Page 31 of Spark
Adrenaline?Into a box.Fear?Another box.The way his chest lurched at the unguarded emotions on Chloe’s face whenever she spoke about everything from baking cookies to advocating for Esme?
Biiiiiiig fucking box.
“Okay, y’all, listen up, because this one sounds like it’s gonna be a cluster fuck of epic proportions.”Hawk’s voice broke through the soft hiss filtering through the headsets they all wore to keep their ears protected and communicate over the sirens and diesel-engine noise.Hawk, who had been Tyler’s commanding officer ever since Tyler had landed both on squad and at Seventeen more than half a decade ago, sounded as serious as he was ever going to on a call, and shit.That wasnota good sign.
“Dispatch is reporting a nine-one-one call with flames showing at Dynamics Lab Corporation.Looks like it’s a forensics science center.It’s after hours, so the place is closed”—unspoken translation: no search and rescue, although Tyler had a feeling that was where the win column ended—“but we don’t know what’s burning, exactly what chemicals are in the building, where they are, or in what amount, so we’re gonna have to proceed with a shit-ton of caution.”
“Is shit-ton the scientific term?”Ryan asked from his spot beside Tyler.It would seem like a smartass response to an outsider, partly because it was.Ryan had bigger balls than most.But joking kept them in nice-and-easy territory when shit was about to go nonlinear, and staying on the level was the key to staying alive for all four of them.
Which Hawk knew damn well, because he replied, “For everyone other than you, Dempsey.Youget to act with ametricshit-ton of caution.”
“Knowing D, that seems legit,” Faurier chimed in, to which Ryan happily responded with a comment about the pot and the kettle, punctuating it with a single-finger salute.Faurier grinned and returned the gesture over one shoulder—although, notably, he didn’t argue—and after a beat, Hawk reined them in.
“Alright, you two.I know this ain’t a bridge club, but I’m not takin’ any unnecessary risks, either.Until we know what’s what, I want y’all in full Haz-Mat gear with dry chemical extinguishers only.Engine and Ambo wrapped up that car wreck, so they’re gonna meet us on scene for backup.Squad Thirty-Nine is on standby for additional Haz-Mat response.”
Damn, this had a lot of potential to take a slide into shitsville, Tyler thought.But what he said into his headset was, “Copy that,” and what he did was take slow, measured breaths while making a mental list of the chemicals typically used in science labs, along with their hazard classifications.Benzene, ethanol, acetone, methanol, pentane, cyclohexane—they were all pretty goddamn dangerous, especially when they met a source of ignition.One tiny spark could take even a small amount of any of them and create a big fucking disaster.
And the amount usually kept in a science lab was never small.
Pushing the thought from his head, Tyler looked out the window to his left and scanned his surroundings.The city was cloaked in the growing shadows of twilight, with many of the office buildings they rushed past largely darkened until morning.Traffic was light in this part of Remington now, and Faurier called out a two-minute ETA over the headset.
“Dispatch is trying to get ahold of someone who can tell us what kind of chemicals we’re dealin’ with on-site, but two more nine-one-one callers are reporting flames showing on floors one, two, and three of the alpha side of the building,” Hawk said.“Gates, I want you and Dempsey ready to roll when we get there.”
“Copy that,” Tyler and Ryan said in unison, and neither of them wasted a single blink, double-checking the mobility suits they’d geared up in as they’d left the fire house and getting the rest of their equipment ready to pull into place.Haz-Mat masks had filters that made it even more impossible to see each other’s faces than the SCBA masks they usually wore, and the specialized turnouts were made of material not only certified for use in hot zone operations, but that also protected against nearly all toxic industrial chemicals.The gear hadn’t earned its name for being easy to maneuver in as much as the ability it allowed squad firefighters to go into (literally) explosive situations too dangerous for regular turnouts.But regular drills in mobility suits were part of squad training, and the bulkier gear was less of a pain in the ass than being exposed to chemicals that would French-fry both his lungs and skin in four seconds flat, so Tyler wasn’t about to complain, no matter how hard he was already sweating.
The pungent smell of something burning was a chop to the throat, and the rest of his senses spun into high alert as Faurier pulled the vehicle around a corner onto Marshall Boulevard.Tyler’s heartbeat threatened to commandeer his chest at the telltale glow of flames licking upward from the building’s windows, but he packed away the fear/dread/panic that rode in on his adrenaline and forced himself to focus.Gear in place, boots on the pavement, scan, smell, listen, breathe.
“Shit,” Ryan muttered, and at least they were in agreement.The three-story metal and glass building in front of them was actively burning, black smoke and searing heat pouring off the place in a steady stream that turned the air around it to a dark shimmer.The smoke carried the acrid scent of something distinctly chemical, and the size of the fire, stretching three stories up and across more than half the alpha side of the building, suggested it was spreading with unnatural velocity.
“That fire’s jumpin’ like water on a skillet.”Hawk frowned, scanning the building from his vantage point on the pavement just as Tyler had.“It’ll get worse before it gets better, and we ain’t gonna be able to contain it from out here.Faurier, radio Seventeen and tell them we need a two-block perimeter around this place as soon as they get here, then tell dispatch to call in Squad Thirty-Nine.Gates, Dempsey, do a sweep and knock down what you can to keep the fire from spreading.Last thing we need is for it to find something combustible.We’ll be in to back you up as soon as we can.”
Tyler yanked his mask over his face, falling into step with Ryan the second Hawk’s order was out.His muscles burned under the combined weight of the SCBA tank on his back and the oversized dry chemical extinguisher in his grasp, but he didn’t slow.They covered the ground between the squad vehicle and the building’s front doors in seconds, clattering to a stop on the threshold.Flames burned brightly from behind the double doors of the main entrance and the large windows facing the street, covering so much of the lobby beyond that if Tyler didn’t know how rare arson was, he’d have sworn the fire had been purposely set there.
Ryan, who’d never met an entry technique he didn’t like, took in the tightly locked doors and shook his head.“Gotta break ’em.”
Tyler wasn’t about to argue—they needed entry five minutes ago.“Mechanical breaching is only limited to your imagination, dude.Do what you’ve got to do.”
One well-placed swing of his Halligan and a little bit of smash-and-crash was all it took for the glass to no longer be an obstacle.Clearing the shards from the doorframe, Ryan finished the breach, and Tyler moved into position, heading past the door with Ryan on his six.A fast visual inventory of the lobby confirmed that the rear wall was fully involved, engulfed in flames that stretched from floor to ceiling.Thick, black smoke clogged the tiled hallways branching off on either side, the bank of elevators behind the empty reception desk already completely blocked off by the fast-moving flames.Protocol dictated that they start from the top and work their way down, and shit.Shit.Where were the stairs?Tyler swiveled a methodical stare over the lobby, his eyes catching on a sign reading STAIRWELL with an arrow pointing to the right, and he bellowed Ryan’s name through his mask.
“Stairs,” he called out, thumping Ryan’s shoulder and gesturing to the right.They hustled down the hallway, their headlamps barely cutting a foot in front of them through the smoke and shadows, even with the assistance of the nearby flames.Tyler counted his steps—sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—and finally,finally—a door appeared on their left.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he murmured to himself, pressing a gloved hand over it in a quick feel test.The metal wasn’t cool, but it wasn’t scalding, either, and relief spilled through his ribs.Not wanting to waste precious oxygen, he nodded at Ryan, who got the message that they were good to go.Tyler yanked the door open, his boots banging against the concrete stairs as he started to climb, Ryan close behind.Sweat poured down his back beneath his gear, his pulse an amplified metronome at his throat, but he lasered his focus on getting to the third floor so they could start containing this fire before it reached something a lot more combustible than drywall and wood.
He clattered to a stop on the second-floor landing.
“Whoa.”Ryan pulled up short behind him.“What’s wrong?”
Tyler stared down the sign outside the door.FLOOR 2: DNA FORENSICS LAB.“There’s a lab on this floor.”
Translation: the highly flammable chemicals probably live here.
Response: “Well, shit.”
They were supposed to go up to the third floor, Tyler knew.But this fire was already out of control, burning at a rate that defied logic.It was a matter of time—possibly minutes—before the flames met an amount of liquid chemicals they wouldn’t get along with.
And if that happened, the entire building might explode.
“The lab is supposed to have fire protection systems in place,” Ryan said, and he wasn’t wrong.All buildings housing more than a strictly regulated amount of flammable chemicals were required to have specialized sprinkler and containment systems in order to be up to code.OSHA, the Environmental Protection Agency, internal company risk management plans—there were literally dozens of regulations calling for safety measures to prevent the spread of a fire.
