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Janeway tapped the EMH on the shoulder and he backed off to give her room. "Roy?" she said, crouching
at his side. "Do you remember how you got injured? It's very important that we find this out together."
Oblivious, Barclay sat on the front bumper, continuing his guarded scans of the bubble's boundaries.
"Wait just a g*d d*mn*d minute here." Roy snapped. "I keep hearing from you people that I'm not
real. Just what the h*ll is that supposed to mean? I feel like I'm still me!"
"You are. In
2010." Boothby told him flat out. "Which is what time it is in here."
Roy's whole demeanor changed
into one of shock. "No." he said in adamant refusal. "It's 1976. I.. I know it is. I still have red
white and blue paint under my fingernails from the kids and I painting the sandbox in bicentennial
colors. See?" he said, holding up aged, shaking hands. The bright little flakes were there, cracked
and broken.
Janeway gently took Roy's palms into her own. "I believe you. Outside, it still is
your 1976."
Roy was only partially placated. "I was working a shift with the guys. We were
working a house fire. A bad one. Johnny and I were sent in to rescue a victim."
"You were? What
happened?" Kathryn encouraged.
Roy thought back. "I..." he broke off, shocked. "I felt a jolt.
It burned me. Right through my jacket."
"Electricity?" Janeway asked.
"I ...I don't
know. I... everything just went black and then when I woke up I found myself here." DeSoto explained.
"Where's here?" he asked.
"The Los Angeles County Fire Museum." Janeway said ironically.
"That
old place?! But this is the squad. And that's the engine!" DeSoto insisted.
"Yes." Tuvok said.
The Vulcan tried to explain again."We are all in your future."
Roy's mouth framed a circle oh
of stunning thought. "Am I dead?"
Janeway suddenly had an idea. "Tuvok. The defibrillator. If
that was used on Roy two weeks ago, when Chakotay and Tom's shuttle entered the Halley's wormhole,
could that have created this time bubble and the echo version of time that brought all of us here,
to be trapped?"
"It is possible." the Vulcan replied evenly. "It is also possible that others
wounded by electricity near the defibrillator machine, have also splintered off into the future."
Kathryn turned to DeSoto in horror. "Roy, have any others on your crew been injured by electricity?
Ever?" she asked softly.
"Yes, uh.. Marco at a gas station. Cap at a car wreck. I had to scope
him to check for a decent rhythm using the paddles." Roy thought back, shaking his head in partial
incomprehension.
"But did they black out like you did?" Janeway insisted.
"No. They didn't.
They were both conscious and Johnny and I treated them." he told her. "They were fine afterwards in
a couple of days."
Boothby glanced up significantly. "Maybe sudden death's the only trigger."
"What?" Janeway startled.
"Cardiac arrest." the EMH followed easily. "That would explain the
injuries I found in Mr. DeSoto's heart. He also had some bruises consistent with CPR."
Roy
felt his chest. "I died?"
"No, both of you lived." Boothby answered. "But you were splintered
off from your younger self when you were shocked back to life the same time our accident happened.
Voyager was destroyed. Then you were sent to 2010 by the wormhole when the Borg was destroyed inside
of it as a secondary effect."
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DeSoto rose swiftly and ran to the side of the squad. He opened the doors of the gear compartments
one by one until he had searched them all. "It's not here." he said, whirling back to the away team.
"The datascope. It didn't follow me forward."
The EMH got mad. "Even if it had been here, I'm
not about to go killing anyone still alive with a defibrillation."
The old Roy wrinkled his
freckle withered lips. "Then how else am I going to get back home? I can't keep going on living like
this. I'll go mad. I'm all alone!"
Tuvok had a theory. "Captain, the augmented combadge Chakotay's
wearing. It is possible it might work in reverse. An echoed person might be able to touch another
echo. I designed it to be immune from temporal paradox."
Chakotay pulled it off and looked at
the combadge pin in his hand. It began to flash an amber light when he tapped it accidently.
"That
one's a big one, Tuvok." Boothby argued. "Never shake hands with yourself in the same time and place
or it's mutual annihilation!"
"The end of everything..." Janeway whispered in horror.
Suddenly,
Roy DeSoto unfroze from his place next to the EMH. He snatched the gold and silver combadge device
from Chakotay and dove into the squad. He slammed the door shut and then locked both of them from
the inside with two hand slaps. Then he looked away from them with determination and turned the
ignition key deliberately.
"No, don't!" Janeway shouted. "You don't know what you're doing!"
"Yes, I do." shouted Roy. Then he gunned the accelerator.
Reg Barclay was struck mid-waist. The
hologram disappeared in a shudder of sparkles as his projecting device was destroyed by Squad 51 as
it hit it.
Then the old crazy Roy DeSoto, in an equally old but fully restored Squad 51, started
speeding towards the shimmering wall of the museum and its confining time bubble boundary. Automatic
reflexes had caused the old paramedic to turn on the squad's red lights without thinking and flashes
bounced around the rest of the dark museum eerily.
The Voyager away team snatched out their
phasers and began running after him.
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************************************************** Subject: Convergence.. (Final Scene.. Fire In
The Sky... Special Episode C..) From: patti k (pattik1@hotmail.com) Sent: Wed 5/05/10 1:37 PM
Tuvok easily paced beside Chakotay, Janeway and the EMH as they ran. "Captain, I don't believe
we need to hurry. With that temporal buffer, Mr. DeSoto still has thirty four years of time to cycle
through before he reaches the other side of the time boundary. It has to pace him."
"Then let's
meet him out there, before he re-emerges. We'll phaser the tires off that squad only if we have to."
Janeway said to her crew mates, keep her phaser carefully muzzle up while she ran full tilt ahead.
"It'll take time to set up our shots and make sure we won't be seen."
"Why are we stopping
him?" the holodoc asked. "Isn't he protected now with Tuvok's device?" he shouted as he matched his
crewmate's speed.
Janeway shook her head in supreme doubt. "Not really, doctor. In his frame
of mind, do you really think Roy will remember to hang onto that once he sees that he's actually free
again?"
Chakotay just got mad. "Doctor, you know what will happen if he were to meet himself
face to face without it! The captain said it inside." he yelled, pushing his feet even harder to speed
up.
The EMH made a face as he ran even faster. "I missed that."
"You'll cease to be." Boothby
clarified again. "And so will everything and everybody in existence." he panted, running hard after
Voyager's captain. "No life. No hope. There'll be absolutely nothing, in its place." he wheezed.
Janeway, Tuvok and Chakotay leaped over a plastic chain barrier they found in their way, but the
EMH just phased right through it. "No wonder I was versed with medicine instead of quantum mechanics."
the holodoc grumbled. "It's too depressing a subject."
Up ahead, they heard a crash as DeSoto
finally hit the outer boundary. But instead of breaking, the wall bent like a soap bubble and held
the front end of Squad 51 like thick molasses. Its velocity slowed to a crawl as it oozed its way
bit by bit through the event horizon. Whereever its physicality touched the margin between years,
a burst of all colors shot out vividly and blindingly in brightness. It was followed by a blossom
of orange physical fire and black smoke which caught in the real time combustible materials nearby,
on the plaster board walls, in the ancient oil patches staining the concrete floor and the wooden
pillars holding up the roof.
"She's burning!" Janeway warned about the physical building around
them.
One by one, the away team leaped through the wavering wall of the museum's time bubble.
They no longer needed to use a door. For its maker was fleeing, and everything temporal was made
permeable to any mind wanting an out.
Just before Chakotay and the EMH jumped for the outside,
a static spark of contact tore raggedly from the polished chrome bumper of Squad 51's rear end
as it ran over a display shelf flanking a turn of the century fire pumper.
The natural electricity
did the unthinkable. Flames of orange fire at that point began transmuting into green plasma. It soon
grew terrifying, expanding rapidly everywhere along the boundary, ceiling to wall to floor, beginning
to billow inwards, on its way to entirely filling the interior space of the museum.
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"AhHH!" Chakotay screamed as he leaped through orange. He got through.
But deadly green plasma
rushed in like a fast filling sink covering a drain and neatly blocked the doctor's only escape route.
The holodoc leaped to free himself, but his program, locked inside the holoemitter, did not make
it to the outside. It bounced off the new lurid green, writhing wall of raw plasma, and landed on
the concrete floor, its casing singed and smoking a dirty black.
Janeway, Tuvok and Chakotay were
thrown to the asphalt outside the building with force as they each diverolled to expend their forward
mometum. It knocked the wind out of Chakotay. Janeway grabbed his arm. "Where's the doctor?" she coughed,
struggling to her feet. The commander shook his head, fighting for breath.
Tuvok made a graceful
recovery, his tricorder already out into his hand. He aimed it at the shimmering area surrounding
the museum. "He's still inside." Then his face grew even more dead pan than normal. "And he is offline."
"D*mn!" Janeway said, watching the lightning fast progress of orange flames as they fully engulfed
their side of the building.
"Where is he exactly?" Chakotay asked.
"The holoemitter is
lying 8.4 meters away from the nearest outer wall." Tuvok replied.
"We can't go back in to
get it from here. The fire's too big." she said, aiming her phaser at the ominous bulge beginning
to distort the side of the time boundary where Roy was driving Squad 51 back into the past towards
them.
"No we cannot. Did you see that eruption of plasma, Commander?" the Vulcan asked Chakotay.
"Yes. It's started off the squad. I think I saw a rear tire hit something." Chakotay said, flipping
over onto his stomach behind a parked car to get a bead on their target.
"What?! A chain reaction
started?" Janeway panicked, her eyes going wide. She almost dropped her phaser.
"There is
no cause for alarm. That time bubble boundary will act as a net. It will cause the plasma fire to
burn inwards onto itself until it extinguishes." Boothby said. "Just the opposite of what one can
do out here."
"We still can't let DeSoto get out. Not while he has a two ton truck under his
control! It's too chancy!" Janeway said, keeping aim with her phaser. "Fire full spectrum on my order.
Now!"
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Tuvok, Chakotay and Janeway all shot beams of pure energy at the kaleidoscoping distortion fast taking
the shape of Squad 51 as it continued straining through the time membrane.
"Keep on it! Concentrate!"
Janeway screamed over the din.
"I think it's working!" Chakotay shouted back as the protrusion
started receding.
Then they heard the sounds; fire sirens, many of them, growing louder, in
the distance.
"Oh, no no no. Not now.. Break off! Break off!" Kathryn yelled in counter. "Get
yourselves across the street. Hide your phasers. Act like witnesses!" she said to the others.
Chakotay met her by the opposite curb just as she pulled out a tricorder to monitor DeSoto's progress
through the time bubble. "Captain." he said. "Let Tuvok and I go back. We can rescue the doctor's
holoemitter."
"No." Kathryn spat out instantly, angry at the suggestion.
Chakotay ignored
her sharp retort. "What chances do you think we'll have in the Delta Quadrant, trying to travel
home, without a doctor?" he asked, just as swift.
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Tuvok was remorseless. "The odds would be against us. Overwhelmingly so. Early deaths would come
most definitely from lack of adequate medical preventions and treatments. It would not be long before
Voyager's crew complement would be too few to fly her."
Janeway pursed her lips, and threw
her head to the side, not wanting to listen. "What makes you think you can still get inside? That
green plasma fire might be waiting for you underneath the real fire!"
"Think of the others
we left behind. You're their captain!" he snapped.
Remembered nightmares reared up ugly inside
of Kathryn's head, unbidden. "Okay. Fine." she blinked, stiff and rigid. She held out a finger. "You
better make it back out here. Alive." she hissed at both of them, in a scathing furious voice.
Chakotay grabbed her arm in a firm squeeze of promise and grinned back, and it was just as sharp
as Janeway's glass edged grimace.
Then he and Tuvok were gone into the bank of fast growing smoke.
Beside her, Boothby's eyes became strangely malleable. They reflected Kathryn perfectly in their
blue depths. They seemed to urge Kathryn to say something else.
"Aren't they in enough danger
already, Boothby?" she said to him.
"Perhaps a little too much." the caretaker whispered into
her ear. "Think outside the bubble, Kathryn. There's more that you can do. Isn't there?" he challenged.
"I know you're good at this."
She started to shake her head, but was unable to look away. Then
the unbidden icy idea came to call. ::...no...:: said a little voice inside of her. ::But you
have to. You've got no choice!:: a second one reasoned. Oddly, the second mental voice sounded a
lot like her sister, Phoebe. Feeling nauseated, Captain Janeway slapped her combadge, weakly. "Janeway
to Escape Pod One."
##Working.## replied the monitoring computer.
"Rendevous to my coordinates.
Full stealth mode: Atmospheric. Make sure you're not detected. Not by any thing. Nor anyone!"
##Assignment?## the module asked her.
".....Emergency temporal plasma fire containment." the words
tumbled out, sour and rank. "N-No countermand."
##Orders accepted and locked. E.T.A. Fifty
six seconds. Sublight.##
"Acknowledged." Janeway trembled, growing very pale.
"Atta girl..."
Boothby encouraged. "Now you're cookin.." he grinned, holding her arms in a comforting, sideways hug,
overexaggerating by far, the role of a human disaster witness.
The look Janeway gave the caretaker,
was of the purest rage. She tapped her combadge. "Janeway to Chakotay and Tuvok. I'm buying you
more time. Watch for the pod! She'll soon be inside with you!" she warned.
Then she started
crying full force with sudden sorrow and loss. Tears flooded out unbidden, hot and jagged.
Boothby
simply held her in a deep hug and started stroking her hair softly. "Shhh, I'm proud of you, Little
Bird. It's all right. It's okay. You had to do it."
She had just signed all their death warrants.
Yes. They'd probably regain the EMH's portable housing. But there'd be no returning back to orbit
to return themselves home through Halley's wormhole anytime soon. The escape pod's final orders
were to use its deflector shields to snuff out the plasma fire, at the cost of itself.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------- Engine 51 was already in
full deployment mode when Squad 51 pulled up at the curb next to the park.
Tom Paris immediately
abandoned Roy DeSoto and Johnny Gage as they geared up into jackets and bottles when he spied Janeway
standing on the street nearby with Boothby.
He tried to act nonchalant around all of the
rushing firefighters surrounding and flowing around them as they hustled to move coiled hose
and equipment to where they most needed to go. "Captain.. wh--?"
"I chose the doctor over the
pod, Mr. Paris." Janeway said quietly, her eyes already starting to dry. "They went in to get him."
Tom's mouth flopped open and he set his hands on his hips in denial and just stood there, frozen.
A full minute later, he managed to choke something out. "You mean we're gonna be stuck here? Forever?"
he asked, holding loose fingers over his lips, in shock.
Janeway looked at the ground, seeing
ants there. She nodded without saying anything, then she moved her foot to keep from harming them.
"And Voyager and our whole crew are going to stay dead." she said evenly, blank eyed. Then her face broke
up into sudden silent grief, dripping new tears.
Paris took in several deep unsuccessful breaths.
And then he said something, a little bit later. "You know what? I think I can eventually... be...
okay with that. Yeah." he said in a small voice.
"How can you even think that?" Kathryn asked,
folding her arms over her chest self consciously as she wiped her eyes and nose dry with a few
knuckles.
"They have vintage cars here." he shrugged, in a lame attempt to protect her feelings.
"B'Elanna would have liked to have seen me tool around in them." And then he smiled.
In spite
of herself, Janeway cracked a tiny, tear glittering grin.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Near them, a furry head poked up from the back of the hose bed on Engine 51. It was Boot. He had
hitched a ride. Whining, he caught wind of something and jumped down fast.
He began to race
towards the burning museum.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Janeway felt the pod's vibration, even though she couldn't see it through the plume of smoke rising
above the burning fire museum. ::It's here. Now that plasma fire will never get out.:: she thought.
::That subliminal buzz is its deflector shields holding in all the energy.:: "We're safe." she told
Tom. "The pod got through."
Paris sighed with relief. "Good. I didn't want this town to BBQ. I'm
beginning to really like it here."
Janeway looked at her tricorder. "He's almost through. Another
few seconds."
Time fractured as fire and force erupted.
In an instant, Old Roy got his
wish for freedom. Restored Squad 51 fully disintegrated on contact with the outside, flowing back
into the future, where it belonged.
In doing so, it left the ancient DeSoto fully airborne,
inside of a ball of orange normal fire in the heart of an explosion and escaping debris.
Old
Roy's body impacted the ground like a lead weight and fractured his face into unrecognizable features
as he bounced once.
When he landed, Hank Stanley had already noticed. "One eject! DeSoto, over
there! Marco get him all the gear! Chet, Gage, get inside and make a fast sweep on a lifeline with
a charged hose to see if anybody else is in there. This may not be the only arsonist." he said, pointing
to their new victim.
Janeway whirled about, frightened. ::DeSoto?:: She had heard the orders.
Then she spotted the telltale glimmer of combadge gold pinned on old Roy's charred shirt. ::He's
wearing it. Oh, thank G*d.:: she sighed. ::He can be touched safely by his counterpart.::
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"That's him, isn't it?" Tom asked, watching the younger Roy scramble with Lopez over to the still
figure's side.
"Yes." Janeway replied, sadly. "All he wanted to do was to go home."
"He's
still alive!" the younger Roy said, after carefully rolling the older face mangled man over to check
for breathing and a carotid pulse. "Unconscious, facial injuries, burns. I'll need a long board,
Cap!"
Roy shrugged off the odd sensation he got when he first touched the man's skin, but
then his full paramedic training kicked in. He inserted an oral airway and asked Marco to start ventilating
full breaths right away using an ambu bag. "Keep him still. We'll worry about securing c-spine once
Johnny gets back out here.." DeSoto said. "I need a firefighter with some suction!" he called to
the scene aloud. Another company man rushed in with a unit off Truck 127. It was already turned on.
"Marco, use a jaw thrust. He didn't break that."
"Sure thing, Roy." Lopez replied, beginning to
work with oxygen around the suction flange wand that was getting rid of all the loose blood and
bone they were finding in the man's mouth.
Station 51's blond paramedic bared his patient's chest.
And exposed massive burns over most of the skin. "Cap! Looks like bad thermal burns. Tell them
to be real careful in there!"
Hank nodded, and then called for an ambulance.
Roy DeSoto
did not even recognize the wedding ring on the man's left hand because it had melted almost entirely
away in the fire it had been exposed to.
"Is he going to make it?" Marco asked, barely able
to get air into old Roy's lungs. One of his fingers were detecting a very rapid and weak pulse.
"I don't know." Roy replied. "He's in a really bad way. I'll set up the EKG monitor."
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inside the
museum, the green plasma fire was beyond an inferno.
Chakotay and Tuvok stood in the margin of
clear air the escape pod's deflector shields were providing them. The computer was still fighting
aggressively to keep the plasma fire off of the Voyager crewman it recognized as moving beneath it.
"Think it'll hold?" Chakotay asked Tuvok.
"I cannot determine an outcome with any great
degree of certainty." the Vulcan said.
"I'll take that as a positive." said the Commander.
"Come on. The emitter's only thirteen meters in that direction." he reported, studying his tricorder.
Tuvok stopped him. "I can hold my breath against super heated air, for much longer." he suggested.
"You cannot make it that far unassisted."
"Okay. I'll hang back while y---"
A muffled
voice rang out. "Is anybody in here? Fire Deparment!" It was Johnny Gage.
Whirling, Chakotay
saw the dark haired paramedic and Chet Kelly wearing air bottles, slowly making their way deeper into
the building on search. "Tuvok. He can't see me! He knows me!"
"Nor can they be allowed to
see the plasma fire." the Vulcan agreed. "I shall deal with it." he shared, then he waved at the pod
to hide itself a little higher in the layer of smoke at the ceiling.
Chet Kelly shouted through
his faceplate. "Hey, Johnny. Do you really think the museum was targetted by a couple of torches like
Cap thinks?"
Gage paused in his rescuer-to-victim shouts. "Good a theory as any. The museum
was still closed and dispatch told us that no one was even scheduled to work here today at all."
Kelly suddenly stared straight ahead. "Hey, did you see that?"
"What?" replied the airbottled
Gage.
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"I thought I saw something green over th---" Kelly broke off and suddenly slumped over when a vice
like clamp gripped the junction of his neck and shoulder, right through his fire jacket.
"Chet?"
Gage asked, turning around. "Are you okay?!" he panicked, seeing Kelly lying on the smoky concrete,
not moving. "Answer m--"
Another grip came from out of the dark smoke. And Johnny, too, became
a victim of the Vulcan neck pinch.
Then a nimble hand set off their P.A.S.S. devices. Instantly,
two sets of audible alarms began to fill the air.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuvok crawled back over to Chakotay's side. "You are safe, Commander. I rendered them unconscious."
"Did they see you?"
"No."
"We'd better move them back outside. This plasma fire's spreading
fast. I don't think those other firemen will be able to rescue them in time." Chakotay said.
Soon, Chakotay and Tuvok had shoulder carried Gage and Kelly to a safe place outside, hidden under
the fire smoke.
"How long will they be out?" Chakotay said, repositioning Johnny so he could
still breathe without problems from the air bottle still strapped to his back.
"Only for another
minute or so."
"Okay, let's go back." Chakotay said urgently.
"Wait a moment, Commander."
said Tuvok. Then he spread his fingers over the unconscious Chet's face briefly in a quick mind meld
around the straps of his face plate.
"What are you doing?"
"Removing a memory of the
plasma fire and inserting a suggestion that will save this time echo until we resolve it." Tuvok replied.
A firefighter's shout, from very near, came through the thick smoke. "Station 127 to Battalion
Nine! I think I hear belt alarms. Over here east side somewhere!" they heard being yelled into a
hand held radio through a faceplate.
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##Standard search pattern. I want a team of two on hose and air on each side of the building until
you find them!## ordered Battalion Nine over the radio.
Chakotay startled. "We need to hide,
Tuvok. Our time to try and rescue the doctor has just run out. There are too many firefighters."
"I have finished." he said, letting go of Kelly where he lay sprawled next to Johnny. "The captain
is not going to be happy that we failed to save the doctor."
"The Prime Directive sucks. Okay,
I said it." Chakotay just gave him a look and wiped soot off of his hands. "Let's get out of here."
The two Voyager crewman hugged the burning building under the concealing smoke and found a way to
return to the street by the park.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inside the museum, the escape pod sensed that it was now totally alone with the fire, so it completely
deployed its deflector shields around the green plasma fire, containing all of it, and itself, inside
of a globe of white sparkling energy.
Then it began an autodestruct sequence, one that would
destroy the small ship down to the subatomic level, but would also snuff out the green plasma, leaving
the real orange fire burning museum around it, still standing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chet Kelly started moaning even as Johnny Gage awoke beside him. Johnny was faster to consciousness.
The first thing he did was check his air supply. Then he hollered. "Chet?! What happened to us?" he
asked crawling over to Kelly to help him sit up. "We're outside!" he said. As he moved, the P.A.S.S.
alarm's howler, ceased. So did Kelly's. "I..I dunno. An explosion maybe?" Chet mumbled.
"How's your air doing?" Johnny asked, sweeping his gloves over Chet's air bottle's connectors and
hoses. "You still getting it?"
"Uh,,"
"Chet!"
"It's fine. It's fine. Just a little
dizzy." he said as Gage hauled him to his feet and started to lead him away.
"We're gonna
get ourselves checked asap. I don't know why we blacked out. Could be some bad fumes we don't know
about or--." Johnny said as they started a stumbling walk away from the museum.
Chet paused
a few feet later. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, Johnny, I gotta do this." And he stopped in his
tracks. He lifted his HT to his mouth. "HT 51 to Engine 51. Emergency!"
##Go ahead, HT 51.## came
Cap's fast reply.
"Tell the power company to shut off the electricity city wide. There's some
real hot sh*t in there that's getting through our air masks. Johnny and I just woke up from a blackout.
We're on the east side, under the smoke."
There was a brief pause, then. ##10-4, HT 51 relaying
your message to Battalion Nine. I'll call in Hazmat...... Evacuate! All crews! Evacuate the area!
Hang in there, pal. Sending in a rescue team to get you two out to some care.##
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Click rampart status board to go to page eight
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