Brad quickly dashed over to Elaine after she passed out, shoving the body of her assailant out of the way, ignoring the spattering of blood all over his shirt. And carpet. And desk.

Okay, Brad was struggling to ignore that. That was going to be a pain to deal with later. The smell of iron, blood, and gunpowder, the sharp ringing in his ears—movies certainly don’t get across just how loud a gunshot can be indoors—the fact that there was a dead assassin in his office. Brad felt himself hyperventilating as it alll sank in. Someone had come to kill him, damn near succeeding in killing a dear friend of his.

Brad cursed his own stupidity. Of course the guy who was stalking him earlier would have checked out his office. Brad had gambled on the idea that his stalker could only identify him by picture without knowing his name or place of residence. Stuff like this only served to illustrate why Brad shouldn’t gamble in the first place.

Brad’s train of thought was broken by the sound of metal clattering against the floor behind him. He turned to see Jolene, face a few shades paler than she was on the way to the office before they heard the commotion inside, sinking to her knees and covering her mouth. Brad, at a loss of what to say, pointed in the direction of the bathroom in his office, with Jolene standing and dashing in. Seconds later sounds of coughing and vomiting erupted from the bathroom. The sounds in conjunction with the sights and smells around Brad triggered his own gag reflex, but he forced himself to keep it in. He might need a stiff drink later to help him sleep, but now he needed to at least appear like a professional.

Right, Elaine. Brad turned and looked Elaine over. She was breathing. She had a pulse. Just unconscious.

Thank God. Hopefully we can keep it that way.

Brad picked her up, dragging her upright to the couch in the front of the office. She needs rest, and until I can figure out where to keep her that’s as good a place as any.

He looked at the door to his office. That was going to need to be replaced, with wood and glass being expensive. Perhaps it was time to just put in a metal or plastic door not unlike others you’d see elsewhere on the colony. Having the film noir aesthetic of the wooden door with the frosted glass window was a nice, if not frivolous use of his funds when he first moved in, but Brad naively expected to go through his career without vandalism or home invasion being on the menu. Practicality was going to have to win out here.

In the meantime, Brad had to figure out how to plug the giant hole into his office. It probably wasn’t going to be safe here, but at the very least Brad should be able to keep the dust out.

He swept the glass into a recycling bin—his way of giving back to the community, the glass would be recycled into something useful surely—and he looked the door over. The assailant had broken the window, slid his arm in, and disengaged the lock. From the look of things, Brad assumed that the door would still function. Maybe he’d just need a sheet of plastic to replace the window. That would be decidedly less expensive.

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In the meantime, Brad did happen to have a whiteboard he could screw into the door. While the board was about three inches wider than the hole where the window should be, at the very least it would solve the problem for the time being.

—

Before long, Jolene staggered back out of the bathroom. Seeing that Elaine was, once again, spread out over the couch, she decided to sit in the desk chair. Brad was still staring at the whiteboard on the door, unhappy with how it looked. I’m gonna need to fix that soon, otherwise it’s gonna drive me mad, he thought.

He then turned and noticed Jolene seated in the office chair. “Oh good, I was worried I was going to have to deal with two unconscious women here, which would look even more suspicious with our buddy with the pipe over there.”

Jolene paused, unsure of how to react, before replying with a weak, “Yeah…”

Brad stepped over and sat on the floor near the chair. “You wanna talk about it?”

Jolene cast her eyes aside. “Why would I want to talk about this? I’m a cop. I’m supposed to be able to handle stuff like this better.”

“First time?”

“First time I’ve even seen combat,” she muttered. “I mean yeah I’ve had to get rough with some people for resisting arrest and the like, but…” she looked at the floor. “I’ve never killed anyone before. Never even drew my gun on another person before. I…what if I missed?”

“You didn’t,” Brad said. “You got him. If you hadn’t, who knows what would have happened? You’re the hero here.”

“It just…makes me think of a lot of things I don’t want to think about. Would I react this way if I had been able to kill Elaine earlier? And what about the future? What if I have to kill someone again? Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”

Brad stayed silent, knowing he had nothing to say either way. He himself had never hurt anyone that bad as far as he was aware, so he’d have absolutely nothing to offer to this extremely distressed girl.

She put her head in her hands, saying, her voice now scarcely louder than a hushed squeak, “It’s all wrong.”

Something’s definitely screwy here, Brad agreed silently. Brad decided to just let her take the time she needed without forcing her to talk or think about anything. A few minutes ticked by in complete silence, before Jolene finally broke the silence.

“Why aren’t you reacting more? Have you ever…y’know…”

“No. I haven’t,” Brad answered. “And the truth is I’m terrified, racking my brain trying to figure out what our next move is, and where we can be safe since clearly this place isn’t going to work.”

“Your expression hasn’t really changed since we got here besides when you first saw Elaine in danger.”

“I do this sometimes,” Brad answered. “I’ve always kind of bottled up my anxiety or other negative emotions or just pretended they didn’t exist. I’ve never been the best at expressing them in what people would call a healthy manner. Even now all I can think is how little time we have to sulk before something else gets thrown at us. It’s exhausting, but I don’t feel like we have any other options.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“First, I’m going to rifle through our assassin’s clothes and see if there’s anything that would hint as to what our next course of action should be besides checking out that mining operation. Second, I’m probably going to throw up. Third, I’m going to need a stiff drink.”