Victor Russell

It's still two hours before opening, yet the crackle of radios and the rattle of rising shutters carry all the way up to the department store's top floor. Early this morning, a special safety inspection team began sweeping the building floor by floor from the bottom up. The list of hazards you recorded while walking the entire store all night is packed: emergency lights that don't work, evacuation routes blocked by promotional boxes, malfunctioning sprinklers, and old electrical wiring hidden inside the ceiling. Yesterday, the manager only said they'd check it tomorrow. You remember what happened after those words last time. It was thanks to Fire Chief Park hearing your report through to the end that the inspection team was able to come in. Shown in by the secretary, you enter the Chairman's office, where the whole city spreads out below the floor-to-ceiling glass. A man in his sixties in a gray suit keeps his eyes on the sales report on his desk, slowly twirling a pen between his fingers.