Tested

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

“You’re exceptionally bad at this,” Bruce said as he shuffled the cards. “I’m not sure I can teach you.”

I made a face. “You cheat. I know you cheat. Your eye twitches every time you get nervous.”

He laughed. “I’ll be more careful in future. How’s your dad today?”

I shrugged. “Probably still arguing with Sonia about going out on another patrol.”

“Is he serious?”

“He doesn’t like being trapped.”

“We’re trying to keep everyone safe. Nobody’s been hurt for two nights now. That’s because everyone’s sticking to the plan. People like your father are liabilities, Jess. He’s not helping anyone, even you, when he acts like that.”

“He’s doing what he thinks is best,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Go for it.”

“What were you doing that day? When we first saw you. You were way out of your jurisdiction, right?”

“Still am, technically.” He laughed. “Some days, I really don’t know how we ended up here. Before everything went crazy—well, crazier—Sonia was suspicious. Things had been strange for a while. We lost contact with stations we regularly worked with, and she was determined to find out more. We were told to leave it, that somebody would take care of it, but she just… couldn’t.”

“So what happened?”

“Her instincts were right. Things started breaking down for real. More crime, more random violence, and then our colleagues started disappearing. We’d been getting some strange emergency calls for a while, way more missing person cases, and a ridiculous amount of false call for help. We kept waiting for an announcement, something to tell us what was going on. That never came, and Sonia wanted to check out her hometown.” He gestured around the room. “I volunteered to come with her. I wanted to see for myself what she thought we would find. On the way, we found more than enough.”

“You didn’t try to go back?”

He shook his head. “No way of getting back. Last we heard, people were being contained. We lost touch with almost everyone we left behind. The ones who got away are doing the same thing as us, trying to find a base to defend, some place to fight back. We can’t outrun all of this forever.”

“Other places might be safer.”

“Probably, and a part of me would love to keep moving, but we’re going to run out of places to hide eventually, so why not get people ready to defend themselves? At first, I thought maybe a war was kicking off, that terrorists were hitting us from inside, and I was right in a way. I just didn’t have a clue about the supernatural stuff. Our station was burned down, and communication was so iffy that we lost ground very quickly. But we picked up enough rumours to prepare ourselves with a plan. We got out of there before they started keeping people in the cities. I can’t explain everything we’ve heard, but I know that I’m not about to give up.”

“If this isn’t your place, then why did you pull over and tell us to get inside that time?”

“People tend to listen to authority,” he said. “We thought if we could get everyone indoors at night, it would keep the streets clean if anything came. You know, make them aware without scaring them. Who would believe us before they saw it for themselves, right? But it wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough. Things got bad too quickly. I’m not sure how long we can endure the attacks without help.”