Tom turned the corner and found her in the p-way, bent over, leaning on some pipes, obviously distressed.

"Rachel?" he asked softly, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She shrank away from his hand, shuddering, drawing in upon herself. He was confused – and even more concerned – at this reaction. "What happened?" he asked, in a firmer tone.

She finally glanced at him.

"I need a shower."

"Um, ok." He said. "Any particular reason?" he watched as she closed her eyes and shuddered once more. He cautiously stepped a little bit closer, to make it harder for her to evade his eyes. "Rachel, what happened?"

"Niels." The one-word response filled him with dread.

"What did he do to you?"

"Nothing."

"This is not a reaction to nothing."

"I… let him think I was going to let him do something…"

"What? Why?"

"He wants to…I needed information…" she said, clenching her fists around the pipe in front of her until her knuckles went white. "He's apparently been following my work for years. Even met me at a conference after a speech I gave, though I don't remember it."

Tom felt a chill run down his back as the pieces clicked. I made Rachel work with her stalker. Who happens to be the worst mass murderer this planet has ever seen. He'd known the latter when he'd forced her to work with him, but he'd seen how much impact a 'regular' stalker had had on his cousin in college. If this was all that Rachel was letting show…she was the strongest woman he'd ever met.

"I…Rachel, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. I can get Dr. Millowski to work with him instead."

"Whom he will tell absolutely nothing. He wants me."

Tom nodded reluctantly. She was right, dammit.

"How much else is there that you need from him?"

"I technically have all the information I need."

"but…" he asked, sensing there was more.

"… but I need actual samples of the virus from his lungs."

"So that requires, what, surgery?" He couldn't see Niels consenting to surgery, but he didn't much care about his consent.

"There's two ways. The easiest way is to let the virus to reproduce in his lungs by unlocking its stability sequence. The other is surgery to take a significant portion of his lung, and search the tissue for months until I find the one strain I need from among the thousands of strains of this virus and the millions of strains of every other virus he's ever had and recovered from."

"…what's wrong with the first method?" he asked. It sounded pretty straightforward to him, so there must be a reason she hadn't already done it.

"Now that I don't need any more information from him, I'd actually prefer that one. It's far quicker, and that alone could save millions of lives. But also for the good and simple reason that he deserves to die in the same fashion as all the people he's killed." Tom blanched once he realized what she was proposing. Not that Niels didn't deserve it. But then he paused, forcing himself to consider the options she'd laid out. Millions of innocent lives were worth far more than Niels' worthless ass.

"You're absolutely sure you'd get what you need?"

"Yes."

"Well, he's going to have to stand trial at some point, and given the charges, he'll probably be executed for his crimes. We may as well get something useful out of it. Let me talk to the president about how fast we can get a trial together. And even if we can't, we will make him have that surgery. Either way, you don't need to talk to him anymore. I'll keep him locked up in his room for the rest of his miserable life, and the only place you'll have to look at him is in your petri dishes."

He watched Rachel as she stood up, turning to him in disbelief, and then awe. Suddenly, she threw her arms around him. He felt himself return her embrace instinctively. This was only the second time he'd hugged her, but there was something about this woman's hugs that just felt right. They stood like that for a while, until he felt all the tension drain out of her small form. Finally, she took a deep, cleansing breath and stepped back.

"Thank you, Tom."

He was glad she felt better, but he felt uncomfortable with her gratitude when he was part of the cause of her pain in the first place.

"You deserve so much more. I'm sorry I made you work with him at all."

"You were right, you know. It had to be done, and it had to be me." She shivered briefly in memory. "But now it's over. And finding the cure is worth it."

It was his turn to stare in awe at the resilient woman in front of him. He knew he couldn't really understand what she'd been going through, but he knew that what she had endured would have broken a weaker soul.

"You're an amazing woman, you know that?"

"Just doing what needs to be done." She told him sincerely. "Thanks again."

And with that she turned and walked down the p-way with a definite bounce in her step, Tom's eyes fastened to her until she disappeared from view.