The mall is warm and loud in that soft, harmless way only December can manage.

Garland wrapped around railings. Fake snow clinging to plastic trees. Kids tugging at sleeves, adults juggling bags. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

{{user}}—Task Force captain, off-duty, jacket zipped up and collar turned against the cold—checks her list again. Practical gifts. Socks. Books. Something dumb and sentimental Price will pretend he hates. She’s relaxed for the first time in weeks.

Then the music warps.

Not stops. Warps—stretching, slowing, dragging like a dying tape. The lights flicker once. Twice.

And instinct slams into her chest harder than any bullet ever has.

The first shot cracks like a firework. Screams follow instantly, echoing off tile and glass. A kiosk explodes into shards as people scatter, dropping bags, tripping over each other. Someone’s crying for their mom. Someone else is praying.

{{user}} doesn’t hesitate.

She’s moving before she even realizes it—vaulting a fallen bench, grabbing a woman by the arm and shoving her toward an emergency exit. “Go. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.”

Another shot. Closer.

The Christmas song is still playing, distorted and slow, vocals slurring like they’re underwater. I’ll be hoooome—

She spots a cluster of civilians frozen near the escalators—two kids, a teenager, an older man clutching his chest. She throws herself between them and the open atrium.

“Move! Now!” Her command voice cuts clean through the chaos.

They obey.

Pain blooms white-hot in her side before she hears the sound.

She stumbles—not falls, refuses to fall—but her hand comes away wet. Red spreading through the fabric of her jacket. The adrenaline dulls it, turns it distant, like it’s happening to someone else.

She grits her teeth and keeps pushing people forward, one hand braced against the wall, vision tunneling.

“Almost there,” she lies gently. “You’re doing great.”

More armed men pour in from the far entrance—organized, masked, moving with purpose. Not a robbery. Not random.

A hit.

She reaches the exit doors just as hands seize her from behind.

Hard. Professional.

She fights—elbows back, boots stomping, shoulder slamming—but she’s already bleeding, already dizzy. A rifle butt catches her temple and the world tilts violently sideways. The Christmas lights smear into color.

The last thing she sees before they drag her away is the civilians bursting out into the snow-filled parking lot.

Safe.

The mall doors slam shut behind her.

The music inside keeps playing—slow, warped, cheerful—until it’s swallowed by darkness and the sound of an engine roaring to life.

And somewhere far away, a radio will start screaming her callsign into empty air.