When Jonathan Giles glanced at his watch, Wells was more than three hours into his second trip, and from Giles' vantage point, this one appeared even worse than the first one. And still Wells had said nothing coherent in terms of the OSI, except to cry out for Goldman every now and again. Giles sat down in a nearby chair, and waited. In another three hours, he could give Wells another syringe full......

It was dark and cold; so dark, Rudy couldn't see anything in front of him. His mind jumped to the last time he experienced something so dark and cold: Rudy slammed his eyes shut and screamed. He didn't want to recall that; there was so much pain.

"Please God, no......"

Rudy thought the words came from him, but his consciousness was so disembodied from reality, he couldn't be sure. He couldn't go through this again. But the darkness and cold led him there as surely as a horse in the desert would go to water. He could feel the wind blowing through his hair, and he could hear the sound it made through the trees. Rudy looked up, and he could see the sound as it whipped through the barren branches of winter. It was a cold blue, blurring as it moved.

"Rudy! Hey Rudy, come look over here! Look what I found!"

He followed the colors of the sound, and after climbing over the familiar rise of the old meadow behind his parent's house, he saw him. It was as if 40 years had never happened, and he was ten again. The pain in his chest caused him to run faster than he remembered on that day: but he had to put a stop to it. He had a chance to set it right. It should have been him, not Tommy.

"Tommy! Tommy, wait for me!"

Rudy ran after the redheaded ten year old in front of him, until they came to the old grove. The trees were dormant and dead; a foreshadowing of how Rudy would feel for years after this day. Tommy ducked behind a tree, and then came out to surprise Rudy, holding the old .38 he found in the meadow.

"Freeze, copper, I gotcha covered!"

Rudy threw his arms in the air as though caught, and then feigned a gunshot and fell to the ground. The two boys giggled with glee. Rudy jumped up and ran over to Tommy, but he could feel his head pounding.....this wasn't right.

"Hey Tommy, lemme see it!"

Tommy handed it over to his best friend, "Do you think it works?"

"I'll bet it isn't even loaded."

Rudy fiddled with it, but had never seen a gun before, much less opened a chamber. Tommy reached over to grab it from him.

"My older brother showed me a gun once, give it here, I know how to open it....."

But as Tommy grabbed for the gun, it went off, blowing a hole in his chest the size of Montana; at least that's how it remained burned in Rudy's mind. Young Rudy ran to his friend, and tried to stop the bleeding, but it was futile. Tommy was already dead. And the answer to which one of them actually hit the trigger, was never proved conclusively. The incident was recorded as an accident.

Giles watched as tears poured down Rudy's face while he continued to sob.

"Tommy, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean...... Oh God, why?"

The bleakness of the barren trees swirled around his head, and he felt dizzy. As his blood pressure rose, Rudy couldn't breathe, and after a few minutes, he passed out.