Author's Note: Here it just goes to show that not everyone who goes out to save the world has to die in the process.

Chapter One

Unexplained Deaths

Greenworld Day, Boston Massachusetts.

"It stopped." grumbled Dave, poking at his watch with frustration.

"What's that, Dave?" his partner asked.

"Nothing." He stood, buttoning up his suit. A well dressed female, another partner of there's, approached eagerly with a broad smile on her face. "How we doing?" Dave asked.

"Oh, we're ready!" she grinned.

"You feeling the magic?"

"Oh, I'm feeling the magic." Dave announced, the smile ever growing on his handsome face. "All right." he laughed, bringing up his fist. "Let's hit 'em!" Bringing their fists together in a sort of all for one and one for all salute, the trio started down the hall.

"Here we go." said the woman.

"Let's hit 'em."

"Let's go make thirty million dollars." Dave whispered under his breath.

Together they entered the board room where a bunch of well to do executives sat patiently waiting for them. Dave smiled. He was nervous, yet excited, and the possibility of thirty million hanging over his head ruled out the option to make any mistakes in this presentation. "Good morning." Dave smiled. Each of his partners took a stance behind him, very much willing to let Dave to the talking. "Before I begin..."

A slight pang in his chest suddenly made the room go fuzzy and dim. Dave tried to blink the feeling away. Today was his big day. Their big day! He couldn't falter now. But as he attempted to focus his eyes, he found there was nothing to focus on. The last thing Dave remembered was falling face first into the glass table before everything went black.

Outside, there was mass mayhem. Every few yards a person was found lying motionless on the ground, similar to Dave's fashion. Sirens were sounding every other block in a matter of moments. Car crashes, screams of panic, children crying, everything. Everywhere.

A bus had crashed on a curb somewhere nearby, filled to the brim with frightened children. A shattered mitsubishi lie just in front of it. A few feet away from there was a small fender bender with three other cars. A few yards down the street to the bus's right, an oil tanker had collided with a small minivan. A crowd of people from the fair had gathered round to check on the drivers. A greyhound bus lie stuck on the curb like a beached whale as citizens ran through the streets trying to revive those who had collapsed on the sidewalks.

On a curb outside of it all, a man held his hands wife.

"What's happened?" she asked. He frowned, looking away.

"I don't know. Lets keep going."

University of Chicago

"Sound waves. So if we know that sound waves gain wavelength and lose frequency as they travel through more dense materials, then the anomalies in these waves are the means by which we can surmise the fundamental architecture of our planet."

Doctor Joshua Keyes looked up from his blackboard to see an ocean of sleeping and bored students. He smiled.

"How are the nails coming, Christine?" Immediately the girl sat up. Doctor Keyes laughed and turned back to the board. "Good. All right, let's have a demonstration. Mr. Acker, Veronica. Thank you very much." he took up a trumpet and began to blow. It certainly wasn't the greatest Jazz in all the world, and if one might have thought to even label the sound music they would have been butchered on the spot by even the least proficient music student.

"All right. Mrs. Limestone," he placed his hand on a large chunk of the mineral sitting atop a nearby table. "being a big softie, you know, loves walks in the park, bedtime stories, big romantic. Love Chet. I can't play Chet but I'll see what I can do." he turned his back to the class and pointed at the furthest corner of the table. Watch the oscilloscope, all right? Here we go."

He kneeled beside the rock and began to play the horrible sounds straight into the surface. The students believed that if it had been glass instead of limestone the element would have shattered, but fortunately that was not the case. Worry grew heavy, however, as two uniformed men with expressionless countenances entered the room.

"Dr. Joshua Keyes?" the less friendly looking of the two asked. Josh stood up again and immediately ceased his playing.

"Maybe." Keyes replied.

"Yes, or no, sir."

"The first one." he tried to look as innocent as possible. Suddenly he realized all those late night raids in his college days were probably not the best idea.

The man flashed a badge and the letters 'FBI' were most prominent on the I.D. next to it. Crap. Keyes thought.

"Guys, wh-whats going on?" Josh asked as they left the college premises. In his nervous state he could barely get his coat on much less look other students and co-workers in the eye as he was walked off the lot with these two men on each side of him.

"We don't know sir." said the first man. Apparently the other was incapable of speech. This information was also not helpful or encouraging to Keyes.

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"Your security clearance is higher than ours."

What? Josh thought. "I have security clearance?"

"We're just here to bring you to your jet."

"I have a jet!?"

Washington D.C.

Josh was lead down into a cellar like entrance where he could hear whispers from the other side of the barred door. Who the hell am I now, 007? He thought to himself. Flashing his badge as the officer before him did, the only one who ever said anything, Josh then slipped it over his neck and tried to look important as possible. That changed however when he heard that those whispers were actually shouts of French anger. An elderly man with graying hair was beating the crap out of a Pepsi dispenser, cursing in his own tongue carelessly while slapping his palm against the plastic surface.

"Hey, Serge!" Josh called out in humor, a wide grin spread quickly across his face. When the man didn't respond, he tried again.

"Ah!"

"Serge."

"Damn!" Serge hissed, kicking it now.

"Serge."

The man turned around. Not smiling but looking horribly frustrated. His glistening eyes turned accusingly to the FBI agent that had lead Josh to the underground rats nest they had found themselves in.

"It's about time. You're always late." At last Serge saw Josh and smiled brightly. They embraced warmly as each laughed at the other.

"Let's keep moving, gentleman." the agent stated.

With a slight hesitance they pulled apart.

"What am I doing here?" Serge asked Josh more than the agents. "They wouldn't brief me until you got here. You know, there are biochemists everywhere, military. I hate them." Josh could not help but laugh some more. "When are you going to meet a nice girl and bring her for dinner?" Serge asked again, playfully brushing the side of Josh's face.

"I'm married to my work." Josh admitted honestly, the grin or the sparkle at seeing an old friend hardly leaving his eyes.

"So am I." said Serge as though this were nothing. "Which makes my wife my mistress..." he leaned in closer to Josh's ear. "That is why I'm still on love with her."

A door opened for them at the end of the long corridor through which they had been lead. Josh and Serge entered through, oblivious to the fact that they were now alone in a large room filled with tables laden with covered supplies.

"You were always a romantic." Josh accused playfully.

"I love my wife!" Serge defended with a grin.

"Yeah I know. I love your wife, too."

"I know." Serge laughed.

"But I don't love your wife. You know what I mean."

"You don't love her the same way, you know."

"It's the French. I think its the cheese."

"Ah, the cheese!" Serge laughed as they stopped walking after a while. Josh leaned against a table and smiled. "You're...you're teasing me, right?"

But Josh didn't get a change to answer. Serge's eyes went wide with horror as he pointed to the table in which Josh had been leaning against. Looking down the young geophysicist saw a limp human arm now hanging from the table.

"Oh, my..." he moved away as quickly as possible, Serge moved with him. Each surveyed the laden, covered tables with fear and suspicion. "Whoa. Wait, these are bodies!" Josh proclaimed.

"I think we're in the wrong place here." said Serge with some concern.

"Yeah, we're in the wrong place."

"No." came an arrogant voice from the opposite wall. "If you were in the wrong place you'd have already been shot."

"That's a hell of a greeting." Serge smiled oddly, not feeling comfortable in his surroundings or some of his company.

"Surge."

"Serge."

"Serge." The officer corrected as they shook hands. "Yes. Always a pleasure."

"Same here, Thomas. Doctor Keyes." Serge turned to introduce his young friend to the officer.

"I know." said Josh in a rather quiet voice.

"Tom Purcell." They shook hands. "Gentleman you do realize that everything here is totally classified, okay?"

Josh nodded, exchanged glances with Serge, and moved up the isles with the two older men.

"At 10:30am local time, thirty two civilians all with a ten block radius...died. They didn't get sick first. They simply hit the ground dead."

"Nerve agent?" Serge asked.

"Our first guess. No."

"They all died at the same time?" came Josh.

"As far as we can tell, to the second. This hit CNN in one hour. I need a reason."

"Is there a variation in sex, age, body type?" Serge tried once more.

"They all had pacemakers." Josh stated.

"Under a minute." Purcell's eyebrows raised. "Your reputation is well deserved."

He pulled back the blanket on one body, causing Josh to step back in disgust, protesting that there was no need to view the victims. "Hey, hey, hey!"

"How did you guess? Without any clues from the victims."

"No that's..." he was trying really hard to not look at the dead body. "Serge and I are the clues. I mean, he specializes in high energy weapons. I do geomagnetics. So calling us means you suspect an electromagnetic pulse weapon. If these are the only fatalities then they must be people susceptible to electronic interference."

"QED pacemakers." said Serge, nodding his head and turning his gaze to Josh. "You are spooky sometimes, eh?"

"Now I need to know," Purcell came in between their conversation. "did some sort of weapon kill these people?"

"The power you would need to create an EM pulse strong enough I mean, that's...that's not a weapon that I've ever heard of."

"No." Serge came in.

"Okay, we're done." Purcell nodded his head and began to walk away.

"We're not done sir." Josh protested, following with Serge at his side. "There's nothing on the other side of the equals sign."

"I agree with Joshua..." Serge began.

"Thank you!" Purcell interjected once again. "Out greatest concern was this may have been an act of war, but since its not I think we can all breathe a little easier, can't we?"

Josh stopped. The frown and the look of utter perplexity had not left his face. Purcell continued on with Serge following. Had he looked back he might have seen his young friend surveying the room once more, as if his answer was written somewhere in the walls.

Author's Note: Correct to the line, I know. No changes so far, but they'll come in later. It's a pain in the butt stopping a movie ever few seconds. Thank God for the luxuries of the pause button and subtitles.