"Okay, Ellie," Mia says, "Lidocaine now."

Ellie winces before the needle even touches her. "My favorite." She doesn't flinch, though, as the nurse numbs a small, circular area, three inches below her right collarbone. Not much seems to bother her, these days. In the three weeks since the bone marrow transplant, she's donated what seems like buckets of blood. When they couldn't take any more without making her anemic, she'd had to spend half a day with a tube in her arm, attached to a machine that filtered out her plasma and returned the blood cells. She has purple marks up and down her arms and hands, and the crooks of her elbows are starting to scar.

There's not much to show for all that. In the six weeks since Ryan, five more test subjects have turned despite treatment with some combination of her marrow, blood, or plasma. Joel is no longer invited to observe the tests, which suits him just fine. And, Ellie has stopped asking about them.

Joel carefully rearranges the blanket that protects her modesty. The operating room is cold. Jerry gives him a cool look. "Don't. You could contaminate the drape, and then we'd have to re-scrub."

Joel sits down and squeezes her hand. She squeezes back, without looking at him. He doesn't have to babble on about bullshit from his past just to keep her mind occupied. These kinds of procedures are starting to feel like just part of their daily routine.

Dr. Anderson's hands are moving steadily and efficiently. With one, he holds an ultrasound probe against Ellie's side, keeping his eyes glued on a grainy screen of abstract gray and black blobs. With the other, he directs a needle attached to a long, thread-like wire, pushing it deep into Ellie's chest. There seem to be a lot of steps involved after that, and Joel doesn't try to follow it all except to take note when Anderson sets down the ultrasound probe and picks up a gleaming scalpel. Joel gently turns Ellie's chin away, but he can't tear his own eyes from the sight. The incision is small in the grand scheme of things - just a straight, three inch cut. The next few minutes, though, involve way too much tugging and cutting under the skin

Ellie whimpers. Joel pats her hand awkwardly. "You're doing great, kiddo."

Anderson looks up, as if surprised by the reminder that there's an awake patient on his table. "Almost done." The device in his hand is an inch-long disc that looks like a rubber button or stopper - the port. He attaches it to a bit of white tubing already in her chest - the catheter - and pushes the whole contraption into the space he's made under the skin. "Okay. Nothing left but the sutures." He sews the incision closed with quick, economical movements until all that's visible is a tiny red line and a rounded lump, with the port, the catheter, and even the sutures entirely under the skin.

Joel's brow furrows. "Why sew the skin over top? I thought the point was to not have to poke her."

"This will let her lead a more normal life. She can shower, even swim with it in."

Ellie snorts, a little giddy from the sedative. "Uh, about that last part . . ."

Joel smiles. "Oh, trust me, that's the first lesson when we get out of here."

Anderson clears his throat, his eyes on his work. "Point is, it's a trade off. The Port-a-Cath will let us draw blood without damaging her veins. Yes, there's a pinch when the needle goes through the skin, but we can give her topical anesthetics for that."

"It's not the poking I mind," Ellie says with her eyes closed, "It's the fishing around after."

"Well, no more fishing." To prove his point, Anderson jabs a short needle through the still-numb skin and into the port below. Blood flows back. He injects some sort of clear liquid and then pulls the needle out and covers the incision with an adhesive bandage. "We're good. You'll have to keep this clean and dry for about a week while it heals."

"Roger that."

One of the nurses - Mia - is approaching the table with Ellie's hospital gown in her hands. "If you gentlemen will give us some privacy . . ."

Joel nods and follows Anderson out into the scrub room. Together, they doff their masks, hairnets, and shoe covers while the two women work quickly and efficiently to get Ellie back into her gown and move her to a gurney for the short trip back to her room. Joel watches as they push her out the door. "Were either of those kids even born yet when the outbreak started?"

Jerry snorts. "They were. Not sure Nancy was out of diapers, though." He shrugs. "You don't have to worry about their competency. They're trained extensively."

"Yeah, but it's not like it used to be, is it? With med school and nursing school and all that?"

"Suppose not."

"Hell, those girls probably don't even remember what medicine used to be like."

Jerry grunts and rinses the excess powder from his hands. Joel studies him for a moment, calculating.

"Thing is, doc, I do."

Anderson looks at him, his face suddenly much more cautious. "You got something you want to say, Joel?"

Joel keeps his voice just barely diplomatic. "Jus' that I've seen permanent IVs like that. Back before. In these little shriveled up skeleton kids with bald heads, all wrapped up with blankets and teddy bears."

Jerry sighs, short and impatient. "That's not the same thing, and you know it."

"What I know is that those catheters go both ways. And there's only so much you can learn from scanning and rescanning her brain or drawing her blood twenty times a day, so how long until you move on to something a mite less benign?"

"We're focusing on sampling and imaging, for now. It's the safest option until we can start to piece out the mechanism of her immunity."

"And if that's a dead end?"

"Then, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. All I can promise you is that we'll talk about it."

Joel swallows a growl and turns for the door, shaking his head. Anderson calls after him. "I hope you're not working Ellie up with this kind of paranoia. Experimental treatments and mad science or whatever it is you think we're doing here."

Joel turns to look at him, his face sardonic. "That girl? No, she ain't scared of the mad science. She'd probably think it was cool."

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A week later, Joel arrives for his evening visit and finds Ellie sitting at her desk, sketching. They've moved a bit more furniture into the clean room - a dented metal desk, a couple of chairs, a bookshelf cobbled together from old milk crates. As much as Joel appreciates the attempt at creature comforts, they've also done a lot to chip away at his pleasant delusion that this might all be over by next week.

She smiles when she sees him, but doesn't get up. To Joel's eyes, she looks tired and a little haggard.

"How you holding up?" he asks. He gestures vaguely at the catheter site. "Still sore?"

"Nope. Just . . . feels weird." She pinches her skin, rolling the buried port back and forth between her fingers.

"Yeah, well . . . don't pick at it, okay?"

"Roger dodger." She belated notices the strap over his shoulder. A slow smile spreads across her face. "What's that?"

Joel's lip twitches, but he suppresses an answering smile. "Nothin'."

"C'mon, Joel what did you bring me?"

Joel loses the resulting staring contest by cracking a wide smile. He swings the six-string guitar down from his shoulder. The warm wood gleams with polish. He was up half the night getting it fixed up. "Found this out on one of my runs. Figured we'd wait until the Fireflies were done with you, but given that we've both got some time on our hands . . ." He strums one chord, then another. It's been years, but the muscle memory comes back fast.

Ellie is grinning now, though she still looks weary. "You gonna sing? I seem to recall something about an aspiring singer."

He snorts instead. "Not on your life. I know where my talents lie." He strums one more chord, then picks out a few bars of a melody he used to know well. "Besides, this one's for you."

"For me?"

He perches on the edge of the bed and pats the mattress to his right. She gets up and tucks herself in beside him so that he can settle the instrument on her lap. He arranges her left hand on the neck of the guitar. "This is your fretboard. The little metal things are your frets. Why don't you try strumming jus' one string to start."

She plucks at the sixth string with her thumb. "Aren't you supposed to have a little plastic thing?"

"It's called a pick. You can, but long run, you can do more if you learn to pick out the strings with your fingers." He wraps an arm around her and plucks out a few strings with his index, middle, and ring fingers, demonstrating. She nods, focused, and lets him reposition her hands. "Use the tips of your fingers. You pinch here and strum, it makes the sound higher. You pinch down here . . ." He slides her fingers down a few frets. "Makes it even higher. Try a few. Different strings, if you can."

She plucks a note on the sixth string, then drops her hand to the first string and strums. She's twisting the guitar in her hand and leaning forward, trying to watch the position of her fingers on the fretboard. Joel gently corrects her grip. "You'll want to be looking at the side. Keep an eye on those little dots to see where you are. Feel for the strings. An' sit up a little straighter." He rests a hand on her back to fix her posture, but pauses at the feel. Something's not right. She's always been skinny, but he can feel her ribs and the knobbly bones of her spine. His brow furrows. "Ellie? Have you been losing weight?"

She hears the change in his tone and tenses a little. "Huh? Why?" Her voice is just a little too innocent.

"You're thinner."

"Well, I'm wasting away, cooped up in here. Guess I gotta start doing some pushups. That's what Abby says, anyway." She's pulling away from him and cradling the guitar to her body, but now that Joel is looking, he can pick out the subtle changes. Her collar bones stick out sharply. Her face is thinner. He can count the bones in her hand. She looked like that in Colorado, after weeks of nursing his useless ass back to health. It had taken a solid month on the road, and every spare calorie they could hunt or scavenge, before she'd looked normal again.

Most damning - and he can't believe he didn't pick up on it sooner - is that she's wearing a baggy, long-sleeved shirt, though it's nearly August and the top-floor room isn't air conditioned. She's trying to hide it.

"Have you been feeling sick?"

"Uh, maybe a little."

"When's the last time you ate?"

"Um, I guess I just haven't been that hungry lately?" She stands and goes to lay the guitar down on her desk. Right on cue, her stomach growls loudly. Joel doesn't even bother to dignify that with a skeptical look.

"When, Ellie?"

She looks at him, her face torn, her mouth open with an excuse that just won't come. At length, her shoulders slump. "Yesterday morning."

He takes a moment just to boggle at just how something like this could happen. Here. Now. To Ellie. "Yesterday morning?"

"Dunno if you've noticed, but the food around here kind of sucks ass."

"Uh huh. Now you're picky. I've seen you make a meal out of canned pineapple and a tin of sardines, but now you just decide to skip five meals because you've got it in for mashed potatoes."

"It's not that big a deal . . ."

"Bullshit." He spends one frozen moment reflecting on just how far out of his depth he is. He makes himself soften his voice. "Ellie, what is going on? I know these past couple months have been rough, but . . . what the hell is going through your head right now?"

She drops into a chair and leans forward, her face just this side of panicked. "Don't freak out, okay? He said you'd freak out, but it's all under control."

That's the moment when Joel realizes it's worse than he thought. "He? Who the hell is he?"

Her face draws up in an anticipatory wince. "Dr. Anderson."

Joel springs to his feet and Ellie flinches. That makes him take a step back. He forces down the instinct to pace like an animal in a cage, instead breathing slowly and steadily through his nose until he's sure he can make his voice very even. "What does Dr. Anderson have to do with this?"

Ellie drops her head to her hands, giving Joel way too much opportunity to count the bones in her wrists. "It's just part of a study. Medical calorie restriction. He had this theory that it might activate the Cordyceps in my brain. I told him about Colorado. He thought it was weird how after all that, I was still able to . . . you know. He thought maybe the fungus gave me extra strength or something. He had this complicated mechanism worked out and he wanted to test it."

"So, he took your food away."

"I agreed to it! I wanted to try it."

There's cold fire burning in Joel's chest, trying to scream out his throat, but he forces it down. He pulls up the other chair, sits down, and takes Ellie by both hands. "Baby girl. You survived Colorado because you are the toughest, bravest, most relentless kid I've ever met. Didn't have nothing to do with your Cordyceps. And Anderson shouldn't of needed to fucking starve you to figure that out." He pauses for long moments, letting that sink in. He keeps his voice soft. "How long's this been going on?"

She won't look at him, but she doesn't pull her hands away either. "Almost three weeks. We were supposed to do one more week and then repeat some brain scans and do some physiologic tests to see what's changed. He had this whole plan . . . he was making sure it was safe."

"Who else knows? The nurses?"

A nod. "They both checked with me, to make sure I was okay with it."

Joel wets his lips. "Marlene?"

"I . . . I don't think she knows. She doesn't visit much. And she doesn't really ask questions."

Not that Joel has much room to be pissed at Marlene when he's been spending an hour with Ellie every fucking day and hadn't seen what was going on right under his nose. He squeezes her hands. "Ellie. Look at me." She reluctantly lifts her head. "Why'd you lie? Why keep this from me?"

"Dr. Anderson said . . . he said you'd never understand. That it would just . . . scare you or worry you or piss you off. And honestly . . ." a hint of challenge creeps into her eyes, "Tell me he was wrong."

Now Joel's the one to look away. He takes another slow breath. "Ellie, I know you think you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders. But, you cannot be doing this. You can't be keeping secrets from me, especially if it's Anderson telling you to do it."

"I'm sorry, okay? Please don't flip out."

"Ellie, this ends. Now."

She ducks her head and nods. Joel squeezes her hands one more time and then lets go.

"I gotta go."

"Joel . . ."

"We'll talk about this later. I ain't . . . I ain't mad at you."

She doesn't try to stop him.

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Jerry is in a meeting with Marlene and a half dozen other Firefly operatives. From the solemn expressions and the large map of the city spread out on the table between them, it looks important. Joel doesn't care.

Anderson's back is to him as he stands over the table, so he doesn't see Joel elbow his way through the door, shaking off the guard. The doctor hears the commotion and is just starting to turn when Joel grabs him by the back of the neck and slams his head straight down into the formica tabletop, leaving a smear of blood on the map. Anderson shoves himself back up, staggering, his nose gushing as the room erupts with curses and shouts of alarm, but before anyone can work out a coherent response, Joel spins the doctor and swings a hook into his cheekbone. Something crunches - whether in Jerry's face or Joel's hand, he's not sure, and it doesn't matter. He yanks the man down into a knee strike that bruises ribs.

"You told her to fucking lie to me." Joel's voice is icy and even - neither a whisper nor a roar.

The guard from the door, aided by two of the burlier operatives in the meeting, manages to haul Joel back. Someone else drives a fist into his gut, and before Joel can quite straighten from that, Marlene is jumping between them. "What the fuck, Joel?"

"Ask him!" he snarls, yanking an arm free to point at Anderson, "Ask him about his other study. The secret one that he could only talk about with his little cronies and a fourteen-year-old girl. Ask him what gives him the right to fucking starve the girl just to prove some crackpot theory."

That knocks her back a half a step. "Starve," she says slowly. She helps Anderson straighten with a hand on his shoulder and passes him a handkerchief to press against his bleeding nose. Her voice is terse but collected. "Any of that true, Jerry?"

Anderson glances up at her, sighs, and slumps again. "It was a controlled environment . . ."

"Jesus Christ, doctor, when you brought that calorie restriction plan to me, I told you it was over the line! Told you exactly why, too. And that was a month ago."

"It was low risk! I was just . . ."

"You were just torturing a kid!" Joel snaps. "She's the most important kid in this facility, if not the damn world, and you decide to starve her just to see if you were right. So, don't tell me you were just." He draws a breath. "This ends. Now."

Anderson is panting. His nose bubbles despite his best efforts not to breathe through it. He nods shortly.

Marlene is pinching her brow between finger and thumb, her face pained, but when Joel goes to pull away from the guard holding him, her eyes snap open. "Not so fast, Private." Her voice is hard. "There's crossing the line, and then there's punching your commanding officer in the face levels of crossing the line."

Anderson tosses the bloody handkerchief onto the tabletop and shakes his head. "Take him to the brig," he tells the guard. His eyes shift to Joel's. "We'll talk about this later."

"I look forward to it."