TROUBLESHOOTER:
Countdown to Zero
by Andrea Speed
Three - Enter, Chased By A Bear

Z hated corporate espionage cases. She especially hated ones where she had to pretend to be a temp.

Pretending to be a janitor was much more preferable, as no one in an office ever gave them a second glance. Office peons felt superior to the clean up crew, just like the CEO felt superior to all his workers. It was a nice little tree of ever grown contempt, from the janitors on the bottom to the corporate board at the very top, and everybody hated those above and below them in equal measure. At least it was the class system in action.

The client assumed she’d go in as a temp, but she went ahead and pulled out the right colored jumpsuit and pretended to be on the janitorial staff, and only a pudgy weasel in a loud tie noticed she was new, and that was only because he tried to hit on her. She would have rather been mauled by a bear, and told him so. After standing there several seconds, trying to formulate a response in the recesses of his sluggish synapses, the best he could do was call her, “Bitch!” Wow, so original - she hoped he wrote that down for future reference.

She tossed her folded up janitorial on the couch, and then tossed the disc she smuggled out on top of it, but far more carefully. At least this bloody assignment was over, and she could look forward to a big fat check. And even then, she wasn’t sure it was worth it just to nail some pissant corporation for knocking off someone else’s designs.

She picked up the remote from her coffee table and turned on her stereo, not sure what she had left in the cd player. She was reminded as soon as the sarcastic, angry strains of “American Jesus” started coming through the speakers, and counterintuitively, the noise was rather soothing to her. Other people being angry seemed to give her a break from having to do it.

She saw her machine light blinking, but figured it was her client, and went to the kitchen to get a tea first. God, she couldn’t wait to give Ness his fucking disc. The guy nagged more than a fucking stallion, like he could do her job better. If he could, why didn’t he just fucking do it then? Because he was a fat, lazy prick? She had no idea why she wasn’t yet inured to working for pricks - her life had been overflowing with them.

She gulped down half her bottle of kiwi tea - too damn sweet; so why did she keep drinking the stuff? Did they spike it with opium or something? - and felt the handle of the utility knife she kept in her boot digging into her ankle. She pulled it out and tossed it on the counter before she went to the fridge and retrieved the leftover Mongolian beef from the night before last. Who knew Canada would have such great Chinese places? If she had the money, she’d eat nothing but Chinese food, the spicier the better. Okay, technically it wasn’t exactly like food the Chinese actually ate - she had yet to come upon a menu with snake meat as an option - but when it was so good, you didn’t quibble.

She nuked the leftovers, searched empty drawers and cupboards until she found a fork, then ate as she went back into the living room, mentally arguing with herself over whether she should finish her dinner first, or listen to her messages and risk losing her appetite. She got irritated watching the blinking light, so she decided to risk it.

She sat on the couch and tuned out the telephone solicitor, and Ness “just checking in” (she’d be so happy to give him his disc, take her check, and tell him to suck her dick), but was surprised back to full awareness by Shan’s voice. She liked to tease him that he sounded like the white Barry White on the phone, but he did, in a way. Maybe it was a gender thing, but she found her own voice sounded higher pitched on the phone, while his sounded deeper, and yet in person, her voice wasn’t that bad, and his wasn’t that velvety. Just one of those things, she supposed.

He was talking really fast - was he overdosing on energy drinks again? - but when he mentioned “bomb”, she really started paying attention. Did he really say that? Apparently so, and it got worse. She set aside her dinner, and grimaced as he said he was going to try and short it out - she wished he’d had the time to describe the type of explosive he was dealing with. It was possible to short some types of bombs out with water, especially if it was made poorly or on the cheap, but a short was more likely to cause a premature detonation than shut it down.

But Shan proved he had that special kind of luck that only belonged to the completely clueless, and the bomb didn’t detonate. To her, that meant it was probably so poorly made it wasn’t going to go off anyways, whether he dumped it in water or not, but she didn’t want to kick the shit out of his triumph.

He never brought a girl home to meet his parents? Why? Was he that embarrassed of his parents, that much of a player, or a combination? He could be bi and not completely comfortable with it; it might explain why he worked so many gay clubs.

Oh well, whatever, didn’t matter. She gulped down the rest of her tea, then went back to the kitchen and found her phone book. If Shan wasn’t injured - and it didn’t sound like it - he’d probably be pulled, taken to the nearest cop shop as a material witness for questioning. He might even be a minor suspect until they got it all worked out. She thought she’d seen one not too far from Shan’s place, and the phone book confirmed it: there was a PD a mile and a half from his apartment, and that’s probably where they took him.

She tried to remember the last time she was in a cop shop, and she suspected it was way back, in some official capacity or another. That was enough to make her shudder.

*****

They tried to dress it up, make it look nice, but under the fresh paint and behind the low growing junipers, it was a depressing as all fuck cinderblock police station that could never look nice, no matter how hard it tried. It gave off an air of oppression and depression, and she could imagine the smell of industrial grade coffee, fax toner, and body odor before she even stepped in the door. It was amazing how most cop shops smelled alike, no matter where they were.

It was brightly lit in that unflattering florescent way, and basically a roughly organized clutter of desks topped with boxy computers, and, almost anachronistically, a couple of perps who looked like they had nodded off while handcuffed to bolted benches. You could barely here the guy in the drunk tank with the DT’s hollering about the spiders over the clicks of keyboards, the ringing of phones, and the murmur of voices. The guy manning the front desk had the hangdog look of a basset hound, and gave her a sleepy eyed glance as she came in. “May I help you, ma’am?” He said politely.

Whenever anyone called her “ma’am”, she had to bite back an insult. She had no idea why - it was just one of those things too. “I think you’ve got a friend of mine here. Shane Shanahan?”

He consulted his computer. “Do you know what he was brought in for?”

“Material witness. There was a shooting and attempted bombing at the Sun Hill apartments on Royal Road? He called it in.”

The cop looked back at her in surprise, a new light flaring briefly in his eyes. “Oh, him!” A lot of people said this when it came to Shan. She suspected people said the same thing about her when she was mentioned. There was something about that pair of them that most people just found so damn bizarre that they felt they required exclamation points. “How do you know about that?”

“He called me while waiting for you guys to show up.”

The cop with the deep bags beneath his eyes consulted a piece of paper on his desk, lips twisting as he scanned the page. “You Dee Markham?”

“Z, Z as in zebra, Markham. Yes.”

His brown eyes appraised her in that impersonal cop fashion as he picked up the phone. “He said you might be coming for him.”

Shan may have been guileless, but he was no fool.

Officer Bassett Hound pushed a button for an internal line, then wedged the receiver against his ear. “Major? Markham’s here for Shanahan.” After that terse statement, he hung up, and told her, “A detective will be out in a moment.” He then turned back to his computer, pretending to work, but she suspected he was playing solitaire.

After two minutes of waiting and guessing what the cuffed perps were pulled for (the guy with the track marks on his emaciated arms was an easy guess - narcotics, probably possession, possibly stoned and unruly in public, with twenty to one odds of trafficking. But the guy in the flannel shirt and slacks looked relatively clean. Domestic violence? Well, it looked like he had a type of mullet, so maybe…) a female cop came out of the back. She was about an inch shorter than Z, no more than a hundred and twenty five pounds, and wearing a rather bland dark blue pantsuit and white blouse that plainclothes cops of either sex were generally known for. She wore her badge on her belt right now, though, so the whole cop thing was a dead giveaway anyways.

She had shoulder length chestnut hair, held back in an almost painfully tight bun, a style that did not flatter the blunt plains of her diamond shaped face. While not homely, she wasn’t wildly attractive either, and she was one of those women who had no figure at all - she was as straight as a rail, flat as a board, and many other hardware store analogies. She was the type you could accidentally mistake for a man from the back, as long as her hair wasn’t in some unnecessarily elaborate, female style. Her eyes were a pale, unremarkable blue, and as they scanned her, Z saw she kept her jaw tight. Humorless? Good bet there. She hoped she hadn’t beaten Shan to death with her nightstick. “Markham?” Z simply nodded, as it really wasn’t a question. “I’m Detective Constable Terry Major. My partner and I brought Mr. Shanahan in.”

She offered her hand in a perfunctory manner, and after pretending she didn’t know what she wanted for a couple of seconds, she shook her hand briskly, giving it a brief, hard squeeze before slipping her hand free. “So how’s he doing?”

She considered that, clearly deciding on how much she should say and how she should put it. “He was a little shaken up at first, which is to be expected, but he wasn’t physically harmed.” Detective Major (Z couldn’t wait until she made Sergeant) paused, and glanced around before leaning closer and whispering, “Is he, uh …” she pointed at her temple, as if that was supposed to mean something.

But Z knew what she was getting at. It was the same fucking thing everybody inevitably asked if they hadn’t met Shan before, and he had the misfortune to have a seizure or a spell of malapropism or inappropriate pausing around them. She glared at her, not bothering to hide her contempt. “Retarded, is that what you’re asking me?” She said it in a normal voice, but Major recoiled in horror, as if she had shouted.

“No, I just meant -”

“He suffered a severe head injury several years ago that almost killed him and left him in a coma for two months. Unlike that bint in Kill Bill, he didn’t come back quite the same. He has petit mal seizures that cause him to freeze up for minutes at a time, and the language center of his brain sustained some kind of damage that sometimes leaves him slipping up or grasping at words. Does that answer your question? I’m sorry he wasn’t wearing his “Hi, I’m Brain Damaged!” t-shirt.”

Major tried damn hard to hide her embarrassment, while at the same time annoyance flashed through her eyes, probably because she didn’t like that last second addition of sarcasm. “I see. That’s too bad. It’s a relief in a way - Dan thought he might be stoned.”

Z had to swallow back an insult that she knew would get her arrested. The odds were a Canadian cop would understand Aussie slang more than an American cop, since they both had Britain - source of most decent curses - in common. “Can I see him?”

Major made a show of thinking about it before simply saying, ”This way,” and pivoting smoothly on her heels. Z thought about mimicking her stiff cop gate, ala Groucho Marx, but the humor would be wasted on everybody, and might earn her a beat down. And since she hadn’t said “Walk this way”, the “If I could walk that way I wouldn’t need after-shave” joke just wouldn’t work.

The cop led her towards a back office, where they were probably keeping Shan more or less isolated so they could question him in private, without the word bomb being tossed about. But didn’t she just say bomb at the front desk?

Shit. If Shan had just earned her a trip into the box, she was going to kill him.

TROUBLESHOOTER:
Countdown to Zero
by Andrea Speed
Two - Optimistic

It was a weird looking bomb. Wasn’t it supposed to have some kind of explosive on it? Well, maybe it did; maybe those canisters were full of plastique or something. Maybe it wasn’t even a real bomb, just something that kind of looked like one.

He dialed 911, glad that Canada had that too, and turned on the taps full blast, putting the plug in the sink. What the hell was he doing? Sometimes his mind was even a mystery to him.

Even if he picked this guy up and managed not to accidentally kill him while doing so, they wouldn’t get far in the time they had left. And what about the other people in the apartment building? Not to mention all his stuff was downstairs, and he didn’t want to lose his stuff. God, he wished Z was here - she would know what to do.

If he could short circuit the bomb, it might not go off, or it might go off prematurely, but with forty seconds to detonation, it probably didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference. “9-1-1. What is the nature of your emergency?” A clipped, ultra professional female voice asked.

“Well, for starters, my neighbor has been shot. He’s bleeding all over the place.”

“Do you know where he’s been shot?”

“Back, I think. I don’t see any exit or entrance wounds in the front, and all the blood seems to be coming out from under him.” He was honestly astonished at how cool and professional he sounded to himself. Z really must have rubbed off on him in a big way, because he felt like he was channeling her. And he must have been, because he was sure normally he’d be hysterical. Maybe so much hideous crap happening at once just overloaded you and focused your attention like a laser. It was be Data or be absolutely useless.

“What’s your location?”

“The Sun Hill apartments, 123 Royal Road, apartment … oh shit, what is this … apartment 22-B, I think.”

“Do you know who shot him?”

“One of two guys who are probably still bleeding at the bottom of the stairwell.”

“They were shot as well?”

“No. They … fell.” Okay, he threw one over the stairs, and probably ruptured the testicle of another, but he was rapidly running out of time. “Look, I’m sorry, I have to go. It looks like there’s a bomb here as well.”

That cracked through her professional courtesy. “Did you say a bomb?”

“Yeah. Nice talking to you.” He disconnected, and hit the speed dial button that connected him to Z. Only, after two rings, he connected to her machine. “This is Markham. If you know who I am, you know what to do.” Markham was her new last name, adopted with such ease he wondered if Stark was actually her real last name. The only thing she had told him was, “I haven’t used my real name in so long, I don’t think I know what it is anymore.” He assumed she was joking, but sometimes with her it was hard to tell.

After the beep, he said, “If you’re there, Z, I really need you to pick up.” He paused for two seconds, and started turning off the taps, as the sink was so full it was almost overflowing. “Okay, you’re not. Umm, some goons shot my neighbor and left a bomb behind, and I’m almost down to single digit time here. I’ve decided to put it in water, and see if I can short it out. If I die, you can have any of my stuff you can salvage, and please tell my parents we were sleeping together, because I think they’ve always suspected I was gay since I never brought a girl home to meet ‘em. Oh, and, uh, I’m kinda sorry we never did anyways, although honestly you scare the shit out of me most of the time.”

Six seconds. Shit. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and swept the bomb into the sink, making water slosh over the side and onto the floor.

He closed his eyes and tensed, wondering if it was humanly possible to brace for being blown up. Would it hurt, or would it happen so fast it wouldn’t matter? He counted to six in his head, and then went up to ten in case he counted too fast, then reluctantly opened his eyes.

The bomb was settled at the bottom of the peeling sink, the clock no longer counting off anything; it appeared to be dead. Not waterproof? So did that mean the bomb was dead, or that it could go off at any time?

He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, his hand sweating so much his phone felt slippery. “Wow, Z, I think it worked. It hasn’t gone off yet, and the countdown has stopped. Maybe it’s dumb luck, or it just wasn’t a good bomb. I mean, I know they’re supposed to be easy to make, but hey, I survived a subdermal hematoma, and they’re often fable.” He paused, because he was sure he said something wrong? Had he? That was another shitty thing about his head injury - sometimes he knew he said something wrong, but he couldn’t always figure out what. Words slipped between his fingers like sand, and it made him feel like a complete moron, which is exactly what most people thought he was (and there was a difference between stupid and brain damaged - okay, not a huge difference, but still). That’s why he liked Z so much. Scary or not, she never made fun of him, or treated him like he was an idiot. Well, no more so than anyone else, that is.

Z seemed to know a whole lot about a lot of things, and sometimes a certain contempt for people who didn’t seemed to bleed out of her, although it wasn’t personal. She was such a cynic she seemed to hate the world in its entirety at times, although he supposed it had earned her contempt. He had seen the ghosts of scars on her arms, the one on her face that was usually hidden by her hair, and it wasn’t hard to guess she’d had a tough life, besides the fact that she had been a cop, and even in Australia that had to be a hard job. “You know, if this was a movie, I’d relax and say “Phew, glad that’s over”, and it would blow up.” He peered down into the water suspiciously. “So I guess I won’t say that.”

He heard the scream of sirens, distant but growing louder, and guessed they were heading his way. His heart continued to beat an erratic tattoo, though, and his palms remained sweaty. Maybe later, when he really had time to think about what happened, he’d shit himself. “Ah, I think the cops and the bomb squad are almost here. Sorry to leave a message like this, but I really didn’t know who else to call. Oh, and uh, forget what I said about my parents, and sleeping with you. Not that I don’t wanna, but I know you’d break every bone in my body and dump me in the crocodile pit. Which is cool … no, I don’t mean breakin’ my bones and giving me to the crocodiles, but the other thing. Umm, okay, see you later. Bye.”

He disconnected and shoved the phone back in his pocket, suddenly realizing that Sade provided really inappropriate background music for this, and remembered the guy on the floor. “Oh shit. Dude, you okay?”

But he was laying serenely on the diving line between the linoleum and the carpet, the pool of blood surrounding him like a liquid shadow diffused by water from the sink. He stared at him closely, trying to figure out if he was dead or not, but it did look like he was breathing. Not rapidly or terribly well, but hey, he was still alive. Sometimes you had to accept small victories as the only ones you could reach.

Even though the curtains were drawn, Shan could see flashes of red and blue lights outside in the parking lot, and he was relieved that there were professionals here that he could hand this off to, as he really wasn’t made for dealing with bombs and shootings. Again, Z’s territory, not his, and she could have it.

Since no one was up here yet, and the guy in question was passed out, he decided to have a look around. Well, from his vantage point, as he’d track water and blood on the carpet and be obvious about it if he started walking around. It looked like there was a small fight, maybe before he got home, or the place was - as Z would put it - “tossed”, as if someone was looking for valuables. So, robbery? That might explain the shooting, but it sure as shit wouldn’t explain an attempted bombing. What kind of “home invasion” ended with explosives?

The door opened, and a wary, wiry looking Asian cop peered in, hand on the butt of his gun (but it wasn’t drawn, which was kind of him). “You the one who called it in?”

“Yep. Sorry, didn’t introduce myself, I thought I was going to get blown up. I’m Shane Shanahan, 12-A.”

The cop nodded like he wasn’t really interested, and glanced around the room. “Where’s the bomb?”

“In the sink. The countdown’s stopped for nudge, but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing.”

The cop flashed him a brief, puzzled look before motioning him towards the door. “C’mon sir, I need you to come with me now.”

“Am I being arrested?”

The cop gave him an ‘Are you a complete idiot’ look, which Shan felt he got more often than he actually deserved. “No, but you do need to clear the scene for the bomb squad and the EMT’s.”

“Oh, yeah.” He went to the door, and the cop quickly grabbed his arm and hustled him out of there, as if he was afraid the bomb would go off. They had to stand aside as a couple of heavily body armored guys went by (must have been the bomb squad, as the cop - whose little nametag read “D. Sakai” - told them gruffly, “Kitchen sink,”) followed by a man and a woman who must have been the EMTs.

At the top of the stairs, he saw a couple of cops clustered around someone near the base. “Did you say on the phone there were two assailants?”

“Yes.”

“We only found this guy here, holding his nuts and weeping,” Sakai said, gesturing towards the clot of police.

“Ah, yeah, he’s one of ‘em. The guy who face-planted is gone?” He looked over the stair railing, but all he saw down on the concrete where he had landed was a smear of blood, and a few droplets.

“The guy who what?”

“He was there last time I saw him,” Shan offered, pointing out the blood to the cop.

Sakai grunted, which was probably an affirmative, and asked, “So what happened here, Mr. Shanahan?”

He thought about telling him his fucked up luck just caught up with him, but somehow he bet that wouldn’t hold up in court.

Next >

TROUBLESHOOTER:
Countdown to Zero
by Andrea Speed
One - Bring on the Flying Monkeys

He should have known something was wrong the instant he realized his neighbor was blasting Elton John.

No one blasted Elton John. Maybe in the ‘70’s, but not nowadays. It was like blasting elevator music, or the “soft rock” they played in the dentist’s office - not only was it not done, it was just fundamentally wrong.

Still, Shan basically ignored it as he let himself in his apartment and threw his gear on the couch. He flipped on the light and kicked the door shut as he took his small bag of groceries into his “kitchenette”, which actually seemed to share an awful lot of space with his living room. Not that it mattered; the place was small - cozy, in real estate parlance - but it suited his needs, as his entertaining was limited to the occasional guest who rarely stayed more than a night. And it had been a while since he’d had anyone over who wasn’t Z or a fellow bouncer, and they just didn’t count.

He put away his chips and salsa, and cracked open a Red Bull, trying to figure out what apartment it was, and who it belonged to. He really didn’t know too many people here. He had only moved in a little over two months ago, and he’d been really busy, what with the club, occasionally doing stuff with Z, and working at the rink. Z liked to tease him about that, but he did enjoy it. At first, just the idea of being able to skate again appealed to him - he was skating at about the same time he was walking - but he found he actually kind of enjoyed teaching the kids some rudimentary hockey basics. And, rather bizarrely, they seemed to think he was cool. Maybe because he not only showed them his brain surgery scar, but he let them touch it. Kids loved that gross stuff. On the bright side, he never had to remind them to wear their helmets.

He only had about forty minutes to get ready for bouncing, or as he liked to call it ‘the night job’. It was only a few blocks over, so there was no hassle in getting there, and it was pretty cool really. Chaos was considered trendy, so he wasn’t so much as rousting combative drunks at closing time as warning obnoxious Yuppies to turn and walk away before he tossed them into the Dumpster. It wasn’t gay night (the club had gay only nights - that seemed to be a huge hit), so he didn’t even have to dress that well, meaning he had some time to kill.

He retrieved his duffle bag full of stripped down hockey gear from the couch and tossed it in his closet, then got his pills and gulped them down with his Red Bull.

He knew he should eat something, but during the first fifty minutes or so, his anti-seizure medication made him feel nauseous. The funny thing was he knew these meds didn’t help his petit mals much at all, but it was better than nothing - barely. He had tried going without them for a little while, but his gaps of missing time got worse and worse, and there was nothing more disconcerting than to look at the clock and realize that, while you thought you’d been sitting there for ten minutes, an hour had actually gone by. It was like reality randomly spit him out, then felt sorry for him and pulled him back in. He hated it, but there was almost nothing they could do about it. Unless his mind spontaneously healed on its own, he’d be forever slipping in and out of time, wondering how much of life had passed him by while his brain kept him in the dark.

The Red Bull was making his heart race at ninety miles a minute, which on the one hand wasn’t good, but on the other hand he was very much awake and no longer tired. Sometimes he felt a little run down after teaching the kids and spending a couple hours skating, but Red Bull - as bad as it tasted - always got him raring to go for the job. It reminded him of that parody ad on Dave Chapelle’s show about “Red Balls”, liquid cocaine in a can. Frankly, if it existed, there were times when he might buy it.

He went and took a piss, and after checking in the bathroom mirror to make sure he didn’t actually look hopped up on goofballs, he started sniffing shirts in his closet, trying to find one that was clean enough to wear tonight (could he help that he still hated doing laundry, no matter how convenient and updated the apartment’s laundry room was? ) when there was a sudden “pop” upstairs.

Or maybe it was a crash. But nothing hit the floor - or at least, not when the pop happened - and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” had almost totally buried it. But it raised the hair on the back of his neck, reminded him of something he had heard before …

A car backfire? Kind of, but sharper, louder. Kind of like that time …

… like that time Z shot that guy.

He now knew what writers meant when they said someone’s bowels turned to ice. He looked up at the ceiling, half expecting to see a big red stain starting to form, oozing across the stucco like spilled paint.

No, it couldn’t have been a gunshot. They dropped something heavy on a counter or something, or cooked a potato in the microwave. It wasn’t a gunshot - how could it be? This was Canada, and they weren’t like America, where every frat boy and his ex-girlfriend had a gun and weren’t afraid to use it. Still, they were close to the border …

He kept listening for something, but all he heard was some footsteps, and Elton John had segued into one of Sting’s mellower pieces, suggesting the stereo was on a soft rock channel. Which was wrong, of course; it was all wrong.

If he didn’t check it out, it would bug him, so he decided to go see what the hell was going on.

He supposed he should be worried - after all, if someone had been shot, he was going up to face them with nothing but curiosity - but that was one of the things he supposed came with his brain injury. Even when he knew he was doing something stupid, it didn’t stop him.

He reached for his back pocket, checking for his cell phone, as he reached the bottom of the wrought iron stairs that led up to the second floor, and heard the thud of hasty footsteps, ringing musically through the metal. He told himself it was pure coincidence, that anyone could be running, but he didn’t quite believe it. He was half way up by the time the two men reached the top of the stairs and started pounding down towards him.

It was Canada, and a little cold, so he couldn’t be completely judgmental, but it was hard to trust two men wearing black ski masks. “Hey guys,” he began, trying to be friendly. “Did you hear -”

They both barreled towards him, heedless, and the one on the right pulled back his arm to punch him.

What a mistake. The pills hadn’t slowed him down yet, he was full of caffeine, and he’d just come from teaching hockey. He was not the man to start something with.

He shoulder checked the guy trying to run into him, sending him crashing into the railing - which he promptly fell half way over, grabbing on desperately to keep from going head first down to the cement. The guy on the right threw his punch, but Shan caught his fist, and rammed his knee into his exposed gut … or at least he intended to. But the guy was on a higher stair, and he ended up jamming his knee right in his balls.

The guy probably tried to scream, but it came out a painful, high pitched squeak. He sagged against the railing like his legs had given up on him, and Shan actually felt bad for him. A gut shot was one thing, but a ball shot was another. “Oh, sorry about that,” he said, grimacing in sympathy.

The second guy managed to pull himself back from the railing, and snapped, “Stupid fucker!” He jammed a hand into his coat pocket.

You didn’t need to be a bouncer, or Z’s back-up, to know that someone going for something in his pocket was never a good thing. He gave him a quick, hard rabbit punch to the stomach (he aimed correctly this time), doubling him over, then connected with an upper cut to the underside of his jaw. He slammed back against the railing, almost losing his balance again, but this time Shan helped him. He shoved his chin up, bending him back, and then grabbed his leg and helped gravity haul him over the side. It wasn’t a long fall, but the guy didn’t have time to break his fall with his hands; it looked very much like he broke his fall with his face. That had to hurt.

“You call me the stupid fuck, and you attack a big Irish guy?” He replied, wondering how they could be such morons. He glanced at the second guy, who was on his knees on the metal stairs, holding his balls and making small retching sounds. He was no longer a threat, as you had to stand to be considered one, and he really did feel bad. His intention had been to knee him so hard in the gut that he’d barf up everything he’d eaten since he was born - how would that feel getting it in the nuts? Ooh, he didn’t even want to imagine.

He took the stairs two at a time and turned left at the top, the direction from which those two assholes had come from, and heard the music quite clearly. It seemed to be coming from the third door down, which was shut tightly. He didn’t know why, but he thought it would be ajar.

He rapped on the door, and asked, “Hello?” He wasn’t sure he could be heard over Sting, so after a long moment, he tried the doorknob. The door was unlocked, which was no shock, and he peered in cautiously. “Hello?”

There was a man on the floor between the floor of his “kitchenette” and the threadbare carpet of his living room. It looked like he had spilled some syrup, maybe some tomato sauce, but … oh shit, yeah, it wasn’t anything that nice.

“Holy shit,” he exclaimed, going to the man and pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. The guy was dressed in ratty jeans and a sweat stained white tank top quickly turning a dark and terrible red. He was average in almost every visible aspect, except he was a generous late twenties, his hard life reflected in every premature line on his craggy face. His eyes were so pale that they were more gray than anything else, but so bloodshot they very nearly resembled grapes. He was opening and closing his mouth soundlessly, like a fish out of water, and he seemed to be trying to point something, but his arm wasn’t quite working right. It had an odd flaccidity, suggesting only the upper part worked.

“What?” Shan asked, trying to follow both the gesture and his pained, insistent gaze. He looked around the room, trying to figure out what was out of place. As far as he could tell, it was just an apartment like any other; a little messy maybe, but didn’t you expect that of a bachelor? Finally he followed his eyes to the kitchen counter, where there was a really weird coffee machine or alarm clock on the small slice of counter between the oven and the sink. What the hell was it?

It looked like two short, wide canisters attached to a small red digital clock face by a messy tangle of wires, but the clocks digits were all wrong. There was no :47 o’clock. Or :46, or :45 …

No fucking way. A bomb?! Somebody left a bomb?!

He knew he should have stopped at Tim Horton’s and gotten a coffee instead of coming home first. That would teach him to … well, it would teach him something.

If he lived through the next forty seconds.