I have no idea how much relative time passed.

I opened my eyes slowly, squinting because the overhead lights were beating home runs into my skull. The back of my head hurt like hell from where I had hit the floor. I felt no pain in my forehead. I raised up my hand to filter some of the light and realized with a shock that I wasn’t even wounded.

He was bent down over me.

“I did not expect that,” he said. He looked me over for a moment, then let out a long sigh.

“It seems that you’re protected,” he finally said. He stood up. “I could probably wound you, but I seriously doubt I could kill you. Alas, I don’t have the time to test that theory out. Shooting you probably set off alarm bells and I need to be gone before they get responded to.”

I think I managed to say, “Whaa…?”

Freddy looked over at Agent Borges. “I was really looking forward to that game of chess too,” he said. “Ah well. One doesn’t mess with a protected one.”

With that he vanished and the room exploded with action.

Chalone finished falling and blood started to blanket the room. Agent Borges let out a yell like a banshee and fell to the ground, his gun clattering away from us all. The door burst open a second or two later and Eric, Gloria and Agent Faulkner all ran into the room, weapons drawn.

“What the hell just happened?” Faulkner yelled.

“Get after him!” Borges shot back, obviously in a lot of pain.

“Get after who? There’s no one here but you three!”

“Freddy!” Borges shouted. “He shot Chalone and Carter in the head. Me in the shoulder. He’s got that damned air gun!”

“There was no one in here but the three of you,” Eric said. “One instant you were talking and the next you were all down.”

“What?” Borges looked up, and then around the room taking it all in.

Gloria was making her way around the room. “Chalone’s dead,” she said. She got to me. “Carter’s not! Call for a second bus!”

Borges looked my way. “Why the hell aren’t you dead?” he asked. “I could see him raise the gun to your head out of the corner of my eye. It was super fast but I saw him shoot you! I saw you go down!”

I rolled my head in his direction. “I’m in one hell of a lot of pain,” I shot back truthfully. “I don’t feel like I got shot though. I feel like I got knocked down by a car.”

Detective Clapton had put his weapon away by this point and knelt down by me. “So that thick skull of yours saves the day again,” he chuckled.

I started to laugh, which made my head hurt even more, which I found just as funny. “Fuck you Eric,” I finally managed. “Oh, this hurts.”

Eric helped me up by pulling the chair upright with me in it. I got woozy for a moment but it passed. I noticed that Detective Martin had also come into the room and was helping stench the flow of blood from Agent Borges’ shoulder. I could see he knew what he was doing so I looked back at Eric. “Talk?” I asked.

“Talk,” he confirmed.

So I talked. I explained everything as I remembered it, from Freddy appearing in the room with the weapon to the words he said right down to the smell, which I now took an extra moment to think about. “There was something a bit sulfuric about it too,” I said.

“Like eggs or like brimstone?” Eric asked.

“Brimstone.”

“What. The. Fuck.” Martin said. Pauses between the words and everything like an internet meme. He looked back at Borges, who nodded.

“That pretty much matches up to how I remember it too,” he said. “Pull the surveillance if you haven’t already. He said it would look like the room exploded.”

“Like everything exploded at once,” I quoted.

He took a deep gulp of air. “I can’t tell you anything about the whole ‘time’ business, but he moved awfully damned fast. Faster than anything I’ve ever seen.”

“You can see him on the video,” came Gloria’s voice from the doorway. “We upgraded to hi resolution digital cameras a while back. You have to slow the playback down horrendously, but outlines and such can be seen. He moves through the room like a ghost. It backs you up, but I’ll be damned if I can explain it.”

I rubbed the back of my head; no bruise seemed to be forming and the pain had subsided a bit. “The gun?” I asked.

“Gone.”

I sighed. “Well, shit.”

“Any idea what that ‘protected one’ bullshit was about?”

“No clue at all. I’d like to think if I had that kind of protection I would have been shot a few times less than I have been.”

At this moment the paramedics arrived. They saw to Agent Borges first and then he and I were both hustled off to County General to be examined and patched up.