ToOH: Usually undercover investigation takes a long time, although Reine's injury do add to the length of her undercover period! Well, the Medical Crime Unit is a new unit and Reine hasn't been exactly showing up in the FBI office. Even if the other agent notices her, they have to act as if they are strangers so not to compromise the investigation. And, yes, I have plans to pair Leighton Croft up!
teamBLAZE: the right case gets to the right person (Reine's tough girl reputation is not just a name, apparently :P)
by the way, PSBT is the acronym for Public Safety Bomb Technician.
"Are you alright, Neil?" Reine asked worriedly.
Earlier, Neil had pushed her just in time to avoid the blast and shielded her. He moved his body slightly, "Yeah, I'm fine. Your leg?"
"It's fine." She told him.
Neil stood up and offered his hand to her, which she accepted. "Thank you," she said.
That was when Reine felt her phone vibrating, and when she saw the name displayed on her screen, she broke away from Neil before picking up the phone.
"Are you at the paediatrics floor?" Helena asked.
"Yeah, the blast delivered me in."
"Apparently, SPD had received a bomb threat on all hospitals with specialised paediatrics ward, which includes Oakbrook. And similar bombings had occurred in Vegas three months ago, so we presume that these are the same guys."
"Okay, so?"
"There are two undercover PSBTs in Oakbrook."
"And how do I know who are they?"
"I'll connect you to the team now."
Soon, another voice came into her ear, "Special Agent Kreiss?"
"Yes."
"There are multiple bombs on the floor. Individually, the damage is not catastrophic, but they can create a chain of explosion—enough to blast the whole hospital, contained in one floor since that floor is currently sealed off by the previous explosions. We will need your help to dispose them."
For a moment, Reine thought it was a joke—a horrible joke—but the tone of the man on the other side of the line assured her that it wasn't, and that now she had to switch to her FBI persona.
"Okay." She said.
Attaching her phone into headset, Reine followed the instruction of the man, who asked her to scan one third of the floor (apparently the two undercover members of the PSBT would cover the other two-third). Reine managed to find four bombs in slightly varying size—the biggest was the size of shoebox.
Reine that the timer was only set at the biggest one—she deduced that once the biggest one blew off, it would set a chain effect to the smaller ones.
"I should put out the one with the timer first, right?" Reine asked.
"No. The smaller bombs are very sensitive to touch and temperature. They are more volatile."
"O… okay."
Reine carefully moved all the bombs to one of the more isolated corner of the floor—using towel to cover the smaller bombs to nullify the touch and heat sensor—and she grabbed a toolbox from the nurse station. Miraculously she could find a box of surgical tools stored there, so she decided to bring that box as well (better safe than sorry, she thought).
Reine sat down in front of the four bombs. "Okay, I'm ready." She said.
"Okay, we'll start with the smaller bomb." The man said, "Unscrew the cover carefully."
Reine took a screwdriver and began to unfasten the screw at one of the corners of the rectangular-shaped black box. Her hand was visibly trembling, and her heart was practically racing.
There are at least sixty-eight children on this floor. Sixty-eight futures. She thought, Oh, shit.
It was then Reine felt a gentle touch on her shoulder and she turned sharply.
"Let me do that." Neil said calmly.
"N-no way!"
"I have steady hands," he said, "and racing against the time is in the description of my job."
Well, that's true… Reine admitted inwardly.
"Dr Kreiss, this is not the time to ponder."
Neil took the screwdriver from Reine and pulled her up and away from the bomb. "I presume you're talking to someone who can guide me through this?"
"Y-Yes."
Reine gave her phone to Neil, "I'll take over from her." He told the man calmly.
Reine was baffled. How could he keep his calm in times like this? Was it just his nature?
He didn't seem to be bothered at all, being surrounded by bombs.
Did he know something called 'fear', or at least, 'nervousness'?
Reine watched Neil as he calmly and adroitly dissemble the bomb—one might think he was an undercover PSBT himself if they didn't know him better.
"…who are you?" Reine found herself asking—loud enough for the other party to hear.
"The same goes to you, Dr Kreiss." Neil replied coldly while continuing his work, "Who are you?"
Reine took a step back. Obviously she couldn't tell him who she was. He, after all, was one of her suspect, still, being in the Surgery Department and all.
"But is it the time for such questions?" Neil asked again, "Time has never been in our favour, don't you think?"
"I…"
"I can do this," Neil assured her, "and there's something that you can do way better than I can."
It was only then Reine heard the faint sobbing behind them. Reine turned around and a girl holding her teddy bear was weeping. "Dr Gee…? Is that you…?"
Reine turned again at Neil, who was still dissembling the bomb with both precision and speed—his strengths as a surgeon being very handy in it. Reine took a deep breath and took off her ID card, shoving it into her pocket. Reine then turned around at the girl and smiled at her. "Why don't we go somewhere else, sweetheart?"
Reine soon found herself with the children who were gathered together in one of the activity rooms that was deemed as one of the safer place for the children in case anything went wrong (read: the bomb exploded). Of course they soon learned that she wasn't Dr Gee, but it didn't take them long to accept her. Now, they were trying, in their own ways, to pronounce Reine's name:
"Ruhnay?" one child said.
"Ruuuuhnei?"
"Rahnay?"
Her names sounded funny, bordering to weird, on their tongues. But she wasn't annoyed at all—at least that could distract them.
As for her, her mind couldn't go too far away from the man who had taken her place.
Allen watched as the PSBT member tried to dissemble the bomb a few metres away from him. He was asked to leave, but he had refused.
"I had someone to be accompanied," he told the PSBT member. "She is a scaredy cat in the dark."
"I'm fine, Rosencrantz!" Gwen said behind the door.
"Yeah, right, I bet you're shaking now."
She didn't want to admit it, but he was right—her hands were visibly trembling as the only light source in the small space she was in came from the small glass window on the emergency door. She had always, always hated the dark ever since she could remember.
"It's okay, Gwen," Allen assured her, "What kind of a man who leave a girl when she needs him the most?"
"What a self-aggrandizing jerk…" she muttered, although inwardly, she couldn't deny her gratefulness.
Will the looming threat forces honesty out of these four people?
Stay tuned to find out!
Thanks for reading! Please rate and review! ^^
A/N: this time, Reine's name is indeed pronounced as RUH-nay, like how "Renai" in "Renaissance" is pronounced since it's a nickname from Renaissance after all. So, in all three stories featuring her, her name is pronounced differently. ^^