Johnny C. was wedged between the agents' panel van and the wall of their tiny garage, squeezed so tight that he could barely even move back and forth, let alone side to side. This was the only space they had been able to spare for his bike. Johnny had been saving up money all through school and all through college and all through med school, working whatever hours he could spare, whatever jobs would take him, just so he could say he had bought her with his own money.

She was a slim, stripped down Spanish import called a Gas Gas, made for scaling rocks and kicking holes in trails, built for nothing but the most efficient transmutation of liquid fire into white-hot heartbreak speed. John had put countless hours into her, tuning the engine, fitting suspension forks and adding his own custom fairings and bodywork. Some part of him was still desperate to throw off a rational, well-paying career and make it big on the off-roading circuit, and so he came down to work on her whenever he needed to clear his head. He had been putting a lot of hours on her lately.

Ever since the incident with the police, the mood in the safe house had taken on a distinctly stifling tone, even more so than could be expected from four people being forced to share a small home, a secret identity and the threat of being murdered by prehistoric animal zombies. Steve had simply refused to speak to either of the agents once they had delivered him back home. Briggs had been upset to learn about what had happened, but when she saw how Steve was reacting she was more than willing to indulge him.

It had been three days since then.

When Johnny couldn't justify staying in the basement any longer, he came upstairs into a room with all the life and warmth of a walk-in mortuary cooler. Briggs and Steve were sitting on opposite sides of the room, their faces towards opposite walls, each one buried in their own particular obsessions. Agent Briggs was at her desk, pouring over police reports of the incident and sketches of the new creatures, pictures that ranged from bestial to fanciful to the acid dreams of Todd MacFarlane. Steve was on the couch, flipping through Professor de Bouchard's handwritten notes for the forty-somethingth time, trying to find any spot of insight he had yet to wring out of them. Between them was an ever-growing vortex of cold that was painful to walk through. Johnny had to hug the wall in order to join Steve on the couch.

"Hey man," he said. Steve nodded back without any actual words. Johnny sat there looking at him until he was absolutely sure that no response was forthcoming. "So… how goes the history lesson?"

"Euuugh…" Steve let the papers slip out of his grasp and drop to the floor. "I've read this thing so many times that none of the words in it have any meaning at all. I could recite it in my sleep."

"The beetle-buddy's no help?" asked John.

"I keep asking him for help but he just keep saying I am a guide but you must walk your own trail, or something meaningless like that."

"You are getting scarily good at that voice, dude."

"I still need to work on the flanges," said Steve, taking a drink of water. "Burns my throat up, too."

"You and agent Scully there still…?"

"Let's not discuss it," said Steve. Johnny sighed.

"Look I know that this whole situation is a giant thundercrap but that doesn't give you an excuse to act like a little kid."

"I'm not acting like a child, she's acting like child!"

"…well, you're half right," said Johnny.

"She could have got me killed out there," said Steve.

"I don't think you were in any real danger from those cops, man," said Johnny. "I've seen what your exoskeleton is made of; those bullets may as well be paintballs to you."

"Regular bullets, sure, but what if they started arming for monster hunting and packing armor-piercing ammo?"

"Well… yeah, that wouldn't have been good for you," said Johnny.

"And I'm some kind of magical superhero now," said Steve. "I thought I'm supposed to be working with the cops."

"You want a Steve-signal in the sky?" asked Johnny.

"That is exactly what I want, yes," said Steve.

"…me too."

"Who wouldn't want that?"

"Everyone wants that!"

"It's quintessential!" said Steve. "And we've got all this… secrecy going on instead. All these monsters running around killing people and nobody can even know about it."

"Yeah, but you heard what Abe said."

"Abe?"

"Ah… Jimenez, Jimenez said it."

"Why did you call him 'Abe'?"

"That's not important right now," said Johnny. "People would riot if they found out about these monsters! Hell, I'm barely holding it together and I know we have an ace in the hole!"

"Well… okay, yeah," said Steve. "Even I'm freaking out about this. But imagine what's going to happen if people find out and it turns out we knew it all along, we just weren't telling them because we didn't think they could handle it? Do you think they'll be happy with us for lying to them?"

"I don't like this either, man!" said Johnny, rubbing his forehead. "But what else can we do?"

"I dunno… get people prepared?" said Steve. "Tell them how to fight these things? Break the news so they don't freak out too much? Freaking anything is better than putting a gag on the whole thing!"

"You guys know I'm in the room, right?" said Briggs, getting to her feet, her voice making Johnny's breath freeze in his chest. "But go on, I really want to know what kind of plan you have."

"Any plan is better than nothing," said Steve, his eyes locked on hers.

"Only if you know what you're doing," said Briggs, folding her arms across her chest. Her left eye, just a few millimeters away from the scar bisecting her face, was shot with blood. "We have no intel on these things save a few X-rays from somebody who should still be a med student-"

"Hey!" said Johnny.

"-and every time we've tried to take one of these monsters down has resulted in you getting your ass kicked!"

"Hey!" said Steve.

"We have procedures in place," said Briggs. "If and when we actually have a plan, we'll act on it."

"How many of your procedures account for undead abominations from before the dawn of civilization?" asked Steve. "This is completely uncharted territory! We can't just keep relying on old plans!"

Johnny was trying to get out of the crossfire when Jimenez came pounding down the stairs, clutching his radio.

"Are you watching TV?" he shouted, scrambling for the remote. "You guys need to see this!"

The television blinked into life, helicopter footage of the city center filling the screen. The camera was trying to focus on a handful of dark, indistinct figures standing amidst a mass of prone bodies and burning cars, smoke wafting high into the air all around them.

"-appeared in downtown Seattle just a few minutes ago!" said the announcer, barely keeping the panic from her practiced, authoritative diction. "Eyewitnesses described them as humans with grotesque animal features, and police officers report their weapons are ineffective! Details are scarce on the ground, but we…" the voice paused as the camera zoomed in on a large figure with a foot-long horn bursting from his forehead, standing back from all the carnage. "…we estimate there may be as many as ten of them."