The Bolt from the Blue (Working Title)

Chapter 32- The Fight

"Hello? Patience?"

John stopped pressing the button and let the radio drop to the floor. "It can't be." He whispered.

"John, that was her. That was Lorna."

"No. She wouldn't." John protested weakly.

"We need to find her." Alex said decisively, bringing John back firmly to the present. "If she's innocent, she can explain to us exactly why she was asking Dr. Demento to drug you."

"She could be anywhere," John said, trying not to panic; immediately his brain said to ask Sam for help, but then he remembered that Sam wasn't talking to him anymore.

Alex put her hand to her temple and started rubbing it in circles, "Well, obviously, she's not in the building," she reasoned aloud, "or she would have just delivered the propanolol herself."

And then a realisation burst to life in John's head- Veronica's blockers never lasted long. Lorna would know that because she'd been monitoring Veronica and her output on her Master's course. So, Lorna knew that Sam could guess that she was the killer, and she knew she could only block him for a short amount of time, and now she knew that they weren't together anymore... "Fuck!" John exclaimed, and tried to open a portal to Sam's building. It wouldn't work. He tried again on every floor, but he couldn't bend space- he was being blocked. "Fuck!" He yelled again, kicking the desk.

"What?" Alex asked, grabbing his arm and spinning him back to face her. "What?"

"Stay here, make sure Charlie's okay and the good doctor doesn't get up." He broke his arm free from her grasp and headed towards the door.

"Where are you going?" She called after him.

"To try to fix things!" He shouted over his shoulder. He ran up the stairs, past several bewildered colleagues who muttered things about him being fired and then locked himself in the men toilets on the fourth floor. John took a deep breath and tried to think things through- a normal, personal blocker, even a licensed one, couldn't cover the whole building like that; only an industrial grade machine- like the one from Lorna's office- would have that kind of range. He concentrated, trying to remember the exact range on one:...half a kilometre. Immediately, in his head, he summoned up a picture of a park near Sam's building, about half a kilometre from the front door. The portal opened and John ran in, hitting the ground running and not stopping until his hand closed on the front door.

Lorna walked briskly up the steps, reached the third floor and knocked on Sam's door. A young man who looked like he'd just woken up from a seven year coma opened the door and peered at her as though she were as luminescent as the sun.

"Hello, I'm with the police." Here she flashed her badge, "I need to ask a few questions about the incident upstairs; is a-" she pretended to look up the name on a notepad, "Samuel Handey in?"

"He's never in." Warren said, in the tone of someone describing a leper, "He's always going off with-"

"I'm here, Warren." Sam said from behind him, walking up the doorway. Lorna did a quick appraisal and decided that John could do better.

She nodded her head at him. "I'm officer Mayhew. I'm with the police- I need to ask you some questions." Sam nodded his head. "Can I come in?"

He nodded again. He wasn't as talkative as she'd pictured- but then she noticed the rings around his eyes. He looked very tired. She stepped over the threshhold, manouevring around the stilted young man and followed Sam into his bedroom.

She shut the door behind them.

"What do you need to know?" Sam asked- there was a slight croak to his voice. Goodness, this man was pathetic.