"And there's two sides of that, right?" she continues, balancing her phone on her fingers like a seesaw. "There's making sure people have other options, better options — both by getting rid of anything that might force them, and by making sure they have opportunities."

She lifts one side of the phone, demonstratively.

"And there's making sure that the outcome of hurting people is worse than not doing that, in expectation," she continues, pushing down on the other side.

"Those are both important. But it would be ... stupid, to make people so afraid of the second part that they forget about the first part."

She turns to face him square on, re-attaching her phone to her vest.

"I wish I'd met you yesterday. It's too late for that, now. But it's definitely not too late for me to help. Whatever problem made you walk in there? I guarantee I've heard worse. And I might not be able to fix it instantly or painlessly, but I'm sure I can help you find some way to solve it that's better than hurting people."

"I-I don't know what you're talking about," he replies, turning away.

She leans back.

"You've got nice boots," she tells him. "I've never seen a style like that before. And they match your friends'."

She holds up her phone to show him a message from dispatch.

"We found your other friend trying to scale the wall of an apartment building to hide on the roof. He refuses to give his name, and his iris isn't in the database either."

She sighs.

"Look — in a society like ours, people are never alone. And I don't mean that as a trite truism, I mean that with a billion people on the planet, everything's a matter of statistics. It's too late for me to stop you shooting that person's knee — they'll live, by the way. They're in reconstructive surgery right now — but it's not to late for us to get ahead of the next instance like this, help someone else in your situation find a better way. What do you say?"

Mike stares at his hands. It's hard to see them tremble, in the dim hospital lighting. He should be scared — he should lash out, make a break for it. Leave Timmy behind with the not-a-cop.

But ...

He remembers his dad teaching him how to hold a gun, how to shoot. Going on hunting trips to the country, fewer and fewer over time, until his dad couldn't walk anymore.

He remembers the panic, the shame, the guilt from the first time he held up a convenience store. It was that or starve, he tells himself, and it might have been true but that doesn't make him feel any better about it.

And he thinks of the random man who shrugged off being attacked, and swapped clothes, no questions asked. How ... safe ... would a place have to be, to make people act like that?

He looks at the earnest not-a-cop. She hasn't exactly been straight with him, but she doesn't act like a cop — sure of being obeyed, just there to keep people down and off the streets. She doesn't even have a gun. She just walked up to him and ... talked.

More than that, he realizes. Her first priority wasn't capturing him, or interrogating him, it was getting Timmy to a doctor. She only shifted to interrogating him once he was being seen to.

It's not like he didn't know cops were often worse than the problems they're supposed to solve. But the idea that you could just ... not do that is far beyond what he had imagined. It's not cops and robbers, it's just robbers and chatty government ladies in purple pants.

He laughs, wipes his eyes, realizes he's crying, and lets out a snort. That's not how it's supposed to go. But nothing has gone how its supposed to since he woke up today, and he can't help wondering: what does it look like to live in a world that places half the blame for bank robberies on the job market, on the landlords, on the debt collectors?

He doesn't know, but suddenly he really wants to find out.

"What do you want to know?"