Emergency Measures
Amarillo, Texas.
In the Oakdale neighborhood of Amarillo was a shabby, dilapidated one-bedroom house. Its windows were boarded up and the outside was covered in graffiti, and the front lawn had overgrown with weeds until it spilled out over the curb and onto the street. Inside, a young man was sleeping on a pile of old U-Haul moving blankets.
He opened his eyes, a purple glint flashing through them, and sat up. He pulled an old flip phone out of his pocket and called the imperial police agency’s non-emergency number, then reported that a homeless person was squatting in the house he was in, then sat back to wait for the police to arrive.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. The young man opened the door and, as he had expected, two men in neat imperial police uniforms were standing on the porch.