21 defused

(Quick note. Everything in this chapter is of my imagination, and has no factual truth to it. Just knowledge gained from tv and video games. For that reason this chapter will have some vague points.)

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I was wrong, soo wrong.

My smile didn't do shit.

Because as soon as I finished smiling at the group of nurses, the one in front of me with the vest strapped to her, opened her mouth to scream with a terrified expression on her face.

Not needing to think. My hand shot up and covered her mouth, while I turned my head shushing the other terrified nurses.

"Shooshh, if you make any sounds they might hear all of us!" I whispered sternly.

Looking back at the young nurse who was starting to cry.

Lowering my hand, I saw that I had left a long smear of blood on the sides of her face.

'Ohhh right, forgot I'm covered in blood.' I thought to myself, as I looked down at my blood soaked hospital gown, and arms.

"Look, all of you need to stay calm. If you do that, then all of you will make it out of here fine" I said.

A few of them nodded, while some looked to be catatonic.

Turning back to the young nurse, I looked up to her light blue eyes.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"c-cindy" she stammered out.

"Nice to meet you Cindy" I said, giving her a smile. Hoping it actually worked this time.

"My name is Andrew Cole. I'm a scout sniper in the Marines. So trust me, you're in good hands."

She gave me a weak smile, before I looked down at the mass of wire and C4.

As I looked at it, my Brain ran through everything I knew about explosives.

'hmmm…fuck'I thought, as I came up empty.

'Explosives are a specialty. And all I know about explosives are door changes. And that, barely even.

But one thing I knew about anything to do with wires in explosives, is to never cut them with metal.

During one of my classes on breach C4 charges, there was a segment about the wires used in those types of things.

And one thing the instructor made sure to drill into our heads, was to never cut an electrical wire with any metallic sharp object, because it might cause a spark when cutting through the metal in the electrical wire.

All it would take is one spark to set it off, and that's not really an option for me.

Looking up to Cindy, I asked her a question, to get her mind briefly on something else.

"Is there anything sharp in here that isn't metal?" I asked her.

It took her a moment to understand what I asked her.

But before she could answer my question. One of the other older nurses beat her to it.

"yes. In that cabinet over there. It has plastic razor scrapers." She said, gesturing to one of the small cabinets along the end of the ward by the double doors that were now chained shut.

"Thanks" I said, giving the nurse a quick nod, before I slowly made my way to the cabinet, in a crouch.

Opening one of the doors, I searched for the plastic razors.

After a few moments of searching, I found them in a small plastic pencil case, with a label on the top.

Opening the small box, I took two out, then made my way back.

"Right, let's get a better look at what we are dealing with." I said, as I fully looked down at the vest.

The vest was of tactical design.

It was low hanging with mag holders, and webbing.

But instead of the magazine's that were supposed to go there, bricks of C4 were crammed into the mag holders.

Connected to the bricks were wires that were taped to the bricks by a thick black duct tape.

All together there were six bricks on the vest, with wires coming out of the ends to be twisted into one large collection of wires that had been taped together in a spiral, leading to the small box the nurse was holding.

"Right." I said, making sure to keep my voice steady and calm.

When something hit me.

'This is just like the door charges.' I thought.

'you would expect more out of these guys. maybe a timer on it or something. Perhaps a trap or two. But no, this was just some basic stuff. Like all of this was rushed.'

That thought stalled me for a moment.

'was all of this just so those guys could get me?' I wondered.

'If so, why me? I'm of no importance to go to this length for…wait, is it possible they know what I can do?'

'no, no way. I can only see seconds, maybe a few days in advance of something happening. And I haven't told anyone about that, or shown any real abilities with it, so there is no way they should know about that.'

I forced myself to stop thinking about that for the moment.

'That guy said they only had fifteen minutes, a few minutes ago, so they must have something else planned.'

"Right." I said, raising the plastic blade up to the twisted jumble of wire and slowly started to cut each wire one at a time.

As I worked, I saw that the nurse named Cindy was starting to shake from the fear.

But It didn't bother me. As long as she wasn't having convulsions I could continue with what I was doing.

Cutting the wires only took me about a minute, and one of my two plastic blades.

After cutting the final wire, I smiled up at the nurse.

"Look at that, all done." I said, slowly grabbing the small black box, the nurse was holding in a death grip.

After forcefully pulling her finger away, I slid the box across the ground and away from us.

"Now all we need to do is get this off of you." I said.

"Raise your arms up would you" I asked, doing so myself, to make sure she understood what I was asking.

Thankfully she understood me, because the last thing I wanted to do was terrorize her even more, by forcefully manhandling her, to get the bomb off of her.

As soon as she raised her arms up, I slowly lifted the vest up.

Struggling when it reached her head. But after a quick tug, the vest was removed from her.

As it was taken from her, I heard a collective sigh of relief from the rest of the nurses.

But then something caught my attention.

A hissing sound.

When I was focused on the bomb, it didn't register in my head.

But now, it was clear as day to hear.

Still holding the vest, I turned in the direction of the sound, and spotted one of the close by beds.

Squinting my eyes a bit, I was confused as to where the sound was coming from.

So deciding not to waste any more time, I just asked the nurses.

"What's that sound?" I asked.

Turning towards the sound themselves, one of the nurses raised her hand to a blue pipe that came down from the ceiling.

"It's coming from the oxygen line." She said, with a hint of fear.

Turning to look directly at what she pointed at, I asked them another question.

"And what exactly is the oxygen line?"

The nurse to answer, looked to be no less than 70 years of age, and like she had seen too damn much in those years.

"It's a pipeline that travels the entire patient section of the hospital distributing oxygen to patients that need it." She said in a gravelly voice, that sounded like two packs of smokes a day since she was a kid.

"Oh fuck" I said out loud, as everything started to fall into place in my mind.

'the hydrogen peroxide, the crappy excuse for a bomb.' I thought quickly.

Turning to look back at the nurses who were now looking up at me, I asked.

"How many patients are in this hospital?" I asked.

"Mm, about 5, maybe 600." a chubby brunette said.

"Damn" I again said out loud, not thinking right.

'This is not going to be easy.' I thought, as the task at hand started to overwhelm me.

But before I could be overwhelmed, my vision turned white and a vision started to play in my mind.

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A large darkly lit room, with concrete walls, and a mass of different pipes, all different colors.

One of the smaller pipes had a small flashing red light that could be seen, turning on then off at a steady pace.

The view changed and I was right in front of whatever it was.

It was a brick of C4 that had electrical wire coming out of it that was attached to a small alarm clock that had numbers on it, slowly counting down.

At the moment, it was at 9 minutes and 34 seconds.

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Word. 1'584

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There was way more I was going to put in this chapter. But I decided it would be best to just make this chapter the way it is.

I'm sure there's a few parts of this where the rhythm gets messed up, and that's where I took out chunks.

Please let me know if there are any issues with the chapter.

-BEAN-