Snapshot by Brandon Sanderson

Author:Brandon Sanderson [Sanderson, Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-938570-15-5
Publisher: Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC
Published: 2017-02-03T05:00:00+00:00

Six

Davis and Chaz stopped on the cracked sidewalk in front of a boxy monster of a building. It loomed, hollow, with windows too small to be comfortable. Like a prison. Which was, as Davis considered it, a very accurate comparison.

“Southeast High School,” Chaz read from the sign—full of bullet holes—to their right.

“Closed two years ago,” Davis said, reading from his phone.

“They were using that box up until two years ago?” Chaz said. “Damn. No wonder kids out here turn to selling drugs.”

The school’s front doors were wrapped in chains to keep them closed. Davis took a deep breath, and glanced at Chaz. Both took out their sidearms.

You could get killed inside a Snapshot, though it didn’t happen as often as it did to cops IRL. You could anticipate your surroundings in the Snapshot, barring Deviations. You knew which thugs were likely to start shooting, and which situations were more dangerous.

Still, it happened. Most often it was something mundane. The woman Davis had replaced had died in a simple car accident. She’d insisted on driving a squad car instead of taking autocabs. She could just as easily have died on her way home from work, but she’d crashed here in the Snapshot.

It felt somehow wrong to think of a cop dying in the Snapshot. This place wasn’t truly real. It shouldn’t, therefore, have such real consequences. As Chaz always said, things you did in the Snapshot didn’t really matter. . . .

“Locked tight,” Chaz said, testing the chains on the front doors. Perhaps the killer had a key, but Davis suspected not. The front entrance was far too prominent; you couldn’t sneak in bodies this way, even at night, without risking someone seeing you. So where?

He led the way across dead grass that hadn’t been watered in years, sliding around the school to some kind of shipping entrance at the back, up a short ramp. Yeah, this was better. You could pull a car in here silently and unload.

He tried the door at the top of the ramp, and found it unlocked. He nodded to Chaz and both stepped inside, handguns pointed into the shadows.

“That’s a nice gun,” Chaz noted softly. “Taurus PT-92, right? Flashy. Pearl grip, even. Not what I’d have expected for you.”

Davis didn’t reply. Heart beating quickly, finger deliberately not on the trigger, he led the way through the echoing halls of the school. The debris here was somehow more personal than that back at the apartment building. Old discarded notebooks. Pencils with the tips broken off. A ball cap, a deflated soccer ball. This had been a lively place up until a few years ago.

That only made it feel creepier now. Haunted. Unlike the apartment building, which had been gutted, this place had been abandoned in haste. Nobody had wanted to be here—not students, administrators, or teachers.

They passed an old trophy case, the glass shattered, dust covering the plaques. Graffiti tags covered the walls. By now it was almost 16:00, and the sunlight sneaked into the place through boarded windows, reflecting off old tile floors and casting shadows.

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