Chapter 18: Part 2

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After Eric made a mere hand gesture, the twelve Silverists who sat their faceless victims down each walked up to us in a robotically uniform fashion only to give us one gun each. "If it wasn't clear already, I want you to select a target and shoot them in the head," he clarified blatantly which explained the get-up of the twelve Silverists, "Any volunteers?"

As I held the gun in my hands, something felt strange. I dared to shift my gaze from Eric to my gun just to check what was wrong with my firearm, but I was caught, "Tyzon, since you seem to grow a bond with that handgun of yours, by paying more attention to it than me, I think you should use it first," he selected me to be the first recruit to execute a supposed Langatory employee.

"But Eric, I was just checking," I talked back, for shooting first was the last thing I wanted to do.

"There are no 'buts' whilst under my command, Tyzon, unless you want me to make you shoot the victim's ass," Eric threatened me, leaving a vivid image in my mind.

An insult was on the tip of my tongue; however, I stopped myself from spitting it out of my mouth and sighed in an attempt to calm myself. After I refrained myself from retorting, I reluctantly walked up to the first captive to my left so that I did not have to make a biased decision.

During my slow and steady walk, I inspected the gun further, and focused on the magazine of the gun, for there was nothing wrong with the gun itself, only the bullets which were loaded into the magazine. Inside the bullet cartridges laid not solid rounds, but instead, I sensed a powdery substance within each of them, which could have only been one thing, gunpowder. That was when I knew that the pistol was in fact a blank gun.

Instead of divulging my revelation to Eric or any of the recruits, I kept my mouth shut for I did not want to deviate them from the point of their lesson, so I did not interfere with what Eric tried to do, though it was completely redundant to me. I finally reached my victim, to which Eric told me, "I want you to cock the gun, then put the muzzle on top of their forehead," I quickly figured why Eric wanted us to do this, which was so that the bullet was never seen, as there was none.

"Their? You mean any one of these people could be a female?" I asked.

"What difference does it make?" Eric cold-heartedly replied. Even though this trial was a fake, Eric gave a merciless performance that nearly convinced me to recheck if the cartridges were indeed blanks.

After I cocked the gun, which I learnt from Carly, I aimed the weapon towards the top of the assumed Langatory worker's head making them flinch and bow their head even lower, hovering it above the sand. The Silverist who stood over the employee rigorously grasped their shoulders to make them sit, or kneel, straight so that I did not have to awkwardly bend down to execute them. In addition to Eric's chillingly realistic portrayal of himself, the actor beneath the bag was doing a brilliant job on their own by making everything seem as realistic as possible, for the acting and pretending was not obvious in the slightest.

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