There’s the sound of handcuffs being ratcheted closed as Smythe puts Ms. Towel under arrest.

  I put up a hand and say, “Don’t do that. I’m not pressing charges. Please.”

  Smythe looks up at me.

  So does Ms. Towel, who’s flushed, with her eyes all red and watery. I can’t tell if she’s crying, or she’s one of those people that cries when they’re super angry. Yeah, she looks pissed, but she’s not struggling or anything. If anything, she seems resigned, perfectly fine with whatever’s going to be done with her. There’s no acknowledgment from her or any response to what I just said.

  Smythe says, “You sure?”

  I’m about to answer when the bus bounces a little and Torelli bounds out the door. “Bunch of kids in there,” he says. “Quiet as church mice.”

  “From the bikers,” I say.

  Torelli arches an eyebrow at me.

  “From their compound?” I say.

  I hear the sheriff swear. He takes a deep breath while rubbing his forehead. Those around me brace for orders.

  He opens his mouth to give them, but there’s a commotion from the street. A wake erupts through the rear ranks of officers as they’re jostled aside as someone short bullies through. I have time to wonder what’s going on before I see the tall figure of Agent Tyler, grim-faced, trailing the disturbance. Ochoa steams through like a tiny tug boat, knocking aside battleships to stand in front of me. She flinches at me, there’s a searing pain in my face, and the world tilts again.

  She’s slapped me! On the same side as Ms. Towel!

  I should’ve figured.

  Straightening back up slowly, holding my face, the sound comes again of handcuffs being applied. Agent Tyler’s putting them on Ochoa.

  I shake my head. “I won’t press charges against her either.”

  Tyler marches Ochoa toward the station, anyway. “Sorry?” she says, pointing to her ear. “Can’t hear you. Too much noise. Tell me again in about an hour.”

  I’m led away soon after as the sheriff’s cursing bitterly. Seems some asshole left a bus blocking the exit.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  I’m in my old holding cell and it’s totally fucked up that I feel more at home here, safer than anywhere else in this universe, even if it gives me time to think. For things to sink in.

  What did I do?

  What did I just do?

  The little room is a tad too small for satisfactory pacing. The damn walls are too close together, and I’m turning so quickly and often enough that I’ll probably get dizzy.

  I’m not under arrest but ‘being held for questioning’ and I want to answer and ask some of my own, but they’ve got me waiting.

  I feel on the edge of panic. I feel like, if I sit down, I’ll only have to stand right back up again to deal with something else. God knows what. A fire? A gunfight? Godzilla?

  And I’m so tired. I know I’m not thinking clearly. Yeah, I got some sleep. Was that last night? But not enough, obviously. How else do you explain what I just did? Walked through a criminal biker gang’s hideout to pull almost thirty kids out of there by myself? It’s insane. I could’ve gotten killed. I could’ve gotten the kids killed.

  But what else could I do? I felt what was going to happen. If I had waited…. Well, we’ll never know, right asshole? You went and did it, anyway.

  I know those kids are okay now. That they’re out in the station being looked after, their parents called, probably being wrapped in a blanket.

  Wait. I’m wrapped in a blanket. When did that happen? Isn’t that for shock? Am I in shock?

  Never mind.

  Amir’s got my phone. I should ask for it back. I need to call—.

  Ma Barker’s pizza chooses that moment to mount its revenge. Pizza doesn’t normally do this to me, but it’s hardly been a typical day. The holding cell’s got a toilet, thank God, and what happens next at my southern end is unspeakable.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  An hour later, I’m still pacing.

  The door opens and Agent Tyler steps in. She looks down at me, her arms crossed.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Ben,” she says. “Get some rest.”

  “Can’t.”

  Agent Tyler is very large. She puts her hands on my shoulders and guides me to my bunk. I sit.

  “You need to rest,” she says.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Are the kids okay?”

  “Yes, they’re all fine.”

  “Good. Agent Tyler, the things they went through—.” My voice cracks and I’m tearing up.

  “We’re going to have a talk,” says Tyler. “Now.”

  I nod.

  “You did a lot of good today. Did a lot of things right,” she says. “You saved twenty-nine kids’ lives. Amir Amin? He’s been missing for four years. He’s the oldest of them at twenty. The next oldest is sixteen. The youngest is eight. One of the little Guatemalan girls. They were sold by a coyote at the border three weeks ago, and we’ve been looking for them. You got us the address of the house they were being held in and the address of the house they were going to be moved to. Ben, there were only fifteen workstations set up there. We think they were going to eliminate some of the computer kids. There was no sign of any holding area for the girls, but there was a backhoe in the backyard beside a ten-foot by ten-foot by ten-foot hole, and ten bags of quicklime. We think Amir’s message spooked them and they were tying off loose ends. Reducing their risks. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  I nod.

  “They’re all alive because of you. Because you acted.”

  I nod.

  “Now, you did some unimaginably stupid things today, too. You ditched me and Ochoa. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that mad,” Tyler says. “And she gets mad a lot.”

  “She really hates me, doesn’t she.”

  Tyler snorts. “Then you did something seasoned undercover agents have difficulty doing. You infiltrated a biker gang that was armed to the teeth and on high alert, commandeered a bus you didn’t know how to drive, fought with a biker armed with a shotgun around a bunch of kids, sideswiped a cruiser, and blocked the exit of the police station when they were trying to respond to the crisis you precipitated. The sheriff’s people rounded up six bikers once they got out of here, but the rest, including that Otter guy who knows what you look like, got away. For now.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes,” says Tyler. “Here’s my point, Ben. You did a lot of good today. Stupidly. Yes, if you hadn’t acted, the bikers would be at their new location, some kids would be dead, the rest still enslaved, and we’d have not the first clue where they were or what was going on. You know what all this tells me?” She pokes me in the chest. “You. Need. Help,” she says. “I want you to understand something. As I’m getting to know you, understanding you a little bit, I can see you struggling with all this, think. I know you want to help. You feel driven to do so and I bet you always have. It’s what’s got you here, cursed like you are, and you know that. Here’s what you don’t know. You don’t have to take responsibility for everything. Every bit of bad luck that you feel happening around you? That’s not your fault. My guess is that luck is just the confluence of events all around us, crashing together to develop strings of causality as a direct result of the actions and intentions of all the people around us. Bad things happen sometimes because people make bad choices. Sometimes bad things happen anyway. Good things too. None of that happens because of you.”

  “Yes, it does! It—.”

  “Why? Because you feel it? Because you can see it just before it happens? Because you can nudge it one way or the other? If I throw a rock at your head and you duck, causing the rock to hit an eight-year-old child behind you, did you hit the kid with a rock? What if you actively knock it aside instead and some other kid gets hit? Are you to blame? I threw the rock, Ben. Not you. Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “You need to think about that some more. Believe it or not, I’m here to help, and like I said, you need it. I’m going to give it to you. Now, first thing’s first. You’re going to sleep.”

  “But—.”

  “You’re exhausted. If you lay down and can relax, you’ll sleep, trust me. Besides, if you don’t lay down right now, I’ll get an EMT in here to sedate you.” She looks at me, her eyebrows raised. They don’t so much as quiver until I concede and lay down.

  “Good,” she says. “We’ll talk more in the morning. Oh! I almost forgot. Melanie is doing great. I don’t think we’d have even been able to get the kids off the bus without her.” There’s a twinkle in her eye.

  “Melanie?”

  “Melanie Linn,” she says. “Doctor Melanie Linn. She’s a child psychologist? You first met her in her apartment when she was wearing a towel. She specializes in trauma, if you can believe it. How lucky are we?”

  I bark out a laugh.

  She widens her eyes and tilts her head back, extends her hand, and moves it in a tight circle. “Sleep,” she intones, like she’s casting a spell. Then she winks at me and closes the door.

  There’s no way I’ll be able to sleep, but I owe it to her to give it a shot. I’ll just relax, maybe do some deep breathing exercises and—.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  The door opening wakes me up. Startling awake like this always disorients me. I know I’m in the holding cell. Then I remember that I’m not in trouble. Then I remember that I’m only probably not in trouble and, when I rub the stubble on my cheeks, my face still hurts.

  “Good morning,” says Agent Tyler.

  “Is it?” I say. “How’d I do?”

  “You had a station full of capable people looking after a bunch of scared kids,” says Tyler. “One of the vending machines quit working at about three a.m. for no reason which forced the sheriff to invest in some donuts which, sadly, are all gone. Was that you? Who knows?”

  I hear the rustle of a paper bag and look up, hope in my heart.

  Sure enough, Agent Tyler, a saint and a genius, has brought me breakfast. It’s fast food but, hey, like Amir said yesterday. Beggars. Choosers. I take the bag from her, gratefully, and start digging through it.

  “You’ve been asleep about ten hours, by the way,” Tyler tells me. “How do you feel?”

  “A little stiff,” I say. “But better.” I take a bite of my breakfast sandwich. Now I’m much better.

  “Good,” she says. “We need your help, Ben.”

  “Oh, I can help now?”

  Tyler smirks. She takes a letter from inside her suit and hands it to me.

  “What’s this?” I say, setting my sandwich aside to open it out of the way.

  “The paperwork for you being a consultant for us. I got my boss to rush the process a bit after telling him what you’ve been up to these past three days. The rest of your paperwork seems to be coming along.”

  It’s been three days? Feels like three weeks. This would be the morning of my fourth day in my new universe, maybe a week until Halloween. I’ll have to check. My sense of time is off because of my sleep schedule and, well, all the chaos, and I still don’t have my phone.

  I set the letter aside. I’ll sign it after breakfast.

  “So, yeah,” says Tyler. “Now you can help.”

  “Where’s Ochoa?” I say, my tone dark.

  Tyler smiles. “She’s been doing interrogations and debriefings non-stop, but there’s one that she just can’t crack.”

  I nod. “Amir,” I say around a mouthful.

  Tyler nods. “Amir. He won’t even give anybody your phone. Which has been ringing all morning and driving everybody crazy.”

  The sandwich, hash browns, and orange juice are soon gone. I sign the papers and now I’m officially employed on a case-by-case basis by the FBI. Who knew?

  Tyler leads me out of the room. “We’ll get you a shower and change of clothes later,” she says. “Did you figure things out with the bank?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “My money’s all back. Amir took it and sent the codes and coordinates. You knew that, right?”

  Tyler nods. “Yes, and we’d dearly love to know how. Our friends at the Secret Service are scratching their heads. He’s got them and the FBI thinking of recruiting him for white hat work.”

  “White hat?”

  “White hat hackers test systems to prevent breaches before the bad guys can do it,” says Tyler. “We employ a lot of former criminals in that capacity. Amir did it all under duress, which, in my book, makes him even more impressive. We think he’s done a lot more for the bikers, but he hasn’t talked yet. We’ve let him sleep and we’re getting him ready for our best interrogator in east of the Mississippi.”

  She leads me around the corner to the interrogation rooms where Ochoa is standing by the door, her arms crossed, the lips under her glasses are tight and thin, with all the blood squished out of them. Her thumb aims at the door. Inside, through the little window, I can see Amir Amin. He looks scared and determined.

  “Will you talk to this kid, Ben?” she says. “So, I can get started already?”