The Gummy Bear Case Study, Part 8

An Apple Slice Short Story by Apple | Content Warnings

CMIIIA Headquarters was located in a renovated office building on the outskirts of the city. Cheery drove her uncle’s delivery truck until the familiar neon signs and glowing billboards faded from view, and old, unlit street lights took their place.

Any time the headquarters was on TV, it was surrounded by guards and patrol-crafts and surveillance drones—a pillar of security against, well, giant gummy bears.

Now, it looked like a ghost town.

Barbed wire fencing surrounded the parking lot, and the robotic voice of a lone drone echoed as she approached. “Please have your ID ready to speed up entry. Please have your ID ready to speed up entry.”

Cheery didn’t have a CMIIIA ID. Instead, she sped up her entry by pressing her foot down on the accelerator.

The tank flew straight through the orange and white striped gate.

“Access denied,” the drone blared behind her. “Access denied.”

A patrol craft hurried toward her from across the lot.

She didn’t slow down.

As the large glass doors of the building came into view, Cheery honked her horn.

Inside, she saw security guards scatter away from the door like ants. 

She drove through the glass.

The receptionist ducked behind her desk as Cheery went by, not stopping the tank until it hovered right in front of the elevator.

She leaned out of the truck’s window to press the call button, but numbers above the door indicated that the elevator was already on its way down.

She pulled one of the doc’s lab coats from her backpack and slipped it on.

Alarms started going off around her, but even then, security was way more lax than Cheery had been expecting. She spotted only three guards creeping toward the tank with the blasters drawn.

Then again, she thought as she tossed her bag over her shoulder, they probably figured they were safe. Who would they be worried about when they were the ones responsible for the gummy attacks in the first place? Plus, the less people in on their operation, the better 

“Don’t move!” a guard yelled right as another said, “Come out with your hands up!”

They probably should have coordinated on who was gonna do the talking, but Cheery couldn’t really judge. She was pretty much winging things too.

The tank provided the perfect cover, though, blocking her from view as Cheery leaped into the elevator the second the doors opened.

There was a scientist wearing a lab coat of his own, nearly tripping over his own feet as Cheery rushed past him to bash the “close doors” button.

“Sorry,” she said when they were alone. “Someone just drove a tank right into the lobby. It’s a mess out there.”

“Seriously?” the scientist asked, eyes wide.

Cheery nodded. “I dropped my keycard trying to run away, but I need to go make sure the doc—I mean, Dr. Somber is secure. They’ll murder me if she escapes. Do you think you could…” She gestured at the buttons on the wall.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” He bumped his card against the sensor. “B1, right?” he said, pressing the button for her.

“Thanks.” She smiled, barely keeping herself from sagging against the wall in relief that somehow that had actually worked.

“I’m headed to B3,” he told her, his tone revealing just how much that was not a fun floor to be on. “Snack time.”

He didn’t elaborate, but Cheery got the gist.

They were about to let out the gummy bears.