Page 58 of Liberating Water

I could hear muttering through the radio as they talked before Hudson gave us their answer. “We are both in agreement with you, Jay. I have a connection with her, so that will help keep us going in the right direction, and you guys are on the opposite end of the catacombs as it is. Deal with the bombs and the students, and we will keep you informed of what’s happening on our end as we can.”

“Check back in fifteen minutes if you don’t hear from us before that,” Jay relayed as he stuffed the radio in his back pocket. “Okay, let’s go take a look at what we are dealing with.”

Spreading out, we walked along the edge of the room and found a total of five bombs, each of them having an additional canister on them with what we speculated was the demon serum.

“Alright, so I can defuse these bombs, but I don’t have all the tools I need to do it quickly,” Jay started, causing us both to groan. “That means I need you two to help me since I’m working with a multi-tool instead of the specialized bomb kit we have for these circumstances. The other part of this I should be honest about is that I’ve never deactivated a bomb like this on my own. I’ve assisted one of our techs and seen it done, just not on my own.”

“We just aren’t going to catch a break on this, are we?” I asked, looking over the bomb. “There’s no other option. We have to do something, and having some idea how to do this is better than none. What do you need from us?”

Jay took a deep breath and rubbed his face with his hands. This might be the first time I’d ever seen him nervous about anything.

“Let’s see if we can move it away from the wall so I can get a better look at it,” Jay said, grabbing part of the bomb.

Parker’s head snapped in Jay’s direction. “I’m sorry, what? You want us to move this device that could go off at any time? Nope, sorry, I want to live.”

“Then I suggest you help and give us the best chance of keeping your sorry ass alive,” I growled, taking the other side, but the way it was shaped, it kept tilting forward, totally off balance.

Parker stepped up and grabbed the front, steadying it as we shuffled away from the wall and set it back down.

“Okay, now I need all the light I can without any shadow. One wrong cut wire and I’ll blow us all the fuck up,” Jay explained as he handed me his flashlight.

Pulling out his tool, he slowly worked at getting off the top of the bomb, showing all the wires. It was a massive, chaotic ball of wire that you couldn’t tell what was going where. The rat bastard had taken every opportunity to make this as hard as possible. Jay picked through the wires and was able to sort out what was real and what was just jumbled up in there. Finally, he cut a wire and crossed it with another before cutting two more. The small timer showed up, giving us five minutes before it would go off. Not having the right tool, he needed to use the blade to get the small screws out of the plate at the bottom, eating into our time before he revealed a small tube of liquid.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Jay swore, rubbing his forehead as he looked down at the bomb. “It doesn’t make sense why he would have three backup triggers!”

“Talk to us Jay, what’s going on?” I asked, trying to understand what I was looking at.

Jay glanced up at me, worry filling his eyes. “Either this was put here to cause whoever tried to disarm the bomb to panic and let the timer run out, or we have a major problem. This is a liquid trigger. If I mess with it too much, the two fluids will mix and react, causing it to blow up.”

“Wait, but wouldn’t it have done that when we moved it?” Parker questioned, squatting to look down at it closer. “I say it’s a fake out, because at this point there’s no other option. You have to remove that to get to the wire under it that controls the power to the battery.”

“How the fuck do you know that?” Jay demanded, brows furrowed.

“Um…” Parker shrugged his shoulders “You guys keep forgetting I’m a technology guy. I get circuitry, and the way this is set up doesn’t support a liquid trigger.”

“Parker, if I do this, know that I’m trusting you will all our lives here. Do you still want me to break this?” Jay asked, his tone dead serious.

Leaning even closer and looking at a few things, Parker looked back at both of us and nodded his head. “Yes, I’m absolutely positive.”