A.N. – Due to circumstances in my real life, the next updates of "Power of the Press" may be delayed for a while. I ask for your patience and understanding. This situation made me wonder about what our favorite detectives might think of such delays. So here's a little tongue-in-cheek idea of what might be happening in the Five-O world. Thanks to Tanith2011 for the quick beta read.

The Abyss

Something pulled him out of his exhausted sleep. As Steve slowly regained awareness, he stretched his long legs, easing his cramped muscles, the soreness that came from spending the night in an uncomfortable plastic chair. The scene had not changed from his last memory: the odor of hospital antiseptics, the dim fluorescent lighting, the soft regular beeps from the heart monitor. Steve lifted his eyes to gaze at the unconscious figure in the bed, his best friend. Gravely wounded and feverish from infection, the sandy haired detective lay eerily still, his chest thickly bandaged, face pale, his curls damp with perspiration. The tableau caused a flood of emotions to reawaken in the big man. Desperate fear and simmering anger competed for prominence within his heart and tears started to burn in his eyes. Doc had said that it was touch and go; that they could really lose Danny this time. And Steve couldn't imagine his world without Danno.

The head of Five-O glanced at his watch; it read twenty past eight. Is that a.m. or p.m.? It should have been morning, but looking out the single window, he saw only darkness, the pitch black of midnight. A bizarre sensation, the feeling that a great deal of time had passed, slowly began to creep into his being. Days? Weeks? Maybe more? Steve shook his head to clear his mind and banish the impossible thought.

Coffee – he needed coffee! He rose from the offending plastic chair and looked down at Williams. Then he reached out and gently placed his hand on the feverish curls and with a painful lump in his throat whispered, "I'll be right back." Before Steve exited the hospital room, he noticed Doc Bergman standing by the door. The physician held a clipboard in his left hand and a pen in his right hand, poised to write, but there was no motion at all; he stood like a statue. Steve did notice the date at the top of the clipboard. Apparently several months had passed since his last recollection. Strange!

o-o-o

He wasn't gone long, maybe five minutes. When Steve returned to Williams' room, he was rattled as if he had seen something out of the ordinary, something he couldn't explain. He paced the floor of the small hospital room, wondering if it was real or if he was still asleep and dreaming. Several times he glanced back at the closed door. Suddenly, as if he had come to a decision, he stopped in his tracks and then approached the bed.

"Danno?" Steve grasped Williams' shoulders with both hands and gently jostled his injured detective, taking care not to disturb the IVs taped to the man's arms. "Danno, wake up!"

"S…Steve?" Dan responded weakly, fighting against the strong pull of drug induced sleep. Then after a few more seconds he mumbled, "W…what's wrong?" With an effort, his clear blue eyes slowly opened and focused in on the darker eyes of his mentor.

"How do you feel?" Steve asked, matter-of-factly.

Dan's brow wrinkled in confusion. Steve's tone was not quite that of a concerned friend, but more of an investigator searching for facts. Still, Dan wanted to give his boss an honest answer, so he concentrated on assessing himself. To his surprise, he wasn't feeling all that bad.

"I think…I think I'm okay, Steve," Dan replied tentatively, just as baffled as his boss.

"Think you can get up if I help you? I need to show you something."

"Sure, but…" Dan glanced in the direction of the white coated figure by the door. "Doc is right there. He'll never let me out of here!

"It's okay, he won't notice," Steve said confidently, nodding toward Bergman. "Come on; let's get you out of this bed."

McGarrett gripped the younger man's arms and then slowly and steadily lifted him into a sitting position. So far, so good. Danny gingerly pulled out his IVs and other tubes then removed the heart monitor wires from his chest. Once the young man was freed from the medical paraphernalia, Steve supported his protégé while he got to his feet.

Dan was still surprised by how normal he felt. "Steve, I don't understand; I was shot in the chest, wasn't I?" His trusting blue eyes searched the older man's face for an explanation. "What's happening?"

Steve sighed. He was looking for answers, too. "Yes, you were shot in the chest, Danno. I don't understand it either, but I'm delighted that you're feeling better. And no, I don't know what's happening, but you need to see something. I don't have the words to explain it," Steve said, trying to keep his voice steady and professional.

But Danny knew him too well and he sensed the unease that Steve was feeling. He shouldered into a white hospital issued robe, tied it around his waist and stepped into a pair of scuff slippers. Then the two Five-O detectives walked right past Bergman and out the door. The fact that Doc didn't move an inch or say a word was more than just a little spooky to Dan.

o-o-o

In the hallway of the intensive care unit, Duke Lukela and Rob Nishimura, both from HPD were posted on guard duty, one on either side of the door to Williams' room. Like Bergman, the two uniformed officers stood like statues, unmoving.

"Duke?" Danny touched the sergeant's arm as he spoke, but got no reaction from the silver haired man. Dan forced his eyes away from the frozen HPD men and looked to his boss with an edge of panic in his expression. "Steve?"

"I know," Steve commented as he steadied his second with a supportive hand on the shoulder. "Come on, let's go."

The two cops followed the corridors of Queen's Hospital, down the elevator and toward the front entrance. When they reached the reception area, Steve pointed to the double glass doors that should have framed a circular driveway and beyond that, the morning traffic on Punchbowl Street. But there was nothing. No scenery, no cars, no city at all. They faced an abyss; a gaping hole of menacing blackness that seemed to be expanding; slowly growing larger.

Danny's jaw dropped and for several seconds, he just stared at the phenomenon and couldn't speak. When he finally regained his voice, he blurted out, "What the hell is that?"

Steve also stared into the abyss then rubbed his hand over his face. "No idea. But I guess that you see it, too."

"Yeah," Danny replied. Then his curiosity got the better of him and the young detective raised his arm and reached out through the door and into the void.

"Careful," Steve warned, pulling Danny back.

Falling back on his natural investigative instincts, Williams tried to think of explanations. "Is the Navy conducting some sort of secret experiments? Or Wo Fat? Could it be a rip in the space-time continuum? Steve, maybe we should call a physicist, maybe…"

"No, not him," Steve interrupted firmly. "I will not work with Grant Ormsbee again!"

"What about Che?" Danny suggested quickly. "Perhaps he can recommend someone from the university."

Steve turned away from the unbelievable sight and spotted a bank of pay phones close to the reception desk. "Okay, let's try Che." The tall detective headed for the public phones with his second-in-command close behind. He fished a dime from his pants pocket then inserted it into the slot of the phone and dialed the crime lab.

"Is it ringing?" Dan asked after a few seconds.

"No, there's no sound at all," Steve reported, holding out the receiver so Danny could hear. "The phone is working; there was a dial tone…" He pulled down the hook on the instrument and released it then inserted another dime. Again there was a dial tone. Danny nodded, indicating that he heard it, too. Steve put the receiver to his ear and dialed the Palace. Frustrated, he slammed the receiver down on the hook. "Nothing!" he barked, shaking his head.

"What now, Steve?"

"Maybe…" Steve's voice trailed off as he tried to coax some kind of reasonable explanation from his baffled mind. He turned back toward the black nothingness, which was now even larger. The front doors of the hospital were now gone, enveloped into the void. Suddenly, Steve snapped his fingers several times. Then he forcefully stabbed his index finger into the air. "That's it, Danno, it's got to be!"

"What, Steve?" Danny asked frantically; his blue eyes locked on his mentor.

"We've been abandoned again! Whoever is writing this story just stopped and left us here, waiting for an ending. Only this time it's been so long that our very world is dissolving around us," Steve explained, carefully gesturing to the ever widening abyss. "I'll bet that even the readers have given up."

"I don't understand, Steve, why would a writer leave us like this?" Danny asked, not quite hiding the hurt in his voice.

"I don't know, Danno. But I do understand that writers have real lives, families to care for, full-time jobs, school; you know, real life responsibilities." McGarrett sounded sad but philosophical.

"I suppose you're right, Steve," Danny replied, sighing in defeat. "But if I stay in that hospital bed much longer, I'm going to be covered with bedsores! I'll never get better."

"But you won't get any worse either," Steve reminded him.

Danny grinned. "I guess you're right about that! You know, I'm not feeling too bad right now. What should we do?"

Steve relaxed and affectionately clapped his friend's shoulder. "Well, it appears that we have a lot of time to kill, Danno. How often does that happen? Let's head up to the visitors' lounge and see if we can locate some sandwiches, coffee and a deck of cards. I'll deal!"

Pau