THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION

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

Notes: I'd like to thank all those who have kindly provided reviews and encouragement; being a total newcomer to , I'm not familiar yet with all the ways users can communicate with each other here, so I apologize if I have appeared unresponsive. I'm glad that others are enjoying this nutbar ride and plan to continue as quickly as I can.

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

- 3 -

HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015, 2:55 P.M.

Kurt Winters was standing at a window he'd smashed open, holding an FBI agent out of it with one hand, when he saw the three figures blast off skyward from the hospital parking lot like a kid's rocket; he had just enough time to see that one of them was Penny, and his jaw dropped. "Whoah," he breathed, and grinned at the guy he was holding up by his neck. "Now come on, dude, you have to admit, that was cool, right?"

The guy didn't do anything but kick and flail feebly, gurgling through his reddening face; his blows at Kurt's arms felt like being whipped with cold spaghetti. Kurt snorted in disdain and dropped him, wishing he was a little higher up than the second floor. If Penny had woken up with the same tricks he'd discovered, the strength and the invulnerability, shouldn't he be able to fly too? He grinned to himself; he'd always thought Superman was a wussy character. It would be totally fucking awesome to show the world how to do it right.

"Mr. Winters! On your knees, hands on your head, now!"

Kurt sighed. Didn't these assholes ever learn? He turned, and blinked. "Whoa." The guys at the end of the corridor were new: they wore full-body riot armour, and one of them was hoisting what looked like an honest-to-God rocket launcher over his shoulder. A moment's rational thought forced its way through the hot red glee: just because bullets didn't seem able to hurt him any more didn't mean something couldn't. But he didn't much like the notion of surrendering, either. He really didn't see why he should have to, after today. Ever.

He held up his hands, backing towards the window, grinning. "Okay, dudes, you win. Let's skip the property damage. Catch you later, okay?" He stepped up backwards onto the windowsill, then spun and flung himself skyward.

The strength in his jump catapulted him over eighty feet into the air and nearly a hundred yards down the street, at which point his arc levelled out and curved down, his stomach shot up into his throat and a vague memory of playing Angry Birds on his phone came back to him. Flailing, Kurt plunged back towards the earth, feeling distinctly disgruntled.

"Ah, shi—" he began. Then he crashed through the roof of a house and the lights went out.

HOFSTADTER-COOPER RESIDENCE – 2311 LOS ROBLES AVENUE, #4A

3:16 P.M.

Whether it was TV, newspapers or the Internet, the only news for the past forty-eight hours had been the Power Pulse, as some reporter or other had evidently dubbed it. Leonard, Raj, Sheldon and Howard watched as the news shows recycled both the satellite footage they'd already seen of the shockwave their experiment had set off, and a smorgasbord of jerky, poorly-focused phone videos and GoPro shots, all of which showed people doing impossible things. At least three people were caught flying; one of those videos had turned unexpectedly tragic when its subject hadn't judged his speed correctly and broken his neck crashing through a billboard. One man was laughing hysterically and holding his hands up, with green lightning crackling between his palms. A little girl was juggling her building blocks in the air without touching them. Five women, all with the same face and body, talked to the camera in eerie unison before suddenly collapsing back into one person. Leonard could only sit and blink, not quite able to grasp the scope of what was happening.

Raj had begun writing down the abilities as each one came up. A new video came on, and Raj elbowed Howard. "Dude, look, there it is—super-strength." On the screen, a balding, muscled man in a red T-shirt grinned maniacally as he used one hand to lift the end of his pickup truck off the ground. Higher and higher he lifted the vehicle until his hand was over his head, and he stood practically underneath it.

Leonard raised an eyebrow. "Great, it's Larry the Cable Super-Guy."

Howard looked disquieted. "Oh boy. That's not the right way to apply lift, buddy, don't just hold it by the bumper, don't—" The man couldn't have heard Howard's warning, but it was too late anyway; the bumper broke off, and the truck came smashing down, its front right tire landing right on the man's foot. He fell like a house of cards and lay screaming on the ground before the TV cut back to the newscaster. Howard rubbed his forehead. "God, don't these people grasp elementary mechanics?"

"Well, now, be fair, Howard," said Sheldon from his spot. "Many people of quite advanced mental resources have more important things to think about than engineering. I'm sure that fellow was desperately trying to remember which part of the crick he'd stashed his six-pack in."

Leonard glared at Sheldon. "You know, for a man who's probably just won the Nobel Prize, once they get all this straightened out, you could be a little kinder to the guys who helped set the experiment up."

"I could," Sheldon acknowledged. "I'm not entirely sure Nobel Prizes should be our highest priority right at the moment, though."

Raj, Leonard, and Howard snapped around to gape at him. Sheldon rolled his eyes and explained. "We have to go rescue our womenfolk from the gub'mint, don't we? I'm not about to let the dang federales keep Amy under lock and key."

Raj frowned. "Have I ever mentioned how freaky it is when you go all East Texas, dude? Seriously, it, like, raises my hackles. Cut it out."

"Agreed," said Howard, "but annoying as this is to say, Dr. Dimension here has a point. Bernadette's still in that hospital, and we have to get her out." He grinned abruptly. "And would it be wrong if we took just a minute to geek out about how utterly cool all this is? I always wanted to live in a world with real life superheroes, and I always wanted to be one."

Sheldon scowled. "All right, first of all, 'Dr. Dimension' is far too close to the Canadian children's television series Dr. Dimensionpants. Whatever name I take it'll have to be something else. Secondly, Howard, we have absolutely no evidence that you personally have gained any such abilities—it's clear that the people manifesting that effect are far from a majority of those exposed to the wave. Thirdly, Leonard, now that one of us has in fact gained superpowers," Sheldon stood and brushed off his pants, "I think once we get the girls back it'll be time to review the sidekick clause of the Roommate Agreement." He went to the kitchen and got a bottle of water from the fridge.

Howard and Raj stared at Leonard in disbelief. Leonard could only shrug. "He's right, there's a sidekick clause. But I am not putting 'Boy' anything in my alias!" he added over his shoulder to Sheldon.

"Dude, you cannot possibly be his sidekick," Raj insisted. "When Robin the Boy Wonder whacks Batman over the head, it makes all of us look bad."

Howard frowned. "All of us? You haven't gotten powers either, any more than Leonard or me."

"And don't think I can't tell that that's just eating you up inside," said Raj smugly, folding his arms. Then he frowned. "Actually—that is a really ugly feeling, dude. It's like this little twisting coil of black electricity right behind your solar plexus. Come on, you really think Bernadette will start thinking Sheldon's cooler than you just because he can twist the structure of space and time?"

Howard's mouth fell open. Silence filled the room. A moment later, Raj slowly took on an equally poleaxed look. "Dude—Howard—I don't know why I said that. I mean—"

"Interesting," said Sheldon, arching an eyebrow. "Raj, I'm thinking of a number between one and the cosmological constant. Do you have any idea what it is?"

Raj stared at him. "No." A second later, he frowned. "But—" He touched his temple with one hand. "Is that what it feels like in your head, when you're really focused on something? That's . . . wow. Kind of awesome."

"What does it feel like?" asked Leonard, fascinated despite himself.

Raj moved his hands, struggling for words. "It's like . . . being a convex lens, except alive, and able to feel it. Taking light from all frequencies and directions and feeling it pass through you, gathering it into one searing point, one nexus of total concentration, which feels both freezing cold and burning hot at the same time." He looked at Sheldon, almost awestruck. "Dude, what the hell are you actually thinking about?"

"The number 1.35213," said Sheldon blankly. "Why, what did you think I was thinking about?"

"Whoa! And now you're puzzled, and that felt just like getting hit with a mist of tepid water." Raj turned, eyes wide, to look at Leonard. "And you, oh God, dude, you've seriously got to get over your self-doubt, 'cause it feels like somebody's turning your intestines over with a butter churn. Aah!" He jerked as if struck. "Leonard, did you know that when you're shocked it is literally like a slap upside my head?"

Howard clapped his hands together and pasted an artificially bright smile on his face. "Okay. Raj is an empath. Congratulations, buddy, you can finally tell when a girl's actually interested in you or not. I see a bright future as Dr. Phil's assistant on national TV! And now that's settled, could we maybe get back to figuring out how to get our ladies back?!"

Leonard pushed his hair back with both hands, forcing something like calm onto his racing thoughts. "Howard's right, guys, we've got to find the girls. Sheldon, can you put us back inside that hospital?"

Sheldon cupped his chin in one hand, frowning. "Well, I remember the coordinates to open a contiguity back to the boardroom. But to do it anywhere else I'd need a map of the building, so I could calculate a proper and safe location for the exit."

Leonard held up one hand. "Whoa whoa—'safe'? What's the risky part about this?"

"Oh, for us, nothing. However, Leonard, I don't know about you but I don't want to risk opening a contiguity in a hallway somebody might be walking through. That's reckless negligence. There's California law about that." Sheldon shook his head decisively. "No, far better to put it on a wall in some unused storage closet someplace. I just need to know where one is. Howard, think you can look the plans up online?"

Howard glared at him. Raj winced. "Ow, dude, calm down. You're like a barbecue on my face."

"Ho, boy, that's not gonna get old real fast," Howard muttered. He went to Leonard's computer and booted up as the others gathered around him to watch. "Ai-yai-yai. Two of my best friends get superpowers and I'm the computer nerd flunky. It's kindergarten playtime all over again."

"What are you complaining about, you're not the one who signed the sidekick clause," Leonard grumbled. "Try the Pasadena Land Use office, for Huntington Memorial."

"Go teach your granny to suck eggs, Leonard, I've been doing this since I was ten." Howard frowned at the keyboard. "You're running slow, man, when was the last time you defragged this thing?" He looked thoughtful. "You know, there ought to be a way to expedite functionality on these circuits . . . ."

"Howard! Focus!" Sheldon slapped Howard on the back of the head. "Solve computer problems on your own time, we're in rescue mode."

"You know," said Howard through gritted teeth, "my wife and my unborn child are back there too. Amy isn't even your girlfriend right now; you do remember that, right?"

Sheldon stared at him. "You don't seriously think I've forgotten it, do you?" he said after a moment. "Howard, I play that last conversation I had with her in my head every day. Well, my brain plays it for me, I haven't yet negotiated a settlement about it, but anyways." He waved his hand. "I have no idea whether I'll be able to successfully effect a reconciliation with Amy, who I might remind you is one of only three women in this entire world to whom I've ever said 'I love you', but it is certainly true that I'll never be able to do so if she spends the rest of her life in government custody. So don't make the mistake of thinking I don't take this just as seriously as you do, Howard. Because I do."

A long moment of silence stretched out. Howard lowered his eyes. "Yeah, okay," he mumbled. "I guess I get that. Sorry, man." He turned back to Leonard's laptop and began typing again.

Sheldon nodded. "And if it turns out we can't effect a reconciliation," he said, "then I'd just as much rather she spend the rest of her life regretting what she let go while I mock her mercilessly with it every day. Ho broke my heart, man," he added, in response to their looks.

Raj grimaced at Sheldon as if watching something extremely peculiar and nasty crawl out from under a rock. "Dude, I don't know where your mother had you tested, but you seriously need a recheck." Then he frowned. "That's weird. Did any of you guys just have a really happy flashback?"

Leonard, Sheldon and Howard exchanged glances, and Leonard shook his head. "Don't think so. Why?"

"'Cause I've got this really bright sparkly vibe in my head, right here." Raj tapped the top of his head with one finger. "It's tiny, but it feels like . . . it feels like it's moving. Like, really fast." His eyes widened. "And—getting closer. Oh! I think she just found something she was looking for!"

"She?!" chorused Leonard, Howard and Sheldon together.

Raj bounced on the balls of his feet, grinning. "Yes, yes! She just spotted something she really wanted, and now she's going for it, at top speed, she's—" His grin vanished. "Uh-oh. She's trying to hit the brakes really fast, and I don't think she's—"

From overhead came a series of thumps and a rumbling crash, rolling across the ceiling.

"—going to make it," Raj finished, subdued.

"The roof!" Leonard shouted. He sprinted for the door, threw it open and ran up the stairs, Howard and Raj only a step behind. They passed the fifth floor and hurtled upstairs to the roof's access door, where Leonard shoved it open, ran outside and almost barrelled straight into Sheldon. "Gyaaahhh! Sheldon, what the hell?!"

Sheldon nodded. "Experiment #1 in direct personal teleportation, successful," he said. "So far this day has not disappointed." He turned, and then the smirk fell off his face; his eyes widened. "Oh dear."

"Bernie!" Howard shouted. He ran across the roof to the corner, where Penny was untangling herself from Amy and Bernadette. In a diagonal line across the roof ran a series of smashed, cracked dents in the concrete floor, like the splashes of a stone skipped off a lake. Penny was in an orange top and green jeans that had both been badly torn up, but—Leonard's heart nearly burst with relief—she herself seemed uninjured. He was only a second behind Howard, and caught Penny in a nearly strangling embrace.

"Oh my God, I thought I was going to lose you," he sobbed.

Penny burst into tears. "Oh, God, you had to start crying didn't you? Leonard, what the hell is happening to us?"

"I don't know, I think—I think maybe we just both of us need to let go and trust each other more; I've got to stop sabotaging things with my self-doubt, and—"

"Leonard!" Penny pulled back indignantly. "I mean what's happened to me! What happened at that lab, how I can do the things I can do now! What the hell is going on?!"

"Oh. Uh, I thought—never mind, we can discuss that later. When you say, do the things you can do, what exactly—" Leonard's eyes fell on the dents in the roof. He thought about Raj's words, and about the noises he'd heard, and the way Penny's clothes were damaged. Realized that she wore nothing like a parachute, and there was no helicopter anywhere in the sky. He felt like he'd been smacked in the face again.

"Penny?" he said, raising his eyebrows. "Do you have something to show me?"

Penny opened her mouth, then gave him an almost painful smile, spread her arms, and closed her eyes. Her feet left the concrete. Inch by inch, she floated up into the air, until she was hovering about three feet above the roof. She opened her eyes, and only nodded at Leonard's slack-jawed gape. "So, whatcha think?" she said, voice achingly wry. "Should I go with the classic blue leotard with red trim, or the white with a boob window?"

Then she suddenly looked alarmed. She hadn't stopped rising. "Uh, Leonard—help? Um, how do I stop this? Uh, stop! Down! Retract! De-elevate!" She began to flail about, drifting sideways. Leonard leapt after her, grabbed one foot and managed to pull her back down to the roof; when her foot was within six inches of the floor the upwards pull suddenly vanished, and Penny plopped to the ground with a gasp of relief. "Okay, some more practice needed there," she said.

"Guys?" Howard's voice cracked in mid-yell, almost a shriek. Together, Leonard and Penny raced over to where he sat, cradling Bernadette in his arms; Amy was clinging to Sheldon, who had knelt down, staring with an open mouth as if for once in his life he had absolutely no idea what to do or say. Penny gasped at the sight of Bernadette; the smaller woman was badly injured, from bruises and scrapes all over to a visibly broken arm and leg and, worst of all, a sodden dark patch of blood on the side of her head. Bloodstains were spreading on Howard's shirt and trousers. He looked up, eyes wet. "Guys, this is—this is really bad. I think she might lose the baby if we can't get her to a doctor, or something . . . ."

"Oh, shit," Penny whispered, hand to her mouth. "I knew I screwed up the landing, but I never thought—oh, God, Bernadette, I'm so sorry." She began crying again, dropping to her knees beside them. As if in response, Bernadette's eyes fluttered open. She reached up with one hand.

"Penny," she whispered. Her breathing hitched. "It's okay. I'm gonna be fine." But her eyes were rolling back, defocusing. "I think—"

She spasmed, eyes bulging, and jackknifed upright in Howard's arms, coughing out a spray of blood—but a second later the cough turned clear. Colour flooded her face. She twisted, writhing, and gave a low cry than scaled upwards into a shriek more of surprise than agony; she held her broken arm up in front of her, staring at it as if it no longer belonged to her . . . and it seemed, for just a moment, that it didn't: the splintered bone-ends pulled themselves in, flesh crawling back over them, like a living animal burrowing into safety. Her shin straightened by itself, with audible crunching noises of bone snapping back into place. The bruises and scrapes on her face faded before Leonard's stunned gaze like ink washing away under water. The bloody patch didn't vanish from her hair, but something shifted subtly underneath it, and Leonard realized with horror that Bernadette's skull had actually been broken. He considered telling Howard that and decided not to.

Bernadette slowly brought her hands up in front of her face. They trembled, but Leonard was sure it was not from any physical pain, not now. Penny stared with wide eyes. Raj stumbled back and sat down, breath hitching with relief. Howard stared at his wife with something somewhere between awe, joy, and shock. "Bernadette?" he whispered. "Are—are you okay?"

"Yeah," said Bernadette. "Yeah, I think so. The baby's fine, too. I . . . I can feel it." A slow, stunned smile spread over her face. "I can feel it. I can feel my heartbeat. My nervous system. Oh, God, it's like I can feel every nerve all through my skin!" She got her feet under herself and staggered upright, leaning on Howard for support. "Howie, I can feel my own gut flora! It's like this tiny little Mongol horde doing a cavalry parade by my brain—it's amazing! Oh!" She grinned down at her own stomach. "Oh, I wish I could stick an endoscope in there right now and watch you guys, you little dickenses!"

Leonard blinked at her, then looked to Sheldon, who raised his eyebrows meaningfully. "Who should go back and get retested now, huh?" he insisted.

HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

3:42 P.M.

Lucy had discovered the hard way that she couldn't actually breathe when she was inside something solid, although she could see out through whatever she hid inside—it was like looking through a hologram, or a half-completed dissolve shot on TV. She crouched down inside the concrete wall, watching a group of riot-armoured SWAT cops running by, feeling her heart pound in her skull and her chest ache. It wasn't a matter of holding her breath; she could move her diaphragm all she wanted, it simply pulled nothing into her lungs. Spots were bursting in her eyes by the time the cops had gone far enough down the hall that she felt she could risk emerging.

She pushed herself out into the empty air of the basement corridor and heaved in a gasp, letting herself slide down against the wall. She'd also discovered she couldn't just stick her face out like a diver in water, either; if her ribcage was even partially within solid matter her lungs simply wouldn't work. Finally, she'd figured out that the more frightened she got, the more likely the power was to turn on by itself, sometimes so strongly she couldn't even stay planted on a floor—that was how she'd wound up down here. When she'd seen Penny's ex Kurt ripping his way through the metal fire-escape door like it was made of wallpaper, all her instinctive terror had simply surged in a freezing blast like an Arctic geyser, so strong there was nothing left but the overwhelming urge to disappear. The next thing she knew, she'd fallen through something like four or five separate stories, finally catching herself here on a sub-level basement, too far below ground to get back up again without using a staircase or an elevator that wasn't already in use by someone.

Oh, God, she thought, and put her face in her hands. I hate my life. I hate being afraid. Tears welled in her eyes. Her fear of people had killed her incipient relationship with Raj, and squelched any attempt to get back together with him by driving her into a lie about seeing someone; then, when he'd made it clear he would only see her again if he could see some other girl at the same time, that same sick dread had touched off a spurt of pride and anger that only hid the nauseating certainty it wouldn't even have been worth trying. How could she compete with someone so confident that she was willing to risk competition in the first place?

And then, out of nowhere, Raj had e-mailed her and invited her out, purely as a friend, he'd said; no pressure, he had been very clear to state in his message. But you told me once you were interested in unusual, one-of-a-kind events, and I thought it would be nice to see you again, as a friend, an old acquaintance or whatever you like. He hadn't mentioned Emily at all, and she'd dared to hope that maybe they'd broken up, but hadn't felt much surprise to learn they hadn't. These sorts of things didn't usually work out for her. She'd learned that the hard way, too.

The light seemed to be growing incredibly bright against her eyelids. She squeezed them shut tighter, pressing her heels against her hands, but the pressure only seemed to warp her vision further; it felt as if the world was reversing itself on her, gone inverted black-and-white, like an X-ray negative. When more footsteps echoed dimly down the corridor, growing nearer, she couldn't even bring herself to push back into the wall again. Let them find her. She was tired. She sighed and looked up, smiling sadly, and watched as a slender woman and an immensely tall, broad-shouldered dark-skinned man (her hair and his skin looked white in her vision) walked quickly down the corridor towards her.

" . . . hadn't knocked himself out with that crazy-ass flying attempt, we might have lost men permanently," the woman was saying. "They've got him on IV sedation on the top level, too drugged out to think, let alone move."

"How'd they get the needle in? Thought this guy was bulletproof." The man's voice matched his size, a resonant basso profundo.

"Don't know," said the woman. "All we know is, when he was unconscious, the needle went in. We haven't found Armbruster yet, either." Lucy tensed: Ambruster—that was her! "If she's capable of going through solid matter she's probably long gone."

That made Lucy smile. With a sigh, she stood up and spread her arms, stepping into the woman's path. The woman and her colleague kept walking, as if she hadn't noticed Lucy at all, but from the way her attention was focused on her tablet, that seemed quite plausible. "Kripke, Bloom and Winkle are cooperating," the woman went on, "but Sweeney still hasn't shown any sign of coming out of her coma or recovering from her injuries—she's the last one from the original site. She's up with Winters in the top-floor secure ICUs." The woman walked straight up to Lucy—

—and through her as if she didn't exist, never glancing up. Lucy spun, gaping in amazement, her body turning straight through the big guy with the deep voice as he followed the woman. There was no way they couldn't have seen her! Was there?

. . . oh, wow. Lucy closed her eyes, breathed deeply, steadied herself. When she opened her eyes again the world had returned to normal full colour. She looked at her own hands, opaque and reliable, the nails bitten down to the raw. Then, the woman and the man still walking away without having noticed her, she held them up in front of her face and concentrated. The world gradually bled back into the weird black-white negative colour scheme she'd thought was just stress-borne hallucination . . . and before her eyes her hands faded away, vanishing completely.

So I can sidestep light itself, not just solid matter. She'd read a few SF stories after meeting Raj, though she'd never dared tell him; if her retinas were transparent to visible light, they must be picking up something outside the visible spectrum, maybe UV or X-rays. That must be why things looked so weird. It would take some getting used to, but it would suffice to let her find her way out of here, now that she didn't have to hold her breath to avoid getting caught. She hurried after the man and the woman, paused as they passed a staircase, and glanced upwards. A sign and arrow pointed helpfully towards the exit.

Then she sighed, and followed the man and woman down the hall. If she had the chance to learn something, maybe she should. She hated not knowing what was going on.

She wasn't in time to beat the closing door of the room they entered, but that didn't matter: one held breath and she was through it. The room had evidently been commandeered as some kind of command centre; banks of laptops had been set up on tables, and a projection screen showed a map of Pasadena up front. Men and women in suits moved back and forth, conversing on phones and checking tablets. Lucy walked through them like a ghost. For the first time she was beginning to enjoy this. She could see everything—albeit fine detail was hard to make out—and nobody could see or touch her. At all.

The woman went to the front of the room, beside the projection screen, and raised her voice. "Okay, everyone, attention please?" The hubbub died down as the others turned to her. "As you know, we have eight Primaries still missing: we've verified to our satisfaction that they are just not anywhere in the hospital, so we're going to be commandeering local law enforcement to search. I want you all to familiarize yourself with these names and faces.

"Our missing Primaries are: Dr. Leonard Leakey Hofstadter." Lucy repressed a gasp as Leonard's face came up on the screen. "Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper." Then Sheldon's. "Dr. Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali. Mr. Howard Joel Wolowitz. Miss Penelope Victoria Carmichaels. Dr. Bernadette Marianne Rostenkowski-Wolowitz. Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler. And Miss Lucy Ann Armbruster." Each face came up in turn; Lucy grimaced at the sight of her own, which looked like it had been taken from her passport. "You'll have images and bios sent to your phones. Our advantage is that all of them have strong pre-existing relationships, so if you find one it's extremely likely you'll find a good many of them, maybe all of them. We can confirm that Carmichaels and Armbruster have definitely manifested as metahumans, and we suspect at least one of the men has; it's the only way they could have disappeared from their last known location. Other manifestations are unknown, so all subjects are to be treated with extreme caution, and encouraged to surrender and cooperate whenever possible. Deadly force is to be used only in the last defense of your life or innocents' lives. Are we clear?"

Nobody else in the room was close enough to see what Lucy saw next, but she had squeezed in beside the woman—AGENT A. PAGE, her badge read—hoping to read her tablet. The effort was wasted; the weird light-reversal of her invisibility made it unreadable without getting a much closer and longer look. But she'd looked up at that last sentence, and caught the big, dark-skinned guy shoot a relieved look at Page. Quite distinctly, he mouthed, Thank you. Page nodded back with a faint smile.

Lucy raised her eyebrows. This guy must know one of them—and from his worried, protective look, it was almost certainly one of the girls. She snuck a look at his badge: DR. G. FOXWORTH, it said—probably not Penny, then, and Amy didn't seem like the type to inspire such sentiment. Maybe, if Bernadette knew about this, she could use it somehow. But the people in the room were gathering coats and briefcases; they clearly weren't going to discuss anything else now. She took a deep breath, held it, and walked straight through bodies, tables, computers, chairs, and the door until she was outside the room. There, she willed her body back into solidity and broke into a run, racing down the hall to the stairs and up.

She paused when she got to the hospital's first floor, looking around. The bustle here seemed like business as normal, if you didn't look closely enough to notice the people in suits and radio earpieces standing at key intersections watching everything with hawk's eyes. By now, she had got the hang of maintaining her invisibility while shifting herself in and out of solidity as needed, and the ease with which she'd gone completely unnoticed had gradually sparked an almost forgotten feeling: confidence—and curiosity. Maybe she should see what else she could find. Maybe even see if anybody else wanted to get out of here.

Like Emily? came the rather pointed thought. Lucy flushed. She'd tried to help Raj get the other girl out of the lab mostly in panic and instinct; it was a great deal more difficult to contemplate deliberately going back into this place for the sake of somebody who, quite frankly, scared the crap out of her, and of whom she could hardly be said to have an unbiased opinion. And if Emily was as badly injured as Page had described, better she stayed anyway for her own sake. But on the other hand, Penny had helped Lucy as best she could, despite their differences. Besides, if she wanted any hope of rebuilding any kind of friendship, or anything else, with Raj, having to admit that she'd left his current girlfriend behind without at least checking on her probably wouldn't go over so well.

None of that was what really mattered, though. What mattered was that moment in the basement, when she'd been about to give up, and finally realized just how truly sick and tired she was of being scared.

She sighed, and headed for the elevators.

3:58 P.M.

The elevator doors rolled open at the top floor. Two suited FBI agents immediately turned to face into it; their expressions on seeing nobody inside would have been funny if Lucy had enjoyed that kind of thing. As it was, her stomach was in too many knots to laugh at anything. She ghosted through them, squinting in the weird black-light of her vision, and hurried down the hall as quietly as she could. Oddly, even at full insubstantiality her feet still left prints and made sounds—probably a side effect of whatever kept her from falling through floors, which was useful but meant even now she still had to be careful.

This level had been completely commandeered. There were suited agents everywhere, and she could instantly tell the normal hospital staff from the people the government had brought in: the Huntington doctors and nurses wore blue scrubs, talked to each other in low voices and looked nervously at the ones in green scrubs, while the green-scurbbed newcomers ignored them and exchanged information with brute military efficiency. Lucy followed two of the green-scrubbed doctors down a hall until they came to a heavy door with two riot-armoured cops outside.

"Anything?" asked one of the doctors.

The taller cop shook his helmeted head. "No. Trust me, ever since we heard about Winters, we've been checking every ten minutes. She hasn't moved. You changing the IV again?"

"I hope not," said the other doctor. "Last time we checked her hemoglobin finally looked like it was stabilizing, but that was after sucking up practically a unit an hour. Whatever's happening to her, it's a whole other ball game." She looked at the door as if dreading having to go back in. Lucy swallowed. This didn't sound good.

She ghosted through the door. The interior of the room only solidified her conviction: Emily wasn't going anywhere. All around the bed where she lay stretched out, pale, limp and unmoving, towered a wall of screens, monitors and devices bleeping to each other in slow, cold tones. Multiple lines ran into and out of her arms, connecting to IV bags and more machines. The room smelt of antiseptics, blood, and a faint stink something like—Lucy sniffed, frowning—burning. The air felt chilly.

She let herself solidify, shifting back to visibility so she could see more clearly, and immediately wished she hadn't. Even in the dim light of the room's drawn curtains, Emily looked dreadful. Dark shadows discoloured her eyes, her lips looked almost blue, and her breathing had a dry, sandpapery sound to it that made the hair on Lucy's neck stand up. She moved closer, despite herself, and found herself reaching out to touch the other girl's arm. Her skin was cold.

"I'm sorry," Lucy whispered suddenly, without intending to. "I know about having issues. Whatever yours are, I didn't mean to make them worse. I should have stayed home. Well, I mean, I guess we all should have, in hindsight, but . . . ." She hesitated. "You probably saved a whole bunch of people's lives, back there, when you got that door open. That took guts. I don't think I could have done that. In fact I know I couldn't have done that.

"Raj told me you liked being scared," she added after another pause. "I'd envy that, except I can't even imagine what that would be like. I wish I could help you, somehow. But the best I can do is go, I guess. I'll tell Raj you're here, that you need him. Maybe he can do something. And . . . I won't see him again. I owe you that much.

"Goodbye, Emily."

She drew in a breath and stood up.

Something icy cold and bone-crushingly strong seized Lucy's wrist, yanked her down almost into the bed. Emily's head jerked sideways and her eyes flashed open, a cold, brilliant, amber light shining in their depthless brown irises. Her lips drew back in a snarl. But Lucy barely noticed. The grip on her wrist was nothing compared to the grip on her mind, a freezing, iron-hard grasp that penetrated every thought, made it impossible to blink, to breathe, to think, almost even to be afraid. The ghost-state was utterly beyond her. All she could see was Emily's eyes, and the rage and agony blasting from them.

And then the snarl warped into something that might, conceivably, have been a smile.

"Goodbye, Lucy," Emily whispered.