Tyler says what I’m thinking, “Is this a good idea?” She opens her hand at me. “He’s in a hospital.”

Ochoa shrugs. “His luck goes both ways,” she says. “It evens out. Besides, my guess is he’s been pushing this whole time.”

I’m not…. Yes. Yes, I am. I didn’t know I was doing it and I don’t think I consciously decided to do it, and if I did I don’t remember, but I’ve been pushing, just a little, for a long time now. It's not like there's a kind of speedometer for it, you know? Some kind of way I could measure it, how much I’m pushing versus how much I need to push or how far is too far to push. Now that I'm paying attention, I dial it down a notch or two, so it's just barely into the lighter side of even. Just in case.

“Ben?”

It’s Tyler. She’s been trying to ask me something while I was thinking. It’s not hard to guess what she asked.

“Yeah, I was,” I say. “Pushing. I didn’t even know I was doing it.” I look at Ochoa. “How’d you know?”

But she just smiles and chews her gum at me.

Tyler snorts.

The elevator opens and we head out into the hall. It’s very… hospital. There are rooms at intervals on the right and utility, storage, and the nurse’s station on the left. At the end of the hall, two uniformed policemen stand outside a hospital room with a wide window. Inside, a very large African American man in scrubs is working on the guy from the Impala.

As we walk down the corridor, I hear a frantic beeping from the room we just walked past. I can feel the cold dark gathering there and I push at it, trying to keep it back.

Nurses and a doctor are hurrying towards us, but I’m concentrating on my struggle so I’m slow to get out of the way. Tyler’s big hand takes me by the shoulder and pulls.

I stumble and trip. I’m falling toward the wall, face first.

I try to get my hands on the wall to brace myself so I don’t break my nose. I'd rather slide down the wall in style with my dignity intact, but my hand closes on something that gives me some purchase and I’m able to keep my feet.

Lights begin to flash and a voice directs us toward the exits.

I’ve pulled the fire alarm.

I look at Ochoa and Tyler.

They are both looking at me, hands on their hips, eyebrows expectant.

Something… behind me.

I turn.

The room with Captain Impala in it is swallowed in darkness. Black tendrils search from the doorway. As I watch, the big nurse steps out like he's emerging from a storm cloud, glaring at me.

There’s a white flash behind him and the hospital shakes with an explosion that pounds at my eardrums.

I step in front of my agents.

Searing pain in my hip as I’m spun into them and we all go down together in a tangle of limbs.

“Mo’s mad at you,” says Tyler.

I look up at her.

She’s smiling. Her expression is… fond?

"'Mo' is short for Monica?" I ask.

"Yep."

“She's mad?”

“Yep,” she says. “She said she always imagined being blown up would be more fun. You spoiled it by getting in the way.”

“Sorry.”

Tyler waves that away. She’s got a shallow cut on her forehead. “She’s upset you’re hurt,” she says. “That you tried to protect us. It was her idea to bring you up here, now she’s thinking about charging you with pulling the fire alarm. Triggering one without there being a fire is a felony, you know.”

“It was damned lucky that you did,” says the man in the other bed. It’s the big nurse from Captain Impala’s hospital room.

We’re each on a gurney tucked to either side of the ward’s corridor while triage is being done on others. He’s lying on his belly with a blanket over him. He’s naked otherwise. The scrubs he was wearing were blown right off him.

As far as we know and can tell at this point, the nurse is hurt worse than anybody, and they worked on him right there for the better part of an hour, removing bone fragments, and taking grim pleasure in identifying the pieces. The only person hurt worse was Captain Impala, of course, who exploded.

They took a single shard of the kidnapper’s pelvis from my hip. It hurts. I got seven stitches and something for the pain.

The hospital room Impala was in is a red shambles. There was no fire but there's a smell like burnt bread or something that’s still lingering.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

The nurse says, “You pulling that alarm saved my life, and my big ass blocking the door probably helped a bunch of other people.”

“What about the other emergency?” I ask. “From right before.”

“Mr. Teasdale?” says the nurse. “He’s fine. They got him back up and running. Worked on him right through the explosion.”

“Some day, huh?” I ask.

“You don’t know the half of it,” says the nurse. “Earlier today, right before my shift? I picked up some donuts and a fucking meteorite blasted through the engine block of my car!”

I look up at Tyler.

“I only took the temporary plates off yesterday. Had that car for a minute,” says the nurse. “And now I’m blown up. It’s only Tuesday!” And the big man begins to laugh.

I sit up.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” says Tyler.

“Bathroom,” I say. I point down the hall. “There’s one right there. I’ll be fine.”

They’ve got the nurse’s personal effects piled at his feet. There’s a wallet, his car keys, his ID.

I hold out my hand to him. “I’m Ben Walker,” I say.

He shakes my hand. I’m six feet tall and slim. I’m not a small man but his hand dwarfs mine. His grip is firm and gentle. “Gerald Whately,” he says.

I don’t really have to go to the bathroom.

I slip my lottery ticket into Whately’s stuff. I’ve got twenty thousand in the bank I got for ten bucks, a settlement coming probably from the convenience store, and maybe a reward from the bank. I won’t miss it.

“Where is Ochoa?” I ask when I get back. “Is she that mad at me?”

“No,” says Tyler. “She’s handling something else.”

I nod. “What’s with the sunglasses?” I ask. “It’s cloudy today. And we’re inside.”

Tyler sighs. “They aren’t sunglasses. They're two-way mirrors,” she says. “Don’t tell her I told you.”

“Why?” I ask.

“She’s a woman in the FBI,” says Tyler. “We all have our issues working there. Ochoa? She’s got volumes of issues.”

“She’s got the sunglasses,” I say. “What’s your thing?”

“Me?” she says. “I’m very large. Sometimes I have to throw my weight around. When I have to do that I’ve chosen to do it, every time, demonstrably. It’s helped.”

“The patriarchy’s firmly in place here too, I see.”

Tyler snorts.

“Does Willamette have an FBI branch office?” I ask.

Tyler frowns. She says, “No, we’re out of Akron. Why?”

“You guys were already here,” I say. “I remember you said. Before I got here.”

“Yes, but that has nothing to do with this.”

“So, where’s Ochoa?”

Tyler says, “I guess it’ll be in the news later anyway. There were other explosions here today. Four. In the morgue. She's down there looking into it.”

“Four?” I say. Then it hits me. “The bank robbers?”

“Shhh! Keep it down!”

“Dead bodies exploding?” I say in a low voice. “But Captain Impala was alive, right? He was up here. Not in the morgue.”

“Captain Impala?”

“The Impala guy. The kidnapping bastard.”

“Oh, I get it. Nice,” says Tyler. “No, he was alive. Now, well, I don’t imagine you thought you’d go pelvis to pelvis with a real-life kidnapper when you got up this morning, now did you?”

“Something’s going on in Willamette,” I say. “Something that’s not me. What part of the FBI do you work for? They’ve got different sections, right?”

“Ochoa and I have the honor to be the only two agents making up the Paranormal Assessment Unit in the Akron office.”

“You guys investigate spooky stuff?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Dude, there was a whole popular TV show based on that where I come from.”

“Here that could be a documentary.”

“Are Ochoa’s eyes spooky then? Magic or something?”

“What’s that about my eyes, asshole?” says Ochoa. She’s down by my feet. I have no idea when she got there.

“Hola, mami. ¿Que tal?” I hear Whately say.

Ochoa rounds on him. “I don’t speak Spanish, big boy. So, I’m going to have to guess at the proper response.” She swats him on his ass.

He howls.

“Oops,” says Ochoa. “Must’ve got it wrong.”

“I’m not so sure,” says Whately. He's laughing through the pain. “That’s all the Spanish I know, I swear.”

Ochoa looks at me. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m Latina. It’s just that my family dates back to St. Augustine, Florida. Older than Jamestown or Roanoke, bitches." She sneers at Whately. "My family’s forgotten more Spanish than you’ll ever know, big boy.”

“You’re so weird,” says Whately. “I dig that about you.”

Ochoa giggles. She turns to me. She adjusts her glasses. “Now, what was this about my eyes?”

“Nothing.”

“If you want to see ‘em, just ask.”

“You gonna spank him if he does?” asks Whately.

“Agent Ochoa!” says Tyler. She's massaging her temples. “Let’s step out into the stairwell for a moment shall we and you can tell me what you’ve learned?”

The FBI agents step away and I can hear Whately laughing.

“What?” I ask.

“You poor bastard,” he says.

“What?”

But he won’t tell me.

There’s something I’m missing. It’s bothering me.

The FBI was already in the neighborhood when I ran afoul of that first kidnapper, Lansky, and her goon.

Lansky cursed me and left me for dead but Beardy the Wizard shot her.

After he took a look at me, Beardy cursed me too then kicked bricks.

I think it was Tyler who said the FBI was aware of Lansky before this. She said she was a freelancer, and Tyler and Ochoa belong to the Paranormal Assessment Unit, right? Maybe they were looking for Lansky or whoever hired her.

Okay, put a pin in that for a moment.

Captain Impala was a kidnapper too. He just blew up along with all the bank robbers. Why?

I mean, it’s possible that Impala did it to himself somehow, but the assholes from the bank?

The exploding people all have to be connected somehow, don’t they? Beyond the fact that they’re criminals? Gotta be, but I don’t see how.

Is it all connected?

Maybe not. Lansky and her henchman were professionals. Were the bank robbers? I don’t think so. They were much too nervous, and I think a professional driver would’ve escaped rather than run in and start shooting. I wonder if there’s been any success in identifying any of them and would they tell me if they did.

As far as Impala being a pro, I have no idea. There's not enough data.

And then there’s the smell. The burnt bread odor is still there and has been since the explosion.

It reminds me of the bank somehow but I can’t figure out why. Did I smell something like that there? I can’t tell. Smells are funny that way. Tied strongly to memory, yeah, but not as orderly as the other senses, I think. At least not for me. I mean, a certain smell can take me someplace totally unrelated to whatever it is. Lavender, for example, always reminds me of a date I took to a college hockey game. I have no idea why.

A psychology professor told me once that the brain is like a big filing cabinet managed by someone who can’t always be bothered to get it right. You’ll forget a name, for example, and it’ll bother you for a week until someone hands you a cheeseburger and then, somehow, you remember. The name file got put in the cheeseburger folder, see?

So, for right now the yeasty smell of burnt bread calls up the bank for some reason. Is it a clue or is it a misfiling? There’s no way to tell.

Wait a minute. How’s any of this my business? I’m just some guy. I shouldn't be mixed up in any of this. It's interesting to think about academically. You know, solving a mystery? I'm not even an investigative journalist. I covered church functions and high school plays and stuff. I'm literally nobody here. I've got an envelope filled with lies to prove it.

Nobody.

Only I’m not anymore, am I? Things are going on. Bad things. And I can help. If I can, I should.

I decide I’m going to.