The room beyond the little recruitment desk was vibrant with chaos. Dozens of Metrocops equipped themselves with submachine guns, handguns and frag grenades, before marching quickly down a hall to my right. The barracks were large, each locker impersonal, and seemed to function as the mess hall too: a long, wide table was strewn with half-finished meals, with many seats around it all pushed away from the table. Whatever was causing this panic had obviously interrupted lunch.
"You there, newbie!" Yelled a voice to my left. I spun to it, to see a Metrocop Sergeant stood directly in front of me. "You ever handled a weapon before?"
I thought back to the combat training my Dad... our Dad gave us as boys of 10. Unarmed, melee and a brief tuition with a range of firearms. I tried not to smile.
"Yes sir."
"Handguns?"
"Yes sir."
"Submachine guns?"
"Yes sir."
The Sergeant paused and leaned in, as if he were about to reveal some dangerous secret. "You any good with a shotgun, kid?" I smirked at his masked visage.
"Yes sir."
I couldn't tell, but I thought he might be grinning. With a hurried pace, he strode to a weapons locker and, inserting a strange, dark key, opened a hatch in the top, over the rows of MP7s and pistols. A single-barrelled, 12 gauge shotgun rested inside. It looked like a modified SPAS 12, which was fortunate for me as that was our father's preferred shotgun. The Sergeant returned to me, shotgun in hand.
"Ordinarily, I wouldn't dream of entrusting this little beauty to such a fresh recruit, but... well, these are hardly ordinary circumstances. Aside from that, none of these dead-eyes could hit anything with a shottie anyway." The Sergeant confided. "Suit up from any of these lockers and meet me outside ASAP. I'll brief you there." He turned to walk away, then stopped. "I like you kid," he said, "you'll do well here."
I smiled to myself, and walked to a locker. The uniform slipped over my citizen's clothing, and I pulled the combat vest over the top. One final piece of the uniform remained: the white mask I held in my hand carried the same intimidation as it did on the face of every CP who towered over me. I slipped the ivory white façade over my face and, standing up, gasped as I caught my reflection in the locker's mirror.
The face I saw was not my own.