Chapter 97: The Exercise
"Casey — no—"
The shot was low and left of center. Casey went sideways out of the wheelchair, hit the concrete, and lay still — not still in the way of someone who had stopped, but still in the way of someone who had been stopped.
Red spreading across his shirt.
The figure kept the weapon up.
"That was a demonstration," the figure said. "The next one ends the conversation entirely. Tell me who they're protecting."
Casey looked up from the floor. His face was the color of someone managing significant pain with everything he had. His eyes found Simon's.
"Don't," Casey said. "Don't say anything."
Simon looked at Casey. Looked at the figure. Looked at the weapon.
The math was simple and terrible. Casey was bleeding. The figure was going to fire again. Simon could stop that from happening by saying words, and the words would result in Chuck being compromised and the operation being burned and potentially multiple people being killed.
Or he could not say the words and watch Casey die.
"Fine," Simon said. "I'll tell you."
"No," Casey said. "Simon—"
"Good," the figure said, and lowered the weapon slightly.
The figure stepped closer.
"They're protecting—" Simon started.
He rocked forward with everything he had — chair, chain, and all of it — and drove his shoulder into the figure's center mass.
The figure had not seen it coming. Couldn't have. Simon had been telegraphing compliance, and compliance didn't suddenly become a hundred and eighty pounds of forward momentum.
They both went to the floor.
Simon came up first.
He'd seen the pen in the figure's breast pocket during the approach — a slim metal ballpoint, visible above the pocket line. He'd seen it during the approach and had been calculating since then.
He used it now. On the chain lock, working by feel, applying torque to the mechanism while his hands were still shaking from the electrical work they'd done to him and everything else they'd done to him.
The lock opened.
He shed the chain, stood up.
"I opened the lock," he said, more to himself than anyone else. Then, louder, at the two suited men who were moving toward him from Casey's position: "Yeah."
He caught the near end of the chain in both hands and threw the far end.
The chain wrapped around the first man's torso. Simon pulled.
The man came off his feet.
Simon closed the distance to the second man before he completed his draw, wrapped the chain around the gun hand, and pulled until the weapon dropped. Then he used the chain to immobilize the arms.
He kicked the man away.
He picked up the dropped gun, turned, and found the figure had recovered and was pointing a weapon at Casey again.
"Drop it," Simon said.
"This is my facility," the figure said, calm, measured. "You have one weapon and no exit. Think about your options."
"I can shoot you," Simon said.
"Then shoot," the figure said, and holstered the weapon.
Simon stared.
"Shoot me," the figure said. "It's the only way to guarantee your friend's safety. Do it."
Casey was on the floor. His breathing was audible from where Simon stood. His eyes were on Simon with the specific intensity of a man who understood the geometry of the problem.
"Do it," Casey said. "Simon. Pull the trigger."
Simon's finger was on the trigger.
He couldn't make it move.
He understood, in a way that was physical rather than intellectual, why he couldn't make it move. The rational case for it was complete. The person in front of him was a threat. The only way to secure Casey was to remove the threat. Every line of the analysis terminated at the same action.
His finger stayed where it was.
"Since you won't," the figure said, and raised the weapon again.
The shot hit Casey in the leg.
Casey made a sound that Simon would remember.
Simon fired.
The round hit the back of the figure's skull. Simon was already moving — turned, found the first of the two suited men, fired twice. Found the second, fired twice.
He ran out of rounds and the men were still standing.
Simon looked at the gun.
The men were still standing.
He threw the gun and went at them with his hands.
There was a point, somewhere in the middle of what followed, where Simon stopped tracking individual exchanges and existed entirely in the present tense — the next strike, the next position, the next immediate problem. Whoever these men were, they were trained and they absorbed damage and they kept coming, which meant Simon kept going.
He was aware of his body communicating an escalating series of complaints and aware of ignoring them.
Then a voice.
Familiar. Female. Authoritative.
"Stand down."
Simon didn't stand down.
"All units, take him."
A dozen people in tactical gear came through a door Simon hadn't registered was there. Shields and batons, moving in a coordinated deployment.
Simon went at them.
He lost track of time again.
When he came back to a moment he could hold onto, he was standing in a space where the people around him were horizontal rather than vertical. His hands were cut. His ribs communicated their unhappiness with every breath. He was breathing through his mouth in the automatic way of a body that had allocated its resources entirely to the emergency and had nothing left for anything else.
"Enough. Simon. That's enough."
He knew that voice.
He looked toward it.
General Beckman was standing at the edge of the space, in uniform, watching him with the expression of someone who had just witnessed something she had intended and was assessing the results.
"General," Simon said.
His voice didn't sound like his voice.
"Yes," Beckman said. "Stand down."
She walked through the fallen personnel without looking at them, which was itself a statement about how she processed the scene.
"Casey," Simon said.
"Right here," Casey said.
Simon turned.
Casey was walking toward him. Upright. The wounds that Simon had watched happen were not present. The blood was not present. Casey looked functional and slightly tired and like a man who had been playing a role and was done playing it.
Simon looked at him.
"I'm okay," Casey said. He put a hand on Simon's shoulder. The grip was steadying. "I'm fine. It was controlled."
Simon's body, which had been sustaining itself on whatever chemistry gets produced in extreme situations, made the decision that the extreme situation was over and began the process of transitioning to the aftermath of an extreme situation. His knees adjusted. Casey's grip tightened.
The figure with the balaclava crossed to them and pulled the mask off.
Sarah.
Simon looked at her.
Looked at Casey.
Looked at Beckman.
"This was a test," he said.
"An exercise," Beckman said. "Designed to assess your performance under prolonged stress, your resistance to coercive interrogation, your capacity for lethal action under necessity, and your judgment when the people you care about are threatened."
Simon absorbed this.
His body won the argument about the knees.
Casey caught him on the way down.
He woke on a cot in what appeared to be a medical bay adjacent to wherever the exercise had been run — a clean space, good light, the smell of antiseptic and institutional bedding.
Sarah was in a chair beside him, reading something on her phone.
She looked up.
"How long?" Simon said.
"Forty minutes."
"Casey?"
"He's fine. He was never actually shot. Squibs and stage blood — theatrical equipment. The electrical work was real." She paused. "I'm sorry about that part."
Simon looked at the ceiling.
"How'd I do?" he said.
Sarah was quiet for a moment.
"You held for longer than Beckman expected under the electrical interrogation," she said. "Your improvised escape showed creativity and composure. Your combat performance after the break was—" she paused again "—significant."
"And the part where I couldn't shoot you when I had the shot?"
"That's the part she wants to discuss with you," Sarah said.
Simon looked at the ceiling.
"She's not going to tell you it was wrong," Sarah said. "She's going to tell you what it means for how she deploys you."
Simon closed his eyes.
Outside the room, he could hear the building settling back into whatever its normal operational rhythm was — muffled conversation, footsteps, the ambient noise of people who had done something unusual and were returning to the usual.
"For what it's worth," Sarah said, "you didn't give them anything. Three cycles of electrical interrogation and a direct threat to the people you care about, and you didn't give them Chuck's name."
Simon said nothing.
"That's not nothing," Sarah said. "That's actually quite a lot."
Simon kept looking at the ceiling and let that land.
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