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Trevor woke to a throbbing headache, the muffled sound of Marcy screaming his name, and the sickening feeling of blood, sticky between his skin and the floor.
“Trevor! Phillip! Can any of you hear me?”
He coughed, twisting over and pulling himself to his feet. The first time he tried, his voice didn’t work, but eventually his throat cleared.
“Ugh. Yeah. Marcy?”
“Trev? Trev! Are the others with you? Are you okay?”
“Uh…”
“Trevor?”
He looked around. The floor, sticky with blood, had three lumps on it. None of them were moving. Trevor tried to crawl towards them, but they didn’t get any closer. Huh. He wasn’t moving either.
“They’re here. I’m, uh, I’m not moving?” Despite the muffled sound, he could hear her sigh. “Wait, where are you? Where are we?”
“I’m on the other side of the door, Trevor. You were all taken at some point yesterday, I managed to track you down, but I can’t get the door open, and there’s a box with a bunch of wires coming out of it attached to the hinges and lock, so I didn’t want to tamper with it.”
“Shit. Like a bomb?”
“Like a bomb,” she agreed. “Wait, did you say you weren’t moving? Trev, are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so.”
She cursed on the other side of the door. “Can you check for me? Make sure you’re not bleeding at least. Adrenaline might mask the pain, make it harder for you to notice. I just- I need you to talk me through diffusing this thing so I can get to the rest of team and check them over properly. You can’t do that if you’re unconscious.”
He patted himself down. Screamed.
Once the blinding white had left his vision, the ringing turned down enough for him to hear Marcy shouting his name again.
“Ah, I’m okay,” he called out tentatively, but loud enough for her to hear. “I just- My hand hit something and it hurt. It’s-” He cut off, eyes finally focussing on the hand in front of his face.
“Trevor?”
“I’m bleeding. A bit. My leg?”
“Okay, Trevor, listen to me. We’ll get you sorted out real quick, then you can check the rest of them are breathing and not about to bleed out, then you can talk me through disarming this bomb. Is there anything sticking out of the wound? A knife, or some glass, that kind of thing?”
He checked. “No, nothing.”
“Good, that’s good. Now use your shirt, or hoodie, wrap it around the wound as tight as you can, and let me know if the bleeding stops. You’re going to have to make it hurt, Trev. It won’t be tight enough otherwise.”
He nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him, then forgot about everything except from searing pain as he pulled his hoodie tight around his leg. It burned. It left him panting.
“Okay, that looks like it stopped the bleeding? Now what?”
“Crawl to the others, pat them down and make sure they’re not bleeding, and make sure they’re all breathing. Put them in the recovery position if you can.”
“Okay,” he said, mostly to himself. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t pretty, but he dragged himself around the room, turning the others onto their sides, making sure their airways were clear and their blood still inside their body.
He got to Phillip last.
“Shit,” he muttered, hand coming back from Phillip’s abdomen stained red, then louder, “Shit! Marcy, Phil’s bleeding. From his stomach. It’s- It’s bad, Marce.”
She went quiet for a heart-stopping second.
“Okay, Trev. You’re going to take your t-shirt, and pack it into the wound. Feed it in as deep as you can, so the whole wound is full, then wrap Phillip’s jacket around it like you did with your leg, and tie it tight.”
“And this’ll stop the bleeding?” He leaned over his friend’s unconscious form, hands steady only from long practice working with machines. It would do Marcy good to have a medic’s steady hands if she really did have to diffuse that bomb.
Especially if she had to be fast enough to do it before Trevor passed out.
“It might not stop the bleeding, Trev. There’s not much you can do for wounds like that without proper kit. But it should at least slow it down long enough for me to get in there. Okay? We’re just going to have to be fast with this bomb.”
He pulled Phillip’s jacket tight around him, tighter than he had on himself, so tight the pain must have been unbearable.
He didn’t stir. Didn’t react at all.
“Okay, done. Describe this device to me again?” he shouted through the door.
“Uh, it’s a box, with two wires going in through holes in one side. One red and one black. The box has a lid, doesn’t look like it’s firmly attached. I haven’t moved any of it yet,” she said. “Oh, and Trev?”
“Yeah?”
“You can find a radial pulse, right? On Phil’s wrist, near the base of his thumb, using your first two or three fingers. Keep your hand on that, and tell me if it disappears.”
“What’ll that tell you?”
“Well, he’s stable as he’s going to get, for now, and as long as you can still feel his radial pulse, his blood pressure hasn’t dropped low enough for me to be worried about that more than the bomb in front of me.”
“Oh.”
“If you stop feeling that at any point, tell me immediately. And keep an eye on the rest of the team. Make sure they keep breathing.”
Shit. There were many reasons Trevor hadn’t considered becoming a doctor, and this situation right here was at least four of them. If he thought too much about Phillip’s blood soaking through his jeans, about his breathing, slightly more ragged than the rest of the team…
But bombs, he could handle.
“Okay, Marce. Sounds like you can just take that lid off. Move slowly, keep it level if you can, just put it on the floor to the side. If there’s anything connected to it, stop.”
Everything was quiet. Everything except for Phillip’s ragged breathing.
“I’ve got the lid off!”
“Okay, now describe what you see.”
“Um, there’s a circuit board with a bunch of wires connected to it, another smaller box, and a few blocks of C4. The wires going out of the box connect to the door–I can’t see where, they disappear by the hinges–and the circuit board. There’s something just underneath… I can’t quite-”
Trevor’s hands flew up to the back of his head, fingers laced into each other, mouth hanging open in resignation more than shock.
On the wall, a panel slid back to reveal a screen. A screen with numbers flashing on it, bold and red as blood. The numbers ticked down.
Well, shit.
“Uh, Marcy?”
“Who is it?”
The countdown flicked past thirty minutes. The three changing to a two distracted Trevor more than he thought it should, considering everything else he had vying for his attention.
“Who’s what?”
29:56
29:55
“Dying, Trev. Describe the symptoms, fast as you can.”
“Nobody’s dying, Marce. That component you described–the box–sounds like it connects to a timer. We’re gonna have to speed this up.”
“Why? How long have we got?”
Trevor stared at the screen, and the numbers blinked irreverently back at him.
29:44
“It’s not like there’s a big countdown in here, Marce. And I’m going to assume there isn’t one out there. Just. Next step, okay?”
“Yeah. How’s everyone doing in there?”
He moved a hand back down from his face to Phillip’s wrist, fumbling until he felt that steady pulse again. He glanced around the room.
“Uh, yeah they’re all still breathing. I can still feel Phillip’s pulse.”
“Good, good.”
“Yeah.” Trevor could only watch, for a moment, as the rest of their team took one breath after another. “This is crazy, Marce.”
“It is. But we don’t have any other choice. We don’t have time to break down. So. What am I doing with this mess?”
“The wires connecting the small box to the circuit board, can you strip those without cutting them? Just an inch in the middle will work.”
Phillip’s pulse beat steady against his fingers.
“Yeah.” A small pause, then: “Done.”
“Does the C4 connect directly to the circuit board, or does it connect to something else?”
“Only to the small box.”
“And do the wires look like they’re just pushed into the C4, like there’s a sort of prong at the end of them that’s just pushed in?”
“Uh… Yes.”
“Pull them out.”
A pause, longer than Trevor would want even if there wasn’t a countdown starting him in the face.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s only there to blow you up if you’re still trying to diffuse this when the timer runs out, but I’d rather not risk setting it off when we’re messing with the real guts of the thing.”
Another pause, Phil’s heart rate syncing for a few seconds with the countdown, two beats to every second lost.
“Done. Still alive. Now, what am I doing with those wires I stripped?”
“Twist them together. Hope nothing starts smoking.”
What a plan. Hope nothing starts smoking. Hope the team keeps breathing. Hope Phillip doesn’t bleed out. Hope Trevor doesn’t bleed out. Hope no one comes and kills Marcy, just out of Trevor’s reach.
Hope.
“Nothing started smoking.”
Phillip’s pulse beat strong against Trevor’s fingertips.
Hope.
As far as Trevor was concerned?
No better strategy.