Trained One ✓

Chapter 02

Lacey.

A flashing red light filled the room, signaling to stop the simulation practice. I gritted my teeth together. This was bound to affect my score.

Josh, one of the others in the simulation who thought he was better than every single person he encountered, marched around the obstacles in the way to head towards me.

We were in a big concrete room and a group of us were set up to reach the enemy target and apprehend him. It was set up with boxes and crates in place of trees, cars, and rocks to hide behind.

"What the hell, Carson?" he yelled.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," I answered as politely as I could.

"Some back-up would have been nice."

I put my hands on my hips. The target was one of the workers here and was in a room full of cardboard cutout people that represented hostages. I watched as he went back to his original location in the hostage room, ready to start again.

"I'm the lead on this run," I answered. Every time we did this, a different person was selected to lead to test their skills and if they could complete the task without anyone dying. "That means I get to decide what approach we take. I said wait. You wait. If I had said jump, you're supposed to jump."

Josh rolled his eyes. "I found a way in."

"You got yourself killed," I pointed out. The target had seen him as soon as he entered the room and shot his fake gun. That meant points off of my score since Josh couldn't listen to authority.

"I didn't have any back-up because you all didn't follow me in," he stubbornly pointed out. The rest of the people on the team remained quiet.

"No offense but it was stupid. You march in there, get shot and now they're angry and probably going to kill the innocent people they've got. That guy's dead, that couple's dead - probably someone's parents, that teen is dead," I said, pointing at random cutouts. "I'm in charge this time."

"That's the stupid thing," he said and stormed off back to the starting point. The red light stopped blinking finally.

I crossed my arms. I'd known him for the last two and a half years, after I called the program to join with them. Before that, I finished school, went to physical therapy as often as I could, and went to support groups. The support groups weren't so bad and it was a requirement if I wanted to join the program as a trainee and work on taking care of gang activity. It was like boot camp but instead of joining the regular police, you were sent on special missions and from what I could tell, a lot of them sat in a car just observing possible gang activity and taking notes. We had classes on gunfire, interacting with gang members, laws, mob mentality, how to talk to victims, how to search records, first aid, the correct protocol for taking down a gang member, anything they could think of you went over either hands on or read it in a book.

Josh was fine to be around unless he had a chance to show off how much better he thought he was. If you were in a situation that didn't involve competition, he was a lot easier to be around. We had a sort of love hate friendship depending on who else was available to talk to and what kind of mood he was in.

I sulked back over to the starting point with the rest of the group.

One of my friends, Elle, elbowed me lightly. "I thought you were doing great," she said.

"Lacey Carson!"

I looked to the entrance door and saw one of the officers in charge of the program, Mr. Tuft, looking expectantly at me.