THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION

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

Notes: Well, the plan to update more frequently certainly went all to hell! Apologies to everyone; I can plead only the chronic lack of time that comes from being a breadwinner dad, and reassure everyone that I *am* closing in on an end to this first story in this AU. (Yes, I am planning others.) Navigating the streets of Las Vegas in a running battle was immensely aided by Google Streetview. For those interested in my head-casting, I have been envisioning Tom Hiddleston as Hal, and for those who like translation, Howard's line "Got zol in dir fargesn" means "May God forget about you", according to Michael Wex's wonderfully funny and interesting book Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods.

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

- 15 -

3050 LAS VEGAS BOULEVARD, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2015, 10:12 P.M.

None of the paramedics who'd been called in to duty at the Camelot's address were novices, and all of them had seen the injuries of most major cities before: car accidents, stabbings, gunshot wounds, construction site negligence, household poisonings, domestic violence, gang fights, everything that the modern world was capable of doing to human beings. But the wounds inflicted on the police officers who'd gone into that exhibit hall were not from anything the modern world had ever seen. They had the shape and pattern of individual blows, but the scope and depth of industrial machinery; the jagged sharpness of rockfalls in an avalanche, but the force and speed of highway vehicle impacts. As the paramedics bustled about their work, Glenn Foxworth had seen their eyes take on more and more of the haunted cast he had only read about in case studies: the bewildered, frightened look of people caught up in a war zone, cleaning up the detritus left behind by passing forces they had neither expected nor understood.

As the only "man in charge" with anything like medical knowledge, Glenn had been put on the spot with questions for which he had nothing even close to an answer. He had no idea what had happened to this man—according to Abrams, Penny Carmichaels had called him "Sammy"—that had transformed him into the creature he'd seen briefly on recordings from the officers' body-cams; he could not say with certainty whether the wounds carried any unique contagious factor. He did not know what, if anything, would suffice to injure the man, much less stop him. All he could say was that it was clearly another effect of the Power Pulse, and that was something any half-awake Internet blogger could have said. And now that Anderson was being brought out on a gurney himself, and Penny and Bernadette's husband had gone off chasing Sammy up the Strip, Glenn knew it was only a matter of time before some determined media scrounger made his or her way past the police line and buttonholed him on camera for the world to see.

It was as much to put off that inevitability as any other genuine curiosity that led him running after Sergeant Abrams, when the other man stiffened in response to whatever he was hearing over his radio, barked an affirmation and an order, and ran off from the ambulance where he'd been watching over another injured man. They sprinted around the hotel's front driveway and lawn, into the parking lot on the north side, and up to the ring of police officers who were surrounding, with weapons out and levelled, two extremely unprepossessing and annoyed-looking people holding their hands in the air. Glenn recognized them, sighed in relief and clapped Abrams on the shoulder. "It's all right," he told the other man. "I know these people. They're not a threat."

Abrams scowled at him, but snapped another order, and the police lowered their weapons just slowly enough to broadcast their readiness to draw them again. Glenn slipped between two of the cops and hurried to the people at the centre of the ring. "Dr. Leonard Hofstadter, I presume?" he said. "And Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler. I'm glad to see you again." He extended his hand, fully aware of the apparent absurdity but banking on social reflex to start calming things down.

"Again?" Hofstadter frowned at him, but shook his hand regardless. "Have we met?"

"Not . . . directly." Glenn shrugged, a little abashed. "My name is Foxworth, Dr. Glenn Foxworth, of the University of Chicago—we met at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Sciences' annual symposium, five years ago. I, ah, I gave your fiancée Penny a lift back to Pasadena."

"That was you?" Leonard blinked. "Oh my God, you're that Glenn. Bernadette's ex." He hesitated, then added, "You have no idea how much Howard hates you. Honestly, for a while I wasn't a fan either."

Glenn snorted. "Oh, Mr. Wolowitz doesn't hate me; I'm just a handy representative for his own chronic sense of sexual inadequacy. If inventing superweapons that can blow monsters through concrete walls won't cure that, nothing will."

Fowler had been studying him with a squint that might have been suspicion or simply myopia, but at Glenn's last words she abruptly grinned. The expression gave her plain features a startlingly appealing cast. "I like this man, Leonard," she said. "We should have him around more often."

"You know that'll just piss Howard off, right?"

"Like I was saying, we should have him around more often."

"Yeah, just remember that when Sheldon refuses to sing Neil Diamond with you at karaoke." As Fowler processed that with a disgruntled look, Leonard turned back to Glenn. "How is Agent Anderson? We saw he'd been injured."

"Agent Anderson is being treated." Glenn turned; Abrams came up to them, his sidearm still holstered but his hand resting pointedly on the holster. "They may or may not be able to stabilize him. Why do you ask?"

"Because when we last spoke to him, he'd arranged a temporary truce," said Leonard, looking askance at the burly SWAT officer as if he already sensed the skepticism this was likely to meet. "We'd help you guys stop Sammy, and you'd call off the arrest warrants, at least for the moment."

"And why exactly would Agent Anderson make such an arrangement?"

"Because Dr. Hofstadter, Ms. Carmichaels and their friends are the only people likely to be able to stop an out-of-control metahuman without further loss of life, obviously," said Glenn, before either Leonard or Fowler could say anything. "Or do you want to send more of your men into that meat-grinder, Max?"

Abrams glowered at him. Leonard cleared his throat. "Well, yes, that was exactly Agent Anderson's thinking, I believe," he said.

"Oh yeah? How's that working out so far?" Abrams growled. "So far all I'm seein' is a lot of property damage and injuries, and our target is still moving. If your friends can't shut this man down soon I'm thinking it might be time to break out the really heavy weaponry."

Leonard looked taken aback, and more than a little worried. "How heavy are we talking, here, sir—?" he began, then broke off as Fowler suddenly stiffened and held up one hand. She put the other hand to her ear; looking closer, Glenn realized she was wearing a radio earpiece, much like Abrams's own. As if the realization had slapped him awake, he sized up Hofstadter again, and saw what he had completely missed before: the smaller man sported visible bandages, his shirt was torn and bloodied, and what remained of his tuxedo was rumpled and soiled far beyond what most honeymoon nights might ever explain. This hadn't just been an interrupted wedding, Glenn realized. Something had gone seriously wrong.

Fowler slumped in relief and smiled. If the grin of a moment ago had made her appealing, that relieved, overjoyed smile made her beautiful. "Oh, thank God," she exhaled. "Leonard, that was Raj. They found Sheldon and Bernadette, they're all right. They're just in the bar, back inside the hotel—Sheldon teleported them all back, apparently they were in some kind of underground access corridor."

"The bar?" Leonard frowned. "Why couldn't Sheldon have brought everybody out here?"

Fowler shrugged. "He's never been in this parking lot. The bar was probably the last point on-site for which he bothered to memorize the coordinates. Even Sheldon's eidetic memory only works for things he pays attention to."

Teleported. Glenn had never doubted Page's deduction that one of the four male Primaries had developed some kind of transportation power—it was the only way to explain how they had disappeared from that boardroom yesterday, and vanished out from under that Texas riot squad's noses milliseconds before the stun grenades went off—but it was still eerie to hear the word used so casually . . . even if this confirmed both who had acquired it and a vital limitation on its use. Glenn tucked those details carefully away in his own memory as Fowler lifted her wrist to her mouth and spoke into the mike peeping out from under her cuff. "Raj, we're in the parking lot on the building's north side. Get out here as soon as you can—"

"Dr. Fowler." If Abrams' voice was just slightly less gruff speaking to a woman, it was still forceful enough to visibly discomfit Fowler when aimed directly at her. Glenn wondered if Abrams even noticed. "If you're in communication with Dr. Cooper and Dr. Koothrappali, tell them to wait in the hotel's main lobby, and that I'm sending officers to meet them and bring them out here—and advise your friends, I can't stress this enough, to be cooperative. Understood? I'm sending my men either way," he added before she could protest. "So you may as well give them a heads-up."

For a moment, Amy looked mulish, but Leonard touched her elbow and gave her a meaningful nod. She sighed and complied, muttering instructions into her wrist-mike. Abrams pointed to four of the officers surrounding them and gave them rapid orders, and they jogged off towards the hotel's main entrance. Leonard looked at Abrams with an expression somewhere between wariness and disappointment. "Does this mean we're back under arrest?"

"It means I want you all where I can see you," said Abrams. "Especially if I'm gonna deploy you as assets to take down this Sammy person. Maybe if you all join in at once you'll get better results. After all, that's how they do it in the comics, right? The big team-up?" At Leonard's astonished look, he suddenly grinned. "I've seen a superhero flick or two in my time, Doc. Cops enjoy a righteous asskicking as much as anyone."

Leonard narrowed his eyes at him, as if he couldn't quite believe he was having this conversation. "Yeah, well, comics and movies are one thing; real life is another," he said. "We've found that out several hard ways already. Can we get helmets?"

Abrams looked impressed. "That's the most sensible question you've asked so far, Dr. Hofstadter. Maybe you are as smart as your file says you are."

"I have a file now? Oh, God, of course I have a file," Leonard muttered, rubbing his forehead.

Amy tilted her head. "Do I have a file?" Abrams nodded, and her own grin returned. "Wow. Leonard, I have a file! I'm a person of interest!"

"Well, you knew that from yesterday," Leonard pointed out. He looked at Glenn as Abrams activated his own radio and gave more orders. "Speaking of which, were you the person who kept Bernadette's name out of the news stories yesterday about Huntington Memorial?"

"I didn't make that decision," Glenn hedged, "but I requested it, yes."

"Good," said Leonard. "If you can, at all, please keep that up. I'd really appreciate it if at least one of us has the option not to go public with what's happened to her, at least as long as possible." He gave Glenn a disquietingly piercing look. "This is for Bernadette's sake, not Howard's or anybody else's. If that makes a difference."

Glenn weighed whether to be insulted or not, and finally decided against it. He understood Hofstadter's point. "It would, if I were the sort of person for whom that mattered. But just to let you know, Dr. Hofstadter: I'm not." He didn't take his eyes from Leonard's. Slowly, the other man nodded.

Amy stiffened abruptly, squinting fiercely over Glenn's shoulder, then gave a frustrated growl. "Leonard, I'm sorry, but I can't see well enough to be certain. Is that—?" She pointed instead of finishing the sentence, and Leonard nodded. Amy started for the edge of the circle, stopped as the officers surrounding them instinctively shifted closer together, and gave Abrams a pleading look. "Sergeant, please? I just—I need to see him. Dr. Cooper, I mean. We, uh, he's extremely important to me on an emotional level, if that factor influences your decision at all—not to suggest that that consideration should be a priority in this situation, of course, but it will certainly provide reassurance to confirm Dr. Cooper's welfare and that can only help if we have to engage in situations of danger which I'm sure you already know all about but I just—"

"Dr. Fowler," Abrams growled. He gestured forcefully at the officers blocking Amy's path; after a moment, they stepped aside. Abrams glared at her. "Go."

Amy didn't wait for further permission. She took off at a run, bolting towards the entrance to the parking lot, where Glenn could see Abrams' men returning with a ragged group of four people in tow; one of them was visibly taller than the rest. When she reached them, they were still too far away to make out much detail, but there was enough light from the streetlamps and the flickering emergency red-and-blues that Glenn could clearly see the tall figure toppling over as Amy flung herself onto him. He cleared his throat quietly, not sure if he was repressing an urge to laugh or a lump.

Leonard glanced at Abrams. "Sorry about that, sir. It's just—they have a history."

"History?" Abrams snorted. "Looks like a frickin' epic to me."

Leonard opened his mouth, then shrugged and nodded in visibly bemused agreement.

LAS VEGAS BOULEVARD SOUTH AND SANDS AVENUE, 10:17 P.M.

"Howard, look out!" Penny's yell was panicked enough that Howard didn't try to whirl and see the danger himself; with a reflexive jerk of his thumb, he simply cut the power to his skates altogether and dropped like a stone. Wind ruffled his hair as something huge and metallic shot over his head, missing him by what felt like millimetres. He switched the skates back on and cranked the power, a trick he was getting much better at doing one-handed, and braked to a stop. The missile—holy crap, that's a frickin' car!—tumbled down past him, almost squarely into the middle of the intersection, and struck asphalt with a cacophonous crash, crumpling into a half-flattened shape of metal. Broken glass burst in all directions. Car horns howled, brakes screeched as other vehicles slewed wildly sideways, and pedestrians screamed, fleeing.

Howard stared at the fallen car, then pulled a one-eighty to glare at Sammy, who crouched in the middle of the Boulevard a few dozen yards away. Beyond him, high in the air, hovered Penny, likewise dumbstruck; the Treasure Island Hotel's sign backlit her in blazing white light. Further above, the hammering rotors of several helicopters formed a rumbling backdrop to the noise. "You son of a bitch!" Howard shouted. "Did you just throw a Prius at me?! I like Priuses!" He blinked, suddenly bemused. "Wait, is that the right plural? Prii? Priusesses? Pri—ah, the hell with it!" His left arm was burning from the effort of holding the heavy cart battery, but he barely noticed; he levelled his force tube with the other hand and fired.

He wasn't expecting much result—even his heaviest blasts only seemed to knock Sammy tumbling—but he was pissed off enough not to care. The result startled the hell out of him nonetheless. Sammy hunched down and then jumped, rocketing clear over the force burst and ascending nearly twenty feet into the air before coming down hard enough to crater the asphalt with a thunderous BAM; behind him, the force burst knocked an abandoned SUV over on its side. Sammy wobbled a little before finding his feet, staring down at himself with an equally surprised expression.

Then he looked up at Howard. And smiled.

Howard gulped. "Oh, shit." He whirled, flicking his skates' power to maximum. Screams pealed behind him as he leapt into the air and shot east down Sands. With a flick of his thumb, he pumped a burst of power through his skates, lofting himself neatly over the pedestrians' bridge between the Palazzo and the Wynn. Shadow flickered over him against the flashing pools of the streetlights, growing, darkening . . . . At the last second Howard jinked sharply right and then straightened out again, dizzy with shifting momentum. Sammy hurtled past, one enormous fist just barely missing him, and slammed back down into the street with a bellow of fury. Howard didn't look back to see. Car horns, shouts and the flashes of phone cameras splashed up behind him like the wake of a waterskier, followed by another burst of sudden shrieks and another deafening BAM. Howard's lungs burned. His heart pounded in his ears.

Out of nowhere a weird feeling of déjà vu struck him. It took a moment to realize why; when he did, he almost laughed aloud, breathlessness notwithstanding. Running like a rabbit from an enraged maniac far his superior in strength, nerves afire with both terror and glee, while all around people pointed and gasped in amazement at the show . . . it was fourth grade all over again. This was just another suburban Pasadena schoolyard, and that was just one more bully back there. It was like nothing had changed at all.

Except this guy's not Jake Truscott, some unamused part of his brain reminded him. And if he catches you you're gonna lose a lot more than a baby tooth. The urge to laugh died.

Sands Avenue curved right, bearing south, then back left and east. He was shooting past the Sands Expo and Convention Center now, slicing through the air a few yards above the traffic, and at Koval Lane he pulled a sharp right and found himself racing the sleek white bullet-shape of a monorail train as it whirred southward along its elevated track. In the train's brightly lit windows, Howard could see people suddenly turning, gaping, and pointing; inevitably, phones came up and flashed at him. Dazed, he found himself waving feebly back.

Then came another shattering BAM. The train visibly jolted on its track; in the windows, passengers reeled and fell, mouths wide with silent screams. Howard looked back over his shoulder, appalled. Sammy's last leap had carried him right into the monorail's track, from which he'd ricocheted back down into the street; the smash of impact had left the structure cracked, broken and warped. The train racing them was well past the impact point, but the next one coming down the line would almost surely derail thirty feet straight down into the street. Howard could only pray the train's operators could get the dispatcher to shut the route down in time.

He tilted forward and dropped closer to the street, staying just above the traffic, ignoring the screeches of brakes and honks of horns as he shot by. With the reflex of a lifetime spent tinkering with motors and rocket trajectories, he'd timed out the rhythm of Sammy's jumps; to cover the twenty-five to thirty yards he guessed Sammy was covering with each leap, his elevation was probably no more than ten or twelve feet. That would let Howard keep him below the level of the monorail and away from further damage to it—it didn't do much for his escape prospects, but there was more at stake here than his own butt. He slung his force-tube at his belt and lifted his wrist-mike to his mouth.

"Penny!" he shouted, though he was sufficiently winded it was more gasp than yell by now. "I'm heading south on Koval, coming up on Krueger, and this guy's trying to jump straight down my ass! Where the hell are you?"

"I'm overhead!" Penny's voice crackled back in his ear. "I was looking for a chance to come in from the side, knock him sideways, but I don't want to throw him into one of the buildings—Howard, right!"

Howard threw himself sideways, almost lost his balance, dropped flailing downwards and got his skates under himself just before hitting the street, skidding through the turn onto Krueger Drive as Sammy shot straight through the space he'd occupied and slammed explosively into the asphalt just below the monorail track. He went down face first this time, and didn't immediately get up—he must have put extra effort into the last jump, trying to catch Howard off guard. Dizzy and disoriented, Howard reeled over to the right side of the road, dropped his battery and collapsed against a palm tree, hugging it to hold himself up. He could actually feel the cold sweat breaking on his forehead. If Penny hadn't warned him at the last second . . . .

"Are you fricking kidding me?!" he yelled into his mike, when he got his breath back. "You're worried about the buildings?" He alternated frantically between watching Sammy's fallen form and peering upwards into the night, trying to find Penny. On the other side of the road, a Ferris wheel turned in a parking lot, lit up in blue and yellow lights, its absurdly cheerful tinny music echoing out over the traffic.

"And everybody inside them and on the streets, if he does enough damage to knock them down!"

Howard rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine," he grumbled, "if you're going to make actual sense . . . ."

"Yeah, well, blame Leonard; he was the one who dragged me to see Man of Steel." Sudden alarm filled Penny's voice. "Howard, look out—he's getting up!"

Howard's eyes snapped to Sammy. The other man was pushing himself slowly to his feet, groaning gutturally as he did. His shape was a distended mass of bulging curves, spikes, plates and joints, inhumanly tall and wide; Howard could barely even understand how his pursuer could still move. He wasn't sure if he wanted to cry or scream. "Got zol in dir fargesn," he moaned, "what the hell does it take to stop this guy?"

"Actually, Howard, we may have a suggestion to exactly that effect," said Amy's voice in his earpiece, startling Howard so badly he dropped his battery in the middle of picking it up and only barely managed not to let it fall on his toes. His reaction was so visible that Sammy actually recoiled, pausing in the middle of hunching for a leap. "Can I ask where you and Penny are currently located?"

"Krueger Drive, just east of Koval, maybe half a mile back to the Strip, and who the hell is 'we', Amy?" Howard yelled. With his left hand he grabbed for his force-tube projector and levelled it at Sammy, who scowled at him with a look almost like Sheldon's in his more exasperated moments.

The voice that answered was one he hadn't expected. "Howard? Baby? Are you okay?"

Howard's jaw dropped. "Bernie?" he choked. "Omigod, Bernie, what happened to you? What—oh, shit!" With no warning at all Sammy leapt into the air, arcing high and coming whistling down at Howard; Howard flung up his force-tube and fired—

—and nothing happened.

His brain took up one quarter of an instant realizing what had gone wrong: he'd dropped the battery, and his jury-rigged connection had torn out. His skates were dead, his weapon was dead. Another quarter-instant to visualize exactly what would happen to his five-foot-four, hundred-and-twenty pound body when that descending mass of abomination hit him: it would crush his ribs, break his back, squelch his internal organs like bags of jelly, flatten him like a cartoon character which could never be reinflated. A third quarter-instant to grasp just what that meant. He would never hold Bernadette again, kiss her, make love to her. He would never hold his son or daughter in his arms. He'd never enter a lab again, build another device, or join the guys to make fun of Sheldon over Mystic Warlords of Ka'a. This was it.

The end.

And in the fourth quarter-instant he had just begun to close his eyes so he didn't have to see death coming, when Penny skyrocketed out of the night like a jeans-clad golden comet, hit Sammy in the side in mid-descent and sent the two of them tumbling and bouncing westwards down Krueger Drive like the trap-chute boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark, cars screeching out of their way. Howard's legs collapsed; he dropped onto his ass with a painful thud, making a sound halfway between howl of triumph and a choked squeak of miserable relief. His pulse roared in his ears.

The noise of his heartbeat was so loud it drowned everything else out; it took a moment for the voice in Howard's earpiece to penetrate, and when it finally did it managed the feat only by virtue of how much it resembled what had been the most important voice in his life. "HOWARD!" it screeched. "HOWARD, YOU PUTZ, ANSWER ME! HOWWW-AAARRDD!"

Howard fumbled his wrist-mike on. "Okay, okay, okay, stop yelling!" he yelled back. "I can hear you, Ma-mah, my, my beloved! I'm okay! I'm fine!" He cringed and hit himself on the forehead. God, of all the times to make that mistake! Maybe she'd missed it in the radio's static . . . .

The moment of silence that followed warned him otherwise, before the earpiece crackled with Bernadette's huffed exhalation. "If I wasn't so relieved you weren't dead, I'd have a few more words to say to you, buddy," she growled. "And one of 'em would probably be 'psychotherapy'. What happened?"

"Uh, well, summing up briefly, Penny saved my ass. Set aside some money for a thank-you gift." Howard twisted to peer down Krueger Drive; already the combatants were too far away to make out, beyond blurred black dots backlit by the Strip's illumination, jumping and swooping about one another. "I think she and Sammy are heading back towards the main Strip. Where're you guys?"

"We're wedged into a SWAT van heading north, trying to intercept this Sammy person," came Sheldon's acid, precise tenor. "Honestly, Howard, if this is the sort of lumbar support passengers get in these vehicles I'm going to be a lot more understanding of police brutality reports in future. Not that that exonerates anybody, but still."

Howard covered his eyes with one hand. "Sheldon, please tell me there weren't any cops within earshot of you when you said that."

"Why would that matter? I'm not insulting anyone, Howard, I'm just saying that now I understand where the violence comes from."

Howard sighed. "Yeah, that's . . . probably not gonna make anything worse, I guess." With his free hand, he pulled the battery towards him and examined where the wires leading to his converter unit had torn away. "It's going to take a few minutes for me to get up and moving again; I'm not hurt, I just have to make a quick repair or two . . . ." Then he remembered something. "Wait a minute—Amy, you said you had an idea how to stop this guy. What is it?"

"Um—I'd prefer to skim discreetly over that for now, Howard, as I suspect you're not going to like it very much."

Howard stopped moving. "Why . . . won't I like it?" he asked, his voice sounding unnaturally flat even to him.

"Oh, that's because it involves Bernadette—" began Sheldon blithely, before a sharp crackle howled in Howard's ear; he winced away. A second later, Sheldon's voice had been replaced by Leonard's, in an annoyed tone so familiar it was actually comforting: "Just get back to the Strip as fast as you can, Howard. I don't think you'll have trouble finding us."

"Ten-four," muttered Howard, and grabbed the trailing wires from his converter unit, dread gnawing at his gut. From down the street, screeches of brakes and howls of car horns split the night, backed by the roar of rotors as helicopters shot by overhead, their spotlights raking along the street. None of them bothered to pick him out as he sat at the base of the palm tree.

U.S. BANK TOWER, 633 WEST FIFTH STREET, LOS ANGELES, CA

OBSERVATION DECK, 70TH FLOOR, 10:21 P.M.

As the elevator ascended, Kurt shifted uncomfortably, wishing he could take off his midnight-blue tie. It was more out of habit than actual discomfort—the shirt he wore fit him as if tailored for him, and it might well have been; the dark-grey silk suit he wore over that was the single most expensive set of clothing he'd ever owned. Beside him, Emily wore a dark red sequined dress that fit her with similar perfection, and whoever had helped her get all spiffed up for this meeting, they'd done her hair and makeup as well, giving her a curled mane that spilled over her head and down to one shoulder. Kurt had to admit, he'd always thought she was hot, but now she was one of the hottest women he'd ever been this close to. Maybe even, he said silently to himself, hotter than Penny . . . although he was smart enough to know that was not the sort of thing you said to women, generally.

At the moment, though, appreciating that hotness was unfortunately a little more academic a matter than he might have liked. The people standing around them in the elevator looked like nothing special, in themselves: three men, two women, of varied ethnicity, and none of them more than average in appearance, though they were all dressed as well as Kurt and Emily. But there was something in their flat, shining eyes that creeped Kurt the fuck out, even as their own wariness towards him indicated how well aware they were of his own strength. They'd been among the people who welcomed him and Emily last night in the parking garage of this building, and shown them to palatially-appointed residence suites like something Kurt had only ever seen on MTV reruns of Cribs—the steak dinner waiting for him had been the best he'd ever eaten in his life. He'd therefore chosen to ignore, for the time being, the fact that when they'd gotten off on that floor, the elevator display hadn't shown any number . . . as if the floor didn't exist.

For whatever reason, that odd glitch, if glitch it was, didn't happen this time. The display clicked to 69 and stopped. Kurt glanced at the number and couldn't help himself; he snickered. As if she had read his mind—and who knew, maybe she had—Emily elbowed him sharply. The doors whirred open.

The space revealed was clearly only half-finished, but even so, it impressed Kurt despite himself. They walked out into an open area that took up the entire two floors of the building, maybe fifty feet across, twenty high, ringed at the midpoint by a walkway that would allow people to lean against the outer windows at the height of the seventieth floor, looking out over the Los Angeles cityscape. The stairs leading up to the walkway were bare concrete, as was the floor, and construction scaffolding and material were everywhere. From the girdered, cable-strung ceiling hung a massive display screen, tuned to one of the twenty-four hour cable news channels; the scene on display was a city street, its traffic in silent chaos. Hypertext ran across the bottom of the screen, but Kurt couldn't read it at this distance. A second later the picture cut to a blonde news anchor; her mouth moved, but no sound came out.

Beside the couch stood a man in a grey suit much like Kurt's own, looking up at the screen. As Kurt, Emily and the others approached, he glanced back and saw them. "Ah," he said. He reached down, touching the shoulder of the man sitting on the couch, then turned. "Mr. Winters," he said. "Dr. Sweeney." It was the mellifluous voice Kurt had heard on the burner phone last night. "I'm glad to see you properly attired. Welcome to our association. My name is Randall."

"Yeah, hi Randy," said Kurt. "Look, before you go any further, I'm grateful you gave us someplace to go, and provided all these awesome duds and all, but I gotta tell you: way I grew up, nobody ever got nothing for nothing, and, well, I'm not really the joining type. So if you're gonna hit us with whatever our bill for this is, I'd kinda like just to get to it, settle up and call it even, if we can." He paused a moment, then deliberately stepped forwards into Randall's space, looming over the smaller man; Randall didn't back away, but his wariness was clear. "And just for the record?" He glanced down at the man sitting on the couch. "If your boss wants to talk to us, he can fuckin' talk to us. I don't like getting jerked around by flunkies. No offense," he added, with a deliberately offensive stare. In his experience, when you suspected there were strings attached, it was best to try to yank hard on them, right away.

Nobody made any audible noise or gasp, but he could feel the tension crackle through the air. Emily gave him a sidelong glare. Randall only blinked once. Then he stepped back, and the man on the couch stood in what looked almost like the same movement. Unlike everybody else in the room, he wore casual clothing, jeans, sneakers and a black leather jacket; he was almost as tall as Kurt himself, maybe six-two or six-three, with broad shoulders, big hands, a long nose, and short dark hair, and looked to be in his middle to late thirties. His smile instantly made Kurt wary, in the way guys who'd been able to give him a good fight had always made Kurt wary. That in itself felt odd—wasn't he strong enough now to throw cars, after all? But Kurt was used to trusting his instincts.

"I like a man who's got no patience for bullshit," said the man in the black jacket. His voice was a medium baritone, slightly hoarse, as if he'd spent a lot of time shouting; it had the faintest trace of an accent in it, some weird kinda British sound that wasn't quite Irish or Scottish. "Never had much myself. Pleased to meet you, Kurt, Emily. Call me Hal." He shook Kurt's hand—his grip felt like it might easily be Kurt's match—and kissed Emily's, his eyes twinkling. "And I hear you on the joining thing. But . . . I really think you're gonna have an interest in what we've got to offer you."

Emily exchanged a glance with Kurt. "Such as?" she said.

"Well, money, for one," said Hal, spreading his hands. "Buckets of it, and you'll never have to waste time on taxes again. More important, security. A network of safe havens. Support personnel, everywhere, utterly reliable. And most of all, a guaranteed supply of, ah, what you really need." He gave Emily a meaningful look. "Like Randall told you last night, Emily. We've been doing this a while."

Emily licked her lips. Kurt wondered if she realized she'd done it. It turned him on and creeped him out at the same time. Still, from the question that followed, the brain behind those big brown eyes still seemed to be working: "And what's our end of the bargain, Hal?"

Hal shrugged. "Simple: same as the rest of us. Help out. Whatever needs doing. Using your—talents—however seems best." He grinned abruptly. "I'm guessing you've already picked up a whole new knack of making people see things your way, right, Emily?" He turned and pointed up at the screen. "There's a situation here we've been monitoring, I've been making up my mind what to do about it; let's kill two birds with one stone, and I'll show you just how useful that kind of influence is." Hal rubbed his hands, looking gleeful, picked up a remote from the table, then paused a moment to turn it over in his hands with an admiring expression. "I love this century, Randall, have I mentioned that tonight?"

"Not yet, sir," said Randall, deadpan.

Hal laughed, pointed the remote at the TV screen and pressed a button. The sound came on. "—still no identification on the demonic creature doing the majority of the damage," said the blonde anchor in grave tones. "But the woman fighting the creature has been tentatively identified as the same person who saved a crashing FBI helicopter last night in Pasadena, California, the metahuman already popularly named, by the Internet, the Angel." Over her shoulder, the action zoomed in until it resolved, showing the spiked, ogrish monstrosity leaping back and forth while a slender blonde figure swooped out of its way, dealing spinning kicks and punches and neatly dodging return blows and hurled cars.

Kurt stiffened. At his side, he felt Emily do the same. Hal turned abruptly, his eyebrows up. "You know her," he said. "The Angel. Don't you." There was no question in his tone, and no amusement.

"Yeah," said Kurt. "Yeah, I know her." He looked at Emily. "You?"

"She's a friend of my boyfr—" Emily stopped, closed her eyes, and let out a breath. "Of my ex," she amended. "But . . . never really mine, for what that's worth."

Hal nodded thoughtfully. "Well. For what it's worth, she might survive this. I almost hope she does—it would be nice to be surprised for a change." He pulled a cellphone out of his pocket, dialed, and put it to his ear. "Hello? Hello, Jenny. Yes, it's me. Yes." His voice suddenly took on the rich, echoing resonance Kurt remembered from the Huntington Memorial ambulance.

"I want you to put me through to Sergeant Max Abrams, Jenny. Now."