Chapter Text
“Fucking—Goddamnit, Prompto! Come on!”
“But—”
Rosea didn’t wait for him to finish his protest, ramming her shoulder into his stomach with all the strength she could manage. She was lucky that he was distracted. He was deceptively heavy for an overgrown stick-bug, all tight muscle under his baggy clothes. She hooked her arm behind his knees, pressing down hard to prevent him from kicking her in the face as she continued with the little forward momentum she still had. No time to listen to his protests or fight him on it. Get out. Get out. Get out.
The one-word text from her dad was the only thing on her mind.
BUG
“Ro, what the fuck—”
Prompto’s yell was drowned out by the distant sound of gun-fire. She pushed herself forward, barreling past a few pedestrians that were still trapped in the vestiges of fear. Her eyes tracked along the walls automatically for a fire-exit, half-hopeful for it to be unbarred, half-desperate for none to appear, lest it become a choke-point for the mass panic that was sure to follow on her heels.
She was fast. Prompto was fast.
Rosea knew she wasn’t all that fast while carrying Prompto, and she wasn’t confident that if she put him down, he could follow. He was still too new, green beyond green, and not even properly through all the vetting processes. He still had to go through two more security checks, interrogation training—which she was secretly hoping dad would hand-wave and save the twink some sanity—, and probably some unknown other amount of bureaucratic nonsense. They did not train him for this! They barely trained her for this, and that was more endless drilling by Dad and Ig and Gladio and—
Rosea ducked away from a sudden flash to her right, keeping her footing on instinct and immediately dodging into the first store on the left. She carried them to the back, dodging past clothing racks and displays until they hit the back wall.
It wasn’t until she was kneeling behind the sturdiest set of shelves she could find to wedge between them and the front of the store that Prompto reanimated from the lifeless weight he had become on her shoulder. She swallowed relief as he struggled against her to get his feet back under him, pushing down the very real fear she had buried deep that he might have been shot dead in all the chaos. She let him get to his knees in front of her, but kept his chest pinned to her, the arm that had been holding his legs moving to loop around his neck.
“Shh, shh, shh, it’s okay, Prom. It’s okay, I just need you to shush,” she murmured to him, her focus on the entrance of the store. She wasn’t sure if he had been making any noise, but it didn’t really matter at the moment.
For all her luck, she had ducked into a ‘Headliners’—a weird pseudo-punk fashion boutique that catered almost exclusively to pre-teens. The display windows were thematically blacked-out and the interior lights dimmed beyond utility, severely limiting any real visibility on the main floor and the chaos beyond.
And fuck was it chaos. People were running past the pinhole window of the open door, just the barest flashes of bodies. If there wasn’t very real terror running through her veins, she’d find the overlap of the overwhelming pop-music playing on the overhead borderline hysterical.
Instead, all she could feel was cold iron in her gut at the realization that none of the emergency alarms were going off. The music should have been cut for a pre-recorded message. The lights should have been pulled to full and alarms flashing and—
“Ro!” Prompto whispered harshly against her ear, shaking her by the shoulders. “Rosea!”
“What?” She snapped in a slightly hysterical whisper, eyes flicking to look at his face for only a second’s sweep. No blood. Eyes back to the door.
“What is going on?”
“I don’t know. Nothing good. You see the exit behind us?”
“Just the Employee door, but I heard those don’t lead anywhere.”
“Yes, they lead—No, Prompto, check if it’s locked.”
Thankfully, Prompto had the sense to keep low as he headed back to check. There were still people running past, the hoard from the food court swelling by in an endless swarm. There were too many, the view from the door too small, for her to determine if there was any blood on their clothes or any sign of how close they had been to the gunfire. Nothing to hint at whatever that flash was. No indication of how much time they had until it was possible the assailants were headed this way, if at all.
“It’s locked!” Prompto stage whispered. With the way the chorus was blaring overhead, it was good as a regular whisper. "Did you see a key?"
Where the fuck was she supposed to find a key? This wasn't a video game! It's not like there'd be loot hanging about. Though...
She scanned the store again, looking for any sign of an employee, before focusing her gaze on the checkout counter. Best place to look, she supposed.
Rosea held up her hand in acknowledgement, then pressed her palm out at him to tell him to wait there. She kept low as she crept to the till, eyes half on the door and half ahead of her. That there had been no one else in this store was an edge she had gritted her teeth against, refusing to worry about it until it reared its ugly head. It was a mall, there had to be at least one employee about if the doors were just causally open.
‘They could have just fled,’ she told herself as she pivoted around a display case on soft soles. ‘Hell, they could have run out the back and—’
Nope. That was a dead body. Heavy form slack against the wall display, limp and amorphous against the grey tile. Blood on the floor. Blood on the wall, almost entirely eaten by the black pegboard and equally black t-shirts. She refused to let herself look at the face.
Eyes on the floor, Leonis. Eyes on the bloody fucking floor.
‘It’s a prop and you’re in training,’ she lied to herself. ‘They finally made fake blood that doesn’t smell like over-sweet toxic sludge and Dad’s judging you for flinching on the camera feed. You’re looking for a key. You’re looking for a key.’
She let her eyes sweep over the thin red, brown on the edges and dark towards the center. Smeared where the body had slid forward over time, but otherwise undisturbed. The right hand was empty, pale fingers curled inward and silver rings reflecting red and black from both the blood and the uniform. The left hand was half hidden by the torso, forcing Rosea to step in the blood like easing her way across broken glass. She was half-way behind the counter when she saw it, sharp black against the bloody tile.
A fucking gun.
‘Fuck. Okay. Suicide or a stand-off? Does it matter?’ It didn’t, she decided, as she grabbed the gun.
Steady hands did routine checks as she confirmed the left hand empty and moved her eyes to pockets. The body was in skinny-jeans, the pockets almost assuredly faux. No obvious outline to show anything was in them, so no need for a manual check. A quick sweep up confirmed no lanyard and nowhere to hide keys on the ripped band tee. She glimpsed just the barest edge of a slackened jaw before she turned away, sweeping her eyes along the shelves beneath the counter and ignoring the squelch of her sneakers as she pivoted in the blood.
There.
She shifted the gun into her left hand and grabbed the bright orange ‘STAFF’ lanyard with her right. She didn’t acknowledge that her fingers were now bloody except to tighten her grip on the gun to prevent it from slipping from her grasp. Each step squeaked silently under the pulsing bass as she slipped back towards Prompto.
A quick glance towards the entrance showed that the crowd had thinned considerably, which made her throat feel tight. Still, she crept quick and careful back to Prompto.
Prompto, who was staring at her in horror.
“That’s blood,” he whispered stupidly. “Ro, that’s bloo—Fuck! That’s a gun!”
“Yes,” she whispered back, shoving the keys towards him and keeping the gun facing the entrance. “And these are keys. Unlock the door.”
He stared at the bloody lanyard, jaw gritted and face draining color fast. She was half-a-second from just pushing him aside when he grabbed it from her. To his credit, he immediately turned back to the door. But maybe that was more to look away from the blood on her hands than to focus on escaping.
She turned her gaze back to the entrance. The cleared entrance.