"Wire cutters, then the bypass bridge—it's the small metal clip in the red pouch."
His hands appear in my peripheral vision, offering the tools. I take them, position the bypass carefully across the contact points, then use the cutters to sever the connection to the primary circuit.
The device doesn't explode, which is always a good sign.
"Pressure plate neutralized," I say, allowing myself one slow breath of relief. "Next is the trembler."
This one is more delicate.
The mercury switch is housed in a small glass vial, and I need to stabilize it before I can disconnect it. I use a small amount of thermoplastic putty, warming it in my hands until it's pliable,then carefully wrap it around the vial to hold it in place. Every movement is glacially slow, my hands as steady as I can make them despite the adrenaline singing through my veins.
Flint's breathing behind me is slow and controlled, a rhythm I can match to keep my own breathing calm. His presence is a constant reminder that I'm not alone, that someone is here witnessing this, that my life has value beyond just being the person who fixes my own mistakes.
The thermoplastic sets after two minutes, which feels like two hours. I test the vial’s stability gently, feeling for any movement. It's solid, held in place well enough that I can work with it. I trace the wires from the trembler to the primary circuit, identifying the connection point, and prepare to cut.
"This is the tricky part," I murmur. "The trembler is wired in series with the primary trigger. If I cut it wrong, if there's a voltage spike or a moment of disconnection, the primary might interpret it as a trigger signal."
"Can you prevent that?"
"I'm going to use a shunt to maintain voltage while I cut, then remove the shunt after the trembler is disconnected." I'm talking myself through it as much as explaining to him. "It should work. It worked in training simulations."
"But Greer knows your training simulations."
"Yes." That's the fear that's been gnawing at me since I saw this device.
Greer knows how I teach, knows the protocols I drill into my students, knows the exact approaches I'd use to disarm this. Has he built in a counter for this, too?
Is there a trap I'm not seeing?
But I don't have a choice. The clock is ticking, and people are counting on me to get this right.
I position the voltage shunt, double-check the connections, and cut the wire to the trembler. The device remains stable, nosudden changes. I remove the shunt carefully, and the trembler is isolated, disconnected, and no longer a threat.
"Two down," I say, and my voice shakes slightly. "One to go."
The primary trigger is my design, and I know it intimately—which should be an advantage but might be a curse if Greer anticipated my approach. I study the circuitry, looking for the modifications he's made, the ways he's adapted my elegant training system into something lethal.
There. I see it.
He's added a fail-safe that wasn't in my original design—a backup timer that activates if someone tries to disable the primary trigger using my standard teaching method. If I cut the wires in the order I taught him, in the sequence that every EOD student learns from me, the backup timer will drop to zero immediately.
He's betting I'll follow my own protocols. Betting I can't overcome my training even knowing it's compromised. It's psychological warfare wrapped in electronics, and I feel a flash of pure rage at his arrogance.
"I need to go off-script," I say to Flint. "He's modified this to counter my standard approach. I need to think like him instead of like me."
"Can you do that?"
I close my eyes briefly, forcing myself to breathe past the rush of panic. I have to let go of Caro Sutton—the teacher, the careful planner, the woman who worships procedure.
None of that will save us now.
Think like Marcus Greer. Reckless. Brilliant. The man who never met a boundary he didn’t want to cross.
What would he do?
My first instinct is the same as always: check the obvious sequence, the clean linear logic. I start tracing it in my head, fingers twitching in rhythm with the pattern I drilled into mystudents. It should make sense—but it doesn’t. The numbers won’t align, the timing feels wrong.
“Come on, Greer,” I mutter under my breath, frustration tightening my chest. “What did you hide?”
