Children's Games: A Story of Modern Consequence

Chapter 27

~Katerina~

The town had woken to the terrifying news that Fimiston might not be as secure as they once thought. Nothing official had made it to the morning announcements, but every customer who ventured into the pharmacy seemed to know all the details. One after the other, each customer described their worries and boasted of the rumours they had heard. The ever-changing story was quickly being compared to the bombing of Whaleback mine and the strange things that happened in the days before its demise.

Each customer that entered the pharmacy revealed a new detail that added to the tale of hysteria. After a few hours, the story had twisted that Fimiston's end was coming soon, much like at Whaleback. It was suddenly related to China and their failed attempts at spying on Australia in the past. Suddenly, any threat or worry of a threat from the past year was now a conspiracy blamed on China. It made the customer's feel important to tell their side of the story, no matter how incorrect they were.

"Rosie was her name. And there would have been no question against the suicide appearance if it weren't for the cover that was blocking the main camera into the building." He was an enthusiastic customer the next morning who boasted more details than any other suspicious customer venturing into the pharmacy. "It was the one mistake that made them come back to that body and realise all the mistakes!"

"Do tell?" Anna said with her eyebrows raised. She was feigning interest in all the man's illicit tales while giving no clues that she was feeling as anxious as Katerina next to her, counting the sparse amounts of money in the till before closing. She wondered if Anna felt partly responsible for leaving the clue behind, or for Rosie's death.

"Well, the first thing is that they would never have inspected her body that closely, in a matter of respect to her memory and to her family, but that camera trick really led them to a string of clues like the so called 'self-inflicted' injuries not looking authentic, the bullet count in her weapon not adding up, and the angle of the shot wouldn't have been possible either."

There was no note explaining Rosie's suicide, but the assumed reasons revealed themselves when her superiors reviewed what type of life Rosie had. It was the sickest aspect of conformation bias. They had seen a fellow soldier fed up with the system and with the unending cycle of war and disease and poverty. They had understood and sympathised with her pathway out of the life of duty. They saw themselves and their own darkest miseries and accepted the possibility that Rosie had taken her own life.

But the customer was right. There were no bullets missing from her personal gun 'fallen' from her hand. Her injuries were relatively bloodless; wounds inflicted to her wrists after blood had stopped flowing in her veins. There were no suspicions from any one of her close colleagues. The realisation that it could've only been a murder shook them to their core, and therefore shook the very core of the city.

"This was a murder. They are inside the veins of this city. Everyone who I've talked to wants to move, only just having heard about this a few hours ago. I reckon that's nonsense. Obviously if it's hit this city so far inland, then there wouldn't be many other places free from it."

"Who do you think did this? An inside job?"

"No, I don't think so," he replied to Anna's clever question. "I think it's obvious that it's related to all these bombings. They keep getting further and further inland, which means that they have the access."

Katerina sent Anna a warning look as she thought about all this information. She wanted to tell her that encouraging these thoughts could actually lead to the mission being exposed, but Anna was having none of it, and ignored the small nudges of warning behind the register.