"How is this possible?" Kuryakin was the first to speak."This looks like a perfectly preserved specimen of Homo neanderthalensis, a species of human in the genus Homo which went extinct 40,000 ago."

"Illya, plain English please?" Napoleon snapped his fingers.

"Are you Brits pulling some sort of crazy joke here? Did you dig up a frozen Neanderthal and dress it up in your clothes?" Billy demanded.

"Billy is correct Napoleon," Illya said,"That looks like a Neanderthal, though not quite."

"Wait,"Solo interrupted."You're saying this is the body of a caveman?"

"Look mates I'm telling you the truth," Brian insisted. He broke into a violent fit of coughing. "He was one of them that attacked us last night."

The others mumbled their agreement and like Brian Cox, they didn't look well at all. Where they were held up was warm enough, so it couldn't be exposure to the cold. Perhaps it was shock.

"I think we need to stay away from them," Illya leaned over, whispering to his partner.

One of the others suddenly screamed, holding his face. He fell forward to the floor writhing in pain and when he rolled over, his features were changing.

The muscles of his face were undulating as his features changed and were beginning to swell up. The shape of his head seemed to stretch flat, becoming elongated. His lower jaw pulled in, yet at the same time his upper teeth pushed forward, protruding from his now gaping mouth. His brow looked enlarged, and his chest expanded, becoming barrel-like.

He'd transformed into what looked like an exaggerated caricature of a Neanderthal and slowly he raised himself up on his arms, snarling as he did so. His eyes were focused on the blond head of Kuryakin.

Without hesitation, Napoleon raised his gun and darted the creature.

"Get out of here!" Cox screamed. He grabbed his head as it too began to swell.

"Come on!" Napoleon called, tugging at Billy's sleeve as the man was standing there transfixed at what was happening to the Brit.

"But we have to help them," he muttered.

"They are beyond help at this point," Illya yelled. "We must leave before they turn on us and ...we perhaps become like them."

The three ran out into the snow, climbing into the snowcat just as the remaining Brits charged after them. Illya and Napoleon darted them as well, while Billy started up the vehicle.

As they disappeared into the wind-whipped snow Billy finally spoke up.

"What happened to them? How could they just become throwbacks... Neanderthals? That's not physically possible but we saw it happen, didn't we?"

"How it happened, I do not know," Illya said. "What we saw however were not true Neanderthals. True Neanderthals did not resemble monsters, they were human like us, though their features were somewhat different from ours. They were still recognizable as human. There are some scientists who conjecture that we all carry their DNA within us. One theory is that as modern man grew in population, he interbred with Neanderthal until they eventually disappeared as a species, having been bred away by the larger population of homo sapien. What you saw Billy was the result of something that caused those men to mutate and it has to be a means most unnatural."

"And thank you for that lecture Dr. Kuryakin. So now we need to figure out how they got that way,"Napoleon mumbled. "Do you think we've been exposed to something that will change us as well? Dare we risk going back to the base camp?"

"None of us touched them, and I doubt if airborne could survive long enough to do anything, not in this frigid environment." Illya hesitated.

"Duval?" The name suddenly took on an ominous portent.

"Do you think tovarisch?"

"There is only hope against hope my friend, but I have a bad feeling he is infected as well, and most likely contagious."

"And taking him back may have exposed everyone."

"We do not know that Napoleon. You and I were exposed to him and neither of us is showing any signs of illness," Illya replied.

His head was spinning though as was going over the possibilities as to what might have caused this inexplicable situation.

The one answer he that kept coming back to him was that it had to have been deliberate. Since his fellow countrymen were seemingly the first to change, could this have been caused by them? Was it an experiment that had gone awry?

Such was a scenario he didn't want to believe at the moment. T.H.R.U.S.H. immediately came to mind as this smacked of their modus operandi.

"Napoleon, I think we need to investigate the Soviet base,"Illya finally suggested.

"Once we check on the Americans and Duval, sure. We can do that. Billy can you make this thing go any faster?" Napoleon asked.

"She's going as fast as she can sir."

Time eked by, making it feel like an unconscionably long time until at last they came to a stop in front of the American outpost.

Nothing looked out of place, smoke was coming out of the chimney in the main quonset hut. The camp was completely intact.

The men quickly disembarked from the snowcat, with Billy pounding on the door to the main hut as soon as he reached it. There was no response.

Too many times Solo and Kuryakin had looked each other in the eye. What they saw this time in each other's glance was not one of confidence.

"We can try around back," Billy said, "Through the kennels."

The agents followed him to a smaller shed located behind the main hut, where they found the door ajar. That wasn't a good sign.

Inside was a gruesome sight; the sled dogs were all dead...ripped apart. They looked as though they'd been gnawed upon.

Illya found the interior door leading to the adjoining corridor unprotected, though there had been instructions to barricade the outer doors.

Perhaps it was out of concern for the dogs that it was left unprotected?

Once inside, Billy again pounded against the wooden back door, shouting his brother Tommy's name.

They heard a muffled voice...it was Aggie.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist! I'm coming!"

The entry was cleared as apparently it had been barricaded after all, giving the three men entry back inside.

"Quick, get your bollocks in here before they come back!" She shouted.

"Agatha what happened to the dogs?" Illya demanded.

"The compound was attacked right after you all left. No one could see them, we could only hear their grunts and snarls at first," Aggie, usually a strong person was definitely shapen. "The dogs started barking. There were yelps and eventually everything went quiet. We haven't heard a sound since then."

The ominous look in the men's eyes gave her the feeling there was more bad news.

"What did you find at the British base?"

"Not good," Napoleon answered." Is everyone else here all right?"

"Except for me, they're all sick. Everyone has developed a bad cough and are running temperatures, just like Duval did."

"What do you mean...did?"Illya asked.

"He died, but before he did, his body began to change, lots of cranial swelling making his features barely recognizable. He was screaming in pain and Maggie gave him a shot of morphine. He passed away right after that. There's no way to know right now if the cause was his his illness, or the drug that did it."

"What about his test results?"Illya asked.

"There was something in his blood, but unidentifiable. it looks like bacteria, but the likes of which I've never seen before."

All the while they'd been walking, heading to the main quonset hut. The only one there was Maggie and she didn't look well at all. She was pale, with reddened circles under her glassy eyes. It was as if she hadn't slept for days.

"Oh thank God you're back," she stood up from the bench where she'd been seated. "There's hot coffee on the stove. I didn't have the energy to cook anything, but you can heat up some cans of soup if you like and there's left over…"

"Maggie, you look exhausted, you should be in bed," Napoleon said.

"That's what I've been telling her but she won't listen." Aggie poured them all hot cups of coffee while they stripped off their outerwear. She pulled Illya and Napoleon aside, whispering to them.

"She's sicker like the others. They've all been confined to quarters. Except for Tommy and myself, they're all becoming the same as Duval had been and I suspect our Maggie is in the same boat. She's the only one who had the closest contact with him.

Napoleon's eyes widened as he'd spent the night with Maggie. Could he have somehow been infected as well?

"Aggie, I suspect someone, Illya whispered,"...possibly the Soviet scientists here have been involved in some sort of genetic experiments. What we saw at the British outpost was most disturbing."

He filled her in on the dead Russian, and the members of the British team who transformed right in front of him, Solo and Billy.

Napoleon cleared his throat but seconds later he suddenly began to feel warm, and looked flushed, perhaps feverish.

"Illya, bad news tovarisch. I'm not feeling very well myself," he sat down, holding his head in his hand.

Maggie went over to him and pulled a thermometer from her pocket.

"Here put this under your tongue," she too cleared her throat.

"No, I'm fine...just a little tired that's all."

"Napoleon, don't get me mad. Remember I have a gun."

"Gee, when you put it that way." He opened his mouth, letting her insert the thermometer.

Maggie tried not thinking about that talented tongue of his and their night together. Could she have infected Napoleon? She'd done the blood work on Duval, and had dropped one of the slides, cutting her hand on it. Was it that, that did it? The others, how could they have become infected as they only had contact with him while he was being transported, it couldn't be an airborne pathogen. Could she have infected them somehow, perhaps when preparing their food? Her head was spinning; she had to concentrate and hold on before she became too sick to be of any good.

"Illya," Napoleon rasped. "I need you to do something. You need to tie us all up before we become like…" he coughed hard this time."You got me tovarisch?"

"Do not assume that will happen my friend."Illya leaned close to Napoleon's ear."I told you your libido would get you in trouble some day, did I not."

"Don't be an I told you so tovarisch...it doesn't become you." Napoleon turned his face away, covering it as he began to cough again. "Can we really take the chance since you aren't sick. So far you, the Ironside brothers and Aggie aren't affected ...we need to make sure you're safe from the rest of us. You need to figure out how to stop this, whatever it is."

"I understand my friend." Illya looked to Aggie for moral support and she nodded her agreement.