The Untold Story

39. Are always the guiltless

Song: The Script - No Good In Goodbye

This is dedicated to all the fans of The Big Bang Theory. The 12th and final season premiers on Monday 24 September. I grew very attached to the series and the cast over the last 11 years, so I'm sad to see it end; but all things must come to an end so...

The first bit of this chapter is a scene I deleted from the last chapter but going forward, I realised it's kind of necessary. So this is the end scene from Chapter 38 from Nathan's POV.

"You SCU guys get all the fun toys," Michael commented as one of the Special Crimes Unit agents, Amelia, explained the function of the gadget in her hand. 

It was a scanning device, square in shape and about half a metre in length and width with a screen in the centre, that could pick up movement, heartbeat and respiration through a wall. They'd settled on using the device after a short argument on a plan of action to save the hostages that they now believed to be in the concealed room under H.B Media. Besides showing them how many people were in the room, the device would also give them each person's position so they wouldn't attack blindly.

"All clear on the plan?" Nathan asked the group of twenty law enforcers surrounding him, as he checked the sidearm he'd been assigned for the umpteenth time.

Michael nodded, pointing at the woman holding the scanner. "Amelia's going to go quietly down the stairs, sticking to the wall for cover and she'll stop just before the bend that leads into the room. Once she attaches the scanner to the wall, it will transmit the image showing the number of people present and their positions to this tablet, then we plan our infiltration accordingly before going down there as quietly as possible. Once we're in position, power to the building will be cut, we go in fast, using these night vision goggles from the SCU to see in the dark. Everyone got that?"

The twenty men and women, a combination of SCU agents and their own police department, nodded their understanding. Satisfied, he gave Amelia the go ahead to descend then turned to Nathan.

"You good?"

Nathan gave him a questioning look in response.

"Seeing someone you care about in danger is hard and in situations like these, our judgement can be a little off. Are you sure you can handle being in there?"

"I'll be fine," Nathan said curtly, putting on his goggles and looking around. Everything was painted in a cloudy, green hue.

"This person," Michael paused to clear his throat. "Claire. She's Natasha's twin. You'll be fine with shooting at a person who looks like a girl you care about, if it comes to that?"

"You and I know this case better than anyone here and of the two of us, I'm better at negotiating in a hostage situation. You'd just piss Claire off, so you need me in there. I'm not going to have a meltdown and risk the lives of two hostages and whatever the hell Lilian Evans is."

A beeping sound from the tablet in Michael's hand interrupted their conversation. The screen showed a grid on a white background. On one end of the grid, a red and orange blob blinked on and off the screen. Three similar shapes also showed halfway up the screen, with two of them very close together. Amelia's partner from the SCU explained that the shapes were heat signatures of people in the room picked up by the scanner and from the looks of it, the people were on opposite ends of the room.

Relieved that everyone was still alive, Nathan said, "Lilian and Claire are both armed. When the lights go off, we'll have a very short time to get in and disarm them before they panic and do something rash like shoot randomly. We could assume the person standing on her own on this side of the room close to the entrance is Claire. Since she's the one holding hostages, the positioning would make sense."