Snapshot

by Brandon Sanderson

In here, everyone else was fake, but he and Chaz . . . They were somehow something worse. Flaws in a perfect system. Intruders. Viruses leaving chaos in their wakes.

“I don’t want to harass her.” “Talking isn’t harassing.” “I’m pretty sure it’s one of the primary methods of harassment,” Davis said.

Flashing their badges could get them past any obstruction, overrule any order. They were two men in a crowd of shadows.

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.

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.

When was the last time he’d just enjoyed life? He’d lost that skill, which seemed so natural to children. They didn’t have to work at having fun.

This kid didn’t need more structure. He needed to be free, to live, to have all the things his father didn’t have.

Here I think we’re sharing something, Davis thought, and then you remind me how good you are at lying.

“This life is too broken. Too many people gone wrong, too many neighborhoods left to rot. The Snapshot is . . . is falling apart. Too many Deviations.”

In the end, people became cops because they wanted to do something good. At least that was what they told themselves. That was what he’d always told himself. Davis lowered his gun.