Author's Notes: Happy 2009! Sorry that this has taken so long, I had a writing crunch on several other projects that took up my energy. And further apologies if this seems a bit disjointed, multiple storylines are vying for attention and demand some setup. I'll do my best to consolidate to a clearer A-B structure as this goes on.

---

William Anthros looked decidedly un-groomed as he shambled into the conference room, fashionably late to the hastily-called meeting. Powernap over lunch aside, he owed himself two nights worth of sleep, and the stubble on his face was a stroppy mess with the appearance and consistency of tumbleweed – strange how quickly the mere beginning of a beard could go out of control. The empty chair ahead looked like sweet salvation; he grabbed it by the backrest, spun it around and plonked himself down, perhaps a little too quickly. Pope ignored him, Bledsoe shot daggers from his eyes, and Truewell silently shoved a cup of black coffee over to him.

Since he'd spoken to Jaime…he didn't know what had happened to him. He'd just crashed.

"The situation is this," Bledsoe said, his point illustrated with a map of the continental United States projected onto the wall-mounted display. "We're looking at Paradise, Idaho. Population 216, standard issue small town. Guy named Zach Peters was the major, nice house, 3 kids. Five hours ago, Mr. Peters was calling his kindly old grandma – who also lived in Paradise – when she suddenly reported not feeling well. Before he knew it, he heard her die over the phone. He had enough time to dial 911 before he nearly did the same thing for the operator. EMTs got there, found dead people in the streets, they seriously freaked out. They got Peters out and whatever it is, they didn't die from it, so they called it in and asked for the cavalry. Then they died."

Jonas Bledsoe paused for effect. He really liked doing that.

"Peters is still hanging on, but so far he's the only survivor and probably won't make nightfall. We've got a National Guard unit on station now, and the Chemicals are sending a Rapid Response Team to figure out what the hell happened."

Will's eyes didn't agree with such a concentrated source of light, so he didn't look and instead focused on the cup in his hands. Too hot to drink, not nearly enough caffeine to make a difference.

"Where do we come in?" he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"Officially, we don't," Bledsoe said. "Nobody's going to know anything until they can get samples tested, probably with a round trip to Aberdeen. And then, maybe, we might get marching orders. But that's hours – days we can't afford to lose if we want to stop the guys who did this."

"You think it's a terrorist attack?" Truewell asked.

"I have a hard time explaining it as anything else," Bledsoe replied. "Truewell, Anthros, you're going, wheels up in ten."

"What about Mendelson's debrief?" Truewell asked.

"I'll do it," Bledsoe said. "And Anthros?"

"Yes?"

"Bring some protective gear. Place might still be hot."

Will's eyes closed completely. It was just a bad day all around to be the guy with the chemistry set.

---

During long operations against drug runners in South America, Antonio Pope had picked up a talent vital to soldiers everywhere: the ability to rapidly adjust his body's activity level from rest to full alert and anywhere in between. Before even water and food, Pope would name sleep as a survival essential, and consequently he was quite adept at fashioning available materials and surfaces into cots suitable for resting. With business class in the redeye to DC severely underbooked, he had gotten the rest he needed to enjoy the view from the small transfer aircraft. The hop to Frederick Municipal Airport was a short one from there, leaving him barely enough time to change clothes. The airfield wasn't a stranger to military visitors; another Major in dress uniform didn't stick out.

The last leg of Pope's journey was by car, the standard-issue ominous black government sedan with a witless Army Corporal at the wheel. Fort Frederick wasn't far away, at least not far enough to let Pope consider getting bored. In accordance with his cover, Pope didn't spend any effort on socializing with the driver.

In assembling a team of very competent people and making them drop off the radar, Jonas Bledsoe had had to resort to the tactic of making them mortal. Pope, once a hotshot Special Forces operator, had therefore come down with a nasty stress-related disorder – the particulars of which it would have been impolite to discuss – that made him unsuited for further frontline duty; unsure what to do with him, the Army had therefore failed him upward, promoting him to Major and assigning him to a mostly ceremonial position at the National Center for Medical Intelligence. He was so far to the right on the org chart that he had neither staff nor responsibilities to speak of, other than filing quarterly reports on obscure medical facilities around the nation. It was, in fact, quite easy to forget that he even worked there.

Pope approached the director's office with a disdainful look on his face. The secretary nodded to him silently; nothing to do but step up to the door and knock.

"Come in," Colonel McCarthy said, a harsh baritone strong enough to punch people in the guts even through the door. Pope took the blow with his trademark composure and entered. With well-drilled rigidity, he closed the door behind him, then stepped up to McCarthy's desk and saluted his nominal superior officer. McCarthy returned the salute without getting up. Pope barely had time to sit down properly before the Colonel shoved a deskful of file folders at him.

"Is that all?" Pope asked, failing to be properly intimidated.

"Literally everything, Major. 10 years of Berkut doesn't add up to a lot. Short quarterlies, the usual incident reports…"

"I'll need those first."

"What are we looking for?"

"Everything about Sara Corvus," Pope replied before he grabbed a folder at random. It was a recent report – IARPA comments on foglet prototypes. Pope wondered how that had found its way here.

"Huh," McCarthy said, leaning back in his chair. "What about her?"

---

Sara Corvus weighed her options. Opposite her, the man stood ready to defend himself, wearing an ensemble of light protective gear. His stance was tight, almost completely withdrawn to absorb and deflect attacks. Corvus wasn't playing that game, though; her choice of tank top + training pants left her much more mobile, and her feet were loose, shifting across the ground as she read her opponent, a tiny dance of equally tiny adjustments. Somewhere in this space between them, there had to be an opening. All she had to do was find it, capitalize it before it disappeared back into the sea of possibilities.

The window of attack was 6 milliseconds wide. Piece of cake.

Corvus's fist shot forward, exploiting a gap in the man's coverage of his face; his head barely missed her fist as he shifted to the right, neatly avoiding her attack. Dozens of counters filled Corvus's consciousness as her implants adjusted to the new situation, but she did not press the attack; instead, she withdrew and stepped back, then circled the man slowly.

"That was fast," she said. "Spinal upgrade?"

"It's very useful," the man replied. Corvus smiled at the way he still couldn't quite nail the 'v' sound.

"We've got a new player," she said. "Her name is Jaime Summers. I didn't think Anthros would do it."

"You thought he'd be dead."

"That was Plan A."

"Getting Rolf killed, losing several weapons and wasting the advantage of surprise," the man said, "that was Plan B?"

"Look, Nick, like it or not, Berkut has another augment. If we can get her -" Corvus trailed off, then launched a quick kick against the man's leg. With a deft sidestep, he matched his shin with hers, blocking her attack before it could gather momentum. Corvus smiled, then continued. "Let me put it this way. I nearly killed her, they put her through the procedure, and she was fighting me less than 24 hours after the crash."

"That's new," he agreed.

"We need her," Corvus said. "She has to know me, she has to follow me when I show up. I don't like sacrificing people either, but it couldn't be helped."

---

The quaint little town of Paradise wasn't much more than a speck in the distance when Will and Truewell spotted the first checkpoint on the road ahead; Truewell went easy on the throttle of the company car. It hadn't been a long drive, what with the majority of their travel being airborne, but there was a grim tension to the trip that made it rather unenjoyable. Will wondered if he'd ever get to go on a proper road trip with his coworkers. Or Jaime. Yeah, on second thought, Will would've preferred two weeks trekking all over California with Jaime. He opened the glove compartment and removed a small bottle of tablets from his travel kit, together with a half-drunk bottle of water.

"You should take it easy on the painkillers," Truewell said, without taking her eyes off the road. "Four in the last hour."

"It's not codeine," Will replied. "Arm's almost done anyway, it's the dialysis I'm not looking forward to."

"What was that, then? You got a perverse taste in candy?"

"Uppers. After three days, I'm beyond coffee."

"You haven't found the right one," Truewell said. "But three days? You really should get some sleep."

"I'm okay," Will countered. "There's just a lot to do. Analyze telemetry, catch up on the latest developments in chemical weapons research, inspect a town full of dead people..."

"Still, this isn't healthy," Truewell said, then slowed the car to a rolling stop at the checkpoint. "Smile and say 'FEMA'."

The roadblock was a fairly simple setup: a tight slalom course of oil barrels, presumably weighted down somehow, with a small guardhouse built on the frame of a shipping container. Bumps further ahead on the road indicated remote-control spike strips or other, more exotic immobilization technology. Finally, an almost symbolic stretch of concertina wire was laid across the road beyond the slalom obstacle: just enough to discourage cars speeding through after the oil barrels. Will wondered how they would get trucks through.

There were three soldiers on station that Will could make out; one was standing in front of the wire, signing for Truewell to turn off the engine. He was dressed in a standard US Army Combat Uniform fatigues, with a light carrying vest and an unmodified M4 carbine slung over his shoulder. Another soldier – same gear configuration – was sitting behind another row of oil drums on something Will couldn't see. The third was inside the container, barely visible through a window.

Soldier Nr. 1 – his nametag identified him as "Larrimore" – stepped up to the driver's side of the car, his gentle Northwestern accent laced with casual boredom.

"Hello," he said. "This is a restricted area. I'll have to see some ID."

Truewell handed him two FEMA badges and a few sheets of faxed documents. Nothing like getting your signed marching orders handed to you when you step off the plane. "Doctors Truewell and Anthros, FEMA Disaster Operations. We need an update on the local situation –" Truewell stole a glance at his shoulders – "Sergeant."

"Sure," Larrimore replied, handing the badges back. "If you don't mind me saying, this is a clusterfuck. We've got the rest of my Guard unit, FBI terrorism response and Thureos guys all at the inner perimeter. Last I heard they're mounting a trip into town in the evening, no timetable yet. There's a Special Agent Brown in charge at the moment, you'll want to talk to him. We've got a Lakota and three Fire Scouts doing recon and perimeter security, but so far there's nothing moving in town or on the fringes. Oh, and we're shipping in vehicle-grade decon units later today, and I'm afraid we can't let anyone out until we've installed them. Set up containers for everyone, though, chow, beds, lab. Keep your windows closed from here on and don't stay outside too long, you know, standard end of the world drill. And…that about covers it, Ma'am."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Will said.

"Have a nice day, Ma'am, Sir. God knows we could all use it."

Larrimore stepped back from the window and signed for his partner to remove the wire obstacle; Truewell nodded to him one last time, then closed the window on her side, started the car and drove on.

"He's taking it well," Will said, looking back at the checkpoint.

"No, he's not. He knows way too much about what's going on, they radio in and check with their unit more than regularly. The chattiness, the gallows humor – defense. He doesn't want to be here."

"I don't want to be here."

"Nobody does," Truewell conceded. "There's a lot of stress going around. It's harder to make the right calls, there's indecision, tiredness, a hold-the-line mentality."

"You get careful when you work with weapons of mass destruction."

"Careful is good, timid is not."

---

Jaime's right hand was wrapped around the P226's grip, her index finger straight and resting next to the trigger guard. Her left hand supported her right from the side; she was slowly getting over the urge to have her left thumb way up next to the slide. Both of her arms were rigid at the elbows, a stable firing platform – which felt like a bit of a waste for Jaime, what with the certainty that she wouldn't be using live ammunition for at least a week. Mr. Kim was circling her much like a hyena, suspicious of every detail.

"Stance?" he asked.

"Isosceles stance," Jaime replied, trying to keep her breath steady. Front sight, front sight, front sight.

"Condition?"

"Condition 2, loaded and chambered."

"Go to condition 0."

Without swaying, Jaime's right thumb made for the hammer, then pulled it down to the sound of a single click.

"Condition 0," she said. Front sight, front sight…

"Tell me the four rules," Kim demanded.

"The gun is always loaded," Jaime rattled off. "Don't point the gun at something you're not willing to shoot. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Be sure of your target and what's beyond it."

"Go back to condition 2."

Her thumb switched to the left side of the pistol, working the decocker. With another click, the hammer went back to its resting position.

"Make sure the gun does not sway while you work the controls," Kim said, still inspecting her. "Your point of aim mustn't wander."

"Got it."

"Unload the gun, we're done for today," Kim said; Jaime's stanced relaxed considerably. "So, how do you feel?"

"About the training?" Jaime asked. Her left hand eased downward and extracted the pistol's magazine in concert with her right thumb; she set it down on the bench in front of her. "I don't know. I never handled a gun before."

"You're doing just fine."

"I just thought – " Jaime's pinky finger found its way into the magazine well all by itself; with an easy rack of the slide, the final cartridge tumbled down, and she gingerly took hold of it and set it down on the bench, next to the magazine. "How are you guys ever going to teach me everything I need to know? And what do I need to know? I can't judge anything without an idea of what the curriculum is like."

"You should take that up with Jonas. What did you do about your sister?"

"Told her to bum a ride from a friend." Jaime decocked the now completely unloaded pistol and laid it onto the bench. Her right hand seemed reluctant to let go of it. "You call him Jonas?"

"Only when he's not listening," Kim said with a smile. "It might be better for your inner balance if you're not scared of him."

"That's good advice coming from a guy who could rip out my throat," Jaime said. Noting Kim's confusion, she added an incredulous stare to her expression. "Be nice until it's time not to be nice? Pain don't hurt?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh my God," Jaime smiled. "I know what I'm getting you for Christmas."