This story is by Valorie Clark and was part of our 2017 Winter Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.
“Do you remember what I said to you in the car on the way here?” Rich started, his voice softer than the pounding of Sandra’s heartbeat in her ears.
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“What?” She hissed. Another second ticked away in front of her. The metal box seemed to take up all the space in the room, as if it was growing the longer she stared. Her blood burned in her veins but her body was stuck standing still.
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“I said no fires, remember that?”
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“Nothing’s on fire. And you said a lot of things. Could you help instead of rehashing them?” The car seemed like a long time ago—a briefing about a recon on a suspect, just a look around Voss, he’d said. She remembered that pretty clearly.
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There were no wires, no soldering seams even. Just a box and a countdown on red LED clock face that Sandra didn’t know how to stop.
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“Bombs don’t look like this, this isn’t normal,” she muttered, walking a circle around the box again, trying to ignore how Rich remained still close by. The bomb stood to about her knee, bigger than the ones in the movies. “No one smuggled this, they built it and left it here,” Sandra said, hoping Rich would contribute to the line of thought.
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He did not. Instead he asked, “What happened the last time one of our missions literally went down in flames?”
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“We have little time left, can we do this part later?” Sandra didn’t dare to touch it, but she also thought if she turned it over and got a look at the bottom—
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“I distinctly remember having uneven eyebrows for weeks.”
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“They grew back,” she bit out. 2:41. It was enough time to defuse any bomb, if she could just figure out how. She could feel her heartbeat race in her very fingertips.
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“I have this no fire rule for a reason. Not only is fire a terrible way to die but it attracts so much attention—“
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Sandra snapped, finally turning her full attention to her senior training agent. “I SWEAR TO GOD. HELP ME OR LEAVE.”
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They stared at each other. His face was impassive, his body relaxed, but his normally icy eyes seemed to be asking her a question. What she needed was answers. Answers to questions like, why wasn’t her training agent worried? And why did she think she could be an agent? And who would feed her parents’ cat after she died in this explosion?
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The clock face ticked to two minutes left. Sandra clenched her jaw so tightly, she thought her molars may crack. Rich remained eerily calm.
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Sandra clenched her fists and looked back at the clock. The seconds seemed to be flying by as she watched. 1:41, 1:40… Why four minutes? Why had the countdown been set to four minutes? This was a large building in the middle of nowhere, with no real means of escape except the car arrived in. If the alarm was set off and triggered the bomb, where was suspect Johnny supposed to go?
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Sandra reviewed the floor plan in her head. Was there some sort of bomb shelter, in case they couldn’t get out in time? She pictured the schematics perfectly, but hadn’t seen anything that looked sturdy enough except maybe the vault with the money. But it was hardly big enough to fit an adult inside.
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Four minutes wasn’t enough time to get them away from a bomb this big. It didn’t make sense. It just didn’t make sense. Sandra frowned—something snagged in her brain.
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It didn’t make sense because it wasn’t real.
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She looked at Rich, her eyes narrowed. “This isn’t a real bomb is it, Rich?”
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He switched from what he was saying mid-sentence to, “I mean Jesus Christ Voss, that took you two full minutes to figure out. Two. Full. Minutes.”
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“You said we were on a mission! A real one! Following gunrunners!”
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“I lied!” He remained still with his arms crossed loosely, but he might as well have been throwing his arms in the air and stomping around for all the frustration Sandra could feel rolling off of him. Sandra’s heart was slowing down and the adrenaline was being reabsorbed, leaving her cold and nauseated. She wondered if she’d get worse marks on this if she threw up.
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Rich walked over to the wall and flicked a switch. A dark window above them that Sandra had barely registered suddenly lit up. It was an observation room, and two silhouettes stared down at them. Sandra decided to wave instead of vomit.
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“Don’t wave,” Rich groaned.
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“Voss, Agent Six,” someone acknowledged over a microphone from the room.
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Sandra took a deep breath. “Okay. So this was a lesson. Okay. What would have happened if I’d tried to defuse it?” She gestured at the clock that had finally stopped. “Nothing, that wasn’t the test.”
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“Well what was the test?” Sandra asked.
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He stared at her like it should have been obvious. “Reading people. Staying cool in a high pressure situation. Here I was, just prattling along about rules instead of working. How did you not notice and think, ‘Oh, he’s calm, maybe this isn’t a real bomb’?”
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“Well you complain about things so damn often, I thought you were just making sure to get your last scolding in!”
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Crackling over the speaker came a hastily stifled chuckle. Rich shot a murderous look toward the window.
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“Let’s go,” he snapped.
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Sandra followed him out. Fully lit, the building did look more like a training center than an illicit weapons warehouse. It was just a little too clean, not enough scuff marks on the floor. She wondered if the weapons scattered around the place were ones taken from actual arrests and seizures.
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They got in the car and didn’t speak the entire drive back to headquarters. Sandra tried not to fidget, knowing it irritated Rich—“Stop showing people you’re uncomfortable!”—and wondered if he’d think turning the A/C up was fidgeting. Now that she was truly out of danger, her body couldn’t decide how to regulate temperature, swinging between being cold from the wintery day or burning hot with embarrassment at failing so badly.
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Twenty minutes later, Rich swung his car into a space at headquarters a little forcefully and killed the ignition. But he remained inside, tapping one finger on his steering wheel. Sandra watched it, counting the seconds again.
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“Always pay attention to who you’re with and assume they’re all lying to you,” he muttered after 47 seconds that felt like 47 hours to Sandra. “It took you about one minute and 50 seconds too long to realize what was going on. It was your worst showing on an assignment yet.”
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“Really? Even compared the Malaga mission?” That was how they referred to another “routine” recon during which they’d both been kidnapped. Rich had failed to mention that he had activated a rescue call before Sandra had distracted their captors with a car fire that accidentally hit a gas line.
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He sighed. “You disobeyed orders that time, but you didn’t fail. This you failed.”
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She watched as he picked up a dime and began to fiddle with it. He was fidgeting; she tried not to smirk and relaxed a fraction. “So, how many missions am I allowed to fail and still gain agent status?”
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“This isn’t primary school—“
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“How many missions did you fail when you were training?”
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Rich pinched the bridge of his nose. “Voss—“
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“I bet you failed two or three. I think you were probably reckless back then.”
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He raised one hand in offense. “Excuse you—“
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“Did you set a lot of things on fire, is that why you have a rule against it?”
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He groaned, passing a hand over his face as if he was trying to wipe away his frown. Sandra knew to shut up when he started doing that. She watched, waiting for the signs that meant he had gotten over whatever had annoyed him: his jaw would soften as he clenched it slightly less; the crinkles around his eyes where he was frowning would smooth somewhat. Some silver strands had woven through his hair in the last year. Sandra wondered how much she had to do with that.
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Something wasn’t right though. The (minor!) burns around his forehead had healed nicely, but something else was off. She squinted closer. “Are you coloring in your eyebrows?” She asked. “Have they not finished growing back yet?”
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“Oh my god,” Rich groaned and got out of the car.
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“I didn’t know you were so vain,” she called, following him. She almost had to jog to keep up with his long strides.
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“Go away. Don’t talk to me for three days.”
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She stopped. “Okay, but I’ll talk to you tomorrow after I finish my midnight rotation.”
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“Yeah, okay, talk to you tomorrow,” she barely heard Rich grumble. Sandra smiled and left for her rotation.
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