The steady beep of the heartrate monitor first came as a distant, quiet disturbance, but slowly became ever louder and more intrusive. Ishana slowly opens her bleary eyes, but shuts them once more as a bright light invades the once serene darkness. She lays there, motionless, for a long moment, her mind slowly beginning to return to her.
Finally, her eyes open once more, squinting against the brightness. Blurry, unfocused objects quickly sharpen, and she realises she’s looking up at a ceiling she does not recognise. Where a stippled ceiling might greet her was now a white paneled one. A few panels were dislodged and sitting awkwardly, while others were slightly discoloured likely by water damage.
She looks right and sees a nearby beige wall, and before it, a heartrate monitor beeping steadily. She looks forward to find a large window that overlooked a small courtyard and a building across from hers. Next to the window is a small TV, the remote for which is affixed to her hospital bed.
To her left is a surprisingly large sitting area: a small grey couch is set against the wall while next to the window are two chairs. Before them is a coffee table, whereupon disposable Starbucks coffee cups sits, lids strewn about. As well, a discarded iPad sits on the table, its black screen lifeless. Strewn over the couch was a small form. It is the form of her daughter, while in one chair is her teenage son and in the other her husband.
She shifts herself upright in bed, propping her upper body up with her elbows, but feels a searing pain in her leg. It’s then that the confusion of where she is and why she is there sets in. It’s clearly a hospital, but why? Why does her calf have such a sharp, stabbing pain?
Ishana pushes the sheets off of her body, and unsurprisingly finds herself dressed in a hospital gown. Pushing the papery garment aside, she finds her calf has been thickly wrapped in bandages. It is then that she remembers. “The trade office upper floors exploded,” the memory comes rushing back. The deafening explosion that left her ears ringing, the heat of the explosion that roiled downward upon them, the glass that fell like tiny knives, piercing her leg and injuring many more coworkers and finally the terror in their eyes.
Those that fled, she recalls, had a look of horror in their eyes. A palpable terror that bespoke the fact that their very lives had almost been arbitrarily taken. “Did people die?” She questions for a moment, suddenly feeling the aching empathy that only a parent could feel. “To lose someone you love so arbitrarily,” she thinks sadly to herself, “What a horrible thing.” She takes solace in the presence of her sleeping family, knowing they were safe and, unlike many of the families of her friends and coworkers, she would not be without them.
After a moment taken to compose herself passes, she swings her legs out to the side and stands, only to find that her calf burned as though a white-hot needles were being pressed into the wound every time she attempted to put her weight on it. Grunting with pain, she leans on the bed, unsure of what to do. Her husband, Jon, stirs in his seat and his eyes slowly open.
He winces as he sits up straight, cracking his back in the process. He looks over at her and smiles ruefully, speaking quietly. “You know, when we started dating, my mother said to me: “A good Chinese boy would date a Chinese girl!” But, as we can see, life with you is anything but dull.”
Ishana moves back to sit on the edge of her bed and he moves out of his chair, quietly walking across the room, not wishing to wake their two children. However, as he moves around the coffee table, he bumps it, and it scuffs against the floor with a noisy scrape. Her son also stirs and lets out a quiet yawn, looking around. “Hey mom,” he says, his voice coarse from sleep, “I see you’re getting into trouble again.”
“No more than you do, sneaking off to your friend’s house every other night,” she responds with a sly as he moves up awkwardly. Ishana, using her husband’s shoulder as a crutch, wraps her arms around her son, now much taller than her. “Sorry to worry you, dear,” she admits and he, still rather unsure of what to do, wraps one arm around her.
Looking between the two males, she sighs, “So, what happened while I was asleep?”
Jon looks to his son for a moment before back to her. “Well,” he begins, adjusting his rectangular glasses on his slim face, “The Trade Minister was killed in the explosion. The news said the explosion originated near his office and that is was likely a gas leak. Eleven others are dead.” Ishana feels her breath hitch in her throat, and she looks out the window to the dawn sky.
She takes a steadying breath, not wishing to worry her family and speaks in the measured tone she often took at work: “I see.” Looking back, she speaks again: “That’s very sad, do you –“ she’s abruptly cut off as the door to her hospital room opens quickly. An Asian man dressed in a grey military uniform, white shirt and red tie with the silver star of the World Confederation, moves in, placing his briefcase noisily on the coffee table. The young girl on the couch lurches upward, her visage a confused, sleepy one.
“Wha-“ she looks around, “Mom! You’re awake!” She pushes past the newcomer and her family and tightly embraces the seated Ishana.
“Lieutenant Atash Hashemi,” he says firmly, The soldier looks at the display, confused at the girl’s indifference with his presence and simply allows the display to continue. “Sorry to worry your, Jun,” the injured mother says calmly. Looking to the newcomer, she speaks in a reserved tone, familiar with his kind. The small epaulets on his shoulder demarcated the rank of lieutenant, and the pin holding his tie back was that of a golden phoenix. “A lieutenant and from the Office of Public Security,” she despite his begins, “What can I do for you?”
though distinctly Indian name, she finds him to be more likely from Thailand than anywhere in India or the Middle East. “If we may speak in private, Ms. Chaudhri?”
She sighs, “And why might that be? I’ve just woken up, I appear to have had surgery on my calf, despite the fact it was only a shard of glass that injured me, and I’ve just seen my family.” She once more pushes herself to her feet, again using Jon as a crutch, “What could be so important?”
“Ma’am, this is confidential, and we can’t be spreading this kind of news around…” He trails off, looking to the two children. Ishana, however, simply stands in silence, testing the lieutenant’s patience. “Very well, but if the Office of Public Security finds out that this information was leaked because of this family –“
“Yes, yes,” Jon says irritably, “We’ll be detained or executed or something horrific. We won’t say a word, right kids?” He looks to the two, who nod quickly.
Lieutenant Hashemi sighs, “The explosion that killed Xiao and eleven others was not an accident. It was a bomb. Somebody planted it moments before it detonated and we think you,” he motions to Ishana, “May have some information regarding this.” Looking to the three others, he says more firmly, “Now, if we can please have the room.”
Jon glares at the soldier, but pats his daughter on the shoulder, “C’mon you two, let’s go get some breakfast for your mom.”
“But I wanted to hear all the juicy state secrets!” Dhruv protests petulantly, smirking smugly at the soldier before leaving the room with his father and sister, leaving Hashemi and Ishana alone.
The man takes the chair her son had been sitting in and drags it toward her bed, patting it twice. She complies and takes a seat, silently grateful to take the weight off of her injured limb. He stepped before her and cleared his throat. “Regarding your leg, ma’am, the bomb was not your conventional weapon. It released a toxic liquid that coated some of the shrapnel glass when it expanded out of the device.”
Concern radiated through Ishana’s form, beginning in her stomach as a nervous hotness, roiling tumultuously, before spreading out through her limbs, making her palms clammy, before reaching her head and forcing the beat of her heart to be uncomfortably loud. These were tactics she had heard of before with the recent assassinations. “To that end, the hospital staff has informed me that they had to remove some of the muscle in your calf to avoid any further spread of the infection this liquid causes.”
“So it was the UN forces that did this?” She asks quietly, slowly reaching down and to no avail trying to feel the missing flesh. “How could they… The administrative towers just look after the ministries – we’re not politicians or solders…” She looks away from the lieutenant’s gaze, suddenly feeling very small in this huge.
Lieutenant Hashemi places two fingers against his ear and looks away, speaking apparently to no one in the room: “Upload the feed to Chaudhri’s room, please,” he states coolly. He moves behind her and presses the power button on the remote attached to her bed. “Ma’am, I know this is a lot to take in all at once, but I need you to tell me if you thought anything was odd when you went outside – did anyone or anything seem out of place?”
Ishana’s mind swirls with questions: how would she work if she couldn’t walk? How could she talk care of her children if she couldn’t hurry around the house when she was home? “I can’t expect Jon to do it all,” she thinks sadly, “Why did this happen to me?” Looking up at the soldier, she takes a moment to consider his question. “Well, no, everything seemed fine up until the explosion. I don’t think anyone was –“ she pauses.
“Wait, there was one.” Hashemi leans in closer, intrigued as she speaks. “A man in a grey double breasted coat, he was east Asian, like you,” she explains hurriedly, “He looked rushed and pushed by me.”
The lieutenant nods firmly, “It’s as we thought.” He presses another button on the remote behind her, and the TV screen illuminates with the frozen image of the courtyard’s southern side. “This surveillance video was taken at the time you exited the Executive Bureau,” he explains, although she can already tell this. Ishana sees herself, clad in grey suit jacket and pants, hurrying across the greenspace only for an incoming man in the same dirty coat push past her. “There he is!” Hashemi pauses the video and moves toward the TV.
“Ma’am, I’ll be honest with you. The Office of Public Security has no idea who this man is. We zoomed in and got his face, but he’s not in any official databases.” His words hang in the air ominously. “Given your position as assistant to Chancellor Zheng’s Secretary, Daniel Lin, I’m sure you’re aware, but this means only one thing…”
She looks over at him, their eyes locking, “He’s a spy. From the UN.” Her words now leave a tense silence between the two of them, and the soldier nods. She hangs her head, “But why attack the Trade and Development Bureau? The Minister and his Associate Ministers are the only politicians there… Why kill eleven other people? And what about the wounded? Are they also… injured, like I was?” She gestures at hr leg
Lieutenant Hashemi averts his gaze as she mentions the affliction to her leg. “Ms. Chaudhri, I should be upfront with you…” He sighs, taking a seat on her bed, now perpendicular to her in her chair. “The doctors advised me to let them tell you, but I may as well be the one. The liquid that was in the explosion is something of a toxin. Once it gets into your system it kills you within a few days – we’ve seen it used on a few of our dignitaries before: the Uzbekistani President was killed with the same substance, just concentrated.” He looks over at her, “Many of the injured will probably die. Those that were just a few feet closer to the building got a hell of a lot more shards of glass in them than you, but even still.”
“Even still, what?” She asks quietly, looking at the soldier, whom she now finds to be abruptly human.
He stands once more and folds his hands behind his back. She notes how tightly they were clenched around one another. “Even still, you still have the poison in you. It hasn’t been around long enough for us to know the long term effects, but it’s potent.”
She looks at him as he turns around, his face a military façade of impassiveness. “So, I’m going to die?”
“I didn’t say that, but, it’s a possibility that overtime it will shut down your organs, yes.”
Ishana Chaudhri slowly lowers her head, staring at the bandages wrapped around her calf, unsure of what to say, what to do.
~*~
“Well, I haven’t seen him in three days, so I really can’t say,” Logan answered with a light shrug of his shoulders. He glances over at the young man next to him, though he seems more engrossed with his phone at the moment, “Or you could tweet about how hashtag excited you are to go to this event and totally not listen to the answer I just gave you.” He receives no response and so, with a huff, he snaps his fingers in front of the other’s face. “Nathan! Quit being a dick.”
The young man swats at Logan’s hand, “Hey, piss off! I’m done, I’m done.” He pockets his phone, “And for your information, I did hear what you said.” He leans back in his chair, overlooking the increasingly crowded class before them. “Maybe I’m texting your mom about what a fun time we’re having waiting for a Greenpeace meeting to start,” the black haired youth warns playfully.
“Do not text my mom about us being here!” Logan protests vociferously, “If she learns I’m here, even just for shits and giggles, I’ll never hear the end of it from them both – my mom and dad – about how I’m gonna get in trouble hanging out with eco-hippies just before I graduate.” Nathan only laughs, shaking his head. “You know, the fact that you have my mom’s number is weird enough as it is, and now you’re threatening me with it. I thought Australians were supposed to be cool.”
His friend scoffs, “Well, I never. I am plenty cool. Now, anyway, potential blackmail aside…” He leans forward onto the empty long desk before them which stretched out before their entire row, “I actually have a class with the guy, I think. Just a little shorter than me, blond hair, seems polite but doesn’t talk unless someone talks to him?” Logan nods.
“Well that’s all I know about him,” Nathan explains, “So I’m not too sure… Guess I’m no help, either.”
Logan sighs, “Here I thought he just didn’t like me – I guess he doesn’t like anyone. What’s he doing when he’s out all night?” The young Australian slowly raises an eyebrow, a devious smirk coming to his lips. “Well I don’t think he’s doing that! That just seems unlikely as hell,” he pauses for a moment, “But, something about him seems sad, y’know?”
“Who seems sad?” A voice sounds behind them. Logan turns around to find Dirk seated in the row behind them. His distant gaze moves down to him, piercing into him, delving into his very being. The student looks abruptly away, uncomfortable under the scrutiny.
Nathan is the one to break the silence: “Oh, just a friend’s girlfriend. I think she’s pregnant.” Logan nearly gapes at his friend, aghast at such rumourmongering just to cover for them talking about Dirk.
“Ah,” the newcomer says, clearly unconvinced.
An awkward silence returns to the three of them, though thankfully it’s Nathan that breaks the silence. “Alright, I need to go and run this thing. You two sit around, there’s a real treat coming,” says the Australian student, “Straight out of the ass crack of the United Nations and on the border with the World Confederation, this piece of fine ass is going to truth bomb the shit out of you!” His diatribe leaves the two roommates silent, though Logan cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of it.
“Right, okay Nathan. Wow me,” he makes an imperious motion with his hand, bidding him to go with a sly wink. Nathan makes his way to the front of the class and began speaking quietly with the others gathered there, donned in green t-shirts with golden suns. “Dirk, take his seat,” Logan urges the silent observer, “Keep the eco-loons away.” Much to his surprise, the young man from Europe wordlessly gets out of his chair, and hops over the desk before him, landing behind the requested chair before taking a seat.
“I wasn’t aware that your friend was going to be emceeing this event,” Dirk comments as he folds his hands in his lap, his brows lightly furrowed as he observes those at the front of the class as they ready to begin.
Logan finds himself simply observing his new roommate for a long moment, further baffled by him. Silent around others except him, extraordinarily coordinated to vault over a desk without any visible effort, and with such a distant, cold look in his eyes. “Who is he?” The student questions silently. “Yeah, it’s a surprise to me, too. I wasn’t aware he was a part of Greenpeace,” he says after a pause, “So, you wanted to go, does that mean you’re interested in joining?”
Dirk almost seems to snort in ridicule of that idea, but resists and instead simply adjusts himself in his seat. “No, not particularly. Just curious,” His counterpart nods and goes to speak, but as a tap sounds on the microphone situated awkwardly on an old wooden podium, he looks forward again, once more confused about his new roommate.
“If I could have everyone’s attention, please,” Nathan’s voice sounds overhead. The room begins to quiet, and only now does Logan notice that every seat is filled and there are even a few people have begun to stand near the back. “It’s amazing to see such a huge turnout, and it really speaks to the kind of support Greenpeace receives from young people.”
He pauses, looking over the crowd. Behind him, three individuals, also likely students, wearing the insignia of Greenpeace on green t-shirts, stand silently. “Do you know why it’s the young that support us?” The emcee asks. He lets a pause fall over the room before answering his rhetorical question: “It’s because they are unafraid of what must be done to save the world. We cannot be weak-willed when it comes to the environment, because when we look only to ourselves – when we focus on our own petty problems and ignore the world…”
He trails off, and taps the screen of an obscured tablet sitting on the podium. Adjacent to the three Greenpeace members, a projector screen illuminates and shocked gasps sound. Logan’s stomach turns into knots at the horrific sight before him. Mangled corpses, half melted, half charred flesh and bone, stick awkwardly out of decimated earth like ruinous sentinels of death. Blackened ground stretches out before them in the picture, a wide vista of death over what appears to have been a savannah.
Where a small stream had once moved over the land, it fell into a wide depression in the ground, a crater of sorts, wherein these ruined dead jutted out of the ground, reaching up, covering themselves and the remnants of children. “This, my friends,” Nathan says gravely, “Is what happens when we turn our attention to hating one another and away from Mother Earth, away from our own wellbeing.”
“Is that…?” One person speaks out from the crowd, and receives a nod from one of the three students.
Nathan also nods in agreement, “Yes, this is Africa – in the southwest of Sudan.” He lets out a breath, visibly disgusted by the horrific sight, “This is what happened when the World Confederation dropped multiple nuclear bombs on UN settlements on the Sahara-Savanna border in Africa.”
He taps the screen, and displays a similar sight. Another crater, this one deeper and rawer, existed in the centre of a city. Stout buildings stood watch around a singular point of nothingness. Inside the crater were no bodies, but a black charred mass existing over indistinguishable lumps. “This is Lusaka, Zambia – one of the sites where UN nukes, after being shot down, landed and exploded,” he does not pause, though, “Do you know where they were supposed to go? Johannesburg, South Africa.”
He taps the tablet below him once more, “It doesn’t matter which side you’re on – WC or UN, both are guilty of terrible crimes.” He clenches his fist around the rim of the podium, “Both have damaged the world so badly that it may never recover. We here at Greenpeace have tried in vain to get Secretary General Fournier of the UN and Chancellor Zheng of the WC to listen, to stop building up arms in this new cold war.”
“But,” he says, his face contorting into a confident smirk, “We have hope, now.” Once more, he taps a few things on the tablet below him, “We have a new leader – one that has borne witness personally to the atrocities both the WC and UN have created.”
Logan looks worriedly over at Dirk, however finds now change in the newcomer’s visage. Ever passive and unreadable, he simply observes. Even still, the student leans closer to him and speaks quietly: “Isn’t it a bit… graphic and kind of like click-bait? Show a terrible picture and claim everything has to change?”
The stranger from Lichtenstein nods slowly, “Yes, it is.” He looks right for a moment, his piercing gaze once more making Logan feel small when he was in fact not the stranger here. “It is a curious thing, indeed. Who is this leader, anyway?”
The projector screen changed to a black rectangle with the golden sun of Greenpeace centred in the middle. The visual slowly faded away to a solitary figure visible from the chest to the top of their head, however no background except the same blackness could be seen. They wore a jacket similar to a suit jacket, yet where the collar and lapels might be, instead a stout collar jutted up roughly an inch. A violet strip ran up the sides of the arms and melded into the collar, while over their heart was a strange sigil. It was of a simple tree in silver, yet there were no leaves and instead the bare, smooth branches ended in sharp points, all of which pointed upward.
More curious was the mask that sat on their face. It glinted as a bright light shone on it, indicating it was metal. The mask covered their forehead completely, but while on the right-hand side it simply went straight down to their jaw, on the left-hand side it ended just over the eyebrow before smoothly covering most of their nose and ending at their jaw, completely a smooth edge over their face and beside their jaw. Where their missing eye should be was a narrow slit, but despite this there was no gaudy decoration, and instead it was simply a silvery metal.
As Logan observes it, he cannot help but note that, from straight on, the shape of the mask reminds him of the shape of an axe-head and hilt facing down. “Students of the UBC,” the masked figure bellows grandly, “I am Lacertus!” The declaration of a name leaves the room confused, silent. “Those who have power… fear me! Those without it, rally behind me!” He clenches his fist before himself, his hand scarred. “I am burdened by sorrow. War and discrimination, malicious deeds carried about by those in positions of power, heedless of the ramifications of their action – for too long has this gone on!”
Logan looks around the room as this man calling himself Lacertus speaks and finds nothing but rapt attention in those around him, save the ever impassive gaze of Dirk. “The very world suffers for the evil actions taken by the governments of the World Confederation. Only within the United Nations can justice be done!” He swipes his hand through the air once more, his dramatic display only adding credence to the concerns Logan has: he’s a madman. “I call upon all those who concern themselves with what the enemy considers paltry matters, such as the health and wellbeing of humanity and indeed all of Earth’s living beings: join us!”
With that, the image faded to blackness, in its place the outline of Lacertus’s mask remained in silver, and a left the room in stunned silence.
~*~
When she had joined the WC reserves, Sasha naively assumed that it would be a great honour full of glorious deeds. Never did she believe it would involve walking the streets of Moscow at 2:00pm looking for drug dealers and corpses. “This is Private Alkaev,” she says into the receiver clipped to her shoulder, “Sector 3: clear as a coke-fiend’s bowl, over.”
Around her, skyscrapers from a bygotten age loom silently, their concrete edifices looking craggy while many of the glass windows interspacing them are either filthy, broken, or gone. The streets are relatively barren, save a few parked cars here and there. Transients roam the sidewalks, looking for change, pity, or drugs. Usually all three. The once clear lines on the road surface had faded over the years, while dirt and grime had accumulated elsewhere.
“Sector 3 acknowledged. Move onto sector 4, Private. And try to use less colourful metaphors, over.” A voice responds. She rolls her eyes at how boring her superiors are. “To them,” she muses, “This is just checking boxes off a map.” She continues to observe the crevices in buildings, alleys and obscured areas that normally caused her issues, “However to me, it’s a couple of gun-toting crack addicts and the occasional body.”
She continues to move down the street, making idle note of the signs in Russian. Despite her being Russian, she can barely read them: the language has become scarcely used. Instead, the transnational language of business, Mandarin, is the standard. Sasha turns southward, moving into the next sector, however slows her pace as she hears something up ahead.
Behind an abandoned car, something rustled. She slowly places her hand on the handgun loaned to her, recalling with chagrin the words her superior had given her: “It’s a QSW-06, meaning it’s Chinese. Break it, and it’s being shipped to China to be fixed.” They were wise words, for she also remembered the time she had damaged the barrel and was forced to do her rounds with a billy club.
Moving toward the commotion, she unclips the leather strap restraining the weapon, her heavy boots scraping against the ground. Sasha pushes her auburn hair behind her back, her pony tail dangling slowly. “WC Ordinance Patrol,” she announces firmly, “Come out with your hands where I can see them.” The fact that there could be someone with a deadly weapon behind the vehicle barely phased her. Most of the times she ran into gun-wielding aggressors, they were so high they could barely unlock the safety, let alone shoot her.
No response is given to her warning, and so she slowly draws the small firearm from her side and holds it in front of herself and steps around the corner. However, in the place of what she expected to be a drugged up homeless person, she finds a mangy dog, its brown fur mottled with ginger patches. She sighs and holsters her weapon, and shoos the dog. “Go on, get out of here, in case some other asshole comes along and shoots you.”
The thin wild dog looks up at her, confusion in its black eyes. She starts toward it suddenly, and it runs off. Turning around, she gasps in surprise. A figure wearing ill-fitting jeans and a dirty green sweater stands before her, his breath foul, body odour severe, and his hair, black and greasy. She quickly steps back, drawing her weapon again. “Hold, civilian!” She says loudly, “What is the meaning of this?”
His eyes, wild like the dog she has scared off, look from her face to her weapon and back again. “Bet you got money on you,” he says in Russian, his accent thick and awkward. “Give it here, or I won’t hurt you, girlie.” She practically snorts at the idea. However, this man is faster than she expects and lunges at her, grabbing the barrel of her weapon and pushing himself into her.
His rank body odour fills her nose and she momentarily wretches before freeing her weapon and smacking the metal butt of it down over the back of his head. Dazed, the man staggers to the side. Sasha takes the opportunity and kicks him, squarely in the chest. He wheezes, dropping to his knees. “The fact that you touched my breast is bad enough,” she says coldly, adjusting her grey military-standard jacket, “But the fact you smell so horrible made it even worse.” With that, she walks off, continuing her search.
“Private Alkaev,” her receiver crackles to life once more, “Switch to Channel 6.2.” For a moment she does not recognise the voice, then her memory returns to her and she smirks in spite of herself. Fiddling with a small dial on the walky-talky device affixed to her fabric epaulet, she speaks again. “Hello Ivan, I trust you’re watching me from somewhere nearby and are about to chastise me for kicking that bum in the chest?”
She doesn’t hear it over the radio, but she can sense the laughter. “Of course, what are siblings for, if not to tease one another?” The younger voice sounds mischievously, “Admittedly, I’d like to be out there with you, but following you without you knowing it has its advantages. For example, every time you belch or fart, I know.”
Moving down the street, she takes another left turn, and momentarily dials back into the previous channel to announce: “Sector 4 cleared. Moving onto sector 5.” She turns back to the previous channel and continues her conversation. “If that’s the case, I may as well file a restraining order, you stalker.”
“You could,” the voice acknowledges, “But then who would tell you that there’s another bum coming up on your left, and that this one has a gun?” Ivan’s coy tones give away no measure of concern, and for her part, Sasha feels more bored than anything else.
“Alright, come out with your hands up! Put the gun on the ground!” She shouts. Before her, the design of the skyscraper left large gaps between its outward façade, perfect for hiding from the elements, or in this case, from the military. She drew her weapon once more, the weight of it becoming all too familiar nowadays, as the state of the city further deteriorated.
She hurried around the side of the building and in the further crevice of the rib-like structure found an elderly woman with grey hair and a frail, thin body, sunken into a corner. A rifle of some sort, Sasha was not sure, was held in her hands and she held it shakily upward. “You won’t hurt my grandson… Not like you killed my daughter,” she said weakly, the weapon trembling in her hands. Only then did the patroller notice the small child wrapped in a bundle of old sweaters next to her.
“Ma’am,” she began calmly, “No one is going to hurt you or your baby. You’re safe.” As Sasha went to speak again, the woman shook her head and interrupted her.
“You’re wrong! It was one of you that killed her! She was trying to get off the stuff and they shot her dead!” The woman shrieked with fury. With shaking hands she points the weapon up at Sasha, who quickly has her own handgun held in both hands, sights trained on the woman. “You see!? You’re here to help, but all you do is bully and kill us! Is this what we get for living in Moscow?!”
Sasha rolls her eyes, “Ma’am, the only reason why I’m pointing my weapon at you is because you are pointing yours at me.” She slowly lowers her handgun, but keeps her finger on the trigger. “Lower your weapon and everything will be fine.”
“Nighty night!” Ivan’s voice comes out in a sing-song, lyrical tone. The woman before her slumps forward, letting go of the loaded rifle. Sasha lunges forward, grabbing it before it can drop to the ground and discharge. The elderly woman’s grandchild begins to cry noisily. “Whoops, sorry, should have warned you. Oh well, I’m not trained!” Her brother says with a chipper tone.
She sighs, “Yes, yes, point taken.” She switches her receiver once more, “HQ this is Alkaev. I have an unconscious elderly woman and what she claimed is her grandchild, can I have a med team pick them up on the west side of Sector 5?”
Switching her receiver back one more time, an oddly panicked voice sounds: “– around! Sasha!” Her brother’s voice cuts off and she turns around, only to find a large man with dirty blond hair standing over her. She sighs, deflating slightly and speaks to no one in particular.
“Oh, fuck.”
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