The experience of returning to Earth was entirely different. There was none of the fuzziness of my arrival in Hell. On the contrary, the abrupt removal of its oppressive atmosphere left me with a clarity and an energy unlike any I had experienced before. If I was at first a little befuddled, it was for the entirely rational reason that I had expected to wake up back on the laboratory floor. From there it would be a simple matter of firing up the engine and summoning Sammy so we could get back to the main task of avoiding the demolition of civilization.

I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by machines, but they were very different machines. As I tried to sit up, a man's hand pressed me back down again. He had been in the process of attaching something to my arm. Then everything lurched as we turned a corner. We were moving? That's when I realized where I was. Shit!

"Drake, you're alright?" It was Ally. I turned my head to see her seat-belted in next to the paramedic, her face full of that same dismay I had seen back at Beanies. My heart turned summersault, leaping at the sight of her, sinking at what might be coming. We hadn't parted on the best of terms, and I had since gone on to do that exact thing she had expressly warned me not to do. Was she here to yell at me? Oh well, I did want to reconcile things – if getting yelled at was part of the process, best get it over and done with.

A second attempt to sit up failed on account of a strap across my chest securing me to the stretcher. Another secured my feet. I wriggled in frustration, that being pretty much the limit of my movement.

"Please be calm, Sir. You have been unconscious for some time. Some disorientation is understandable, but you need to relax. We're taking you into the hospital for tests and observation."

I slumped back, temporarily defeated. My mind was entirely clear now, fogged only by a rising annoyance. "Look," I told him. "I'm fine. Really, better than fine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with me." This was true – all of the afflictions and agitations I had accumulated during my visit to Hell had been left behind on my return to Earth. Seeking support, I turned now to Ally. To her credit, her voice had expressed nothing but concern. Not shouty at all. "I need to get back to the lab," I told her. "There is something very important there that I need to do, and I need to do it right now." I frowned, remembering. "And how come you're even here?"

"Hello to you, too, Drake. I came by to check up on you at the lab. To make sure you hadn't done anything stupid. Clearly I was too late." Okay, her voice was steady but the yell was in there, you just had to know her to hear it.

"Ally, I'm serious. I need to get back to the lab."

"Drake, you terrified me. For a moment I thought you were dead. You lying there on the floor, the other two just standing around, doing nothing."

I opened my mouth to explain, then closed it again. I put two and two together, got four. Patient emerges from extended period of unconsciousness, starts babbling about demons and the need to save the world from Armageddon – I could see how that might go. If I wanted to get out of here, I was going to have to play clever.

Ally's look of concern was mixed with uncertainty. "I don't know what just happened to you, but maybe the hospital is the best place for you right now. To stop you from getting mixed up in things you really oughtn't to be mixed up in."

Had she forgiven me? It almost sounded like she had. With that immediate concern parked to one side, I made use of the space now vacated in my thoughts to address the real question: what to do now?

Over the past hour I had experienced every flavor of terror there was to be experienced, or so I had thought. I was wrong – turns out there is a very particular form of terror reserved for those who, by the simple dumb fact of being strapped to an ambulance stretcher, are prevented from doing the one small thing they need to do to save themselves and everything they hold dear from a radioactive nightmare. In my head, frustration and cunning went to war. Frustration won, cunning having come up empty. I strained at my bonds, trying to better capture Ally in my line of sight. "It's too late for that," I hissed at her. "You accused me of not taking this seriously enough. Well maybe you were right, but not anymore. I've been there – you know where I mean – and they told me some things that scared the shit out of me. You still think it's all a trick? Maybe it is – but this is too big to take that risk. That's why I need to get back to the lab."

The paramedic was a credit to his profession, appearing to pay no attention whatsoever to what I was saying, getting on with taking my blood pressure. Then again, in a job like his – I expect he gets to see all sorts of crazy on a daily basis. For me, I was saving the world. For him, just another day at the office.

"Ally," I said. "I'm not kidding. This really matters. We need to get this vehicle turned around right now so I can get back."

Ally just bit her lip and looked worried.

"Would one of your colleagues be able to help?" asked the paramedic, proving he had been paying attention after all.

"What?" I snapped. "What are you talking about?"

"When I collected you from the university, there were two other men with you..."

Of course, Anton. So much for my claims of clear-headedness. In my frustration I had ignored the obvious. I calmed myself and thanked the man for his helpful suggestion. "Well," I said, addressing Ally. "Go on – get him on the phone."

Still regarding me with a mix of skepticism and concern, Ally paused a moment then complied, pulling out her phone.

"Number?"

"Huh? How should I know... Wait a minute, he's on my contacts list." My attempt to pull my own phone from my pocket was defeated – first by the straps holding me down, second by the realization that I didn't have the damn thing with me.

"Bugger, I put it on charge, back at the lab... What about Denton, then... Can you get through to him?"

"Number?" asked Ally again, sounding more and more like the paramedic with her let's-humor-the-madman tone.

"I don't know the fucking number. It's on my phone, same as Anton's. Are you saying you don't have it?"

"Drake, what on Earth would I want with Denton's number?"

I lay back and attempted to think. What would be happening to Sammy right now? A conscription gang, he'd said. Assuming they caught him, they'd be carting him off to the army barracks or whatever equivalent they had down there. Could he still be summoned from there? And what if he couldn't? I didn't want to leave him in the lurch, but there were bigger issues going on right now. The old demon seemed pretty keen to do his deal – would the loss of an apprentice really affect that? Surely he'd find some way to get back in touch?

Poor old Sammy though – marched off to a war he wanted nothing to do with. He'd seemed quite a nice guy, for a demon.

"It's Sammy," I told Ally. "He's in trouble. I need to get back to the lab so I can help him."

"Is that all? You are making all of this fuss just so you can help a ... can help Sammy?"

The paramedic had slipped back into ignore-the-civilians mode. "Sammy is our pet cat," I told him, repeating what was whispered into my ear by the imp of the perverse. I graced him with the most insincere smile I could muster, figuring that there is no better proof of sanity in a human being than the bare-faced telling of blatant lies.

Ally snorted, and for a moment I allowed myself the luxury of believing things might get back to normal between us. So long as there was still a world left to be normal in. "You win," I said, bowing to the inevitable. "Take me to the hospital. Make me all better... And if my pulse turns out to be a tad elevated, trust me, it's nothing to do with my state of health."

"Your blood pressure is completely normal," the paramedic conceded when his task was done.