Author's Notes: Here we go. If you haven't done so already, you might want to keep a Google tab open for this, acronyms and slang fly quick and heavy. And yes, there will be room for action scenes later on. So much infodumping, so little time...

---

There was still some sunlight when William Anthros and Ruth Truewell reached the forward operating post of the Paradise mission. The base was half tent city, half circled wagons – granted, with HEMTTs instead of more classical fare, but the overall effect was hard to shake. A small dirt road diverged from the main road into town; it made for as good a place as any to define as a safe distance from whatever had killed Paradise's population. Will estimated that they were about three miles away from the town proper, if that. Of course, owing to the small size of Paradise, that still didn't leave him with much to look at in the distance.

Their arrival was mildly overshadowed by the much louder entrance of the observation helicopter: a smooth machine with a rounded main body and a three-part tail assembly sailed downward onto a site well clear of the little fort. The landing zone wasn't pretty, just a flat and barren piece of ground demarcated by several large rocks spraypainted with a sickening, glowing green-yellow. In approaching this flagrant violation of Mother Nature's homely charm, the metal bird slowed both its descent and forward motion until it hovered right where X marked the spot. With the slowest of movements, it dropped out of what little sky it still clung to and hit the ground. As far as landings went, it was a soft one, without broken landing skids or other horrible material failures. Will flinched when he saw the wiggle between the ground and the skids – it invited thoughts of tolerances and margins, when what he really wanted to associate with flying was only the utmost precision.

While Will was therefore occupied with auto-traumatizing (though ably assisted by talented Army Aviators), Truewell had no time for gawking at military hardware. FEMA badge in hand, she stalked off in search of someone to impress. Her search didn't take long, as a fortuitous chain of events ejected several men in Army fatigues and a government spook from one of the many tents. Her eyes locked with the gaze of the agent, and she closed the distance. He was younger than her, though not by much: short-cropped hair, a middle-of-the-line dress shirt and tie under his dark blue FBI jacket.

"You must be Special Agent Brown," Truewell said, flashed her badge and shook his hand.

"Dr. Anthros?" he asked; she shook her head. "Truewell," she said. "Dr. Anthros is waiting at the car."

"Let's fix that." With the noise of the helicopter's engines spooling down covering their footsteps, the two of them made their way back to the company car. Brown reached into his jacket and retrieved a pair of sunglasses. More than any uniform, the fact that they weren't Oakleys marked Brown as Not A Soldier. "Sergeant Larrimore called ahead. Do you know anything about this that you feel like sharing with me?"

"Sorry, Agent Brown," Truewell replied, "I'm just here to assess the type of assistance needed. Dr. Anthros is the specialist; he should be able to help you with your investigation."

Will turned away from the spectacle at the landing site when he heard his name; he shook Brown's hand and cocked his head at one of the more elaborate tents.

"Is that where you're keeping the mayor?" he asked.

"Yes," Brown replied. "He's in a coma. Fleming's guys are doing their best to keep him stable, but from what I hear it's bad. They can only risk moving him straight to a proper hospital. One that isn't in fucking Texas."

"Fleming?" Truewell asked.

"Texas?" Will added.

"Captain of the National Guard unit," Brown said. He nodded to Will's question. "The problem is we've got the wrong people here. The Guard guys have some training, but they don't have the gear. The Rapid Response Team is three hours away and has been since lunch. The mayor should have been out of here by now, but I can't get the clearance to fly him out until somebody convinces them that the Paradise Bug isn't infectious. As it is, they'll only let him into a Level 4 facility. And that means Texas."

"Get me a phone," Truewell said. "Dr. Anthros, could you…"

Will nodded. "I'll take a look at him. What about the Thureus guys?"

"You won't see any of them here," Brown replied. "They're all running perimeter security, South and East."

---

The quarantine tent was such more by virtue of designation than any true containment certification. A smaller tent attached to the entrance served as the understudy for a proper airlock, and despite putting every bit of company rubber inside the tent and around Mayor Zachary Peters's bed, the tent's canvas construction would not – indeed, could not – be expected to seriously deter bad things from leaking out. It spoke to the troops' faith in their medic's opinion that this state of affairs was tolerated. Will stepped inside slowly, dressed in a heavy-duty overgarment, moon boots and a brand-spanking new full-face gas mask. The wisdom of Truewell's refusal to dress similarly and enter with him seemed more self-evident by the second.

The medic, by contrast, had already abandoned the NBC protection gear in favor of a surgical mask and regular latex gloves. He checked the IV bottle that hung over the mayor like the sword of Damocles; when he noticed Will, he gave him a nod and a greeting in a heavy monotone.

"Anything I can do for you, Sir?"

"I'm Dr. Anthros, FEMA Disaster Ops. I'm here to inspect the mayor."

"Thank God," the medic said with genuine relief. "We need to fly out Mayor Peters as soon as possible."

"Agent Brown mentioned that. My partner's already on the phone to make it happen. Can I take a look?"

"Step right up, Sir. You might want to take that gear off."

"Do you know what's killing him?"

"I'm not a 100% certain."

"…then I'm keeping the suit, if you don't mind," Will replied. He didn't notice the medic rolling his eyes. "Fill me in."

"Fixed pupils, leaking every body fluid imaginable, labored breathing."

Will walked over to the side of the bed and began his own quick series of diagnostics. Weak pulse, low blood pressure, spasming – and the medic wasn't kidding about the leaking either. Will added seeing a comatose man cry to his medical experience.

"Tears."

"Don't ask me how often I changed the sheets, Sir."

"Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, this looks like classic nerve agent exposure to me," Will said.

"That's what I'm treating him for, Sir. We found him in the ambulance with three autoinjectors already in him. I convinced Captain Fleming to let me use a couple of ours, too. But I'm running low and nobody's feeling like sending more, so unless we can get things moving we'll run out by ten. I already had to reduce the dose to stretch them and he's getting worse quick, so he's suffering and may die. If I go back up to what the manual says…one hour, and then he will die."

"Not good."

"And I'm not even sure I'm doing it right," the medic replied, sounding the opposite of convincing, "because he's barely alive, and from what we have seen here it really can't be nerve gas. We wired our chemical sensors to the Fire Scouts and took readings inside town, and they didn't trip on anything."

"That's weird," Will agreed. "You got here, what, three hours after the fact? To take out the whole town at the same time, it must have been airborne, a massive dose –the stuff that settled should still outgas something detectable."

"Frankly, Sir, I don't know. The sensors are supposed to ping on all Gs and Vs, and…they didn't. They can't all be broken, can they?"

"Okay," Will said, and moved to the other side of the bed. "Still, if the treatment works…maybe a different delivery system of some sort. Or maybe this is a different organophosphate through a vector we haven't considered. Your medicine problem – well, I brought a kit with me."

"So you've got…"

"Atropine and pralidoxime," Will said with a nod. "Do you have a blood sample from him?"

"I can draw one, but what's the use?"

Will smiled, though the mask over his face hid it well. "I also brought a lab," he said. "Stick him with another injector, I'll be back in a minute."

---

Ruth Truewell wasn't happy with how things were proceeding. Clouds over the horizon threatened wind and rain, and that was exactly what the town needed – both for uncontrollable dispersal of the threat and for washing away potential evidence. With her Berkut cellphone pressed against her right ear, she wandered around the company car and eyed the two plastic packages in the trunk with serious intent. If there was going to be an expedition into Paradise, it would have to happen soon.

"And I need background info on an FBI asset," Truewell said. "Special Agent Clayton Brown."

"Any particular suspicions?" Bledsoe replied; she could almost hear him nodding over the phone.

"Not yet, Sir, just getting a feel for the situation. Has there been any outside movement?"

"The DoD is saving up its competence for the media blackout, because that's truly a thing of beauty. I don't know how long they can keep it up, but we can enjoy it while it lasts. As for the Rapid Response Team…"

"Yes, we're waiting on them."

"Apparently, they're stuck in Colorado. Some mixup with the marching orders, and they're trying to extract a straight answer from the Department. You'll be lucky if they make it before midnight."

"That's –" Truewell sighed – "not the answer I was hoping for."

"I managed to get CBIRF tasked, though – when in doubt, send the Marines."

"ETA?"

"Two hours, they're already in Montana."

"Great, but it'll be dark by then. We're bleeding time."

"You've got a lab case and suits. The cleanup isn't your job, finding clues is. So you'll have to go in now, without them."

"If the National Guard unit will let us, Sir. I'll talk to Captain Fleming. "

The call had taken up all of Truewell's concentration, and she almost jumped when she saw Will – still clad in full NBC gear – rummage around the trunk of the car. She could hear his wheezing breath through the mask; though he strained to breathe properly, he wasn't hyperventilating. The heavy rubber gloves over his hands meant that he had no fine dexterity to speak of, but digging for a large carrying case beneath sealed packs of environmental suits didn't require that. The case was a sturdy affair, stainless steel with reinforced edges and corners, the kind of heavy-duty luggage one could conceivably use to store a backpack nuke. Will heaved it free of the trunk and set it down onto the ground; for a beat, he wanted to wipe the sweat off his brow with the back of his arm before he remembered that he was still wearing the full protective ensemble.

"This is not going to be fun," he said. "My money's on VX, sensors didn't go off but I suppose that could happen with National Guard issue. If that's it, then…it's bad, but it could be worse."

"How, exactly?" Truewell dared to ask.

"Dimethylmercury. Goes straight through most protective gear, the LD50 is too small to measure accurately, no effective treatment. My OrgChem professor had a horror story about this woman in New Hampshire…"

Truewell just nodded, and Will trailed off.

She watched him lug that beast of a box back to the quarantine tent and shook her head. The thought of hopping into one of those suits did not sit well with her at all. But at least she had finally seen Captain Fleming walking outside the command trailer, and a conversation where she held the cards would serve as a fine distraction.

Captain Fleming nodded to Truewell's approach. At 50 and balding – no grey to spoil his light brown hair, though – his career had reached and passed its natural apex. Right now, what he needed least was another busybody Fed stomping around the camp – and what was worse, this woman looked like she'd walk right through him without batting an eyelash. Fortunately, the radio set chose this moment to crackle with the familiar voice of Sergeant Larrimore.

"Sawdust, this is Sawdust Two-One, ready with our sitrep. Over."

Fleming suppressed a lopsided smile and grabbed the receiver; his thumb pressed the "transmit" button just as Truewell took her last step toward him.

"Yeah, uh, Sawdust Two-One, this is Sawdust Six, standing by to copy, over."

"Sawdust Six, sitrep follows: negative movement on perimeter, continuing surveillance. Running low on water. Over."

"Sawdust Two-One, this is Sawdust Six, copy sitrep. Sawdust Two-Three will relieve you at 1700 hours, over."

"Roger that, Sawdust Six. Sawdust Two-One out."

He put down the receiver and took a breath.

"I'm sorry, Captain," Truewell said, "but I need to take up some of your time."

"That's quite alright, Miss –"

"Doctor Truewell," she replied. He knew her name, of course, but she ignored the slight. "I need to investigate the zone."

"You're welcome to the footage of our cameras, Doctor," Fleming said with a dismissive wink and a nod toward another soldier hovering nearby. "Corporal Finster –"

"No," Truewell interrupted, "physically get into town."

"I barely have enough protective equipment to outfit my men. And it's a few gas masks and MOPP jackets, not what you need."

"We brought our own."

"Fair enough," Fleming replied. "Still won't happen. As I'm sure everyone keeps telling you, the RRT – you know, the experts – aren't here, and we're losing daylight."

"We're the experts, and if we don't go in now, we lose hours until sunrise tomorrow."

"It'll be dark by the time you're suited up and in town. Do you want to run around in a deadly environment with a flashlight?"

"If that's what it takes, yes, that's precisely what we're going to do. All I need is for you to let us do it."

Fleming rolled his eyes. Why did all the Feds have to remind him of his three year old daughter?

"Doctor Truewell," he said, sounding like the most patient man on Earth, "I'm responsible for the safety of everyone in this camp. I can't let you go in there without an escort, and even if I did allow you to go in alone, what would happen if there's some sort of emergency and you have to be evacuated? I need to be able to send my men wherever you go, and I can't send my men into the town center."

He turned his head and brought up his arm to point to the idling helicopter at the improvised landing pad.

"You want an overflight, okay. You want footage, sensor readouts, okay. But you're not walking into a hot zone."

Truewell fixed him with a glare. "Give me five minutes and I will have someone on the phone who will order you to let us go in."

"Then you'd better make that call, I'm not letting you do squat until there's someone on record saying it's your own damn fault." Fleming locked eyes with her, and there was a coldness in his gaze that surprised Berkut's chief psychologist. "You want to play like that, Doctor, be my guest. But in that case you're no longer my problem – do you understand?"

Truewell smiled. "Perfectly."

---

Jaime Sommers added another thirty seconds to the grand tally of lifetime spent waiting for elevator cabs; when the doors finally slid open in front of her, Jonas Bledsoe was already inside and gave her a neutral look. Jaime stepped into the cabin, with her back to Bledsoe, and watched the doors close. The elevator was rated for twelve people, but it felt rather small.

"I've got your temporary training schedule ready," Bledsoe said; Jaime turned to face him, expecting a piece of paper or a file folder or something to grab on to. "We can upload it now," he said.

Oh, great, Jaime thought, more creepy voices in my head.

"Have you informed your sister about your new occupation?" he asked.

"You mean the cover job," Jaime said, "or the Secret Agent Girl one?"

Bledsoe smiled. Jaime decided she didn't like that.

"Neither," she added, after a moment's hesitation. "I didn't have the time to talk to her earlier today, I might float it when I get back…"

"Yes, about that. How did you solve the transportation problem?"

"She did. Told me she didn't need a ride today. I didn't exactly have time to investigate."

"Dr. Anthros told me you didn't know her cellphone number."

Jaime blinked. "Yes, but –"

"I'm just surprised," Bledsoe said nonchalantly, "your profile indicates that you're a more controlling type of personality. Are you slipping, Miss Sommers?"

That earned him a glare. "Can we not talk about this now?" she said, forcing her face back into a more careful expression.

"But you are worried about Becca."

"Of course I am; she's freaking 16."

"Then it looks like –" the elevator door pinged open behind Jaime –"you need to find a solution for that. Come on, I want to show you something."

They left the elevator on the third sublevel, as indicated by a sign outside, but it struck Jaime that she hadn't felt the air pressure change since entering the underground installation. Just one more thing in an endless list of loose ends to look into.

"We're heading for the operations center," Bledsoe explained. "You now have Secret clearance, by the way."

"That was fast."

"It wasn't easy, there was a lot of whining about background checks and your spotty personal history, not to mention your parents being peace protestors – and yes, some people in the chain are that petty –, but then I mentioned that you're the only one we have who can potentially stop Sara Corvus." Bledsoe allowed himself a small grin. "After that, the words 'expedite' and 'special circumstances' appeared in the conversation."

"So, the background checks –"

"- are still on, of course. The clearance is temporary until they can run you through the wringer properly. Fortunately, we already have several written expert opinions on your psychological and physical status courtesy of our staff, and the circumstances of your life don't permit any interviews with people outside of Berkut, per several agreements some people should have read more carefully. So, the way I see it, we just let them grind their teeth for a few weeks and then you're all set."

"It really shouldn't work this way," Jaime said, stopping when they reached a door. "I mean, that does basically give you carte blanche, doesn't it? The system's broken."

"The bigger the fence, the bigger the holes," Bledsoe replied, with just a hint of appreciation in his voice. "What were you expecting?"

The door slid open before them. The operations center wasn't larger than the conference room Jaime had visited the day before; it consisted chiefly of four metal desks with dual-screen computers, arranged like two stacked Vs with their point aimed at the entrance. A large, curved touchscreen surface was mounted in the room's center, currently displaying a map of Idaho. On second glance, Jaime noted that it wasn't just one map, but actually a composite of different datasets – high resolution survey maps, the latest shot from a spy satellite overflight, aerial reconnaissance pictures, several markers for important locations and GPS trackers. It looked…less fancy than she would have expected had she heard a description of it, mostly because there was very little user interface candy to it – no nice bevels, shadows or alpha shading, just hard edges and high-visibility fonts. The desks themselves were deserted except for one, a bit larger and with more legroom than the others – the close left one. Jaime wasn't surprised to find Nathan at the desk with a headset on, intently working on something on his computer.

"Ambrose," Bledsoe said, "update Miss Sommers. I'll be in my office if you need me."

Nathan tapped a few more keys, then turned around, gave Jaime a look and turned back to his computer. Nathan Ambrose, huh? Jaime thought. The door closed behind her.

"Hey, Sommers," Nathan said. "Welcome to the Batcave."

"Hello," she began, and then she thought for a second before settling on "Ambrose."

"You wanna sit down for this? Yeah, you do, you want to sit down. Got a couple patches for you."

Jaime furrowed an eyebrow, but pulled up one of the chairs and sat down. "Could we maybe make a point of not treating me like a science fair project?" she said.

Nathan scoffed. "You're a freaking cyborg, Sommers. That's, basically, kind of a big deal. Anyway, this update will do you good, we'll hook you up with new data, disengage a few safeties, correct your neurochemicals…"

"What's wrong with my neurochemicals?"

"Something boring," Nathan replied, "ask your boyfriend. Bug list was sorta vague, you know, blunted affect, mild case of anterograde amnesia…"

"Oh, lack of emotions and memory loss. Let's fix that, yes."

"Knew you'd be into that."

Jaime waited for Nathan to get up. Then she waited some more.

"Uh, when are we going to start?"

"Already halfway done," Nathan replied, and smiled. "You know, we pioneered the whole wireless radio component with your system. Got full telemetry access, too, except we can't get video streaming working over the commercial cell network."

"Science fair," Jaime repeated.

"But it is pretty cool," Nathan insisted. "You like the navigation? Anthros made me switch it on today, it's got the works – GPS, magnetic sensors, dead reckoning through inertial. You'll never be lost again. Unless you go into space, in which case I gotta tell you: the celestial fix routine isn't quite there yet…"

"Science. Fair."

"Okay. Okay, you want something more relevant. Check this out."

Nathan tapped a key on his desk, and Jaime's world started swimming. The traditional folk remedy of clutching her forehead and moaning came easily to her, but within a few seconds the attack was over. Her vision focused to find more of the non-fancy computer elements, strewn all over the place. A very readable sign hovered over Nathan, divulging his name and a small stylized eagle head Jaime understood to be Berkut's symbol.

"Augmented freaking reality," Nathan said in response to Jaime's unspoken question. "Last generation technology, but I figured I'd show you it's still there to fall back on."

"This is what Corvus has?" Jaime asked.

"Yes. But as you can see, it really clutters up your field of vision, so you're rocking the new hotness that is memetic injection."

"So either I get pop-up ads in real life or voices in my head," Jaime replied sarcastically. "Great design."

"You'll get used to it," Nathan said. "Try working with it. It hijacks the nerve input on your artificial eye, so you just focus on the element you want to use –" Jaime looked at the label hovering over Nathan – "and double-blink." The nametag expanded into an extended dossier of Nathan, scrolling automatically as Jaime's gaze hit the lower bound of her field of vision. "I know," he said, "awkward at first. You'll –"

"– get used to it," Jaime said. "Can I have my voices back, please?"

Nathan tapped a few more keys. He made the science! look easy. "Done and done. Just tell me if you need any more of that service mode magic done."

"Can I do this by myself?"

"Ah, young grasshopper, not ready for this you are."

"Disgrammatism will get you nowhere," she said. "So…"

"Ask Kim, he's got a meditation technique for that."

For what wouldn't be the last time, Jaime fixed Nathan with a look of total disbelief.

"Mediatation technique," she managed to say.

"See," Nathan said, "the fix is working already."

"Confusion is not an emotion, Ambrose."

"I'm not trying to mess with you, Sommers. Seriously, it works through biofeedback, consciousness hacking, altered states –"

"– that was a movie," Jaime said.

"About consciousness hacking," Nathan said defensively. "I mean, I could talk about this for hours."

"It feels like you already have."

"I see we still need to work on the crabbiness. Anyway, you got your training schedule all loaded up?"

Wednesday: 10 AM Weapons Drill. 12PM Lunch. 1PM Introduction to Fieldcraft. 3PM Close Combat Drill. 5PM Weapons Drill. Thursday: 10AM Close Combat Drill. 12PM Lunch yes thank you very much that will be all.

"Got it," Jaime said, then rose from her seat. "Guess I'll see you around."

"Sure. Oh, little tip…"

"I'm listening."

"The next time you've got Corvus at gunpoint," Nathan said, "shoot her first."