Footsteps clattered behind him, echoing throughout the ally. He raced through it, not even caring that his steps were loud, attracting, and probably alerted whoever it was chasing him to where he was. The moon shone high above him, shielded by the towering old, Victorian-seeming building that looked as if it should be used for a hotel tourist trap. Shawn’s breath shuddered at that. Trap. Not the best thought in the world.

He didn’t know why he was running, or who from. He couldn’t remember. For that matter, he couldn’t remember where he was; just that he definitely wasn’t in Santa Barbara anymore.

The footsteps were growing louder by the second. Shawn looked around frantically, his eyes adjusting to the darkness around him but not focusing on much. He knew he had a concussion (once you’ve got the first one, and the second one, and the thirteenth and fourteenth one, you manage to keep track of what they feel like), and it was probably what was causing his memory loss. If he didn’t find a way to shake his pursuers, he’d be in deep fried trouble for sure.

There wasn’t anything. The ally was a dead end, and the footsteps were getting closer. Shawn threw a desperate look over his shoulder, shoulders tense and every instinct in his body to run, even if he couldn’t remember why.

And then he looked up.

His alert eyes, ever watching, ever noticing, caught the glint of the moonlight as it reflected off a shiny red bar.

Shawn held his breath and scurried over under the building. Did they have fire escapes back in Victorian times? He couldn’t remember, and he didn’t care. Careful not to step on anything particularly noisy, like those trashcan lids over there, he grabbed the lower bar of the ladder from the fire escape and hoisted himself up.

Pain shot through his palms and he realized, for the first time, that he was injured in his right hand. When did that happen? Shawn didn’t know or care. He could wonder about it later, but first, he had to live till then.

Shoulders straining he swung his legs up to reach the bottom rung of the ridiculously high up ladder. Why’d they design these things so high up anyways, he thought, annoyed. The answer came to him: maybe because most people were trying to climb down a fire escape, and not up. They were escaping the fire, after all.

Finally he got his toe on the rung, balancing precariously and leaning back so far the hood on his sweatshirt almost touched the other building’s wall. Then he pulled himself upright again and scrambled up the ladder.

Ping!

Shawn jumped as something shattered above his head. Cement from the wall above him crumbled and sprayed his hair with plaster. Before he could figure out what the hell that was, another part of the wall exploded, much closer to his face then he would’ve liked.

Indignance flooded through him but it didn’t last as he ducked, skirting around the corner of the fire escape platform and reaching the ladder again, climbing that one in quick succession.

After squeezing himself through the tiny red square of a hole, he finally took the chance to glance over his shoulder.

The man chasing him—and Shawn assumed he was a man by his build, although he couldn’t be sure because of his mask—had his gun whipped out and pointing it straight at Shawn. His aiming style was different then what normally saw when people were shooting at him—left arm out at a right angle across his body, right arm up and balancing on the forearm of the left. It was more like he was about to fire a crossbow, rather then a standard, police issued .45 pistol.

Their eyes locked. Shawn was already moving to escape, grabbing the first rung of the last ladder leading up to the roof, and scaling it like an expert.

Something stung sharply on his right arm, slashing across his bicep like white hot fire. He gasped, his hand automatically letting go of the rung so clasp across his arm. Warm blood spilled over his fingers, pressure against his arm turning it from fire to ice. He could feel his pulse through his arm as it pumped more and more blood through the wound in an attempt to prevent any more damage to the delicate muscle.

His vision blurred and spun like a kaleidoscope, but he gritted his teeth. Shawn was not passing out, not like last time. Last time got him in some deep trouble.

He grabbed the bar again. Vaguely the sounds faded back to him and he could hear more gunshots destroying cement all around him, narrowly missing him. It looked like he was staying on the ground, instead of following Shawn. If he could just get onto the roof….

Finally, finally, his head popped up out of the hole and he pulled the rest of himself through it, standing unsteadily on the roof, one hand still cupping the gunshot wound on his arm.

Shawn stared out at the night, bright lights of the city lighting the view like a Christmas tree and illuminating the massive, round, unmistakable form of the Capitol Building.

Shawn felt numb. D.C. What the hell was he doing in D.C.?

A shout came behind him and he whirled abruptly, eyes widening as a hand swung towards his face and that was the last thing he saw before it connected and he was left falling into the darkness once more.