A/N: I've always loved the Buck Rogers episode Mark of the Saurian because that one gets into some of the slight differences that would occur in that situation, like different immunities and different biochemistry over the centuries. It occurred to me that a similar, though not identical, situation could happen with Steve, where he was aware of something due to his eye but nobody else believed him if he was sick at the time. So this story is that basic premise transferred over to this show. Hope you enjoy.

(SMDM)

Oscar sat in his office doing paperwork but as always with an ear cocked toward the phone. He was never far from communication, but tonight, he even had both ears cocked toward the phone.

Tonight, a top scientist from one of the United States' trusted allies was going to be arriving. He would be working over here for a while with the US team on this high-budget shared project. He thought he was very close to breaking through the nuclear fusion problem. Nuclear fission, splitting atoms, which formed the technology behind most current nuclear inventions in use, had the downside of giving off radiation. Nuclear fusion, putting atoms together, had no radiation byproduct if cold fusion was used. It had, however, proven very stubborn to achieve effectively in practice. If they could ever harness fusion reliably and simply, it was limitless, safe energy with none of the dangers that accompanied fission.

Dr. Mark Blankenship should be landing soon. In fact, he should have been here this afternoon. However, his plane had been delayed in takeoff due to weather over the Atlantic and hadn't finally made it up until several hours late. Thus, Oscar was here after closing time. His secretary had already gone home, but he was waiting here himself for the call.

A perfunctory knock sounded at the door, and Steve opened it a second later without waiting for a response.

"Hi, Steve." Oscar smiled at him, surprised. "I wasn't expecting you back from your assignment until tomorrow."

"Things moved a little faster than we expected," Steve replied. He walked across the office and tossed a manila envelope lightly onto Oscar's desk. "There you go. I stole your information as requested."

"They stole it," Oscar reminded him. "We just got it back. We're the rightful owners, so we didn't steal it. Great work, pal." He opened the envelope and pulled out the pages. Steve sat down with a soft sigh in the chair in front of Oscar's desk.

Oscar looked up from his reunion with this data. "Are you all right?" he asked. Steve didn't quite seem himself tonight, and he looked weary. His stride across the office a minute ago had been a little slow, too.

"Just tired," Steve said. "It's been a very busy few days."

"Did things get interesting?" Oscar asked.

"Let's just say that they didn't hand it over to me on a silver platter," Steve confirmed.

The phone rang at that moment, and Oscar gave his friend an apologetic smile as he picked it up. "Oscar Goldman." This was the hoped-for update on Blankenship's plane with the latest ETA. He should be here in about two hours. The conversation took a few minutes, including making sure that secure transportation from the airport was standing by. Blankenship would be given a choice of simply going to his apartment they'd arranged or coming straight on to OSI to meet Oscar, but Oscar expected him to choose OSI, even if only briefly to get acquainted. He'd rarely met a genius scientist who wasn't a fanatic on his particular subject of interest. Most of them would rather do anything work related than eat or sleep.

When he hung up, he turned back to Steve to resume asking about his latest assignment, and he realized that his friend had fallen asleep in the chair. He really must be tired. Oscar resumed his study of the paperwork, just leaving Steve alone. He no doubt hadn't had much sleep the last few nights on his mission.

His mission. Oscar sometimes wished that they could give Steve more backup on missions so that the full burden wouldn't fall solely on him when things started going wrong, but the trouble was, Steve had no partner who could keep up with him. By necessity, he had to work solo on most assignments.

Nuclear fusion. Oscar let his mind wander forward to Blankenship again. If they made the breakthrough on fusion, Rudy could give Steve new and improved power packs, ones which required no shielding to protect him from the radiation. The strength provided would even be superior to what he had now. A total upgrade. Oscar imagined Rudy's enthusiasm working on it. Using nuclear power for the bionics had always bothered the doctor a little, precisely because of the radiation danger. Still, no other power source was strong enough to drive the very complex machinery while still being small enough to fit in the limbs.

Oscar turned a page on his paperwork and looked back up at Steve. His friend really did look exhausted. Oscar thought a little guiltily of the push of demanding missions lately. It wouldn't hurt to give Steve a few days off. They had to remember that while the technology could be kept tuned up by Rudy, the human side still could get worn out by the demands they made on him. Steve's uniqueness made him the sole possibility as an agent for many missions, but Oscar knew that he asked a lot of him, and there was a temptation to make it too much. Once Steve woke up, he decided, he'd tell him to take the next week and go fishing or horseback riding or something to recharge his non-mechanical batteries.

Steve shifted, his head turning against the back of the chair, and Oscar suddenly frowned, studying him more closely. His friend was sweating now, drops visible on his forehead even though the temperature in the office was comfortable. Oscar stood up and softly walked around the desk, trying not to wake the other man up but getting closer to him. Steve was definitely sweating, and his breathing seemed a little quick, too. Oscar reached out and touched him lightly on the forehead, then jumped. Steve was burning up.

The phone was only a short reach away, and Oscar consulted his card file and then dialed the number for the hotel while walking back around the desk, retreating a bit. He didn't really want to wake Steve up; his friend probably needed the rest. When the front desk answered, he gave them a room number.

"Hello." Rudy sounded sleepy, reminding Oscar exactly what time it was.

Oscar spoke softly. "Rudy, it's Oscar. Steve came in from a mission a little while ago and just fell asleep in my office while I was talking on the phone, and now he's running a fever."

Rudy woke up all at once, his voice much more alert now. "How high a fever?"

"I haven't got a thermometer here, but it feels high to me. And he's sweating and seems to be breathing a little faster than usual."

"Count it. The breathing."

Oscar looked at his watch, then studied Steve, watching the rise and fall of his chest as a minute of silence passed. "19."

"Hmm. That's on the high side but not crazy. Do you think you can take his pulse?"

"Hang on a minute." Oscar put the phone down and circled the desk again, picking up Steve's left arm. Steve shifted against the back of the chair again, muttering something unintelligible, but he didn't wake up. Oscar fumbled for a few seconds hunting the right spot, then found it and counted off a minute on his watch. He returned to the back of his desk and picked the phone up. "87."

Rudy sighed. "Again, that's a little elevated, especially for him. His cardiac system tends to run low if anything: less demands on it. But it's not dangerously high. He's still asleep?"

"Yes. A little restless - he shifted right then when I grabbed his arm. I haven't really tried to wake him up."

"Don't for the moment. Did he mention feeling ill when he came in?"

"How long have you known him?" Oscar retorted. "He looked a bit off from the time he got here, not quite himself. But he never said a word about it until I asked him if he was okay, and then he just said he was tired. Long mission; that was all."

"He's certainly got an advanced case of stubbornness," Rudy grumbled. "He's probably just come down with some virus he picked up somewhere, but I'd better have a look at him. I'll be there in a few hours. I'm down in Norfolk at that conference, you know."

"Yes. I can get somebody from the lab up here to check him out, but I wanted your opinion first."

"No, I'll come back." Rudy sounded worried himself, in spite of his phone diagnosis of just a virus. "I spoke yesterday, so there's no reason I can't check out early and come back to Washington. I know one of my assistants could see him, but I'd like to do it myself. From what you've said, his vital signs aren't calling this an emergency, but I'll still get there soon as I can. Meanwhile, just let him sleep. If he has picked up some bug, that's probably the best thing for him."

"I'll do that. Thanks, Rudy."

Oscar hung up and sat there watching Steve now instead of paperwork. Steve progressively seemed to get more restless as time went on, though he remained asleep. Oscar paced back around the desk to touch him again. The fever was rising. Just a virus, he reminded himself. Rudy thinks it's just a virus.

But Rudy was also coming straight back from his conference in the middle of the night. Nothing medically with Steve was entirely simple anymore, not even a bug, and Oscar knew that as well as Rudy did.

He had completely forgotten about Dr. Blankenship until the phone rang, announcing that they were downstairs. Steve moved a bit at the sound, but he never quite woke up. More reluctantly than he would have imagined a few hours ago, Oscar left his office, closed the door behind him softly, and prepared to meet the brilliant scientist.

(SMDM)

Steve woke up slowly, thickly, as if climbing through mud out of a tunnel. Finally, his eyes focused.

He was in Oscar's office, and he remembered now coming here with the information and sitting down in this chair. He must have fallen asleep. Oscar was nowhere to be seen, apparently had gone on home for the night and just left Steve here sleeping, not wanting to wake him.

Steve rubbed a hand across his forehead. He could feel the fever now, burning like a fire through him. He hadn't felt well for the last day, tired and achy, but he hadn't had a fever then, and he had hoped he was just worn out. There had indeed been a lot of tough missions lately. Now, he was forced to face the inescapable fact: He was sick.

He sighed. Better just go on home and go to bed. He probably had some virus, and he could sleep it off. No point in worrying Oscar, Rudy, and the others, not yet. He knew he could contact the bionics program in the lab. If he made one complaint, a whole fleet of personnel would be called in pronto, even in the middle of the night, but there wasn't any point. Nothing was wrong with his bionics, no need to call the team out for a repair over in the lab. His bionics were immune to routine bugs. He only wished the rest of him were.

He stood, taking a moment to get his balance set. He felt weak as a kitten now, much worse than when he had arrived, and his legs didn't seem quite right underneath him. Rudy had explained the phenomenon once when Steve had been injured, a human injury that time, not a bionic one. When his physical body was under extreme duress, either through injury or illness, the bionics could also be off. The problem wasn't in the mechanical limbs themselves but in the very complicated interface where bionics joined flesh and countless little connections were made. When his physical body wasn't up to par, the signals along all those pathways to his limbs didn't work as efficiently. The same thing applied in reverse with very severe bionic injuries. While he couldn't feel pain per se in his artificial limbs, when the bionics suffered critical damage, the signals they sent back to his physical body went haywire, and it could sometimes knock him down physically, too. The two systems were very intricately tied together, and when one was badly off line, the other often went wrong in sympathy to it.

Knowing the reason didn't make it any less frustrating. Steve sighed and walked slowly over to the door of the office.

He heard voices as he opened the door, and he paused to take stock of the situation. Oscar was here after all. He was across the reception area and at the door into the hall, which he was holding open. His back was to Steve. Hovering in the background were two security people; Steve had seen them before. They usually had escort duty, transporting bigwigs around safely from one point to another. It was the man facing Oscar, just finishing a conversation and about to leave, who seized his attention.

He was glowing.

Steve stared at him. There was a slight yellow glow, almost as if the man's form had been outlined. Steve had never seen him before; he was obviously some VIP. Oscar's attitude alone would have told Steve that even without the escort.

Steve blinked and tried to focus, then ran a hand over his eyes. Closing one and then the other, he realized that the effect was coming from his bionic eye. With the human eye alone, the man looked normal. But even bionically, only he had the aura, not Oscar, not the security men. Nothing else looked wrong. Steve tried to magnify, to look at him more closely. Again the bionics were a little slow to respond, but he did get magnification at last. It didn't tell him anything new. There was just that yellow haze surrounding this man.

He was glowing.