The Jason’s phone rings, waking him from his afternoon nap.

“Mr. Marrow, seems we have a hostage situation at a bank, I’ll send you the address, you show up. Get it settled with. Peacefully” Raizel snaps through the phone.

Jason in a groggy state replies, “Yes sir.” He rushes to get dressed, grabbing a random shirt, a pair of black pants, and his steel toed boots. He runs into the bathroom, gels his buzz cut hair into short spikes, and applies his deodorant haphazardly.

Twenty minutes later, Jason shows up to the bank where the police have barricaded the road. He identifies himself, and they let him into the vicinity. Walking around, he looks for the person that would be in charge, after failing to find them, he resorts to asking an officer and is pointed to a table.

“Short hair, combat looking boots. Rather young looking, you must be Jason Marrow, the negotiator that we’re expecting.” An officer analyzes Jason’s appearance.

“Yes, that would be me sir. You must be Officer Whitman. What’s the situation inside?” confirms Jason.

“As far as we’re able to tell, just three armed suspects. Two with AR’s, the third a pistol. Roughly 15 hostages.” Officer Whitman explains.

“Just three of them? That shouldn’t be too hard, how long as the standoff been going?” Jason asks, trying to calculate his chances of this being easy. The longer the standoff, the more stress on the criminals, the easier it will be to lull them into a trap.

“Two hours, why?” Officer Whitman demands.

“It helps me calculate the chances of success. That’s all, sir, thank you. I need inside the building, unarmed as well. Count two minutes once I’m inside, and then storm the building.” Jason says, as he turns to leave.

An officer grabs a mega phone, and proceeds to attempt to yell into it, “Our negotiator is approaching the doors! Let him in!”

That was a rather stupid thing to do. No need to yell into a machine made to make your voice louder. Jason thinks, as he approaches the bank doors. He grabs the door handles and gives them a rattle, he looks up from the handles, and sees a man, with a green mask, on the other side.

“I’m Jason, the negotiator. I’m unarmed, may I come in?” Jason identifies himself, in case the guy couldn’t make out the megaphone yelling.

The guy looks behind him, and then reaches for the lock, letting Jason into the bank.

Jason looks around, sees three armed men, and a line of hostages against the wall. “Is it just the three of you making demands, or are there more? I’d like to know who all is involved up front. Just fair for my job and such.”

“Yes, just the three of us.” A guy with a red mask says in a stern voice.

“That’s good, so let’s hear your demands then.” Jason replies as he does 360’s getting a good feel for the building, the items in it, and their placements.

“What the hell is wrong with you boy? I’m over here, why not look me in the face when I’m talking to you? Never seen a bank before?” The leader seems to be upset that he’s not being looked at while they talk.

“No, I just like the décor, thought I’d admire it a bit before offering a counter proposal. That’s all.” Jason says, as he ends his rotating shifting, now staring at the seeming leader.

“You’re irritating me boy. We want a helicopter placed on top of the building, we don’t need a pilot for it, we already have one, we don’t want it bugged, and we want it to have as much fuel as possible. We also want a hostage to go with us…” The leader pauses for a moment. “That’s weird, I feel like something isn’t quite right with this room.”

Jason looks around again, “It looks just like the real world does, how could it feel wrong?”

“What the fuck happened?” The leader looks down at his gun, and looks back at Jason, “What the fuck did you do kid? What kind of fucking trick do you think you’re trying to pull over on me?”

“I, wha-” Jason stammers.

“My name is engraved on this gun, as it was a gift from a friend, and my name is missing! What did you do?!” Enraged, the leader marches up to Jason, who instinctually backs up.

“That’s a nifty way to tell your reality was switched with a fake one, I should probably be more careful about such things in the future, shouldn’t I?” Jason asks the man pinning him to a wall.

“What the hell are you on about, a fake reality?”

“Oh, about that…” Jason starts, then waves a hand around him, through the wall, causing a rippling effect, like you’d find if you swung an arm through a pool.

The room, the hostages, and the guns being to vanish with the rippling wall. The three men start to panic, their freedoms, their plans have started falling apart. Then suddenly, each of the men realize they’re lying on the ground, being cuffed, and that resisting at this point is not worth the trouble and pain it’s going to cause.

The men are picked up off the ground, their masks left on their faces. Blue mask, the guy that let Jason into the bank, is the first to be escorted out, next is Red, the apparent leader of the gang. The guy with the green mask, who never said anything, was the last to be escorted out.

Officer Whitman comes, and stands next to Jason, who is leaning against the wall, sweating from the dream realm encounter of Red. “You look like you had a near death experience. You did great.”

“I kind of did, even knowing it’s a fake reality that you can control, things still startle and upset you, like having a gun pressed against your body, while pinned against the wall.” Jason lets the officer know a bit of what happened.

“Well, other than injury from man handling, nothing fatal or worth hospitalizing any one for, it looks like, but we’ll still have everyone checked just to make sure.” Officer Whitman informs Jason.