Saleem and Emilio had to ditch their trolley at the base of the staff room stairs. Staff lockers, offices, and all the back-of-house areas for the grocery store were in a loft that overlooked the store. A big window let them see down the aisles that spanned the huge area.

Saleem took a moment to watch Gowan and Elizabeth embracing in amongst the shelves. "What's their deal?" He wandered towards Emilio who was rifling through some couch cushions.

"Dating," Emilio grunted. His mind was focused on the job. It was no secret he wasn't a fan of the kids in the cinema, but he wasn't going to let someone die just because they had annoying friends.

No luck.

"Where are the lockers?"

Saleem walked across the break room to another door. "This way."

The locker room was more dingy than the larger break area. The decades old grey carpet was filled with mystery stains and it had lifted up in the corners of the room. There were large pots to try and hide some of the poorly maintained flooring, but even houseplants had given up. Posters lined the walls that reminded employees that they must clock out, or that their phones must be put away when employees were on shift.

Of course, the manager had their own office in the area. It was easy to enforce a "no phones" rule when no one could see them using theirs. Saleem didn't mind though. The trolley collectors had their own shed. It was dingy, but it was theirs and no one minded if they drank goon in it during late night shopping. It was their little slice of paradise away from all the drama and power trips that happened in the customer service side of things.

"Alright, Copperfield," Emilio gestured to the lockers, "do your thing."

"I can show you how. It's really easy."

Emilio simply shrugged. "Yeah, alright. Fuck it. Show me how to fleece some minimum wage teenagers."

"Nah, the casual staff just get those." He gestured to some cubbies hidden away in a corner that were empty besides a few LCM bar wrappers. "This is for the people who have to do full day shifts."

"I don't know whether to feel worse about that."

Saleem looked at Emilio like he was an idiot. "Dude, d'you really think they're coming back?"

Emilio thought for a moment and let his face show Saleem that he knew he was right.

Saleem put down his yet-to-be-discarded, non-beeswax candle on the disgusting floor. He put one hand on the handle and the other underneath a small air vent that sat close to chest level. He tugged hard. A few screws from the hinges popped out. He yanked the door a few more times and with a final heave, the entire door was ripped off.

"Tada!" he said, holding the flimsy locker door.

"That can't be a sustainable way to break in to people's shit."

"There's another way. All locks have the same reset combination. I just remembered this from when- Ah, not the time. Let's get grave robbing."

"Jesus."

The pair began to rifle through the personal belongings of random employees. There were things they could get downstairs like hairbrushes, bottles of water, or tampon boxes which got flung across the room as soon as Saleem realised what they were. Bags were emptied over the ground.

They took one backpack, emptied it, and began to fill it with packs of any medication that they found. There were a lot of asthma inhalers, and Emilio demanded that they took them all too. Maybe they wouldn't need them, but placing them in the bag helped him squash the regrets burning inside him from watching Masina wheeze on the floor and the sinking feeling of knowing he was too late.

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The packets of medication rattled around in the backpack as they made their way through each locker like a whirlwind. When they were done it looked like a bomb had hit the place, as Emilio's mother used to say. They then set their sites on the three office doors.

Two had name plaques on them that neither bothered to read. They were both locked. They decided to head to the nameless room first.

It was just a small kitchen. While filled with passive aggressive signs about cleaning up after yourself, there was nothing of use. At least, nothing they couldn't get brand new from the shelves below on their way out.

Emilio tried to shoulder-barge open one of the doors, but didn't have any luck. Instead, he grabbed the kettle from the break room, stood back, and pegged it through the thin glass. For a moment, he smiled. He liked breaking things for the greater good. He wrapped his hand in a discarded jacket and opened the door from the other side.

"Can I do the other one?" Saleem asked, bouncing like a little puppy.

Emilio was already rifling through the drawers in the managers office. "Sure, Pinky," he said, noting Saleem's hair.

Saleem grabbed the toaster and heaved it at the other door with a satisfying smash. Just as he watched Emilio do, he wrapped his arm in a jacket and reached in to unlock the door.

"Ah, fuck!" he exclaimed, pulling his arm out.

Emilio came running to find blood on Saleem's upper arm. He pointed to the blood. "You missed a spot," he said dryly before wandering back to the kitchen.

"Yeah, gee, thanks."

Emilio came back with a tea towel and a pair of kitchen scissors. He cut the arm off one of the other non-glass-covered jackets and used the tea towel as a bandage, and the jacket sleeve to tie it to Saleem's arm. It was bulky and not very fashionable, but it would do the job.

"Bloody amateur hour, mate," Emilio tutted to himself as he helped Saleem to stop bleeding everywhere. "It's not deep. It'll stop. Just keep the pressure on."

"Fuck, you're so cool. How'd you learn all this shit?"

Emilio unlocked the final door. "Not as cool as you'd think, mate. Had to watch a lot of people die." He crossed his arms, looking Saleem in the eyes. "A lot of people who looked just like you."

There was a tenseness in the air. Emilio's eyes almost went straight through Saleem. He was looking straight at him, but there was also an odd blankness to his expression.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Saleem had only just been born when 9/11 happened, but fucked if somehow white people always wanted to blame him for it. As if he was personally responsible. His parents weren't even from the same country as the guys that flew the planes, and he was born in Australia.

"Sorry. Nothing. I didn't mean it like-"

"Yep, righto." Saleem let it pass. The guy had obviously been through some shit.

While many of the filing cabinets and drawers were locked, Saleem had gotten pretty good at picking them. He only needed to use his skills on a few of them. Whatever idiot manager was here had a set of keys just sitting on the desk. The same ones needed to open said desk, and two of the filing cabinets.

"Jackpot!" Emilio exclaimed, "Mummas got a pain problem!"

He was crouched over the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. Inside were the same boxes of pain medication that Violet had used. There were a few other bottles as well. Some were just paracetamol, but others Emilio recognised from when Amy had been prescribed them. He was no stranger to how useful diazepam could be. It wasn't a pain medication, but it could help the kid calm the fuck down.

All of it went into their backpack.

Saleem put the pack on over the arm without the makeshift tourniquet, feeling all of the packets rattle around inside. "Just like the old days," he thought to himself.

They left the offices to come back to their trolley that, thankfully, hadn't been moved. With his free hand, Emilio began pushing it to the opposite end of the store from where Gowan and Elizabeth had started.

Saleem and Emilio were tasked with picking up non-food items. Extra buckets for the bathroom, toilet paper, pads and tampons, paper towels, paper plates and cups, anything for general living. Neither of the men were super into shopping so Emilio thought he'd make some small talk to pass the time.

"I gotta ask," he gestured to Saleem's hair, "why pink?"

Saleem shrugged. "My friend wanted to try and bleach textured hair. She didn't get very far and it turned orange instead of white. I guess because my hair's so dark."

"Yeah, but why pink?"

"The internet said if your hair is orange, you're not exactly spoiled for choice on what to dye over it and pink doesn't fade too quick. I'm lazy." Saleem threw some paper towels into the trolley like he was dunking a basketball. "Kobe!"

Emilio grunted in acknowledgement.

They continued in silence for a while.

"What's your deal?" Saleem asked Emilio. "I guess you were in the army?"

"Yeah."

"Why'd you join?"

Emilio shrugged. "Gonna die anyway. May as well get paid and die in a war."

Saleem let out a noise as if he was weighing up his death options. "Yeah, I get that. Pushing trolleys isn't exactly fulfilling."

"Looks like you have skills that weren't exactly gonna lead you to trolley pushing your whole life."

Saleem continued to scan the shelves. "I guess some young guys find purpose in being straight-laced and following the rules. I tried to find it outside of the boundaries."

"And we both ended up right here."

"Yeah. I guess we did."