Police sergeant Alicia Hendrickson first realized something was wrong when her desk officer left his post at the front office to stand in front of the wall-mounted television with four other policemen, gawking at something on the news. She had never known the young man to leave his desk during a shift, not even for lunch. Too eager to prove his work ethic, she supposed. Now the trim brunette sergeant’s hackles were raised, so she went to see what was going on.
Squaring her shoulders to make up for the height difference between her and the male officers standing around the TV, she swaggered into the common area. Alicia was the only female officer in the district, and had made quite a name for herself as a rising star, making sergeant after only three years and getting the district promotion after six. She had learned how to make herself noticed and respected on the Denver force. A discreet tug straightened her navy-blue blouse around her figure, and she cleared her throat.
“Officers. What are we watching?”
She tried not to be an office Nazi, but as the sergeant in command it was up to her to run a tight ship in her district. She was the first to celebrate and congratulate when things were done right, especially off-hours. But in the office, with the public walking up to the front desk and watching the officers in the background, she felt a constant need to ensure that office decorum matched the results she demanded on the street.
Usually the mere act of stepping out of her office made the others perk up and check her body language to see what was about to happen. But this time only one of the officers watching the TV even turned his head: the recent academy grad from the front desk, Winstone. She knew privately that the assiduous young man was intimidated by his thirty-year-old female sergeant, but this had never bothered her before. Now he looked at her with a mixture of fear and worry, but didn’t step aside or go back to his desk. He just pointed to the screen.
As Alicia’s attention finally focused on the newscasters’ frantic commentary, it took her several seconds to figure out what was going on. Instead of the usual slick candor with which the local news anchors rattled off the latest headlines, usually with a wink or a knowing grin as they poked fun at some target of derision, the man was ignoring the papers in front of him and silently reading something just off camera. The woman was dazedly staring into the camera and saying a lot of filler words to patch over the moment of difficulty. But the moment stretched on and on.
“What we’re all left wondering here is whether or not there’s any official word yet from… we’re awaiting a statement or an update, rather, from our parent news agency in New York. In the meantime, of course, we’ll be with you throughout the morning for constant coverage, here at the Denver Local Newsdesk, and if you’ll bear with us for just one moment I think we’ll have some details on these disturbing events…”
The anchor never did get around to saying anything of substance, but the ticker text at the bottom of the screen was full of words that Alicia visually scanned alongside the other officers: “Rumored disruption of Eastern power grid, possible cyber or terrorist attack -- Major media outlets down in NYC -- Wall Street freezes trading -- White House under attack?”.
And then it all went dark.
“Turn it back on!” one officer cried, somehow failing to notice that all the lights and computers and phones throughout the office were dead as well. Dim sunlight filtered in through the windows in the offices along the outer wall, barely illuminating silhouettes where a moment before there had been a busy, brightly-lit district station interior. There was a swell of noise as the office workers and policemen murmured their confusion and dismay, and then a hush as everyone waited for the lights to come back on.
“Did you hear that?” Winstone whispered to
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