No…no…

Nononononono.

God, no! I thought I stopped it!

I couldn’t budge my eyes from my phone. I don’t even think someone could if they tied them to a speedboat and drove off at full speed. These words… these four words would haunt me for forever. I couldn’t even watch the building as it continued to collapse. The screams of terror around me were white noise compared to the noise of the thoughts in my head. The blazing inferno rising from what used to be a 30-story building, filled with rich office managers of a billion-dollar corporation, which outshined the sun and could’ve been a signal fire for someone 1000 miles away, only furthered the fiery thoughts in my own head. The heat and the crashes of falling rubble only furthered the burning in my heart. I might’ve been in shock. There were too many emotions to tell. Whatever I was feeling, it kept my eyes locked on those four words.

“Thanks for your help.”

This isn’t how this was supposed to go down. My plan was perfect. I was only supposed to pretend to be helping him. I’d trained for so long for situations just like this one. After years of only working intern jobs and basic robbery cases, they finally gave me a chance. They finally gave me a chance, and instead of focusing on the building that blew up, I’m focusing on how my career just did.

God, how selfish am I? These people around me are screaming, terrified for their lives because a goddamn 30-story important building just got demolished before their eyes, and I’m thinking about my job. Myself. I’m not trying to save anyone. Maybe I deserved this. If I’d just been smarter.

How am I supposed to explain this to my superiors? I’m fired for sure, but they’re going to want more than “I don’t know.” I don’t have more. I have no idea what went wrong. I only helped them infiltrate so I could plant the tracker…

Oh, my god. I’m such an idiot. The tracker’s on me. I thought I planted it on him. That’s where everything went wrong. They never sensed him entering the building and couldn’t stop the attack. He must’ve swapped out my tracker for the detonator. I planned that detonator as a failsafe so the bomb couldn’t be hacked; it was the only way to make the bomb go off. God, such an amateur. I deserve to get fired. I deserve to get locked up. I deserve everything that’s coming.

Burying my face in my hands, I slump down quickly, landing butt-first. However, I perk up as something pokes it. I don’t even want to know; it was probably just a rock or a piece of rubble. I should’ve gotten crushed by one. I slump back down slowly, feeling that thing more deliberately. It’s too boxy to be a rock. Too smooth to be a random piece of rubble. Giving in, I reach back and pull the detonator out of my back pocket. My eyes light up with surprise and I take a sigh of relief.

“He didn’t have the detonator…” I mutter to myself. Wait. That makes no sense. How did he detonate the bomb? This was the only way, and if he didn’t have it, that means the bomb was detonated remotely. But that would mean someone redesigned it right before we executed “the plan.”

I jump in surprise when I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. When I pull it out, I see my boss’s name displayed. Do I have to answer it… yes. I do. This is gonna suck.

“Hello?” I say.

“What the hell happened?! You blew up a building?? This isn’t your superhero movie, Agent Lieu. You weren’t supposed to let it explode!”

“I know, Captain. I promise I’m looking into it. I was double crossed. Someone changed the bomb last minute to detonate remotely. This isn’t a superhero movie. It’s a mystery.”

And the mystery is, if I didn’t detonate the bomb…who did?