THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION

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

Notes: In the words of the famous "Ti Kwan Leep" sketch from Canadian comedy legends The Frantics, "All right, finally, some action!" I have tried to keep this within the level of what might count as T-rated violence, but as I am not 100% confident of what the line between those two degrees is, I will note for the record that some of the content here, as in Chapter 10, may veer close to the edge of if not into M-rated territory. Personally, I think any twelve-year-old who can handle soul-sucking horrors like the Dementors of Harry Potter can deal with a little fisticuffs, but let the warning be noted for where it is legitimately required.

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

- 12 -

GRAND CAMELOT HOTEL, 17TH FLOOR, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2015, 9:46 P.M.

"ExcusemegentlemenI'mterriblysorrytodisturbyoubutIwaswonderingifyouknewwherethenearestwashroommightbeeeeeeeee—" Raj babbled, and that was as far as he got before the big bald guy grabbed his collar where it stuck out of his armour vest and slammed him against the wall. Something hard, cold and metallic jabbed Raj under the chin, hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. The bald man's glare was the most terrifying thing Raj had ever seen. Beside them, the skinny guy had grabbed Lucy and hauled her into a headlock, jamming his gun against her temple with the same brutal speed; her terror blazed from her white face with such force Raj could barely think.

"How the hell did you get onto this floor?" growled the bald man. "This area's hotel staff only." Then he frowned. "Wait. I know you. Where've I seen—?" In mid-sentence his eyes widened. "Oh, shit. Sammy, you know who we got here? We got two of Dr. Hofstadter's friends, from the news! The people the cops are looking for!" He grinned.

The skinny guy, Sammy, nodded slowly in comprehension. "And they're trespassing, too," he said, and broke into a grin himself. "Might be even more money in it for us, Joe."

Tears spilled down Lucy's cheeks. "Oh, God," she whimpered, "please, please don't hurt us, please—"

At which point Sammy made his fatal mistake. "Oh, shut up, bitch," he snapped, and whacked the barrel of his pistol against Lucy's head.

The pain of the impact burst through Raj's head as well, and as he saw Lucy slump, her eyes rolling up, the blast ignited Raj's brain like a primary detonation setting off the chain reaction of a fusion bomb. "NO!" he roared. White-hot fury erupted invisibly out of him in all directions; he could feel its wavefront smash into every mind in its path, both here and as far away as four or five floors above and below. Joe went flailing backwards as if he'd been physically punched, his gun flying away down the hall. Sammy reeled back and collapsed . . . and with a heart-wrenching scream that extinguished that fury in sudden, appalled shock, Lucy fell too, her arms over her head.

The rage-wave flickered out like a dying flare. Like a tsunami crashing back into shore, the terror, bewilderment and anguish Raj had left in a hundred minds backlashed over him in a freezing, hammering flood. Raj collapsed to his knees. Gasping and paralyzed, he saw Sammy clawing his way back upright, grabbing his gun, bringing it up into line with Raj's face—

Beside him, Lucy reached up, grabbed Sammy's arm with both hands and pulled it down. Her hands, Sammy's arm, and the gun Sammy held all disappeared into the carpeted floor. Then Lucy yanked her hands back out and rolled away. For a second, Sammy stared at the carpet where his arm had fused into it, face blank and uncomprehending. He tried to pull his arm back; it wouldn't move. He tried harder. Then sudden horror shattered his face and he began to scream. "Jesus! Jesus, Joe, help me! Jesus Christ, bitch, what'd you do?! Oh shit! Oh God! Oh, God, help—!"

Gunshots cracked through the air. Raj flung himself to the hallway floor. Lucy threw herself through the fire escape door without bothering to open it and vanished. From farther down the corridor, Joe swung his recovered gun across the hall to bear on Raj once again, still firing; a red flower burst across Sammy's temple and the skinny man's screams cut off, his body collapsing to the carpet. Raj rolled across the floor into the recess of the fire escape door, out of the line of fire. Panic drowned his mind; he threw bolts of that panic over and over at Joe, smashing at that stone-stubborn resolve, but the man was too used to mastering his own fear to be shaken by Raj's. Bullets struck bursts of plaster from the edge of the wall, chewing towards him, the thunder of Joe's gunfire a deafening roar in Raj's ringing ears.

Then Joe's gun clicked on empty. Raj felt the dismay in the big man's mind as clearly as if he'd shouted an obscenity aloud. He struck at that dismay, punching through it, slamming his mind down on something that felt like a well-worn switch, a long-trained reflex: Retreat! He heard Joe curse, felt him hurl the useless gun down the hall at Raj's hiding place and saw it hit the carpet. Footsteps pounded the rug once again, fading away this time. Raj lay still, shuddering, trying to bring the hammering of his heart back under control.

Lucy poked her head through the fire escape door. She saw Raj, and a relieved, joyful smile burst across her face as she stepped back into the hallway. Then she looked beyond him, saw Sammy's body on the carpet, and her eyes bulged; she clapped both hands to her mouth, muffling another scream. Raj clambered to his feet and pulled her to him, hugging her tightly, taking as much comfort as he gave.

GRAND CAMELOT HOTEL, NORTHSIDE EXTERIOR

9:47 P.M.

"Guys, I think we just distracted the people guarding Leonard. This would be a good chance for you to get him out of there, but . . . if someone could, um, help us? Anyone? Please?"

Without hesitating Penny flung herself at the lighted window—and sliced around in a sudden vicious spiral as Amy grabbed her leg with a shout of, "Wait!" The two of them spun about one another in a flailing knot before Penny tore free, and for a second the look of sheer rage on her face actually frightened Howard. But Amy didn't flinch. "We have to be careful!" she cried. "We have to go in together, quietly! All of us. Carefully."

Penny closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and nodded. "Okay," she rasped. "You're right. Careful. But fast. Come on."

She whirled and shot towards the window, fetching up lightly on the wall to one side; Amy flashed after her and landed on the opposite side. They fumbled around the outer screen and dislodged it. Howard just barely kept himself from following it down with his eyes. Penny peered inside at the frame, scowling. "They don't make these things to open from the outside, do they?" she muttered. "I can't find anywhere to get a grip."

"Maybe we should just push it in." Amy moved around and set her hands against the bottom corners of the frame, nodding to Penny. "You get the top. Okay, ready? One, two, three—"

Howard saw their mistake an instant too late. "No, wait—"

Simultaneously, Amy and Penny both pushed as hard as they could—and sent themselves flying away from the building, spinning about in mid-air. Penny got herself under control almost instantly, but Amy took a few seconds more, and looked distinctly dizzy by the time she stopped. Penny glared at Howard as if it was somehow his fault. "What the hell happened? I thought we were super-strong!"

"You are strong," Howard said. "But you didn't have any leverage there. It doesn't matter how much force you apply if you don't have something to brace against." He took a deep breath; this wasn't going to be quiet, but it might be quieter than the alternative. "Okay, guys, stay back." He adjusted a couple of dials on the control wand in his left hand, then lifted the metal tube in his right hand and aimed it at the window. "And you might want to plug your ears."

Looking unsettled, Penny did so; after a moment, so did Amy. Howard breathed deeply a few times, then in one quick move leant forward to direct his skates' thrust backward and pressed the red button on the bottom of his control wand. A burst of force whipcracked out of the tube, shoving him backwards—he flailed a second but managed to recover, reminded for a moment of trying to stay upright on roller skates—and punched in the window frame and panes together with a splintering crunch and crash, leaving a four-foot-wide hole in the wall.

"Wow!" Amy grinned.

Penny immediately leapt backwards, brought her arms together over her head, and arrowed into the room like a high diver, pulling up and dropping onto her feet with a ballet dancer's poise. Amy looked at Howard apologetically. "Um, I don't think I can do that," she said, waving at Penny, and simply clambered in through the hole. Howard sighed and followed her in, stumbling a little until he got the knack of standing upright on the skates' countergrav field. Simply having a floor within touching distance was an unbelieveable relaxant.

Penny had already sprinted to the bed, in which a covered sleeping form was visible. She yanked back the blankets. "Leonard!" she cried, and hauled her fiancé's limp form upright, holding up his head, kissing his face fiercely before pulling back with dismay. "Oh, God, Leonard, honey, wake up! Can you hear me, baby? Wake up, please, wake up . . . ." She twisted round to cast a beseeching look at Amy. "Ames, what's wrong with him? What's happened?"

Amy hurried over to the bed, grabbed Leonard's arm and pushed back the sleeve of his white shirt. Then she yelped and dropped his arm, which fell limply to the mattress. His wrist was wrapped in heavy, blood-stained bandages. "That's not good," she said. "Here, bestie, move over—" She skinned back one of Leonard's eyelids. "Pupils dilated. He might have been drugged. Howard, can you put the lights on?"

Howard skated to the light switch on the wall by the door. A second before he touched it, the door opened. The big bald man on the other side stared blankly at him. Howard returned the gape. Then a massive fist smashed into the side of Howard's head; stars burst blindingly throughout his skull. He went over on his back as if tackled, the back of his head thudded into the floor and Howard lost all interest in subsequent proceedings.

9:48 P.M.

"Howard!" Penny spun to see Amy charging at the big man in the doorway; before she could leap up to join her, the big man had unloaded a powerful swing and decked Amy so hard that she spun about and staggered, her glasses flying in two pieces off her face. Blinking myopically, Amy shook her head, then glared in the big man's general direction. "You know, sir, that hurt my budget a lot more than my skull. You have any idea what my prescription costs?"

"Noted," said the man after a moment, looking a bit taken aback. It was not enough to stop him, though. He stepped forward and, with a speed and smoothness Penny would never have expected from someone of his bulk, spun on his heel and delivered a roundhouse kick to Amy's midsection, knocking her back across the room. She collapsed, eyes bulging, whooping in huge gasps. The big man nodded, turned, and saw Penny holding Leonard. With an exasperated huff he strode towards her. Before she knew it, he'd brought up his fist with that same speed and haymakered her right across the jaw.

The blow knocked her head sideways, but felt no harder than an unexpected push. She blinked, turned her head back, and glared straight into his eyes. His eyebrows shot up. Penny rolled back on the bed, brought her feet up and with all the strength of her cheerleader's legs kicked him in the belly with both feet. His breath left him with a loud "Oooffff!"; the man flew backwards through mid-air and crashed into the wall with such force that the plaster cracked. For a moment he hung there, then fell to the carpet, leaving a six-foot-high sunken crater of cracks and torn paper behind him in the wall.

"Wh—wh—wh—whoa," Amy finally gasped. She sat up, massaging her stomach. "Remind me—never to tick you off again, Penny."

Penny hurried over and helped her to her feet. "You okay? You hurt?"

"No, I'm fine, I think. Just had the wind knocked out of me." Amy looked down at herself. "This power seems to have some interesting limits—it protects you from actual tissue-damaging injury, but doesn't seem to stop the subsidiary effects unless you brace for them with the concomitant strength. Did you know Harry Houdini died from a burst appendix when somebody punched him in the stomach unexpectedly?"

"I did not," said Penny. "And now I'll have something interesting to talk about at the wedding reception. But we gotta get out of here. Check on Howard." She went back to the bed, slid her arms under Leonard and lifted him easily. He stirred and groaned in her arms; her heart fluttered. "Leonard? Leonard, honey? You okay?"

"P . . . Penny?" Leonard's eyes cracked open, blinking blurrily at her behind the empty frames of his glasses. His gaze wandered, as if he couldn't quite focus. "Penny. That is you, right?"

"Yeah! Yeah, it's me, baby. Oh, God, what happened to you? No, you know what, never mind. It's time to go. Can you walk?" She let Leonard down to rest on his feet; the minute she eased her grip back his legs wobbled and he almost fell, and she only just caught him in time. "Okay, okay, take it slow, honey. Hold on to me." She walked him over to the door, where Amy was propping up Howard, and winced at the sight of the engineer's face, which was swollen all down one side and turning truly spectacular shades of blue and purple. "Amy, how's he doing?"

"Concussed," said Amy tersely. "Or as close as makes no nevermind. I don't think he's going to be in any shape to skate back down with us. If I carry him, you think you can fly carrying Leonard?"

"I can, I'm not sure we should. What if something goes wrong and one of us drops somebody?" Penny glanced at the window. "Let's take the normal way down. Come on." She swung Leonard towards the door, then stopped, closing her eyes. "Oh no . . . ."

"What is it?" Then Amy heard it too: more running footsteps. She grimaced. "Oh, boy. What is it you always say, bestie—'crap on a cracker'?" She let Howard carefully down and raised her fists, grimacing. "And just to warn you, Penny, without my glasses I'm about as blind as Leonard used to be, so if I hit you by accident, I apologize in advance."

"Accepted, and likewise. Baby, I've gotta put you down just for a second—hang on—" She eased Leonard down to sit against the wall and brought her fists up, waiting. The footsteps were almost at the door. She breathed in a few fierce, fast breaths and braced herself.

Raj and Lucy appeared in the door. Lucy yelped and jerked back, Amy and Penny both jumped, and then everybody relaxed with a simultaneous outrush of breath. Raj stepped forward and hugged Penny; she returned the embrace tightly. Lucy squinted at each of them. "You guys okay?" Then she looked past them, and gulped at the sight of the big man lying flat on the floor beneath the damaged wall. "So that's what happened to him."

Penny frowned. "You already met this guy?"

"He was one of the guys who came to check out the noise when they heard me and Lucy," explained Raj.

"One of the guys?" said Amy. "What happened to the other one?"

Raj swallowed. Lucy looked away, her face pale. Amy waved her hands and shook her head. "You know what, forget it, I don't want to know." She knelt, hauled Howard up and draped one of his arms over her shoulders. Penny did the same to Leonard. "Come on, let's get out of here. We'd better let Sheldon and Bernadette know we're okay." Her mouth twisted. "For certain values of 'okay'."

"We're alive and moving, that's enough for me right now," said Penny.

GRAND CAMELOT HOTEL, THE AVALON BAR

9:49 P.M.

With the part of his brain that wasn't taken up either by listening intently to the earpiece or by holding himself still with ever-greater willpower to keep from fleeing, Sheldon had only become all the more convinced that he'd been right to insist on never going to the bars at Comic-Con. The barely-lit room seemed to have become the most densely packed hang-out site for the convention attendees, and the uproar was deafening. The outfits some patrons wore here were rather different from typical Comic-Con cosplay, he conceded—although less so than one might think—but the crowd's noise and frenzy gave off almost exactly the same vibe of affected frivolity and poorly concealed desperation. This was the sort of thing that had soured him on the whole idea of human mating procedures, before he'd met Amy—if you had to reduce yourself to this kind of squawking, semi-rational primate simply to obtain a cooperative biological spasm that more often than not led to nothing, as far as he could tell, but inconvenience, boredom and ultimately financial ruin, he would far rather spend his time using his brain at its full potential to decipher the language of Creation.

It was even more galling to concede that Howard had been right, mostly because it was galling to concede Howard was right about anything. Despite Bernadette feigning public affection with constant touches (an irritant in itself) and prominently flashing her wedding ring ever since they'd sat down in their corner booth, Sheldon had been propositioned twice in as many minutes by wandering professionals. This third and latest one, a tall brunette with piercing blue eyes who'd introduced herself as Michaela, had even propositioned them both simultaneously and been sharp enough to see through their cover.

"Honeymooners, huh?" she said, and ran her hand over Sheldon's left hand with upsetting familiarity. "Then where's your ring, handsome; you lose it already? And what's a honeymoon couple doing at an event like this? Believe me, if you're having a little getaway on the down low with somebody else's wife, there's nothing that adds a little spice like someone joining in . . . ." Then she slid her other hand up Sheldon's thigh. Sheldon jumped with a yelp and, before he could stop himself, translocated her out of the bar with a shrug of focused willpower. Bernadette's eyes bugged, but the dimness and the noise had kept anyone else from noticing.

Sheldon caught her stare and looked down at the tabletop, more embarrassed than he cared to admit. "If you're going to lecture me on careless use of one's abilities, Bernadette, I'd appreciate it if you saved it for later," he muttered.

"Actually I was just wondering where you were sending these people."

"Oh. The comic book store." At her raised eyebrows, he shrugged. "I think we can trust a wedding-chapel minister, a janitor and a Vegas callgirl to have no interest whatsoever in vandalizing Stuart's stock. And it guarantees them being both safe and out of our hair for the rest of the night—"

"Sheldon? Bernadette? We got him, we're going to the elevator!" Even in the earpiece, the words were difficult to hear over the noise of the bar, but Penny's shout made them clear enough. Sheldon let out a gasping sigh of relief, surprised both by its intensity and by the fact Bernadette had sighed in exactly the same way. It was rare for him to be so emotionally in sync with someone—Amy had been the last person with whom he had managed it with any degree of consistency, and even she remained aggravatingly unpredictable at times. He finished the virgin Cuba Libre he'd ordered, congratulating himself on successfully not dressing down that snooty cocktail waitress who'd raised an eyebrow at the order, and got to his feet.

Before he could push his way through the crowd to the exit door, however, Bernadette grabbed his arm with one hand and brought her mike to her mouth with the other. "Wait, guys—the elevator? Why can't you just fly him down?"

The pause wasn't long, but it was long enough. Sheldon actually saw the dread hit Bernadette's face in a visible draining of colour; it was a fascinating experience to realize how clearly he could read it. Usually such things were as opaque to him as a wall. "Penny?" she said. "Are you all okay? Is anyone hurt?" Now it was her turn to start pushing towards the door, but her small size worked against her; barely anyone even noticed her efforts. "Penny? Amy? Answer me!"

"Bernadette, it's me." Amy's tone was steady but grim. Sheldon caught himself slumping in relief again, and wanted to hit himself—Amy had copied Penny's invulnerability, there should have been absolutely no reason to worry about her welfare. Was there no limit to the irrationality this woman produced in him? "Howard's going to be all right, I think, but he did take a really nasty punch; I think he may have a concussion. And Leonard had some injuries of his own, so he was pretty heavily sedated. But we've hooked up with Raj and Lucy, so between all of us we should be able to get everybody downstairs. Meet us by the elevator in ten minutes, and be ready to teleport out."

"10-4," said Sheldon into his mike. "Roger, and out." He turned to Bernadette. "Bernadette, if you'd be so good as to stick behind me, I think we can—"

He never saw it coming or had time to react, but his brain was quick enough that, in the millisecond between the Taser prongs jabbing into his buttock and the blinding, tingling surge of power that stiffened him into shuddering paralysis, he had time to think, Aw, frack me. Then he collapsed, blinking, every muscle in his body quivering like Jell-O. Dazed, he wondered why he wasn't falling. Then he realized a stranger in a blue blazer was holding him up, and dimly felt the change in weight as an unseen hand pulled the Taser pistol from his belt holster. Annoyance gurgled sluggishly through his treacly brain. Piss-poor example for any proud Texan, to be disarmed so easy, said a mental voice that sounded awfully like his father's. He fumbled for the precision and insight that would let him open a contiguity and found absolutely nothing.

A tall, shaven-headed black man in a similar blue blazer was standing beside Bernadette, one arm around her shoulders and the other at her waist: pressed against Bernadette's stomach, concealed by an extended finger, was a short single-edged knifeblade whose edge shone with disturbing sharpness. Bernadette had frozen, eyes wide, her breath wisping in and out like a rabbit's in front of a fox. Blearily, Sheldon supposed he couldn't blame her; even if she could regenerate from a full disembowelment it could not possibly be easy or pain-free. All around them, the crowd continued to moil and rumble. Sheldon couldn't believe nobody was noticing this.

"Okay, honey," the knifeman said to Bernadette. His slightly thyroid eyes seemed to glow in the dimness of the bar. "You and Dr. Cooper are going to come with us, and if you give us any trouble, it'll be the last thing you ever do. Are we clear?" He glanced past Sheldon to the man holding him; Sheldon tried to turn his head to see and just couldn't muster the effort. "You got him there, Pete?"

"Is Pyotr," huffed the man behind Sheldon, in a thick Russian accent. "And yes, he is no problem. Is practically beanpole."

"Good. Don't hesitate to zap him again, though, he looks like he's waking up. Come on." The knifeman spun about, manhandling Bernadette like a doll and bearing her with him out of the bar. Sheldon felt Pyotr's arm muscles bunch as the Russian hauled him along. His head rolled on his neck like a bobble-head's, and the thought that came to him was more irritated than anything else: If I'd uploaded my consciousness into a robot I wouldn't have this problem.

But then, if he'd uploaded his consciousness into a robot, they would never have faced this situation at all. Amy would never have fallen for a robot. And with no relationship to traumatize him with its cessation, he would never have thought of the equation that inspired that catastrophic experiment, and everything that followed from it would never have happened. No, the logic was inescapable: it would have been better and safer for everyone—for the entire world—if Amy and he had never met.

He wondered why that thought hurt so badly. Logic was logic. It wasn't supposed to hurt.

17TH FLOOR

9:50 P.M.

If Penny got one more hard lesson from reality about the limits of physical hyperstrength, she thought she might just punch something. Lifting Leonard was effortless; carrying his adult-sized, almost completely limp body was altogether more awkward—in some ways, in fact, the strength made it trickier, because it was all too easy to forget to pay attention to what she was doing. She'd already clonked him on the head once while getting him through the door of the hotel room, though thankfully it seemed to have helped wake him up rather than further injure him. By the time the group had gotten to the elevator vestibule, Leonard had roused enough to mumble a request into her ear to be let down. She tried, only to have to catch him again. "Whoops! Okay, there, sweetie, I think you may have to lean on me just a little longer . . . ."

"Okay," Leonard husked. "Whatever you say, baby. You got me."

Penny fought back the urge to cry. "Yeah. Yeah, I do." She glanced at Amy and Raj, who were supporting Howard between them; they too had stopped, but were staring at something on the floor ahead of them, as was Lucy. Penny frowned and looked past them, then whistled. "Whoa."

The fire escape door hung open, lolling off one hinge, as if something massive had smashed into it. Before it, the floor seemed to have burst open, torn strips of carpet peeled back from a ragged hole and chunks of metal and concrete scattered about, as if a grenade had somehow been buried in the concrete and gone off. Penny looked at Raj and Lucy. "Did you guys do this? What happened?"

"Um—" Raj and Lucy looked at each other; Lucy's face was bewildered, Raj's not much less so. After a moment he looked back at Penny. "It wasn't like this when we left, let's just say that."

Penny shrugged. "Fine, whatever." Supporting Leonard in one arm, she navigated past the broken floor to the elevator control panel and hit the down button, then stepped back. The others came to stand beside her. The pause stretched out. Penny found herself awkwardly rocking on her feet, trying to think of small talk, and not able to.

"If a conversational topic is desired to help pass the time, I have a number of interesting anecdotes about the various types of brain lesions I've studied in the past year," volunteered Amy.

Penny bit her lip. "Um, I don't really know if I feel like talking shop right now, Ames." She was saved from further explanation by the bing of the elevator, and breathed out a sigh of relief. "C'mon, guys."

GRAND CAMELOT LOBBY

9:51 P.M.

The elevator doors rolled open. Penny hauled Leonard out of the elevator with her into the vestibule, and stopped, her mouth open. Amy, Raj and Lucy came out behind her, Howard draped off them, and stopped as well. Startlingly, it was Lucy who came out with the unbelieving exclamation, "Oh, shit."

A short, balding man in a cardigan stood in the middle of a row of angry-looking men, some in blue blazers, others in leather or denim jackets, all holding guns levelled at them—not just Tasers, but real firearms, all automatic pistols with suppressors screwed to their muzzles. Behind them, a hasty set of guide-ribbon posts had been set up, closing off access to the area; several of the standing advertisement banners had been hauled around to conceal the area from the crowd outside. Penny glanced behind her, but there was no other exit from the vestibule, except to get back into an elevator or through the door to the fire stairways.

The balding man shook his head, his arms folded, looking more tired than anything else. "Dr. Hofstadter, I don't know how your friends found you, but I really wish this hadn't happened. Didn't I tell you if you just cooperated you'd be treated perfectly well? Now this isn't going to end particularly well for any of you."

Leonard surprised Penny with a groan, lifting his head. "Mr. Rozokov," he rasped, blinking, "I'd like to introduce you to my fiancée, Penny Carmichaels. If you think all those guns are scaring her, I have to tell you, you're seriously wrong. The only way this all ends well for you is if you let us all go. Now."

Rozokov glanced at Penny; however kindly that roundish bespectacled face, there was no human feeling in that cold, assessing look. "You may be right. Then again, you may not." He gestured to one of his men, a big guy with a greasy black ponytail and beard and tattoos visible at the end of his leather-jacketed sleeves. "Pasha?"

The guy pointed his pistol at Penny and fired. It didn't sound anything like the pwip effect of a thousand movies; instead the gun emitted a sharp crack like a builder's nailgun going off. The noise echoed through the lobby, and the rumble of the crowd beyond suddenly subsided, turning somehow uneasy. Penny jerked back with the impact—it felt like somebody had shoved her hard in the stomach—and then resettled herself, not even breathing deeply. Pasha stared at her, his mouth open, frowning faintly as if he suspected some kind of trick. The other gangsters exchanged suddenly uncertain glances.

Leonard let go of Penny, shuffled to one side and let himself slide down the wall. But his head remained up and his eyes stayed fixed on Rozokov. "And she's not the only one," he rasped. "Amy? Lucy? You guys want to show these folks what you can do?"

It took only a moment for Amy to step up beside Penny, glaring fiercely at Rozokov. Lucy gulped and took up a stance on Penny's other side; Penny could see the faint hint of translucency about her that indicated what Lucy called the ghost-state. Raj had, she was glad to see, decided discretion was the better part of valour and pulled the unconscious Howard back with him against the wall. Leonard waved at them. "All the guns in the world aren't going to help you against these three. You're welcome to try." Unexpectedly, he laughed; a dry harsh bark that sounding nothing like anything Penny had ever heard from him, but real, however raw. "And I really feel sorry for you if you do."

Rozokov's face suddenly split in an enraged snarl, as if Leonard's laughter had been the last straw. He shouted orders in Russian. The gangsters hesitated a second; Rozokov shouted the same words again, more furiously, and this time his men levelled their weapons and fired. The storm of suppressed fire sounded like some kind of industrial buzzsaw kicking off. Instinctively, Penny twisted slightly to one side, away from Leonard, Howard and Raj, her arms up to guard her face: she felt the bullets as a patter of sharp stings, like a hailstorm so fierce it was blowing horizontally. Amy had likewise shielded her face, the bullets plucking at her clothes, and Lucy simply stood still, her eyes closed, as everything that came at her went straight through her. Within seconds the guns had all clicked empty. The noise of the crowd beyond had turned into a cacophony of screaming and running feet.

Penny lowered her arms, gave the flabbergasted gangsters her best Junior Rodeo smile, and lifted about a foot into the air. Deliberately cracking the knuckles of each fist, she levitated towards them. Pasha was the first to break. Without warning he spun and ran, and in less than half a second all the rest of the group had followed him. Rozokov screamed obscenities after them, turned back, whipped out a pistol of his own and took aim—

—at Leonard.

All Penny's gleeful triumph shattered in an instant of terror. She flung herself at Rozokov, getting her hands around his wrist as her momentum carried them both flailing down the marble floor, crashing through the standing ad posters and knocking them down. He pulled the trigger, once, twice—the bullets stung her stomach, then her chest—she wrenched his arm upwards—

The third shot went off just as the gun came level with her left eye.

9:52 P.M.

Raj felt the sudden searing pain in his own eye as if it had happened to him, but worse was the sheer, unbelieving shock as Penny jackknifed over backwards, her hands to her eyes and her scream ripping the air. Rozokov scrambled to his feet and ran. In fury, Raj hurled psychic bolts of rage after him, but he could not scare the man any more than he already was, and Rozokov only ran the faster. Within seconds he was out of sight, the lobby left empty behind him. The crowd had fled, and even the concierge's desk was empty.

"Penny!" Leonard's anguished cry echoed in the wake of his fiancée's scream. He clawed his way to her side on his hands and knees; Raj, Amy and Lucy followed. Penny had fallen to her knees, hunched over, her hands to her face. Leonard pulled her into his lap, taking her hands in his. "Oh God, baby, please, let me see—I have to see—" He pulled, but couldn't move her hands. Tears streaming down his face, he looked up. "Amy—Raj—help us—"

Raj nodded to Amy, who took Penny's wrists gently but firmly in her own hands, and as she pulled, Raj sent the gentlest waves of calm he could at Penny's mind, as he'd done with Mrs. Cooper yesterday but a dozen times more strongly. Penny fought it reflexively, her Nebraska stubbornness kicking in, but as Leonard murmured soothing reassurance in her ear the terror gradually washed away. Shaking, Penny let Amy pull her hands downwards. Slowly her face came into sight.

Raj collapsed in relief. Penny's left eye was red and swollen, leaking grimy tears as if it had been caught in a sandstorm, but nothing worse. With a murmured request Raj nudged Amy gently out of the way, reached under his Kevlar vest, took the handkerchief he always kept in his breast pocket (and he would be very annoyed if any of them ever gave him a hard time about it ever again) and began dabbing at Penny's eye, removing the grit and dust he could see in every blink. Leonard had slumped in similar relief, almost crying himself.

Amy squinted at Penny's face, but without her glasses she clearly couldn't see much. "Raj, what happened?"

Raj took a close look at the grit smeared on his handkerchief. His mouth came slowly open in awe as he saw its metallic glitter. "I think," he said, "the bullet shattered on Penny's eyeball." Beside him, Lucy gasped. "But some of the fragments got caught under her eyelids, and that hurt just as much as it normally would. Other than that, though, I think she's fine. She might have a little corneal scratching, but I think that will heal."

"Oh, God," husked Penny. She was shaking now, almost as if fevered. Leonard tightened his arms around her reflexively. "Oh, Jesus, that scared the crap out of me. I thought—I thought—" She buried her face in Leonard's chest. "What the hell?" she demanded, her voice muffled. "Superman never got hurt by this kind of shit!"

"Yeah, well . . . ." Leonard's expression seemed caught halfway between bleak amusement and infinite sadness. "I never thought I'd have to say this to you, sweetheart, but . . . Superman's only in comic books."

A groan cut through their quiet. Raj looked back to the elevators. Howard was rolling over and pushing himself up; his pain, disorientation and nausea swamped Raj like a wave, and Raj had to turn away, clenching his fists as he walled off his mind. Lucy and Amy ran to Howard's side, helping him up. He looked about, blinking hazily. "What the hell happened? Last thing I remember, I saw a big guy in the door, and—" He winced, touching his face. "I got my clock cleaned, didn't I?"

"Like a nameless Nazi mook in Raiders of the Lost Ark," confirmed Amy. "Sorry, Howard."

"This explains why Tony Stark always wore the helmet," Howard muttered. Then he saw Leonard, and a big grin broke over his face for a second before it dissolved into another grimace of pain. "Buddy!—ow." He tottered over to Leonard and Penny, dropping to his knees beside them in what was half a fall. "How are you, Leonard? You okay?" He looked around. "Where's Bernie?"

"I told her and Sheldon to meet us by the elevators," said Amy, frowning. "They were supposed to be in the bar—they can't have missed all the noise." She lifted her wrist to her mouth and clicked her mike. "Bernadette? Sheldon? Anybody there? Berna—"

She stopped, frowning. For a second Raj didn't understand why; then he heard it, too. A heavy, slow, slightly irregular thumping, like something pounding the floor. And it was getting louder . . . no, he realized, his stomach sinking, it was getting closer. He turned, slowly, looking back towards the elevators. As if drawn by a string, Amy followed his gaze. One by one, so did the others. The noise grew louder, and louder . . . and stopped.

Raj suddenly found himself unable to breathe.

Then the steel door leading to the fire escape stairs burst off its hinges like a tank had smashed into it. Lucy and Amy both screamed; Raj was only a little ashamed to realize he had shrieked too, at more or less the same pitch. As the bent and ruined door crashed down onto the floor, something massive and hideous staggered into the elevator vestibule, its feet slamming down with the same heavy tread. The marble cracked underneath each step, as if an anvil had fallen onto it. The shreds of a shirt hung off its swollen shoulders. The figure's right arm was a nightmare mass of metallic spikes and jagged cement-like bone spurs, and streaks of shining grey ran down the face and throughout the skin like lines of infection. It paused, breathing heavily, as if exhausted by the mere effort of movement. But as it stood, its head turned slowly to face them.

"W-w-w-what the frak is that?!" squeaked Howard.

Raj swallowed. "If memory serves," he said in a trembly voice, "I think his name is Sammy."

At the sound of the name, the figure's head snapped up. Blazing, maddened eyes fixed upon them. And then, with a roar, the thing which had once been Rozokov's henchman came charging across the lobby floor at them.

* * * * *

For those who may, perhaps, sincerely wonder why the heck it took eleven days to write the contents of about seven minutes in internal story-time, I can only write that off to the fact that this tale is taking on its own density as it goes. Still, honesty requires me to admit that at least some of the delay was due simply to my brain going on strike. I am hoping that with the block broken, I will be able to get through the next chapter a little faster. Thanks again to everyone coming along on this crazy ride! And if you felt like tossing a little review-meat to the alligators living in my brain, I would in no wise object.