, and I followed suit, signalling to Ana and Emmy behind to do the same with a raised hand.
“D-d-don’t shoot!” A brown-haired man stumbled out of an office, hands above his head. An employee? He wore black trousers and a pale blue shirt, a name badge pinned to the pocket.
Sky waved him past. “Keep your hands up and exit the store.”
“O-o-okay.”
As he approached me, his right hand dropped an inch, and I shot him. The bullet entered through his philtrum, and he crumpled without a word.
Sky’s eyes bugged out. “What the…?”
Emmy checked her watch. “Nice, we’ll make it back for lunch. Good shot.”
“She just killed a civilian.”
“He was the hostile,” Ana told Sky.
“But—”
“Look at the shoes.”
White sneakers with red laces and the logo of a well-known sportswear brand on the side.
“They’re not in line with the dress code,” I explained.
“Last time I checked, that wasn’t a capital offence.”
“But murder is.” The name badge on the hostile’s pocket read “Chris Bacon, Supervisor” in block capitals. “Ten bucks says you’ll find the real Chris Bacon dead in that office.”
And the hostage would be stumbling out of the store by now, released by the hostile on the condition that she kept quiet and didn’t turn back. If we’d carried on after her, we’d have been the ones with bullet holes. I flipped the hostile over and removed the semi-automatic from his waistband. Who was playing the bad guy? A member of the training staff? Not one of Emmy’s core team, that was for sure—this man felt pudgy around the middle.
“We’ll probably lose marks for using lethal force,” Emmy said. “At least you didn’t shoot him in the back.”
“I’m not an amateur.” And Chris P Bacon wouldn’t have thanked me for the bruises if I’d slammed him into the concrete floor. “Plus I saved the taxpayers money. Twenty thousand bucks a year for incarceration plus the cost of the trial.”
In Russia, it was cheaper. Trials were rigged, and prisoners were shipped off as cheap labour or cannon fodder. Life sentences were common, whether by accident or design. The sim flashed a message, an imitation of a retro video game: Game Over! You Win :) The four of us traipsed back through the lingerie department and homeware, down the stairs, and around the make-up counters. When we reached the main doors, I removed my headset, and the fancy store became a drab grey building once again. My stomach grumbled. After Paulo’s call, I’d abandoned breakfast and headed straight to Blackwood’s headquarters with the intention of using the range and then grabbing a granola bar, only to find myself co-opted onto Ana’s sim team after Carmen’s kid puked at school.
“Anyone else fancy a bacon double cheeseburger?” Emmy asked. “Sky, we can debrief on the way to the diner. You did good for a regular active shooter situation, but on rare occasions, we’ll encounter a hostile with a brain, and we need to be prepared for those.”
Ana snorted. “If you sneak out to the diner again, the next hostile will be called Kale P Lettuce. Toby will make sure of it.”
“How many guys named Kale do you know?”
“I went to school with a guy called Kale,” Sky said. “His sister was in my class.”
“Go on, what was the sister called?”
“Quinoa. She shortened it to Quin.”
“I thought it was pronounced ‘keen-wah’?”
