Steve was rooted to the spot, studying the illuminated stranger. "Thank you very much," Oscar was saying. "We're delighted to have you here, Doctor, and I look forward to you starting work tomorrow."

"I'm looking forward to it as well." The man Oscar was talking to apparently felt Steve's fixed stare and looked over at him curiously just before he turned and left. Oscar turned around, following his gaze, and saw Steve leaning against the door frame.

"Hey, pal." Oscar stepped away from the door as it closed and crossed the reception area. "How are you feeling?"

Steve kept watching the man with his escort. He was still glowing, even from behind, as he disappeared down the hall. "Oscar," Steve asked, "who was that?"

"That's Dr. Mark Blankenship. He's from an ally, and he's going to be working with us for a few weeks in the lab." Oscar studied Steve. "How are you feeling?" he repeated.

Steve was feeling lousy and more so by the moment, but his eyes were still fixed on the door, even though the departing group was out of sight by now. "Something's wrong with him, Oscar," he said.

"Wrong? What do you mean?" Oscar looked toward the now-blank hallway himself. "He's a brilliant scientist. Wish there were more like him in the world."

Steve shook his head. "Something's wrong. He was glowing."

Oscar's attention sharpened up, totally back on Steve now, forgetting the hallway. "Glowing? What do you mean, Steve?"

"Glowing. All over, like somebody outlined him in yellow. He looked like a walking neon sign." Oscar's eyes narrowed, and Steve read the expression flawlessly. "He was glowing, Oscar. I know you couldn't see it, but I could. There's something strange about him."

Oscar put a hand on Steve's arm. "Steve, you're running a fever, and it's getting higher all the time. I think you're just sick. That's why he looked different."

Steve was getting a little annoyed now. "Oscar, the man was glowing." He could feel his body sagging a little bit beneath him and was glad of the sturdy doorframe that he had a shoulder hitched on at the moment.

Oscar tugged gently at his arm. "Why don't we sit down and then talk about it?"

He was humoring him; Steve could tell. "I'm not seeing things, Oscar. There is something different about that man."

"Well, he's gone for now, so there's no reason to stand here talking about him when we could sit down in the office and be more comfortable." Oscar pulled him back into his office. Steve felt too awful to put up much of a fight, but he wavered slightly as he lost the support of the door frame, and Oscar put an arm clear around him, steadying him. "Come on, pal. Let's sit down."

Oscar steered him to the couch, and Steve more or less collapsed into the cushions. "Just take it easy," Oscar urged him. He pushed Steve down so he was no longer in a sitting position.

"I know what I saw," Steve insisted. He didn't have the energy to resist as Oscar picked his legs up, swinging them onto the couch, too.

"I have no doubt that you saw it," Oscar said. Again, Steve could hear the soothing tone in his voice and knew that his boss didn't believe him.

"It was there, Oscar. Only with the bionic eye; that's why you weren't seeing it, too. But it was there."

Oscar knelt by the couch, getting closer to his friend's level. "Steve, you're obviously sick. I think even you know that by now." Steve reluctantly nodded after a moment. "You know that when your body is injured or sick and isn't quite working right, it can happen that the bionics lose some function, too. You've got a high fever, and your eye simply wasn't focusing correctly. Doesn't that make sense? Rudy has talked to you about how closely tied together the two parts are now."

Steve for the first time wondered himself. "It looked real," he countered, but he was losing a little of the former vehemence.

"I'm sure you saw it," Oscar assured him again. "I just think it had a lot more to do with your physical condition than with Dr. Blankenship." He put a hand on Steve's forehead. "You're burning up. It's no wonder you're not quite seeing things right."

Steve considered. "Nothing else looked wrong, though. Wouldn't it affect everything I saw if the eye was off?" He felt like he was sinking down into the couch, his body wanting to give in to the illness for the moment, and he abruptly fought it, trying to push up to a sitting position.

"Whoa, pal. Settle down." Oscar pushed him back down, his strength greater just now. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Home," Steve replied. "I've obviously picked up some little bug, like you said. I need to just go to bed, sleep it off. I'm sure I'll feel better in the morning."

"You aren't going anywhere until Rudy has checked you over," Oscar stated flatly, his tone leaving no room for negotiation.

"No need to bother Rudy. This is nothing to do with the bionics, just a virus."

"I've already bothered Rudy, and he's on his way back here from his conference as fast as he can come."

Steve sighed. "You didn't need to do that, Oscar. You're overreacting."

Oscar shook his head. "If I am, it's only because you're worth it."

A spark of anger flared up for a minute before it was swallowed by the fever sweeping through him. "Six million dollars' worth. I know. You wouldn't want anything to happen to your precious investment, after all. You might even have to go to the trouble to build another one to replace me." The sharp edge in his tone startled Steve as much as it did Oscar. The other man flinched but didn't respond, and there was a short silence before Steve broke it. "I'm sorry, Oscar."

Oscar patted him on the shoulder. "Forget it, pal. But as for Rudy, he's already on the way, like I said. The only thing you'd gain by going to your apartment is to give him another stop to make after he gets here. Easiest thing for everyone is just to stay put and get it over with, because he is going to check you out."

Steve could feel his eyes closing. He felt so weak at the moment. Oscar gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Just rest, pal. Rudy will be here before too long, and hopefully he'll be able to help you start feeling a little better."

The fever was like a heated whirlpool, pulling him down. "I did see him glowing," Steve insisted, his last words before he lost the fight to keep his eyes open.

(SMD)

Oscar was on his feet pacing. He stopped regularly in his circuit to look at Steve; there was no way anyone could have missed the fact that he was ill now, even on a quick glance. He looked far worse than he had when he'd walked in hours ago to deliver his information. Finally, the door to the office opened, and Oscar spun around at the sound and hurried over. "Thank God you're here."

Rudy looked at the couch, where Steve was asleep. "Is he getting worse?"

"Yes. The fever is higher now, but he also woke up for a little while, and he was either outright hallucinating or his eye wasn't functioning correctly because he's sick."

"It would be understandable to have the eye not focus correctly when he's got a high fever. The eye is the most complicated implant he has."

"I know, but he was so dogged about it. Kept insisting what he saw was real, but what he was describing was ridiculous. If he hadn't been totally serious, I would have thought he was setting up some joke on me."

"What was he describing?" Rudy asked.

"When he woke up and came out of this room for a moment, he happened to see a man leaving - you remember Dr. Mark Blankenship was due to arrive?" Rudy nodded. "He landed and came by to get introduced before going on to his lodging. Steve insisted that the man looked like a neon sign."

"A neon sign?" Rudy asked, making sure he'd heard that right.

Oscar nodded. "All lit up. A walking neon sign is his own description of it, and he didn't want to consider any alternative explanation at all. He even got annoyed with me when I was trying to talk to him."

Rudy frowned. "Well, let's see what kind of scrape he's gotten into this time." He walked over to the couch and put a hand on Steve's forehead. The frown deepened. "That's quite a fever to just be a random virus."

"I thought so, too, but I'm not a doctor." Oscar had hoped that Rudy, like Steve, would have accused him of overreacting.

"Has he been coughing at all?"

"Not that I've heard, and I've been with him several hours now. All I've noticed is the fever and him being weak; he was having a little trouble walking earlier when he woke up. And, of course, calling people neon signs."

Rudy had picked up a small bag at the lab on his way by, and now he opened it, searching through the contents. "When he was awake for a bit, how did he say he was feeling? I'm assuming you asked."

"Yes, but he didn't give me much of an answer. He did agree that he was sick, but even that much was like pulling teeth. He also tried to leave. He said it must be a bug, and he could just go home and sleep it off, and he'd be fine in the morning. Didn't think it was a big deal or that he needed to be seen at all. That was right after he'd been insisting that Blankenship was glowing."

Rudy shook his head in exasperation. He straightened back up from his bag with a thermometer and stethoscope in one hand and a complicated electronic instrument in the other. "Well, let's get some more information from him. Try to, at least." To this point, the two men had been talking very softly, but now Rudy put a hand on Steve's shoulder and shook it as he called him. "Steve! Come on, fella, wake up."

It took several seconds, but Steve finally opened his eyes and looked up at them. Oscar flinched. Normally, it was impossible to distinguish the artificial eye from the real one. Rudy had even managed to achieve a reactive pupil in his creation. At the moment, though, the two looked quite different. Steve's right eye was glazed, fever bright, while the left one still looked normal. Still, there was clear recognition in his expression and nothing like his fixed attention on Blankenship earlier. Apparently, Oscar thought, neither he nor Rudy resembled a neon sign, at least for now.

"Hey there," Rudy said. "I won't ask how you're feeling in general. Let's just get down to specific questions; those are harder to dodge. How long have you been feeling like you were getting sick?"

Steve hesitated, looked from one to the other face hovering over him, then sighed. "A day or two."

"You didn't have a fever like this all that time, though, did you?" Oscar asked. He didn't think he possibly could have missed that when Steve first came in.

Steve shook his head and cleared his throat. "No. Just tired and achy. It wasn't this bad earlier."

"Well, let's get some data. Just a minute, Oscar." Oscar had gone over to the bar to pour a glass of cold water for Steve. "Let me get his temperature first." Rudy inserted the thermometer, then put on the stethoscope while he was waiting. "Deep breath, Steve." He moved the metal disc around. "Well, your lungs sound all right, and you don't seem to be coughing."

"No," Steve said around the thermometer.

"Rules out pneumonia, at least." Rudy moved the scope over to listen to his heart. "Your heart is a little fast but strong and steady. But you've got a fever of -" He removed the thermometer. "103.4. That's pretty high for a simple virus."

Oscar was standing there with the water, and Steve slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position and reached for it. "Steve," Rudy said, "this is important, so level with me. Have you been injured anywhere, even slightly, in the last few days? Anything that broke the skin?"

"No," Steve replied. "Nothing aside from the usual getting banged up a little." Oscar and Rudy shared a look at the way Steve automatically called that usual, but they had no doubt that the description of his typical mission was accurate.

"But no cuts or scrapes?" Rudy persisted. "Nothing that could have gotten infected?"

"No."

"You said everything was aching. Is any one spot in particular hurting more than the rest?"

Steve hesitated, then said, "Not from the virus."

"I'm the one who's the doctor, Steve," Rudy reminded him.

"Well, I got smacked in the ribs on the right side yesterday. Didn't break them; I know what that feels like. But they are a little sore."

"Yesterday. But you were already starting to feel like you might be getting sick at that point anyway?"

"Yeah, right about then. A little bit before that fight, actually."

"I'll check that out, but probably it has nothing to do with the illness," Rudy said. "Which still leaves us back at something that's got quite a punch to be just a virus. That's not saying it's not one, but I don't want to miss anything here." The doctor considered for a few moments. "Of course, if you were totally worn out to begin with, you'd be more susceptible, and any virus would hit you harder. How long since you had a couple of days off?"

"I don't remember," Steve answered. He took another drink.

Rudy looked back at Oscar. Oscar was running agendas in his mind, trying to recall. "You don't remember either, do you?" Rudy asked.

"It's probably been a while," Oscar admitted. "Just a minute." He went over to his desk, unlocked the top drawer, and pulled out a notebook. Flipping through it, his own eyebrows raised. "Five months," he said.

Rudy shook his head. "And that whole time, he's been just going from one mission to another, back to back, no break at all? With the kind of things you ask him to do?"

"I didn't realize it had been that long," Oscar replied, feeling guilty under the doctor's gaze.

"Why not? You have it written down." Rudy turned his professional disapproval back to Steve. "Did you realize it had been that long?"

Steve sighed. "Not precisely. I couldn't tell you exact months."

"But were you feeling worn out already before this last case, or even before the last few cases?"

Steve hesitated, then nodded. "But they were important. Something was always urgent, and Oscar needed things done now."

Rudy switched to his electronic scanner, grumbling things under his breath that Oscar didn't really want to hear aloud. He hooked the instrument to Steve's right arm and turned it on. "The readouts from your bionics are definitely off," he noted. "That's no doubt because of the interface not working as well as usual. I'm sure that's why your eye was acting up earlier."

Steve, who had been calm and fairly cooperative to that point, though obviously sick, flared up at once. "So he told you I was hallucinating? Rudy, I wasn't seeing things; it was there. There is something odd about that man. Something's not right."

"Take it easy," Rudy said. He dropped the subject. "I want to get some blood work, and I'd like to keep a close eye on you. This probably is just a virus and will have to run its course, but we need to be careful."

"Me being sick isn't what happened with Blankenship," Steve insisted. "The man was glowing, all over. Really weird effect. I've never seen anything quite like that before." He looked from one of them to the other. "And both of you think I'm just losing it."

"No, we don't, Steve," Rudy said. "I'm sure you saw it."

Steve sighed again. "Can I just go home now?" He hauled himself to his feet.

Rudy grabbed an elbow. "No, I want to keep you in one of the observation rooms at the lab. We can monitor you better that way. I don't think you really require full hospital admission, and security is more of an issue there anyway, but I don't want you left alone."

Steve started to protest, but even standing up was clearly an effort for him. Oscar grasped his other elbow. "Look at it this way, pal. At least you'll get a few days off."

Rudy glared at Oscar across Steve. "He's going to get more than that. I've told you before, you can't just make constant extreme demands on him like he's a machine." The group started slow progress toward the door with Rudy grumbling all the way, Oscar meekly silent, and Steve simply focusing on walking.