After sending the message, Elaine put out a general alert message to all officers that Cortez had been shot and that the killer was at large, likely still within the detention center. Alarms began blaring. Red warning lights began shining throughout the facility. Though she couldn’t hear it, Elaine also knew that, per department policy, all exits would be locked.

She knew she couldn’t 100% rely on this plan working. If, God forbid, the culprit was inside the department from the beginning as she’d been suspecting, they would already have planned around the standard operating procedure in emergency situations to make their escape before the alarm was raised. But if there was any chance of stopping them from getting out, Elaine knew she had to take that chance.

While she had her communicator out, Elaine pulled up the security cameras for the facility. One perk of her rank was remote access to the automated security systems in government facilities. As she quickly flipped through the different cameras assigned to the detention center, her mind quickly raced trying to figure out what sort of timing the murder would have happened in.

Cortez was still warm, so it couldn't have been long. On the other hand the facility itself wasn’t particularly large, nor was it meant to hold prisoners long-term. If a crime went to trial and the accused were found guilty, their long-term sentencing would typically be implemented off-colony, typically in orbital prison stations.

Assuming the crime wasn’t bad enough for execution, anyway, though capital punishment was a very rare conviction following decades of debate before the colonies were even launched. In a legal, official sense, the death penalty was reserved for the most egregious crimes, though a lot of what was affectionately called frontier justice occurred off-the-books in the early days of the colonies, mainly because of the length of time proper extradition of prisoners would take. This off-the-books prairie justice also tended to dip into the realm of cruel and unusual punishment, “befitting the crime” as was often joked by those who partook in the practice.

Elaine paused to think about this. If the killer was part of the force, was it motivated by some desire for frontier justice? No, it couldn’t have been. As far as Elaine knew, Vince wasn’t a criminal. Just what had Vincent Cortez discovered?

Elaine looked solemnly at Jill Cortez’s body. The poor girl didn’t know anything. Or if she did, she never let on. She was just collateral damage.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna let this slide.

Elaine’s communicator buzzed. A message from Brad. Finally. She’d notified Brad of Cortez’s death...fifteen minutes ago?

Huh, I guess it feels like it’s been longer.

Elaine looked at Brad’s response.

“What? Are you safe? I just got jumped.”

Oh no…

Elaine decided to do a video call.

Brad picked up immediately.

“Elaine! God, what happened?”

“Someone shot Cortez, like I said.” Elaine looked at Brad. “But wait, didn’t you say you got jumped? You look fine! Hair’s a little messed up, but…”

“Oh, he missed with the pipe. He’s probably not far behind though. I kicked him in the nuts and bolted. Can I call you back when I get to safety?”

“Uh…yeah sure, but hurry up though. I’m locked in the detention center and I think the killer is still with us.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Brad’s eyes widened. “What?! Oh no…look, do what you can to be safe. I’ll get back to you when—“ Brad suddenly started shouting. “BEHIND YOU!”

Elaine hadn’t heard the door open behind her, but she quickly turned to see a woman with her face covered pointing a gun directly at her. No time to think, Elaine quickly dove to the side as the gun went off, bullet burrowing into the floor where she’d been sitting.

Elaine’s mind raced, trying to find something she could hide behind. Which, of course, since it was just the holding cell, there wasn’t anything. Elaine frantically reached for her stun gun. She only had one shot and not nearly enough time to aim it properly.

Elaine quickly fired off a shot in the shooter’s general direction.

While in the past, standard issue stun guns were of the taser variety, firing darts attached to wires into the target, incapacitating them via electric shock, and while those were still commonly in use on the colony due to them being relatively cheap and easy to produce, Elaine had enrolled in a trial for an experimental stun gun that would fire a concussive blast of air at a force similar to that of a shotgun blast, just without the shot spread.

It hurt like hell and recoil was a problem that was well-documented from the trials (as a shotgun blast without a stock to absorb some of the shock would be), but assuming the pressure tank inside the gun didn’t fail it would be much easier to outfit a squad with rather than the disposable cartridges native to tasers.

The upside of the blast was the fact that precision wasn’t completely mandatory like it was with a taser.

The downside…well…

White hot pain shot through Elaine’s shoulder. No time to worry about that now, though.

While the masked woman tried to recover from being blasted back into the wall, Elaine quickly dove on top of her and tried to cuff her with her one still-intact arm.

Surprisingly, trying to wrestle someone with a dislocated shoulder, even someone as dazed as this masked woman was, turned out to be surprisingly difficult.

Another blast at this range would be a terrible idea. Elaine would never be able to properly brace herself, and the recharge for the air compression tank would take sixty seconds—an eternity in a fight.

Then again, there was one other option.

Elaine reached onto her utility belt for her other non-lethal equipment. Specifically, a bottle of pepper spray. She closed her eyes, turned her face away from the spray, and blasted the masked woman in the face with the spray.

The woman screamed in agony, letting Elaine know that she now had precious few seconds to finish cuffing the woman.

The woman writhed on the ground screaming. Elaine waited.

Either the woman would pass out from the pain or the spray would wear off. The chemical reaction of the spray would wear off significantly faster than similar sprays used in the past, but it was still difficult to watch this woman writhing in pain. Elaine knew the burning feeling too well from her own training as well as a mishap with the spray on a previous mission.

Eventually the screaming stopped. Elaine stepped forward and tore the mask off, revealing an unconscious face she had seen before but wasn’t overly familiar with. A redhead named Jolene Morris. A newer officer, recently transferred in from somewhere. Elaine racked her brain. Was it one of the lunar colonies?

Elaine tried to pull up her personnel file, but she quickly discovered that she was logged out of the police department’s network. Strange.

Elaine tried to sign back in, but was greeted with an orange screen notifying of emergency server maintenance.

Oh for f-.

Elaine scowled and quickly removed any weaponry from Officer Morris and cuffed her.

If we can have emergency comms maintenance during an actual emergency, this must go deeper than I originally thought. No telling who I can trust on the force at this point. I gotta get myself and Morris out of here. I do not wanna be here when they found out her assassination mission was a bust.

Hang on…

Elaine quickly grabbed Morris’ communicator and booted it up. Comms were still down on her device, but for some reason she still had access to the locks and cameras. Elaine quickly flipped through the cameras. Nobody was outside the door yet but a lot of officers were on the way to the holding cell.

Elaine flipped through some more cameras trying to decide what to do when she came upon the emergency fire exit. There was an extremely small window to escape, but she’d need to get out ASAP.

And Elaine had to do all this while dragging Morris out with one arm.

Fantastic...