THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION

Description: The gang gets superpowers. It's not as cool as some of them always thought. Alternate Season 9 premiere.

Disclaimer: The author does not own THE BIG BANG THEORY or any of the characters.

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HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

100 WEST CALIFORNIA BOULEVARD, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA

THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015, 2:05 P.M.

Leonard opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Had he been sleeping with his glasses on? The roof of whatever room he was in looked perfectly clear. He reached up to touch his face, and frowned. No, his glasses weren't on. Where—?

He looked over at the table beside his bed, and several things struck him all at the same time. One, this was a hospital room, and he was hooked up to an IV and a boatload of sensors. Two, the glasses without which he was functionally blind were sitting on that table, and he could see them with utter sharp-edged clarity. Three, he knew he wasn't wearing contacts—he'd tried once while dating Priya, and the softest, lightest lenses available had still felt like sandpaper in his eyes. Four, he felt physically better than he had in years. Maybe physically better than he ever had. Wondering if he was dreaming, he reached over, grabbed the glasses and put them on.

"Ow!" The distortion of looking through the lenses was physically painful. He took them off in reflex, stared at them, then tried again, with the same result. He gaped at the glasses. Hadn't he seen this scene in Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man movie?

He could not have said what instinct moved him to it, but abruptly he took the spectacles and worked his thumbnail around the edges of the lenses until he was able to pop them out—thankfully, they were an old pair, and due for replacement anyway. He replaced the empty plastic frames on his face. They felt lighter without the lenses, but their presence was reassuring nonetheless—one touch of familiarity in a world gone strange. The same instinct was urging him to rip the sensor-pads off and get that IV out of his arm, but there he stopped, his scientific training kicking in: don't screw with somebody else's tech unless you know what you're doing—

"Oh, shit," he said out loud, as memory crashed back in upon him. Penny. That was enough to override all else. Carefully, he peeled off the tape and slid the IV needle out; it stung, but he was too focused to care. One by one the sensor pads came off, leaving red patches of hairless skin on his chest. He swung himself out of the bed and ran to the door, hauling it open.

Two big men in dark suits immediately appeared in his path; they'd been sitting by the door outside. Leonard gaped at them. One of them lifted his wrist to his mouth and began muttering into it, while the other stepped forward and took Leonard firmly by the shoulder. "Dr. Hofstadter," he said. "We're glad to see you up. But I'm afraid you're going to have to wait here for a moment."

"Where's Penny?"

"Miss Carmichaels is fine. She's resting in another room here. She's not injured."

Leonard blinked. "Well, how the hell did that happen?" he asked. Then he looked down at himself. "Come to think of it, how am I fine? What the hell did happen?"

"We don't know, Doctor. We're in the process of trying to find that out." The suited man exerted pressure, gently but firmly pushing Leonard back. "Please, if you'll just return to your room . . . ."

Leonard resisted. "Look, please, just tell me what happened! Was anybody else hurt? My friends? The other scientists? The invited observers?"

The suited man glanced at his partner, who shrugged. He looked back at Leonard and sighed. "Doctor, I'm not authorized to disclose that. But I can tell you this. Everybody's fine. There were no injuries." He hesitated. "In fact, let me repeat that. There were no injuries. At all. To anyone."

"Oh. Oh, thank God. Thank—" Leonard stopped. "Wait. How . . . how is that even possible?"

"I think, Doctor, they're kind of hoping you can tell them," said the other man, and nodded down the corridor. Leonard turned. Another group of grim-looking suited people were marching towards them, led by a slender dark-haired young woman who looked strangely familiar. Leonard squinted. Then his eyes went wide as the group came up to him.

"Special Agent Page?" he blurted.

FBI Special Agent Angela Page smiled coolly at him. "Hello, Dr. Hofstadter. Long time no see. I understand you're engaged now; congratulations. Does that mean I won't get any more invitations for a night I'll never forget?" One of the men beside her gave her a curious look. She waved him away. "Tell you later," she murmured.

Leonard stared at her. "What's the FBI doing here? What's going on? Is anybody going to answer any of my questions any time soon?"

"We'd like to get started on that process as soon as possible, actually," said Page. "We had some of your clothes brought to your room while you were unconscious. If you'd like to get dressed and follow me, assuming you're up to it?"

"Sure, but—wait. How long was I out?"

Page glanced at her watch. "A little over forty-eight hours; you've been here at Huntington Memorial for most of that. A lot's been happening in that time. Please, Doctor. Go get dressed."

Forty-eight hours? Leonard shook his head, feeling poleaxed. Two days in a coma. Surviving what could have been a city-flattening disaster totally uninjured. And waking up with, apparently, twenty-twenty vision instead of the myopia he'd had his whole life.

What the hell was going on here?

2:28 P.M.

Once Leonard had dressed, Agent Page and her team took him to a boardroom on the hospital's second floor, where she sat down and plugged in a laptop while half her team took up guard positions outside. She ignored Leonard's questions, and after two or three attempts he gave up. Some minutes later, two of Page's men brought in Sheldon, Howard and Raj. None of them were wearing the clothes they'd worn the day of the experiment—it was fairly easy to tell because it was the first time in months he'd seen Harold without a dickey, Raj without a sweater-vest or Sheldon without a superhero T-shirt.

"Guys!" Leonard jumped up and hugged all three of them, even the visibly uncomfortable Sheldon, all of them exchanging reassurances. Once he'd satisfied himself they were all okay he immediately grabbed Sheldon by the shoulders. "Sheldon, did you see what happened to Penny? Why didn't you get her out? Is Amy okay? Have you worked out what went wrong with the equation? Talk to me, buddy! They won't tell me a damn thing except that Penny's resting somewhere else."

"Yeah, they gave me the same runaround about Bernadette," Howard growled. Then he noticed Page, and rounded on her. "Hey, listen, lady, I—Agent Page?!"

"Mr. Wolowitz," said Page, not looking at him as she connected her laptop to the tabletop projector. "Why is it every time I talk to you it seems to involve damage to immensely expensive government-funded property?"

Howard mustered a pained grin. "Just lucky, I guess." The smile vanished; he slapped his hands on the table and leant down to get into her sightline. "Listen, Agent Page, whatever happened in that room two days ago, the only thing I care about right now is my wife. Because the last thing I remember her telling me, before I figured out how to get that door open and get us out of there, is that she was pregnant. So I'm not answering any piddly-ass questions until I get to see her, am I making myself clear?"

Raj's mouth fell open; he pressed his hands to his cheeks. "Oh, my God, Bernadette's pregnant? Oh, dude, congratulations! Holy Krishna, you're gonna be a daddy!" He flapped his hands at his own face like a beauty-pageant winner, eyes and mouth crinkling up. "Oh my God, I think I'm going to cry!" He lunged forward and threw his arms around Howard, hugging him tightly. Howard patted Raj's hands awkwardly, looking like he couldn't decide between a smile or a grimace.

Leonard looked at Sheldon, who jerked his head at Howard. "You may as well congratulate him now, Leonard," he said brusquely, and sat down in one of the empty chairs, folding his arms. "Lord knows if we're going to get another chance before we're all sent up the river to the big house."

Page frowned at him. "Excuse me, what?"

"The big house," said Sheldon. "The pokey. The hoosegow. The slammer. Hard time. At least I assume that's what you're here to tell us? Leonard tried to play with somebody else's toy and broke it. That never ends well for anybody. I know." He stared at the tabletop with haunted eyes. "Forgive me, Tiny Toy Spock," he murmured. "Forgive me."

Leonard gave Page an apologetic shrug. "Okay, look, he's normally crazy, but this is a step up even for him," he said. "Seriously, if we are facing charges, I think we get to talk to a lawyer, don't we?"

Page folded her hands. "Nobody's being charged with anything, Dr. Hofstadter. Not yet, at any rate. But I should warn you that that's contingent on your cooperation—as is getting to see the people who are special to you. We have a number of questions we think only you can answer. And now that you, Dr. Cooper, Dr. Koothrappali and Mr. Wolowitz are here, I'd like to show you what our first question is about." She got up, went to the boardroom wall and pressed a switch; a projection screen slid down out of the ceiling. "Sit down, please."

There didn't seem to be anything else to do. Exchanging glances, Leonard, Raj and Howard all sat. Page heaved a sigh, turned off the lights and sat back down at her laptop. "This," she said, "is satellite footage taken two days ago at 11:02 a.m. Pacific time, from a surveillance satellite over the California coast. Watch." She pressed a key on her laptop. An arc of the Earth, all blue, white, brown and green, came up on the screen, the triangle-in-circle "play" arrow sitting in the centre of the image. Page slid her cursor to the arrow and clicked upon it. The image didn't move.

"Okay," said Howard, frowning, "so what are we looking at?"

"Wait for it," said Page, holding up a finger.

Leonard frowned. "Look, Agent Page, I really don't see the need for—" He stopped, sucking in his breath. On the screen, a pinpoint of searing blue-white light had ignited from a point somewhere in—he frowned, calculating it—the Greater Los Angeles basin, stabbing its brilliance upwards like a spear thrust out into space. For a moment, that impossible spear held steady. Then a shockwave burst out from it, a coruscating circular ripple rolling out in all directions as if someone had thrown a stone into a puddle. Seconds later, its inverse returned, rolled back into itself and vanished, along with the original point of light. Leonard stared, his mouth open. Howard, Raj and Sheldon all looked similarly thunderstruck.

"That energy shockwave," said Page, "traversed the entire planet and returned to source in less than five seconds. And our calculations indicate that its point of origin was the Boer Laboratory building, on the JPL campus at CalTech. More precisely, they indicate its point of origin was the chamber where their new Mark III plasma wakefield particle accelerator was undergoing its first tests. This is what that building looks like now." She clicked to another picture.

Raj gasped. Howard grimaced. Leonard stood, feeling as if someone had hit him, and moved slowly towards the screen. The building had been levelled—worse than some structures he'd seen in photos of war zones. Not a single girder or column still stood upright. The destruction had spread to areas outside the building as well; holes in walls, flipped cars, broken fire hydrants. In a couple of places, Leonard could see limbs sticking out from under piles of wreckage; his gorge rose in his throat.

Then he remembered something. "Wait a moment. Your man, back at my room—he told me nobody had been injured. At all."

"He was right," said Page, not blinking. "Which is our second question. Everybody we rescued from that wreckage, and from the affected areas beyond, was in a coma. Yet none of them showed a scratch. Exactly how do you do that much damage to inanimate matter and not touch a single person? What kind of phenomenon did you unleash two days ago? We have people very high up in our government who are very worried about the weaponization potential implicit in this incident."

Leonard opened his mouth, unsure what he was going to say, when he was interrupted. "Agent Page," said Sheldon, frowning, "you don't by any chance have a map of the points where people were recovered, do you?"

For the first time, Page looked taken off guard. "I, uh, I believe we do—"

"Can you superimpose it on that display of the wreckage?"

Page frowned at her laptop. "I don't know. I guess it's possible, but—"

"Of course it's possible, and of course you don't know how. See, the poor training you people get on computers is half of why we're still fighting the War on Drugs, right here." Sheldon thrust himself to his feet, strode around the table and shoved Page aside from the laptop, ignoring her outraged look. His fingers flew over the keys. "Where's the recovery map?"

"Excuse me, Dr. Cooper, but—"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, woman, we're talking about a world-changing event here, I don't think we have time to indulge social protocols, where's the flipping map?" He gave her a glare that reminded Leonard of nothing so much as Dr. Rotwang from Metropolis, bug-eyed and blazing, and Page reeled back in shock. After a moment, she tapped the screen, evidently pointing to a specific file, and Sheldon snorted. "Thank you," he said. "Now, let's resize that, make the back layers transparent, rotate it a little, and . . . here."

A scattered array of white dots appeared on the picture of the wreckage. Sheldon adjusted the spacing, then stood and folded his arms, nodding in satisfaction. "There," he said. Then, as nobody said anything, he stared around at them. "Oh, good grief. Are all of you telling me you don't see it?"

Raj sighed. "Dude, you're scaring Agent Page, and she's already scared enough by all of this. Please try making a little sense." Page gave him a strange look, but Raj didn't notice. "So that's where they found everybody who was knocked out in the blast. So what?"

"No. Wait. I think . . . I think I see it." Howard leant forward, staring at the projection screen with the almost monomaniacal focus Leonard had only seen from him when utterly focused on an engineering problem or a girl's cleavage. He got up too and went to the computer. "Agent Page, may I—?" Page rolled her eyes and waved one hand, clearly fed up. Howard began clicking, typing and sliding, the mouse scooting all over the place. At last a menu asked him, Change BG Color for Selection? "Yes, indeedy, I'm changing colour," he muttered, and clicked.

The shadows of the wreckage all lit up in bright green. And the patterns they made hit Leonard in the face like a padded mallet. From the Lassie-like squeak Raj made as he covered his mouth with both fists, he saw it too. Page only stared. "So . . . what is it?"

Leonard cleared his throat. "Agent Page," he managed, "the fallout pattern of the wreckage shows a consistent outward-forcing distribution around every point of recovery. Don't you see what that means?" Page didn't answer, and at last Leonard sighed. "It means that the concussive force that brought that building down . . . it came—" He had to pause and swallow. "It came from us."

Page frowned. "I don't understand. How could the force come from you?"

"I don't know!" Leonard had to get to his feet, pacing around, gesturing as he thought out loud. "Maybe it didn't come from us. Maybe the people in that building were just the, the focal points for something that was projected from elsewhere. But that's how everybody survived without a scratch: Nobody got hit, because everything was being forced away from us. It brought everything else down around us but we were protected." He turned to Page and jabbed his finger on the table. "So it wasn't whatever shockwave the experiment set off. It was whatever that shockwave did to—" He stopped, his eyes suddenly widening.

"Whatever it did to the people it hit," said Page, quietly. "Or some of them, at any rate." She closed her laptop down and unplugged the projector; the projection screen flipped to a blue NO SIGNAL field. Page stood, tucking the laptop under her arm. "I think we're going to need to run a considerably greater amount of tests than we had expected. Starting with the four of you, and everybody else who was in that building and nearby. I'm sorry, Dr. Hofstadter, I don't think you're going to be able to see your fiancée just yet." Without another word she turned and left the room, closing the door behind her. A moment later the click of a lock echoed through the air.

Leonard dropped into a chair, massaging his head. "Oh, man," he said. "What the hell is happening? I mean that. What the hell have we done?"

Raj winced. "Dude, next time you invite me to one of your groundbreaking physics experiments, just leave me out of it, okay?"

"Yeah, well, next time you accept one of those invitations don't bring an ex-girlfriend along where a current girlfriend can meet her," Howard snapped back. "It's bad luck to bring significant others into labs, everybody knows that."

Sheldon scoffed. "Howard, that's the rankest superstition. And I should think the example of your own wife would disprove it."

"Oh no no no no, when Bernie's in her own lab, she's fine. If I came into her workplace, well, let me just say this is the woman who almost weaponized Ebola by mixing it with the common cold. If I'd been there the day that happened, we'd all be trying to schedule our own funerals against one another."

"We have to get out of here," said Leonard. "Somehow. Oh, God, I wish we were back in our apartment. Howard, any chance you could pick that lock?"

Howard sighed. "Maybe, but what's the point? There's only gonna be more FBI goons outside. Maybe if we all agree not to tell them anything else . . . ."

"We need a coordinate change," said Sheldon, staring into space. "If we could simply access the information overlays of the space-time reference frame determining our location and momentum, then perhaps we could rewrite that data. Which would effortlessly allow translation between one space-time point and another. Or, alternately, we could redefine the structure of space-time to create an arbitrarily short contiguity between defined loci. Yes, that might be more efficient." He nodded, got up and went to the wall, staring at it, his eyes focused far beyond it. Leonard, Raj, and Howard gaped at him.

Then, without fanfare or flourish, he knelt, ran his finger up the wall, to the right in a straight line over his head, back down to the floor and across to his starting point.

The wall vanished. Through the doorway-sized gap, the yellow safety ribbons blocking off the elevator of 2311 Los Robles gleamed, the elevator doors themselves as dusty and dull as always. Sheldon nodded in satisfaction. "There." He strode through the gap in the wall into the fourth-floor hallway, standing perfectly halfway between 4A and 4B. After a second, he turned around and looked back at them quizzically. "Well, I'd recommend you join me, so I can reset the contiguity. Not much point in leaving if we only show them where we are immediately, correct?"

"Dude, if somebody throws an alien in my face I think I'm gonna crap my pants," croaked Raj.

Leonard had no idea what Raj was talking about, and could barely grasp what had just happened. But he was positive he didn't want to wait until someone else decided he could see Penny, and he was equally positive he would never get the chance if he just went passively along with Agent Page's agenda. Refusing to let himself think about it, or to let visions of slamming face-first into a wall take over his brain, he forced himself forward and stepped through the gap. It felt exactly like walking through any other doorway, and then he was in the hallway at 2311 Los Robles, outside his door as if he'd just come up the stairs.

From this side the doorway appeared to be in the wall, a slightly wavery rectangular gap opening onto the boardroom. Howard and Raj were on the other side, gawping through at them; after a moment, Howard took off one of his shoes and tossed it through. It landed on the floor beside Leonard with a thump. Sheldon stared at it and gave Howard an exasperated look. "Are you expecting that to come out of the ceiling with pink goop all over it?"

Howard rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine, I'm sorry! Just had to check." He ducked through the portal with a hunching, twisting movement, as if terrified to let any part of him touch the edges. Raj did the same thing, gaping around the hallway as if expecting to wake up. Sheldon huffed in disgust, bent down and ran his fingers along the edges of the portal again, using both hands this time. The instant his fingertips met at the top of the portal, the hallway wall was back, looking as if nothing had ever happened to it.

"We should get something to eat," Sheldon said thoughtfully. "Even with IV nutrients our blood sugar will be low. I have several high-glucose cereals that should do the trick. You're welcome to share, gentlemen, as long as you commit to replacing what you eat." He dug through his pockets, looked alarmed, and then annoyed. "Oh, frickety-frack, I don't believe it."

"What? What is it?" asked Leonard.

"We forgot to get our keys back from the FBI." Sheldon stared at the door in frustration. "Well, this is a fine how-d'ye-do. How are we supposed to get into our apartment now?"

Leonard stared at him, eyebrows raised. After a moment Sheldon started and slapped his forehead. "Oh, good Lord, of course. Sorry, sorry." He bent to touch the base of the apartment door, then frowned at Leonard. "Did you know the lenses in your glasses are missing?"

Leonard turned to Raj and Howard, flabbergasted. Raj shrugged. "At least we know it's still him," he pointed out. "Nobody else could gain superpowers and still be this annoying."

2:47 P.M.

Penny dreamed of flying.

It had been a favourite dream of hers, when she'd been a little girl growing up on a farm outside Omaha. She found herself standing in a wide green field, the mountains of the Nebraska high country rearing up on the horizon, lone windmills piercing the flatness here and there. Cold wind blew her hair back from her face, and she leaned into it, then began running. She could never identify the moment when she left the ground, but she always did, and then the sky was hers. She would hurtle across the sky like an arrow, swoop and barrel-roll, shrieking with laughter, sending the birds scattering. Sometimes she would find herself plummeting in a headlong dive until the ground came terrifyingly close, and then she would pull up in a fierce arc that cannoned her back up into the sky. Sometimes, she would fail to pull up in time; she hated that, because she never remembered the impact, only the sickening jolt of coming awake with her heart pounding and her lungs sore. But for the most part, the flying dreams were nothing but unadulterated joy. And here at last, after years and years, the dream had come back to her. Penny spread her arms and blazed a contrail across the sky, the world rolling away far beneath her.

She hadn't had one for years. If asked, she would have barely been able to remember it. But the feeling of it had never left her: she remembered that weightless, joyful, soaring sensation whenever any moment of pure, sheer happiness came over her. The moment she'd first ridden a horse. The first applause she'd gotten as part of a school play. The first time she'd had really good sex, and realized just what the whole process was actually about. The moment she'd opened her door and seen Leonard, bearded and hirsute, back from the North Pole, and realized just how badly she'd missed him and why. Her agent, calling her to tell her she'd got that first professional commercial. Leonard again, turning what had felt like the most obvious decision of her life into something magical and romantic after all, when he'd produced that ring and knelt down. And once more, driving in that car to Vegas, about to turn that magic into reality.

Until he'd told her what he'd done.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach with sickening force. Penny opened her eyes just in time to realize she was falling. A second later she slammed onto the hospital bed with an impact that knocked the wind out of her. She blinked up at the ceiling, struggling to get her breath back. A shrill beeping was sounding beside her; she looked over at a tower of medical screens and equipment, several of which were flashing, and realized that several medical sensor sticky-pads had been torn off her body. Her hand hurt; blood was trailing from the back of it. A stand with an IV bag hanging off it had been knocked to the floor. Penny looked around dazedly. What the hell had happened? She remembered looking through that observation window, seeing Leonard, and then . . . nothing.

The door slammed open. Two large, broad-shouldered men in dark suits burst in, reaching inside their jackets, but stopped when they saw her pushing herself upright. One went back outside, lifting his wrist to his mouth and muttering into whatever mike was hidden there. The other came over and put a companionable hand on her shoulder. "Morning, miss," he said, with a friendly smile. "How are we feeling today?"

Penny shoved the hand off her shoulder with what she would have recognized, if she'd been paying attention, to be startling ease. But she wasn't. She didn't like strange men touching her when she wasn't in the mood for it, especially not when all she was wearing was a hospital johnny that didn't close properly in the back. "I'm fine," she snapped. "Where am I? Where's my fiancé? My friends?"

The suited man's smile fell off, as if it had never been more than a mask. "You're at Huntington Memorial Hospital, Miss Carmichaels," he said. "We're in the middle of an investigation into the incident that occurred at JPL. You and your friends are under observation, to make sure you haven't experienced any ill effects. If you wouldn't mind just resting in bed here until a doctor can see you—"

"Actually I would mind," Penny interrupted. Incident? Ill effects? "I can tell you right now, I feel fine, and I just want to get out of here. Where are my clothes?" The man didn't answer, but his eyes flicked in brief reflex to the room's closet. Penny nodded, rolled out of the bed, clutched her johnny closed behind her to hide as much as she could and went to it. With a glare she waved the man away. "Hey, look, buddy, do you mind?"

The suited man glowered at her one more second, then turned away and folded his arms. Penny huffed. As quickly as she could she got into the clothes somebody had put in the closet; they were all hers—oh, crap, had somebody been in her apartment?!—but the orange top and green jeans didn't match at all, which annoyed her even further. At least they'd brought running shoes rather than heels. She turned back to the suited man. "Okay, pal, either I talk to someone in charge or I'm leaving. What's it gonna be?"

Before the suited man could answer, his colleague opened the door and leaned back in, his expression the wide-eyed blankness of someone trying very hard to hide worry. "Jim? We need to get up to the east wing on the third floor. Winters is resisting."

Winters? Kurt's last name was Winters. That he'd fight people who, more and more, reminded Penny of cops of some kind didn't surprise her; that he was here in the same hospital? And what the hell was she doing in the hospital? Why had she had an IV? And why had they hooked up all those sensor-thingies? What was going on here?

The suited man, Jim, nodded. "Okay, let me secure things here." As the other man disappeared back out the door, Jim turned to her. "Miss Carmichaels, for your own safety I'm going to lock you in. Are we clear? Good." Before she could respond he had backed out and pulled the door closed. The click of a lock cut through the silent room. Penny stared at the door.

"Oh you arrogant son of a bitch," she said, more in disbelief than anger, and tried the knob. It wouldn't move. She rattled it harder, and it still wouldn't turn. A sudden fury burst through her. She grabbed the knob and wrenched as hard as she could. The entire assembly cracked in half and tore out of the door, leaving a ragged half-circle hole behind.

For a moment Penny stood, gaping, the ruined doorknob still in her hand. Then she dropped it with a horrified yelp. "Oh my God," she breathed, hands to her face, "oh my God, holy crap, holy crap, holy crap on a cracker . . . ." She shook her head, hard, and pulled herself together. There would be time to figure this stuff out later. She was sure only of two things: she wanted to find her friends, and she wanted out of here. She wormed her fingers into the exposed lock workings, tripped the latch by feel and pulled the door open. Cautiously, she peeked out into the hall.

The corridor looked like any hospital hallway, and smelt of much the same blend of disinfectant, rubber, metal and plastic. Two chairs sat to either side of her door, a can of Coke on the floor beside one. Down to the left, she could see the edge of what looked like an admissions desk, with the corridor continuing beyond it; to the right, the corridor went down a few more doors—each of them had two chairs on either side as well—and ended at a window through which a beam of sunlight shone. Muffled announcements came over the P.A. Penny glanced back and forth again. No way out except past that desk—or was there? She looked towards the window once more, and grinned. Over the last doorway, closed like every other door in this part of the corridor, a fire-exit warning sign shone.

Wait. Closed—like every other door? Penny didn't visit hospitals much, but the few times she had, most patient rooms were always open, whether occupied or not. People liked to feel connected, especially when afraid. Penny glanced once more towards the admissions desk, then ducked out of her room and walked calmly down to the next door. She remembered this from the Mission Impossible movies Leonard had made her watch with him (and that she'd actually rather enjoyed, not that she'd admit that): Acting like you had a perfect right to be where you were was the first and biggest step in going unnoticed.

She peered into the room through the window in the door. Another bed, with another array of medical equipment and an IV, but she couldn't see who was in it. She looked quickly back down the hall, then put her hand on the knob, gripped it tight, and exerted pressure, keeping herself as still as possible while ratcheting up the force bit by bit. For several long seconds, nothing gave. Then something burst within the lock with a sharp snap and the knob turned over. Penny caught herself, opened the door and slipped inside.

The woman in the bed was Bernadette. Penny held in a shout with one hand and hurried to her side, shaking her gently. "Bernadette!" she hissed. "Bernadette, can you hear me?" She shook harder. "Bernie!" she tried.

" . . . Howie . . . ?" Bernadette mumbled. Her eyelids fluttered. Penny cast a nervous glance at the medical monitors, which had changed the rhythm of their beeping as Bernadette roused; it looked like mostly the same stuff that had been next to her bed, except for—

She clapped her hands to her mouth again, eyes wide. Normally none of the stuff she saw in hospitals meant anything to her except as vague reminders of her occasional Grey's Anatomy binges. But one screen in the stack beside Bernadette, one black-on-grey-on-black blobby image, she recognized immediately—heck, more than one childhood friend back in Nebraska had proudly showed off such images, even before showing off the ring that was theoretically supposed to precede them. It was an ultrasound. And in the centre of the image, something tiny moved, swimming in and out of visibility.

"Holy shit!" she squeaked. She grabbed Bernadette's shoulders again, grinning foolishly, this time shaking her out of sheer inability to hold still. "Holy shit, Bernadette, you're pregnant! You're gonna be a mom! I'm gonna be an aunt! Oh my God, best day ever!"

"God, Penny, I know, okay?" Bernadette rasped. Her face scrunched up as she fought her way back to consciousness. "I've known for about six weeks, but can you not go shouting it everywhere? I don't want Howard to—" Her eyes shot open, and she jackknifed upright, suddenly alert and horrified. "Oh my God, Howie! I told him just before he got the doors open back at the lab—Penny, what happened? Where the hell are we?" She put her hands to her stomach, looking sick. "Does everything look . . . you know, okay down there?"

Penny shrugged. "How the hell should I know? Nothing's going eeeeeeeee and flashing red lights; far as I'm concerned that's an all-clear." She began ripping the sensor pads off Bernadette, ignoring the smaller girl's squawks of pain. "We're at Huntington Memorial, a whole bunch of people in suits are being all Men-in-Blackish about things, and apparently there was some kind of incident back at the lab, that's all I know. Come on, let's find Amy and get out of here."

Bernadette detached her IV with a grimace and swung out of bed. Penny found her clothes in the closet and tossed them to her; as she dressed, Penny couldn't help but notice there was already a slight thickening at Bernadette's waist. Knowing Howard he would probably have cracked a few one-liners about gaining weight, patiently endured a night on the couch and forgotten it. At the doorway, Bernadette frowned at the broken doorknob. "How'd this happen?"

"Show you in a second." Penny took her to the next room, which was also locked, stood Bernadette to block any sightlines from farther up, and broke the lock with a single sharp twist. "Vitamins in the IV, I guess, right?"

Bernadette shook her head, dazed, as they slipped inside the room. "Penny, you know this is not normal, in any way, right?" she whispered. "None of this?"

"We can worry about normal later, Bernadette." Penny pulled back the curtain around the bed to reveal Amy, her face looking softer and more vulnerable without her glasses. Penny realized something with a start. "And as far as normal goes, you realize you aren't wearing your glasses, right?"

Bernadette jumped, touched her face, then held her hand out at a distance and stared at it, wiggling her fingers. She moved it back and forth before her eyes, squinting, then gaped at Penny. "Okay, I've worn glasses since I was nine. As my husband might say: What the frak?!"

Amy proved slower to rouse than Bernadette had. Penny bit her lip, glanced at the clock over the door and decided to maximize resources. "Bernadette, can you get Amy up and moving? I'm gonna check next door to see if Emily or Lucy are there. I think we're pushing our luck for time."

Bernadette frowned as she vigorously chafed Amy's wrists. "You sure you wanna bother? I don't think Emily would bother looking for you."

Penny hesitated. It was tempting. But a deep feeling of wrongness twisted in her stomach. "Yeah," she said at last. "Yeah, I'd better. I want to be able to look myself in the face tomorrow." She got Amy's clothes and put them on the bed. "Be back as soon as I can." Her nerves got the better of her; she wasn't able to keep up the calm walk this time, and found herself almost sliding along the wall to the last room in the hallway. She almost tripped over one of the last two chairs as a result, caught herself, and reached carefully for the knob.

A small, pale hand on the end of a black-jacketed sleeve shot through the door, as if it was nothing but a hologram of light or a cloud of backlit fog. Penny jumped back with a shriek she was completely unable to repress. The hand jerked back through the door, vanishing completely. A second later it reappeared, fumbled around, and then found the knob on the outside. Gripping awkwardly, the hand wrenched at the knob, harder and harder—Penny saw the knuckles turning white—but couldn't move it. With a feeling of unreality, she saw the nails were torn and bitten to the quick.

From above, there came a sudden flurry of shouts; crashes and bangs, as if furniture was being thrown around; then a series of sharp reports, which Penny recognized instantly. She rolled her eyes. "Ah, crap," she muttered. "Okay, screw this." She grabbed the hand by its wrist and yanked hard.

With a yowl of fright and confusion Lucy came completely through the door and fell to the ground, her eyes wide. She closed her eyes and gave a full-body shudder, almost a spasm, and rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. "Oh, God," she mumbled. "I feel like somebody just strained me like soup."

Penny nodded. "I've had mornings like that. Feel like getting out of here?"

"Ah, yes please." Lucy reached up; Penny grabbed her hand—and stumbled back as her hand went straight through Lucy's, which had gone translucent. Lucy gulped, then stared hard at her hand with narrowed eyes. After a moment it went opaque again. Lucy scrambled to her feet with an apologetic look. "Sorry. I woke up when I fell through the bed in there; I'm still not a hundred percent okay at turning this on and off."

Penny frowned. "Why didn't you just walk through the door?"

Lucy shrugged. "I was scared it'd flake out on me halfway through. Figured doing one arm at a time was a little safer." She lifted her eyebrows. "Uh—I don't suppose anything weird happened to you?"

Penny looked around, picked up one of the chairs, grabbed it by its back and one leg, and tore it apart with one quick yank. Lucy jumped back. "Whoa. Okay, plus, not alone. Minus, now even more scared of you than I was."

"Yeah, well, I get the feeling there'll be more to be scared of before long." Penny pointed at the ceiling, where the crashing and the gunshots were getting louder and closer. "You seen Emily?"

"Speaking of things to be scared of," Lucy muttered. "No. I was alone in there."

Penny sighed. "Okay, let's go collect the others." They went back to Amy's room, where Bernadette had just finished getting Amy dressed. She looked considerably groggier than the rest of them had, and unlike Bernadette, she was wearing her glasses, and gave no appearance of discomfort. Had whatever happened to the rest of them just not worked for her? Or was something else going on? Penny smiled and squeezed Amy's shoulder. "Hey, bestie. What's shakin'?"

"The contents of my stomach, I think," Amy husked. "I guess it's your turn to carry me. Hope you didn't take any complaints I might have made about your size personally."

"Well, you can buy me a few drinks later to make it up to me," said Penny dryly. She'd carry Amy over her shoulders if she had to. "Okay, Bernie, Lucy, you guys support Amy; you're good friends helping another friend under the weather, and we're just walking out of an ordinary hospital on an ordinary day like we have a perfect right to. Right?"

The girls exchanged looks, then tried to smile. All three expressions were uniformly wide and unconvincing. Penny sighed and rubbed her forehead. "Maybe we just concentrate on walking, how about that?" She opened Amy's door and stepped out into the corridor; Lucy and Bernadette followed, helping Amy stagger along. Then Penny stopped.

At the far end of the corridor, where it debouched into the admissions desk area, five men in suits waited for them, two on their knees in front and three behind, all of them with pistols levelled straight at the four women. Though the guns were held in firm and steady grips—the sign of someone who knew what they were doing—the men's eyes were wide, and their foreheads shone with sweat. Penny slowly lifted her hands into the air. She had never had a gun aimed at her, but she knew about shooting, and she knew when someone was more than ready to use a weapon in their hands.

"Ladies," snapped the man in the centre, "I'm gonna have to ask you to return to your rooms, now. It's very dangerous out here and that's by far the safest place for you." Behind her, she heard Bernadette make a tiny whimpering squawk, something that might have been, Oh God. Strangely, the sound of her friend's terror stilled her own. All Penny felt was an intense concentration. This might be the greatest sales job of her life.

"Look, guys," she began—she had to swallow, but managed to keep her voice fairly steady. "We, uh, we just wanna go home. If you've got a problem with that, hey, I'm open to talking about it. But the guns," she attempted a laugh that sounded more than a little strained, "well, they make it kinda hard to chill, you know?" She was rewarded by flickering glances from side to side; indecision? Looking for reassurance? "Now unless you do have a problem—" she swallowed again "—I'm thinking we're just gonna back up this way . . . ." She suited action to words, taking one very slow step backwards. Then, when they didn't move, another. " . . . and we're gonna go out this fire escape door—"

Metal split open behind her with a rending crunch. Bernadette screamed; there came the sound of bodies hitting the floor with a thump. Penny spun just in time to see the fire escape door being ripped open from the other side by a pair of big hands, Bernadette and Amy huddled in one corner, and Lucy falling straight through the floor with a look of shock on her face before she disappeared. And then gunfire filled the world with a roar of thunder. Half a dozen slugs slammed into Penny's back, knocking her over and down like full-body punches; she gave a breathless yell and hit the floor. Chest, stomach and back all ached. Sheer shock kept her from grasping what had happened for a second. What little emotion filtered through that shock was more indignation than anything else. Holy crap, she found herself thinking, why'd you guys do that? You just ruined one of my best tops!

The gunfire died. Penny rolled over, gasping, wondering why it wasn't hurting more. Maybe she was in shock. Then the rest of the door ripped away, and a tall figure stepped into the corridor from the fire escape stairwell, carrying a jagged two-foot shard of metal in his hand clearly torn from the remains of the door. He stopped beside Penny and smiled down at her.

It was Kurt. He wore only a hospital johnny, and it was pockmarked and torn in multiple locations, like it had been run through a thresher . . . or through a hail of gunfire. His smile gleamed with a madness utterly beyond his old bad temper. Penny shrank back from it. "Hey, hon," he said cheerfully, and waggled the metal shard at her. "Looks like you woke up a brand new person. Just like me."

Penny stared up at him, breathing hard. The ache was dying away, fear growing in its place. Surely the pain would start any second now? But Kurt only bent down, picked something up from the floor, and tossed it to her. In sheer reflex she caught it, then goggled at it. It looked like a fairly standard 9mm slug, but its nose was crushed flat like it had been shot into a foot-thick hardened steel backstop. What the hell could this thing have hit that would—?

Oh.

Penny looked down at herself. There were no exit wounds in her front. Her back felt completely dry. She stretched her hand behind herself as much as she could, and found a couple of the holes in her top; beneath them, unbroken skin met her fingertips, and a momentary twinge like a days-old fading bruise. Then even the twinge was gone.

"Oh, holy crap on a cracker," she breathed.

"And then some," Kurt agreed. "Hey—I'm gonna go have me some fun with some government flunkies. You feel like joining in, come on along. You don't . . . I'll see you later." His grin looked like a shark's. Without further warning he turned and ran straight at the suited men, who broke and ran as fast as they could, but not fast enough to outrun Kurt—his legs seemed to blur at superhuman speed, and he hit them like a bowling ball hitting pins, knocking them over with a crash. Cries and yells of pain split the air.

The noise galvanized Penny; she sprang to her feet, grabbed Bernadette with one arm and Amy with the other, threw them over her shoulders one to each—it took about as much effort as lifting child-sized straw scarecrows—and twisted sideways into the fire escape stairwell. She heard the girls grunting with the bouncing impacts as she ran down the stairs; from both of them, the breathless noises sounded dangerously close to sobs. Oh, God, I hope I'm not hurting Bernadette's baby! Down one floor, then another, then down a corridor following the large white arrows marked EXIT, and she burst through a door into a parking lot, staggering out across the tarmac.

The parking lot was filled to the brim with police cars, ambulances, and out by the street, a few fire trucks. A row of cruisers were arranged in a semi-circle around the exit, with next to no space to dodge between them. Along that arc of vehicles, uniformed blue police officers levelled their guns. Penny stopped, letting Bernadette and Amy down slowly, staring at the cops.

"Oh, boy, that's a lot of police," Bernadette squeaked.

Amy snorted. An odd smirk came over her face. "Wow. And my mother kept telling me I'd never land a man if I went into neurobiology. Didn't Bonnie Parker get marriage proposals in the press all the time?"

Penny moistened her lips, not really listening as one of the cops bellowed orders at her through a bullhorn. She might not have anything to fear from bullets now—or did she? Were there limits to what she could withstand?—but she doubted Bernadette or Amy would be so lucky. If she tried to fight or run she'd only get her friends killed. And for Bernadette there were more lives on the line than just her own. Maybe they should surrender. Maybe that would be better.

Or maybe . . . .

Out of nowhere, she remembered her dream. Remembered the way she'd woken up, less than forty minutes ago. Remembered the feeling. And that ludicrous, joyful glee came over her again, with no explanation at all. She tightened her arms around Amy's and Bernadette's waists.

"Guys?" she said. "Hold on."

"Hold on?" said Amy. From Bernadette: "Penny, wait, what are you—?"

They got nothing else out before Penny crouched down and leapt skyward. And gravity vanished as she rocketed upwards in a blast of displaced air, Bernadette and Amy tucked under her arms, arcing up and into the sky. Within seconds the parking lot, the police and the hospital had shrunk and disappeared into the cityscape of Pasadena, over a thousand feet below. Cold wind blasted through Penny's hair; she lifted her voice in a scream of joy, almost drowning out Bernadette's and Amy's screams of terror.

What do you know, she thought, grinning giddily as they hurtled through the sky. Come to California, and your dreams do come true after all.