Page 30 of Playing with Fire

“What?”

“Officer Down-ning?”

“I heard you.” The woman remained near the elevators, straightened, and lifted her chin. “How can I help?”

If I got us all out of this alive, I would not only take her on a ride, I would find the best bar around so we could drink ourselves into a stupor. She seemed like the type of person I’d like to take to a bar and get exceptionally drunk with. “This not bile. Is dust. Gor-gon dust. Re-cep-shun con-tam-eenated. Leave. Sor-ree. I stay. In con-tam-eenated area. Hallway seem safe. For now.” While I could try to burn it, I couldn’t afford to take any risks, not with so many people in danger. The list of people qualified to demand a napalming was limited to upper officers in the police, upper management of the CDC, and people with top-level certification at the contamination site, like me. I lifted my head and forced my tongue to do my bidding. “I condemn this building and request napalm. Entire structure. All ducts, all ventilation systems. You call dispatch.”

Glass coffins protected humanity, and while there were ones designed for centaurs, they were few and far between and shaped specifically for them. I wouldn’t fit.

I would stay. There was no other choice.

Cadet Winfield’s eyes bulged, and he crept backwards.

Considering I could stand in fire and like it, maybe I’d survive. I’d even had C4 detonated while strapped to me. It had tickled. What was an entire building being torched with a full load of napalm compared to that? I watched the idiot cadet and decided to pull rank. All things considered, I couldn’t allow a loose cannon to put the public at risk. “Officer Down-ning, if he try to leave without scan or ree-fuse glass coffin, you shoot, put him in anyway. Risk to public.”

“He won’t, not on my watch,” she promised.

“I like you, Janet.” I did, too. It took real courage to face a leave-someone-behind situation with dignity. “Tell Officer Purr-keens to call Profess-ur Yale to pro-vide sec-un-dare-ee auth-or-is-zay-shun for nay-palm.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Go. Quick.”

The cops fled into the elevator.

When I was certain they were gone, I began hunting for the dust. Picking up the fish-eye camera in my mouth, I began the tedious process of pushing the meter around on the floor in search of the source. Why had I gotten qualified for dangerous material handling? Stupid me. I’d be inside the building when they started flooding napalm in through the top floor, probably pumping all sorts of magic into the gel to ensure it covered every possible surface in the structure.

Even if I survived the fire, if the floors didn’t collapse, I’d be astonished. Starting tomorrow, the government would begin planning the rebuilding of the site while a lot of stunned bankers tried to figure out what they’d do without their office space.

If the heat or the building collapse didn’t kill me, Quinn would. He’d hunt me down, cut off my horn, and take it as a trophy. At least I wouldn’t need another round in the glass coffin when I reversed to human. A round or two of napalm would cook the dust right out of me, assuming I didn’t get charred to a crisp.

A little experimentation with the meter confirmed my fears: the dust had made it into the reception. I located a brown splotch of drying fluid on the floor near the receptionist’s desk. On closer inspection, I found some other dark spatter marks. How had they gotten there?

I looked up.

A drop of liquid fell on my nose with a splat. Dark stains marked where something leaked in the ceiling. I tried to get a view of my own nose, which didn’t work very well. Drawing in a deep breath, I worked to make sense of the smells. The pungent odor of cleaners hung in the air along with the hint of gasoline. Gasoline? No, it wasn’t quite gasoline. It reminded me of napalm. Had they already started pumping the gel into the building? I hadn’t heard any of the warning sirens.

The authorities liked informing New Yorkers when they were about to put on a show.

Underneath all the other harsher smells, I couldn’t detect the earthy, mildewy scent of the gorgon dust. Whatever the fluid was, it masked the presence of the dust far too well.

The lights went out, and utter quiet descended on the building, so deep and still I shivered. A few breaths later, the blare of distant sirens accompanied a bone-deep thrum. The sound of emergency response vehicles drew a snort out of me. What were they hoping to prevent? A fire? With a little help from the CDC and the military, the police and fire department would have no problem shielding the building so the intense heat and cinders wouldn’t reach any of the neighboring structures.

I forced my attention back to the stained ceiling. What was that stuff? I really needed to practice using my nose as a unicorn if I survived. Short of tasting it, I had no way of identifying it. Whatever it was, the meter wasn’t picking it up.

One little taste couldn’t make my situation any worse, could it? I already had some of the gunk on my nose. With nothing to lose, I set the camera on the desk, eyed the brown stains, and dragged my tongue over the wood. If someone was recording and it got back to anyone I had deliberately eaten a dangerous substance, I’d be a dead woman walking, but I didn’t exactly have a lot to lose.

If I did survive, I’d enjoy the arguments. Learning how the fluid worked—or the culprit’s goal—might be important later.

I had been smelling gasoline. Why on Earth would anyone mix gorgon dust with gasoline, shove it into the ceiling of an office building, and leave it there? Why hadn’t it burst into flame when the initial bang happened?

Wait. Gasoline wouldn’t be sufficient to neutralize gorgon dust. If it burned, it’d get into the air ducts, spread through the entire building, and potentially affect every single person in the building. While gasoline and other accelerants were used in napalm, modern blends were designed to burn hotter and longer, reaching temperatures capable of destroying gorgon dust.

The possibilities stunned me into staring up at the stained ceiling tiles. Why hadn’t anyone reported the smell of gasoline? Had someone mistakenly—or deliberately—reported it as gorgon bile? Gorgon bile smelled far worse than gasoline. A single spark could have blown the whole thing up. Had the fluid been a little more effective at igniting, the dust would have potentially incubated in unwitting victims, priming the city for a petrification endemic. Had the meter not been set to do a bulk scan, I might not have clued in to the irregularities of the brown fluid. I would have breathed a bit of fire in the wrong place and lit the whole building up, sending gorgon dust into the air.

I had come within feet of petrifying both Janet and the cadet and possibly exposing the entire crowd gathered outside of the building, including Perky.

The thrum increased in volume, and the floor shivered beneath my hooves. Everyone in hearing range, probably for several miles, would know something big was about to happen. According to protocol, the tone would continue for five minutes.