Dean paced the waiting room. He hadn't touched the food Al had brought him, and he wasn't sure exactly how much time had passed. It felt like a long time, but that could be the stress of being where he was. Or it could be that more time was passing than he thought. Or it was like when he was in Hell and time moved in strange directions. Whatever the reason, he decided he wasn't going to be staying in this room waiting for Beckett to save Sammy.
He went to the door and inspected the lock. He didn't have any of his usual picks. He didn't even have any of his knives. Strangely enough, the door didn't seem that solid, which Dean thought might have been something that would be important. He backed up and braced himself before kicking the door right beside the handle. A shot of pain ran up his leg, but the door held. Dean swore and tried again, this time causing a crack to open up beside the handle. One more kick and the door buckled outward.
Dean stuck his head out and inspected the hallway while rubbing his throbbing leg to dull the ache. The hall wasn't very impressive; the walls were a plain grey and the the floor was tile. The light was fluorescent, but not harsh. There didn't appear to be much going on, though doors lined the hall.
Tentatively, Dean stepped out, expecting some kind of alarm. When none came, he turned right and started walking. There seemed to be more activity this way. Which is to say that slightly more than nothing was happening. There was a room just a few doors down from the waiting room that had a lit sign above it that read, "IN USE." Dean pressed his ear to the door, but heard nothing on the other side, which he found weird. Though not weirder than anything else that had gone on, he supposed.
Further down the hall there was a humming sound. Curious, Dean made his way toward the sound. It was coming from a room at the end of the hall on the left, and when Dean peered through the door, he saw the biggest computer he had seen in his life. It looked like something out of the fifties and took up the entire room, with a keyboard and monitor in the center, just a few feet in the door. After taking a cautious look around, Dean stepped inside and pressed the enter key, just to see what would happen.
"Who's there?" a female voice asked. "I don't recognize you."
Dean turned around, expecting to see someone standing in the doorway. When he saw no one there, he turned back to the computer, pressing a few more keys to test the machine's reaction.
"It's rude to leave a question unanswered," the voice said, and suddenly the keys wouldn't press anymore.
"Who are you?" Dean asked, looking around uncertainly. He was still the only one in the room.
"I asked you first," the voice countered.
"My name is Dean Winchester," Dean said uncertainly.
"Oh, you're the man Doctor Beckett leaped into," the voice said. "I am Ziggy."
Dean looked back at the machine in front of him. "You're the computer."
"Indeed," Ziggy said. "And you should get back to your room."
"Not a chance in Hell," Dean said. "I need to know what's going on back in my life."
"You'll get the memories of the hunt when you get home," Ziggy said.
"Really? Awesome. I still need to know what's going on."
Ziggy sighed, which Dean wouldn't have thought was possible for a computer to do. "I really shouldn't tell you," she said.
"Wait, does Al carry around some kind of device with him that you transmit to?" Dean asked, suddenly getting an idea.
"Of course. I need to be able to communicate with Doctor Beckett from here, and I can't do that without a transmitter."
"Could I get a message through to that transmitter from here? Like a phone across time?"
Ziggy seemed to ponder this for a moment. "Yes, I suppose," she finally said.
"How?" Dean asked impatiently.
"If I explain, will you stop with the attitude and go back to your room?"
"We'll see. Now explain."
"Fine," Ziggy said. "Enter the following commands just as I say."
Back at the motel, Beckett and Sam were explaining their separate situations.
"Are we talking about the same Apocalypse here?" Beckett asked, sitting in a chair and leaning forward with his forearms rested on his thighs. He had already told his story, and Sam had just finished his.
"Yeah," Sam responded from his spot on the bed. "Four Horsemen, the end of days, all that jazz."
"But...? The world goes on? Just like that?" Becket asked, having trouble wrapping his mind around it.
"You're welcome," Sam said.
"Yeah, I guess," Beckett said, running a hand through his hair.
"More importantly," Cas interrupted from where he stood leaning against the door, "you finish what you need to do here and you leave?"
"That's more important than the Apocalypse?" Beckett was a little confused by this. "This Dean guy is that special?"
Cas looked like he wanted to vaporize Beckett, but he restrained himself. "Yes," he said, his jaw clenched.
Beckett furrowed his brow, studying Cas. Before he could make any kind of comment, Al stepped in. "Are we all acquainted now?" he asked.
"I think so," Sam said.
"Good," Al said, holding up the transmitter in his hand. "Ziggy has a theory."
"Thank God," Beckett said. "Let's hear it."
"She says that on this hunt, Sammy here-"
"It's Sam," Sam interrupted.
"Oh?" Al asked. "Your brother called you Sammy."
"Only he can call me Sammy."
"Noted," Al said. "Anyway, Ziggy says Sam was overpowered on this hunt. And...turned, I guess. If that's how you'd put it."
Sam narrowed his eyes at Al. "Turned? You mean I get bitten by a werewolf?"
"That's my understanding, yes," Al said. "You'll have to forgive me, this whole thing doesn't make sense."
"Tell me about it," Beckett said.
"But where you are, this happened in the past, right?" Sam pressed.
"Right," Al and Beckett said in chorus.
"Then tell us where the pack is," Cas said, catching Sam's train of thought. "We can stop this before it starts."
"Ziggy hasn't gotten that far yet," Al said.
"Then tell Ziggy to hurry," Cas said, his voice deadly calm.
As if on cue, Ziggy piped up. "I hate to interrupt," she said, "but you have a call."
"Call?" Al asked, whacking the side of the transmitter, thinking maybe there was something wrong with it.
"No need to be rude," Ziggy said, sounding annoyed. "I'm going to put him through anyway."
"Him?" Beckett asked, but then a new voice came through the transmitter.
"Can you guys hear me?"
"Dean?" Sam and Cas asked in unison.
"Boy is it good to hear you guys again," Dean said, sounding relieved.
"How are you doing that?" Beckett asked.
"I found the computer," Dean said simply. "She told me how."
Beckett looked impressed. "I didn't know that was possible."
"You left your room?" Al demanded.
"What, you think I'm gonna sit on my ass and twiddle my thumbs while you get my brother killed? No thanks dude."
"You need to get back to that room," Al said. "If you're not there, we can't leap."
"Relax. I'll get back there."
"Dean, are you okay?" Cas asked, worried, stepping closer to Al.
"I'm fine Cas," Dean said, his smile coming through his voice. "But I had to know what was going on."
"Well it's definitely the werewolf pack," Sam said. "The body wasn't there anymore when we went to investigate, but there were claw marks on the windowsill and around the room. Looked like a nasty fight."
"Yeah, I was thinking about that. You remember the farm we passed on the way into town?"
"You'll have to be more specific. We passed a few."
"The one with the scarecrow at the end of the driveway?"
"The one that looked like the one we were almost sacrificed to?" Sam asked, earning horrified looks from Beckett and Al. "Yeah, I remember. What about it?"
"There's something that's been bothering me about it. The house, not the scarecrow. The paint was peeling on the house, and I thought that was normal, but I've been thinking that it looked like there were claw marks on the house."
"You remember that about a house you saw for a second as you were driving into town?" Beckett asked, impressed.
"Yeah," Dean said, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to remember. "I think you should look into it."
"We will," Sam promised. "Anything else?"
"Don't get bit?" Dean offered. "That seems like solid advice."
"It's not like I want to," Sam countered.
"But I do have a question for the other Sam," Dean said.
"What's that?" Beckett asked.
"Can you fight? With a knife and a gun?"
"Not particularly," Beckett admitted. "I've done martial arts in other lives, but I haven't done much with weapons."
"Fantastic," Dean said, his voice bland.
"Why do you ask?" Beckett asked, pretty sure he didn't want the answer.
"Because you can't kill a werewolf in hand-to-hand combat," Dean said.
"Kill one?" Beckett was taken aback. He hadn't signed up for killing anything.
"You need silver," Cas said.
"Of course you do," Al said.
"You're sure there's no other way to get me back there?" Dean asked, sounding desperate.
"I have to leap," Beckett said. "And to leap, I have to change history. And Ziggy says the most likely way for me to get out of this one is to save Sam from being turned into a monster."
"What if Sam just doesn't come?" Cas suggested.
"You want to send my friend in there alone?" Al demanded.
"Yeah, sure," Dean said, sarcasm dripping from his words. "Are you kidding? Cas can go."
"Dean, Cas, I know you mean well, but I'm not sitting this out," Sam said.
"I know," Dean said sadly.
"I'll be fine," Sam said, forcing confidence he wasn't sure he felt.
"I hope so," Dean said. "And don't scratch the car," he added, obviously trying to lift the mood. Sam and Cas smiled at his concern for the Impala.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Sam said.
"Good," Dean said, but his voice was garbled by static. "And don't-" His voice vanished in a cloud of white noise.
"What happened?" Cas demanded.
"I cut him off," Ziggy said. "Boring conversation."
"He was about to say something," Cas said, his voice starting to grow angry again.
"Cas," Sam said. "It doesn't matter. He had a theory about the house. We'll go check it out and go from there."
This didn't seem to make Cas feel any better, but he grudgingly agreed.
"I'd better go make sure he gets back to that waiting room," Al said, stepping through his door to his own time.
"What do you need me to do?" Beckett asked.
"Carry a gun with silver bullets, stay out of the way," Sam said. "The gun you had earlier had silver bullets, so you can just take that one." Sam stood to get the car keys, made sure he had his own gun and a silver knife. "Alright," he said. "Let's get this over with."
He and Beckett began to make their way to the door, but Cas was standing in the middle of the room, staring off into space.
"Cas," Sam said. When Cas didn't respond, he stepped over to the Angel and put a hand on his shoulder. "Cas, what is it?"
Cas blinked a few times, bringing himself back to the present. "It's Heaven," he said.
"Heaven?" Beckett asked. "You can hear it?"
"Yes," Cas said, then turned to face Sam. "Raphael is angry that the Apocalypse wasn't carried out. He wants to form an army to get Michael and Lucifer out of the Cage. I have to get up there."
"Yeah, I understand," Sam said.
Cas seemed like he wanted to say more, but he didn't say anything before he vanished in a flutter of wings.
"Let's go," Sam said to Beckett, turning to leave.
When Dean was cut off, he slammed his hands down on the keyboard. The static remained for a moment before dissipating.
"What the hell Ziggy?" Dean demanded.
"You think I want to hear your sentimental stories? No thank you," Ziggy said.
"Put me back through," Dean ordered, keying in the commands again.
"No can do."
"Why not?"
"Don't want to."
Dean was considering the appeal of tearing the computer to pieces with his bare hands when he heard someone in the doorway behind him. He turned to see Al standing there, not looking pleased.
"You need to get back to that room," Al said.
"And wait for something to happen? No thanks," Dean said.
"You don't seem to get it," Al said, stepping closer. "If you aren't in that room, Sam can't leap. He can't get out of your life. So I suggest you get back there so the second he does what he needs to do, you can get home. Lord knows I want you there."
Dean was fairly certain Al didn't mean that in a well-wisher kind of way. "So I just sit and wait."
"You just sit and wait," Al confirmed, stepping aside to let Dean pass him into the hallway.
Dean figured that as long as Al and the transmitter were here, there wasn't much he could do in the way of communicating directly with Sam and Cas, so he might as well go sit in the waiting room. Maybe he could find something interesting to do, like bang his head against the wall.
If nothing else, Cas was there. Cas would make sure nothing went wrong. Or at least, Dean hoped he could.