"Graham, what the hell? You just toasted Radovic!"
"Yes. Although I suspect roasted is probably a more accurate term."
"But...but...you can't do that kind of thing!"
"Why ever not?"
"Well, because it's...you know—wrong. Plus, we're federal agents. We don't roast perps, we bust them."
As if on cue, the wreck of the SUV—already burning ferociously—exploded below them with a tremendous concussive whump, the shockwave washing over the dragon and the agent in a torrent of heat and noise. They watched on as fragments of flaming wreckage rained down upon the desert.
"Not a word," growled Fields. "Not a bloody word."
The voice in his head was pure innocence. "I wouldn't dream of it. At any rate, you're the one who's a federal agent, Fields. I'm a fire-breathing dragon. Roasting kind of goes with the territory."
"But—"
"Look, you said you wanted him stopped, so I stopped him."
"I didn't want him stopped from existing!"
"Well, you should have been more specific. I'm not a mind-reader, you know."
"What?" exploded Fields. "You're literally communicating with my mind, right now!"
"One-way traffic, Fields. Projecting a message into a human brain is a very different kettle of fish to extracting meaning from the jumbled morass of misfiring synapses you choose to call consciousness. Honestly, I sometimes wonder how on Earth you people manage to walk and breathe at the same time, let alone invent new and exciting ways to clog your arteries, conduct wars, and ruin your planet. Trust me, it's quite enough listening to the things you vocalise, without trying to wade through the mental quagmire you call a mind in search of even more tiresome mundanity."
"Yeah, yeah, I love you too. But next time, dragon-boy, questions first and flamey-flamey later. We don't just go around killing people."
"Not even self-confessed murderers, bent on world-domination?"
"No! Of course not. We don't get to be judge, jury and executioner. We're agents and we follow the letter of the law."
"Oh Fields, you do amuse me. Do you think the letter of your law was designed to account for inter-dimensional dragons and multiverse-spanning plots? For fairy-tale princesses and storybook giants? Tell me, just how much use do you think the letter of your law will be in a world overrun by monsters and madness and creatures beyond your ken? Don't you think that in such a world a flames first and questions later policy might be fitting?"
"No." Fields surprised himself with the immediacy and vehemence of his response. With his absolute certainty. Maybe, on this day—on this very long, very surreal day, on this day of mind-bending, reality-warping, comprehension-defying, unrelenting weirdness—maybe his floundering, flailing sense of self just needed one solid thing to hold on to. One rock in a raging stream. One port in a storm. One double-shotted short black in a sea of decaf skinnycinos.
Whatever the reason, while he hadn't been sure about much today, he found he was very sure about this. "Never. If we haven't got rules—if we haven't got justice—then what have we got? When things get a little crazy"—he couldn't resist a wry grin—"when the freaky shit hits the bizarro fan, that's when those things matter most. Fire-breathing pan-dimensional entity or not, you break the law again, and we're gonna have a problem."
Being mocked was not something Fields ever enjoyed, but to have a dragon doing it telepathically in his head was at least novel.
"Oh, stop it Fields. You're killing me. If you haven't got justice, well then what you've got is most of the history of the world—trust me, I was there. And as for us having a problem? I'm massively stronger than you, I weigh at least a hundred times as much as you, and in the next five seconds I could tear you limb from limb, incinerate you, eat you, or simply let you fall to your death. Or, quite possibly, all of the above. You understand that don't you?"
Fields swallowed. "Yes."
"And you still think we're going to have a problem if I don't toe your line?"
It didn't seem quite right that the ground could kill you, thought Fields, contemplating the arid terrain far below his feet. Something so innocuous shouldn't simultaneously be so lethal. Briefly, he pondered which would be the best way to go—splattered, sautéed, or swallowed—before taking a deep breath, shoring up his nerve, and making his reply. "Yes."
There were a few moments of loaded silence. "You know, even after all these millennia, you humans can still occasionally surprise me. Fair enough, Fields, fair enough. We'll do it your way. Well, until I change my mind, anyway. Or I get bored. Or you start to over-complicate things. You lot are always doing that."
As he heaved a sigh of relief, Fields couldn't help but wonder in what conceivable way the situation in which he currently found himself could possibly become any more complicated. However, as Graham banked and turned, his powerful wings driving them in a great sweeping arc back towards the crater, he found he didn't have to wonder for very long.
The portal had grown. It had grown a lot. If it had been a portal-person, then it would have been a portal-person who had been hitting the portal-gym and downing lots of portal-protein shakes. With copious amounts of portal-steroids on top.
The inter-dimensional gate, the multiverse-straddling doorway that lay at the very heart of the insane sequence of incidents that had led to the extraordinarily strange here and now in which Fields found himself, towered over the desert, dwarfing the Dish from which it emerged, making even that monumental landmark seem diminutive in comparison.
At its very summit, soaring kilometres above the earth, swirling storm-clouds gathered, the lightning flashing in their depths mere flickers compared to the monumental surges of pure energy rippling through the portal's writhing, elongated form.
In short, it looked like one hell of a complication. A complication of the very worst kind. The potential Armageddon, end-of-days, world-destroying kind.
"Well, there's something you don't see every day. Shall we take a closer look?"
Fields was torn. A glance at his phone was enough to confirm he still had no coverage, no way to call in a medevac. So, he could either ask Graham to fly city-wards, in the possibly forlorn hope of saving a fairy-tale princess and a mad scientist (although he didn't hold out much hope for the latter). Or, he could head back to the Dish, tackle the portal, and—just maybe—save the world.
"Fields? What's it going to be? Do we go back?"
Wide-eyed, Fields stared at the enormous, otherworldly column, dominating the landscape for miles around. Every fibre of his being, every brain-cell in his head, every survival instinct he possessed, screamed at him to say no.
He sighed. "Yes. Let's go, dragon-boy."
To Fields' disappointment, if not his surprise, the portal did not become any less intimidating with proximity. Overpowering the fading sunlight, it cast a viridescent glow over the interior of the crater, illuminating the cluster of buildings huddled at its centre—along with the recumbent giant, his sleeping features still composed (if a little sickly looking)—in a shimmering green light.
As Graham circled high above, Fields considered his options. It would be fair to say none of them seemed particularly attractive. In fact, never before had Fields quite so grasped the significance of the phrase "least worst option." He was also simultaneously gaining a whole new appreciation for such classics as "we're all screwed", "I want my mother" and "I really wish I'd brought a spare pair of pants."
"Well, Mr Federal Agent? What now?"
"I guess we need to get to the control-room. With Featherstone out of the equation, I'll just have to have another crack at shutting the portal down. Maybe I can find a plug to pull out, or something."
"What do you mean, Featherstone's out of the equation?"
"Huh? Oh yeah, you were catching up on your beauty sleep while all that was going down. Radovic shot the poor bastard. He's probably dead by now. Anyway, if we can just—"
"What?" Quite how a telepathic voice was able to shout, Fields wasn't sure, but Graham somehow managed the feat. "You're telling me the one man in this whole benighted multiverse, the one person who actually understands how that thing"—ferociously, the dragon jabbed a claw (fortunately not the one busy holding Fields) at the portal—"works, the one man who could potentially put me back together, is dead? Is that seriously what you're telling me?"
"Um." Furiously, Fields tried to come up with an answer that wouldn't potentially end in freefall or flames. He failed. "Well, strictly speaking there were probably two people. You just roasted the other one."
Even though the telepathic shouting had been bad, Fields was definitely finding the telepathic loaded silences even worse. He was almost grateful when the outburst finally came.
"Why the hell didn't you stop me? If you knew Featherstone was dead, if you knew Radovic was the last bloody human with any bloody clue about all this bloody crap, then why didn't you bloody well stop me?"
Despite the precariousness of his position, despite his fear, despite his complete and utter helplessness, Fields suddenly found he'd had enough. He was thoroughly fed up. "Because, you great scaly scorch-mark, I didn't bloody well know you were going to go the full blow-torch, did I? Flames first, questions later doesn't seem so great now, does it? Maybe if we'd actually had a little chat about what you were going to do, then I would have had the chance to tell you. But we didn't. And guess what, dragon-boy? I'm not a bloody mind-reader!"
Fully aware he'd gone too far, braced for whatever gruesome end Graham had in mind for him, it took Fields a moment to recognise the new sound in his head.
Laughter.
"Touché, Fields, touché. I must admit, you've got me there. Well played. Now, let's go and see what can be retrieved from this whole, sorry debacle, shall we? What crumbs of inconsequence, what unimportant morsels?"
"What, you mean like saving the Earth? Morsels like that?"
"Oh yes, that too. But before we go down there, before we head once more unto the breach, my dear friend, there's one thing you should probably know."
"Oh, yeah? What's that?"
"Call me dragon-boy one more time, and I'll barbecue your sorry arse back to the stone age."