Kurt woke up, but his eyes remained firmly shut. He felt the usual slow ache all over his body - not as bad as it had been the last few awakenings, but still there . . . always on the blade edge of his thoughts. The same dream snarled every time he dropped into unconsiousness -- a half nightmare of heat and reptilian demons where images were fleeting and if you tried to corner one . . . it vanished, but it was a nightmare all the same.

He'd essentially been drifting in and out of delerium and sleep for, well, he didn't know how long. And they still hadn't given him his glasses. The bright florescence overhead tried to beat through his eyelids. He dimly remembered even brighter light -- an operating table, maybe -- just before the anaesthetic had kicked in and knocked him out. He didn't know what was going on, things still hurt, and the incessant numb stab of the IV kept him from turning over to bury his eyes against the pillow. He hated needles . . . hated . . . hated . . .

His bed vibrated under him. Hard. He nearly opened his eyes. He groggily realized that hospital beds just weren't supposed to do that. The vibrations intensified . . . as if their source were coming closer. There was a heavy slam (a door being shoved open, probably) and the vibrations stopped. Two pairs of footsteps approached the bed. One normal . . . . one very very heavy . . . .

"Kurt." Familiar . . . ah yes, familiar. Lance. Kurt nodded weakly. "Kurt, we're takin' you outta here."

Well, what was he supposed to say to that. Hospital . . . that's where he was. Hospital was usually a decent place to be. Maybe being out of hospital was not such good idea. "Ughhh . . . " Well, so much for protest. It's hard to feel chipper and argumentative when you have enough drugs in you to kill several large rats.

"Freddy, pick him up." A pause. Then two large hands gripped his shoulders with all the force of a gorilla. A really big gorilla. Kurt gasped another unheard protest as the immense whatever ripped him from the bed (and snapped all those needles out of him in a very painful manner).

"Not like THAT. Oh well, no time. Carry him, we gotta run. Unless you can walk . . . " He seemed to be addressing Kurt again. Kurt did not feel well enough to answer. He was in the middle of deciding whether to throw up all over Freddy.

"Never mind. Let's go!" Every hurried step of the Blob shook him violently. He considered throwing up again . . . this time with more fervor. And when Freddy reached the stairs . . . Kurt switched from thinking about throwing up to thinking about teleporting himself anywhere else. Difficult and risky, yes . . . but comparitively painless. And no motion sickness either!

There was a lot of scrambled noise whooshing past his ears. Most of it didn't sound terribly happy. Occasionally, he would hear the screech of someone being shoved out of the way.

Finally, the noise was replaced by that distinctive automatic door swing . . . and then replaced in turn by very loud and irritating sirens. Kurt wished they would just turn it all off and let him go back to sleep. Even if he would have that stupid dream again.

Actually, he did go to sleep. Despite all of Freddy's jostling, the medicine took hold again and transported him back into demon land. When he woke up yet again, he was lying on a bed that smelled funny. In other words, he wasn't in the hospital.

"Okay . . . well, that was fun. With luck, they'll dismiss the whole thing to group hallucination and an earthquake. And a really really big guy. But we had to get you out, you know." Lance again. How fun.

"You really ain't conscious, are ya? Look, just in case you hate me later for this, in any other case, we would've left you there. I don't know if you're goin' to get really sick or the like from our meddlin'. But they wouldn't let anyone see you at all. You were practically in a vault. It took us some serious work and brute strength just to get in. And we heard rumors . . . never mind. Why do you have to have those blasted yellow eyes anyway?"

Kurt went back to sleep.