Peppermint

Chapter 35 - still feel.

"It's okay if you're not sure." I take her hand and pull it closer to the doorknob. "Maybe we should open it together?"

She nods once, her lips jammed tightly shut until she opens them to say, "Let's tear that Band-Aid, dude."

And tear it we do, pushing the door open and finding what looks like an empty room. Except it's not, not completely. I think there's another door on the other side, a door that's supposed to be hidden, but it's not fully closed. Someone's just left in a hurry. What and where are they hiding?

"Look familiar?" I ask Kensi.

"Sorta...?" She shakes her head. "Just about everything in this place looks the same after an hour of running around."

"It's a bloody labyrinth, that's what it is." I wedge my fingers into the gap between the hidden door and the wall and try to pull it open. It won't budge, though. On the other side, there must be a chain or a hook or something keeping it firmly in place.

"Allow me." It's no longer TJ's or AK's voice, but Elliot back in the wheelhouse. Well, shit. I was getting used to having this group be all-queer, even for a moment. Whatever the case may be, I step aside and let Elliot do his thing. That thing being a blast of light in the crack, enough to force the door completely open.

The room beyond the secret door is full of time meteorites, scattered piles of pieces in black and white like an explosion in a go factory. One person is throwing these meteorites all over the place, pocketing black ones and abandoning white ones.

"HARRIS!" Kensi and I both call his name, and he drops a number of meteorites in surprise.

"Oh my God!" Harris runs into my arms first, kissing me fiercely until he pulls away, patting his meteorite-filled hoodie pocket self-consciously.

"I said no Supernatural references," Elliot grouses, though at least he does so in hushed tones. And if he makes good on his shoe-up-the-ass threat or whatever it was, I'll be the first to break his nose until he stops.

"Are you okay?" Kensi asks.

"For now, yeah. But I'm super psyched you're here!" Harris hugs her too. "That means I don't have to pretend I'm worried they're gonna kill you." He takes a look at Elliot and says, "But you, you look like you're still possessed."

"Technically, this vessel is possessed," Elliot says. "Just not by Peppermint's people, so be thankful."

"You weren't possessed, were you?" I ask, peering into Harris' eyes.

"No, I'm the only one they didn't," he says. "I think they wanted to use me as a control subject or some shit." He picks up one of the meteorites he's got in his pocket. "They wanted me to pick up as many of these as I could. So they could, I dunno, re-fuse them."

I scratch my head. "Refuse? Like, they'd send you down to fetch them and then they wouldn't take what you got? Assbutts."

"I know, but that's not what I mean. I mean, 're-fuse.' Put all these little fragments together into one and..." He twitches nervously. "They didn't say what they wanted to do with these babies, but I think the plan's some kind of time bomb."

Kensi blanches. "Literally, I bet."

Elliot holds out his hand, and Harris, in spite of himself, hands over one of the black meteorites. "If I know Kristoff - and I do, unfortunately - this'll probably be his first time attempting one of these 'time bombs,' as you say."

"I don't think there should be a first time," I say.

"You're right." Elliot throws the meteorite down to the floor, where it smashes into a cloud of black smoke that drifts up and around us before dissipating.