In Case of Emergency...

By Gillian 

Hey Chief," Jim greeted his partner as he let himself into the apartment. "How's the first day of your break been?" He leaned over and playfully rumpled Blair's hair, then drew back in disgust. "Whew, time to change the oil up there, Chief." He rubbed his fingers together in distaste.

"It's my Mediterranean background," Blair explained uncaringly, nose deep in a book. "I have to wash it every day or it gets a little greasy."

"A little?" Jim wiped his hands on Blair's shirt and then strolled to the kitchen for a beer. "More than a little, kid. So wash it already."

"Sorry." Blair turned over and peered at him over the side of the couch. "I'm enjoying a grunge-fest."

"Excuse me?" Jim twisted the top off a beer and took a long drink.

"A grunge-fest. I don't go back to work until Wednesday and I've decided to totally relax. For the next four days I'm not gonna put on a tie, I'm not gonna shower, and I'm not gonna shave."

"And you're not going to climb into bed with me." Jim finished smartly.

Blair tried to outstare the bigger man, lips pursed, but Jim contented himself with merely raising an eyebrow. After a few moments, Blair caved.

"Okay, okay. I'll shower and shave. But no tie."

"Sorry, Chief," Jim said cheerfully, dumping the now empty bottle on the sink. "But we got that charity thing on tomorrow night, remember?"

"Rats." Blair wrinkled his nose.

"It was your idea to go," Jim reminded him, "And I paid fifty bucks a plate for those tickets. We're going."

"Well, there goes my grunge-fest," Blair said gloomily.

"And here's Jim, cheerfully waving it bye-bye," Jim chuckled, climbing the stairs to his room.

"Ha ha." Blair slammed his book closed and slumped in his seat.

"On a happier note, I was about to take a shower myself," Jim called down. "Care to join me and conserve a little water? I'll wash your hair."

"We don't conserve water when we shower together," Blair called up. "The two of us spend three times as long in there."

"Offer closes in 5... 4... 3..."

Blair tossed his book aside and raced up the stairs, limp hair flying.

"2... 1..."

000

"Is it just me, or does it get better every time?" Blair said dreamily, some hours later. Jim smiled and stroked the rumpled hair.

Dinner had been microwaved leftovers eaten in their robes after the long hot shower. They had then sat curled together on the couch watching some ancient movie on TV. After that it had been straight to bed, to indulge in what had become a favorite pastime for both of them. Pushing the limits of their lovemaking, exploring each other with a seemingly unquenchable curiosity. It was exhausting work and after exchanging a few more desultory kisses and caresses they settled down to sleep.

A loud ringing scream awoke Jim. He sprang up off the bed, his Sentinel senses turned up full before he was even fully awake, his gun freed from its holster and in his hand.

"Nooo, Billy, no," A woman screamed, and Jim instantly pinpointed where the sound was coming from. The alley beneath his windows. Ripping the shutters open Jim tried to peer through the frosty glass to the alley, but the upper windows were sealed and the angle made it impossible for Jim to see below. The woman screamed again and without hesitation Jim turned the gun butt first and brought it down hard onto the glass. The window shattered. Barely waiting for the glass to fall Jim stuck his head out the window and bellowed down into the alley.

"Leave her alone, you bastard."

"Whoa, Jim, what's goin' on, man?" Blair was behind him, hand on his back.

"A woman is being attacked in the alley." Jim said curtly. He scanned the length and breadth of the alley with his Sentinel vision but couldn't make out any details past the big dumpster and the scattered trash. "Call the police," he ordered. "I'm going down." He was tugging on jeans as he spoke, and slipping his feet into a pair of Blair's moccasins that lay forgotten by the bed.

"Be careful." Blair called after him, punching in the number.

A scant few minutes later Jim was at the mouth of the alley, all his Sentinel senses reaching out ahead of him like phantoms. His eyes gathered in every trace of moonlight and streetlight and flooded the narrow alley with pure blue illumination. His ears strained for the slightest sound, his brain swiftly searched for and catalogued anything out of place.

A rustle of roaches came clear as a bell, the steady drip from a drain pipe, a high pitched squeak from behind the walls; rats or mice. Nostrils flaring for the now familiar tang of blood Jim opened his senses as wide as they had ever been, so that even the distant wail of approaching sirens was uncomfortably loud. But there was nothing out of the ordinary to pick up. By the time Blair appeared behind him the safety was back on Jim's gun and he was holding it in one hand, pointing it at the ground.

"Jim, what's up?" Sandburg panted, "Cops are on their way."

"It's a false alarm," Jim said steadily. "No-one is out here. Nothing happened."

Blair frowned, opening his mouth to ask more, but at that moment the sirens became audible to him and then a police car was squealing around the corner. Jim raised his hands in the air, gun in plain sight. After a thoughtful glance at his partner, Blair followed suite.

Luckily one of the uniformed cops recognized Ellison and took him seriously when he said he thought he had heard screaming from the alley. He squinted up at the high window, it's jagged edges of glass clearly visible, and then at the half naked men, shivering now in the chill night air.

"Could have been kids, yahooing through the alley on their way somewhere," he suggested.

"Could have been," Jim agreed, blank faced. Blair nodded his agreement. He had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the interview. "I'm sorry to have bothered you, Allen, Officer Shipton."

"Don't worry about it, Jim." Allen closed his note book and buttoned it into his breast pocket. "Better an honest mistake than ignoring a cry for help and we end up with a tragedy on our hands."

"We'll check out the alleys in the next few blocks," Shipton said easily. "Let you know if we find anything."

The men shook hands and the cops hopped back into their car and cruised slowly away.

"Jim, are you okay?" Blair asked, the moment the cop's were out of earshot.

"I don't know," Jim said quietly.

000

Back in the apartment Blair made coffee while Jim grabbed a couple of sweat shirts for them. He slipped his on and then opened up Blair's behind him for the smaller man to step back into. Jim rubbed Blair's arms briskly, trying to warm him up. "Sorry to drag you out into the cold on a wild goose chase, Chief," he apologized gruffly.

"Don't worry about that, man." Blair turned in his arms and gave him a quick kiss on chill lips. He slipped the sweat shirt over his head. "Just tell me what happened here. What did you hear?"

"A scream first," Jim said thoughtfully, sipping his coffee. "And then a woman's voice saying 'No, Billy, no."

"Anything else? This Billy's voice, the sounds of a struggle?"

"No. Just one more scream. That's when I smashed the window. It sounded really desperate down there, and I thought by the time I got down to the alley it could be too late. I suppose I thought the sound of the broken glass might, I don't know, shock him into running off. And..."

"What?" Blair asked intently.

"I just wanted to reach her, to get to her. She sounded so... Didn't you hear anything?"

"Not a thing. I kinda woke up when you jumped out of bed, but then you smashed the glass and, man! I was awake! Scared the heck outta me."

"I can't believe you didn't hear anything?" Jim frowned thoughtfully. "Even without enhanced senses, those screams were pretty piercing, and that alley isn't so far down. You should have heard something."

"Jim," Blair began reluctantly. "Could it have been a dream?"

"No. No way. I was awake when I heard the voice and the second scream. It happened. A woman was being attacked."

"Then where is she?"

There was a quiet knock on the door and Jim and Blair exchanged puzzled glances.

"Detective Ellison? It's Officer Gates."

"Allen?" Jim unlocked the door and swung it open. "Did you find anything?"

Officer Gates stepped into the spacious apartment, looking around discreetly. "We searched the adjoining alleys for a four block radius. Nothing. Other than a few drunks and some pissed off alley cats we didn't see a thing."

"Thanks for taking the time and trouble to come up and tell us, Allen," Jim said gratefully. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Love some, but our shift's not over yet and my partner's waiting. Have a nice night, Jim, Mr. Sandburg. And don't worry about it, I'm sure it was just kids fooling around or something like that."

Jim closed the door behind him, a stony look on his face. "Maybe it was just a dream."

"No," Blair said emphatically. "Jim, you can't start doubting yourself, you have to trust your senses. A minute ago you were sure you weren't dreaming. Were you?"

Jim smiled at the vehement tone. "No."

"Then we just have to figure out what it was."

"Tomorrow, Chief." Jim draped an arm around Blair and hugged him to his side for a moment. "We'll figure it out tomorrow."

000

Blair spent the day at the University, catching up with paperwork and occasionally staring thoughtfully off into the distance, going over the events of the night before. When he had finished his work to his own satisfaction he carefully pulled out the old book he kept locked in the bottom drawer of his desk. It was the book on Sentinel's written by the explorer Sir Richard Burton over one hundred years ago and printed by the Royal Geographic Society. Almost reverently Blair unwrapped the faded old cheesecloth around the tome and opened it at the title page, tracing a gentle finger over the print of a map drawn by Burton himself marking the routes he had traveled throughout South America.

Blair spent an hour going through the book, searching for an answer to the odd occurrences of the night before to no avail. Finally the young grad student closed the book and stowed it safely away. Of course he hadn't found anything he didn't already know, he was as familiar with the book as he was with the back of his hand and he had known there was nothing in there that even remotely described Jim's experiences. So what was the answer?

000

"Jim, this shirt you lent me doesn't have any cuff buttons." Blair came wandering out of Jim's bathroom, examining his sleeves in dismay.

"They're French cuffs, junior," Jim chided in fond exasperation. "They need cuff links." Blair followed the cops pointing finger and pounced on an open box of various bits and pieces of masculine jewelry.

"Wow." Blair lifted out a thick chunky set of dull expensive looking gold. "Cuff links! Cool! Talk about evidence of primitive man."

"Ha ha." Jim finished tying his bow tie and turned to watch Blair trying to figure out how to attach the cuff links. "Not that pair," he finally said, tiring of the show. "They're too heavy for your scrawny little arms. Here." He rummaged in the box until he found a smaller pair, discreetly winking with sapphires.

"These are nice." Blair craned his neck and examined the jewelry as Jim fastened it. "Thanks."

"Keep them." Jim said generously, ruffling his young lovers hair affectionately. "I'll buy you some shirts to go with them."

"Wow, thanks, Jim." Blair touched the glinting gold and stones and stood on tiptoe to press a kiss to Jim's lips. "But are you sure? They look kind of expensive."

"They were my dad's." Jim revealed, picking up the stretch of silk draped over Blair's shoulder and easing it around the younger man's neck. He began to knot it into a bow tie.

"Oh, Jim." Blair's eyes shone. "You're giving me your dad's cuff links? Are you sure?"

"If I wasn't," Jim said slowly, reaching into his jacket pocket, "I wouldn't have bought this to go with them." And with a flourish he handed Blair a small velvet bag.

As excited as a child Blair tugged on the draw string and spilled the contents onto the palm of his hand. A gold stud winking with a perfect sapphire lay looking up at him.

"Oh, Jim," Blair breathed. "It's beautiful." He threw his arms around Jim's neck, burying his face in the curve of a strong shoulder. "Thank you! But what's the occasion?"

"Try it on," Jim urged, not answering the question. Blair dashed in the bathroom and pulled out the silver rings adorning his left ear. He then carefully inserted the gold post into the lowest hole and attached the back. Jim came up behind him and rested his hands on the young man's broad shoulders, admiring the blue fire of the stone as it winked through the carefully groomed brown waves.

"Beautiful." Jim whispered. Blair turned in his arms, his big blue eyes shining up at Jim lovingly.

"I love you, Jim." He whispered.

Jim answered with a heartfelt groan, and bending his head he crushed Blair's mobile mouth beneath his own.

000

The speeches were interminable, the food was soggy and tasteless and the band stank. Just like every other fund-raiser he'd ever been to, Jim thought. "Hey, Chief." He waved a hand and caught Blair's attention. The younger man was absorbed in the dancers, big blue eyes happily taking in the swaying people, the glittering lights and the ritzy decor.

"Yeah, Jim?"

"Did you come across any thing that might explain my experience last night?"

Blair's attention sharpened on his partner.

"Zip," he said succinctly. "I spent the morning going through the mountains of data I've compiled on Sentinels and couldn't find a single similar occurrence. I even referred back to Burton's book. Nothing."

"I thought you knew that thing off by heart." Jim attempted a smile but couldn't quite carry it off.

Blair leaned forward lowering his voice comfortingly. "Don't lose hope, Jim. There is an answer, and we'll find it."

"Yeah, but what if the answer is I'm losing my mind?" Jim said bitterly.

"Come on, man. It's not like you to give up."

"I'm not giving up," Jim returned fiercely. "It's just... You don't know how clear it was, how sure I was that something was going down in that alley. And then to get there and find it empty..."

"Well, maybe those cops were right." Blair said hopefully. "Maybe whoever was down there heard you break the glass and ran for it."

"No." Jim shook his head with certainty. "As soon as I got to the alley I knew. You remember you were talking about bats that time, about sonar?"

"When you were blinded, yeah."

"You talked about a person's resonance. Well, I knew exactly what you meant. It's like when you enter a room that someone has just left. You know, you can feel that someone has been in the room. Maybe it's a shift in the air currents, I don't know, maybe something even more subtle than that. "

"I know what you're talking about," Blair said in absorption, his big eyes avid on Jim's earnest expression.

"Well when I got to the mouth of that alley and stood there, I opened myself up wide. Every sense I've got. And it was still, Blair. Undisturbed. Like a tomb. No-one had been in that alley for hours."

Blair rubbed at his chin thoughtfully, absently noting the slight scratch of stubble under the sensitive pads of his fingertips. He would have to shave again before bed. "Well, if you say it, Jim, I believe you. You know I trust your senses. It may even be something we can study later on... What?" Blair broke off as Jim turned away. "Jim?"

"Maybe you shouldn't be trusting my senses so much, Blair. If I'm gonna be hearing things that aren't there, how far can I trust my own senses? And how can I function as a cop?"

"Jim, what happened last night might never happen again," Blair said briskly. "But I'll stick really close to you for the next couple of days. We'll get through this."

000

They saw the function through to the end, neither of them in a mood to leave the gaiety of the party and head back to the quiet loft. It was the wee small hours of the morning when they finally climbed into Jim's truck and headed home, driving in silence on the nearly empty roads. Blair sat close to Jim on the wide front seat, his hand curved over Jim's powerful thigh. Now and then the cop would cast him a slight smile and Blair would squeeze the big muscle reassuringly. As they approached home they caught sight of blue and red flashing lights reflecting off the shiny wet concrete.

Trouble." Jim said shortly. He pulled the truck out of the way and approached the closest cop. "Detective Ellison." He flashed his badge at the young female cop. She was unfamiliar to him. "This is Blair Sandburg. We live here, what's the problem?"

"You live in this building?" the cop probed.

"Third floor." Jim confirmed patiently. Over the cop's shoulder a pair of paramedics were loading a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. The prone figure was still, an oxygen mask pressed to her face, long streaks of tangled brown hair tangled around her head.

"Assault." The cop jerked her head toward the alley. "Anonymous caller reported a woman screaming."

"Did they catch the perp?"

"No sign of him," the cop said sourly. "He was long gone, left the victim to die."

"Will she?" Blair asked in concern.

The cop shrugged. "They're taking her to Mercy if you want to follow up on it. No more for us to do here until Forensics arrive and god knows when that will be."

The ambulance moved off and one of the other cops started to unreel some familiar yellow tape, cordoning off the mouth of the alley. Jim side-stepped him and picked his way through the alley, trying to avoid the possibility of disturbing any evidence. He reached the site of the assault and crouched down by a small pool of blood, gleaming blackly in the buildings lighting. Looking up Jim traced the wall up three stories, focusing with his Sentinel senses on a window whose shining pane of glass was firmly held by fresh white putty.

"Sandburg, what time is it?"

Blair consulted his watch. "Uh. 2.45 AM."

"Officer?" Jim called over to the cop tying off the perimeter tape. "What time was this called in?"

"2.15," he called back, going back to his task.

"2.15." Blair didn't need a map to see where this was going. "2.15! Jim, that's when you woke up last night!" Blair's voice rose excitedly as it was wont to do.

Jim shushed him automatically. "Yeah," he agreed, pointing up to the window above him. Blair followed the path the finger pointed in and swore under his breath. "This is incredible." Jim was leaving the alley and, ducking under the tape, Blair followed him. "Jim, what does this mean?"

Jim waited until they were well away from the cops, in the foyer of the building. "Remember you joked about me working on my sixth sense? Well, maybe it's time to start."

000

Blair threw a scattering of marshmallows on top of his hot chocolate and then carefully picked up the two steaming mugs and carried them to the lounge area. Jim was crouched before the fire, poking it to life. "This is unbelievable," Blair was saying for about the tenth time. "Incredible. Can you imagine all the possibilities this opens up?"

"All too well," Jim said gloomily, taking one sniff of the chocolate and putting it aside.

"Oh, come on, Jim," Blair chided. "This is exciting. Think where it might lead."

"I am," Jim interrupted sarcastically. "Here's where it might lead, Sandburg. I'm in a crisis situation, people's lives are in my hands, my colleagues are depending on me. Suddenly, I'm hearing voices, sounds, that aren't there. I won't know what's real and what's not. How can I function as a cop like that?"

Jim's voice rose until he was almost shouting and Blair forced himself down from his high to comfort his Sentinel.

"Shh, Jim." He scooted closer and wrapped a comforting arm around the bigger man's shoulder. Once, not so very long ago he would have been forced to keep his distance, sooth with his words alone. But now that the dynamics of their relationship had changed he could give his affectionate nature free rein and he did. Jim shied away a little at first as he sometimes did when things got physical between them outside of the bedroom. Then he calmed and let Blair comfort him.

"Jim, remember when your sentinel abilities resurfaced, how scared you were?"

"I wasn't scared," Jim protested automatically. "I was... worried."

"Well, how worried you were then. You were so... worried that you couldn't even envisage a time when you could control them. You just wanted to get rid of them so you could do your job. We got you through those first difficult days, didn't we? We'll get through this."

"Blair," Jim said quietly, slipping his own arm around the younger man's waist and leaning closer. "I don't know if I can take any more on. You're the only one who knows what this is like for me, how hard it is sometimes to control this, what I go through every day. I just don't know if I can take the burden of anything more."

Blair was quiet, thoughtful. "Then maybe what we're looking for is a way to turn it off," he finally said. Jim turned his head and looked into his eyes. "But either way, Jim, we have to know about it, study it. We'll get through this," he promised, and pressed a warm comforting kiss to his lovers lips. Jim returned the pressure. "For now let's get some sleep though, hmm?"

"You go up," Jim urged as Blair heaved himself to his feet. "I want to stay down here and think for a while."

"You mean brood for a while." Blair said in mock exasperation. He bent and bestowed another kiss, this time to Jim's buzz cut. "Don't stay up too long, you need your rest."

"Yes, dear." Jim patted the tempting rear as Blair walked by and watched with affection as he climbed the stairs, shutting the lights off as he went, leaving Jim in the firelight with his thoughts.

000

The next morning Jim was driving the truck and Blair was sprawled next to him yawning.

"How can you look fresh as a daisy this morning?" Sandburg complained. "You got less sleep than I did."

"Clean living." Jim winked and Blair giggled. "Where we going?"

"Well I don't know where you're going, Chief, but I'm going to Mercy general to talk to Karen Blatowski."

"The victim?" Blair looked a little more alert.

"Yeah. I called the hospital an hour ago, she's in recovery and she's awake. The doctor will give me ten minutes with her."

"Jim, you gotta be careful what you say to her," Blair warned. "Don't mention this Billy you heard her calling out to."

"I know." Jim said impatiently.. "Anyway, you're taking a lot for granted, Chief. Could be her getting attacked the night after my dream was just a coincidence. Probably turn out she doesn't know anyone named Billy."

"It wasn't a dream. And you don't really believe that, do you?"

"No."

"I didn't think so. You know, Jim, I've been thinking about this..."

"Heaven help us."

"No, seriously. I mean, people dismiss the sixth sense because we feel we have no direct experience with it, but what if we do. What if all those people who link the sixth sense to intuition, gut instinct, call it what you will. What if they are right?"

"We all have gut instincts, Blair. Cops especially. But mostly that's just instinct born of experience, a certain set of circumstances adding up to a logical result."

"Yeah, but what if there's more to it?" Blair turned sideways in his seat, his eyes shining with enthusiasm. "You know, those things that really seem like random chance. Knowing someone's name before they tell you. Knowing the next number that's gonna drop in the lottery. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about."

"I guess so."

"Right, right. So if it is just another sense, undeveloped and under used, couldn't your genetic advantage boost it along with all the other senses?"

"Don't ask me, Chief, you're the expert."

"Well I think it could."

"But why so long after all the others?"

Blair shrugged. "Who knows. But it might be fun finding out."

"Nyaa." Jim screwed his face up in disbelief. "I don't buy it. What I felt the other night wasn't a gut instinct, nothing so indistinct. It was clear as a bell."

Blair shook his head in exasperation. "Work with me here, Jim. Cast your mind back to your first sensory overloads, when your Sentinel senses were kicking back in after all those years off-line. The way you've described those experiences was like nothing you've ever known before right?"

Jim frowned, remembering the boiling water, echoing strangely in his head, that focus on an object way too close, the shock of it pushing him backwards. "That was because I didn't understand what was happening to me," he said thoughtfully.

"Oh, and you do now?"

"So maybe it might settle down," Jim hazarded. "If it was just an enhanced gut instinct I could handle it. Might even come in handy."

"Like, 'my Spidey senses are tingling!'?"

"Yeah."

The hospital was bustling and Jim badged his way into the recovery room, the doctors warnings ringing in his ears. A young uniformed cop was on duty, Jim nodded at her. Karen Blatowski was laying flat on the bed, a drip protruding from her skinny arm. Bruises dotted her pale skin and one eye was swollen shut. She looked about 17.

"Hello, Karen. I'm Detective Jim Ellison, this is Blair Sandburg." Blair waved a hand in greeting as Karen's wary gaze flicked to him. "I know you're tired and sore right now, Karen, but I have a few questions to ask you."

"I don't want to talk about it." Karen said sulkily. Even her voice was young, high and piping like a child.

"Karen, we have to ask you these questions, we have to get a description of the man that did this to you, so we can make sure he doesn't do this to anyone else."

The girls pale eyes flickered away from him.

"Or is there some other story behind this, Karen," Jim probed skillfully. "Was this someone you know? Why would you protect him? He left you to die."

"He didn't mean to hurt me!" Karen burst out miserably. "Really he didn't And I don't want to get him into trouble." Sobs shook her thin frame and with a sigh Jim gathered a handful of tissues from the box by the bed and handed them to her.

"That's not your decision to make any more," he informed her. "Tell us what happened last night, Karen."

The girl sobbed a little longer, sniffing and wiping her eyes on the tissues. "He was just mad at me." She whispered. "We were fighting in the car and he was yelling and yelling at me. Then when we stopped at the lights he started in hitting me."

"Who's 'he', Karen. Who did this to you."

"My boyfriend. Billy."

Blair's eyes shot to Jim's and even from the other side of the bed he could see the jolt go through the cop. It was one thing to speculate, to believe. It was quite another thing entirely to have that belief confirmed. Jim, consummate professional that he was did not let her see him falter. "Billy who?"

"Billy Turner." Karen whispered.

"Okay, Karen, you're doing great. What happened when he started hitting you at the traffic lights?"

"I opened the car door and ran. I shouldn't have run." Karen scrubbed at her eyes with the crumpled tissues. "It just makes him madder. He caught me in the alley and started in on me again. Then he pulled his knife! He's never done that before. I guess I screamed."

The memory of her shrill scream was in Jim's eyes as he exchanged another quick glance with Blair. The girl didn't notice, her head was down and she was picking at loose threads on the crisp hospital sheet.

"I felt the knife cut me." Karen began to cry again, not the wild sobbing of before, but slow leaking tears from the corners of her eyes. "He lifted it high and I thought, 'He's gonna kill me.'"

"What happened?"

"I heard a sound, it seemed awful loud. Glass smashing." Blair stiffened in shock but Jim's attention didn't shift away from Karen's drawn face. "And someone, a man, yelled something, I don't remember what. But Billy, he froze like he was poleaxed and then he let go of me and ran away. I don't remember anything else."

"You did the right thing telling us, Karen." Jim soothed. "The officer will stay with you 'til we catch Billy. You're safe here."

"He didn't mean to hurt me." Karen said again, a little more uncertainly now that she had put her experience into words.

"They never do." Jim said dryly as he let himself out of the recovery room. "Right up to the moment they kill you," he finished in the hall.

"Oh my god, Jim," Blair said slowly. "Do you grasp the implications of what she just told us?"

"I think I get the basics of it," Jim returned sarcastically.

"Do you? I mean, we're not talking about what you heard now. They heard you. They heard words you spoke 24 hours before, and glass smashing that had been repaired a full 12 hours earlier. It's incredible."

"Kinda blows your sixth sense theory out of the water though, doesn't it, Chief."

"Not necessarily." Blair defended. "It's obvious some kind of cosmic event took place..."

"Oh obviously." Jim agreed with exaggerated solemnity.

"Some kind of link in the space time continuum."

"Just what I was thinking," Jim nodded his head thoughtfully.

"But that doesn't mean your Sentinel abilities aren't in some way connected... Blair's absorption faded as he took in Jim's mocking stance. "Oh, you." He batted him playfully on the arm. "How would you explain it then?"

"A bad dream?" Jim hazarded hopefully. "One I should have just ignored and rolled back over to go to sleep?"

"Seriously, man. You saved that kid's life."

"Yeah." Jim shrugged. "You still haven't explained how." Jim turned and walked down the hospital corridor. "Come on, Einstein. Let's go see if we can find this kid Turner."

"Jim, we have to talk about this more." Blair spread his hands in appeal as the Sentinel pushed the button for the lift.

"Nothing to talk about," Jim said happily. "It was just some passing cosmic event like you said. Probably never happen again. Let's just leave it at that."

"No." Blair burst out, catching up with the cop as the lift doors opened. They stepped in. "We have tests to run, plans to make..."

"Give it a rest, Chief," Jim appealed, but Sandburg was off and running.

"I'm sure I can get some Zener cards from the university, you know, the ones with the stars and the wavy lines? I'm betting your scores will be higher than average. I'm kicking myself I didn't think of this sooner. How could I have been so blind?"

Jim sighed and cast his eyes up to the ceiling of the elevator.

"Forget it, kid." The door dinged and opened, Jim stepped out into the busy foyer. "No stars and wavy lines."

Blair clutched his chest as if his heart were breaking. "Jim! You have got to be joking, man. Jim just kept walking. "Jim, trust me, it'll be great! Jim!"

The End.

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