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Headquarters
“I heard Anderson had to fight off half the building to get this guy,” Eric said.
“And he ends up here?” Maya said. “Not Nolan’s section?”
“Have we ever had a sworn officer before?” Chris said.
“Not unless you count Sinclair.”
“The section chief doesn’t count,” Maya said. “And Anderson went right over him to announce it. With almost no information.”
“Sinclair seemed fine with that.”
“Sinclair’s fine with everything.”
“Yeah. He was fine to clear a private office for a part-timer.”
“Even Dana doesn’t have a private office,” Chris said.
Anderson stepped out of his office.
“Right on time, Hartfield.”
A man in a wheelchair rolled in. Forties, maybe. Looked like he’d seen more action than everyone on the floor combined. Clean-cut, sharp in uniform. Two stripes on the rank badge.
Captain.
“Wouldn’t want to make a bad first impression.”
“You? Just try not to break anything on the first day.”
“Pretty sure I’ve broken enough of myself already.”
Anderson laughed. “Your office is set up. Dana will get you squared away.”
“Welcome to HQ, Hartfield.” Dana walked him to the office at the end of the row.
A captain. In a wheelchair. The Deputy Chief of Operations greeting him like Jack Ryan.
“I have so many questions,” Eric said.
“Guess that explains the staffing,” Maya said. “Or maybe not.”
Chris was still staring down the row. “Did anyone else see the two stripes?”
“Hartfield, Matthew. Captain. Operations Duty Officer, part-time. Operations Support Section.” Maya scrolled down. “That’s it. Unless you want his badge number.”
“That’s the whole record?”
“No prior assignment, no service history, no transfer documentation. It’s like someone scrubbed it.”
“Are we a fire department or are we hiding spies?” Eric said.
“Guys, Dana’s back,” Chris said.
They were at her desk before she’d sat down.
“No.”
“We haven’t asked anything yet.”
“You’re going to ask about Hartfield.”
“His employee record has nothing in it. A captain should have—”
“Take it up with HR then.” Dana sighed.
“What was he captain of? Engine? Rescue?”
“If you’re this interested, go ask the man. He’s right there.”
“We’re not going to interrogate a captain on his first day.”
“Then I don’t know what you want from me.”
Anderson’s door was open. He was signing off on reports.
“Chief, do you have a second?”
“No.”
“It’s about Hartfield.”
“Great. Wonderful. What about him.”
“We were hoping for some background.”
“I’d worry less about him and more about keeping up. Try not to embarrass me.”
“Can you at least tell us what station he came from?”
“If he wants to tell you more, he will. Now go do your jobs.”
“Chief—”
“That was not a suggestion.”
They went back to the dugout.
“A captain with no record, a private office, and nobody will tell us a thing,” Eric said. “Who is this guy?”
“We could just introduce ourselves,” Chris said.
“And say what?” Maya said. “‘Hi, we looked you up and you don’t exist, what’s your story?’”
“Or we could go ask George. George loves to talk.”
“George is not going to tell us anything useful.”
“He’s going to tell us everything,” Eric said. “Let’s go.”
They headed toward Dispatch.
Dana knocked on Hartfield’s door. He’d finished the onboarding materials already.
“Since you’re officially on the clock, let’s see what you can do.”
She dropped a folder in front of him.
“Medic response delays going back two weeks. We can’t find a pattern. Dispatch can’t find a problem.”
“No one’s cracked it?”
“That’s why it’s yours now.”
“So much for light duty.”
Five minutes. Maybe less. She watched him go through the folder page by page, flip back twice, and stop.
“It’s coverage drift. These delays only show up after the big ones—multi-alarm, hazmat standbys, anything that pulls units across districts. When those wrap, medics get re-staged near wherever they last dropped off instead of pushed back to their home grid.”
“That’s it?”
“Fifteen-minute blind spot right after a surge. Map looks balanced, but half the city’s parked in the wrong place. Something changed two weeks ago. System updates? Procedural memos?”
“Hmm. CommTech pushed a load-balancing patch. Said it would smooth redeployments.”
“There’s your problem.” He jotted a note with his left hand, slanted. “Add a re-stage trigger on the incident-closure flag to redistribute units by deployment grid, not hospital proximity. Have CAD think like a firefighter instead of a map.”
“Weeks. We’ve been going in circles for weeks.”
He shrugged. “Seemed obvious.”
“Obvious to you,” Dana said. “Sure we can’t talk you into more than ten hours a week?”
“I mean, if you want to talk to Lucy—”
“Never mind.”
They came back from Dispatch.
“The raccoon one is real,” Eric said.
“You don’t know that,” Maya said.
“Come on, you can’t make that up. Everything else could be embellished, but losing a fight to a raccoon? That’s just a guy having a bad day.”
“And catching someone mid-air off a collapsing structure is what? A good day?”
“I’d believe the rookie one,” Chris said. “Someone goes at you for an hour straight, yeah, I’d quit too. What did he call it?”
“A ‘military tribunal.’” Eric grinned. “Speaking of military—the airstrike.”
“How do you even call an airstrike on a burning building?”
“Same way you disarm a hostage-taker with a coffee mug, apparently.”
“We don’t do hostage situations,” Maya said.
“Then explain the electrical grid. How do you walk straight through live voltage?”
“You don’t. Half of those are impossible. The other half are real stories that got bigger every time George told them.”
Chris hadn’t said anything for a while. “He solved the medic delays.”
They both looked at him.
“The two-week thing. Dana just sent an email to CommTech.”
“It’s his first day,” Maya said.
“I know.”
“First hour, actually.”
“I know.”
“So either every word George said is true,” Eric said, “or George just had the best thirty minutes of his life at our expense.”
“Either way,” Maya said, “we’ll never know.”
Chris was staring at Hartfield’s office again. “Did we ever actually introduce ourselves?”
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