THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION

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

Notes: The Muse was kind enough to help me update more quickly again, and I'm hoping to be able to keep this up as I close in on the story ending. I have to admit to the readers that I was a little worried this story had gone a little over the top in terms of its action, but I happened this evening to take in the film X-Men: Apocalypse, and it convinced me that I was nowhere near the top yet, which was a profound relief. I strongly recommend the film to superhero fans and hope this next chapter provides at least a little of the same kind of entertainment.

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

- 17 -

LAS VEGAS BOULEVARD SOUTH, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2015, 10:29 P.M.

On her knees underneath an up-ended SWAT van, her hands pressed against the stony skin of a monster that had once been human, Bernadette poured her power into Sammy's body, trying desperately to fight her way through his rage and pain to reach the critical neurological pressure point within.

It was like nothing she had ever experienced. Healing Lucy's injury had come so naturally it was almost as if the power had done it without her; all she'd had to do was make contact and let the energy flow the way it wanted. The things she'd done to the gangsters in the Camelot's under-corridor had taken more force and more determination, but her anger had carried her through it, and it had happened so fast the gangsters hadn't had time even to understand what she was doing, let alone resist it. But when she'd thrust her hands against Sammy's concrete-and-metal carapace, she'd found herself drowning in a typhoon of fury and anguish, like she was fighting her way upstream against a river in full flood—and a boiling-hot scalding river to boot.

The metabolic sense that had awakened with her power pulled flashes of insight and realization out of that flood, like fluttering Polaroids slamming briefly against a glass windscreen before whirling away into the maelstrom. She reeled under the memory of Raj's anger-blast, brain thrown into disarray. She saw her arm—no, not her arm, it was wiry, olive-skinned and hairily male—buried seamlessly in a carpeted floor as if growing out of it, and felt the aghast dismay of realizing what Lucy must have done. She saw a face reflected in an elevator door, narrow and ratlike, but eyes and mouth so wide with horror he seemed more boy than man. She felt the red-white blast of pain as a comrade's wild gunshot grazed her temple and knocked her senseless. She felt the sanity-bursting agony as under that twinned shock, the latent oneirion field implanted in Sammy's brain by the Power Pulse burst open like a golden, inhuman seedpod, flowering into warped and hideous blossom, saving Sammy's life the only way it could: by sucking in the minerals and metals that had become embedded in his body, converting his entire metabolism into something that could absorb and incorporate the inorganic substance to become stronger. And then, still in pain, still confused and dazed, he had attacked the only source of his anguish he could see, unwittingly locking them and himself into a feedback cycle that only gave his power more and more to feed upon. By now he was so far gone—more golem than man—that it might well be impossible to restore him to what he once had been.

But Bernadette had never had a lot of patience for people who called things impossible. And if there was one thing she hated more than being short, it was losing. She fastened on the memory of Sammy's human face. If there was any trace of what he had been in this body, then it was there to reactivate, if she could just find a way to shut down that golden-white firestorm raging in the man's brain under Raj's constant assaults of despair and sorrow. She knew it was the only thing keeping him too off-balance to fight back and free himself, but God, if she could just get a few seconds of calm with which to work—!

She realized what had to happen, and swallowed. But there was no way around it. "Raj!" she called. "Ease up on the mind-blasts! I need to feel his brainwaves on their own! Undistorted!"

"Bernadette, I really don't think that's a good idea!" Raj protested.

"It isn't! But I can't find the pressure point I need to if I can't see it!"

"Oh, God," Raj moaned. "Sheldon, can you teleport us all out as fast as you brought us in?"

"If we can maintain physical contact, yes," said Sheldon, after a moment.

Bernadette shook her head, not looking around. "Not gonna work," she stated. "If I touch Sheldon I'm gonna pick up on his system too, and I can't afford the distraction."

"Then Sheldon, you get ready to teleport Raj, Lucy and yourself out," said Penny. "Amy, get over here." As if feeling heat on her skin, Bernadette sensed the two girls sprinting over, until they stood beside her one on each side. "Bernadette, if things go wrong, we're gonna fly you out. Got it?"

Bernadette managed to nod. "Got it. Okay, Raj, drop—"

"SHELDON!"

Leonard's distant, horrified cry broke her concentration. The connection with Sammy shattered like glass. Bernadette lost her balance and fell back, landing hard on her butt, turning just as she saw a flash of light and something streaked towards them with a whooshing roar from the last SWAT van. Sheldon, the first to turn, instinctively threw up one hand. And suddenly the streaking flash of light had flipped through an instant ninety-degree turn, shooting almost straight up, higher and higher above them. It crashed into the top of the Camelot, just below the giant metal sword, and exploded in a thunderous BOOM that momentarily turned the sky daytime-bright. The fireball licked upwards and died away. Shrapnel hailed down, and Bernadette ducked, covering her head with her arms.

"Those sons of bitches," said Raj in complete, flabbergasted shock. "They shot a fucking rocket at us." Bernadette could only nod numbly, so stunned that the experience of hearing Raj actually swear went completely unremarked. The astrophysicist let go of Lucy's hand and suddenly began jumping up and down, almost completely insane with rage, waving his fists at the SWAT officers by the van. "What the hell, you assholes! What the fuck! What—"

He was cut off by a deafening CRACK from above. Raj froze. Then he looked up. Bernadette followed his gaze. Beside her, trapped in the shell of the van, even Sammy had stopped writhing, and had twisted his head to look upwards. The three-story-tall sword at the top of the Camelot had tilted. For a second, nobody moved. Bernadette wasn't even sure she remembered how to breathe.

Then there came another horrendous CRACK, then another. Then a chain of plangent, discordant twangs as anchor cable after anchor cable snapped. The sword tilted over, farther and farther. And then, before Bernadette could summon the wherewithal to react, there came one final CRASH as the sword broke off from its concrete at its base and, faster than Bernadette would have believed, came plummeting straight down at them. She watched it come, frozen, not even able to move her arms. At her side, Penny and Amy stared up with equal, dazed paralysis.

Howie, Bernadette thought.

10:30 P.M.

When the rocket from Abrams' weapon abruptly flipped itself in midair, shot up to the top of the building and exploded, Leonard collapsed in relief, his eyes leaking tears and his throat raw from his warning shout. Howard had likewise collapsed, panting and gasping. When this was all straightened out, Leonard thought, he was going to hug Sheldon and not let go, and the other man's misophobia be damned. The gangly physicist must have done one of his spacetime warps; the vector change had been too instant and complete for any actual physical force, and if Penny had tried to kick or punch the rocket upwards she would have likely as not set it off herself. Abrams lowered the launcher, staring at the result, face still thoughtlessly blank, like a robot hitting a pause loop in its operating code. He seemed completely unaware of Raj jumping and shrieking at him like a maniac.

Then the noise of the fracturing sword silenced the street. The giant metal sculpture tilted over, its shadow falling across the lamppost-lit asphalt, breaking free of its mounting. Leonard froze, all the misery of this night suddenly wiped away in what, at last, he knew was real horror. Helplessness—not for yourself, but for those you loved: Sheldon. Raj. Bernadette and her baby. Amy, Lucy . . . and Penny. Most of all, Penny. To watch death coming for them—for her—knowing, like a spear through his gut, that he could do nothing.

The sword shattered at its base, plunging downwards from the peak of the Grand Camelot, spinning as it hurtled down at the small group gathered around the wrecked van where Sammy was trapped. Penny looked up, gaping, too flabbergasted to react, and the idea that the last expression she might ever wear in her life was one of sheer befuddlement was intolerable. Leonard wrenched one arm free from the dazed police officer restraining him, reaching out impotently toward the woman he loved, screaming something he couldn't understand himself, a wordless wail of denial, grief, pain and rage as tears blinded his eyes, watching as the multi-ton mass of metal came slicing down through the air and—

Something like lightning, ice and fire fused together burst throughout his spinal column, rocketing from the small of his back up into his brain and down into his groin. Every hair on his body spiked erect; his breath shut off like an airlock had slammed closed on his lungs. The world ignited in a weird, bluish-white radiance that made everything seem to glow. A vast, rushing surge of force gushed through him as if his entire body had become a firehose, erupting out through his outstretched hand in a blurry tidal wave of power. The shimmering, coruscating cone of distortion whiplashed out across the street and intercepted the gigantic sword bare metres from his friends' heads, seizing it in mid-air, freezing it there as if it had fallen into a transparent cloud of cotton wool.

The crowd's shrieks and cries died away, falling into a silence that rang with awe. Penny, Sheldon and the others had all reflexively cringed, but as the seconds trickled by and they realized nothing had happened, they lowered their arms, lifted their heads, and stared. One by one, each of them followed the cone of power back to its source, and gaped at him with utterly stunned looks. The police officers had stumbled back as well, putting some safe distance between him and them. Even Howard was staring, eyes wide and bright with the sourceless radiance coming off Leonard. Only the roar of the helicopters overhead, the sword now gleaming bright in their spotlights, made any sound.

Leonard moistened his lips. His head was buzzing and sparking like an enormous Tesla coil. He pushed himself up onto his knees, holding himself up with his other hand. It was difficult to breathe; he almost didn't dare try. He had no idea how he had done this or what might cause him to lose his grip on it. His first attempt at speech was a hoarse whisper. "Penny—Sheldon—" He cleared his throat, sucked in a breath and tried harder, this time managing a cracked yell. "Guys! Finish it! Hurry!"

Bernadette was the first to snap back to herself. She scrambled to her feet, rushed over to the trapped Sammy and seized his head in both hands. Whether it was shock, confusion, or simple exhaustion, Sammy's resistance failed within seconds. Bernadette's eyes closed. A glow of light welled about her hands. Sammy slumped. Puffs of dust burst up between Bernadette's fingers, then blew through the windshield and the van's open rear entrance. A brittle, crackling sound echoed through the air. And then, with a crumbling roar, Sammy's armoured carapace split open, disintegrating into fragments of concrete, marble, metal and stone and spilling out from the van like sand from a broken hourglass. Bernadette plunged her hands into the dusty, gritty morass; Raj and Lucy rushed over to help, and within seconds the three of them had hauled Sammy—the real Sammy, the original, small, rat-faced man, now naked as a newborn—out of the wrecked SWAT van. They stumbled back and fell on their butts, the unconscious Sammy sprawled across their laps.

Leonard knew how they felt. He hadn't done more than hold his hand up and try to keep whatever power was blasting through him in operation, but already he felt like he was going to pass out. His arm burned like he'd been dragging a truck by hand, and dizziness was setting in. Something hot and wet trickled over his lips; he licked them, and tasted blood. "Penny!" he shouted, voice rasping. "Move!"

He'd meant, move yourself, get out of there, but Penny had clearly had a better idea. She signaled Amy, gestured at the sword and pointed down the street; after a moment, Amy nodded. The two of them leapt into the air, grabbed the sword and pushed hard, shoving it away from the Camelot, into the largest empty area of the street they could find. The sensation was strange, like an insubstantial pressure against his own hand. His vision blurred and his ears rang, as if he'd been holding his breath too long. His nose felt stuffed up. The sword moved as if they were pushing it through mud, but at last they reached an area with enough open space. They let go and floated backwards.

Leonard closed his eyes and willed both his mind and hand to relax. After a moment, the muscles of his arm finally unlocked and his hand fell. As if that movement had been the decoupling of a circuit, the force surging through him suddenly collapsed, dwindling instantly away to nothing; the tingling in his skin vanished, and through his closed eyes the light abruptly dimmed, shadow dropping back over him. He didn't see the sword hit the street, but he heard and felt it, a gigantic ringing WHAM of metal on concrete and asphalt that knocked his trembling limbs out from under him and took the last of his strength. Whatever car alarms hadn't already been triggered by the fight with Sammy went off. Their yowling, wailing electronic tones chased him down into darkness.

10:31 P.M.

The aura of blue-white light surrounding Leonard blinked out as the massive metal sword sculpture crashed to the ground; he keeled over, his helmeted head smacking on the road. His glasses flew off. Blood was streaming from his nose. Penny clapped her hands to her mouth in horror and shot downwards; she landed beside him, pulled off the helmet and gathered him into her arms. "Leonard? Baby?" He was utterly limp, his body the same deadweight it had been when they'd found him drugged upstairs in the hotel. Tears sprang to her eyes again. "Oh God, please, don't do this, not now, not when we've finally won—" She hugged him to her breast, cradling him, her sobs almost drowned by the wailing car alarms going off everywhere.

Howard scrambled over to them, tried to say something, then rolled his eyes in disgust and ripped off the black tape covering his mouth. "OW!" he yelled, in startled annoyance. "Holy crap, that hurt!" He tilted Leonard's head back from Penny, hissing at the sight of his friend's pale, slack, bloodstained face. "Oh, crap. 'Scuse me, Penny—" He pressed his hand to Leonard's neck, his lips moving as if counting, then nodded, looking relieved. "Okay, his pulse is steady, it looks like he just burst some capillaries in his nose from the physical strain. Not that that's great, if that's what it costs him to use that kind of power, but . . . ." He trailed off, staring at Leonard's unconscious form as if he'd never seen the man before. "Wow," he said after a moment. "Amy was right. It really does just take the right kind of stress, doesn't it?"

Before Penny could process that, movement caught the corner of her eye. She turned, and saw Abrams striding towards her, his smartphone clutched in one hand—and the other lifting his sidearm pistol up to point at her, his face weirdly expressionless. Instinct acted before understanding came: she dropped, rolling on her back and letting Leonard go as she did, and came up grabbing for the pistol, even as she remembered this was exactly the sort of move cops were generally trained to expect and avoid. But either her fury and fright made her faster, or something was slowing Abrams down; whatever the case, she was able to rip the pistol away from him with one hand and deck him with the other before he even seemed aware that she'd moved. Abrams flew backwards and crashed to the street, blood gushing from his flattened nose and his eyes rolled up, and did not move. His smartphone clattered across the pavement.

Howard squeaked in panic as the other SWAT officers reacted to the violence exactly the way cops usually did: all their weapons flashed right back up and took dead aim at Penny, giving off a rippling wave of metallic clicks as their wielders readied them to fire. Penny glanced around, sighed in exasperation, then held up her hands, Abrams' pistol still in one. Officer Davies had to clear her throat before shouting, and even then, her voice still cracked: "Miss Carmichaels! Drop that weapon, now!"

Penny grimaced. She supposed she couldn't really blame Davies or the rest of the SWAT team, but this was getting on her last nerve. She locked eyes with Davies, then tightened her fist on the pistol as hard as she could. The result wasn't as spectacular as she'd hoped—she'd half-thought the gun would distort and bend like clay, or that it would shatter completely into dust; instead, the slide only bent and snapped off the barrel and something cracked inside the chamber, causing the magazine to fall out. But from the way Davies' eyes widened as Penny tossed the pieces of the ruined firearm to the ground, it had been enough. Deliberately, Penny put both hands back above her head. "If you're going to cuff me, fine," she told the officer. "Just be aware that it's my choice to restrain myself. Not yours."

"Officer Davies! Stand down! Stand down, please," said a strangely familiar voice, rich and deep and slightly breathless. Turning, Penny blinked at the sight of the tall, dark-skinned man running up to the ring of police officers; the others were trailing in his wake, all of them looking dazed, exhausted and a little bemused. But as Bernadette spotted Howard, the fatigue vanished from her face, and without even looking at the police officers she rushed past them to fling herself upon her husband. Howard only grabbed her and held tight, rubbing her back, whispering soothing words at her as she sobbed.

As if Bernadette's tears had been a signal, the atmosphere seemed to change, the violence draining out of it. The officers exchanged looks; one by one, the rifles came back down. Davies sighed, almost angrily, and went over to Abrams, kneeling down to check on him. The strangely familiar tall man came up to Penny with a smile. "Hi, Penny. I don't know if you remember me—the conference at Big Sur, a few years ago? Glenn?"

If Howard hadn't talked about this man yesterday she might not have placed him, but with the reference in mind the memory came back. She grinned in surprised delight. "Oh my God! Glenn! Hi!" She lifted her arms to hug him just as he held out his hand to shake; they caught themselves and reversed gestures, then did it again, until finally Penny said, "Aw, screw it," and just hugged him fiercely. It said something about how long she'd been with Leonard that embracing a physically much larger man now felt distinctly strange. But at the moment it was far too comforting to stop. Of all the people to be here . . . ! She found herself laughing almost giddily—and realized too late that the hysteria was sliding into tears of her own. She choked the sobs back, clinging fiercely to Glenn's shoulder. He held her steadily, his broad hands patting her back like her father might have.

Sheldon cleared his throat and leaned closer to Amy. "Amy," he said in a low voice, "if you feel any urge to cry in a similar fashion . . . could I please ask you to hug Raj? Salty moisture won't be good for the fabric of this T-shirt."

Caught by surprise—although she really shouldn't have been; she'd known Sheldon for years—Penny spluttered out a burst of laughter, let go of Glenn and scrubbed at her eyes, getting herself back under control. Amy turned slowly to face her boyfriend, her brows rising and her mouth opening in a way that warned of either a screaming fit or a breakdown, but Penny managed to intervene first. "Uh, Sheldon—don't you think being there for your girlfriend might be more important than your T-shirt?"

Sheldon frowned. "But this is an original-release print of the Flash logo, size S. They don't make these any more, you know."

"Would you rather take it off first?" demanded Penny, with heavy patience.

Sheldon's eyes widened in alarm. Without hesitation he turned to Amy, started opening his arms, and then pulled back a little. "Of course, if you don't actually need some sort of physical consolation—" he began, before his breath whoofed out of him with bulging eyes as Amy threw her arms around him. He gave Penny a sour look over Amy's head. "I hope you're happy."

Penny rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, Sheldon, don't you think you're past the germophobia with Amy? What are you gonna catch?" She knelt down and hoisted the unconscious Leonard into her arms, firmly telling herself that his ridiculous lightness was only her strength and not a sign of something wrong, as if he'd somehow hollowed himself out with that incredible burst of power. "She's almost as big a neat freak as you are."

"You think so?" Sheldon raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Well, her lab is well-organized, I concede, but clearly you haven't seen her eat a sandwich with one hand and section a brain tumour with the other at the same time."

"Sheldon, for the love of—" Penny stopped and frowned. "Oh my God, Amy, you do that?"

Though she didn't let go of Sheldon, the tips of Amy's ears reddened, and she shifted her weight awkwardly. "Not . . . all the time," she mumbled into Sheldon's vest.

Penny sighed. "Okay, Ames, I tried, but you know, I kinda don't want to hug you right now."

"A-hem," said Glenn, vigorously clearing his throat and raising his voice. "People, if I could have your attention for a moment?" He paused until everyone had turned to him, then looked at Officer Davies. "I think the most important thing right now is to get our Primaries here out of the spotlight."

Davies frowned. "Primaries?"

"That's how the FBI designated them back in Pasadena," said Glenn. "They were the people with the closest, most intense exposure to the Power Pulse, as well as being the people involved in the source experiment, so they got labelled as the 'primary subjects', and the term just caught on." He glanced down at Abrams' unconscious body. "And we need to get him back to one of the ambulances to set that nose, and figure out what happened to him first—I'm assuming it isn't standard SWAT procedure to use heavy weapons when there are still civilians in the target zone."

Davies clenched her jaw. Penny wondered if she was angry at Glenn for his none-too-subtle sarcasm or at Abrams for what he'd done. "No," she said. "No, it isn't." She beckoned two of her comrades over, then grabbed her radio from her belt and began issuing orders in a low voice. As the SWAT officers bent down, hauled up Abrams' unconscious body and carried him towards the ambulances on the other side of the Camelot, Glenn walked over to where Howard and Bernadette were kneeling and held out his hand.

It took Howard a moment to notice; when he did, he only stared up at Glenn blankly. Glenn simply waited. At last, Howard took the taller man's hand and let Glenn pull both him and Bernadette to their feet. He met Glenn's inscrutable expression with an unreadable look of his own. Bernadette looked between the men and bit her lip. Penny traded a worried glance with Amy—the last thing she felt like doing right now was trying to break up another fight.

But Howard surprised her. "Thank you," he said abruptly. "For trying to keep Bernie's name out of the spotlight. That was you, right?"

"It was," Glenn acknowledged. "I'm only sorry circumstances seem to have made the effort moot." Howard frowned. Glenn gestured at the crowd, still kept back from the street around the Camelot by the police and firefighter lines, and indicated the cameras and phones still pointing in their direction. "With all the footage that's been taken of these events, the odds are good that whether you want to or not, Mr. Wolowitz, every single one of you is going to be identified and publicly named before Monday morning. Somebody from your own university will leak it in return for money, if nothing else."

"Ah, crap," said Howard, but he sounded more resigned than angry.

Bernadette squeezed his waist consolingly. "It's okay, honey," she murmured. "Ms. Locke already told us to expect this, right?"

"I know, I just . . . ." Howard sighed. "Look, I'm not taking comics as gospel here, but I've read enough of them to know that living in public as a superhero isn't always a good idea—I mean, jeez, this whole mess kicked off because a bad guy recognized Leonard when none of us expected it. I was just hoping we could give you and the baby some privacy, even if I'm not gonna get any."

Bernadette shrugged one shoulder. "I'm your wife, Howie," she pointed out. "And Penny and Amy are my best friends, and I'm gonna be involved in researching all this. It would have come out sooner or later. Now isn't any worse a time than any, I guess."

"You do have some advantages," said Glenn, and gave Sheldon a meaningful look. "Unlike most celebrities, you can exit a situation instantly, pretty much at your own discretion. And if you're interested, I'd like to recommend a destination."

Amy grinned awkwardly. "It wouldn't be the spa at that hotel in Big Sur, by any chance?"

Glenn chuckled. "No. I'd advise going back to Huntington Memorial. The information and the people needed to make some critical decisions are all centered there, and they should be able to keep the man you defeated under temporary control as well."

"As well as what?" said Raj, scowling. "As well as us, you mean?" As if in reflex, his arm tightened around Lucy's shoulder. "Why exactly should we go back to the place the FBI wanted to lock us up in to start with?"

Glenn sighed. "Dr. Koothrappali, if the events of tonight have proved anything, I think they've proved there's no possible way for anybody to keep any of you anywhere you don't want to be. Miss Armbruster can walk through walls, Penny can punch holes in them, and Howard can blast them down. You yourself could terrify anyone into giving you a key. Dr. Cooper can teleport you all out as easily as he can bring us all there." He lowered his voice and nodded at Leonard, still unconscious in Penny's arms. "And if Dr. Hofstadter can repeat his little stunt, he might well be able to completely demolish any building we put him in. So I really don't think you're the ones who have to be worried here."

Penny's mouth tightened. Glenn wasn't wrong, but she rather thought that if tonight had proven anything it was that they all, even she, had vulnerabilities, and that letting your guard down was the surest way for those vulnerabilities to bite you in the ass. Still, was there another option? She was quite sure she didn't much trust Mrs. Latham either, and you couldn't keep your guard up twenty-four-seven; they all had to sleep sometime. And whatever Howard said, Penny would much rather see Leonard getting proper help than counting on chance, or Mrs. Latham or even Bernadette, for his recovery . . . .

". . . Penny."

Penny snapped her attention down to Leonard, who had stirred in her arms; his eyelids fluttered, and her heart turned over. She set him on his feet as the others gathered around and ran her hand over his cheek. "Baby," she murmured, her throat thick. "You okay?" She let his weight down onto his feet, then hastily caught him again as he buckled. "Whoops!—okay, I guess maybe not, not just yet . . . ."

"Phone," Leonard whispered, eyes still unfocused. With his glasses gone, he looked years younger. He licked his lips and swallowed. "Abrams . . . phone. Someone called him, just before . . . ." He drew a deep breath; for a second his eyes met hers, and she froze at the intensity of the look. "It was . . . wrong," he husked. "Have to . . . find . . . ." Whatever strength he'd mustered went out of him again. His eyes rolled up and he slumped into Penny's grasp.

Penny looked up at Sheldon, their eyes meeting. It was one of their rare moments of perfect mutual understanding, and for once without any of the bemused disquiet that normally accompanied such synchrony. As Penny stepped forward, effortlessly holding Leonard out a little, and got Glenn's attention with an earnest question about whether Leonard would be all right, Sheldon turned slightly and pointed at Abrams' phone where it had fallen on the street. It vanished soundlessly and instantly. Penny didn't think anybody had noticed. She wondered where Sheldon had sent it, but wasn't too worried—when Sheldon really wanted to keep something safe and yet retrievable, he always knew how, and had no shortage of hiding places squirrelled away everywhere he'd ever been. She truly doubted the FBI would be able to find or predict them all, even if it occurred to them to look.

"I think Glenn's right," she said, looking around at her friends. "If there's anyplace where they might have figured how to tell if Leonard's all right, it'll be back there. And it's a lot closer to home. But I do have one suggestion for, uh, I guess you'd say, the logistics."

11:02 P.M.

It had taken longer to organize than Penny liked, but less time than she'd feared, mostly because with both Agent Anderson and Sergeant Abrams incapacitated the on-site chain of command had largely broken down. Most of the people they corralled seemed too grateful for clear instructions to be particularly skeptical of who was giving them—though it helped, Penny privately admitted, that Glenn was both imposingly tall and charismatically authoritative when he wanted to be, and was more than willing to drop his FBI contacts' names. At last, a line of vehicles had been arranged on the street: the working SWAT van, where Raj, Lucy and Howard were riding along with Glenn, Davies and Davies' men, and two ambulances, one containing Sammy and Abrams, with Bernadette along to keep them asleep, and the other carrying Anderson and Leonard. Penny, Sheldon and Amy stood at the head of the line, Amy still clinging to Sheldon's side.

Sheldon looked impatient. "Penny, I still fail to see why this is necessary. I'm perfectly confident of being able to execute this particular task on my own."

"I'm sure you are," said Penny. "But having an extra hand never hurts."

Sheldon frowned. "Actually, having an extra hand would indicate a degree of genetic mutation that would almost certainly involve lethal neoplasmic growth—"

"Sheldon!"

"All right, all right, geez." Sheldon turned to Amy, paused a moment, then harrumphed and gave an oddly theatrical sigh. "I suppose you're going to insist on doing this the same way we did this morning?" He leaned forward, closed his eyes and pursed his lips. Penny's jaw dropped open.

Amy gulped. "Well, I wasn't going to insist, but hell if I'm passing that opportunity up—" She seized Sheldon's head in both hands, pulled it down and plastered her mouth over his. In sheer reflex Sheldon wrapped his arms around her to catch himself. Penny braced herself for Sheldon's reflexive pullback and Amy's inevitable, heart-wrenchingly disappointed look . . . and then her jaw fell open again as the kiss went on, and on, and Amy's arms slid around Sheldon's shoulders and their bodies melded seamlessly together. She shook her head, hit her forehead, pinched herself, and finally allowed herself a grin.

After close to a minute, though, even Penny's delight had given way to impatience. She cleared her throat loudly, which didn't work, and finally had to poke both Sheldon and Amy hard in the ribs until they sheepishly separated. Sheldon coughed. "I assume that was sufficient for power transfer?"

Amy nodded, blushing. "Yes, yes, it was. I'll let you take the lead . . . ." She stepped back. Sheldon moved in front of the SWAT van, drew a tiny circle in the air and squinted through it. He nodded and beckoned Amy to his side. They turned to face each other, hands palm to palm.

Then, without words, they lifted their hands and backed apart. The air separated between their raised hands as if they were pulling back a curtain; a semicircular arch sprang into being, widening and rising as Sheldon and Amy stepped further and further apart, until it was nearly thirty feet wide and fifteen feet high. From the watching crowd came gasps and cries of awe and a flurry of camera flashes. Through the arch, Penny could see the entrance to the Huntington Memorial Hospital driveway. She found herself swallowing. For all she'd seen the effect before, there was something profoundly different about seeing it on this scale, in a wide-open street in front of thousands of witnesses and camera lenses.

"Excuse me? Hello!" Sheldon's shout broke her mesmerized daze. He clapped his hands and jerked his head impatiently at the gateway. "Can we get this done promptly, please?"

"What's wrong? Are you having trouble holding the gateway open?"

Sheldon huffed. "It's not a 'gateway', it's a contiguity, and no, I can leave this open as long as I like—the problem is that if someone tries to pull into the driveway on the other side they're going to pop out here, and if it's an ambulance that's going to leave someone up a serious geographical creek. So the quicker we can close this, the safer for all concerned. Good Lord, doesn't anybody but me ever think about the dangers of teleportation? It's a good thing you've got me here, Penny."

Penny stared at him. "Yeah," she finally said, mostly for complete inability to think of any other response. "Good thing. Yeah." Not wanting to give him a chance for more bloviating, she floated up off the asphalt, flew to hover in the centre of the archway, then revolved in mid-air and beckoned. The SWAT van's engines started up, followed by the ambulances. Penny let herself drift backwards through the arch. Driving with what in other circumstances would have been hilariously cautious slowness, the vehicles followed.

She had to give Sheldon this much: he'd positioned the archway perfectly at ground level on either side—there was no visible bump at all as the SWAT van and the ambulances crossed the threshold. Once on the other side, they picked up speed; Penny ascended swiftly out of their way and turned to watch them roll up towards the emergency entrance. Nurses and EMTs ran out to meet the vehicles, and within a minute the stretchers carrying Anderson, Abrams, Sammy, and Leonard were hustled into the hospital at top speed, surrounded by Davies and her SWAT team. Glenn, Bernadette and Howard went with them as well, and before Penny realized it the vehicles had been left abandoned. Only Raj and Lucy stood outside, looking a little bemused; they had disembarked with everybody else, but clearly nobody had told them what to do or where to go. Penny felt an odd urge to laugh or cry, and wasn't sure which. She let herself descend gently to the ground.

Sheldon and Amy walked together through the archway; Sheldon turned and made a sweeping gesture, bringing his arms together. To his obvious surprise, the archway didn't move. Amy cocked her head. "That's interesting," she said. "If we opened it together, do we have to close it together?"

"Oh, that makes no sense at all," Sheldon scoffed. His eyes narrowed. "Ah, I see. Yes, it's just a structural frequency issue. Excuse me, Amy . . . ." He held his hands up, palms facing each other, and his arms tensed as if he was trying to bring them together. His face tightened with effort. Then, suddenly, he spat a triumphant "Aha!" and his hands smacked together as if something invisible between them had broken. The archway snapped closed with a startling crack. And Amy cried out and staggered, holding her head as if something had struck her.

The sound punctured Sheldon's smugness in an instant; he caught her in his arms, alarm written brightly across his face. Equally alarmed, Penny ran to their side. "Amy!" Sheldon demanded. "What happened? Are you all right?"

Amy shook her head and massaged her temples with her palms. "Yes . . . yes, I think so. It felt like—well, it felt like for just an instant, I had the worst migraine of my life. But it's diminishing very quickly." She drew a deep breath and straightened. "Perhaps it was backlash from closing the contiguity. You looked like you were having to exert force, Sheldon."

"Uh . . . yes. Yes, I did. I thought it was simply a matter of conflicting wave structures." Sheldon's alarm had given way to a deeper dismay. Her heart twisting, Penny recognized his expression: it was the appalled look he only wore when he discovered he'd been catastrophically mistaken about something really important to him, like the day Leonard had told him his cashew chicken had been coming from a different restaurant for two years. "It never occurred to me that there could be an active feedback connection between our brains and the contiguity." Penny could almost see the question on his face as he stared at Amy and then at the space where the gateway had been: if he'd been wrong about one thing, what else was he wrong about that he didn't know?

Amy took pity on him, as she always did, and hugged him again. "Sheldon, you . . . you couldn't have known—"

Sheldon stiffened angrily and broke free of the hug. "Oh, so now we're descending to cheap personal insults, are we?" he barked. "'I couldn't have known'," he repeated in a tone of deep disgust. "I darn well could have known, structure of space-time's my lifelong stomping grounds, and I would have known too once it occurred to me to ask, sooner or later . . . ." Arms folded, he stalked off stiffly up the driveway towards the hospital, looking like an angry stick insect. Amy stared after him.

Penny held her hand out to Amy. "Want the super-strength back, so you can punch him through a wall?"

"No," said Amy, after a pause long enough to make Penny think she'd seriously considered it. "No, he's just upset that he made a mistake, and especially that it hurt me. He'll admit as much, later, once he gets over it."

"Yeah, well, if he wants practice getting over things, I know a few walls you could throw him over."

"I'll keep that in mind." Amy smiled. She looked around at the street, and the cityscape of Pasadena beyond. "Home again, home again, jiggety jig . . . ." She bit her lip. "Penny, I'm so sorry about your wedding."

"Wedding? Oh. Right. That." Penny blinked, amazed at herself; so much had happened that she had actually forgotten why they'd all gone to Vegas in the first place. She waved a hand. "Look, it's okay, I'm just relieved we're all still alive, right? I mean—" She rubbed the ring of bruises where Sammy had nearly strangled her. "It could have been a lot worse, and we can always try again, and . . . and probably I can get another dress, once Leonard's back to normal, if he—I mean when he gets better—I mean—I—" Why was her throat suddenly so thick? Her eyes burned; she swiped at them. "It's just a stupid ceremony we can do any time. And I've got you . . . ." Amy's form was blurring in front of her eyes. "I know I can always count on you to be my maid of hon-hon-honourrrrr . . . ." Her voice cracked and dissolved completely. Before she knew it she was in Amy's arms, weeping helplessly on her shoulder, even harder than she'd wept on Glenn's. "Oh, God, Amy, we just wanted to get married . . . ."

Amy held her silently and let her cry, rubbing her back between her shoulder blades.