Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a powerful Hunter named Hawk.  No Revenant could hide from him. No Lunatic could defeat him. He was the most powerful Hunter in all human history, and he remained undefeated until the day he died, old and retired.  Or at least, that's how the story was supposed to go. In reality, I was sitting on a bomb in the middle of Sea-Tac Airport, trying to ignore the screams and alarms as the building around me was evacuated.  I was sitting on enough explosives to level a large portion of the terminal, and I didn’t dare move off. I came here hunting a Lunatic, and I’d succeeded, but now I had to pay the price. My name is Hawk, and I’m the Lunatic Slayer.

 

My target, an older white man named Nolan Thoroughgood, somehow managed to get the bomb past airport security, and had armed the thing before anyone even realized he was there.  The old man then sat on the thing, simply because he’d designed it with an odd sort of pressure trigger. So long as there was pressure on the bomb, it wouldn’t go off. But if something happened to reduce that pressure…

 

I don’t really want to go into the how surrounding what I did to get him off and myself on.  I don’t exactly follow the rules when it comes to hunting, and the majority of what I did involves quite a bit of cheating.  But what I did worked. Thoroughgood was off, and now stuck in a soul orb I had already tucked into my hip pouch. In the mean time, airport security was occupied with clearing out the terminal so if the bomb I was sitting on did go off the only casualty would be me.  Just thinking that left a sour taste in my mouth. So, now that I was stuck in a rapidly emptying airport, sitting on a bomb, the question had become what to do next. I didn’t want to end up a splattered mess all over, which is what would happen if I got up. I sighed as I realized there was really only one thing I could do.  My phone was in my hand before I’d finished the thought, and I dialed the first phone number I’d ever learned: the number to my Hall.

 

“Thank you for calling the Hunter’s Guild,” a calm, collected voice answered.  “How may we direct your call?”  Taigo Shuyin, my brain promptly provided, along with a picture—maybe a year or two older than me, pale, Asian features, perpetually happy.  Occasionally wears glasses, though prefers contact lenses. Incredibly smart and one of the few people apparently willing to take me at face value, at least some of the time.  I’d first met him when I’d been working on a case in the Archives a couple months back, a mathematician who’d left some sort of complex formula behind as a code before going on a killing spree.  Hunter Shuyin had helped me solve the formula, which had been the key to a cipher he’d left behind, and once it was decrypted I’d learned who his next target was and stopped him before he could kill again.

 

“Hunter Shuyin,” I replied.  “This is Hawk. I need to speak to Master Fitzgerald urgently, please.”

 

“Of course,” Shuyin replied evenly.  “Let me get him on the line.  Just a moment, please.”

 

“Thank you,” I answered.  I felt the need to be polite with him, because he was polite with me.  It’s weird, but after the brief kindness he’d shown me before I felt this inexplicable urge to not give him the same attitude I gave everyone else.  Most Hunters are barely willing to give me anything, even the time of day. They sit off in the corner, where they think I won’t see them, won’t hear them, and whisper behind their hands.  They insult me to my face, ridicule me behind my back, and yet when something like this comes up they’re more than willing to let me handle it. I’m valuable to the Guild, because I can survive what no one else can: repeated hunts for Lunatics. But that doesn’t mean they like me for it.

 

Taigo was different.  He’s scrupulously polite with everyone, and he’s always cheerful, always happy about something.  But I never got the impression it was just a façade with him. Whoever he interacts with, from the newest student to the Guild Master, he treats us all with the same respect and courtesy.  He’s only had his license since June, and yet he seems perfectly suited for life in the Guild. It was enough to make me jealous. In spite of the fact that I’ve lived the Guild life since I was seven, I’ve never felt like I fit in.  Still, that wasn’t his fault. The least I owed him in gratitude for his help was to be civil.

 

“Hunter Hawk?” his voice returned, startling me out of thought.  Thankfully it wasn’t enough to disrupt my balance. That would have been…embarrassing.  Assuming I survived, of course. “I have Master Fitzgerald on the line for you.”

 

“Thank you, Hunter Shuyin,” another, older voice interrupted.  Master Fitzgerald was the Guild’s Master Engineer.  He was a craggy, cranky old man, perfectly suited to tinkering with machines.  His weathered face was usually smudged with something—oil from the Guild’s vehicles, thermal compound from the Guild’s computers, and once I’d stumbled across him with wood shavings in his frazzled hair.  He never seemed to leave his garage, even to sleep. Or at least, it never seemed that way to me. Still, of all the Masters he was one I knew could be counted on for anything technological. “What’s going on, Hawk?”

 

“I need your help with something,” I admitted, embarrassment and nervousness coloring my own voice.

 

“What did you break now?” Fitzgerald sighed and I bristled in response.

 

“Nothing!  Damn it, Q!  Why do you always assume I’ve broken something?”

 

“Because you usually have,” Fitzgerald groused, “and stop calling me Q.”  It was an old nickname, something I’d picked up from my own mentor, Chad Stone.  It was a movie reference of some kind, something to do with a man who worked for a secret government spy group, and who always provided the group’s spies with their gear.  I’d started calling him that because I’d heard Chad doing it, and sometimes I still did, even though I knew by now the man hated it.

 

“I don’t have time for this right now,” I complained as I tried to bring the conversation back on track.  “I need your help.”

 

“With what?”

 

“With a bomb.”  The phone remained suspiciously silent for long enough that I began to worry something had happened.  “Q? Master Fitzgerald? Are you still there?”

 

“I’m sorry; I could have sworn you said you needed help with a bomb.”

 

“You heard right.  I’m sitting on a bomb, and I need your help to disarm it before it takes out half the airport.”

 

“Jesus Christ, Hawk!” Fitzgerald exploded.  I winced as a stream of abuse and insults followed, the kind that would never be repeated amongst polite company.  By now the airport terminal was empty of everything except the evacuation alarms, so there was no one to see me pull the phone away from my ear and hold it out away from me, scowling darkly at it.  Eventually the torrent died down, and when it had resumed a more normal volume I brought the phone back to my ear, just in time to catch the end of it. “Damn bloody stupid moronic imbecile!”

 

“Yes, Master Fitzgerald,” I agreed through clenched teeth, “but can we get back to the part where you help me disarm this thing before it sprays bits and pieces of me all over the airport?”

 

“Damn it, Hawk, I’m an Engineer not an explosives expert!  I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m dealing with, let alone how to disarm a damn bomb.”

 

“What do I do, then?  Just sit on it until I get tired enough to fall off and let it blow me to bits?”  I admit I was curter than I should have been. In my own defense, though, I’d been sitting on a bomb for the last ten minutes and the day wasn’t getting any longer.  Fitzgerald sighed, and this time I could hear the exasperation in it.

 

“All right, tell me what you can.”  I cut off my own instinctive response and took a deep breath.  He was going to help me. Snapping at him wouldn’t make it any easier.  Frustration pushed aside, at least for now, I quickly and succinctly rattled off everything the Lunatic had mentioned about his bomb.  A medium-sized suitcase full of something he’d called C-4, set to detonate based on a pressure plate. Once activated, pressure would need to be maintained on the pressure plate or else the bomb would detonate.  Every piece of the conversation I related to him verbatim, because I had no idea what tidbit of information would be enough to let him solve this thing. Sometimes having a perfectly flawless memory is useful.

 

“So you can’t even see the interior of the case to know if it can be disarmed,” Fitzgerald replied in exasperation when I was done.  “You don’t even know for sure there is a bomb.”

 

“There’s a damn bomb!” I snapped.  “They brought in the bomb-sniffing dogs and the things went crazy.  I thought they were going to kill me.”

 

“I’m not going to ask how you ended up sitting on a pressure bomb,” Fitzgerald snapped back, “but you should damn well know better!”  The man fell silent briefly after his outburst and I struggled to keep my own temper in check.  “All right, I’ll call in some favors.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Hawk, I haven’t got the slightest idea how to disarm a bomb I can’t even see.  It’s way outside my area of expertise. So I’ll call around and see if we can get you someone who can.  Worst case scenario is that we might need to call in some soldiers form JBLM.”

 

“That’ll take hours,” I complained bitterly.

 

“Then I suggest getting comfortable,” he responded sternly.  “It’s the best I can do.”

 

“Fine,” I barked out, temper flaring at the thought of being stuck on this bomb for hours.  “Let me get off the phone then.” I hung up on whatever he’d been saying in response and dropped the thing in my lap.  It was useless to me now. I’d been hoping the Master would have a quick and easy spell solution for me. Instead I would be stuck on this damn thing for hours until someone came up with a way to get me off without blowing me up.  I don’t know how long I sat like that before something interrupted the silence. The phone buzzed in my lap and I looked down, tempted beyond belief to just throw the thing across the empty terminal. If I did that, though, I wouldn’t be able to just get up and bring it back.  Besides, I had a pretty good idea who was calling me. I closed my eyes briefly and then lifted the phone up to my ear and answered.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Hunter Hawk?”  I’d been wrong.  I was sure the next time I answered my phone I would be chewed out by Chad.  Instead I was talking to Taigo Shuyin again, though I didn’t know why.

 

“Yes, Hunter Shuyin?”

 

“Might I have a moment of your time?”

 

“Sure,” I laughed bitterly as I looked around the empty terminal.  “Not like I’m going anywhere anytime soon.”

 

“I just wanted to ask…”

 

“Ask what?” I prompted when the silence had gone on for too long.

 

“Well, I hope you don’t think it too terribly impertinent of me, but I wanted to ask if you were out of your mind.”

 

“What?”  This wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all, nor was the suddenly deathly serious tone from someone who was always so cheery something I missed.  I straightened up, all my attention focused back on the phone and the strange conversation I was having.

 

“You heard me correctly,” Shuyin replied, with what sounded suspiciously like rebuke.  “Are you out of your mind?  You’re sitting on a bomb in the middle of the airport?”

 

“You were listening in on my conversation?” I asked sternly.

 

“No.  Master Fitzgerald has been screaming into his phone loud enough to be heard by everyone on the garage level, and Engineers like to gossip.  Since I’m not on desk duty anymore for the day, I went up to the Archives and used the servers to back-trace your number, specifically so I could talk to you.”

 

“Why?  You really wanted to know if I was crazy?” I laughed, but there was a core of bitter anger wrapped around me I couldn’t shake off, and I think Taigo heard it because his next words were nicer than they probably should have been.

 

“No, not at all.  I…was worried about you.  I admit, I probably should have started this a little differently, however I am concerned that you’ve put yourself in unnecessary danger.”

 

“I don’t think I’m in any danger unless I get up,” I replied, as snide and cruel to him as I am to everyone else.  The last thing I needed from some random Hunter was a lecture. Then what he’d said sank in and I caught on. “Wait, you did what to get my number?”

 

“I’m good with computers,” Taigo answered, and there was quiet pride in his voice.  “I used the computers in the Archives to access the switchboard and get a record of numbers that had dialed in during the fifteen-minute window of your call.  Then I eliminated all the ones with blocked or unlisted numbers, and ones that didn’t have the standard 977 Guild prefix. After that, I matched the call-ins to the server’s record of where those calls were directed.  Only one call was directed to the Garage during that fifteen minute window, so it was fairly safe for me to assume that number was yours. I programmed it into my own phone and left. Right now I’m tucked in a corner of the lounge on the twelfth floor and talking to you.”

 

“That…wha…” I stuttered briefly, trying to understand what he’d just rattled off, but none of it made sense to me.  If I haven’t mentioned it already, I’m technologically inept. I can use the standard equipment the Guild issues, but when it comes down to it, I don’t even know how to turn a computer on, much less operate one.  “Why’d you bother?”

 

“I was concerned.  Is that not enough?”  He seemed confused, and I hurried to explain.

 

“No, I mean…  Why are you concerned about me?  You barely know me.”

 

“Yes, and it would be a shame if you were to die before I could rectify that.”

 

“I don’t understand,” I answered, because I didn’t.  Nothing he was saying made any sense. It almost sounded as if he was offering me friendship, something I’d only really ever had once before in my life.  It hadn’t ended well for her.

 

“Then let me be clear,” Taigo replied, startling me out of my thoughts.  “I would like to get to know you better, if you’re willing.”

 

“Why?”  There had to be a reason, an angle, some kind of hidden agenda.  There always was.

 

“Because I thought we might become friends.”  His answer was artlessly honest, and the way he blurted it out without all the pretentious tones he’d been using before actually made me believe it.  Well, almost.

 

I was suspicious.  I had a right to be.  Others had offered me what seemed like friendship in the past, only to yank it back when I’d reached for it.  I admit I spent quite some time on the phone with him, trying to catch him. I was so sure he was just like everyone else, so determined to show that he was lying about wanting to be my friend, that all my attention focused on one thing: proving it.  Before I knew it two hours had passed and a bomb-squad robot came rolling around a corner towards me. To my own surprise, I realized he’d gotten me so involved in conversation that I’d completely lost track of everything else, including the bomb.

 

“The bomb-bot is here.  Looks like this is almost over.  Hey Taigo?” I asked as the robot wheeled closer.

 

“Yes, Hunter Hawk?”  I could hear it in his voice.  Affection. Appreciation. Admiration.  The same things that were always in my voice when I talked to Chad.  The things that told me it wasn’t a ruse. Taigo Shuyin meant what he’d said.  He wanted to be my friend.

 

“Just call me Hawk,” I said, a smile on my face for the first time today.  “And thanks.”

 

There was a wealth of affection in his voice when he answered, and an acceptance that I had to trust was real.  For once in my life it seemed like something would work out in my favor. I grinned at the approaching robot. Probably looked like an insane fool, but I didn’t care.  His words warmed my icy little heart in a way all my anger and rage had never done. I’ll always treasure what he said.

“You’re welcome, Hawk.  After all, what else are friends for?”