Section F: Fairy Tales & Physicists

Chapter 21

The fact his heroic, self-sacrificing dash had in fact been completely safe didn't technically make it any less heroic—given he hadn't known it was safe—but he still couldn't help but feel a bit...miffed.

Shaking it off, he turned from his perusal of the doorway in the back wall of the sloping room—a doorway which opened onto a steep stairway, leading down into darkness—and went back to the window through which he'd just climbed.

"You can come out," he called. "They're gone."

Like nothing so much as an over-sized meerkat, topped with a crown of unruly hair, Peregrine's head popped up from behind the twisted section of wall that sheltered her. "Huh?" she called back.

"Radovic and Feathersone are gone. They've done a runner. Just give me a sec and I'll lower the ladder—you can come up and see for yourself." An expletive-laden, ladder-free minute later, he was back at the window. "It's no good—the hatchway's jammed shut. It must have been damaged when this place dropped."

The two agents regarded each other from across the hangar, both thinking the same thing. It had taken every inch of Fields' six feet for him to make the leap to the underside of the control room—although undoubtedly a woman of strange and unexpected talents, Peregrine wasn't getting in that way.

She jogged over and looked up at her partner. "See if you can find a phone in there, or a radio. We need to call in a medevac for Embers. And, as much as I hate to admit it"—the portal behind her pulsed, grew another metre or two, flashed vermilion, and then spat out a car-sized pumpkin with wheels—"it might be time to call for some back-up."

Fields' quick check of the room revealed a telephone handset mounted on a wall—dust-covered, discoloured and totally dead—and nothing else remotely telecommunicationy. "Nada," he reported. "Looks like we're on our own."

"Well, that's just great. How about the portal? Can you try to shut that sucker down? The way it's going, we might just wind up with the big bad wolf down here with us. Or even worse."

Fields scanned again. Sadly, no inviting big red buttons marked 'OFF' were evident. Biting his lip, he surveyed the vast collection of switches, dials and display screens arrayed around the room, most of them evidently still active, despite the structure's damaged state. With slow caution, not at all sure of the wisdom of what he was doing but feeling compelled to do something, he picked a switch at random—and flicked it.

Nothing.

Just as warily, he flicked another.

Still nothing.

Confidence increasing, he flicked a third switch.

Nothing again. At least, not at first. Then, just as Fields was about to hit his fourth switch, the portal flashed, shot up ten metres higher, turned an angry orange and began shooting out fireballs in random directions. Mouth agape, he watched in horror for a moment, before desperately lunging to flick the third switch back to its original position, heaving a sigh of relief as the fiery projectiles stopped and the towering, pulsating column of light returned to its usual emerald-green state. Several spot fires still burned throughout the hangar, including one in the giant's whiskers—which his next snore blew out.

Fields made a sheepish return to the window. "Er, yeah. Looks like portals are above my paygrade. I suspect we're gonna need one of the brain-boxes to shut that thing down." Coming to a decision, he took a deep breath and summoned up all the courage he could muster. "So, you're going to have to throw me your car keys."

There was a moment of stunned silence. Peregrine's expression darkened. "I'm going to have to do what, now?"

Seeing the expression, Fields swallowed—but pressed on. "You heard me."

"Oh, I don't think I did. I really, really think I must have misheard. Because it sounded a bit like you just asked me to throw you my car keys. And we both know that can't be right. Don't we?"

"Peregrine, we haven't got time for this. I need to go after Radovic and Featherstone, and if they make it to their cars before I catch up with them, I can't very well follow them on foot, can I? I also need to get somewhere with phone coverage, so I can call in some help for Embers. So, you know as well as I do, I'm going to need the keys to Pearl."

Features set, Peregrine shook her head. "Nope, nope, nope—not gonna happen. Now that the electric fence is down, I'll head back over the crater wall and get to Pearl that way. You go after 'em in the tunnel, and if they get to the car park first, I'll go after them. Car chases are my department, Sonny-Jim. Particularly when it comes to that car."

Sonny-Jim? "Peregrine, I'm faster than you, and I've got less far to go. Every second we stand here arguing, the further away those arseholes get. And the less time Embers has." He steeled himself. "So, shut your face, suck it up and throw me those bloody keys. It's just a car."

There were a few loaded seconds before Peregrine could bring herself to answer. Then, expression thunderous, she raised a rock-steady finger and pointed it straight at her partner's face. "I like you, Fields," she growled, "so I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. I'm going to let it slide. This time." A billboard, a chorus line and a catchy jingle could not have made the threat implied in those last two words any clearer. "Having said that"—she hurled the keys at her partner with such force and pinpoint accuracy that only a desperate last-millisecond grab on his part prevented them embedding in his forehead—"you scratch my car, I break your face."

Fields pocketed the keys, but not before noticing the President Bieber keyring. He refrained from asking—even if there had been time, he decided he really didn't want to know. "Don't worry, I'll take good care of her."

"You better! You better, or else I'll rip your—"

Peregrine's stream of threats faded as he plunged through the doorway and down the stairs, taking them two at a time, horribly conscious of just how big a lead the rogue scientists had on him. All too soon the light from the control room was lost, leaving him in total darkness and it was with only the faint illumination of his phone that he tore through the tunnel, sprinting at full speed despite the limited range of his vision.

In the circumstances, it was hardly surprising he failed to see the body. Unable to stop himself in time to avoid tripping over the still, prone figure lying across the tunnel floor, he tumbled to the bare, unyielding concrete, losing skin, tearing clothes and adding some new and exciting exhibits to his extensive and rapidly expanding collection of bruises, scrapes and contusions.

What he did find surprising, once he'd picked himself up, retrieved his phone and shone it on the body's face, was to find that it belonged to Featherstone.