When you press to accept the call, there’s no lengthy preamble from the young man on the other side of the line. Notably, you don’t recognize his voice from any of the video files you previously unlocked and the caller ID doesn’t update to show his name, face, or otherwise any identifying information on who he is.
“Ah, Mr. Edgeworth, you must be the CFO! I’ve been meaning to find you. I think you’d be very interested in learning about an upcoming attempt to unionize.”
The phone jumps back to its lock screen. The date at the top is eleven years after the date you saw from the start of the projection.
The three monitors loudly shatter at the same time that “Andrew” finally raises his head and looks up at the window. The clock face on his back slams shut, its hands frantically spinning around. Once the hands are locked in place, the clock face falls off and lands to the floor with a thud - showing the same frozen time displayed on the same watch now in Akemi’s possession and the one that Vincent received from the warehouse machine: 2:43 PM.
Before your eyes, the Chicago cityscape splits multiple screens, showing static between a montage of images: what’s presumably Andrew’s perspective of ordering someone to set a large device into an out-of-the-way nook. It doesn’t take much expertise to recognize it as a bomb. The perspective stutters as it goes down and up, like he’s doubting himself.
Eventually, the montage and static end and consolidate into over a dozen newsfeeds showing countless angles of a massive office building in the middle of a theme park.
Not a single angle isn’t crowded in every pixel with people. Thousands of picketers surround the outside of the Bright Future and Co. headquarters, facing a group of union busters about half their numbers, themselves also surrounded by curious park-goers and news people. Even the periphery is populated as traffic can’t keep up with the amount of people trying to get into or out of the fray. Have you even seen this many people in one place before?
An ongoing call notification pops up at the top of the phone and answers itself from Andrew Edgeworth. His voice comes out of the phone as if filtered through a walkie-talkie, but he’s clearly not talking to you.
“Those batons are not toys. Your job is to end this quickly, not cause a damn bloodbath.”
Several camera angles are fixed on a very small, but increasing amount of union busters who are waving around their batons in response to verbal jabs from a few of the protesters.
“…we know how to do our jobs, Boss.”
A gruff voice with a thick inner-city Chicago accent comes from the phone right after. All the camera feeds have audio, but they all overlap each other and are difficult to differentiate. However, you see a couple angles show the head union buster give a terse reply through his ham radio receiver.
“I can see clearly from all of these broadcasts of you all that you don’t.”
From the growing agitation in his tone, it sounds like Andrew’s already starting to regret this. You can’t see the leader’s face on the screens, but his head movements show that he definitely rolled his eyes at that.
The phone unlocks on its own while the “call” continues to play, revealing feeds from different social media sites in regards to Bright Future and Co. It’s about as crazy as you’d expect for such a big event; a lot of speculation and questioning about why the strike is taking place.
Even as the strike drags on and on for hours, neither side budges even an inch. However, it only makes everyone antsier. Even though the strikers’ group gets bigger as more people join, fear and nervousness spread fast as busters start waving their guns around.
Andrew’s voice quickly interjects through the phone.
“I don’t care that those are rubber bullets; if you aim your guns or set off the bomb when it isn’t necessary, you are not getting paid. Those are strictly for de-escalation, and nothing else.”
The leader barely has time to snipe anything back before someone else comes into view.
The energy of the situation and all the social media feeds turn on a dime. Nearly everyone goes silent. The leaders of the strikers stay stalwart, but you can still tell they’re shaken by this development. Shock and awe blow up across every site - and perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of hearts, heart-eye emojis, and flushed emojis - when most of the newscasters turn their cameras to Simon Edgeworth.
The leader of the union busters turns off his radio in full view of several cameras, immediately switching gears to schmoozing the now-present CEO.
“Mister Simon Edgeworth himself! No need to busy yourself with anythin’ here, sir, we got it all under control~!”
Not that Simon cares of course, his full focus is on the cameras and microphones shoved in his face. Even though you’ve only seen him a few times in the video folders, you can recognize the fury in his eyes.
“Really now, I didn’t think it was possible to have such a big event without me! I can’t say I don’t feel hurt, I made sure from Day One that working here would feel like working with family. I can’t imagine what this is all about…”
Of course, many of the users making comments about the situation fold immediately, fawning over Simon and chiding the strikers for daring to take advantage of his kindness - not everyone, though. About the same amount of people are on the strikers’ side, commending them for going against the Man.™ However, the vast majority are somewhere in the middle, unsure of what side to take with so much information being thrown at them at such short notice.
Andrew’s radio line to the scene cuts off at the same time he sees Simon appear, and you can hear him cursing under his breath over the phone.
“Shit, shitshitshit, weren’t you supposed to be in Spain, right now, what are you doing here?! Answer the phone, goddammit!!!”
The stream of curses escalates between panicked breathing as you see a long chain of missed call notifications directly to Simon. There isn’t even seconds between them and the Simon on the screen’s phone isn’t even ringing, as if Andrew is blocked. Despite being ignored on all fronts, you can hear Andrew desperately hitting the radio and pleading over phone calls that aren’t being picked up.
“Please…please, Simon, I can explain! They didn’t do anything wrong, I’m…I…just let me fix everything and you can get mad at me all you want, just don’t do anything to them!!! Just…j-just let me explain before you do anything-!”
With how the majority of the camera feeds are focused on Simon, only one camera picks up an escalating altercation between a striker and a buster in the background. The striker says something you can’t hear that suspiciously looks like ‘what are you gonna do? shoot me?’ before the buster raises his gun at him and fires.
Not at the striker, though; his aim is much higher. Even though the bullet moves fast - enough to be hard to follow - you can tell it’s a live bullet round, not at all one the rubber bullets that Andrew mentioned earlier.
You can only watch in horror as the bullet soars upward towards the area that Andrew had the bomb set…and misses. It goes far higher, lodging itself deep in the ceiling with a metallic CLANG, loud enough to pull the gaze of several cameras, and even Simon’s attention, towards it. It’s too late to do anything but watch for a few, long seconds. More loud bangs draw more attention until every inch of the towering, concrete and steel building rips itself apart at the seams like paper.
Nothing else matters when fire, smoke, and ash pour out of the splintered gas pipes in massive clouds that engulf the sky, and everything comes crashing down onto the crowd below. Building debris knocks into nearby buildings, sending them into nearby traffic, spreading the devastation even further.
The bomb is a devastating afterthought in the middle of the destruction, dislodged from where it was set and sent into a support column that may have saved a few had it stayed standing.
It feels like the destruction will never end. The phone shuts off on its own. Camera feeds shut off one after another, leaving only one aerial view from a helicopter. You can’t see even a single sign of life through the sea of ash and fire. As the room continues to plunge further into darkness, what light remains draws your eyes away from the screens for just a moment.
—
