A/N: Thanks for the reviews!

Sitting in the backseat on the way to Cedars Sinai, Don second-guessed himself. What if they pulled a fast one, and the ambulance turned around and went back to the airbase? He didn't trust Robles whatsoever. Somehow, though, he felt that Robles was telling the truth, at least in this instance. That man was going to be where Charlie was so he could control the situation. He'd made that clear.

At the emergency room, the medics quickly pushed Charlie's gurney into a room with a closed door, and the man named Jim went in with him. Robles stood with Don in the hallway and nodded toward an ER attendant waiting down the hall near some curtained-off patient bays. "I've arranged for them to take care of your wound. I didn't think you'd get very far on your own without ID. I'd go get treated - we'll get Professor Eppes admitted and into a room."

Don had visions of them whisking Charlie up to the helipad as soon as he was gone. He knew it probably ridiculous, but he was staying nearby. "Thanks, I'll do that, but I'll wait until the doctor sees him, and he gets into a room."

Robles shrugged, irritably. "Suit yourself."

Don walked down and spoke to the ER attendant and told him he'd be back down later. He did need to get his arm taken care of - just not quite yet. Down the hall, he saw a man in a suit hurry off an elevator and make his way to Robles. They spoke briefly, and they both went into Charlie's ER bay. The attendant, a stocky young man with sharp eyes, said, "That's a new one. I've never seen the hospital director down here before - at least not in a room." He looked at Don with curiosity. "So what gives?"

"If you find out, please let me know," said Don. "I'll come down later."

The young man shrugged. "No problem. I've got a chart started for you. I'm here all night."

Don walked back down and sat in a chair in the hallway. Shortly after that, a doctor popped out of the same elevator and disappeared into the room. Don began to take stock of his situation. He had no ID, no wallet, and no phone. His Glock was tucked in his waistband under his sweatshirt, but without an ID, that was almost a liability. He hadn't had a shave in at least three days, he was dirty, smelly, and covered in blood, and he was walking around with no ID with a gun tucked in his rear waistband. In short, he looked like your average L.A. gang member. Just a little older.

He needed to get hold of his father, he decided. He walked back down the ER attendant, who very generously let Don use his cellphone, and Don walked back down the hallway for privacy. He called David first.

"Don," came David's voice, "Where are you?"

"We're at Cedars Sinai. They got us out and flew us to LAAFB, and then we came here by ambulance, or Charlie did. They're in there looking at him now. But there's something pretty hinky about all of this. I'm not letting Charlie out of my sight."

"We're about an hour out. We'll head right there."

Unexpectedly, Don felt a lump in his throat. Finally, someone other than himself to lean on. He hadn't realized how exhausted he was until that moment. "Okay, that'll be good. I'll fill you in when you get here with what I know, which isn't much."

He signed off and then called his father. "Hi, Dad."

"Don?" His father processed the fact that Don was calling several days earlier than the planned end of the trip - and from an unknown number - in an instant. "What's wrong?"

"We have a slight issue. We're at Cedars Sinai. Charlie is sick. I'm not sure what's wrong. They're in there looking at him. They sent a guy here from D.C. Charlie's illness is somehow connected to his trip, and neither Charlie nor this guy will talk about it. I'm hoping the doctor here will figure it out and fill us in."

"I'll be there in an hour," Alan said.

"Okay, Dad, can you do me a favor? Bring me a change of clothes, deodorant, some shaving cream, and a razor. And I may need to borrow a little cash. I had to leave my ID and my phone behind. Meet me in Emergency."

"Done," said Alan firmly.

"Okay, take it easy on the roads. Nothing is happening too fast here."

That was an understatement. Don walked back down and returned the phone and sat there another twenty minutes before the doctor, Robles, and the hospital administrator came back out. Two orderlies bustled into the room. Don approached the doctor, who was striding toward him. The man didn't look like he intended to stop, and Don belatedly realized that he was heading for the elevator. He fell into step beside him. "Doctor, I'm Don Eppes, Charlie Eppes' brother. Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"I wish I knew," muttered the doctor. His name tag said Ceres. He didn't look happy. He gave Don a sharp glance as if seeing him for the first time. "His brother, you said?" He gave a glance over his shoulder to make sure the others were still down the hallway, and said in a low voice, "Come up and see me in my office - alone - when you can."

Don's heart leaped with hope. Finally, someone was going to fill him in on what was going on. The doctor paused at the elevator and punched a button, and his next comment sent Don's heart back down into his shoes. "Maybe you can shed some light on this."

He stepped onto the elevator, and Don stood staring as the doors closed. Then he whirled on his heel. The orderlies were wheeling Charlie out of the room, but Robles, Jim, and the hospital administrator had vanished. Don soon found out why. They had taken another elevator. The orderlies wheeled Charlie toward the back end of the emergency room. There was another set of elevators there, large enough to accommodate the gurney, and Don stepped into the lift with them. Charlie was out cold and white as a sheet, his eyes closed, and didn't respond when Don called his name. They had started an IV, but it didn't seem as if they'd done anything else.

They took him up to the ICU and wheeled him toward a room. One of the orderlies said, "You won't be allowed in. No visitors."

"I'm his brother."

"Those are the orders. If you break them, they'll call security, and take you off the floor." His words were curt, but his eyes were sympathetic. "Just sayin'." He inclined his head. "There's a waiting area over there."

The waiting room was an alcove with a collection of chairs and a sightline to a few rooms. Unfortunately, Don realized that Charlie's room was not one of them, as the orderlies pushed inside a doorway at the far end of the corridor. Still, he was at least on the same floor. The rooms all had windows, and Don walked down and looked inside to see Robles and Jim sitting inside, watching as the orderlies transferred Charlie to the bed. Don yanked the door open. "What gives?" he demanded. "They tell me I can't be in the room, but you two clowns can be?"

Robles gave Don a look of annoyance and gave Jim a wave that said 'deal with him.' Jim hurried over to the door, ushered Don into the hallway, and closed the door behind him. "Professor Eppes is in and out of a delirious state," he said, quietly, even though there was no one else in the hallway. "He may inadvertently speak of his assignment. We need to monitor the situation, so the ICU staff is bending the rules for us. Orders from Washington."

He was polite and seemed concerned, unlike Robles. Don stared him down. "I'd like to see your ID."

Jim fished it out and handed it to him. His full name was James Vanderberg, and he had the same nondescript Department of Defense designation on his identification.

"Who are you guys really with?" Don demanded. "You're spooks, aren't you?"

Vanderberg raised his eyebrows. "I really can't say, one way or another."

"I thought so. Did you give the doctor enough information to treat him?"

"As far as we could. We may be able to help further, but we're waiting for the green light from Washington. The doctor has ordered blood work and tests - they took several vials downstairs already, and they are already in the lab. According to the doctor, he's suffering some respiratory distress; they're going to fit him with a nasal cannula and put him on some oxygen. Low-flow, they told us."

Vanderberg was either more forthcoming and sympathetic than Robles, or a smooth talker. A possible ally, or perhaps even more dangerous. They seemed to be doing the right things, but Don wasn't sure they had Charlie's best interests at heart. He wondered what their further help might entail, but he knew he wouldn't get that out of them, at least not until they heard from Washington. He gave Vanderberg a sharp nod and said, "Keep me informed. My father is on his way. If there is a time when Charlie is sleeping and not talking, I'm sure he'll want to step in there to see him."

"We'll see what we can do," was Vanderberg's noncommittal response.

Don headed back toward the elevator and made his way back down to the first level, where he found a directory. He looked up the location of Dr. Ceres' office, which was in another building on the medical campus, and decided that he didn't have time to see him before his father arrived. So he headed back to the emergency department and waited. Alan Eppes showed up ten minutes later, and so did David and Colby. They walked in together, all with expressions of concern on their faces and looking at Don for answers. He came out of the treatment area and into the waiting room to meet them, and everyone in the room looked at him. He had to be a sight: covered in dirt and blood, his hair and clothes disheveled. His father uttered an exclamation. "Let's step outside," Don said.

It was August, and L.A. temperatures were a far cry from the coolness of the mountains. Don's sweatshirt suddenly felt stifling. Waves of heat were radiating from the pavement. They walked over to a shaded area away from the doorway. Colby and his father spoke at once: "What happened?" although Colby's version had an accompanying epithet.

Don told them all of it: he spoke about Charlie starting to feel ill, and their decision to get off the trail. About finding themselves on an illegal pot farm and being rescued by a covert ops team. He said, "After I called you and Colby to come up, we realized that we were in the middle of that illegal operation. I went off to scope things out. As the smugglers were moving in on us, Charlie must have seen them and called Robles. Robles called in support."

"Thank goodness," said Alan. "Who is Robles?"

"His ID says Derek Robles from the DOD, but my guess is he's CIA. It sounds like he was part of Charlie's second assignment in D.C."

"We ran into him up in the mountains," said David. "We were stationed where the creek meets the road, which is where you asked us to wait. Robles and another guy drove up in an SUV, and then the two helicopters came in."

"Two helicopters!" exclaimed Alan.

David nodded. "They dispatched a team out of one of them to take down the camp, and the other one was used to evacuate Don and Charlie. We watched what we could from below. When the second chopper headed south, we figured you guys were on it, and we started driving home. I tried to call you, both on your cell phone and Charlie's satphone."

"Our cell phones are toast," said Don. "The smugglers destroyed them. Charlie hid the satphone in his boot. I guess I don't know what happened to it. I imagine Robles has it. We left our packs, everything, behind, including my wallet, ID, and the keys to my SUV."

Alan was looking at his arm with concern. "What happened to your arm?"

"It's not as bad as it looks," said Don. "Someone winged me when as we ran for the chopper. There's a guy in the emergency room waiting to stitch me up."

"Which you are going to do as soon as we finish here," said Alan firmly. "And Charlie? You said he wasn't feeling well. Did they admit him?"

This was tough. "Yeah," said Don. "He's in the ICU."

"ICU!"

Don took a deep breath and let it out. "He wasn't doing well from the start. Charlie was lagging behind me, blamed it on getting no exercise for two months. He kept getting worse, and we both thought it was a touch of altitude sickness. But as Charlie got even sicker, he finally admitted to me that he was in trouble, and he thought it had something to do with his recent assignment. It sounded like he had been ill while he was gone, and it also sounded to me like he knows what it is. He said it wasn't contagious, and he'd thought he was done with it."

"Do you think he was working on disease research for the government? Like for the CDC?" asked Colby.

"I asked him that same thing, and he said no, it had nothing to do with that. Robles and Vanderberg - the two spooks who are watching over him - wanted to fly him to Walter Reed for treatment, but a doctor here at LAAFB nixed that. He said Charlie needs treatment right away, so they brought him here. Whatever this is, the spooks feel that if it gets out, people will be able to determine something about his assignment. They are up in his room now, and they aren't letting anyone in because they say he is delirious, and there is a risk of him inadvertently spilling something they want to keep secret."

"We'll see about that," Alan growled. "I'm going in whether they want me to or not."

"The weird part of this is, I thought they would have confided in Charlie's doctor, but I don't think they told him everything. He wants me to come up and see him, maybe to see if I can shed any light on this. When I questioned Vanderberg, he said that the hospital did blood work. It's in the labs now, and he and Robles are waiting for some kind of green light from Washington before they can say more. I was just going to go up to talk to Charlie's doctor when you showed up."

Alan shook his head. "You should get looked at first." He held up a bag. "I brought your clothes."

…

Charlie's eyebrows knit in a frown, and he opened his eyes, blinking. His first realization was that he was in a hospital bed, and with that came a measure of relief. There was a cannula in his nose, and he could hear the soft whoosh and thump of the oxygen pump. Then the hazy recollection of being on a helicopter, and Don being there too, resurfaced. So they'd made it to a hospital. He would have felt better if he had seen Don and knew for sure that he was okay, but this was something. His eyes landed on the IV in his arm, and he knew he must be getting treatment. It was strange, though, he reflected. When he'd been treated previously, the medicine had produced a horrible metallic taste in his mouth, but now there was none. And he felt terrible, just as bad as before.

Robles and Vanderberg were across the room, talking in low voices. Why were they here, and Don wasn't? As groggy as he was, Charlie felt that something was off. He closed his eyes and tried to listen to their conversation over the hiss of the oxygen.

'…checking to see if the bids have been made public over there…' Then something that Charlie couldn't catch, and then, '…we could at least tell them what he has - we don't necessarily have to give them the country…' then, '…we could tie it to the first assignment. That's not where he got it, but they wouldn't know that…' then, '…we could propose that, but I'm betting they'll want to us at least wait until they see where the bidding process is…'

Charlie felt his gut contract. That's why he wasn't starting to feel better - they weren't treating him at all. They hadn't told the doctors what he had. He quickly opened his eyes and looked up at his IV bag. There was nothing attached to it, no tube of medicine that dripped medication into his IV line, just a simple bag of fluids. No treatment - he was just lying there, getting worse.

His eyes tracked back across the room, and he saw Robles looking at him. He closed his eyes, hoping the man would think that he had only partially wakened and gone back to sleep. The first time, he'd drifted in and out of consciousness, the doctors told him, in and out of delirium. Then and now, the pattern was the same. Fever, chills, and hallucinations, sweating as the fever broke, and returning to consciousness and terrible fatigue. Over and over again. He was in the conscious phase now. There was no telling how long it would last. Or if consciousness would return if he didn't get treatment. He might just go under and never come up again.

He could hear someone walk over to his bedside and pull up a chair. "Dr. Eppes." It was Robles. "Dr. Eppes, can you hear me?"

Charlie opened his eyes and looked at him and gave him a nod. "Dr. Eppes, you're at Cedars Sinai. Your brother is downstairs, getting stitched up, but he's fine. Do you understand?

"Yes." The word came out barely audible, his voice scratchy. So they were in L.A., and Don was here and was relatively ok. Relief surged so sharply that tears came to his eyes.

"The doctors are doing bloodwork before they give you treatment," Robles said. "They should have a medication identified soon. In the meantime, we are asking that there be no visitors, because you've been feverish and, well, babbling, I'm afraid, and some of it has been about your work with us. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Charlie rasped. He understood perfectly. Not only did they not want people to hear him when he was delirious, but they also didn't want him to talk when he was awake. They didn't care if the doctors found out what he had in time to save him or not. If he were dead, his travels and his assignments would remain a mystery. If the doctors did figure out what was wrong, Robles and Vanderberg would have to create a mitigation plan and swear civilians to secrecy, and they didn't want that mess. But Robles was betting that the doctors would not be able to figure it out, and Charlie knew why.

He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep again. Sooner or later, medical personnel would need to come into the room. Maybe his doctor would visit, or someone would at least come to change the IV. He needed to stay conscious until then and figure out how to tell someone what he had without Robles and Vanderberg hearing him. He knew he would be breaking his vow of silence, but they were breaking their vow to protect a civilian. It was a fight for survival.

He wished he had yielded and told Don what he had, out there in the forest. He could have at least done that, without divulging exactly where he'd been. A tremor ran through him, and his heart sank. The fever was coming on yet again.