THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION

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

Chapter Rating Alert: One moment in particular in this chapter—you'll know which one when you get to it—probably qualifies as M for violence. Sensitive stomachs are hereby warned.

Notes: This particular delay in publication I actually have a good explanation for; I've been on vacation in Tasmania, Australia for the last week and a half! Nonetheless, the comparative deceleration in speed of updating has probably come to a few people's notice, and for that I must apologize. Part of the problem is that the first few chapters of the story—how the characters got their powers, what they were, the emotional dynamics of leading in from the end of season 8—I'd had in my mind for a while, and the following few chapters were simply the most obvious ways to move on from that. But now I'm getting to a point where some of the arcs actually have to get somewhere, and that takes more thinking, trial and error. It doesn't help that I typically write by the seat of my pants and have only a very limited idea of where I'm going at any one point. (To that end, if anyone has any ideas for scenes they'd like to see, I have no objection whatsoever to stealing inspiration!)

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

- 13 -

GRAND CAMELOT HOTEL, MAIN DRIVEWAY, LAS VEGAS STRIP, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2015, 9:55 P.M.

When Dispatch's reports of gunfire at the Grand Camelot Hotel had come in, Sergeant Max Abrams had ordered his SWAT vans around immediately, not feeling any need to check with that punk Anderson; FBI agent or not, gunfire in a public place was always a threat. Then the dispatcher had filled in his team on the nature of the event going on at the Camelot, and his worry only increased. There was no such thing as a "gun-free zone" in an open-carry state like Nevada, but hobby or leisure conventions like this one were usually the next worst thing—most people tended to leave their weapons at home when they felt like letting their hair down, and that made for a distressingly target-rich environment for the wackos. His team were all seasoned veterans, and over the radio he gave them their orders tersely: two by two, full armour, semi-automatic, create evac pathways for civilians—they knew the drill.

They rolled up the Camelot's driveway as the last of the civilian crowds were fleeing, swinging over to park on the lawn-island inside the driveway's curve to keep access clear for other emergency vehicles. Abrams popped his door and swung out, already able to hear the sound of approaching sirens: ambulances, he hoped. Unfortunately, one of them turned out to be Anderson's SUV. Anderson practically leapt out of the vehicle, spitting mad, and came storming up to Abrams, the tall civilian doctor trailing unhappily in his wake.

"What the hell were you thinking not clearing this with me, Sergeant?!" he shouted. "Why didn't you respond to any of my hails?!"

"I was thinking that we were looking for any signs of trouble, Agent, whether your superfreaks are part of it or not," said Abrams coolly. "This is our primary responsibility, and it's happening in our jurisdiction, which means I make the calls until we have evidence this relates to your case—"

With an ear-splitting crash, the big glass panels of the lobby's front wall burst in an explosion of whitish-gray shards. Out of the shattered windows hurtled a luggage dolly, tumbling end over end in a whirling streak of brass and red velvet that flashed over their heads—Abrams, Foxworth and Anderson all ducked—landed on the lawn island, and continued rolling and bouncing until it flew right into the traffic of the Strip. Brakes screeching and horns blaring, vehicles slewed sideways around the dolly or juddered to a stop before it; within seconds, the Strip's traffic had snarled into a hopeless tangle.

Abrams straightened, his mouth tight. Well. That did clarify things. "All right, Agent Anderson, there's your evidence. What do you want us to do?"

Anderson shook his head, recovering himself. "All right—Abrams, I want half your team out here with heavy weapons, Tasers, flash-bangs and tear gas, ready to take down anybody who comes out. I'm going to get the uniforms to cordon off the area and direct traffic around here. The minute that's done, you and I and the other half of your team are going in, to take into custody whoever we can." He held Abrams' gaze unflinchingly. "However we can. Am I clear?"

Two minutes ago Abrams would have objected, half out of respect for law and half out of resentment for FBI high-handedness. But that was before he'd seen that luggage dolly come flying through the glass like a catapult missile. He only nodded, triggered his radio mike and began giving orders.

GRAND CAMELOT HOTEL LOBBY

9:56 P.M.

Penny had never thought the day would come when any of them would ever say this, but she was pretty sure at least some of them now owed their lives to Howard Wolowitz. As Sammy charged at them across the lobby, roaring, his huge misshapen arms coming up, Howard had lifted his force projector tube and let loose a blast right into the man's—creature's?—face. Sammy had flipped heels-over-head backwards like the last bowling pin in a perfectly placed spare, cracking the tile when he hit. For a moment he lay there, rolling back and forth, moaning, but the moan turned with dismaying speed into a roar of painful rage and within seconds he was back on his feet. "Kill you!" he spluttered through a mouthful of teeth that didn't look human any more. "Kill you all!"

Howard stared in disbelief, then hastily fumbled at his handheld controls. As Sammy began moving towards them again Howard flicked a panicked look at Penny and Amy. "Uh, superstrength people, help?!" he squawked. He levelled the tube and pressed the trigger button—but the rippling bolt of energy that shot forth this time was visibly weaker, and when it smashed into Sammy it only knocked him stumbling off balance. Eyes bulging, Howard tried once more, returning his aim to Sammy's head. The feeble, wavery pulse that shot out splashed off Sammy's face like water . . . and the hum coming from Howard's skates died. He dropped to the lobby's marble floor with a clank, staggering.

Sammy shook his head like a dog and glowered at Howard. From the man's horribly thickened throat, a slow, guttural chuckling ratcheted up into audibility, and he broke into a sharklike grin. He waved his spiky arm at the power cylinder on Howard's belt. "Guess it doesn't last longer after all, huh?" he rasped. "Shoulda used Energizer, little bunny." The smile fell into a snarl like a house of cards collapsing, and he started forward with heavy slamming steps; the marble cracked under his feet. "You wanna keep going and going, shorty, I'd start running. Now."

I should move, thought Penny dimly, through the haze of fear, revulsion and disbelief clogging her brain. I should get up and do something. She just couldn't seem to think what. With nightmare clarity and slowness, she saw the shards and fragments of marble Sammy kicked up floating about his feet in a cloud; at each step, they seemed to whirl inward, plating themselves onto Sammy's socks and shoes and even sinking into the flesh beneath. Moment by moment there was less in the thing before them that was real, that was human . . . . Howard stumbled backward, off balance and clumsy in the dead metal frames of his powerless skates, and suddenly Sammy was looming over him and the massive spiky arm swept back like an executioner's sword coming up—

Screaming in mingled fury and terror, Amy threw herself into Sammy's path and began hammering punches against his body; the blows that had pierced aerospace-grade steel when they'd taken down that FBI copter yesterday only sent Sammy staggering back. Penny had time to see the surface of Sammy's torso actually bending and flexing under the punches, as if Amy was denting a car hood that kept springing back, before Sammy's arm came whickering around and Amy went flying across the room and crashed into a lounging couch, rolling it over with the force of her impact. She came to rest on the floor beyond, blinking dazedly at the roof.

"Amy!" Raj screamed. He broke away from the group to sprint towards where she'd fallen; reflexively, Lucy tore after him—but Sammy whirled with monstrous quickness, placing himself squarely in their path. They froze, Lucy grabbing Raj's arm, staring up at him; oh, Christ, Penny thought aghast, he was growing, right in front of them! Sammy bellowed in rage, drew back his fist, and before Penny could move or think had driven it completely through Raj's chest.

Penny screamed. Everything seemed to come to a stop with that sound. Howard turned sheet-white, reeled backwards and collapsed on his ass. Leonard's mouth fell open in horror. Raj stared up at Sammy, who was grinning down at him in fierce, malevolent triumph . . . and then, slowly, the grin faltered and crumpled into a frown. With equal slowness, Raj looked down at himself, blinking in puzzlement. Penny shook her head, feeling some inchoate realization trying to fight its way through horror. Something was off, something was awry—what was it—?

No blood, she suddenly understood. And in that instant, Raj and Lucy flickered out and disappeared. Sammy whipped around, baffled, and gave out a cry of thwarted fury.

The sound and the relief galvanized Penny, igniting a fire in her blood that burned away shock and confusion. She shared one quick glance with Leonard, who let her go and began scrambling backwards, before she stood. It was remarkable how calm she felt, really. She looked carefully around, walked over to a brass-polished baggage dolly, lifted it easily in two hands, then spun on one foot and hurled it at Sammy as if it had been shot out of a cannon.

Sammy fisted his hands together and swung them like a baseball bat. His blow caught the dolly and sent it hurtling out the plate-glass windows of the hotel with a thunderous crash, but the attack had served its purpose: it had put him off balance for the second she needed. She exploded off the floor, shot through the air like a guided missile and caught Sammy in the face with both fists held out before her. The impact knocked her careening around in mid-air, and she let herself drop to the floor in a three-point landing, braking, as Sammy went flying back through the lobby and crashed to the ground in front of the doors into the exhibit hall. Howard yelled triumphantly and pumped his fist in the air.

This time, Sammy was a lot slower to get to his feet, and when he did, the balked anger in his face now held more than a little wariness. Maybe even fear, Penny hoped. That would only be fair; she was dealing with more than a little fear herself, though she kept it off her face. From the hit Amy had taken, Penny was pretty sure Sammy was capable of hitting way harder now than anything else she'd encountered—certainly harder than his big friend upstairs; maybe even harder than the rotor blades on that FBI helicopter, which had been moving at blinding speed but had also struck at an angle and shattered from brittleness first. And now that Rozokov's bullet had proven there were still ways to hurt her, Penny had lost a lot of interest in further testing her limits. For a singing, tense second of silence neither moved, only staring at one another.

Without warning, she leapt, combining the force of the jump and the speed of her flight into a single coiled-spring arc across the hotel atrium. She plummeted down on Sammy from above, gathering speed on the way down like a diving falcon, and in the second before impact busted out one of her old cheerleader moves: in mid-air, she somersaulted, bringing her legs up out of the way of his scything blow and smashing her feet down hard on his shoulders. Caught by surprise, Sammy failed to brace against it; the strike drove him face-first down into the floor again. Penny bent her knees with the impact and immediately leapt back into the air, this time coming to a hovering stop below the ceiling.

"Sammy!" she shouted at him, as he fought his way back to his feet once more. She had to keep his attention focused on her somehow and away from the others, especially Leonard and Howard. "Back off a second and listen to me, will you? Just listen!" Amazingly, it seemed to be working; Sammy hesitated, only staring up at her. "If you want to get a handle on what's happening here, this is not the way! I mean, Jesus, Sammy, look at yourself! Even if you pound us all through the floor, where you gonna go? What happens then?" Her own words to Mrs. Latham came back to her, and for all their pain, they were the truth. She threw that truth at him like another weapon. "Everything you thought you were going to do with your life, everything you thought you were—that's done, Sammy. Finished. No matter what happens here. The only choice you have is what you want to do now."

She let herself drift lower, desperate to reach him, to get past that confused frenzy in the man's eyes, the only part of him that still looked wholly human. Come on, Penny, you can do this; just another sales job, right? "You can be a monster, Sammy, or you can let us help you; you can make a new life worth living, even if you can't get the old one back. It doesn't have to be like this. We can figure something out. Come on, what do you say?" In sheer reflex, she reached one hand down, palm out towards him. The silent air sang again with tension, but this time in a completely different way.

The most infuriating thing of it all, Penny had just enough time to think, was that she really, truly believed she was actually getting through to him; that she would have gotten through, if she'd had just a few seconds more to talk, to hold his eyes with her own. But she hadn't. The silence shattered with a bang and a crash as armoured SWAT cops burst into the lobby through the main doors, levelling automatic rifles and spreading out to form a line focused on Sammy. "Everybody freeze!" yelled one of the men in the lead, a compact, blond young man whose vest read FBI in large white letters. "All violence stops immediately, right now—"

No! Penny was about to shout in sheer, pissed-off annoyance. But she didn't get the chance. Sammy leapt upwards in a standing jump of nearly fifteen feet, seized Penny's hand, and pulled her down with him as he fell back to the floor. A choked yell burst out of her, more sheer surprise than fear or anger, and then became a howl of disorientation as Sammy spun her around and around his head like a bolo. Faster and faster she whirled until, with a whipcrack that hurt so badly she half thought she'd broken her spine, he flung her across the lobby into the line of SWAT officers, knocking them tumbling like bowling pins. Penny rolled over and over and came to a stop, so dizzy she couldn't even move, blinking down at the blond FBI agent—she'd wound up sprawled across him like a carelessly tossed rug. He stared up at her in shock.

"Open fire!" yelled one of the SWAT cops still standing, a tall man with brush-cut ginger hair. All the officers who'd managed to dodge Penny's hurtling flight and stay on their feet let loose at once. Bullets chewed the air of the lobby and hammered into Sammy, driving him backwards with roars of pain; hiding his face with his arms, he turned and plunged through the doors of the exhibit hall, vanishing from sight. The ginger-haired SWAT officer shouted more orders. Keeping up their hail of fire, the officers ran after Sammy into the exhibit hall, their comrades only seconds behind them as they scrambled to their feet and followed.

The blond FBI agent threw Penny off him, leapt to his feet, drew his pistol and levelled it straight at Penny's face. "Penny Carmichaels," he said grimly, "you are under arrest for obstruction of justice, resisting arrest, damage to government property, and probably a few other things I can't think of right now." Penny gaped at the muzzle of the pistol, too dizzy to grasp much of what he was saying but altogether too aware of how uncomfortably close the gun was to her eye. "You have the right to remain silent; if you choose to waive this right, anything—"

He was cut off by a scream of agony from the exhibit hall, and the rattle of automatic fire. His grim look wavered, and he put one hand to his ear, suddenly intent on his earpiece. The awful noises from the exhibit hall doors continued, coupled now with crashes and bangs and yells of fury, pain and terror. Second by second the look on the FBI agent's face transformed from resolve to horrified dismay. The barrel of his pistol drooped, and he turned to look back at the exhibit hall as if he'd forgotten Penny was there.

"Excuse me?" One arm around Howard, Leonard stumbled up; Lucy and Raj followed, supporting the still stunned-looking Amy between them. "I think we met a couple of days ago in Huntington Memorial, sir—you're Agent Anderson, you work with Special Agent Page, right? Dr. Leonard Hofstadter." He stuck his hand out, absurdly formal. When Anderson stared at it as if Leonard had tried to hand him a dead fish, Leonard sighed and glanced skyward. "Listen, we can discuss our legal situation later; right now, I think your problem is inside that hall, and I think Penny is the only person who stands any chance of getting your people out of there in something resembling one piece. So I'd really advise calling a truce on the whole arrest thing just for the moment."

Penny frowned. "Hey," she said, raising one hand. "What's with volunteering me to save these people's asses when they were just trying to arrest us all?"

Leonard blinked at her. "Um—'cause . . . you do that sort of thing now? Remember the helicopter?"

"Well, sure, Leonard, but I'd kinda like to be the one who makes that call." Penny got to her feet, dusted herself off and glared at Anderson. "And speaking of the helicopter thing, by the way, I'm not seeing a lot of gratitude for saving your guys from that. 'Specially given it was them who caused the damn crash in the first place by trying to purée me in mid-air."

"Not to mention," Howard chimed in, as Anderson reddened, "that if it gets out you were the guy in charge who deliberately rejected a superhero's help in taking down a supervillain, and got a bunch of his own men tomato-pasted as a result, well, I don't see any promotions coming for that, to put it mildly. Eh, bubeleh?"

Anderson put his free hand over his face. "Oh, God," he groaned. He lifted his hands and let them fall. "All right. Miss Carmichaels, and any of the rest of you with enough oomph to deal with this guy, come with me. The rest of you, get the hell out of here and wait by the police vehicles out front. Understood?" He stepped back and gestured Penny ahead of him, motioning to the exhibit hall doors.

Penny swallowed. She was never going to run out of new ways to find this uncomfortable, it seemed. Fighting for her fiancé and her friends was one thing; this felt like she was being drafted. She'd never had any interest in being any kind of cop.

But she'd never thought much of walking out on a fight, either. She took a deep breath, nodded to Anderson, then turned and caught Leonard in a fierce embrace, kissing him until he wobbled dizzily. "Take care of yourself, okay?" she whispered in his ear. "I didn't go through all this so you could get walloped by whatever the hell else is gonna come along."

"Believe me," said Leonard, getting his breath back, "I have no intention of putting myself in any more danger. I've been Tased, drugged, and sliced up by glass already today, that was more than enough." He smiled at her and nodded to the exhibit hall. "Go get 'em."

Penny took another deep breath and raked back her hair with both hands. She turned to Anderson. "Okay," she said. "I'll take point and try to pound him until he gives up. You're probably not going to be able to do much but distract him, but I'll give you one tip: If you have to shoot to kill, go for the eyes. They're probably the only weak point." She wanted to gulp, her own eyes stinging again with memory and something that felt oddly like betrayal. But she sensed intuitively that if she looked weak to this man he'd never take her seriously again. "Ready?"

Anderson, who had paused to check over his gun, only nodded. Penny squared her shoulders. "Then let's go." She lifted off the floor, rotated in mid-air, and shot towards the exhibit hall doors, keeping her speed down just enough for Anderson to follow her at a run.

10:01 P.M.

Leonard watched Penny and Anderson disappear into the exhibit hall, hoping he'd managed to keep his terror and bitterness off his face. All his life he had despised feeling helpless or useless, and the fact that there was nothing he could do to help or protect the woman he loved was like a knife in his gut. At the very least, thank God, that last kiss—the fact that she'd fought so hard to be here at all, to find him, to rescue him-seemed to have stifled the old self-doubt: However little it seemed like it, she must still need him, somehow. He hated feeling unnecessary even more than he hated feeling helpless.

Well, if he couldn't help Penny, there was still something he could do. He looked at Raj, who was still watching the exhibit hall door with wide eyes. "Raj? You okay?"

Raj started. "Uh, yes. Yes, I'm fine. Thanks to Lucy, I'm fine." He leant his forehead against Lucy's, closing his eyes as he did; she closed her eyes too.

"And Amy?" said Leonard. "How you doing?"

Amy's mouth set in a flat, straight line, the squint of her eyes as much angry as myopic. "Physically I seem to be okay. Emotionally I'm feeling pretty pissed off and useless. The irony of being invulnerable and super-strong, but being unable to use either effectively because I couldn't copy twenty-twenty vision or fighting skill along with them, is not one I appreciate."

"Well, that's against somebody with their own powers," said Leonard. "Against ordinary people, I think you'll probably still be pretty useful, and I suspect that's going to be relevant in just a few minutes."

Lucy sighed, looking almost too tired and resigned to be afraid. "We're not going to wait safely by the police vehicles out front, are we?"

"No," said Leonard. "We're going to find Sheldon and Bernadette. Come on." He let go of Howard, staying upright and steady; it took some effort of will, but less so than it had a moment ago. It took far more effort to turn his back on the crashes, bangs and yells coming from the exhibit hall, but he had already come to terms with that. Without waiting, he headed for the corridor that, by the signage, led from the lobby towards the hotel offices.

The others caught up to him within seconds; Howard reached out as if to grab Leonard by the shoulder and then visibly reconsidered. "Leonard, Sheldon could have gotten Bernie and himself out of here in literally less than a second," he said. "What makes you think they're still here?"

"Because Sheldon said he'd meet us at the elevators, and when Sheldon says he'll do something, he does it," said Leonard, still striding along the corridor. The floor was carpeted, empty as far as Leonard could see, and the noise of the battle coming from the lobby fell off as if absorbed by the silence. He lowered his voice. "The only possible reason they wouldn't have met us would be that they couldn't. That suggests somebody took them, probably by sneaking up on them in that bar—their boss Rozokov is easily smart enough to pull that off. And if he can't sell me, Sheldon is just as valuable, once Rozokov figures out who he is."

"Sell you?" said Amy, sounding appalled. "Or Sheldon? To whom? Why?"

"To the Russian government, or so he claimed," said Leonard. "And as for why, think about it, Amy. Getting a metahuman on your payroll is one thing. However inadvertently, Sheldon and I were the people who created metahumans—and if we did it once, we might be able to do it again. Apparently that makes us really hot government employment prospects . . . for certain values of 'employment' that include 'chained up in a lab somewhere for the rest of our lives'."

"Or possibly just 'chained up until you write it all down clearly enough for someone else to use, and then shot'," said Howard grimly. Lucy and Raj both gasped, and Amy put a hand to her mouth. Howard glared at them all. "Oh, come on, guys, has it really not dawned on you that these guys are playing for goddam keeps here?" he snarled through gritted teeth. "Look, I had to deal with the Russian government when I was over there for my NASA launch. Most of them are just bureaucrats, but a couple of times we had some really really scary types pass through, and the guy in charge over there right now is ex-KGB, which pretty much makes him one of the scariest mo-fos on the planet. So please, guys, get this through your head right now: The only way we're gonna get these guys off our back is to show them we mean business even more than they do."

Raj stared at him. "And you think an asthmatic physicist with no powers, a half-practiced empath, a half-blind flying brick, a five-foot-six gadgeteer with dead batteries and a girl whose biggest power is to disappear like a ghost are going to pull that off?"

Leonard blinked as something occurred to him. "Actually," he said, "now that I think about it, I haven't needed my inhaler once since I woke up two days ago. Not even yesterday, after Penny and I—" He cut himself off abruptly, feeling his face heat at their expressions. "Well, that's not the point. But my eyesight might not have been the only thing that got fixed." At their blank looks, he added awkwardly, "The upshot being, I'm not an asthmatic physicist. Any more."

"Whoopee," said Raj, after a pause just long enough to make Leonard feel particularly foolish.

"Although that does give me an idea," said Howard. "Come on." He hurried past Leonard, leading them further down the corridor until they came to the first open door; it looked as if most of the offices had been abandoned without bothering to lock them up. He plunged into the office and started pulling open every drawer he could find. "If anybody finds any D-cell batteries, sing out."

Leonard nodded. "Good idea. Amy, you and I will help Howard search; you break open anything that's locked. Raj, Lucy, if you guys can ghost out and work the corridors, looking for Sheldon or Bernadette the same way you looked for me, that'll expedite us getting out of here."

Lucy frowned. "Leonard, not to be a wet blanket, but how can you be sure they're still here?"

"Honestly? I'm not," Leonard admitted. "But if they're already gone then there's nothing we can do. If they are still here, though—and I'm guessing Rozokov might be smart enough to have someplace to hide and wait for the cops to go away—then we might make all the difference." He patted his shirt pocket, then his trousers, then grimaced in remembrance. "Dammit, I've got to get a new phone. I don't suppose you guys brought anything to keep in touch?"

"Actually, we did," said Raj, sounding smug. He lifted one hand to show the mike peeping out at his wrist, then turned his head and tapped the white earpiece in his ear. "Courtesy of Mrs. Latham. If we find anything, we'll signal Howard."

"Excellent," said Leonard. "And we'll call you as soon as Howard gets some batteries. Go." He turned back to help ransack the office as Raj and Lucy headed off down the hall. "Mrs. Latham, huh?" he said to Howard, his stomach sinking a little. "Guessing she wasn't happy about all this."

"Wasn't, isn't, never gonna be," said Howard, pulling a desk drawer out entirely and turning it upside down; when the only things that hit the floor were paper clips, pencils and staples, he cursed. "But right now, that's pretty low on my priority list. You?"

"Oh yeah," Leonard agreed. He tugged at a drawer in another desk, found it locked, and turned. "Amy? Would you mind giving me a hand here?"

Amy sighed. "You know, that's almost exactly what Sheldon says when he needs me to open asparagus jars for him." She came over, knelt down, squinted at the drawer and yanked it open with a crack of broken metal. "Is this some kind of cosmic irony, Leonard? Getting superpowers changes your life less than you'd think?"

Leonard stopped and stared at her. "Amy," he said, "today I was kidnapped from my own wedding by the Russian mob. I would kill to have a less changed life than I expected. And I didn't even get any powers except fixed-up eyesight."

Amy reddened. "Yes, of course. I'm so sorry, Leonard. I wasn't thinking."

"Not to worry," Leonard muttered, already feeling embarrassed. "Let's just keep looking." He returned to the search.

A moment later, however, Amy broke the silence again. "Actually, Howard, I do have one question, if I could ask?"

"Sure," said Howard without looking around. "Whatever. Ask away."

"Exactly what is a 'mo-fo'?"

10:04 P.M.

The zipties binding Bernadette's hands behind her back were cutting into her wrists, which would have worried her a lot more if she hadn't figured out how to shut off the pain from the wounds within a few minutes. All she felt now was an aggravating itch, as her enhanced metabolism kept trying to close the wounds around the zipties and failing—apparently the foreign bodies' presence in the wounds was enough to stop the healing process. She filed that away carefully in her mind. She'd tried to shut off the fear in her brain as well, but had had less success with that; toning down the neurotransmitters of the amygdala had stifled the panic, but her conscious mind was only too clearly aware of the danger level here, and there was nothing that tweaking your neurochemistry could do about that.

She and Sheldon were sitting slumped on metal conference-style chairs in a small room with two doors and no windows; Pyotr and the other security thug (Sean, Pyotr had called him at one point) had brought them here from the bar via the hotel's file storage room, which had proven to contain a hidden staircase behind one shelf packed with three-inch binders (Bernadette had found herself wondering crazily, amid her terror from the razor blade at her belly, if they'd used the same architect as Mrs. Latham's husband). Once they'd been tied up in the chairs, Pyotr had jabbed a syringe into Sheldon's left buttock without preamble; the pain had momentarily startled him out of his Taser-daze, but whatever drug it contained took effect too quickly for Sheldon to muster his powers. Sean had likewise injected Bernadette—pausing for a sickening second to gloat at her posterior—but her metabolism had processed the drug out of her system within a minute. She'd felt enough of it to realize it was a sedative, and obviously a potent one from the glaze in Sheldon's unfocused eyes, and had feigned a similar daze herself. If they got a chance to do anything, the element of surprise might be her only advantage.

For a few minutes it had looked like said chance wasn't going to happen any time soon. Sean had tried to call somebody, gotten no answer, and the two thugs had plopped down at a nearby table, taken out a deck of cards and started playing, of all things, Go Fish. As the minutes crawled by, they had started looking more and more bored as well as more and more on edge, glancing uneasily at her and Sheldon every minute or so. Bernadette had done nothing except sit and wait, letting her head slump down. She'd gotten out of the habit of daily prayer a long time ago, but all her childhood rosaries were coming back to her with startling clarity, and for lack of anything else to do, she'd been saying and counting Hail Marys in her head, wishing she could remember whether today was the day for saying the Joyful or the Sorrowful Mysteries. She'd been halfway through the fifth decade of her second rosary when, two minutes ago, footsteps had pounded on the staircase.

Sean shot to his feet while Pyotr hastily gathered up the cards. He hadn't finished, however, before a small, balding man in a cardigan burst in, sweat shining on his brow, and slammed the door closed behind him. "We have problems," he said. Bernadette could hear his fright in his thickened accent, and saw it in the pulse hammering in the blue veins at his temples. "Hofstadter's girlfriend turned out to be a lot harder to deal with than I thought. We're going to have to relocate down the block. Immediately."

Sean and Pyotr looked at each other, then at the balding man. "Anyone else coming?" said Sean. The balding man shook his head. That really seemed to shake the other two. Both muttered affirmatives, then moved to their prisoners and knelt. Pyotr took out a large knife and cut the zipties around Sheldon's wrists and ankles efficiently, catching him as he slumped forward out of the chair.

Sean, however, only tapped his razor blade thoughtfully, looking at Bernadette, then at the balding man. "Mr. Rozokov," he said, "it's the man we need, right? She's not really any use to us?"

Rozokov expelled an angry snort. "Sean, if you want to indulge yourself now, you'd better be quick. I don't know how long it will take for someone to find this place, and I'd rather not have pursuers." He went to the other door, the one they hadn't entered by, and began looking through keys. Pyotr, who already had Sheldon slung over his shoulders, gave Sean a disgusted look and deliberately turned away. Sean grinned, took off his jacket, and without haste ran his razor blade down the front of Bernadette's blouse, parting the fabric with a sound like tearing paper.

Terror, fury and nausea flooded Bernadette's guts like a sewage plant turning over. But she hadn't gotten Penny's super-strength or Lucy's ability to ghost out. Even if she could somehow get Sean's razor away from him by surprise, she didn't have the reach or the muscle to do anything with it. But there had to be some way to escape this. Some way to—

The idea came to her like a cricket bat whacking her in the brain, so hard and fast it almost hurt, so desperate it left her reeling.

Sean had pushed back the ruins of her blouse from her shoulders, and was now considering her cleavage like a starving man looking at a picture on a menu cover. Not taking his eyes from the décolletage on display, he stepped around behind her and removed the zip ties on her wrist, then her ankles. She let herself groan in pain as circulation came back to the limbs, fluttering her eyelids as if only semi-conscious. He returned to kneel before her (obviously not having noticed the wounds already beginning to close on wrists and ankles) and reached out to slide the razor blade under one bra strap.

It took all the resolve and courage she could find to act. If she was wrong, this would be the kind of mortal sin that she hadn't realized, until this very moment, she still at least somewhat believed in. But she had literally run out of any other hope. At the last, she decided, it would be her choice what she took the chance on surviving.

Bernadette's hands flashed up, grabbed Sean's wrist, and pulled it forward, sinking the razor blade into her own throat and slicing it across in a blast of silver agony.