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And now: chapter ahoy!

Chapter 15: Catch Me If You Can

"Regina!" Archie Hopper pleaded as the hatch cover clattered off, levitated by threads of violet magic that burned unnaturally in the darkness of the Jolly Roger's hold. "Please, Regina, listen to me, this isn't you! Come on. We can still work through this together. This isn't the way to solve your problems. What would Henry think?"

Regina had been standing silently by, torn, as her mother inserted the captive cricket into the black, bilge-smelling depths of the pirate ship, but at this, her head jerked up. "I am doing this for Henry," she snapped back at him. "We're not even hurting you. We just. . . can't have you interfering. After you walked in on us, what you heard. . ."

"Already we, is it?" the psychiatrist asked gently, making no attempt to escape as Cora lashed him hand and foot to the wall. "Imprisoning an innocent man, when we'd been trying so hard to overcome your issues? Remember, Regina. You're strong enough. You can let go of this need to control, to keep close and conquer and destroy. With Daniel – "

That, however, was exactly the worst thing he could have said. Regina's hands flared with magic to match her mother's, and she directed a lasso of searing flame that made him yelp and jerk his head back, leaving a distinct stench of scorched ginger hair in its wake. "Don't you dare," she breathed. "I don't care if you got your M.D. from a curse, even you should know better than to just. . . How dare you talk about him in front of – "

"I didn't take him from you, Regina," Archie reminded her sadly. "And no matter how far you went down that dark path – down this dark path – it didn't bring him back. It won't bring Henry back, either. When you change, you can't just think about things differently. You have to go about things differently as well."

Regina regarded him silently for one long, fraught moment. Then she stepped away and kicked the hatch grate back into place with a sepulchral clang, drowning out Archie's last impassioned importune from below. She couldn't say that she cared much for this place. The crew quarters of a pirate ship weren't about to appear in Condé Nast Traveler any time soon, although this was nicer than the cramped, filthy hammocks that were usually a buccaneer's lot. As well, since the ship remained invisible, there was slim-to-no chance of anyone finding Hopper before they were ready to release him. If they released him. It seemed like the sort of loose end that her mother didn't tend to leave hanging.

Regina shot a narrow look at Cora's back. The witch was presently engaged in a diligent search for – something, running her gloved hands along the ratty pinstriped mattresses and under the splintery wooden chests. If it was treasure that she was after, Regina thought scornfully that she was wasting her time. No pirate interested in surviving more than twelve hours aboard a floating thieves' emporium would stash his valuables under his pillow; it was rare that they ever even got around to burying it. If so, any mutineer or deserter had to be hunted down and killed straightaway, so he didn't do a bunk and go filch it all for himself.

From the looks of things, however, Captain Hook ran a tight ship. The sort of man that other men liked to follow, who remained openhanded with the plunder, liquor, punch-ups, and women (or as Regina imagined they called it, the booty, booze, brawls, and bitches) while never allowing them to forget who quite literally called the shots. Pirates were more altruistic, at least in regard to other pirates, than they were customarily given credit for. As exemplified in the scenario of one man potentially stealing the treasure of the others, if you couldn't count absolutely on your mate in a tight corner, the lot of you would soon be feeding the crows while merrily swinging on the harbormaster's yardarm. Or lying at the bottom of the sea while mer-children gamed with your bones, or any other number of gruesome and fatal disadvantages.

Be that as it may, however, the pirate reputation for treachery was equally founded, and it suddenly hit Regina what her mother must be doing. Hook himself had somehow avoided coming over to Storybrooke with the curse, an explanation which certainly had everything to do with Cora herself and the con job the two of them had pulled over on Regina upon their return from Wonderland, but the members of his crew had had no such protection. Regina didn't know the name of everyone she'd ripped out of the Enchanted Forest; she didn't care how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of commoners were caught up in the crossfire, as long as Snow and Charming suffered. But if they were here, and inclined to hold grudges after twenty-eight years of Hook's contrivance to avoid their fate instead of taking it on with them like a good pirate, the fundamental responsibility of every captain to go down with the ship . . .

A slow smile curled Regina's lips. She eyed Cora's continued search with new interest, wondering if it would be advisable to locate something herself. Somewhere along the way, she didn't remember exactly when, she'd decided that she had to give her mother at least the semblance of a chance. The damage between them ran too deep to be forgotten, but part of Regina was still an awkward, insecure, eager-to-please teenage girl who wanted nothing more than for her powerful, self-assured mother to love her. If she was the child and the mother at once, if she could find a way to have Henry and Cora both. . . she hadn't forgotten that she'd told her son that Cora would hurt him if she could, but if somehow by some miracle she was wrong and Cora genuinely wanted to reconcile. . . she wanted to be wrong, for once. . .

At that moment, Regina's reverie was interrupted by Cora herself making a sound of triumph and holding up an item of clothing which was fully as disreputable as the rest of the surroundings. It likewise smelled as if the owner hadn't washed it in twenty-eight years, which was entirely probable; if Hook's crew had come over with the curse, the Roger must have sat more or less unused. But going door-to-door in sedate, small-town Storybrooke this late at night was not the formula for recruiting willing accomplices, and Regina knew that she still had enough of a PR fiasco on her hands without spreading the information at large that Cora was here. Unless –

"Come, dear," Cora said serenely, ignoring the faint banging noises that indicated Archie was still trying to get their attention. "We have what we need." Without a backward glance, she swept out of the room, the lantern dousing of its own accord.

Regina hurried to keep up with her. Some things never changed; she was still trailing at her mother's heels. "What is that? What are we doing?"

"Earlier, before I solved your Emma Swan problem for you, our dear captain chanced to cross paths with an old acquaintance." Cora began to mount the narrow wooden steps back to the deck, with her usual aloof elegance. "His first mate. I believe he was intending to have the man kidnap the Swan girl, of all the half-baked plans. That was quite as much a debacle as I expected, but no matter. Does the name William Smee ring a bell?"

"Should it?" Regina asked warily.

"We'll see." Cora smiled that feline smile, and raised a hand.

At once, the ship rocked as the gangway lowered itself, landing with a clunk on the shore. They hadn't found it moored up in its usual place, as the pirate had sailed it out into the bay in response to something Cora had mentioned about a sea monster, but that had not posed much of a threat to two sorceresses of their caliber, and they'd brought it in in order to deposit Archie upon it. Now that they were safely disposed of that business, Cora, with one more languid gesture, shooed the ship back into deeper water. But while it was quickly fading from sight, Regina caught a glimpse of a strange bulky shape on the deck. Like a box, or a crate.

"Mother," she said impulsively. "What's that?"

"What's what, dear?"

"That." But even as Regina was pointing, the ship completed the process of vanishing from view in the invisibility enchantment, and she was left gesturing rather uselessly at an empty ocean. "There was something on the deck, I didn't. . ."

Cora looked puzzled. "Just cargo, I'm sure. You know I only came here to reunite with you, darling. I. . . I am so sorry for that scene, earlier, when you felt as if the cricket couldn't speak Daniel's name in front of me. The pain of that, the mistake, will never leave me. If I'd known you'd loved him so much. . ." She shook her head. "My precious daughter."

Regina's throat felt choked, and she glanced away, not trusting her own reaction. She didn't want to forgive Cora for that, but she did, most devoutly, want Henry to forgive her for everything she herself had done, and she was at least honest enough to want to reconcile it. She'd always been her father's girl, but she'd always wanted to be her mother. . .

Maybe there was still a chance. After everything. Feuds, looking glasses, world portals, and more. For all the danger and heartbreak and wrath and ruin they'd wreaked on each other.

She burned my house, Regina reminded herself. Even in her desperation for her own happy-ever-after, the reason she'd cast the curse in the first place, she wasn't going to make the mistake of looking past her mother again. But she just had to be careful.

She shook her head and turned away, back to Cora. "What's next?"

"These." Cora shook out the pungent-smelling overalls. "The less time we have to spend with these, the better. Now, since I know you still don't trust me, if you would do the honors?"

At that, Regina understood. "A tracking spell."

"Yes indeed." Cora held it out with that smile which had always terrified Regina whenever she'd seen it in childhood. "We pay a call on our dear William Smee."

(8888888)

Emma Swan didn't even recall being consciously aware that something was wrong. Didn't even recall moving, really. But something in the back of her head was chirping at her, screaming at her, and she was running, she was fleeing, from the place where she'd confronted Neal, where her son had run from her, and she was shouldering down the hall even though she'd already been awake for most of the night and had already interrogated Greg Mendel the best she could when it felt like her heart was falling apart inside her, and told the others that he was texting and it was all clear and it was fine but it wasn't –

She was dead on her feet, her arm fiercely sore and bruised, but something propelled her forward faster, down the hall to where she'd hidden Hook in one of the hospital's rarely used wings – in a place this podunk, even with magical misadventures thrown into the bargain, they weren't exactly overflowing with attempted homicides and domestic disturbances and beautiful broken pirates from alternate dimensions. She could sense something, a hot crackling on the back of her neck that strangled her when she breathed in, and she knew. Magic. And more than that, death.

Emma threw herself through the door just in time. As a matter of fact, she took the brunt of something she never even saw, something screaming and white-hot and as hard as being hit by a fully loaded freight train, and the next thing she knew, she was falling. The linoleum hospital floor smashed up to meet her, and she rolled away by instinct, spitting out blood and hearing her ears ringing and screeching as her heart imitated the approximate temperament and tenor of a lightning farm. Which didn't seem too far off. Gasping, she somersaulted to her feet.

She was greeted by an up-close and personal look at the business end of Gold's cane, which was currently swinging toward her head. She lashed out with an old karate instinct to block it; no one lasted long in her life without a considerable stash of self-defense skills. She could feel stray pulses of static electricity snapping between her fingers, but she was still upright, still functioning, and to judge by the look on Gold's face, that was not a common outcome whenever he used that spell.

"Miss Swan," the pawnbroker said, in the most painful simulacrum of courtesy that had ever been forced through a set of (more or less) human teeth. "What would you be doing here?"

"I – want – to ask you – the same question." Emma gulped a fizzing, sparking breath. "Are – you insane? This – a hospital!"

"Lass," she heard Hook say from the bed behind her. "Emma – "

She wanted to look around, she had never wanted anything so badly in her life as she wanted to look and see if any of that had hit him and if he was still breathing, if he was still there, if because he was tied down he couldn't get away, but he was talking at least and she had bigger fish to fry. Instead, she kept her attention trained on Gold. "Look. I know you're upset about what happened to Belle. I don't blame you. But killing Hook is not going to solve that."

"On the contrary. It will solve everything." Gold smiled. "Perhaps not for you, dearie, but for me, beyond a doubt."

"Fine, then." Emma wasn't really up for another dose of voltage like the one she had just taken, but there was nothing on earth to make her move. "You're going through me."

For a moment, she was convinced he was going to call her bluff, and she sucked in her breath, praying that there would be dental records or something to identify her corpse later, so her parents didn't have to remain in the agony of doubt. Then she remembered what her parents had done, the deal they'd made, and pain from an entirely different source surged up. She would just have to live with this. And very shortly, die with it.

But instead of summoning another titanic blast of murderous magic, Gold cocked his head and scrutinized her intently, as if he was finally seeing what exactly he was up against. Not the clueless, hard-headed, tough-minded but well-meaning drifter who had first fetched up in town, not the product of true love who'd broken the curse, and not even as his mortal enemy – which by rights was something she was well on the way to becoming. Instead he stepped closer.

"Are you sure you're ready for this, Miss Swan?" he asked. "Are you very sure? You've already used deep magic, uncontrolled, and you would be well advised to look at what just once cost you. You used it to heal Hook – don't lie, he has your scent all over him, and I recall rather clearly that I shot him before he attempted to acquaint you so closely with the beauty of extreme weather phenomena. And now. . . your parents have made a deal with me that is still binding regardless of what they think, they've destroyed their moral high ground, you've lost your trust in them, and your son has just abandoned you after discovering your lie to him. All for the sake of saving Hook's life, when he himself has demonstrated every desire to throw it away – I repeat, once. Twice. . . there are some prices that even I have never asked anyone to pay, dearie. And you are coming very close."

Emma flinched. "How did you know. . .?"

"I know everything that goes on in this town." Gold took another step. "Everything. Regina may have sent us here, and you may have broken the curse, but Storybrooke will always belong to me, and almost everyone here still owes me a favor. Unlike you, Miss Swan, they keep their bargains. Is that what you want? This game goes two ways. If I call in all of those at once, if I tell them to go after you. . ."

Emma tried and failed to keep her expression neutral. "And?"

Gold actually laughed. "You're a fearless and brave girl, I'll give you that. But no matter what powers you have or don't, you can't win against everything I can and will throw at you."

"And?"

"Again, Miss Swan, this is all rhetorical. An illustration, if you will, of how you cannot possibly hope to beat me with force. But. . ." Another step. "There's still a chance for you to redeem yourself and cause this to be settled without tearing the town apart."

"You really think I'm going to – ?"

"Oh, no." He smiled twistedly. "I don't expect the sheriff of Storybrooke to put her duty to every soul in this town over the life of one criminal. Especially when she herself is fond of reminding us of her obligation to do just that. Whyever would I? How foolish."

Emma felt cold sweat start to trickle down her back. I can't win this way. Or the other way. The only choice she had. . .

. . . was to step aside and let him kill Hook.

And that wasn't even a choice. She couldn't. It was like asking her to walk on her hands, to breathe water, to drown. You would have done the same. Actually, no. She didn't even trust him, he'd left her behind again, give him half a chance and he'd be out of this bed like gangbusters. The only reason he wasn't doing so right now was because of the cuff and the broken ribs, but he was watching this, watching her put herself between him and his crocodile. . .

You made a dealwith Gold? Even after everything that just happened? She'd screamed that at her parents in horror, discovering what they'd pledged in exchange for her return. But she had nothing. She was at an end. In a moment she was going to have to do the same.

No. No. No.

She would never recover from this.

Slowly, Emma raised her hands. "Okay, then," she whispered. "Me first."

"Swan." Hook's – Killian's – voice behind her. "Emma, love. Emma, no. Not that way. No. No, don't. Lass, please."

"I do believe someone cares for you," Gold remarked. "The last time I was in this situation, however, he was tied to a mast instead of a hospital bed, and he actually had something that I wanted. Now, it's finally come full circle. I am not going to enjoy killing you, Miss Swan, but unless you get out of the way, that's what, I'm afraid, it has come down to."

Was her resilience going to be enough to withstand a second time? Did it even matter? All Gold had to do was keep on slinging shots until one of them hit paydirt. By that time, they'd both be dead, and Storybrooke would be in ruins. Hot tears were starting to sting her eyes, blinding her. How could it end like this? How could it be meant to? All the prices she'd paid already were not enough. Nobody ever breaks a bargain with me.

She was shaking with exhaustion and fear and grief. She couldn't think of anything else to do. She was drawing an utter blank. This was it. The end of her story. No happy ever after. Just a nightmare.

And then, revealing the bloody, scraped mess of her arm, her sleeve fell down.

(8888888)

Cora and Regina stayed well in the woods, away from the road, as the sirens lit up the dark night and the rush of activity and panic hurried by in all directions. Cora seemed mildly interested in the whole affair, especially as catastrophes had always been her specialty, but she was too interested in following the tracking spell to comment on it. Regina stayed close behind her, watching the overalls glow sullenly, growing brighter or dimmer depending on their path. She had never been this close to the town boundary herself, and she had to admit that it was unsettling her. Rumple had been the one to craft the curse for her, of course, and she was fully aware that its effects would bite her as well if she tested it. Doubtless the twisted little imp had found the irony delightful. Magic always comes with a price.

"Mother?" she whispered. "We're not – ?"

"Patience, dear." Cora turned off through the trees. "We're almost. . . ah!"

With that, she bent down and made a grab at something scuttling at their feet. Regina choked on a yelp of disgust as she realized that the thing in her mother's hand was a squirming fat rat. It was by no means the first rat she'd ever seen, they being something of a ubiquitous ingredient in dark magic, but they were likewise never one she had appreciated. "Mother! Put it down, it's going to – "

Cora clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "All these years, dear, and you still can't recognize a simple transmogrification spell when you see one?"

That brought Regina up short. "I – what?"

Cora sighed again, gave her daughter a disappointed look, and placed the rat back down at their feet. It tried to run, but achieved approximately six inches of progress before it was engulfed by a cloud of smoke, whirling it up and around in a distinctly ungraceful spiral, until it – no longer a rat but a short dumpy man, arguably still vermin – was lying facefirst in the mud, coughing and sputtering and covering his head. "Don't hurt me!" he squealed. "I'm unarmed! Don't hurt me! Whatever it was, I didn't do it!"

Cora smiled. "William Smee?"

That caused the decidedly unimpressive little bastard, still blinking from his abrupt de-ratting, to scramble around and stare at her. Whatever he saw apparently frightened him back into stupefaction, as he emitted a faint wheeze like a stepped-on bladder. The only thing he seemed capable of saying, over and over, was, "Please don't hurt me."

"I'm not here to hurt you." Cora swept over. "Yet. How did you end up like this?"

"I – he turned me, he turned me into a rat, he poured potion on my hat and made me cross the town line and once it worked, he turned me into a rat! I ran into the woods, there was some horrible dark stuff, it almost got me, I didn't – "

Cora jerked up a hand. "Stop. There was what?"

"Some – stuff!" An erudite vocabulary was clearly not one of Mr. Smee's strong suits. In fact, it was hard to distinguish what his strong suits were. "Black and horrible and cold, it nearly got me, I didn't – "

Cora seized him under the chin, twisting a fistful of his grubby shirt, and Smee's eyes crossed as he attempted to look down at her hand. "You will take us to it."

Once she dropped him, Smee was only too glad to comply. He swung around on all fours, apparently with more than a touch of the rat still remaining, and galumphed off through the dark forest, making Regina briefly suspicious that he intended to lead them into a trap, but traps by their very nature were cerebral exercises. So while she prepared a fistful of magic just in case, she hastened after the pirate and her mother.

They arrived shortly thereafter at a trampled-down space in the woods, where – just as Smee had promised – a strange dark coldness seemed to linger like tar on the ground, the tree trunks, and the dead leaves. Regina's nostrils flared. She was certain she smelled blood.

Cora had noticed the same thing. With a cursory gesture to her daughter to guard their prisoner, for whatever guarding he required, she knelt down, illuminated her work with a glow of magic, and within moments, held up a good-sized chunk of rock that was spattered with crimson stains. She turned it over, eyeing it consideringly, then all at once, arrived at a conclusion. With quiet, savage satisfaction, she said, "The netherworld."

Regina frowned. "What?"

"The netherworld." That smile began to reappear, crossing Cora's face far more than she ever usually allowed it to; a lady always kept rein of her emotions, after all. "Someone's opened a portal to it. And gotten out of it recently as well, very clumsily." She held up the bloodstained rock. "Enough to let one person escape, but not enough to close it off. So it's still here. I can get back into it. And you know that small fact about the netherworld?"

Regina's frown deepened. She had in fact become familiar with the netherworld during her work on perfecting the sleeping curse – she knew that your soul went there both when you were under one, and when you slept after waking from one. But the netherworld was, in a very real sense, death. That was why it was dangerous to go too deep, and if you ever found yourself in there bodily, you very rarely returned. Only the most uniquely gifted and magical could.

And that meant –

"Emma," Regina said, cold and flat.

"What was that?" Cora was still too enamored of her prize. Still not listening.

"Emma," Regina repeated. She was sure of it. "After she and the pirate jumped into the tornado together, from that image you showed me. They must have inadvertently ended up in the space between worlds. And now they're back here. They got out of it."

"Did they?" Cora glanced up. She still did not appear very perturbed. "So?"

"Mother," Regina said angrily. "If there is an uncontrolled netherworld portal active here, then it's their fault! It's a giant open sewer of poison, and it'll spread, take over and kill this entire town, if you don't – "

"And since when do you care about them?"

"I don't. I care about Henry." She bit her son's name sharply, impressing on her mother what was at stake. "Shut it."

"No, dear." Cora shook her head. "You don't understand. Netherworlds, by their very nature, lead everywhere. This is an open gate to anywhere I need to go, for anything I need to collect, from any world at all. Anything I care to, I can go in and bring here."

Regina stared at her. "You're out of your mind. No human being can travel all the way through the netherworld even once and survive."

"No human being," Cora repeated. "No ordinary mortal human being, with a heart. But as you may know, I've kept mine safely hidden somewhere very far away, for a very long time. You are correct, no one can come and go through this place as they please. . . except me. Darling, don't you understand what this means? We've won. Flying monkeys. Food from Wonderland to re-grow my. . . special guest. My old friend Morgana and all her dark sorceries. There is no limit on what we can bring to Storybrooke now, and we have Emma and her pirate paramour to thank."

Regina's mind was reeling. She could only now grasp the scale of what her mother was suggesting, how in a night's work, they could rip apart every boundary that had ever existed between this world and any other. All by a mad fluke of chance, and Cora's forethought in collecting an item of Smee's off the Jolly Roger. She could show Henry the full range of the weird and wild and wondrous and bizarre, all the magic, all the ways she had taken, all the secrets she'd uncovered, everything she was doing to keep him safe. But if this brigade of dark magic was unleashed on the world. . . last time when she'd made the turnover, she'd only retrieved an apple from the other side, and look what that had done. . .

"My dear," Cora said. "I do hope you're not having second thoughts now."

In her mind's eye, Regina saw the image again. Emma and the pirate, falling into the whirlwind together. Tangled in a lover's embrace. He's my son.

The Swan girl and her parents had already taken too much from her. Not this too. She couldn't. She couldn't stand it. Let her have just this. Just Henry. She wouldn't kill anyone if she didn't have to. She'd do everything she could to show him that her repentance was sincere. No matter what Archie, presumably still adrift in the bowels of the pirate ship, would think. She could match up to her mother now. This time it would be different.

"No," Regina said, and took a deep breath. "I'm not."

Cora smiled. Reached down with both hands.

And tore the netherworld open.

(8888888)

"I am nothing if not a professional, Miss Swan." Gold's voice was level. Too level. "And that doesn't look like the sort of wound I inflict. Would you mind telling me where you got it?"

"Gold." Emma looked back at him, utterly drained. "This isn't the time for small talk."

"Believe me, dearie, this is anything but small talk. As you will notice, I'm not even killing Hook, and if you tell me, I won't. . . for now. Where did you get it?"

Emma hesitated, but the whole "not killing Hook" thing was kind of a point. She had no choice but to confess how they'd ended up in Davy Jones' Locker, and how they'd gotten out of it. Not the kiss part. God, no. She managed to make it sound like a fortuitous accident, though who knew how much of it Gold bought, but she did include the stuff about smashing her own arm up with a rock after witnessing the confrontation at the boundary line. Keenly aware of Hook stone-silent in the bed behind her, she went into rather more graphic detail than needed. Let him know just what she'd had to do, thanks to him.

When she was done, Gold was gazing back at her with a funny expression. Not angry. Almost. . . no, couldn't be. Not him.

Worried.

"You left a portal to the netherworld open in the woods?" he repeated at last. "Of all the dangerous, lunatic, idiotic things. . . you really don't know the first thing about magic, do you? You reacted in emotion, used your blood to get out of that place, and you did it in the worst imaginable way. Remember what I said earlier, about prices so great that even I have never asked them? About what you're going to give up in exchange for saving this worthless scum's life, twice?"

Emma didn't answer. She couldn't.

"You're about to pay it." Gold showed his teeth. "We're about to pay it. And I include myself in that assessment. You, your family, your son, your. . . dear friend here. Everything you were trying to save, you're going to lose." He shook his head again. "You foolish, foolish child."

She really wished she had some way to answer him, some way to defend. She didn't. She was speechless. He was right.

All magic comes with a price.

Love was the most costly magic of all. And as great as it could be, as soaring, as true, as much as it had saved Henry's life, as much as it had acted to break the curse. . . if it had given her that blessing, it must be coming back in even worse retribution. . . for her, for her heart, for her solitary soul, for everything she knew she couldn't take a chance on. . .

And had. Despite everything. Was still standing here because she refused to let Captain Hook, Killian Jones, be butchered in his hospital bed for something he probably deserved. Scratch that. Definitely deserved. A handsome, charming psychopath was no less a psychopath.

You foolish child.

If true love was the most powerful magic for good in the world, it stood to reason that, gone bad, it was also the most powerful magic for unimaginable terror.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something strange. The lights overhead were starting to flicker and buzz. Hook's monitors made eerie shrilling noises, mechanic fibrilliations of protest, as they went on and off, spiking and flatlining. He grunted in pain, and she was struck by a horrible flashback of the night when the wraith had come for Regina, when even one fell creature had emerged from the netherworld to menace Storybrooke. What had happened to her and Mary Margaret and everyone and –

"Emma," the pirate said. "Emma, love, no."

"For once, Miss Swan. . . he's right." Gold still stood motionless as everything else around him came undone, as papers began to fly through the hospital room and glass shattered somewhere in the hallway, as the lights doused and the wind began to rise. "You'd better take cover. The true storm is coming."