Dex swung from one rusted edge of the fire escape, closing his eyes and doing breathing exercises to calm himself down. It wasn’t that far to the ground; three, maybe four feet. No big deal. If he wasn’t so paralyzingly afraid of heights, this would be a piece of cake. The ladder creaked and swayed in the slight breeze, and he refused to open his eyes. There was a hard strip of pavement waiting for him if he jumped, and he wasn’t eager to move things along.
“Dex, get your ass down here.”
Yailyn. He’d nearly forgotten she was here in his panic.
“I’m just…working up to it.”
He gripped the ladder more forcefully, the muscles in his hands cramping under the strain.
“They’ll be here any minute. You’ll never pass the test at this rate. Do you want to be a CPO or not?”
Sweat poured down his face. He let out a muffled curse as he dropped to the ground, and dusted off his hands on his jacket when he’d righted himself. Yailyn rolled her eyes and broke into a fast sprint down the block. As he heaved his less-primed body down the block after her, huffing and grunting his way into step alongside her, she shot him an amused glance.
Dex had entered into Colebrook Peace Officer training because it was the most stable income around. Yailyn had been his grudging ally since his first days struggling through the coursework. It was a miracle she still stuck with him, encouraging him with her unique blend of exasperation and good-natured cruelty.
“Do you think they’ll have poison ivy this time?” She asked, a hopeful edge to her voice. The force sometimes hauled in plants or animals to help add challenge to the test, and one year each trainee had ended the test covered in red blots from poison ivy. Another year, it had been dogs.
“God, what is wrong with you?” he shot back. “This is hard enough as it is.”
“Really? I thought they were going easy on us.”
Unease spread through him quickly. It did seem to be a test relatively free of obstacles so far. There were no assailants shooting arrows at them from unseen vantage points, no flesh-eating plants, no fire. Why was it so simple? He shook his head sharply, willing himself to focus. He couldn’t let himself become carried away with his own anxieties if he wanted to have a chance at passing.
The street flickered in front of them, the simulation sputtering. The department had lacked funding for years, and all of the state-of-the-art equipment they’d purchased a decade ago was in dire need of expensive software updates.
Because the test was mixed reality, it required complete concentration. A portion of it (like the fire escape) was real, but details like assailants and certain buildings were done using holograms. Which was fine, except when the holograms glitched out and caused you to fail your test because an assailant that looked like it was right in front of you was really stabbing you in the back. It had happened before to new recruits, and Dex was terrified it would happen to him.
Yailyn disappeared around the corner up ahead, her baton drawn and ready to meet some force invisible to Dex. He hurried to catch up to her, crouching behind her at what looked like the entrance to a building. He tried to spot anything that didn’t belong in the malfunctioning scene before him. Slight ripples went through the buildings and made his head spin. He blinked and wiped the sweat from his eyes with a calloused palm, reminding himself, not for the first time, that he’d been training with mixed reality for months. He should be more used to it by now.
He stepped carefully, knowing that one wrong move could easily fail him. He found his mind wandering to other occupations, and how little training they required. Why hadn’t he chosen something else? Anything, really, as long as it didn’t involve holding a long stick with the ability to electrocute people with the press of a button.
Yailyn looked back at him and nodded at the door in front of her. She wanted him to go through first. The handle was a hologram, so his hand passed through it when he reached without thinking to push the door open. His mind skipped; he grunted and stepped through, squinting as the light changed drastically from a gray morning to nearly pitch-black.
There was an echo. Who knew what area of the training grounds they were in now–his brain found it impossible to try to remember where they were in real-life while the holograms were active. It was one of the many ways that he had proven himself to be less than qualified for police work.
His eyes adjusted, just barely, to the darkness. He could see general shapes of objects, what looked like shipping containers in a great open building. A warehouse, maybe? The officers who’d created this test weren’t always great on backstory. During their briefing, they had just informed the handful of candidates there was an assailant on the loose they needed to apprehend using whatever means necessary. They’d each been given a baton, ear pieces, and a watch with location sharing and been sent on their way.
Dex willed his own heart rate to slow as his eyes adjusted to the dark. In the far corner of the room a figure was muttering, distraught, a few yards away from where he and Yailyn were crouched.
“We’ve got you surrounded,” Yailyn called, her words reverberating against the walls. The assailant looked up but kept talking, either to himself or into an earpiece.
A few other candidates entered silently and settled against the opposite wall.
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” the assailant moaned, cradling his head in his hands. Dex rose to standing and holstered his weapon. Yailyn glared at him in the dark.
“Dex, get down,” she hissed.
He ignored her and crept toward the pacing man. He looked so helpless. The trainees closest to the man rose as well, readying their batons.
“Sir, can I help you?”
“No one can,” the man said, “Everyone stay away. Don’t come any closer. I’ve got–I’ve got–”
“Put your weapon down, sir,” Yailyn said from behind Dex. She had crept up behind him, and the other trainees were moving closer, too. Dex couldn’t even see what weapon Yailyn was referring to, but he supposed it didn’t matter.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay away!” The man cried. He was sweating, and the whites of his eyes gleamed in the darkness. He looked mad with fear and pain. Although he knew it was a simulation, Dex felt a profound pity for this person. He wondered briefly if he was in the wrong line of work; if being the enforcer of laws might be a tad heavy for him. He also wondered what programmer had been assigned to their test. Whoever it was had more attention to detail than everyone else in their department.
He was now close enough to touch the man. He wondered at the detail on him, the lines of wrinkles along the man’s brow and the sweat pooling in the armpits. This man seemed real. Too real. A metal clang echoed off the walls and startled him. His focus left the man for a second–maybe just half a second–but it was enough time for the man to elbow him in the nose sharply and dart for the door. There was only one thought that presented itself to Dex in that moment, as he clutched his nose and attempted to slow the blood gushing from it.
Holograms shouldn’t be able to do that.
Yailyn shot him a quick look of concern mixed with curiosity, then took off at a run towards the assailant. Some of the other recruits flanked her immediately. He was in the second wave, made up of the recruits still recovering from the shock of real violence. The bridge of Dex’s nose throbbed. Something was definitely broken.
He quickly fell into last place of the group, and found he hardly cared. His mind was too busy puzzling over the man. Who was this assailant? Had the force hired him? The batons they carried were powerful enough to knock someone out for a day, maybe two. If you happened to be hit by multiple batons at once, though–well, that could be lethal.
That was the whole point of the holograms. They were supposed to protect the recruits from getting hurt, but they were also supposed to keep the recruits from hurting others. If it wasn’t a hologram, then what were they doing? A dark thought crept up in him without warning. Could they kill this man?
Logically, he knew that if he somehow passed this test and became an officer, he would likely be put into situations where violence was necessary. The term “Peace Officer” was a purposeful illusion, designed to market officers as friends of the community– helpful allies. Dex was more interested in the illusion than the reality, and that had never been more obvious to him than in this moment.
Dex approached quietly, unable to see much of the sweating man through the ever-tightening throng of recruits. The sky was gray and blinding after the brief dark of the warehouse. The gravel was loose beneath his feet, splattered with deep red droplets from his nose. Blood trickled down his throat, face, and neck.
The others were circling around the assailant, just as they’d practiced in training. None of them seemed disturbed or particularly surprised that the man had been able to inflict force. If anything, it seemed to invigorate them. Through a small gap in the circle, Dex could see that the man was clutching his head in his hands. He could feel a pulse of energy from the rest of his team, a sickening enthusiasm. It seemed to him that the inevitable outcome to this exam would be more violence.
The assailant made a move. Yailyn and three others came forward swiftly, each hitting the man with a pulse of electricity so strong it knocked him to the ground. The circle of recruits parted just enough for Dex to see the man through the gaps. He watched, disturbed, as the man’s body gave way to a few unnatural jerks. A groan escaped from between the man’s lips and another recruit, baton held in front of him, came forward to hit the assailant with another strong current of electricity. Dex doubted the man would ever get up again.
Abruptly, the scene changed. Buildings disappeared, and the glitches in their reality dissipated. The courtyard felt bare and exposed; empty. After the overflow of mixed-reality and the brutality he’d just witnessed, Dex struggled to find his equilibrium. Someone had shut off the holograms, returning them all to the familiar training grounds. The violence was over faster than it had begun.
“As you may be aware,” a voice said through his earpiece, “the exam each of you experienced today differs from prior years in many ways. Many of you have done well with this particular test; some of you have not. The communities we serve are in need of strong leaders who do not hesitate to act.”
The test must be over. With a sick feeling, Dex realized he’d never even pulled his baton. The instructions at the start of the test had been clear; apprehend the assailant using whatever means necessary. There was no way he’d passed; he hadn’t done anything! And the man, was he okay? Who was he?
The voice continued.
“We have found that more drastic measures are necessary to weed out recruits who fail to protect this community at all costs. For those of you that have shown you will do whatever it takes to enter into our ranks, I congratulate you. You have my respect. For those of you who have failed, rest assured you will still be able to assist us in our efforts.”
Dex thought this all sounded a little formal for the ending of an exam. He looked down at the blood droplets and then up at his fellow recruits. The bridge of his nose was still aching. Each of the recruits was staring back at him, which seemed strange. Yailyn was looking to the left of his eyes, avoiding his gaze but still interested in what happened next. With a brief pulse of static, the voice through his earpiece began again.
“Do not be afraid, Dexter. They are acknowledging your part in this test. You will help others to become the best officers they can be. We need real people. We need actual confrontation, or we cannot determine who will make the right decision. We think you will be a wonderful addition to the test for next year’s recruits. Remember; each one of us has a part to play.”
Dex looked at the body in front of him, which hadn’t moved since it was shocked. His eyes swept up to the solid wall of recruits stepping toward him cautiously, like he was the assailant. Like he was the animal. His heart thumped wildly in his chest as he thought of the voltage hidden in the batons.
“Yailyn,” he pleaded, but still she avoided his gaze.
“We all have a part to play,” she echoed, and it was like someone else was speaking to him through her voice. The rest of the recruits formed a circle around him. In his panic, his breathing became sharp and shallow. It was too late, there was no way out. These grounds were surrounded by strong electric fences, and there was no way to outrun or outsmart this circle of colleagues who he’d trained with. There were too many of them, and where he had hesitated, they had propelled unthinkingly through the test. The body of the assailant lay forgotten on the pavement, having played its’ part.
“Don’t worry, Dex,” Yailyn said without inflection, tipping her head to one side, “We’ll bring you back with us. We won’t hurt you. The new recruits need someone to practice on, and you will make the perfect prey.”
“And if I don’t want to?” He hated how weak he sounded, how his arms hung limply at his sides as his colleagues crept closer. Yailyn smiled, but it was not a true smile.
“I think you know what will happen then, Dex.”
Blood continued to drip from his nose to the gravel beneath his feet, and his face throbbed. Dex shuddered to think what his own part in this test would look like, and how long he’d be allowed to play it.
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