He'd laugh, yeah, if it didn't sound so fucking stupid. So damn retarded that a guy couldn't handle his explosives well enough to reign in the cracks. A bomb that went off at the slightest disruptions in the environment didn't do its fucking job as a fucking bomb.

And that's not even touching the fact that it was once around the Courier's neck.

Neil inhales sharply, his face growing red from rage, his brain trying to fend off both pain and emotion. Alex is fine. His head didn't pop off from a rigged collar. The collar is still a mile-long list of complaints, but the narrator is alive to tell his tale.

"So," Neil chances, his voice careful not to sound too affected, "the odds were against you, and you survived. That--" He swallows. "--must have been something."

Something, really, beyond definition, aside from the pointlessness of it all.