One Day After

"We can now conclusively say that Shaun Bennet, the killer in the Southfield shooting, was a troubled individual who acted alone," Special Agent Richard Hastings said at the press conference. "ATF has traced the weapon to a purchase Mr. Bennet made at a licensed dealer in Texas on his drive north. The sale was entirely above board – he passed the background check. The paperwork was in order. He'd filed the serial number off the weapon, but the dealer's records matched it within hours. There was no accomplice, no black market, no larger network. We hope that by closing this case we can give the people of Southfield back some sense of normalcy."

A gentle tap on her door pulled Tricia's attention away from the TV. Alexi was standing outside, all sharp cheekbones and heavy brow, ruggedly handsome under his prematurely greying hair, perfectly coiffed, a thinly trimmed mustache perched perfectly over his upper lip. Quickly Tricia hit the mute button and motioned for him to come in.

Poking his head into the door he asked, "Standup?"

Horrified, Tricia looked at the clock on her computer – she was late. Shutting her laptop, she stood up and started to head for the door. Alexi glanced over at the TV, still playing.

"Hasty Dick solved it?" he asked with his usual dry sarcasm.

"Hey," Tricia said, "only people he's really fucked over can call him that."

Alexi looked at the TV for another second, then shrugging said, "Well, if he ever wanted to fuck me over, Kamran probably wouldn't mind."

Tricia groaned. "How is Kamran?" she asked, giving Alexi a playful jab as she pushed him out of her office and into the common space.

Alexi just shrugged. "He likes California," he said, trying to sound upbeat.

Tricia shot him a knowing grimace; nothing worse in a long-distance relationship than both people liking where they are.

Tricia wasn't sure if her little field office was a gift or a punishment. Far away from anything in Minnesota, she'd been given free rein to build a team around her, but not the budget to do so. What's more, for most of the best and brightest the prospect of rural Minnesota wasn't exactly appealing. Still, Tricia had a knack for finding the lost souls who needed a home, and she'd managed to assemble a team here. Her Menagerie, as she would sometimes call them – at first behind their backs, but then after a round of drinks at the Runestone one night she'd let the term slip, and to her amazement they'd adopted it.

Every morning Tricia would rally the team for the standup meeting: no computers, no visuals, just face-to-face interaction. "All four oars in the water," Tricia would sometimes say. Something she'd picked up from coxing her college's crew team – the one place where being small put you in charge.

As Alexi and Tricia joined the already gathered team she motioned for Alexi to start.

"I've been following up on the Levantis case now that it's going to trial, just making sure we haven't missed anything that could come back to bite DOJ. Marcus and I will probably need three days to fly out to New York to testify."

Tricia nodded and then turned from Alexi to the woman beside him – small, dark olive skin, half swallowed by an oversized sweater, her long straight hair pulled back, her eyes resting on her pink running shoes. "Priya, anything to add from your memo on the Meridian ransomware?" she asked.

Priya lifted her eyes for a second, shaking her head no and giving a barely audible "Nope" before focusing back on her hot pink sneakers.

"Ada?" Tricia said, turning to the woman beside Priya.

In the crowd of misfits Adaeze stood out more than others. Her long hair was tightly braided into neat rows and fell over her shoulders, partially covering the intricate linework of the tattoos expertly rendered on her dark skin. The tattoos themselves would have been enough to get Ada kicked out of most FBI offices; on one arm she had what looked like a pencil sketch of naked men cowering before a heavily muscled and mostly naked woman. When she'd first met Ada, Tricia had asked what the tattoo was of. "Valhalla," Ada had said, offering no further explanation.

Taking a minute to think, Ada used her tongue to fidget with a lower lip piercing, then responded, "I'm finishing up the report for Applegate. I've managed to deconstruct the audio and match it back to the suspect once I stripped out the voice synths. It's all pretty amateur stuff, and he didn't do a great job hiding any of it." Ada's tone was dismissive.

Then, as if to challenge Tricia, Ada turned to the man in the suit beside her and asked, "Marcus, what about you?"

Marcus seemed to have been caught off guard by having Ada ask him the question instead of Tricia. "Oh, me..." He stumbled for a second before regaining his composure, adjusting the green tie he'd worn. "It's like Alexi said, we've been hard at work on that Levantis case. Real doozy, that one, and we just want to make sure they can nail him."

Ada rolled her eyes and Tricia shot her a glare. It was one thing for Ada to challenge Tricia's authority a bit – in fact Tricia felt like Alexi and Priya could learn a thing or two from her in that regard – but she wasn't going to tolerate any disrespect between team members. It had taken Tricia enough time to get Alexi and Ada to stop calling Marcus "the suit" behind his back.

She'd even sat Marcus down one time and told him, "You know you don't need to wear a suit to work every day in this office."

Marcus had nodded and then said in his Midwestern manner, "Thanks for saying that, but if it's all the same to you I'd rather keep my suit. It's how I was raised, and well... you don't ask Ada to cover her tattoos, so don't ask me to do this."

Tricia couldn't really argue with that, so she sat down Alexi and Ada and laid it out straight – no more suit jokes.

"Ok, team, I think we're all set. Alexi and Marcus, I'll see if I can get you on a charter flight through the agency," Tricia said, rallying the team.

"Boss?" Alexi asked, stopping Tricia from breaking up the standup.

"Yes?" Tricia said.

"Any update on the Bennet case?" Alexi's question came with a sort of nervous undertone.

Tricia was taken aback a little by the question – what did Alexi know?

"It's closed, like Special Agent Hastings said," Tricia replied, toeing the official line and trying to feel out Alexi.

But it was Priya who chimed in, her voice soft but audible: "The fingerprinting of his online activity, though... it shows an abnormal pattern, a pattern more closely linked to systematic radicalization than traditional lone wolf attacks."

Tricia was impressed; Priya wasn't normally so assertive, preferring long technical memos to the direct verbal communication of their morning standups. Still, how had Alexi and Priya found out she'd even run the fingerprint on Shaun when it wasn't officially their case? Once the killer had been traced back to Dallas it was the Dallas field office, and Hasty Dick, who had taken over, much to Tricia's chagrin. She'd raised a little bit of a stink about it but was told in no uncertain terms, "You're a small office without the resources to investigate something like this. Stick to computers, let the boys in Dallas handle this one."

"How do you know about that fingerprint?" Tricia asked point blank, leveling the question at the whole team.

It was Alexi who took the fall. "I stayed a little late working on some enhancements and just started looking through job logs. I thought it was a test run, but then I saw the data, and, well..."

"It was 2 AM," Priya said to her shoes. Alexi winced.

Tricia shook her head – she couldn't be mad at Alexi and Priya. After all, they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing; she was the one running the fingerprint against a case that wasn't with her office anymore.

"Yes, I ran a fingerprint on Shaun Bennet," Tricia admitted, adding, "but just because his profile isn't an exact match for a lone wolf doesn't mean the official explanation is wrong."

Alexi looked uncertain, but it was Marcus who spoke up. "You know I'm not one to buck the system," he said, "but it seems to me like we've all got some time on our hands with our current caseload. Maybe we dig a little, you know, unofficially."

Tricia felt uneasy; she wasn't sure if it was the idea of her team running an investigation into a closed case, or the fact that the suggestion had come from Marcus and made perfect sense to her. He was right. Marcus and Alexi were just reviewing case material; Priya had finished the ransomware reverse engineering and traced it to a hacker collective on the East Coast who would be getting a knock on their doors in a day or two; Ada had a smoking gun on the perv who'd been chatting with teenagers. Even tying up loose ends on those cases, the team would have plenty of time to dig a little more into Shaun's history. They even had the partial clone of his phone she'd gotten at the crime scene – they wouldn't need to reach out to Dallas for anything... unless there was something.

"Ok," Tricia finally said, relenting. "We can work the Bennet case, but it's extracurricular only. Your real cases better be buttoned up." Staring straight at Alexi she added, "If you or Marcus screw up the testimony on the Levantis case because you're chasing this thing, then you're both fired. Got it?"

Alexi nodded. Tricia knew the team looked to him; if he stayed in line, the others would follow.

Returning to her office Tricia looked up at the TV. It was still muted but coverage of the shooting had continued. The chyron below read "FBI: Killer acted alone." Tricia switched the TV off.

One Day Before

As Shaun made his way down to the apartment building's parking garage he got a "ping" from his phone. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw it was a new message notification from the Apex app – a reply to a post he'd made about being a delivery driver. "You're probably really a scav," it said, from HuntOrBHunted.

"Fuck you," Shaun said out loud, pissed at the insult. He smashed his thumb on the notification and started to think of all the ways he'd verbally tear this HuntOrBHunted apart. The Apex app opened but then just showed an orange ring slowly spinning. Shaun looked at his cell phone reception – basically nothing in the concrete stairwell; he wouldn't be able to load the app properly.

"GOD DAMN," he said, kicking the concrete wall. A sharp pain shot through his foot – god, he hoped he hadn't broken it. Finally, dejected, he dropped the phone into his pocket and descended the stairs to where his old beat-up Camry was parked. Climbing in, he started the car, snapped his phone into its holder, and drove out of the garage.

Once he was outside, with the early morning Dallas sun streaming in through his windows, Shaun found a place to pull over. First things first, he opened the Apex app, which had finished loading and now showed the whole thread. There at the top his username WelcomeToMyJungle had posted a long bit on the hustle of being a delivery driver; he had tried to put a positive spin on it. The work was shit but it was work, and it gave him the flexibility to be Apex. He'd gotten a few +1s and "Yeps" from various people, one from a Cert even. Then the message that Shaun had seen in the notification.

He tapped the reply button and started typing furiously. "Fuck you you piece of shit, what do you even know, I bet you don't even have a hustle, I bet you'll never become Apex and you're just jealous because some of us are doing it. Don't get all butthurt you fucking scav!" Quickly Shaun hit send.

He looked at the message, pleased with himself – then he saw it and felt that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The little orange checkmark next to HuntOrBHunted's handle.

"He's a fucking Cert," Shaun said. You don't mess with Certs. It's one thing for two Certs to go at each other, but for Shaun to have sent that reply – "FUCK," he said loudly. There was no way to delete his message; it was done. "FUCK FUCK FUCK."

He'd spent the last months living the lifestyle, learning what he could, and now to fuck up like this. For this Cert to have called him a scav, that was one thing, but for him to have insulted a Cert... there was no way he was going to become Apex now. "FUCK," he said one more time, gripping his phone tightly.

The one hope he had was the Certs who'd +1ed posts he'd made before. Maybe they'd vouch for him, maybe they'd tell this HuntOrBHunted guy to fuck off – that he'd picked the fight, and Shaun was just being a #warrior. Nothing he could do about it now. Learn from your scars – that's what an Apex would do, he told himself.

Then, putting his phone back on its dock, he switched over to the Cole and Wells live feed. "Look at this Honeyguide!" Cole's lament came through the car's speakers. Shaun flicked the app into the background and started the routine of ratemaxxing his delivery apps.

It was almost 10:30, when the breakfast delivery rush had ended, that Shaun pulled his car into an out-of-the-way surface lot. Closing the delivery apps on his phone, he reached into his back seat and got out the sun shade for his front window. Turning the volume down a bit on the stereo, he listened as Wells cited statistics about testosterone deficiency in men who grew up near data centers. Shaun grabbed the seat adjuster, slid the seat all the way back, reclined, and curled up to sleep. Over the speakers he could hear Cole and Wells.

"Southfield, North Dakota," Cole was saying. "They're letting the Honeyguide into their nest – this mall is going to sell out and become a data center. Going to give rise to a whole generation of scav children. We need to fight this, we need to be #warriors. And look, we haven't even talked about the cost of all this. Here's a developer coming in and being all sweet – 'Look, I'll lead you to the honey,' he's saying – but really he's just a scav. What does it take to build a data center?"

Wells chimed in: "Two years at least, but that's assuming the town looks the other way on water and pollution."

"Right, fucking two years of this asshole scav getting paid, and when do the people of Southfield get a fucking dime from it?"

Again Wells came in with the facts: "Yeah, for something like this it's usually at least ten years before they start really contributing to the tax base. You know, on most construction projects you can at least expect some local construction work, but nowadays these data centers are all prefab, so they're not even going to be building it locally."

Cole came back hot: "We got any Certs, anyone who's Apex in Southfield? Let us know on the boards how you're going to be a #warrior to defend this place."

The hosts had started to switch topics; Shaun had fallen asleep.

Shaun woke up suddenly. He hadn't slept well; something about the mall in Southfield had been turning over in his head. On the car stereo Cole and Wells were discussing a new proposal to ban beach volleyball in California. Shaun reached for his phone, looking at the notifications. His sister had sent another picture of his niece – swipe. His mom had called and left a voicemail – swipe. Where were the Apex app notifications?

Furiously Shaun opened the app. There was his thread, with his rant to HuntOrBHunted. No one had posted anything after it. He pulled down to refresh the page – orange spinner – and then the same set of messages. There were no Certs coming to his defense.

Then he saw it: the clock on his phone read 2:30 PM. "What the fuck," Shaun shouted – he'd missed the lunch rush. He quickly pulled open delivery app after delivery app. The rates weren't even worth the gas he'd spend. Fucking stupid oversleeping, he cursed himself. "Learn from your scars," he reminded himself. He hadn't set an alarm; he thought he'd trained his body to sleep properly in one-hour increments, but the whole data center debacle in Southfield had set him off. He should have set an alarm. It was his fault – this was why he wasn't going to be an Apex, because he made stupid mistakes like this.

Reaching over, he grabbed his lunch box, opened it up, and instantly recoiled. Inside, the ice pack he'd packed was covered in a slick wet film; it had leaked all over the place. Shaun opened the container with his chicken and rice and felt it: warm – it was fucking warm. He was supposed to eat, he needed to eat to stay in the routine, to become Apex. He'd fucked up sleeping, now he'd fucked up eating. He was going to have to go do a shit rate run and then eat some processed-ass food. How many months of progress would he have undone by the end of this crappy day?

Opening his car door, Shaun climbed out and hurled his lunch box across the parking lot as far as he could. Unzipped, it caught the wind and turned over, landing only a few feet from him. The glass bowl holding the chicken and rice he'd meal-prepped earlier in the week smashed into the pavement, shattering and leaving glass and rice spilled everywhere. Enraged, Shaun reached into his car, grabbed the sun shade, and threw it into the parking lot too.

He was about to grab his phone and throw it when he heard Cole on the speakers: "I'm looking at the boards now and I'm not seeing anything from people in Southfield. Come on, people, where are the #warriors? Aren't there any Apex?"

His phone in his hand, Shaun paused for a minute, then opened the maps app. "Southfield North Dakota," he typed. It was a small rural town with a large shopping mall just over the Minnesota border. He clicked on the mall – a sprawling complex, but the photos showed a dated interior. He hit the "Directions" button, and after a brief "calculating" screen was told the drive was fifteen hours. He did the math in his head: stopping for gas, he'd still make it before the mall opened.

Putting his phone back in the dock, he pulled his seat forward and raised it up. He scanned the route, looking at how much gas he had in his car. There, just before the Ohio border, he'd have to make his first stop – a big gas station right off the highway. The map showed him the shops nearby: a fried chicken place, and on the other side a store called Guns-N-More. He added a stop at the gas station, closed his door, and started to drive.