Page 32 of Spark
Not that it was a hair they could split with the place burning down around them.“Anything they’ve got here is obviously malfunctioning, otherwise this fire wouldn’t be jumping so fast.Until Hawk and Faurier can bring in backup, you and I are the only containment this lab has got.We have to go in.”
Ryan’s pause lasted the span of a heartbeat before he nodded.“Alright, then.Let’s do this.”
Tyler turned his chin toward the radio on his shoulder.Safety first might mean altering protocol, but he wasn’t going to be stupid about it.“Gates to Command.There’s a lab on Floor Two.Fire protection systems are not engaged; repeat, that’s a negative on fire protection systems activation.Dempsey and I have stairwell access.We’re going in for containment.”
“Copy that,” Hawk’s voice crackled over the line after a brief curse that Tyler had to assume was about the fire protection systems failing to do their thing.“Don’t be shy about sharin’ if you find any chemicals.Seventeen and Thirty-Nine are on scene.Captain Bridges is taking over command.Faurier and I are comin’ in for Haz-Mat backup on Floor Two.Thirty-Nine will take Floor Three.Command, out.”
Tyler’s heart jackhammered in his chest, but he refused entry to the emotions that wanted to follow.Pulling the door open, he shouldered his way out of the stairwell and onto the second floor.The hallway that he and Ryan had been dumped into was thick with smoke, flames whooshing in loud, raspy whispers on either side, and Christ, was there any part of this place not actively on fire?
“This way,” Ryan hollered, thumping past a sign for the lab with arrows pointing to the left.The two dozen steps they took down the hallway felt like a decathlon, and Tyler’s muscles released their stranglehold on his lungs when he and Ryan reached a set of thick glass doors with the words DNA ANALYSIS LABORATORY stenciled across them in bold, bright red letters.
Right up until he realized the doors were actually the first of two sets, each sealed by an electromagnetic system that should have failed over and released when the building’s power had shorted out from the fire…but hadn’t.
“They’re locked,” Tyler said, rattling the handle on a Hail Mary that went unanswered.
Ryan’s chin jerked toward the locking mechanism mounted in the door’s steel frame.“What?How?There’s no power supply.”
Tyler shook his head.None of this made any sense.The locks were specifically designed to only open one at a time to prevent cross-contamination, but they all automatically disengaged in a power outage to keep anyone from being accidentally locked inside.Without power, theycouldn’tbe locked.
But they were.
Flames shimmered and flashed beyond both sets of doors, deepening Tyler’s confusion.How the hell had the fire moved through not one, buttwoimpossibly sealed entry points?“I don’t know,” Tyler said, shelving the question for later, “but the lab is showing flames.We’ve got to get in there.”
Ryan swore behind his mask.“Fucking cleanroom doors.”A wider scan, then, “The panels are polypropylene.”
Tyler added his own swear to the pile.Polypropylene had a high impact resistance and a low melting point.In layman’s terms, hard to break and highly flammable, two of Tyler’s least favorite things right now.They weren’t going to be able to simply smash them like they had the doors in the lobby.
“Hang on,” Ryan said, and Tyler should’ve known it would take more than a powder-coated steel frame and some malfunctioning maglocks to deter the guy.“Give me some force, here?”
He flipped his Halligan fork-side forward, and Tyler lowered his dry chemical extinguisher, grateful as hell for the collapsible breaching sledgehammer he kept in his turnout pockets for occasions just like this.Ryan edged the fork of his Halligan into the millimeter’s worth of space where the doorframe met the jamb, nodding at Tyler a second later.Tyler swung the sledgehammer, making contact against the end of Ryan’s Halligan with a sharp metallicclink.Ryan repeated the call for force once, twice, three times, pausing only for a breath between each to get a feel for the gap that had started to appear at the fork of his Halligan.After the fourth strike, the gap loosened, the door giving way with a crack after the fifth, and Ryan—being Ryan—grinned.
“Gotcha, you tricky bastard.Let’s go.”
Tyler grabbed his extinguisher and followed him past the now-swinging door.The containment room beyond was little more than an eight-by-eight square, with a washing station and a row of hooks and cubbies holding various protective gear, and Tyler sent up a prayer that maybe, maybe they’d get luckier with this door than the first.
Big, fat negative, and damn it, this call couldn’t turn into a bigger disasterpiece.He and Ryan breached the second door, finally moving around the corner and into the lab.
Holy.Shit.
Every one of the four workstations had been destroyed, broken glass, ruined equipment, and smashed computers littering both the tables and the floor.Flames danced from each one in angry yellow-gold pillars with just a flash of blue at the base, sooty smoke clinging to the air and creating a dark, blurry haze.But, as gut-punching as the sight was, it wasn’t what had kicked Tyler’s fuckometer into overdrive.
The stainless steel cannisters with huge biohazard stickers on the sides, all of which were unsealed and scattered over the floor?Yeah,thattempted him to panic.
No.No, no.He couldn’t feel.He had to think.Come on, come on.Yellow and blue flames.Dark smoke.No feelings.What chemical creates a yellow and blue flame?Think, think, think!
“Ethanol,” Tyler yelled, turning toward the radio on his shoulder.“Gates to Command.We’re in the lab on Floor Two.There are open containers of ethanol in here.”He calculated scenarios, lightning fast.This had to be the fire’s ignition point, but with multiple open containers, the cause couldn’t possibly have been accidental.“Requesting immediate Haz-Mat backup.”
“Copy that, Gates,” came his captain, Tanner Bridges’s calm, stern voice.“Contain as much as you can.Hawkins and Faurier are on their way.”
Faurier followed on the radio with their location in the stairwell, and Tyler swung toward the lab.A wall of windows lined the back of the space, separating the lab from what looked like some kind of high-tech storage area.Fire filled that room, too, the flames so center-of-the-sun bright that Tyler could barely make out the shelves running along the wall inside.He took a step forward, trying to advance, but heat slammed into him, so brutally intense that he felt the force of it through his mobility suit.His breath sawed past his lips, unnaturally loud in his ears, and it took all of his energy to get it regulated.
Don’t feel.Think.Think.
Tyler dragged in a breath, forcing his pulse to slow and his brain to fall in line.He had to knock down some of these flames, otherwise he was never going to get close to that storage area, where he’d bet his net worth there were even more chemicals.Letting muscle memory take over, Tyler yanked the pin from his extinguisher and aimed the nozzle at the base of the flames.He swept back and forth, dousing the fire with the dry chemical foam, but had only made the smallest dent in the fire when Ryan’s voice, thick with urgency, hit him from the other side of the room.
“Gates!Look out!”
Tyler ducked out of the way just in time to dodge a burning ceiling panel falling from above.His heart jammed in his windpipe only after the debris had smashed to the ground, and Jesus.This fire was burning far faster than anything he’d ever seen.
