Mirror Mirror

Chapter 2

Regular Universe: Mirror John's Point of View

Two worried faces peered down at him. One was a man named Lestrade, John knew him as one of the Protectors who worked at the London office of New World Investigations, and the other was a twitchy lad with large protruding eyes and an unclean aura about himself.

"Billy, call for an ambulance," Lestrade said.

"No ambulance," John tried to croak out. They were ungodly expensive and often wouldn't come to this part of London anyway. Unless you were very wealthy, you got yourself to the A&E or died trying.

"I'm okay. Where am I?" he finally managed.

"Just lie back, John," Lestrade said. "You've taken a pretty big hit of current. The pub owner said he'd been having electrical problems for a while now. Seems you ran afoul of some faulty wiring. You stepped right on a live wire, mate."

"What?" John tried again. None of this made any sense at all. Unless he'd lost a big chunk of memory, he should be lying on his back in an abandoned pub with a blubbering orphanage manager handcuffed to a chair. Instead, he seemed to be in a much different room with people he didn't know.

He gaped at his surroundings. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought this was still the back room of the Boar's Head Pub. Only now the back room held neatly stacked shelves filled with bottles of larger, paper napkins and the largest containers of mustard and catsup he'd ever seen. Bright lights shone overhead and delicious smells of frying bangers floated over him.

"Where's Jameson?" he asked. His heart had finally slowed down, and he took a few deep breaths. For being electrocuted, he didn't feel that bad. He had a mild headache and his legs hurt, but otherwise, he felt like he could sit up.

"Help me," John said holding out his arms.

Lestrade sighed and shook his head. "All right, no ambulance. You're the doctor."

He heaved John into a sitting position. To his relief, he saw Jameson sitting in a much nicer version of the chair he'd been handcuffed to before and staring at John. Only now, his hands were twisted together in his lap free from restraints. He had no bandage on his head and didn't seem to be in any pain at all.

"I can't believe you survived that," Jameson said with genuine admiration from his perch in the chair. He had no blood on his clothes and seemed unaffected by any wound.

"Cheers for that," John retorted snarkily. "What's happened to that gash on the back of your head?" John asked struggling to stand up. Lestrade moved over to help him to his feet. He swayed slightly, and the room spun. He made out an apron hanging on a peg near him that cheerfully read Boar's Head Pub. How could that be?

"I want you to get checked out anyway, John," Lestrade said. "I think your brains might be a bit scrambled," he said making a twirling motion with his finger.

"I'm fine!" he bit out at the man. He turned around to get a better look at his surroundings. He now stood in the back room of an actual, functioning pub. He could see a bustling kitchen through a window in the door, and all the way into the main dining room. Where there had been only the eerie silence of a dead bar, now noisy customers crowded around ordering drinks, while waitresses carried plates of food on their arms. The Boar's Head Pub had miraculously come back to life in the time it had taken John to suffer a brief electrocution on the floor in the back room. Impossible. They must have moved him while he lay unconscious. But why?