Section F: Fairy Tales & Physicists

Chapter 39

"Well, hello young man. Nice to have you back with us."

It took a few blinks for the genial face smiling down at Fields to come into focus. The features were so mundane—so normal—that his hackles instantly rose. Normal? That couldn't be right.

"What?" he snapped, even more perturbed when he reached for his gun, only to find it wasn't there. He settled for grabbing the lab-coat-clad stranger's lapels and hauling his face to within inches of his own. "Back? Back where? And who the hell is 'us'? Huh? What's your deal, scumbag? Are you one of Featherstone's cronies? Did Radovic send you? Where the hell's my gun? Where's Peregrine?" Eyes narrowing, he drew the startled man's face in even closer. "And what universe is this?"

"Uh..." His captive attempted to pull away while simultaneously trying to disentangle Fields' fingers, both with a notable lack of success. "I...um..." Clearly at a loss as to how to respond to the last question, he settled for the safer ground of the penultimate one. "Agent Peregrine is right here. Just as she's been for the past three days."

"Fields, be a good patient, and let the doc go—you're scaring him."

Slowly, he turned his head, to find his partner sitting in a chair by his bedside, dark circles under her eyes, and unruly hair unrulier than ever.

Hang on—my bedside? "What do you mean 'patient'? Where am I?"

Peregrine stood and gently prised his fingers free from the shaken man's lapels. "Hospital. I kind of thought all the cords and cables and machines that go ping might have been a bit of a giveaway. And this nice man"—she straightened the stranger's shirt, while attempting to flatten out the worst of the creases—"is the doctor who's been looking after you."

"Yes, indeed," the doctor confirmed, giving Fields a reproving look. "And I must say, you took quite some looking after. Contusions, countless lacerations, a bullet-hole in your foot, and a really quite spectacular concussion—you looked as though you'd gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, provided Mr Tyson was armed with a baseball bat and a paring knife. You've been in a coma these past few days. To be brutally honest, we weren't entirely sure you would wake up."

Fields absorbed this. "Hospital? But how...? Weren't we...? What about the por—?"

"The poor victims?" Peregrine interrupted, to the accompaniment of a very significant look. "Of the tornado? The rogue electrical tornado? The one that trashed the old Novus Institute research station, out at the Dish?" She shook her head. "Yep, very sad. And seriously bad luck that it hit while we were there on an investigation. Although we're lucky you managed to come out of it with nothing worse than a few scrapes and a nasty bump on the head." She gave his shoulder an even more significant squeeze. "Aren't we?"

"Uh..."—Fields could almost hear the clunking of his dazed brain trying to keep up—"...yeah. Lucky. A tornado. Yeah, that's right. A big tornado. Lots of wind and...stuff. Yeah."

"Quite remarkable." The doctor busied himself checking Fields' pulse, while consulting some of the aforementioned pinging machines. "A tornado, in these parts—unprecedented. I can't wait to hear how those ridiculous climate-change deniers try to explain that away. They'll probably come up with some cockamamie theory about a science experiment gone wrong, or some such poppycock."

"Well said, doc," agreed Peregrine. "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's poppycock. Especially the cockamamie kind." One hand on his back, she shepherded him towards the door. "Thanks for checking in, great job, now I've just got some vital agency business to discuss with Agent Fields here, and I'm sure you've got other patients to check on, so if you'll excuse us, we'll catch you later, thanks again, bye now."