There were times when you just knew a run was going to be a shocker in every way possible. When you wish that you could tell your Engineer to slow down – to not be the first Station on the scene. To have some other mug have to run the fire ground.

But you don't. You race through the city streets and you start planning for what is needed. Giving your crew instructions even as you go, so that when you get there, everybody can just swing into action.

And hope that your gut was wrong, and it was all straightforward. Or even that the call is cancelled. Or something simple like a rubbish fire.

Rarely does that happen though. And the only variable ended up being how much of a shocker – lives lost, injuries, or just complete cockups on every side that added to the whole mess.

Captain Hank Stanley knew that this wasn't going to be cancelled or downgraded. They could see the plume of smoke, could even see a faint reflection of flames in it as it rose in seeming sluggish, oily blobs, starting to cover the skyline immediately around the scene.

The entire crew knew it would be one of the old buildings, the timber frame old and brittle – a deathtrap to unwary firefighters. There was a settling of shoulders that said that they all knew that this would be one where they would probably be called to drag one of their own out of the maw of their enemy.

The voice of the Battalion Chief came over the radio, reading from the Premises Report that every commercial and multi-tenanted building in the district had. Old warehouse, covering several levels, now turned into apartments. More and more of those conversions were happening. If they were lucky, it had been done by one of the more careful property developers. Who took the time to make sure that the conversion met the fire code. Who had taken the time to get rid of old hazards, installed a fire sprinkler system.

Hank glared at the oily smoke, feeling personally offended by its existence and the cause of a lot of very hard work and danger for a lot of Firemen.

It was a shitty day.