SUNDAY, JULY 11, 2410
                               5:43 PM
                  INTERNATIONAL POLICE HEADQUARTERS
                        NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

        Greg Sanders was mildly surprised, upon arriving at his
chemistry lab on the 10th floor of the International Police
headquarters building, to find it occupied already.  The lab wasn't
his sole domain, but it came pretty close.  The day shift criminalists
had their own facilities, a mirror image of the night shift's kingdom,
over on the other side of the building's central airshaft.
        The person standing by the bench was holding up a test tube
full of some glowing green liquid and peering into it when Greg
entered the lab.  Hearing the door, the figure turned toward the
sound, and Greg saw that it was Sara Sidle, one of the field
investigators on the night shift.
        Greg was something of an admirer of Sara's, and so he tended
to take some note of her appearance.  He had to admit, she'd looked
better.  Her white lab coat was smudged and stained, her clothes were
rumpled, her hair wasn't much better off, and her eyes had that
too-bright intensity that meant she'd been at whatever she was doing
for longer than was strictly healthy.
        "Greg!  Hi!" she said, just a little breathless - clearly, his
arrival had startled her.
        "Uh... hi," the Dantrovian chemist replied.
        "What are you doing here so early?" Sara asked.
        Greg gave her a puzzled look.  "What do you mean, early?" he
replied.  "It's 5:45."
        Sara blinked, looked at her watch, and then looked again with
an expression of surprise.  "5:45 -PM-?" she asked, incredulous.  "On
-Sunday-?"
        "Yeees," Greg said slowly.  "When did you think it was?"
        The dark-haired young investigator shook her head.  "Sometime
around 8 o'clock last night."
        "O... kaythen," said Greg.  "How long have you been here?"
        "Since noon.  Yesterday.  Saturday.  Whenever that was."
        Greg looked faintly pleased, as though he were making progress
with a difficult patient.  "And why did you come in at noon on
Saturday?"
        He looked around and noticed, really for the first time, that
his lab was a disaster area.  At least four different experiments
appeared to be going on all at the same time, complete with beakers,
tubes, burners, and reference books propped open with the little brass
masses from the balance scale.
        "Other than to ransack my lab?" he added.
        "Trying to see if I could find any common threads between the
major designer drugs that are on the street right now," Sara replied.
        "And have you?" Greg wondered.
        "I'm closing in on it," Sara replied.  "It's taking longer
than I thought it would."
        "This much is obvious."  Greg advanced into the lab, his face
taking on an earnest look.  "Listen, we need to get this place cleaned
up some before Grissom shows up and - "
        " - starts finishing your sentences for you?" came the voice
of the crime lab's director, Gil Grissom, from the open doorway behind
Greg.  The Dantrovian froze, the fur on his tail bristling, a pained
look crossing his face.  Sara, punchy as she was, had to stifle a
giggle at the sight.
        Greg turned to see Grissom standing in the doorway with his
hands in his pants pockets, surveying the rubble-strewn lab with a
look of mild bemusement on his calm academic's face.  Only the faint
twitching of the tips of his primary ears - Grissom, like Sara, was a
humanized Salusian - betrayed his annoyance.  Or amusement.  It was
sometimes hard to tell.
        "Gris!  Uh, hi," Greg said unsmoothly.  "Yeah, listen, Sara
and I were just about to start straightening this out.  Long
experiment, kinda got away from us there - totally my fault - "
        "Sara's a big girl, Greg, she doesn't need you to take the
fall for her," Grissom said with gentle irony.  "Sara, since I missed
that part of your debriefing with Professor Sanders here, would you
mind explaining what you're -doing- with all this?"
        "Uh, sure."  She put the test tube she held into a rack that
contained three others, each containing a different liquid.  In
addition to the glowing green sample she'd just racked, there was one
that was a bright but not actually glowing blue, one that was clear,
and one that was a nasty amber color.
        "These are samples of the four big-time designer drugs on the
streets of New Avalon right now," she said, indicating the rack.
        Grissom adopted the demeanor of a patient college professor.
"Which are?" he asked, though of course he knew already.
        Sara was apparently up for the game.  She pointed to the amber
one and said, "Chlorozaphrexadine sulfate hydrochloride, also known as
Cortex Bomb.  Highly hallucinogenic in humans, a transcendent euphoric
to Salusians, a powerful stimulant to Klingons - a real Swiss Army
knife of a party drug.  Ravers can't get enough of it.
        "Anodyne, or simply Dyne," she went on, pointing to the clear
liquid.  "An illegal distillation of Miraculon, the solution used in
quick-heal slap patches and single-use spray hypos by military and
tactical forces.  Reportedly, it's like popping five doses of
Miraculon at once, plus a shot of one of the hardcore mega-stims."
        "Gangbangers use Dyne patches to boost their metabolic
processes and healing rates before shootouts with each other and the
cops," Greg added helpfully.
        Sara nodded.  "It's good for what ails you - except for the
1-in-30 chance you'll drop dead from toxic shock," she noted.  "Same
reason why legitimate Miraculon users never -take- five at once.
        "This blue specimen here is Velocity-9," Sara continued.  "In
humans, it causes -massive- metabolic acceleration, far beyond
anything Dyne provides.  Its users temporarily gain the ability to
move at incredible speeds.  They age about a year with each dose,
suffer massive dehydration, and risk serious brain damage every time
they shoot up - but the stuff is so instantly, viciously addictive
that they don't care."
        "Great," Greg said darkly.  "Junkies with super-speed.  That's
just what society needed."
        "And -this-," Sara concluded, pointing to the green chemical
she'd been holding when Greg arrived, "is the latest wonder drug to
take the city's misguided youth by storm: Superadine, also,
confusingly enough, known as Dyne on the street.  Superadine won't
heal your wounds, but it will make you stronger than ten ordinary
people.  Permanently, if you take enough of it.  Of course, it'll also
turn you green, make you lumpy, and reduce your IQ by about a hundred
points, which you can ill afford to lose if you're dumb enough to be
taking this crap in the first place."
        "All right," Grissom said, nodding.  "What about them?"
        "I think they all originated in the same lab."
        Grissom raised his eyebrows.  "Really.  Explain."
        "I'm not quite finished yet," Sara said, gesturing to the chaos
of beakers, burners, retorts, solutions, and titrations going on all
over the bench in front of the supercollider.  "But I've noticed some
distinct similarities among them, both in terms of trace chemicals and
in the structures of some of the big synthetic molecules.  I think they
were all created by the same chemist."
        Grissom nodded.  "How much more do you have to do?" he asked.
        "I need to run one last set of samples through the
supercollider," Sara said.  "I'm about halfway through prepping them
now."
        "Okay.  Keep at it, then - you've come this far.  Greg, would
you mind giving her a hand?"
        "Not at all."

        Between one thing and another, it was nearly midnight by the
time they had all the final samples ready for the supercollider.
        Sara racked the fourth sample container, then slid the tray
back into the machine, which resembled nothing from the outside so
much as a large microwave oven.  The sample bay hatch closed with a
satisfying CLUNK and a sibilant hiss of air being drawn off, creating
a near-perfect vacuum inside.
        The part that looked like a microwave was only the facade, so
to speak, of the laboratory's supercollider.  The business end, as it
were, was behind the lab's back wall - a whole room full of coils,
power converters, and other oddments of high-energy technology.  The
room backed in turn onto the day shift's equivalent of Greg's lab,
enabling both labs to make use of the powerful device without the
expense and trouble of installing and maintaining two completely
separate units.
        Sara checked the settings - the unit would be operating at
maximum output for this last series of tests - and then turned to
Greg.
        "Looks like we're good to go," she said.
        "Great," Greg said, rubbing his eyes.  He was tired, having
spent most of the night hard at work on preparing those samples with no
time for any of his usual therapeutic goofing off.  How could Sara work
like that for days on end?  It wasn't natural.
        "I'm gonna go get some coffee," he said.  "You've got this
place so torn up I don't dare to make any in here.  I might end up
putting in Superadine instead of cream or something.  Want anything?"
        "No, thanks," Sara replied absently.  She wasn't really paying
attention, absorbed as she was in jotting down a series of notes
outlining her hypotheses and expectations prior to the final tests.
        Greg nodded and made his way out of the lab.  A moment later,
Sara finished her notes, put the notebook aside, and switched on the
supercollider.  A smile spread across her face as the lab filled with
a deep, powerful hum.

        Catherine Willows squelched into the breakroom feeling a bit
hard done by and looking forward to a nice, hot cup of terrible coffee.
        "Evening, Catherine," Greg remarked from the couch by the
coffee machine.  Then, raising his eyebrows at her bedraggled
appearance, he said, "Did you fall in the river?"
        "No, it fell on me," Catherine grumbled, hunting in the
cupboard for a clean mug.  At Greg's look of puzzlement, she explained,
"It's raining like hell.  Biggest thunderstorm I've seen in years.
The rain's just coming down in sheets.  You should look outside every
now and then, Greg," she added with a wry grin.
        "Well, at least it might break up this heat wave we've been
having.  Anyway, I've been too busy being Sara's lab slave," Greg
replied.
        "Oh, is that who's running the collider?" Catherine asked,
noting the minor ripples on the surface of her coffee.
        He nodded.  "She's doing a big comparative analysis of Cortex
Bomb, V9, Dyne and Superadine.  She thinks they were all invented by
the same guy."
        Catherine looked interested.  "Really?  That would explain a
few things."  She thought for a second and added, "Four samples at
once, that must be pushing things a little."
        Greg shrugged.  "Not really.  The unit has to run at 105%, but
the manual says that's OK as long as you don't go longer than 5
minutes.  We calculated the last run should take 4:37."
        Catherine smirked.  "That's not pushing things a little?"
        "4:59 would be pushing things a little," Greg replied.
        Catherine might have replied, but before she could, the
overhead lights flickered, brightened to a startling degree, and then
went out altogether.
        "What the - " Catherine began, but she was cut off by another,
even more startling occurrence.  In the darkness of the blacked-out
office, there was a sudden, actinic blue-white flash - a brilliant,
unnatural light that slashed through the mostly-glass walls of the
night shift's office complex from some near-central location.  Before
anyone could react to that, it was followed by a harsh crackle and
then a loud, reverberating BANG that shook the floor and cracked
several of the glass walls.  Something clattered against the breakroom
walls like a handful of thrown rocks.
        Greg and Catherine looked at each other - a useless reflex,
given that they were in pitch darkness, their eyes momentarily stunned
by the blue-white flash that had filled the room for an instant.
        "What the hell was THAT?" came the voice of Nick Stokes from
somewhere near the breakroom entrance.
        Greg suddenly realized the answer.
        "Dvhil nazhai orZAL!" he cried, bolting for the door.  "SARA!"


                              /*  The Who
                             "Who Are You?"
                     _The Ultimate Collection_  */

                I have a message from another time...

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                                 and
                         Avalon 17 Television
                               present

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

                           CSI: NEW AVALON
                           FORWARD MOMENTUM

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                           with Chad Collier

                (c) 2007 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


        The chemistry lab had been cluttered before.  Now it was a
smoking ruin.  It reminded Nick of bombing scenes he'd worked.  There
was that same scorched texture; that same random litter of small
objects, some pulverized, some inexplicably intact; that same harsh
smell of burned things and of strange chemical vapors born in hellish
heat and pressure.
        The face of the supercollider, where the controls and the sample
tray belonged, was a char-edged crater in what had been an armored wall.
The experimental apparatus that had been strewn on the counter in front
of the machine was entirely gone.  Everything else in the room was
either blackened, smashed, or both.  Doors had been blown off cabinets,
the jars and bottles of various chemicals inside disarranged - some
blown apart, some overturned, some inexplicably untouched.  The
worktable in the middle of the room was on its side.  Broken glass lay
everywhere.
        Nick saw all of this in the wan light of the emergency
glowstrips, which came fitfully on when he was about halfway between
the breakroom and what had been the lab.  For the moment, he didn't
see anything else, other than Greg Sanders tugging at the handle of
the mangled, jammed door and looking stricken.
        "It could be worse," he pointed out helpfully.  "You could
still be in there... "
        Greg turned around, the look of mingled panic and fury on his
face startling Nick into silence.
        "Sara -is- still in there!" Greg snapped.  "Help me with this
door!"
        Nick blinked in shock, then got hold of himself and looked at
the door.  The safety glass - actually klaster, a transparent substance
that had more in common, chemically speaking, with steel than glass -
was warped and soot-blackened, and had come partially out of its
frame, which was itself so badly bent that Greg was never going to get
it open tugging on the handle like that.
        So Nick pushed him out of the way, then stepped back, wound
up, and kicked the klaster panel itself as hard as he could, just
above the horizontal crossbeam midway up the door.  With a shriek of
protest, the warped panel bent a bit further, popped out of its track,
and clanged to the floor.  The two men climbed over the crossbar into
the room, coughing and waving aside acrid fumes, with Catherine on
their heels.

                        MONDAY, JULY 12, 2410
                               2:23 AM

        Gil Grissom was in his office conferring with the Chief of
the International Police, a man named Benjamin Hutchins and near-
universally called Gryphon, when Warrick Brown stepped in.
        Without greeting or preamble, Warrick placed a small object on
Grissom's desk and said, "There's what caused the explosion."
        Grissom broke off what he'd been saying to the Chief, turned,
regarded the object, and then looked at Warrick.
        "What is it?" he asked.
        "An electron-plasma bypass," Warrick said.  "Somebody
installed it in the EPS control module for the supercollider."
        "I see.  What was it bypassing?"
        Warrick looked grim.  "The safety interlock."
        Gryphon got halfway out of his chair in about half a second,
hesitated, and then got the rest of the way up more slowly.
        "The safety interlock," he repeated.
        Warrick nodded.  "The supercollider was running at 105% of its
rated output.  The building took a lightning strike - a big one,
judging by the damage it did up on the roof - which caused a power
surge.  The interlocks everywhere else kicked in and shut everything
off - but because of this bypass, the collider kept running.  The guy
from the manufacturer thinks it probably hit something like 10,000%
output for a nanosecond or so, before the containment unit blew.  They
build those things tough, but it was never designed to handle that kind
of load."
        Grissom, too, got up slowly, taking off his glasses with the
air of someone who doesn't realize he's doing it.
        "Warrick," he said slowly, "are you saying the collider
exploded because someone intentionally bypassed the EPS safety
system?"
        "Not only that," Warrick said, his expression becoming even
grimmer, "but I can tell you who."

        The apartment door opened to reveal a bleary-eyed,
irritated-looking man with sandy hair.
        "What the hell do you want?" he asked - pretty much the
standard opener for anybody rousted out of bed at 3 AM by an insistent
fist on the front door.
        "Mark Compton?" asked the man who had knocked.  He had a
sharp, no-nonsense voice that went well with his sharp, no-nonsense
face, and in that cheap suit he couldn't be anything other than a cop.
Compton wasn't so sure about the woman with him.  She was certainly
easier to look at than the guy's suit jacket.
        "Yeah?" Compton asked, switching from annoyed to faintly
puzzled.
        "Chief Inspector Jim Brass, New Avalon Police," the man said.
"This is Catherine Willows from the IPO crime lab.  We need to ask you a
question."
        Compton glanced at his wrist, remembered that he didn't wear
his watch to bed, and leaned back to look at the clock on his living
room wall.
        "At 3:10 in the morning?" he said.
        "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," Brass replied
dryly.  "Can we come in?"
        Compton considered saying "no" just to see what would happen,
decided against it.  "Sure, what the hell," he said, stepping back.
"Coffee?  I sure as hell need some."
        "No, thanks."
        "Well, have a seat, then, I'll be right with you."
        As she sat down to wait, Catherine took a look around.  She
had become a criminalist partly because she was an inveterate snoop,
so it came natural to her to check out her surroundings whenever she
found herself someplace new.  Compton's apartment was neat and tidy,
obviously the home of a man meticulous and regular in his habits.
        "You're an industrial electrician?" Brass called toward the
kitchen, from which could be heard the clinking and whirring of coffee
being made.
        "That's right," Compton replied.  A moment later he reappeared
with a steaming mug in his hand.  He crossed the living room, sat down
in an armchair facing the couch Brass and Catherine had taken, and
asked,
        "So what's so important that you've got to get me up at 3 in
the morning?"
        Brass reached into his coat pocket, removed a plastic
envelope, and tossed it on the coffee table.
        "Recognize that?" he said.
        Compton looked.  "Sure," he said, shrugging.  "It's a Class-3
EPS bypass module.  I use them all the time."
        "According to a thumbprint we found," Catherine said, "you
used this one.  At International Police Headquarters."
        Compton raised an eyebrow at her, took a sip of his coffee,
and shrugged again.  "I've done some contract work there.  You guys
must know that, the IPO keeps records of everybody who works on the
building."
        "This didn't come from a contract job, Mark," Brass said.  "I
checked the records.  Nobody ever hired you to perform an illegal
bypass of an important piece of safety equipment."
        Compton blinked at him.
        "Come again?" he said.
        "Why do they always think playing dumb will help?" Catherine
wondered rhetorically.  Then she leaned forward and said, "Listen,
pal, one of my colleagues found this gizmo of yours bypassing the
safety interlock on our chem lab's supercollider."
        Compton gave her a baffled look that she could have sworn was
genuine.  "Supercollider?!  Hey, you heard the man, I'm an
-industrial- electrician.  I don't screw around with specialized
equipment like that.  You'd need a scientific instrument technician
for that kind of work.  I'm not certified for it."
        Brass sighed.  "So your thumbprint got on there by magic?"
        "I don't know -how- it got on there, I'm just telling you I
never worked on a... "  Compton's voice trailed off as an unpleasant
look of recognition crossed his face.  "... son of a bitch," he said.
        "And what certification would you need to work on a son of a
bitch?" Brass asked archly.
        Compton shook his head.  "No, I'm serious.  This supercollider
you're talking about - how big is it?  Would it fill a room?"
        Catherine nodded.  "The guts of it do.  In back of the
elevator shaft maintenance area on the tenth floor."
        "So?  Did you work on it or not?" Brass asked.
        Compton slowly nodded.  "I did," he said.  "Goddammit.  I
didn't know what it was.  That son of a bitch!"
        "Do you make a habit of working on machinery you don't
recognize?" Catherine asked.
        "No, of course not.  This was a special job.  I did it as a
favor for my brother-in-law.  -He- said I was bypassing a defective
autoswitch - part of the special lighting system for the document lab
or some damn thing.  I wasn't too concerned about it at the time.  I
mean, why would he lie?"
        "Your brother-in-law."
        "Right.  Come on, you must know him.  He's the director of the
damn lab."
        Catherine blinked.  "Gil Grissom?!" she blurted.
        "No!" Compton replied, annoyed.  "Conrad Ecklie."

        Ecklie arrived at work at a quarter to four, having been paged
out of bed.  This annoyed him deeply, since he was the supervisor of
the crime lab's day shift and, as such, felt it was not his place in
life to be getting rousted out of bed by the job.  That was for
Grissom and his menagerie.  Overtime, sure, that came with the job,
but it happened at the -end- of the shift, not the beginning.
        So grumpy was he about this that, when he hit the lobby and
saw Gil Grissom waiting for him, he missed the look on Grissom's face
and failed to realize that this was not a normal day.
        "I don't appreciate having to get up in the middle of the
night to clean up your messes, Gil," he said with cordial venom.
"What's the problem, and why can't you handle it yourself?"
        "Hello, Conrad," Grissom replied pleasantly.  "Your sister's
husband seems to think you're me."
        Ecklie paused.  "... Is that some kind of joke?"
        Grissom shook his head, his pleasant demeanor vanishing
instantly.  "No," he said.  "I'm not in a joking mood today."
        He said no more, just led the way to his office.  Ecklie, now
confused in addition to irritated, followed.  As he did, he noticed
that something odd was going on - the lab smelled funny, and there
were blue-jumpsuited Tactical Division and Support Division personnel
all over the place.
        Not until they were inside his office with the door shut
behind them did Grissom speak again.
        "You had your brother-in-law bypass the safety interlock on
the supercollider," he said.  "Explain."
        Ecklie looked confused, then laughed.
        "Oh, -that-," he said.  "That interlock was defective, Gil.
It kept kicking the damn thing offline whenever the power level went
above 100%, so every time I needed to check something at 105, I had to
go into the damned equipment room and reset it three or four times.
It made the tests take forever.  You must have known that, you use
the thing too."
        Grissom didn't look impressed.  "My chemist never mentioned
that it was a problem," he said.  "Maybe he read the collider's user
guide.  If the interlock was causing you such a problem, why didn't
you ask for it to be fixed?" he said.
        "I did," Ecklie said.  "Plant Services sent one of their
people down.  She looked at it, told me it was supposed to be that
way.  I didn't have the time to get after her supervisors and get the
whole thing sorted out, so I just asked Mark if he'd do me a favor."
        "And told him you were the director of the lab."
        Ecklie gave a dismissive chuckle.  "My sister thinks I'm the
big boss around here.  I've tried to explain that I just run the day
shift, but she doesn't get the difference.  Look, Gil, what's this all
about?  So I had the damned interlock bypassed.  Big deal.  You and I
both know the book guidelines on the 6000 series are absurdly
conservative.  105% power for no more than five minutes, for heaven's
sake.  You could run that thing at 110% for an hour and not hurt it.
That interlock was a needless annoyance forced by a brainless code
regulation.  It was completely unnecessary.  The unit's perfectly safe
without it."
        Grissom sat regarding Ecklie calmly - too calmly, Ecklie
realized after a couple of seconds.  The man's face was glacially
still, his eyes fixed on Ecklie's, his primary ears immobile.
        Then, in a calm, conversational sort of voice, Grissom said,
        "The building was struck by lightning earlier tonight.  One of
my investigators was running an experiment on the collider at the
time.  One hundred five percent power for four minutes, 37 seconds,
perfectly within the book's 'absurdly conservative' guidelines.
The lightning strike crossed into the EPS tap for the collider.
        "Because the 'completely unnecessary' safety interlock was
bypassed, it didn't trip the collider offline when the surge hit.
Instead, as near as Warrick can figure it, the unit ran at something
like 10,000% power for a nanosecond or two, and then the interface
module on my side of the lab failed, releasing the contents of the
collision chamber into the chem lab."
        Ecklie stared at him, unbelieving, and said nothing.
        "As near as we can calculate, Sara Sidle was standing three feet
away from the unit when that happened," Grissom went on.  Then his voice
suddenly lost its conversational tone, becoming as cold and hard as his
eyes, as he went on, "So why don't you tell -her- how perfectly safe
your illegal modification was."
        Ecklie's face was ashen.
        "My God," he said.  "You're serious, aren't you.  What
happened?  Is she - ... "  He hesitated, unable to come right out and
say it.
        Grissom shook his head.
        "We're not sure how, but she was alive when the rescue crew
pulled her out of the wreckage... and for your sake, Conrad, you'd
better hope she stays that way."
        A moment later, the office door opened and a grim-faced Jim
Brass entered the office to make an arrest.

                               9:15 AM

        Ecklie made bail almost immediately, of course - he was hardly
considered a flight risk - and at quarter past nine he was in his
office, collecting his things.  The criminal charges brought with them
an automatic suspension, one which Ecklie had chosen to make permanent
by resigning, something he'd been thinking of doing for months.  He
admitted no guilt, but he was well aware that he was so unpopular no one
would ever forgive him anyway.
        Besides, everybody knew damn well it was his fault.
        Case in point: the person who appeared in the doorway of his
office now, a lab-coated man in his mid-thirties with a blond crew cut
and a clean-living sort of look about him.  Right now he seemed
agitated, which was unusual.  Usually there was nobody on the day
shift more even-tempered than Barry Allen.
        "How could you be so irresponsible?" Allen demanded as he
entered the office.
        Ecklie grunted noncommittally and kept packing things.  "Can't
talk about it, Allen," he said.  "Lawyer's orders."
        "The hell with your lawyer.  I think you owe me an answer,
Conrad," Allen persisted.  "I'm the senior lab officer.  That collider
is my responsibility."
        Ecklie's frayed patience parted.  "What are you getting so
worked up about, Barry?" he snapped.  "YOU weren't dumb enough to blow
yourself up with it!"
        Allen stared at his former boss with a look of disbelief for a
second -
        - and then socked him in the jaw, sending him clean over
backward.  Ecklie fell from surprise as much as the blow itself.  He'd
never even -heard- of Allen hitting anyone, or even -offering- to hit
anyone, before.
        The buzzcut scientist stood over him for a second, fists
balled; then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the office.
Ecklie slowly picked himself up, rubbing at his jaw, and finished
packing up his things.

        Ten minutes later, Barry Allen was in the Chief's office on
the 38th floor, looking a bit sheepish.
        Gryphon gazed across his desk at Allen for a few moments, then
sighed and said, "Barry... "
        "I know," Allen said at once.  "I'm sorry.  It'll never happen
again."
        "Good," Gryphon said, nodding.  "Bad enough you did it -once-.
I've wanted to sock that son of a bitch all -morning-, but now it'd be
redundant."  Allen blinked; Gryphon grinned slightly and went on,
"Anyway, your punishment is to take over Days."
        Allen looked startled.  "What?"
        "Just temporarily," Gryphon assured him, "until I can find
someone to take it full-time.  I know you don't want to leave the lab.
But you're the most experienced person on that shift right now, and
the others look up to you.  I think you can provide the stability the
day shift needs until I can get a permanent leader in there."
        Allen thought it over for a few moments, then nodded.  "Of
course," he said.
        "Two, three months, that's all I need," Gryphon assured him.
"I've already got a candidate in mind, I just have to figure out how
to pry him out of the cushy job he already has."  He glanced at his
watch, then rose.  "OK.  Go see if you can straighten out the day
crew.  I'm going over to Boyce to see how Sara's doing."
        Allen nodded.  "Right."

                               11:08 AM
                 PHILIP BOYCE MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER
                        NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

        Gryphon was in the waiting room of the hospital's special
trauma wing, a department specifically created to treat the usually
serious, often bizarre injuries suffered by the International Police
Organization's top-level field agents.  Up here, the doctors and
equipment could treat anything from a Magmaloran Lava Man to a
Dralasite, could handle problems ranging from Getter-ray poisoning to
Martian regenerative fever.  It was the most highly specialized
department of one of the best hospitals in the galaxy.
        The man who was in large part responsible for its founding had
been sitting in the waiting room, in exactly the same position, since
his arrival from Headquarters.  The charge nurse thought it a bit
creepy, in fact, that he hadn't moved since then, nor had his companion.
        Gryphon and his special assistant, the young woman known only
as Raven, weren't using the waiting room's chairs, either.  Instead,
they were over in a corner.  Gryphon was on his knees, in the position
known to martial artists as seiza, hands lying slack on his thighs,
eyes closed.  Raven had assumed the classic lotus position opposite
him, across the corner.  She was wearing a dark blue cloak over her
stylish, rather gothic street clothes, and with the hood up and
casting her face in shadow, it was hard to tell whether she had her
eyes open or closed.  The charge nurse would have thought the tableau
even odder had the drape of Raven's cloak not concealed the fact that
she wasn't actually touching the floor, but rather levitating an inch
or two above it.
        A man in surgical greens came down the corridor at a trot,
leaned his head into the waiting room, and said, "Gryph?  You're gonna
want to see this."
        Before Dr. B.J. Hunnicut had finished speaking his name,
Gryphon was on his feet, the movement so quick and fluid that the
charge nurse, who had been convinced the man was in fact asleep,
started slightly.

        A few moments later, the three - Hunnicut, Gryphon, and Raven -
were in Hunnicut's office, where another doctor waited, looking at a
chart on the wall monitor.  She was a good-looking, dark-haired young
woman, apparently human and smartly dressed under a neatly starched lab
coat.  As Hunnicut and the others entered, she turned to face them.
        "Gryphon, Raven, meet the newest member of the special trauma
team," said Hunnicut, gesturing.  "Dr. Allison Cameron.  She comes to us
from the Earth Alliance medical system."
        Gryphon arched an eyebrow, shaking Dr. Cameron's hand.  "Highly
recommended?"
        Cameron smiled.  "With no recommendation at all," she replied.
"With luck, I was here before they realized I'd left."  She shrugged and
turned to the monitor, effectively closing that topic except to add
breezily, "If I'd known you had such interesting patients here, I'd have
come sooner.  Here's Investigator Sidle's profile when your bluesuiters
brought her in," she noted, pointing.  "Biochemical markers all over the
place, third-degree burns, three broken limbs.  Not a healthy young
woman by any stretch.  We got her stable, set the fractures, and put
her in ICU for burn treatment."
        Gryphon nodded.  "And?"
        Hunnicut flipped to the next screen.  "Here she is now - well,
five minutes ago."
        Gryphon blinked.  He wasn't a doctor, but centuries of
soldiering and other dangerous work had left him with a decent
facility at reading medical charts.  He'd seen his own often enough
after various things had happened to him.
        "Some mild first-degree burns?  Healing fractures
approximately three weeks old?  What do you, have her on a Miraculon
drip?"
        Cameron shook her head.  "We thought about it, but about 10
percent of the Cheltari Salusian population has a severe allergy.
There's nothing in her history about it, but I didn't want to risk
it without being able to ask her.  Take a look at the biochemical
markers, though.  They tell the really interesting story."
        Gryphon looked, shook his head.  "They don't make any sense to
me.  It's been a while since I had to read a metabolic analysis."
        Hunnicut grinned.  "Dr. Cameron's an immunologist by trade - she
reads 'em all the time, and this one doesn't make any sense to -her-,
either."
        Cameron nodded, pointing.  "See this?  An hour or so after the
accident, Investigator Sidle's body stopped processing sugars.  She's
still absorbing -materials-, which is why her injuries are healing, but
her -energy- is coming from... somewhere else."
        Gryphon raised his eyebrows.  "Which means?"
        Hunnicut shrugged.  "Don't know," he said.  "I've never seen
anything like it."
        "It's why she's healing so fast, though," Cameron noted.  "All
her metabolic processes are accelerated.  She doesn't seem to be -aging-
at an unnatural rate, though that's hard to say given that she's only
been in this condition for a few hours."
        "What effect will all this have, long-term?" Gryphon asked.
        "We don't even know for sure what effect it's having SHORT-
term," Hunnicut said.  "Whatever happened to her.... "  He shrugged.
"We'll just have to watch and see.  There's no evidence of brain
damage - in fact, we're seeing a -lot- of neural activity - so she
should regain consciousness, although after a shock like this, it's
anybody's guess how long that'll take."

                        WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2410
                                2:17 AM

        Catherine Willows sat on the bench in the CSI locker room on the
tenth floor and tried to muster enough enthusiasm to bother putting on
her coat and going home.  It wasn't easy.  Just sitting on the bench had
an incredible amount of appeal right now, uncomfortably hard as the
industrial seating surface happened to be.  In fact, slumping over and
falling to the floor was not entirely without its charm at this point.
        "You look tired," said a voice from the doorway.  With an
effort, Catherine turned her head to see Skuld Ravenhair, the IPO's
chief technologist, framed there.
        "You're a keen observer of detail," Catherine remarked wryly.
"You should be a criminalist."
        Skuld chuckled and sat down at the end of the bench.  "Long
week?"
        "You could say that," Catherine replied.  "Working one
investigator down, with our trace lab reduced to rubble and the day
shift missing its supervisor... "  She gestured vaguely.  "And of course
every wacko in the city picks this week to get up to weird tricks.  This
is the first night this week I've been able to head home before dawn."
She gave Skuld a look.  "I -am- going to be able to go home... ?"
        Skuld nodded, laughing.  "Don't worry, I won't keep you.  In
fact, this drill should be familiar to you, except you're usually on the
other end of it."  She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and
pulled out a self-containing swab, holding it up with a grin.  "I need a
sample of your DNA."
        Catherine raised an eyebrow.  "I'm already in the IPO database.
Everybody who works here is."
        Skuld's grin widened.  "I don't need it to identify you...
exactly.  But it needs to be fresh."
        "Can you give me a hint?"
        "Nope.  Still classified above your level.  Don't worry, it's
nothing too weird... by this place's standards."
        Catherine gave Skuld a puzzled look, then shrugged.  "What the
hell," she said, "you want to be cryptic, be cryptic."  Then, smiling,
she opened wide.

                       THURSDAY, JULY 15, 2410
                               7:43 PM

        Sara awoke from a dream of swirling blue-white wonder to
find herself in what was unmistakably a hospital room.  Given that the
last thing she remembered was the supercollider making a very ominous
noise, followed by a faint recollection of seeing the bones in her
hands outlined in a ghostly blue light as she reflexively shielded her
face, she found that perfectly understandable.
        What wasn't quite so understandable, although certainly not
unwelcome, was the fact that she still -had- her hands, and they
looked just fine.  In fact, she felt perfectly normal, as if she'd
just awakened in her apartment in Salutown, ready to get started on
another regular day.
        Not knowing quite what else to do, she punched the call button
on the "fence" at the edge of her bed.  Within 20 seconds, a pretty
young female doctor in surgical greens entered the room, followed
closely by burly, lantern-jawed Nick Stokes.
        "Hi," said the doctor.  "I'm Dr. Cameron.  I was the special
trauma physician on duty when you came in.  How do you feel?"
        Sara gave her a puzzled look.  "I feel fine.  Great, even."
        Cameron nodded.  "I figured you might.  You're in perfect
health."
        "I remember the collider exploding," Sara said.  "How can I
possibly be in perfect health?"
        "That's the $64,000 question," Cameron agreed.  "The short
answer is, we don't know."  She gave a rueful grin and added, "The long
answer is, we really don't know."
        Digesting this, Sara turned her attention to her colleague.
"Nick?  What are you doing here?"
        Stokes grinned.  "It's my turn," he said.
        "What time is it?  Shouldn't you be at work?"
        Stokes shook his head, still grinning.  "It's quarter to eight
in the evening.  On Thursday."
        Sara's eyes went wide.  "... I've been unconscious ALL WEEK?"
        "Pretty much.  You sure you're feeling all right?"
        "I feel fine."
        Stokes nodded.  "I'll head back to the office and give 'em the
good news, then.  You had us all pretty scared for a while there... "

        Cameron and various other members of the staff spent a couple
of hours testing their patient, but none of them could find any decent
excuse to keep her around, so at ten that evening, they told her she
might as well go home.  Her clothes had been ruined in the blast, of
course, but some kind soul had brought a set from home.  The list of
people with a key to her apartment was pretty short, so she could
guess who had done that.
        Sara stepped out of the hospital into a hot July evening,
wondering what to do.  She had no money - as far as she knew, her
wallet was still on her desk at work - so calling a cab wasn't going
to work, nor was catching the N.  It was a pretty long walk from Boyce
Memorial, in the City Center, to Salutown.  Not so far to the office,
and she could pick up her wallet there anyway.
        She was about halfway there when it happened.  As she made her
way along the sidewalk, mulling over her accident and her mystifyingly
quick and complete recovery, a figure in dark clothes darted out of an
alley, grabbed the shoulder bag of a young woman a dozen yards or so
ahead, pushed her down, and sprinted off down the street.
        "Hey!" Sara cried.  She sprang forward to the young woman's
side.  "You OK?"
        "Yeah... banged my knee, I think," she replied.  Up close, she
was younger than Sara had thought, maybe high school age, with dark
hair showing blonde at the roots (there's a switch, Sara thought
wryly) and too much eye makeup.
        "OK, stay here," Sara said, and then started running after the
bag-snatcher.
        Later, she wasn't really sure why she did it - instinct, she
supposed.  It was so unusual to see that kind of crime in the City
Center, though it wasn't quite as safe a district as, say, eastern
Claremont or most of Salutown, that she felt personally outraged at
having witnessed it.  She hadn't lived there all that long - just
about a year - but she was proud to live in New Avalon, and the
idea of somebody thinking he could just pull a grab like that in the
heart of downtown made her mad.
        So she ran, awkwardly at first because of the suddenness of
her start, then more smoothly as she loosened up and got into the
rhythm.  Ahead of her, she could see the grabber's black cap bobbing
up and down as he pelted along.  At this hour, the vehicle traffic in
this neighborhood was almost nonexistent, so at least they weren't
dodging cars.
        Too bad Warrick isn't here, Sara thought.  Chasing perps is
his department - DAMN this kid's fast - I think - wait a second - what
the HEEEEELLLLLLL
        Sara's surroundings suddenly accelerated into a streaking
blur, rather like the starfield did when viewed from a spacecraft
beginning the jump to hyperspace.  At the same time, something even
odder happened to her perception of it all, because even though that
had happened, she could still quite clearly see everything.  It wasn't
that everything wasn't a blur - just that she had somehow become able
to identify what every part of the blur -was- and react accordingly.
        It was over almost as fast as it started, her surroundings
snapping back into focus, her body suddenly at a halt.  She stood for
a moment, breathing hard more out of shock than exertion, and then
looked around her, stunned.
        She was on a calm, dark residential street, most of the houses
already buttoned up for the night, not a car in sight.  Slowly, she
turned around.  Behind her loomed the golden eminence of downtown New
Avalon at night, as viewed from the ridgeline of one of its pleasant
northern neighborhoods.
        Crescent Heights, she thought, identifying her orientation
relative to downtown by the positions of several of the biggest
buildings.  I'm in Crescent Heights!
        What the HELL.
        She looked around a little more, getting her bearings as to
where in the Heights she was, and then very carefully walked to the
nearest house she knew.

        "Ideas?" Gryphon asked.
        B.J. Hunnicut shrugged, glancing back through the kitchen
archway into the living room, where Sara sat thumbing pensively
through a physics text.
        "Like I said - beyond my field," he said.  "I'm going to need
to consult with an expert - if I can find one."  He smiled.  "I don't
suppose you know anybody with specialized knowledge of accelerated
humanoid metabolism."
        Gryphon looked thoughtful.  "Hmm.  I might.  Thanks, Beej.  I'll
have to make a few calls and let you know what I come up with."
        Hunnicut nodded.  "OK."  He went back into the living room,
smiling.  "Well, the bad news is, we still don't know what's happened.
The good news is, what you did doesn't seem to have caused any harm."
        Sara put the book aside.  Seeing Hunnicut's eyes following it,
she said, "I was trying to estimate how fast I was going, but it's no
use.  My perception of time was all wrong."
        "Well, there are no reports of broken glass along your route,
so I guess we can assume you didn't break the sound barrier," Gryphon
said.  "Apart from that... it takes about 10 minutes to walk here from
where you ended up, and you left the hospital 20 minutes before you
got here... "
        "And I'd been walking for at least seven or eight minutes,"
Sara said.  "So it took me no more than two or three minutes to
cover...  how far is it to City Center from here?"
        "About eight miles," Gryphon said.
        "Eight miles in two minutes... that's 240 miles an hour," Sara
said thoughtfully.  "Wow."
        Gryphon nodded, impressed.  "Not bad."
        Sara gave a rueful laugh.  "It'd be better if I could control
it," she said.
        "Maybe you just need practice," Gryphon said.
        "Hey, now wait a minute," Hunnicut put in.  "I don't think you
want to go playing with this just yet.  Let us check with a few
people, run a few more tests - we don't know what the long-term
effects of something like this might be."
        "I've had enough tests for one day."
        Hunnicut grinned.  "It'll take me a while just to figure out
what to try," he said.  "Just take it easy in the meantime."
        Sara nodded.  "I'll be careful," she said.
        After that, Hunnicut took his leave.  Gryphon saw him out,
then came back to the living room and stood in the archway, hands in
his pants pockets, looking bemused.
        "What?" Sara asked after a few moments.
        He shook his head.  "Nothin'.  Just thinking.  You want a ride
home?"
        "Sure."

        He drove her downtown in his old Nissan Skyline R32, which
happened to be her favorite of his many cars.
        "You're sure you're OK?" he asked as she climbed out and
walked around to the driver's side.
        "Fine," she said.  "Just... well, it's a little weird.
Y'know?"
        Gryphon chuckled.  "No kidding.  Well... good night, Sara.
I'm going to make a few calls, see if I can find some answers."
        She nodded.  "I'm sure we'll figure it out," she said.  Then,
with a slightly awkward smile, she added, "Well... thanks for the
ride... "
        He nodded.  "Any time.  Good night."
        "Night."  She hesitated for a moment, as if not quite sure what
to do, then just smiled again, turned, and went into the building.
        Gryphon sat in the car for a few moments, not really looking
at much of anything; then he sighed, started it up again, and drove
off.
        It's just one damn thing after another in this town, he
thought, but he did so with the ghost of a smile on his face.

        Back at Headquarters, Catherine prowled the halls of the tenth
floor, wondering idly how long it would before the place stopped
smelling like blown-up chem lab.  At least the repair crews had removed
most of the visible evidence of destruction by this point.
        Picking up the pieces was an arduous process in more than just
the literal sense.  The destruction of the night shift lab had forced
Greg into an uneasy coexistence with his opposite numbers on Days, which
wasn't a problem so much because of any rivalry between shifts as
because there just wasn't enough room for everyone during the shift
transitions.  Worse, the congestion increased the chances of things
getting mixed up, cross-contaminated, or otherwise invalidated, which
could screw things up in court later on.
        Catherine wasn't really thinking of that just now, though.  Her
thoughts were on more immediate personal matters - and Grissom was in
his office, miracle of miracles, so she at least stood a chance of
addressing one of them.
        "Hey, Gil?" she asked, leaning into the open door.
        Grissom looked up from his paperwork.  "Yes, Catherine?"
        "When you were selected for the Lens... was there a gene scan
involved?"
        Grissom looked quizzical.  "A gene scan?  No, nothing like that.
It was... well, it's hard to describe, but there were no lab procedures.
Why?"
        Catherine shrugged.  "No reason.  Just curious.  Hear anything
about the trace on Mr. Jumped-or-Pushed yet?"

        Sara wasn't particularly tired.  It wasn't even midnight yet;
on a normal day she wouldn't be getting out of work for another couple
of hours.  Besides, she'd - ha! - slept late.
        She felt a strange nervous energy, and wondered if it had
anything to do with what had happened to her.  It wasn't a new
sensation, though, so she didn't think so.  She got like this every
now and then, often on enforced days off like this.  She got edgy
without something to do.
        She tried getting online and looking up whatever she could
find about abnormal speed conditions.  Most of the hits she got back
were related to Velocity-9, unsurprisingly, but there were a few
reports of other, more interesting cases.  Those were unsatisfyingly
sketchy, though, based on old news reports and rumors.
        She had slightly better luck with in-house resources.  Her
access level to the Babylon Project Galactic Database entitled her to
a file on a man named Eobard Thawne who had gained speed powers in the
mid-2300s after a laboratory accident, exact circumstances unknown.
Thawne had gone on to be one of the founding members of Big Fire's
Magnificent Ten under the alias "Professor Zoom"; he had disappeared
under mysterious circumstances in 2402.
        Apart from that, not much was available, and since Thawne had
been a criminal who had always eluded capture, the IPO's science
division had never been able to study his powers.  There was a flag
indicating that a member of the Titans, New Avalon's main superhero
team, had similar powers, but Sara was hardly going to go looking for
advice from some teenage kid.  There were a few other notations
cross-referenced, but they didn't seem all that relevant to Sara.
Mostly, they had to do with certain martial arts techniques that
granted temporary hypermetabolism, like a natural, short-term version
of the Velocity-9 effect, or the Dantrovian gift for "metabolic
overdrive", which worked on the same principle.
        Those were interesting, but didn't seem to be connected to
what had happened to Sara.  She wasn't in a hypermetabolic state, per
se.  Sitting in her den, surfing the Net, she was perceiving time
normally.  She had none of the symptoms of the common hypermetabolic
side effects, either - dehydration, nutritional imbalances, excessive
fatigue.  She'd run eight miles in approximately two minutes earlier
in the night and felt no greater fatigue than she would normally have
felt after running to catch a bus.
        After a couple of hours of that, she pushed herself back from
the computer and sighed.  Research wasn't keeping her interested
tonight.  She didn't want to investigate the historical precedents for
what had happened to her... she wanted to explore the -effects-.
        Not recklessly, though.  Scientifically.  Deliberately.
Carefully.
        She -had- promised Dr. Hunnicut she'd be careful.

        At daybreak, Sara went to the open country northwest of the
city - a tract of rolling-hilled grassland that seemed ideal for her
purpose, being open, unobstructed, and unpopulated, without farms to
damage or mountains to run into.  It did have hills, though, and hills
made useful landmarks.
        She had with her five items with which she hoped to conduct a
scientific exploration of her new abilities.  On one wrist, she wore a
watch subetherically synchronized with the IPO master clock back at
headquarters, so that if there were any time-distortion effects
involved, she'd still be able to get a clear time reading.  On the
other, she wore a normal watch that would presumably be affected by
any such distortions.  By comparing the two, she hoped to be able to
gauge the extent of any distortions she encountered.  She also had a
pocket-sized laser rangefinder, a small notebook, and a pen.
        Her idea was to gauge the distance to, say, a far-off hill,
then run there and see how long it took her.  It was a decent idea,
and her early, cautious, tentative tests did give her some interesting
data to mull over later, but she knew as she was doing it that there
was a factor she hadn't taken into account: namely, as she got more
and more accustomed to the sensations of super-speed, she realized
that she wasn't getting up to anything like full speed on these little
jaunts.
        She tried longer ones, sighting from hilltop to hilltop, but
after an hour or so she was forced to admit that she wasn't really
getting anywhere.
        "OK," Sara mused to herself, looking over her notes.  "Let's
try a different approach."  She looked at her etherwatch, switched its
mode, and got a fix on her coordinates from the pseudocontinent's
positioning system.  Then she pulled up the list of standard waypoints
and looked for a suitably distant one.
        There - the edge of the Western Desert.  That was 72.39
straight-line miles from her present location, with no habitations or
farms in between.  The way she'd felt after the longer short hops,
distances that would have winded an ordinarily fit person as she had
until recently been, she suspected she wouldn't have much trouble
going that distance... so the question was, how fast could she do it?
        Only one way to find out...

                            /*  Juno Reactor
                              "Conga Fury"
                         _Bible of Dreams_  */

        She started out at a normal run, then pushed herself faster,
then faster still.  After about thirty paces she felt the now-familiar
shift as she accelerated past what a normal humanoid could do.  It was
an odd sort of feeling, one without a useful analog in normal,
everyday life.  Before that breaking point, running felt like
running.  After it, there wasn't a phrase to describe the feeling.
        Sara kept climbing the acceleration curve, feeling herself
going faster and faster.  She could also feel her heart beating in her
chest, but it wasn't pounding; just loping lazily along, as if to say,
Don't worry about me, chief, I can handle whatever you've got in
mind.  She felt good, loose and balanced, like she had when things had
been going right during the annual Science Academy Desert Foot Race back
on Vulcan.  Her yearly foray into charity foot racing (a tradition the
various law enforcement agencies of Avalon County also indulged in) was
her only regular opportunity to experience the so-called runner's high,
but - as now - it always reminded her of why hardcore runners bothered
with it.
        In fact, she got so lost in the feeling - the world streaming
past at an impossible and ever-increasing speed, individual elements
snapping into and out of focus like time-lapse flickers as she passed
by, hurtling onward but never feeling the slightest bit like control
was slipping away - that she lost track of what she had been
attempting to do.  Only the sight of the desert's border flashing past
snapped her out of the reverie, and by then she was a hundred miles
beyond it, detouring with detached, microsecond precision around
boulders and crags.
        Oh, well, the hell with it, she thought.  I'm still nowhere
near top speed...
        Sara began to wonder if she even -had- a top speed.
        Under the circumstances, trying to find it on the day after
regaining consciousness was probably not within the limits of being
careful... but by now she was beyond really worrying about that.  She
lost herself in the feeling and just ran, harder, ever harder.
        It did start getting more difficult after a while - not
I'd-better-ease-off-or-I'm-going-to-hurt-myself difficult, but there
did come a definite sense of having to put some effort into going
faster.  She was oddly pleased to learn that there was a point at
which the curve started getting steeper, though even now she felt like
she had plenty more to go before she would really hit her upper limit.
        Before she could give that too much thought, though, she ran
out of ground.
        Sara saw the precipice coming with almost no time to spare, at
the speed she was going, but her reaction time seemed to improve along
with her ground speed.  Where before she'd been lost in the sensations
and run right past her intended stopping point, now she was able to
put on the brakes in plenty of time, and it didn't take her anywhere
near as long to stop as it had to get going.  That, too, was a strange
and near-euphoric sensation, the feeling of inertia bending almost
unwillingly before her as she came to a sudden, windblown halt at the
edge of a towering cliff.
        She stood there for a few seconds getting her bearings.  A
hundred feet or so below her, surf pounded on rocks.  Before her
stretched an infinite-looking sheet of blue-green water.  Her shadow,
long and sharp, stretched out over that water.  Behind her, Zeta Cygni
was barely rising.  Off to the left, just visible in the faint haze on
the horizon, were the towers of a city.
        Sara checked her coordinates.  They confirmed what she already
knew.
        Slightly but not extravagantly breathless, and that more from
emotion than exertion, she murmured to herself,
        "... the Great Western Ocean.  That's... that's -Perth- over
there.  I just crossed the pseudocontinent.  Three thousand, two hundred
ninety-four Standard miles... in... "  She switched her etherwatch back
to time mode.  "... twenty-two minutes."  She blinked.  "That's
impossible.  That's almost... 9,000 miles per hour.  ... And I'm talking
to myself."

        Sara made it back to New Avalon in slightly -less- time, still
feeling no ill effects.  As she got more accustomed to the sensations
of incredible speed, control became easier. She didn't overshoot her
mark on the way back.  It became obvious as she retraced her path that
some force was mostly negating the effects her speed should be having
on her surroundings.  She saw no evidence of the hypersonic blast
damage her westward passage should have caused on the way back, and at
9,000 miles per hour, that should have been extensive.
        Curious.
        She found her department-issue vehicle parked where she'd left
it an hour and 6,500 miles ago, got in, and drove home, thoughtful.

        Sara was back at work the following day, insisting that there
was no reason why she shouldn't be.  Her brush with death had had some
peculiar aftereffects, yes, but she was dealing with them, and she saw
no reason why they should affect her work.  She felt fine, okay?
        Okay, her co-workers said, and let the matter drop.  No sense in
making her all grumpy again.

                        TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2410

        The problem with having a night shift and a day shift in
anything, be it a crime lab or a customer service department, is that
whenever there's some kind of all-hands meeting or training session,
somebody's going to get screwed.  One shift or the other is going to
be able to log it as work time, while the other will have to report at
what is, to them, a savage and unnatural time of day.
        It's almost always the night shift that gets the shaft in this
way, and this particular day was no exception.  In one of the
uncomfortable chairs of the Avalon Centre Hotel's big conference room,
Sara Sidle shifted her weight slightly and tried to calculate mentally
what "logical" time of day it was for her, adjusting the start and end
times of her normal workday as though they were 9 AM and 6 PM.  There
was about an eight-hour differential on most days, which meant that
for Sara and her shiftmates, it was logical 3 AM.
        No wonder she felt a little spacey.  Then again, the
presentation she was attending was so dull it might not have
mattered.  Some of the day-shift guys were looking kind of dungy too.
Barry Allen in particular looked like he was about to nod off and fall
face-first into his handouts.
        The IPO crime lab was usually a very nice place to work; it
had a minimum of this sort of bullshit.  But two or three times a
year, circumstances conspired against the planners of such events and
forced them to schedule something at an awkward time and in a
less-than-fortunate venue.  Then again, the uncomfortable seating
might be the only thing keeping people awake right now.  Even Sara,
who was normally easy to engage with anything remotely technical in
her field, was finding it hard to get really excited about this
particular lecture on xenocomparative blood spatter evidence.
        Abruptly the building shook, jarring her out of her
half-sleepy reverie.  Above her, a few pieces of the ceiling broke
away and began to fall - then slowed... slowed... and halted in
mid-air.
        It took her a moment to realize what must have happened - to
her, if not to the ceiling.  The debris was still falling.  Her own
perception of time had shifted into a higher gear, as it were, so that
it was falling so slowly it seemed to have stopped.  This was a new
phenomenon; before, when she'd used her speed, her perception of time
had stayed more or less normal and her perception of the -world- had
changed, sharpening to the point where she could keep up.  (And thank
the fates for -that-; she couldn't even imagine how -boring- a
cross-pseudocontinent trip would've been if she had perceived her
running pace as normal.)
        It was an interesting sensation, but she filed it away for
later, got up from her seat, and started looking around for some
inkling of what was going on.
        Two rows away, to her shock, someone else was doing the same
thing - at the same speed.
        Barry Allen turned, a quizzical look on his face, and made eye
contact with Sara.  For a moment, the two stared at each other in
mutual disbelief.
        Allen recovered first.  "It's a bomb, I think," he said.  His
voice sounded a little squeaky - he was going a little faster than she
was, apparently - but it was perfectly understandable.
        "What can we do?" Sara asked.
        "Start getting people out before the ceiling finishes coming
down," Allen said.
        Sara turned to the person next to her - Nick Stokes, a
daunting enough mass under normal circumstances, but now seemingly
made of concrete thanks to his much-different frame of temporal
reference.
        "How?" she asked Allen.
        "Here," he said, "I'll show you."

        It was, indeed, a bomb - one that took out several upstairs
rooms in the hotel and caused the conference room to collapse, and
which the two shifts' worth of crime scene investigators who happened
to be right there were able to trace within two hours back to a
disgruntled former employee.  ("What's it like being a rocket
scientist?" Jim Brass asked this worthy as he made the arrest.)  The
only thing about the incident that they weren't able to fully explain
was how they all managed to get out of the conference room before the
flaming wreckage of the rooms above fell into it.
        Thanks to their work schedules, it wasn't until Saturday
afternoon that Sara and Allen were able to meet and compare notes.

                        SATURDAY, JULY 24, 2410

        Barry Allen lived in a modest ranch-style home on a quiet street
in the leafy, pleasant suburb of Elstree, west of the city center.  It
was just the kind of place Sara had expected a man with a crew cut and a
penchant for saying things like "gosh" would live - complete with a
neatly cut lawn, a white picket fence, and a sensible sedan parked in
the driveway.  He even answered the door wearing exactly the same kind
of clothes he wore to work, including a tie.
        Inside, the house kept up its impression of being from another
time.  Tidy and trim, it was decorated in a retro style: low-slung
leather furniture with smooth, tapered legs; shag rugs; wall clocks with
chrome spokes; lots of Formica in the kitchen.  Barry led her to the
living room and introduced her to his wife, who, Sara was surprised to
discover, she already knew, at least casually.  Iris West was a reporter
for the Cornet-Scientifer, one of the ones who could be counted on not
to screw up an investigation.
        "I had no idea you were married," Sara observed, "let alone to
Barry."
        "Well, we try not to spread it around too much in professional
circles," Iris explained.  "If people knew I had that kind of connection
to the crime lab, they might assume I was getting inside information."
She smiled.  "But it's no big secret either.  I mainly kept my maiden
name on my byline so that I wouldn't lose what name recognition I'd
already built up.  Anyway," she went on, "I understand you have need of
Barry's insight into... a particular matter."
        Sara glanced sharply at Allen, who smiled and patted his wife's
hand.  "Iris has known about my, er, special ability for years," he
explained.  "When I lived on Earth, before I came to work for the IPO,
I operated in costume for a few years.  Our nephew Wally is carrying
that on now, as one of the Titans."
        Sara blinked.  "The Flash is your nephew?"
        "Iris's brother's son," Allen explained.  "I gave up the life
when we moved to New Avalon.  It never really suited me anyway.  I did
it because there wasn't anyone else in Central City who could, but
around here, there's plenty of that kind of help when the city needs it.
I'm happier where I am.  But I still know a few tricks," he added with a
grin.  "I showed you one of them Tuesday."
        "Right, and that's why I'm here," Sara said, sitting forward in
her armchair, elbows on knees.  "I take it something similar... happened
to you at some point?"
        "Eerily similar in some respects," Allen said.  "I was struck by
the lightning -directly-, and my chemical bath came from a supply
cabinet that was next to me at the time, but the general circumstances
were very much the same."
        Sara looked faintly troubled as she posed the next question
slowly, taking her time to choose her words carefully.
        "Did you ever work out... exactly what -happened- to you?  What
you... -became-?"
        "I think so," Allen said.  "Mind you, it's only a theory, but
here's my take on it."

        Half an hour later, Sara sat back in her chair with an
expression somewhere between puzzled, astounded, and disturbed.  For a
few seconds, she tried in silence to digest what Barry Allen had just
told her.
        Then she said, "Wow.  That's... wow."
        Allen chuckled.  "Pretty much my sentiments too, at the time."
        "So... if what you're saying is true, then... what -are- we now?
Because it sounds like what you're saying is that you're not... not -
human- any more.  Which would make -me-... "  She trailed off.
        Allen shook his head.  "No, no.  I don't look at it that way at
all.  I'm still the same guy I always was.  What my body can do doesn't
change that.  It's just that... "  He searched for words.  "You and I,
and Wally, and a very few others I know of... we're all -connected- to
something.  I don't know exactly what it is.  Maybe it's unknowable.
All I'm sure of is that the energy that drives us, propels us forward,
comes from somewhere -outside- normal time and space.  Which is probably
why we ourselves are, in a sense, exempt from the usual rules.  Whatever
it is, wherever it comes from, that energy is the source of all the
amazing things we can do."
        Sara quirked an eyebrow.  "'All'?  There's more to it than just
running really fast?"
        Allen grinned.  "Oh yeah.  There's a -lot- more to it than that.
Fate's given you a great gift, Sara.  If you want, I can teach you how
to use it... but what you do with it after that is up to you."

        For Sara Sidle, the next month was a revelatory, albeit
exhausting, experience.  By night, she went to work as always, assuring
her co-workers that she was fully recovered from her accident.  By day,
she immersed herself in research, trying with all her scientific
training and intellect to understand what had happened to her.
        And in between, whenever her free time and Barry Allen's matched
up, she learned the subtle art of being lightning.
        Of the three, the last was the most immediately satisfying.
Work was work, with its usual highs and lows, but just now there were no
really immersing cases in the offing.  The research started out
frustrating, as dead end after dead end cropped up.
        Chemical studies of the substances she'd been exposed to proved
fruitless.  Nobody could predict what any of them might have become when
exposed to an environment such as must have been inside that collision
chamber before the bulkhead blew.  Every calculation, every act of
scientific prediction, Sara tried gave her back the same result.  Caught
in the blast radius of the exploding supercollider, it shouldn't have
mattered -what- was being studied in there - she should have been
vaporized.  Since she clearly hadn't been, she had to conclude, however
reluctantly,  that for once conventional science had no answer.
        So that left examining what -had- happened, rather than trying
to pin down its cause.  Sara worked on that by herself, as best she
could, for two weeks before finally deciding that the job was too big
for just one person.  If nothing else, she couldn't be test subject and
observer at the same time.  She needed at least one other pair of
trained eyes, probably more than one, to really gauge what was going on.
        For a week, she bent all her spare efforts toward figuring out a
series of experiments she could enlist some help to conduct.  Her co-
workers sensed her increased detachment and knew from experience that
she was thinking hard about -something-, but, not having been informed
of the strange side effects her accident had brought with it, they had
no idea what it might be.  Rather than bug her about it, which never
worked anyway, they just waited, figuring they'd either hear about it
someday, or whatever it was would blow over.
        One month after the explosion, life was pretty much back to
normal on the tenth floor.  Greg Sanders enjoyed his replacement
supercollider so much he put off his long-pending transfer to field
operations long enough to master its complexities before handing it off
to a replacement.  Cases came and went, none of them terribly
compelling, but at least the crushing weirdness of the shorthanded week
had abated.  Catherine heard nothing from Skuld's office and eventually
stopped wondering what all the fuss with the DNA swab had been about.
        That week, Sara finished planning and started working on
execution.

                       THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2410
                     BOYCE MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER

        Sara found Dr. Allison Cameron in her office, doing whatever it
was that doctors did in their offices.
        "Doctor?" she asked from the doorway.  "Got a second?"
        Cameron looked up and smiled.  "Hi, Sara.  Sure, come on in.
How do you feel?"
        "Great," Sara replied, sitting down in a chair opposite the
doctor's desk.  "I feel great.  Never better.  Listen, are you free this
Saturday?"
        Cameron looked faintly quizzical.  "I can be," she said.  "Why,
what's up?"
        "Well," Sara said, "I'm putting together a little... test, and
I'd like to have a doctor there as part of the observation team.  You
know more about my case than pretty much anybody else, so you're the
logical one to ask... "
        "A -dangerous- test?" Cameron asked.
        "No, no," Sara said.  "At least I don't think it will be," she
added wryly.  "I suppose there's always the chance something might go
wrong, but... no, I want you there for your input on the test results,
not because I think I'll need medical attention."
        "Oh.  Well, in that case, sure, I'd be happy to.  What kind of
test did you have in mind?"
        Sara smiled and pulled a notebook from her shoulder bag.

        Two hours later, Gil Grissom was in his office, getting ready to
brief his team as they got ready to take on their last shift of the
week, when Sara swung in.
        "Hey," she said.
        Grissom looked up.  "Hey," he replied.
        "Can I talk to you a second before the shift meeting?" Sara
asked.
        "Okay," Grissom replied, slightly bemused.  Sara wasn't usually
the "can I talk to you a second" type, and when she was, the resulting
discussion had a tendency to get -weird- by Grissom's standards.  The
last time she'd wanted to talk to him for a second, her question had
been about his opinion, as her supervisor, of the possible effects on
her career trajectory that might be caused by a liaison with the Chief
(one which, he was given to understand, she'd decided against having
anyway).
        Thus it was a little warily that he added, "What's on your
mind?"

                       SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2410
                 SECTOR 17C3AE, ZETA CYGNI DYSON SPHERE

        Apart from the Avalon pseudocontinent and the vast Utopia
Planitia shipyard complex, the interior of the Zeta Cygni Dyson sphere
was largely given over to energy collection surfaces, which drank in the
radiations of Zeta Cygni and provided for the massive power demands of
the aforementioned settlements.  Largely, but not entirely.  In Sector
17C3AE, far removed from the pseudocontinent and any part of the
shipyard, things were different.
        The sector is entirely given over to a single massive structure,
built up from the curved interior of the sphere so as to provide a
perfectly level platform.  This platform represents one of the largest
continuous flat surfaces ever created, a square, utterly featureless
plain of metal encompassing fully 100 million square miles (which sounds
big, but is only a tiny fraction of the sphere's colossal interior).
Ringed by force barriers and laced with sophisticated telemetry
equipment, it exists for one reason and one reason only: to be the best
place in the galaxy for making things go very, very fast on the ground.
        It is formally known as Burt Munro Memorial Speedway, but all
who frequent it refer to it with great affection as the Bonneville Steel
Flat.

        "What are we doing here?" Nick wondered as he and his colleagues
disembarked from the runabout Grissom had borrowed from the IPO motor pool 
for the trip out.
        "Beats me," Greg replied, shrugging.  "Maybe Sara's been
distracted all month 'cause she's been building a jet car."
        "Yeah, picture that," said Warrick Brown skeptically.
        "She's got enough telemetry gear set up for it," Nick noted,
pointing to the bank of consoles arranged by the landing area.
        "And isn't that one of the doctors from Boyce?" Warrick asked.
        "Yeah," said Nick.  "Yeah, I think it is."
        Nick was right, Greg reflected: The area near the landing pad
did look like the kind of thing you'd expect to see set up for a test of
some high-speed vehicle... except no vehicle.  Instead, there was just a
sizeable array of portable sensors, telemetry consoles, and Anvil-cased
field computers; a good-looking woman in a lab coat; a folding chair;
and Sara, dressed in what appeared to be a running suit, lacing up a
pair of expensive-looking trainers.  A pair of old-fashioned brass-
framed goggles rested on her forehead.
        "All right, Sara, we're here," said Grissom in his I'm-confused-
but-game voice.  "Now would you like to tell us what's going on?"
        Sara looked up and smiled.  "Oh, hey, you're all here.  That's
good.  I've got consoles for all of you.  Have you all met Dr. Cameron?
Okay.  Great.  Let's get started."
        "Uhh... before we do, what's with the Agatha Heterodyne
goggles?" Greg wondered.
        With a slight smirk, Sara reached up, settled the goggles over
her eyes, and regarded her Dantrovian colleague through their green-
tinted lenses.
        "I'm doing Science, Greg," she replied as if the answer were
self-evident.  He could hear the capital letter.  "It's required."
        Then she briskly assigned each of her bemused colleagues to a
monitoring or recording station.  Once she was sure everyone was
situated, she stood for a moment looking from one to the next, like a
flight director polling her mission controllers, before speaking.
        "Okay.  This is going to seem a little weird, but... my accident
last month?  Had an interesting side effect.  And rather than wait until
you all find out about it under less-than-ideal circumstances, I decided
to get your help investigating it."  She turned to Cameron.  "All set?"
        Cameron nodded.  "Medical telemetry looks normal.  Signal's
good.  I'm ready when you are."
        "All right then."  Sara stepped to a line taped on the metal
"ground" and turned, facing an infinite-looking expanse of nothing in
particular.  From here, at the edge of a featureless flat space bigger
than the surface area of Earth, under a black sky illuminated by a
motionless dead-center sun, she felt momentarily as if she were standing
at the center of the universe.
        Then she shook off the sensation and started running.

                           /*  Lenny Kravitz
                       "Are You Gonna Go My Way?"
                     _Are You Gonna Go My Way?_  */

        Greg turned to Nick, slack-jawed, and managed to say, "... I
guess she doesn't need a jet car."

        Once Sara's colleagues recovered their wits and got to work,
they spent a good four hours at it, collecting data and trying different
sensor settings, piling up the most extensive study ever conducted, as
far as any of them knew, of a person with hypervelocity motion
abilities.  Then, rather than call it a day, they returned to New
Avalon to have a look at their take.
        To preclude the possibility of anyone else finding out about
Sara's special abilities (and because what they were doing was not,
strictly speaking, work-related), they didn't use their usual lab
facilities.  Instead, the whole crew and all the gear adjourned to one
of the network of safehouses the IPO maintained in the city - in this
case, a warehouse in Pinewood.  By midnight, the place was littered with
empty Chinese takeout boxes as well as criminalists and equipment, and
the whole thing had the convivial air of a college project team all-
nighter, part work, part party.
        One thing that all the members of the crime lab night shift crew
(and Dr. Cameron, come to that) had in common was their love of a good
mystery.  Now, faced with one that - for a change - had nothing to do
with crime or violent death, they dug in with relish, switching
stations, compiling notes, getting each other's takes on the results.
        At 2:30 in the morning, they ordered pizza, cleared the remains
of the previous meal from the big table in the middle of the room, and
gathered to discuss their findings.
        "All right, what've we got?" Grissom asked.
        "Man, what haven't we got?" Nick replied.  "It'll be -weeks-
before we've had a chance to analyze all of this stuff."
        "Still, the preliminaries are pretty impressive in themselves,"
Warrick said.  "Top speed of 145,503 miles per hour on pass 5... "
        "I think I could've pushed that one harder, but I'd have run out
of room, even out there," Sara put in.
        "Well, it's not like we're going to find a bigger test surface,
uh, -anywhere-," Greg said.
        "We could try somewhere else in the sphere," Nick mused.
        "I think Zeta Cygni Light and Power would complain if we started
running tests across their energy collectors," Grissom observed.
"Besides, most of the interior doesn't have a breathable atmosphere."
        "We could just use the -outside-, if Sara didn't mind doing her
test runs in an EVA suit," Catherine joked.
        Grissom looked like he was seriously considering that for a
moment, then said, "No, probably not a good idea."
        "Aw, why not?" Catherine asked.
        "Because if she trips at that speed, she'll launch herself right
off at escape velocity," Grissom explained patiently.  "And while I'm
sure Gryphon would be amused at me asking to borrow a runabout to go get
her, all the same I'd rather not."
        "Excuse me, I am not interested in becoming a projectile," Sara
put in.
        "Oddly enough," Dr. Cameron said, "you kind of already do.
Take a look at this phase analysis."  She slid a printout across the
table to Sara, who picked it up and looked it over.  "That 'break point'
you feel when you hit a certain speed?  The PA shows a major spike in
resonance at that point.  Your molecular structure... -dissociates-.
Partially."
/--
        As she accumulates speed, Sara's body begins to draw strange
energies from some outside source.  As this occurs, her physical
structure changes.  At first, the alterations are predictably
physiological: Muscle fibers strengthen, metabolic and endocrine
processes become more efficient, glucose conversion accelerates.  As
more than one user of Velocity-9 has learned to his cost, however, such
changes can only carry a person so far before permanent harm is done,
and long before the situation reaches that point, something much more
dramatic takes place in Sara Sidle.
        At the point where ordinary running ceases and overt
superhumanoid movement begins, the energy buildup in her molecular
structure reaches a sort of "flashpoint" - and abruptly, very abruptly,
everything changes.  The very atoms that make up her physical structure
reach a vibrational resonance at which they separate slightly, the
ordinary bonds between them broken.  At this point, she is not so much a
Salusian female running at extremely high speed as she is a cloud of
atoms hurtling through space in a tight formation maintained by this
unknown energy.  She perceives this only as a slight shifting sensation,
as of a car going into a higher gear.
        It is this molecular dissociation that protects her from what
would normally befall an unprotected person traveling at those speeds.
It is this strange propelling energy, harnessed by her consciousness,
that enables her to turn, accelerate, and stop without regard for the
forces of inertia that would normally act on a body of her mass.  And
when stop she does, everything falls back into place without a hitch or
murmur.
        Barry Allen was correct.  Those touched by the lightning were
still who they had been... but they were also more.
---/
        Sara looked up from the printout, clearly gobsmacked by the
revelation.  After a couple of seconds, though, she recovered enough of
her aplomb to try and laugh it off.
        "Well," she said.  "Who knew that phase analyzer would actually
come in handy someday?"
        "Sort of makes you wonder if the rumors are true," Greg agreed.
"Maybe the Chief really -can- see the future."
        Sara snorted.  "Ha!  Not hardly."  She took a drink of Diet
Hassy and gestured toward the main computer bank.  "Go back to the
'dissociating molecules' part.  That sounds potentially Bad."
        Grissom shook his head.  "It looks like the energy field that
turns up whenever you're at speed keeps everything in its proper
relation when you're out of phase.  I'm not sure what the energy
involved -is-, but whatever it is, it keeps you together."
        Sara frowned.  Barry Allen referred to that energy, somewhat
prosaically, as "the speed force", but of course she was't about to tell
the others about that.  The man's secrets weren't hers to spread around,
after all.
        "Hm," she said.  "So where does that leave us?"
        Cameron looked at her watch.  "Well," she said, "it leaves -us-
in a secret warehouse at 3 in the morning... and it leaves -you- with
super-speed."
        Sara gave her a sardonic look.  "Thank you, Doctor Obvious," she
said wryly.  "Mainly what I'm concerned about is whether this is stable,
or if I'm going to have some kind of weird metabolic crash and DFO at
some point."
        Cameron looked puzzled.  "DFO?"
        "Oh, come on, Dr. Cameron," said Nick with a grin.  "Among
witnesses trying to explain things to us criminalists, Done-Fell-Over
Syndrome is the leading cause of unexplained deaths.  You're in
emergency medicine, surely you've heard of it."
        Cameron laughed.  "Ah.  No doubt this is a corollary to the
Mysterious Dude Defense I've read so much about."
        "Very, very often," Sara confirmed.  Then, thoughtfully, she
added, "I suppose with this 'molecular dissociation' thing going on, I
should worry about being the first recorded case of Done-Fell-APART
Syndrome."
        "Gil's mystery energy should keep that from being a concern, but
I'll have to get back to you when I'm done analyzing all the vectors,"
said Catherine.  "In the meantime," she added with a grin, "I guess
you're not going to need your company car any more."
        Sara looked skeptical.  "What, like I'm going to carry a hundred
pounds of crime scene gear around on my -back-?"
        "I know some people on Kane's," Nick offered.  "I could get you
one of those Batman utility belts."
        "Thank you, Nick, but I don't think that'll be - "  She trailed
off.  "... actually, do you think you could?"
        "If you have a line on the supplier, Nick, I'd be interested in
getting a quote for the whole team," Grissom put in.  "That equipment's
state-of-the-art."
        Nick looked surprised, then said, "They don't exactly sell the
things at Cops-R-Us, but like I said, I know some people.  If you're
serious, I'll make a few calls."
        Grissom nodded.  "Thank you."  Then, sighing, he rubbed the
bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.  "Well.  This
complicates things somewhat."  Then, before anyone could ask him what he
meant by that, he stood up and said, "Good work, everybody.  Go home and
get some rest.  Nice to meet you, Dr. Cameron.  The rest of you, I'll
see tomorrow night."
        Sara watched him go, then turned to the others.  "Well, that was
abrupt."
        "Yeah, I wonder what he meant by 'this complicates things',"
Nick mused.
        "Pay scale's probably different if you've got superpowers," said
Warrick.  "Not that you'll ever need to get paid again after the OT on
that Zardon job."
        Sara looked exasperated.  "Are you still on about that?  You'd
have made out better than me if you'd just bet on me to find the guy,"
she added with a playful grin.
        "You know I'm not allowed to do that," Warrick replied, trying
to sound indignant but mostly failing.

        The next week kept the criminalists of the night shift too busy
to think much about what they'd discovered that weekend.  Back at the
warehouse, where one or another of them would periodically check in as
time permitted, the computers kept chewing on the data, but nothing
really diverting emerged; the developing picture merely refined the
impressions they already had.  For the most part, there was too much
"real" work to be done for any of them to give it much thought.
        What spare time Sara had between immediate cases was given over
to a somewhat more cautious and methodical repeat of her investigation
into the four designer drugs.  The resumption of this project was made
possible mainly by the repairs to the chem lab, which included a new,
uprated supercollider with a thoroughly tested safety system.
        "This new collider is sweet," Greg observed while helping her
out with one of the tests.  "Ecklie should've blown this place up years
ago."
        "I think I should object to that," Sara replied, "but... "
        In fact, she'd been thinking about that a lot, in her copious
free time.  Thanks to Ecklie's cavalier disregard for everyone's safety,
she'd experienced the kind of radical, life-altering event most people
only read about - and yet, it really didn't seem to have changed things
all that much.  She was still working the same job, still taking the
same sort of fulfillment from it, still moving in the same circles.
She'd made a couple of new friends, but apart from that...
        ... well, it had occurred to her that there might be a -few-
changes she might do with making, once she got a day off.

                        THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2410
                              THE MILLRACE

        Nick found Jim Brass standing on the curb outside a nondescript
apartment building, looking rather bored.  Bored was Brass's default
expression, though, so it didn't really tell Nick much other than he was
on the clock.  He was more animated after hours, unless they were
playing poker.  The young forensic scientist shook his head at the
thought.  The detective's poker face was murder on Nick's game and his
nickel jar.
        "Got the page, what've we got?"
        "Neighbors reported sounds of a fight and a loud noise, maybe
gunfire of some sort," Brass told him.  "Uniforms busted in and didn't
find anyone.  Looks like there's some blood, though, so they called us
to do a once-over before they made a bigger mess than they already did."
        "Heh.  Give 'em a break, they never get to use the battering
ram.  You been up yet?"
        "They swept the place, no one else has been in or out, figured
I'd wait for you."
        Nick hefted his field kit.  "All right, let's do it."

                            IPO HEADQUARTERS

        Catherine was loitering in the bullpen, waiting to hear back on
a DNA trace, when her phone rang.
        "Criminalistics, Willows," she said, noting automatically as she
did so that the newly opened connection had no video signal.
        Not that she really needed one to identify the caller, who said
in a very familiar voice, "Hi, Mom."
        Catherine grinned at the sound of her daughter's voice.
"Lindsey, hey.  Where are you?  I'm not getting any picture."
        "We're on Tatooine, Mom," Lindsey explained patiently.  "They
don't have video phones way out here.  Listen, are you still coming to
the show on Meizuri next week?"
        "That's the plan.  Grissom signed off on my registration for the
conference today."
        "Is Warrick still coming too?" Lindsey asked playfully.
        "Down, girl," Catherine replied, laughing.  "We'll both be there
- and I'll be watching you the whole time, so don't get any ideas."
        "Buzzkill," said Lindsey with mock petulance.
        "Listen to me, only child," Catherine said.  "Older guys are
nothin' but trouble."
        "Funny, Captain Tenjou told me the same thing once.  What about
Kate's dad, though?  He's -really- old."
        "That's different.  And he's trouble too, in his own way,"
Catherine added with a smile she was vaguely glad her daughter couldn't
see.  "I hope you're behaving yourself out there."
        "Of course I am," said Lindsey piously.  "What kind of girl do
you think I am?"
        "I remember what kind of girl -I- was, and then I start to get
the Fear," Catherine explained.
        "Pff," Lindsey replied.  "I'm safer out here than I would be at
home."
        "That... might actually be true," conceded Catherine.
        "'Kay, I gotta go.  See you next week.  And give my love to
Warrick!"
        "If it keeps -you- from doing it," Catherine replied dryly,
"gladly.  Love you, kid."
        "Love you too, Mom.  Bye."
        As Catherine was putting the phone down, Warrick sloped into the
bullpen with a printout in his hand.  "Hey," he said.
        "Hey," Catherine replied.  "That was Lindsey.  She sends her
love, she's looking forward to seeing you next week, and if you touch
her, I'll kill you," she added conversationally.
        Warrick held up his hands.  "Whoa, hey, I did -nothing- to
encourage her," he protested.  Then, shrugging, he went on, "Guess I'll
have to have a talk with the girl."
        "Yeah.  God knows her -mother's- efforts have gone unrewarded."
        Warrick sat on the corner of her desk and affected a look of
modesty.  "Well, you know how it is, Cath," he joked.  "Some ladies just
can't resist."
        "Uh-huh," said Catherine dryly.  Then, looking around, she said,
"Speaking of which, where the hell is Nicky?"
        Warrick raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

                              THE MILLRACE

        Nick swept his flashlight around the living room, soaking in
details.  Brass hadn't been kidding: The place was a wreck.  It became
rapidly apparent to Nick, however, that the overambition of the NAPD was
only a fraction of the fault.
        "Somebody turned this place over good before our boys got here."
        "Mmmm," Brass grunted.  "Why do you guys never turn on the
lights?  I mean, I know having a flashlight fetish is a prerequisite for
the job and all..."
        Nick laughed.  "Man, don't let Grissom hear you talk like that.
That's heresy.  I'm going to check the bedroom."
        "Have fun."

                            105 MORGAN LANE
                            CRESCENT HEIGHTS

        Gryphon got home a little after six, for a change, and spent the
first few minutes after his arrival wondering just what he was going to
do with himself.  With the younger crowd out marauding and the older
ones either on assignment or off doing their own stuff, he was at a bit
of a loose end.  He considered finding out what Paige was up to and, if
it happened to be work-related, tagging along, but -
        "Evening, Chief!" said a voice cheerily from the archway into
the living room.  "Got a minute?"
        Gryphon whirled, yanking a plasma pistol from inside his coat,
and found himself leveling his weapon at a grinning Sara Sidle, who
stood leaning against the archway, arms folded.
        "Gah!" Gryphon blurted.  "Wh - how did you get in here?"
        Sara looked back over her shoulder, then said nonchalantly, "Oh,
uh - turns out I can run through walls if I try hard enough."
        "Jeez."  Gryphon put away his weapon.  "Don't do that.  I
could've shot you."
        Sara gave that a moment's consideration, then said matter-of-
factly, "Actually, I don't think you could."
        "... This is going to be a problem, isn't it," Gryphon observed.
        "That you can't shoot me?" Sara asked with a quirky smile.
        "That your attitude's getting weird," Gryphon replied.
        "Oh, come on," said Sara.  "You're always after me to lighten up
a little."
        "Aren't you supposed to be at work?"
        "I took the day off," said Sara casually, as if that were
something she, well, -ever- did.  "Got plans for dinner?  I thought
maybe you could get a jet or something and I'd race you to Perth."
        Gryphon eyed her skeptically for a moment, then grinned.
"You're on.  Just give me time to get to Mathews."  As they left the
house, he asked, "By the way, just out of curiosity, does this mean
we're Sort Of Dating Or Something again?"
        "Well," said Sara judiciously, "Catherine said you were worried
about me getting hurt by your enemies?  And I'd like to see them try to
-catch- me now."
        "Don't get cocky," Gryphon cautioned her.
        "What, you don't -want- another shot?" she asked, breaking out
her quirky smile again.  Then, shrugging with affected nonchalance, she
added, "That's cool too."
        "Ahh, I didn't say that," Gryphon replied.

        More of the same disorder greeted Nick in the bedroom.  He
carefully threaded through the debris, noting some blood on the bed.
Weird spatter pattern, and the color wasn't quite right.  He knelt down
to eye level, looking at it in the direction the blood was travelling in
when it hit the sheets.  He looked around the opposite way and was
greeted by a view of the closet door, one of those two-panel over/under
sliding setups.  Curious, he walked over and carefully slid one side
open with a gloved hand.
        What happened next happened so fast that, for a brief moment,
Nick could've sworn there was just a gun floating in mid-air, pointing
at him.  Looked like a plain old projectile weapon of a type he knew he
should recognize, but the adrenaline dump that was already starting made
retrieving information like that difficult.  .45 perhaps? he thought.
Definitely something classic, but I really shouldn't be worrying about
that right now.  At least I've got the vest...
        And then the gun spoke, not with the roar of exploding
propellant but the throaty energy report of a blaster.  The room
flashed red.  Nick twisted and fell backwards towards the bed.
Through the haze of pain he could just make out Brass's arrival and
the bark of his service weapon being fired.  There was a crash of
glass - the window? - and then Brass on his handlink calling for an
ambulance.
        Nick lifted his head slowly and looked down and the smoking,
bloody hole on the side of his chest.  He reached a hand up and gingerly
touched the wound, alarmed somewhere in the back of his head how deep it
seemed to be.  He pulled it away and distantly observed the blood on his
fingertips.
        "... shit."
        Everything went black.


                              /*  Diffuser
                               "New High"
                         _Making the Grade_  */

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited            My life is fading
presented                               Sick and tired of wasting time
                                        And my back is breaking
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES                   Underneath all these lies
FUTURE IMPERFECT                        This feels like second-best
                                        I'm trapped in false content
CSI: NEW AVALON
[107] Forward Momentum                  My cup is half-empty
                                        And dripping with envy
The Cast                                Right now I'm feeling that
(in order of appearance)                No one's going to help me but myself
Graig tz'An Daarst
Sara Sidle                              I'm looking for a new high (new high)
Gil Grissom                             I don't want to get left behind
Catherine Willows                       I'm looking for a new high (new high)
Nick Stokes                             Trying just to get the feeling right
Benjamin D. Hutchins
Warrick Brown                           No motivation
Mark Compton                            Elevation is hard to find
Jim Brass                               I'm not impatient
Conrad Ecklie                           But every day is a common grind
Barry Allen                             My head is spinning round
Raven                                   I need to straighten out
Benjamin J. Hunnicut XIII
Allison Cameron                         My cup is half-empty
Skuld Ravenhair                         But that don't upset me
Iris West                               Right now I'm feeling that
Lindsey Willows                         No one's going to help me but myself
 
Lightning Wrangler                      I'm looking for a new high (new high)
Benjamin D. Hutchins                    I don't want to get left behind
                                        I'm looking for a new high (new high)
Mr. Stokes's Stunt Coordinator          Trying just to get the feeling right
Chad Collier
                                        Too much of the same routine has 
Tweakers                                  held me up
(not in that way)                       (Too much of the same routine has
Janice Barlow                             held me up)
Geoff Depew                             But I'm willing to leave the past
                                          within the past
"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"        (And I'm willing to leave it all
created by                                behind)
Anthony E. Zuiker                       And I have to believe I've finally
                                          had enough
The Silver Age Flash                    (I need to feel I've got enough)
created by                              But the first step is the hardest
Gardner Fox                               one to make
Bob Kanigher
Carmine Infantino                       Go!
                                        I'm looking for a new high (new high)
Dr. Allison Cameron from "House, MD"    I don't want to get left behind
created by                              I'm looking for a new high (new high)
David Shore                             Trying just to get the feeling right
                                        I'm looking for a new high (new high)
Appearing in the Photo Lineup           I'm looking for a new high, new high
the EPU Usual Suspects                  I'm looking for a new high (new high)
                                        Trying just to get the feeling right
The night shift will return             To get me through the night


                          E P U (colour) 2007