…EARTH-BOSTON-FIVE YEARS EARLIER….

Harper, flanked by Rommie and his cousin Brendan, put the roll of red tape and glass full of magic markers down on the crate and raised his eyes to the group of people milling around in the warehouse, the fifty or sixty resistance fighters whom Harper and Rommie were arming to attack Boston's Nietzschean garrison.

"Hey, listen up…." Harper called. "Hey!"

No one reacted.

Brendan whistled loudly. "HEY!" he shouted. "Listen up!"

Conversation died; everyone turned to face Brendan.

"Seamus has an important announcement," Brendan said. "Seamus?"

"All right," Harper said. "We've had a couple of accidents already and we don't want to have anymore." He held up a force lance. "Remember, these things key themselves to their user's DNA, and anyone else who uses it gets shocked, as a few of you have already learned the hard way. So, I want everyone to take a piece of red tape and use it to put their initials or some other identifer on their lances. The dragons may not mind if we shock ourselves unconscious, but I, for one, don't want to make their jobs easier."

The fighters clustered around the crates. Harper turned away to from the crates to the red-haired man in leather armor who came over, rubbing his head. Ozzie had been the first one they met when they arrived, challenging them because Brendan hadn't told his cell about his cousin. Rommie appreciated the need for security, but that Brendan had not informed his second-in-command did not bode well for this operation.

"You ok there, Ozzie?" Brendan asked.

"Yeah." Ozzie shook his head. "Damn, that thing packs a punch."

"It's supposed to," Harper said. "Ok, Izzy, like I told the others, I want you to-"

"Who's Izzy?" Ozzie asked.

"What?" Harper stammered.

"You called me 'Izzy.'"

"I meant Ozzie. Sheesh. Like I said-"

"Tape and marker, got it."

Ozzie joined the crowd lining up at the crates. Rommie helped them get organized as Harper and Brendan went across the room to huddle over their makeshift command post, their backs to the rest of the room. Rommie monitored their movements with her peripheral vision and tuned her hearing to pick their conversation out of the background noise even as she distributed pens and tape.

"So, uh…" Brendan snuck a glance back at Rommie then back to Harper. "Speaking of Izzy-"

"What?" Harper said.

"I was wondering, in your travels, did you bump into her?"

'"Her"?' Rommie thought, though her attention didn't waver from her tasks.

"No," Harper said. "So what?"

"You didn't say goodbye to her, did you?" Brendan asked.

"What if I didn't?" Harper hissed back.

"She came here that night, Seamus, looking for you. I think she would have cut her way through the whole ghetto to get to you."

"Yeah, looking for her lost puppy. How sweet."

"Seamus, she had a crush on you that makes Jupiter's atmosphere look like smoke-"

"And that's all it was, Brendan, a crush, a stupid case of puppy love. She's probably back home on Nua Eireann with a muscle head for a husband and a bunch of rug rats and she hasn't given me a second thought."

"I don't know, Cuzzo. I never told anyone - I wanted to maintain your street cred, just in case - but I've kept an ear open. Word is she got in some kind of trouble a couple of years ago. Her dad-"

"Is a Dragon. Like she is. Like the Dragons we're fighting, Brendan? Remember? It's ancient history."

"Maybe." Brendan snuck another glance at Rommie. "But I think your friend ought to know."

'I would at that,' Rommie thought. She didn't feel jealousy - she had no romantic interest in Harper - but over the past 14 months, she had come to care about him a great deal; he was second only to Dylan in her affections. Yet how much did she *not* know about her engineer? Would she have to euthanize him to prevent the hatching of his Magog larvae with so many unknowns about him? As if she hadn't already-

'Damn you, Trance Gemini!' Rommie thought.

"Hardly," Harper snapped. "It's nothin', Brendan. Forget about it."

"Ok."

Ozzie took over handing out pens and tape just as Brendan and Harper came back over from the command post. Rommie crossed to her engineer as Brendan headed for the head of the room.

"Everything fine?" she asked.

"Yeah," Harper said, "no problems."

Rommie chose her words carefully: "You know, Harper, this is a new situation for you, and well outside your comfort zone. If you need to talk about anything, anything at all, you know you can talk to me."

"Yeah." Harper smiled. "And if I need comforting…"

"Harper."

"Ok. I'm sorry. Thanks, Rommie. Now, let's get this party started."

Harper never mentioned Izzy again for the rest of the trip to Earth.

And Rommie never heard the name at all until the Than courier delivered her message five years later.