Story code: ST-000244
Part 4: The Required Reading
Leo gasped, clutching his bruised ribs as the heavy wooden half-door swung violently on its metal hinges. The Vanguard-backed politician stomped down the narrow hallway toward the exposed documents. Leo tried to scramble up from the jagged shards of the shattered acrylic display, but a sharp, blinding pain radiated through his chest, pinning him to the linoleum floor.
Before she could reach the production room, the loud, cheerful chime of the front door’s bell echoed through the lobby.
Not just one chime. A continuous, frantic ringing.
Leo forced his head up, his wire-rimmed glasses hanging crookedly off one ear. A sudden influx of the 5:00 PM rush had pushed through the glass front doors. Seven people-a mix of college students from the neighboring coffee shop and local office workers-stood frozen in the entryway. But their shock only lasted a fraction of a second.
Almost in unison, four smartphones snapped up. The bright glare of recording lights pierced the sterile fluorescent illumination of the print shop. They had seen the entire physical assault through the floor-to-ceiling glass storefront.
The politician froze halfway down the dark corridor, realizing she no longer had the cover of isolation. She spun around, her pristine beige cashmere coat rumpled, her perfect blowout a tangled, sweaty mess. Her face twisted into a mask of pure, frantic horror as she registered the glowing screens pointed directly at her.
Maya, still pressed tightly against the back counter, pointed a shaking finger. “She attacked him! I have it all on the security feed, too!”
The woman lunged back into the lobby, her blood-red acrylic nails swiping desperately at the nearest bystander’s phone. “Stop recording! You do not have my consent to film me!”
The young man holding the phone stepped back easily, keeping the camera lens locked on her face. “You just assaulted a guy in a copy shop, lady. You’re going viral.”
Leo watched the politician’s haughty, untouchable veneer completely disintegrate. She was no longer a powerful, polished Vanguard operative; she was a violent, erratic aggressor screaming at bystanders in a strip mall. Her political credibility, her carefully curated public image, was burning to ash in real time. She shrieked, threatening lawsuits and calling them all corporate spies, but the more she yelled, the tighter the circle of recording phones grew.
Then, the flashing red and blue lights of local law enforcement painted the front windows.
Richard Vance’s threat to call the police had ironically become Leo’s salvation. Two uniformed officers pushed through the crowd, their hands resting cautiously on their duty belts. They took one look at the completely destroyed premium merchandise display, the scattered plastic shards, Leo bleeding on the floor, and the screaming woman in the designer coat.
“She pushed him!” Maya yelled, her voice finally finding its full volume. “She went crazy and destroyed the store!”
The officers immediately moved to intercept the politician. She fought them, twisting her arms wildly and pointing a manicured finger toward the swinging half-door.
“You have to look in the back!” she shrieked, her voice cracking into a desperate, hysterical pitch as an officer firmly gripped her wrists. “He has stolen Vanguard property! He’s a radical activist! Look at the main printer!”
The older of the two officers let out a tired, dismissive sigh, securing a pair of heavy metal handcuffs around her wrists. “Ma’am, you just destroyed a thousand dollars of store property and committed battery in front of eight witnesses. We don’t care about a printer.”
They completely ignored the back room. To the police, she was just another entitled, unhinged retail customer having a public meltdown. They marched her forcefully out the front doors, her expensive heels dragging across the scattered promotional flyers as the crowd of onlookers parted to let them through.
Leo sat up slowly, wincing as he brushed a heavy metal keychain off his lap. An EMT arrived a few minutes later, checking his ribs while the remaining officer took a brief, standardized statement. Maya provided the security footage file, sobbing quietly but deeply relieved that the nightmare was over. Richard Vance called back twice, but the officer answered the second time, sharply informing the district manager that his employee was the victim of a felony assault and the store was now a crime scene.
By 6:30 PM, the lobby was finally empty. Police tape was strung across the shattered display case, and the front door was locked tight.
Leo limped slowly into the back room, his chest throbbing with a deep, dull ache. The heavy mechanical hum of the massive air conditioning unit vibrated steadily overhead. He walked past the secondary workstations and stopped in front of Printer A.
The top sheet of his contraband run still sat in plain view on the output tray. The embossed silver compass over the fractured shield stared up at him. The asset liquidation manifesto. The absolute proof Vanguard was going to quietly privatize the district.
He carefully gathered the stack of unauthorized prints, aligning the edges until they formed a perfect, seamless block of heavy cardstock. He slipped them into the blank Manila folder, just as he had originally planned, and tucked it securely under his arm.
The politician was currently sitting in a holding cell, her career effectively over, her reputation permanently destroyed by high-definition internet videos. No one at Vanguard would ever believe a disgraced, viral laughingstock raving about union conspiracies in a print shop.
Leo turned off the heavy-duty commercial copier and killed the back room lights. He had exactly what he needed. His underground book club was meeting at eight o’clock in the union hall basement, and for the first time in a year, they finally had the required reading to win the war.