The Fix [Open]

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq, who had been ambling along comfortably, was lost in thought. He considered carefully the extent of the things Pagusel had said. It wasn't unheard of for the unconscious to maintain a certain level of awareness, but it seemed strange to him that he hadn't noticed anything going on. How had she?

He assumed that it was because he was too occupied with playing doctor, as he had done for years and years before. There were emotions attendant to the remembering he had been required to do.

He had once marveled at how could leave his life behind but not his past. Now he only pondered over the practicality of moving on once more. His old legs were tired, but they had at least one more journey left in them--perhaps to the south, where the weather was warmer.

Of course, he'd need his gear for that.. whatever of it was left. Either way, there was no avoiding what awaited him in the city. And there would be something there. He was sure of it now. If an assassin, a man in whom instincts about life and death had been ingrained, spooked upon hearing the true nature of things, perhaps he, too, should be afraid.

He continued to amble, however, and mild thoughts drifted sluggishly through his head. He didn't much care that his circumstances presented themselves as rather inescapable. In fact, there was a certain comfort in the resignation.

Another mild realization was that Pagusel was capable of bluffing. She had always seemed honest. The only question had been if it was to a fault. Evidently not. There were probably other things she was covering up. She probably had more control over herself and the situation than he realized. But it was of no consequence.

"It will all be over soon," he reminded himself quietly. "For the better or for the worse."

He had to jog to catch up with her again. When he did, he held himself back a few paces. He watched her carefully as she took careful steps, her torso barely moving, held in place with disciplined stillness under her heavy coat. The crunching of his boots masked the sounds of her quiet steps as he continued to plod along, watching and following. She seemed to know where she was going, perhaps better than he.

[Pagusel]

Pagusel stopped and looked down abruptly as her foot touched on the edge of a wagon wheel rut. She glanced back at Daq, her face a picture of surprise. "We are near now," she said hastily. Her voice carried none of the composure it usually did; it sounded as if she was just coming to the realization as the words exited her mouth. Perhaps she was a bit embarrassed she hadn't even realized the clearing they were coming upon was in fact a stretch of the wide, stiffly-packed dirt road that led to the city.

Pagusel took a few small steps to turn herself ninety degrees. Behind her was a hazy denseness of trees and a dark length of road that disappeared far in the distance. Before her, the trees thinned, and the road turned sharply. The trees were younger near the perimeter of the woods; they appeared crisp in the fine pre-dawn light. Even the gentle watery slur of the Ofriyu Mar, to which the road would soon lead them, was audible, suddenly, it seemed.

She looked back at Daq and lifted a relaxed hand in his direction, palm up. "Come on," she said. Her composure was back.

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq stumbled over one last tangle of undergrowth and fell onto the hard pack of the road that led up to the city entrance. He wanted to brace himself, but only one arm cooperated. He ended up with a face-full of dirt. Fortunately, his face took the brunt of the impact. The contents of his bag seemed mostly undisturbed.

He picked himself up quickly and began brushing himself off. "I'm fine," he shouted ahead.

He saw Pagusel glance back at him, face full of surprise.

"Don't worry. I'm fine!" he called out. He tried to collect the grit in his mouth to one place to spit. He spat on the ground a few times and kept walking.

Daq heard her say something about them being close. As the ringing in his ears settled down, the sounds of the nearby river became more apparent. He couldn't see it yet, but he guessed that she was right--they were closing in on the bridge to the city. It was still rather dark. They had made good time.

He saw Pagusel usher him on, and he jogged painfully to catch up with her. The foot that had gotten snagged was beginning to bother him.

"Yeah," he said. "Let's go."

Dusting off his cheek carefully, Daq realized that he was bleeding.

[Pagusel]

Pagusel hadn't seen the fall itself. She had only heard the soft crash and then watched, perplexed, as Daq brushed himself off. He reassured her more than once, and she gave him the benefit of the doubt that he had enough sense not to lie about such things. She went on, and he caught up to her.

Pagusel turned her head to him as he came up beside her. The first thing she noticed, oddly, was the almost imperceptible way he favored one foot in his stride. Her own gait was quite symmetrical. Her upper lip stiffened as she slowly lifted her gaze to his face, from which he was wiping a bit of dirt and blood.

She stopped in her tracks. "Are you alright?" she asked. A hint of skepticism tinted her regal tone. If he was going to tell her he was fine to begin with when he was now clearly bleeding, she couldn't expect his answer to this question to be enlightening one way or the other. She left it with no need for an answer as she clicked the tip of her tongue against the back of her teeth and tipped her head sympathetically. The darkening of her brow gave away mild vexation.

Pagusel lifted a hand and touched a slender finger lightly to the scratch on his cheek. As she did this, she leaned forward just a bit to inspect it with a deepening concern written on her face. She seemed perhaps overly consternated by the situation at hand.

"I used to be able to fix these things," she murmured with soft wonder. For a brief moment, she lifted her eyes to his and stared intensely, then dropped her gaze to scrutinize his cheek again. "Don't you think you should sit down for a moment? To see that you can assess the damage?"

Her tone had become a bit less formal than before. Whether it was an effect of the drug winding through her system, her concern for him, or simply a growing comfort, something had appeared to bring her guard down--if she had her guard up to begin with.

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq wasn't sure he heard her right when she murmured to herself about being able to fix 'these things.' He wasn't even particularly sure what she meant by 'these things,' though he assumed that she had noticed the blood he was dabbing away from his temple.

He took a wrong step, and his knee buckled from the pain. As he went down, he heard Pagusel ask if he shouldn't sit. He barely managed to avoid hurting himself again.

"Well," he said. "I guess that's decided."

He dabbed at his temple with his sleeve again. It was still bleeding. He wondered if he had struck a root or a stone. He took off his pack and reached deep inside it to pull out a handkerchief. It looked surprisingly delicate for something he would own, and it was embroidered with initials--SB.

He pressed it to his face, and came back with a better picture of where he was bleeding. A bit of blood from his cheek, and significantly more from his temple.

"Yeah.." he said. "That's not good."

He held the handkerchief to his head with one hand and began to unlace his boot with the other. After he'd got it undone, he tried to pull it off, but a sharp pain cut him off. He put his hand to his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut.

After a long, steady breath out he opened his eyes and wiped them with his sleeve.

"Could you take this off for me?" he asked. He gritted his teeth in advance.

[Pagusel]

Pagusel watched Daq drop suddenly near her feet with little change of expression. Her chin simply fell as if on a clean hinge, subject to the pull of gravity like Daq. The soft crash of his hitting the forest floor again evoked a tight-lipped scowl of concern.

She dropped into a kneel beside Daq and waited with her hands palms-down in the dirt as he produced the handkerchief and dabbed at his blood. She glanced first at the spots of blood on the cloth and then to the corresponding wounds on his face in affirmation of what he had just put in words.

"It's not good," she repeated with a clear-toned sigh, "but healing magic is a lie." The second half of her sentence could have been a drug-induced non-sequitur, or even just a confusion of the subject of discussion. Either way, she seemed lucid enough to guide Daq's hand down from his head--where he was blotting the blood but doing little to stem the flow--to his leg, just above his ankle. Her eyes paused briefly on the stained monogram before raising to meet his.

"The head will bleed a lot from even minor flesh wounds, so please try to stay calm about that. There is no need to soil the handcloth so much." She seemed confident enough about her decision as she pressed her hands over his to solidify his grasp on his own leg. She would need him to hold it steady while she pulled off the boot.

She placed her hands on either side of the sole of the boot and wiggled it cautiously. Rather than tense with concentration, her face actually relaxed and her expression lengthened as if in curiosity as she pulled on the boot to remove it. The mass slid off in a few separate movements as she did her best to maintain the smoothest possible route.

Pagusel looked up to Daq again and then looked down and to the left, averting her gaze to allow him time to assess his foot on his own terms. As she was looking away, her hands disappeared under the hem of her cloak, and by the wriggle of her shoulders, she appeared to be fiddling with something behind her back under there.

"Healing magic is simple. No, not to perform, but simple to reconcile." She was unusually forthcoming with her words now, and speaking somewhat quickly. It was as if she was trying to distract Daq with a particularly heavy brand of small talk. "Healing is natural, of course. Bodies heal of their own devices. Healing magic is a crutch, a salve not only to the wounds of the flesh but to the discontent of spirit. Performers of this craft can be content to be useful. What kind of life is that, which deals only in that which is easily reconciled within one's small, small cosmic scales?"

As she was speaking, Pagusel's arms were visibly moving around and around her torso under her cloak. She finished speaking and her hands stopped moving. A length of oily suede cloth, many times longer than it was wide, dropped down onto her feet from beneath her cloak. She lowered a hand down to take hold of it, and she lifted it for Daq's acceptance. "We should wrap your wound," she said in explanation.

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq was intrigued by Pagusel's tangent. It was strange to have come across another who thought little of magic--a person free of the silly superstitions that clouded the proverbial minds of, he assumed, every little province from the foreign southern lands to the familiar north.

Of course, that argument didn't sit right with him. He'd long since learned to steer clear of denouncing magic, even in his head. Magic was one of the subjects he willfully ignored. It was just hearing it from another person that shook him out of his habit. He listened intently as she talked about magic being a crutch. He didn't completely follow her train of thought as she talked about cosmic scales, but he thought he understood her drift. He focused on her calm face, mesmerized by how nonchalantly she presented such strange thoughts.

When he looked back down at his leg, he was surprised by two things. Firstly, his boot was off. Apparently he had been too engrossed in Pagusel's short commentary to notice its removal. He nodded absentmindedly as she suggested wrapping his ankle. That was, of course, the right action. Now that he thought about it, it would have been best not to remove the boot at all, but with the boot now off, there was no sense in forcing it back on. Wrapping would have to do.

Secondly, the hand she had moved to his leg, his left, was gripping it just above the ankle with vice-like strength. All this talk of magic, especially the words that were not spoken in its favor, had caused agitation, he realized.

"Please do not speak anymore of magic," Daq sad quickly and firmly. "I do not attest to belief in superstition, but my experience suggests that devils come when called."

He watched his hand relax. A rather pitiful whimper forced its way out of his mouth before he managed to get control of himself again. A sharp pain had radiated suddenly from his ankle, like one final act of protest--a reminder not to let things get out of hand... so to speak.

[Pagusel]

Pagusel frowned thoughtfully as Daq reprimanded her perhaps unintentionally harshly. She shifted her position to balance her weight on the balls of her feet in a squat, which hid her knees beneath the drape of her cloak. She tipped her head back to take in the sight of him: his tense expression, his uncomfortable posture there on the ground by the road. If her expression was not so collected, one might take the rearing of her head as being taken aback by his words, but rather than react as such, she just frowned and looked.

She held up her hands to offer the swath of suede. "Would you feel more comfortable wrapping it yourself?" she said quietly. Her eyes grazed over the tense hand on his leg, and she looked up to his eyes again, hoping to thus communicate her reasons for asking.

Pagusel sighed and took the moment to stare at the wound on his head. It was good he was sitting, but she might have to assess the damage herself if he was slightly numb to it. The length of suede might even be better suited to dressing his head, if the bleeding was quite bad.

"I'm--not talking about superstition," she said as she lifted one hand to trace the area around the wound on Daq's temple, surveying the area of the damage. Her voice had slipped again into this strange small talk; she sounded almost as if she were making comfortable conversation. "Superstition is how we interact with the world around us. Our--microcosms? Our little worlds, I mean to say. You needn't worry, there is nothing devilish about what I'm saying."

Pagusel arched her back to improve her balance in her squatting position and withdrew her hand a few inches from Daq's head. "Broaden your experience, Mister Bekkar, to understand that there are things beyond devils. Healing magic is a thing that makes individuals feel big in the confines of a self-imposed small cage of understanding. This is what I am talking about."

[Daq Bekkar]

Pagusel retained her outward composure, but Daq feared that his sudden change in attitude had affected her. Was her moving back simply a repositioning? Or was it another subtle sign of a more resonant discomfort, one extending beyond the mere physical? Daq could hardly remember spending more time engaged in trying to comprehend another person. He feared that with each tested hypothesis and each new conjecture he was getting farther from the truth of things, but the intuitive hollows of his mind harbored a greater fear--that he was closing in on that truth. What would the understanding bring?

He took the suede from her and noted her focus on his hand. She never missed a beat, sadly.

"Sorry.." he mumbled. "I'm just.. very.. uhh. This all hurts quite a bit."

He had fallen just short of either apologizing for one thing or the other, but he let it remain that way. In the long run, there was nothing worth saying. There had been enough messy explanations already. He removed his sock and probed his ankle with practiced care winced occasionally.

"It's not broken or anything," he said, though he had really come to that conclusion much earlier. "I'm just a big crybaby."

He chuckled at himself while wrapping the ankle adeptly and tightly. It was strained or sprained at the worst.

"Such simple injuries," he said, thinking aloud half under his breath. He wondered why they were giving him so much trouble.

Feeling her touch at his temple, Daq focused in on what she was saying again--something about microcosms and superstition. It was clear that she had either missed or ignored the point of what he had said, but it didn't bother him. With his age came the understanding of how often people talk past one another. Curious to him was her haphazard use of words. Perhaps her speech and her demeanor were linked. Was Pagusel simply grace without content?

But what she said next caused a wave of conflicting impulses to race through him. He was at first offended by her suggestion that he understand things beyond devils. It was precisely because of those things that he wanted her to stop. Boundaries he had set up were beginning to be pushed. And then, of course, was fear. He could almost hear the foreign gears turning inside him as her comments once again regarding healing magic were processed. To him, they sounded like gears of war.

His hand jerked toward his knife, but he was ready for the impulse, and he caught it quickly with the other before the motion could even be partly completed.

"Yes, I see," he said nervously, hoping that agreeing with her would get her to abandon the issue. "Yes I know exactly what you mean."

Unfortunately, this couldn't be closer to the truth. Had she left room for ambiguity, he could have placated the surge of forces that struggled for control over his next move. However, she seemed to be implying quite obviously that magic was what people with stunted perspectives grasped at to feel important. Although most parts of him once openly and now secretly agreed with this, his acquiescence didn't settle well within him, on many accounts. He managed a feeble smile.

"How does the head look? It doesn't feel like it's too bad."

Daq was silently glad to see her arch away from him and withdraw her hand. The extra distance might serve to lessen the effect of any sudden retaliations on his part, should they come.

[Pagusel]

All of Daq resided within Pagusel's field of view. Drawn back from him a few feet as she was, he was perfectly framed by the blur of her periphery such that no ambient action interfered, yet no movement of his was outside of her scope. Under lesser circumstances, she might not have spotted the unexpected jerk of his hand and the nearly simultaneous move of his other hand to stifle it. She did, though, because her vantage point was perfect.

The move surprised her such that her shoulders recoiled--not greatly, but enough to sway her center of balance past the base provided by the balls of her feet. Pagusel stood swiftly with the momentum of the sway. She took a step back from Daq as he was reassuring her about his full and complete understanding of the subject.

Her hands disappeared up under her cloak. Her long fingers reappeared at the neckline of the garment to cradle her chin as she gazed on with an uneasy sort of concern. At Daq's beckoning, Pagusel stooped forward to see what she could of the wound that glistened with flowing blood. It was still dark and even having been out in it most of the night, her low-light vision was not developed to the point of discerning this sort of thing particularly clearly.

Standing before him with her knees crooked, her arms drawn in tightly, her cloak hanging from her shoulders as she bent at the waist, she was the image of a shaggy brown stork.

She moved her gaze slowly from his wound to his untrustworthy hand to his strained ankle, and back again to his temple. "Don't you have something--for the pain--in your . . . supplies?" she said after a long silence. She gave no appraisal of the bleeding wound as he had requested.

Pagusel let her chin list to the left so she could glance crookedly at the city not far away. An unusual, dark haze that appeared to be localized over a space no larger than a city block caught her attention just enough that she gazed for longer than a glance. She did not look back at Daq right away, but squinted into the distance as if trying to make sense of some perceived slight.

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq was surprised by Pagusel's sudden recoil. As far as he could tell, the movement of his hands was so disruptive that it brought her to her feet. The thought of the silent inventory she must have been keeping of his erratic behavior began to press upon him. He imagined with dread the advent of difficult questions that had seemed to hound him over the years--questions she would, in all probability, be asking soon.

Pagusel's new posture, standing over him, arms hidden, chin cradled, suggested an end to the strange almost-intimacy that had followed his falling. Daq's immediate reaction was a kind of relief. The guarded Pagusel was something he was beginning to understand, like a mix already sent through a number of trial runs. However, the casual Pagusel, coupled with his rising anxiety and heightened instability.. that was a new and dangerous brew.

Daq wondered what Pagusel was trying to conceal from him by responding so indirectly about his head wound, but he chose to ignore the urge to press her for an answer.

"Mmm.. Yeah," he replied simply. "An ointment, actually, though I am worried that.. Well--it's been known to affect judgment. But. Yeah, I do have something."

It was near the top--a clear gel in a clear container marked only with a red 'x'. Or a cross depending on which way he held it. He undid some of the wrappings on his ankle and dabbed it generously.

"The plant I've used to effect trans-dermal absorption.. is... uhh. I mean, sorry. Well.."

He focused on his ankle, trying to think of a layman's way of explaining it and missed Pagusel's diverted staring. Finally, he returned with, "It can work through the skin because of a plant ingredient that, unfortunately, clouds judgment."

Daq applied some to his temple cautiously. "It should also help with the healing, though these are so minor.." He chose to wipe his fingers off on his pant leg without looking at them. Perhaps blood had mixed in with the ointment because the wound was still bleeding, perhaps not. Whatever had dissuaded Pagusel from answering him, he'd rather not know.

"If you'll help me up," he said, extending his left hand. "We can probably get moving again. I'll need you to help me along until I can find a stick or something."

[Pagusel]

Pagusel's body remained still and poised, and only her chin pivoted on her neck as she looked back at Daq. The movement was slow and controlled, unlike her startle a few moments earlier. Daq went on about the properties of this salve he was using, and in response, Pagusel's eyes narrowed with a sympathetic sort of vague concern. When he backpedaled in an attempt to make himself clearer through less bookish language, her eyes widened and glazed slightly. Her brown irises strayed toward the left corners of her eyes as if to catch another glimpse of the small smoky cloud, but it was behind her now, rising as if from her shoulders if she were viewed straight-on.

Pagusel lowered her hands. She extended her left hand to take Daq's. In her right hand, she firmly grasped the bottom edge of her cloak, keeping it from rising up very far due to a lift her of arms. She swung her left foot forward a few feet to brace herself and next tightened her grip on Daq's hand to give him a swift pull up to his feet.

She didn't let their mutual grip linger past the necessary moment to assure his nominal stability. From a short, impersonal distance, she saw the moonlight glisten on Daq's temple where the ointment on his wound muted the reflection to something less vivid than the glitter of pulsing blood. This appeared to satisfy her for the moment.

The hand that had helped Daq up turned a palm to him in a signal to pause. Pagusel turned on her feet to look back at the city. The smoky haze seemed clearer than a minute before. "Yes, let's go," she said curtly. She twisted her wrist to offer a palm-up hand for the support Daq had requested.

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq felt dizzy when he first got to his feet. He'd been thinking about how quickly Pagusel had regained her composure, when the shift of pressures and rushing of fluids in his body washed away all of the thoughts in his head. He repressed the urge to vomit, noting almost subconsciously that nausea had been a symptom of his last batch of the salve, though he'd suspected that it had been botched at the time.

"Urp.." he gasped. "Thanks."

All of a sudden, the night's chill became very apparent. He was sweating. Desperate to get his bearings, he looked around, focusing first on Pagusel, and then the sky that framed her. Just as she glanced toward the city, Daq noticed the oily looking smoke that drifted up from it. He traced its course as it blew to the north, partly occluding his view of the moon. The smoke illuminated by the moonlight had a strange amber hue.. maybe even orange.

He stepped back into his boot and felt a reasonably sharp jab of pain from his ankle. Grunting, he leaned more heavily on Pagusel's upturned palms.

"S-sorry. I'm just gonna take it slow for now."

The first step he took was rather painful. To keep his mind preoccupied, he quizzed himself on what compounds could cause an orange smoke like that. He immediately thought of some organic dyes, but decided that that was too easy of an answer. The next step didn't hurt him as badly, and the one after that was a little better as well. He stretched his focus to include things that would do that when mixed as he hobbled a few more steps.

Quickly, he settled on a few combinations of nitrates, organic sugars, and chelating agents that would do it. He took a couple more steps, which didn't seem to hurt him badly at all. His final trick was to narrow it down to a combination of things he had left in his lab.

"Potassium nitrate, glyceraldehyde, reduced pig iron..." he said quietly, naming compounds each time he took a step.

"Oh..."

Daq stopped dead in his tracks. Everything fell into place quickly--the smoke rising from what looked like the residential district, the compounds that could have caused it if mixed, the big unfriendly giant who was prone to smashing things like vials containing chemicals meant to be separated from each other..

"My lab!" he exclaimed. He let go of Pagusel's hands and began to lurch ahead with an awkward hop-skip motion.

"No.. no.. no.. no.." he repeated to himself as he went, stopping only briefly to pick up a stick as he passed it. With its help, he stumped along toward the gates as quickly as he could, ignoring whatever pain the analgesic hadn't managed to take care of.

[Pagusel]

Pagusel folded her fingers down to grasp Daq's hand when he took hers for support, but she extended her forearm from the elbow so as to keep an impersonal distance. She pushed up against his weight with a force reciprocal to his. Pagusel would not make eye contact.

She looked over her shoulder at the city, disregarding the smudge of smoke in the sky and instead appraising the distance to the gates--not far at all now. When they set off walking, she had to crook her elbow in and allow Daq to be closer, if she hoped to offer any support at all. In the first few steps, his gait lurched as he was still reaching an understanding of his strained foot's capability, and she softened his forward motion with a gentle bump of her shoulder.

Pagusel's touch felt rigid, even a little cold, and though she didn't lack for offering physical support where it was needed, she wouldn't look at Daq as she helped him along.

His vocal contribution--"Potassium nitrate, glyceraldehyde, reduced pig iron..."--was punctuated by Pagusel's deliberate steps, and somewhat muted by the obvious lack of words shared between them. Pagusel had dropped any sign of real friendliness ever since she had startled at the frightening jerk of his hand and his attempt to cover it.

Presently, her companion stopped short. She finally looked at him--down at his foot, up at his face. Before she could register what that look of shock on his face might be attributed to, he let go of her and tried to go off on his own.

"Mister Bekkar, your lab?" she called hoarsely. A creak had crept into her voice and she hadn't been prepared to speak, and thus hadn't cleared it.

Pagusel started off after him, taking brisk strides. "Mis--" she paused to clear her throat and spoke again more boldly--"Daq!" She extended a finger at full armslength to point to the column of smoke in the city, an at the same time cradled her cloak to her midsection with her other arm so it did not rise and reveal her skin. Keeping astride with him was not too difficult a task, given his hobbled pace, but the ground was sloping downward a bit, and she had to keep a few steps behind him, lest she risk slipping on her unfit sandals.

"If the origin of this," she said, referring to the smoke she indicated with her point, "is in fact an accident involving contents of your lab, I think we must approach with caution, and by all means take our time so as not to worsen your condition. Surely you don't expect to halt a reaction of chemicals by your own hands, as if prying apart a pair of brawlers . . . ?"

[Daq Bekkar]

The comments about worsening his condition hardly registered. Daq's mind was now set on protecting his lab--his livelihood. There were many things Pagusel obviously didn't understand. Something about her suggested that she'd never been confronted by abject destitution before, or at least that the idea didn't phase her much. Whatever the case, it seemed that she didn't understand the gravity of the situation at hand.

"If I don't hurry," he started to explain, "there won't be anything left to return to. The reaction is stable at first, but it becomes volatile."

Daq realized that trying to explain the positioning of his chemicals, complementary reagent interactions, heat activation, and the effects of reaction chaining would only go over her head and delay things further, so he decided to simplify things, even if it meant that his statement wouldn't be strictly accurate.

"The lab is going to explode."

Gradually his jerky, pain inhibited movement became more fluid. Either he'd managed to 'walk his injury off' or the salve was working. If the salve was working, it could mean that his judgment had been compromised, but he considered his choice to be sound. There was no point in delay.

"Surely you don't expect to halt a reaction of chemicals by your own hands, as if prying apart a pair of brawlers . . . ?"

The problem Pagusel suggested rang inside his head briefly, but so did the solution. Oblivious to the consequences of cryptic comments and sudden actions suggested by his previous observations of Pagusel's behavior, he decided to voice his intentions only vaguely.

"There are many things you don't understand," he said, now loping along gently. "The lab must be saved. It will be saved."

As he approached the city gates, he flexed his left arm, though the oddness of the motion suggested that the arm flexed itself. Without pause, he entered the city and began to head straight for the smoking lab.