Alex put his hand up to shield himself from the strobing effect of what he knew must be a police cruiser. As he did, he felt a strange sensation streaking across his forearm. He lowered his arm and looked down in shock. The warm blood of a fresh wound crawled across his skin, trailing from a mangled etching on the back of his left hand. He looked up in horror.

The two officers flanking him appeared wholly unequipped for whatever the fuck Alex was doing here. It was hard to discern in the darkness, but the figure approaching Alex from the left belonged to a portly gentleman, of the mustachioed sort that one typically associates with cheap cop caricatures. To Alex’s right, a different figure entirely: this one a tall, wiry man who looked like he’d been carrying a weapon for precisely nine days. How Alex so quickly sized up each of these officers, in about half the time it took them to cross the unpaved road and draw their weapons, was beyond him. But then again, many things about this peculiar situation were beyond Alex.

Right around now was when Alex became increasingly aware of another unusual phenomenon: a crisp breeze nipping across his legs. He glanced down. Yup, his pants were gone, leaving only the boxer shorts he typically reserved for indoor use below. Well, that was something.

“Keep your hands up!” The larger, more experienced of the two officers momentarily broke Alex’s befuddlement on his own internal state. He looked up again. This time, he noticed a few more details: the odd gait of the older cop, an indicator of knee issues and, most likely, chronic back pain. The quivering in the trigger hand of his deputy, who’d already lost some advantage by narrowing his distance to Alex. Shouldn’t be too much trouble to blindside the younger cop, wrest his gun away, and escape into the darkness. Or, given a few more seconds, kick a knee out from the sheriff, disarm him, and intimidate the deputy into giving up the keys to the cruiser.

Where the hell was this coming from? Still in a daze, Alex shook these notions from his head and dropped to his knees. The deputy swooped in with a pair of handcuffs, and as Alex’s arms were wrestled down, he caught a closer look at the symbol etched into his hand: three overlapping circles, with a single triangle inset connecting the intersection of each.

Alex knew he was unlikely to get any more rest tonight.