First I want to say THANK YOU! to ragingscooter and talentedgemx for going above and beyond and helping me with this even though they are each facing their own difficult situations!

And once again THANK YOU for sticking with this story, and for all of your comments, PMs, tweets, and reviews!

Pt 1

Darkness so thick it didn't matter if my eyes were open or shut along with the smoke and dust made it hard to breathe. I was alone. That I could sit up and move did nothing to quell the rising panic in chest. Sure, I still had my gun. A whole lot of good it would do me here. With my luck, I would probably end up shooting myself with it if I weren't careful. My phone was dead, my radio gone, the flashlight I had been holding had fallen from my grip when the floor gave way and had gone out. And God only knows what happened to Chris.

Great.

It all began when Chris and Dov got a call for an alarm going off in Warehouse Seventeen-eighty-two near the docks. They had just finished booking a drunk and disorderly punk who had puked all over the back seat of their black and white. It was forty-five minutes before the shift was supposed to end. I watched Dov's face fall like the world was going to end instead.

"Gail?" He said looking at me imploringly.

"What." I didn't look up from my computer.

"I'm supposed to take Chloe out to Bero tonight…" He continued, there was a note of pleading in his voice.

"So?" I knew what he wanted, but I thought I would make him suffer just a little.

"And, well, you know, it took me almost two months to get an eight-thirty reservation, so…" As I looked up raising an eyebrow at him, I could see the earnest look on his face.

"I take it you're asking if I can take this call for you?" I said noncommittally

"Come on Gail. Please?" He begged.

I sighed and looked at my watch. I could feel the pent up energy coming off of him in waves as I made him wait.

Three…

Four…

Five…

Wait for it…

He began to fidget.

"Sure. Why not." I said looking coolly back up at him.

"Really? You'll do it?" His eyebrows shooting up almost into his hairline as a smile spread across his face.

"Sure," I said with a small frown, "What could be better? I'll be doing my job while earning points with the special international task force, and have you forever in my debt." I snapped my fingers and smiled coldly at him.

"Thanks Gail!" He gushed as he turned to go.

"You get to clean the puke out of the back of the cruiser though!" I called after him.

Dov was still in the carpool, sleeves rolled up, bucket in hand, when Chris and I came out to get rolling.

"You have got to be kidding me!" I glared at him.

Just then Andy and Sam pulled into the lot.

"Hey Peck, what seems to be the problem?" Sam called to me seeing the look of disgust on my face.

"There's still puke in the back of our cruiser." I complained

"You're not planning on sitting back there, are you?" He answered with a grin. Andy ducked her head trying unsuccessfully to hide the fact that she was laughing.

"Nice." I scowled at them.

"Look, why don't you guys take this one, we just gassed her up." He tossed me the keys. "Don't worry, Peck, I'll even deal with signing her out to you."

"Thanks!" I replied, as I picked the keys from the air.

Warehouse Seventeen-eighty-two sat in the center of an empty lot with an expanse of field grass on either side. The building was dark and quite, almost too quiet. We had just cruised around the back when I noticed a gap where the fence had been cut to create a space for someone to enter. I parked the car and led the way.

"I dunno Gail. I don't like this." Chris had complained as he followed me through the hole in the fence.

Truth be told, I didn't like it either. Fear was making my skin prickle and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. But I wasn't going to let him know that!

"Don't be such a wuss!" I shot back over my shoulder as I climbed the concrete stairs to find the steel door ajar.

"Great. Now we're going to have to clear the building." I heard him grumble heavily behind me. "Just the way I wanted to spend my Thursday night! Don't you and Holly have something better to do tonight too?"

"Fifteen-twenty-two on location at the South West entrance of Warehouse Seventeen-eighty-two on Webster." I called it in, ignoring him.

"Fifteen-twenty-two, Roger that." The response came back.

We walked into a vast open room, filled with crates and boxes and the occasional piece of heavy machinery.

"Wow!" Chris murmured, almost to himself, "This is just like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark!"

I had to laugh, because he was right.

"Ok Indy," I teased, "Let's find that alarm box, secure the building, and get outta here!"

We walked down the center aisle in silence, keeping on alert for any sign of movement among the towering piles of crates.

In the back there was a gate through the chain link wall. The padlock lay cut and open on the floor. Chris pulled out his gun, nodding at me to do the same. The light in the office was on, but as we entered it was quiet and empty. Chris quickly tapped out the police code on the alarm keypad, shutting it off. The office seemed undisturbed, but we did a quick check through the rooms anyway.

Walking back out into the cavernous hall there came a noise from above, a bang of something falling that echoed off the walls and hard surfaces of the open space. I pulled my gun out again and nodded to Chris.

"Ok, let's do this!" I whispered heading for the stairway up.

As we reached the fourth and final floor, the glint of a flashlight shone from what must be a control room in the back. We approached with caution, weapons drawn and blood pounding in my ears. A figure of about Chris's size in jeans and a black hoodie turned in our direction.

"Police! Put your hands in the air where we can see them!" Chris yelled, pointing his weapon.

The figure turned quickly, and fired three wild rounds in our direction before turning to run for the freight elevators.

"Fan-fucking-tastic!" I mumbled to myself as we sprinted for the stairs.

Two floors down, we gave chase through a maze of cube-farm offices, barely finished drywall halls, and finally out the door into a parking garage. Headlights from a pickup truck momentarily blinded us as the guy we were chasing made a leap for the bed of the truck. Chris stood his ground, firing his weapon into the windshield of the oncoming vehicle. The truck skidded to a halt, two men jumped from the cab, the third from the bed, and ran for the door back into the warehouse.

"Why do they always have to run!" I moaned as I chased after them.

As we burst through the doors, something the size and shape of a baseball came flying in our direction. Chris grabbed me by the vest, practically throwing me into a little room under the stairs, and slammed the door shut as the grenade exploded. The ground beneath our feet shook and shifted; there was a whiff of natural gas and a second later, a larger explosion rocked the building. The floor buckled, Chris was clutching at my arm as we fell into darkness. I landed hard, hitting my head on something sharp, and knew no more.

I awoke in the hot darkness with a start, to the smell of smoke and burning rubber, an aching head, and a dull pain in my arm. Even in the pitch black of wherever I was, I slowly began to take stock of the situation. As I tried to sit up, a sharp pain shot through my arm where the ache had been.

"Motherfucker!" I swore

"Gail? Are you alright?" Chris's voice came from somewhere to my left. His flashlight clicked on, shining a bright beam of light through the hazy air.

"What happened?" I asked, confused.

My head throbbed, the room swam and I fought down the urge to puke. I felt something trickle down my scalp and reached up to touch the hot, tender, bleeding bump that was forming there. It was then I noticed my cap was gone. Looking down in the dim light of his torch, I could see my bicep wrapped in one of his white, old man handkerchiefs, the dark red stain of my blood growing larger there too. Lovely. Another uniform shirt ruined, and Holly was going to kill me for getting injured on the job again! I just hoped it wasn't too bad. Water was dripping from somewhere, and the building above us moaned and creaked.

"Good. You're awake!" he exclaimed, "Look, we have to get out of here!" He continued, as he handed me my torch.

"And just how do you expect to do that? Warp the space-time continuum to teleport us out of here, Dr. Who?" I asked as I shone my light around.

We were in what looked like a small maintenance room beneath the stairway. It was probably about twice as large as the room above it where we started out had been. It was hard to say, because maybe half the room had collapsed into a pile of twisted re-bar and cement slabs, and nothing but rubble remained where the exit had been.

"Well, you're not going to like this…" Chris began tentatively.

"Go on…" I scowled at him

"Look, while you were out of it, I found the entrance to a maintenance tunnel that should take us out to the street." He continued with a wince.

"Maintenance tunnel? You mean sewer, don't you." I said scowling harder.

"Uh maybe?" he shrugged. "But it's how the telecommunications fiber optics and electrical main wiring enter the building." He was looking at a set of blueprints that were taped to the inside of a large metal cabinet.

"Ok. Whatever." I glared at him. My head hurt. My arm was beginning to throb.

"Come on Gail, let's go!" He moved the manhole cover aside.

"No. No way. No way am I crawling through some sewer!" I protested

"Gail," he said, and I could tell he was starting to lose his patience with me. "The building is on fire, the air quality is getting worse by the second. If we can get out, I am not staying here! And neither are you!"

He pulled the blueprint from the wall, folded it up and stuck it into the pocket of his pants along with a couple of screwdrivers he found in a drawer.

"Ok, ok, lead on…" I gave in.

In the light of my flashlight I watched Chris lower himself into a three-foot wide hole in the floor, climb down a ladder and crawl into an impossibly small tunnel. I tried not to think about what I was going to find when I got down there. The floor had several inches of nasty looking water that we would be forced to touch. Ew! I knew I was going to catch some horrible disease! MRSA? Black Death? Ebola? It could happen! You never know!

We crawled on hands and knees for what seemed like an eternity. Every so often, Chris stopped and wanted to know if I needed a break. I was exhausted, my head throbbed and my arm hurt, but this tunnel was disgusting! So I made him push on. No way was I going to spend an extra second of my life in this germ-infested hole! I decided I was just glad that there wasn't more light, 'cuz I will never need to know exactly what we were crawling through! After what seemed like forever, Chris stopped, flipped over onto his back, and pulled himself up into another manhole. I could hear him grunt with effort as he pushed the cover aside. Fresh, cool air rushed into the tunnel where I waited impatiently. I followed him quickly to discover we had come out somewhere behind the warehouse in a paved lot next to a field.

Our cruiser was nowhere in sight, but a battalion of fire engines were already on the scene. Chris pushed the manhole cover back into place. Red lights danced across the sky. They illuminated the thick haze of smoke and steam rising from the burning structure. Units from the Twenty-seven were on the scene as well. We walked through the chaos unnoticed, like ghosts. Finally Chris stopped to talk with a rookie from the other division that neither of us recognized.

"Oh, you're from the Fifteen?" She said blithely, "Why aren't you on traffic control detail with the rest of your division?"

Some days I hate this job.

"Oh, uh, I guess we'll go find them." Chris hedged.

"What a moron!" I hissed, as we turned and walked away.

As we finally made our way out through the open gate, I tumbled onto the grass between the street and the fence, lying back as fatigue and pain both hit me hard.

"Gail?" Chris's voice came, full of concern, "Gail, are you ok? Can you sit up and talk to me?"

"Ugh, yeah…" I groaned, "Just give me a minute Chris…"

"Hey, listen, I'm gonna go get the car, and then I'm gonna take you to the hospital to get your arm stitched up, and your head checked out." He said, with an overprotective fatherly look on his face.

"No, really I'm fine!" I insisted as I tried to sit up.

"If you're so fine, then maybe I should call Holly and tell her what happened. Maybe I can have her take you to the ER." He continued.

I did sit up at this. My head throbbed, but not enough to stop me from narrowing my eyes threateningly at him. "You wouldn't dare!" I growled.

"You know she's going to kill us both if I let anything bad happen to you." He looked genuinely concerned.

"We don't need to tell her about this… now, do we?" I flashed a fake smile at him and opened my eyes wide, and innocent.

"Yeah, like that's gonna work." He muttered and started to walk in the direction of where I parked the black and white.

As he turned to go a giant explosion rocked the warehouse. Fire and glass and flying bits of metal and junk shot from all of the windows, and the whole ground shook. I was grateful we weren't any closer.

"SHIT!" I yelled, flattened myself to the ground and covered my head with my arms.

I saw Chris duck and freeze and then start to run at top speed in the direction of our cruiser. He was back within minutes. Our car had a giant dent in the boot and the back window was smashed out. I didn't ask questions, I just got in. As we tried to approach the scene, we were stopped by a firefighter warning us of the danger, and requesting we call for an ambulance for a police officer from the Twenty-seven who had been injured in the blast.

"Fifteen-twenty-two reporting a ten-eighty (explosion) at Warehouse Seventeen-eighty-two please assist! Officer down! Ambulance requested." Chris called it in. We could see one of the Twenty-seven's cruisers had flipped over and was on fire.

"Fifteen twenty-two, ten-seventy-four (status/description of the fire), copy." Came the reply.

"Structure fully engaged, TFD requesting all HAZMAT units." Chris responded.

"Fifteen twenty-two, Ten-Four, Please stand by."

"Negative." Chris replied, "Code 602 (officer injured), ten-forty-four, nine oh two H (request to transport/leave, in route to hospital)."

"Copy that. Affirmative." Dispatch answered back. "Fifteen-twenty-two out of service."

The stars were already beginning to fade and the first red fingers of dawn touched the Eastern horizon.

"Cool. We're outta here!" I sighed.