Fire with fire

Still chucking about the altercation, the loudmouth reached the cafe door.

It was an unfortunate piece of timing, for that was the precise moment that the bomb also hit the door and exploded in that particular way that bombs do.

The lovely 1930s shopfront was turned into rubble.

Someone ran into the street, their burning clothes obviously causing them distress.

The lead police car slammed into them, and they flipped neatly across the top and through the windscreen of the next car.

* * *

‘Thanks for the help,’ said Daisy, slightly unsurely with her attention was still on the action.

The lead car had stopped as the fire expanded into a part of the building that contained flammable material. Another explosion took out the rest of the block, parts of which collided with the satellite dish on the university.

‘I’d point out though,’ she continued, ‘that blowing the place sky high is a bit of an extreme response to a refusal of service and a fat lip.’

‘What the hell were you doing walking in there?!’ demanded the woman in the back seat. She seemed a little tense.

‘Felt like a coffee,’ Daisy replied matter-of-factly, still admiring the chaos in the rear view mirror. It was a pretty fire. Her subconscious jumped up and down trying desparately to bring something to her attention. She looked up and realised.

‘Patricia?’ said Daisy, turning and looking over her shoulder.

‘Prime! We use code-names while in the field. You know that!’

‘Sorry,’ said Daisy, returning her gaze to the road.

This was a bizarre reality. First the male-only cafe, now code-names and places you usually found cattle. Yes, Daisy nodded to herself, it all fitted. She was stepping blindly from cowpat to cowpat. getting into more and more shit as the minutes ticked by.

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Patricia/Prime, still annoyed. ‘We’ve had this planned for a fortnight and you walk in the front bloody door! You could have ruined everything!’

‘Well, um,’ murmured Daisy, still slightly lagging in not-only the conversation but also in the events of the reality. ‘Sorry. I got drunk last night and I’m still catching-up.’

This extension of the word ‘truth’ got Daisy a sideways glance from the driver.

‘You were lucky we were scanning the police channels,’ she said, returning her attention to the road.

Caroline, thought Daisy. Caroline bloody Rook. Good grief.

‘Would you be Second?’ she asked.

‘You’re Second. I’m Tert,’ said Caroline.

Tert? thought Daisy. As in the singular of tertiary — not that there really is one. Although a better name would have been ‘Terse’.

‘Though given your behaviour, I’d be pushing for a demotion,’ Caroline/Tert continued. ‘Somewhere around a hundred and sixty nine.’