Author's Notes: Here's a tip for aspiring writers - don't base your story on chemical weapons. Happiness will forever evade your grasp. As usual, it's probably a good idea to have a Google tab open.

---

Will stepped into the quarantine tent, a heavy breath from his lungs forcing its way to sweet freedom through the gas mask's exhalation valve. His toes were starting to itch from the sweating, and the first thing he had planned for after taking the suit off was drinking a whole bottle of water, but he'd been through worse than spending twenty minutes under full NBC protection.

Not much worse, mind you.

The medic had pulled down the surgical mask over his face to have a drink; it was, perhaps, Will's own thirst that led him to idle speculation about whether the thusly-revealed mustache was still within regulations. Grooming standards were about more than just keeping up appearances; some facial real estate really needed to be as smooth as possible to form a tight seal with the gas mask. Of course, on reflection, Will's stubble wasn't much better. So his second action after taking off the suit was going to be a close shave.

First rule of chemical warfare, Will thought, beards kill.

He set the heavy steel case onto a nearby collapsible table and snapped the locks open. The case was neatly separated into two components: the emergency supplies on top, all strapped into the lid, were made up of various drugs and chemicals plus a vacuum-sealed gas mask and plastic poncho; the other two thirds of the case's volume were taken up by a large, metal-cased monstrosity, all smooth aluminum plating, various small displays and adhesive plastic seals over a dizzying variety of input ports.

"Do you have the blood sample?" Will asked; the medic grabbed a small vial from an instrument tray, wound up his arm for a low toss in Will's direction, then thought better of it and closed the distance.

Will had managed to get the displays lit up and one port cleared when the medic handed him the sample. Of course, it was the wrong port, too small for the vial to fit; Will's reaction to this earth-shattering revelation was to tear open the next-larger port with no further comment. That one worked, so he pressed a few buttons and let the machine do the work. The medic fondled a freshly-spent autoinjector absent-mindedly.

But Will wasn't done. His rubber-gloved fingers dug into the small compartments of the case lid until they freed an IV bag from its storage pouch. The force needed to do so with the gloves on wasn't quite trivial, which made Will extra careful for the seconds it took to hand the bag to the medic.

"Atropine sulfate," Will said. "Put him on this, start with –" he took a glance at the mayor – "you just dosed him."

"You said to," the medic replied, "Sir."

"Before or after you took the blood sample?"

"Before."

"Okay," Will said with a twang of exhaustion. "Hook it up, don't start it yet. I really hope we've flushed the worst of it for now, but if he starts slipping back, begin with 1 mg per hour and watch it for 10 minutes. If he's still secreting, double the dose. Do that until he's dry, then keep the dose constant. The bag should be enough for at least three hours. Do you have any sterile water?"

"Sure," the medic replied.

"Then we could use these," Will said, fumbling for a handful of small vials in the case. "Worst case scenario." Finally, the medic took pity on him, walked over to the case and pulled them out.

"You know, Sir," the medic said, "you should really take that suit off." He held the vials against the light, read the label and shrugged. Pralidoxime, it said.

"The analysis is almost done," Will replied. He really wished he could wipe the sweat off his forehead. "Just another minute."

"How much water do we need for these?" the medic asked, pointing to the vials.

"How much you got?" Will asked.

"Most of two bottles, I think it's about 350, maybe 400 milliliters left."

"Okay, we need 100 per vial and another IV bag. Prep it, but don't administer it unless I tell you. He's probably gotten enough of a dose already – but it's good to have insurance."

The portable lab gave a very dissatisfying beep to inform Will of its completed analysis. Hooray for microfluidic LOCs, he thought. Top of the class in chemical analysis, and then I go and build a machine that goes ding when there's stuff.

"Yep, still has some knocked-out acetylcholinesterase," Will said. "Nerve agent, now we have it in writing. Well, on a screen."

"Good news to me, Sir," the medic said. "So we can get the mayor flown out."

"If it's not too late," Will said. "Hang on."

Will grabbed the gas mask on his head by the mouthpiece and yanked it upward. Fresh air seemed to blow away the sweat on his face almost instantly. He took a few deep breaths and tried to clear salty liquid from his eyes. He stole a glance at the comatose mayor. His chances weren't anything to write home about, but given that he'd survived this long without a trip to an Intensive Care Unit…

"Organophosphate poisoning is an angry beast," Will said, still rubbing his eyes, "and we're poking it with sticks. I really want to get Peters into a lab and find out what keeps him alive."

"Should I wait a couple minutes before I start the IV?" the medic asked. On seeing Will react with a nod, he shrugged. "I'll need the time to prepare the other bag, anyway."

"Well, if you don't mind, I got some people waiting outside for the good news," Will said with a smile. The medic returned it, then went back to work.

Will enjoyed the relief for a few more seconds, then walked out of the tent. He never did ask for the medic's name. He had much bigger problems.

---

Becca entered her home to the expected silence. The oral report she'd built up in her head as her little moment in the spotlight had come and gone without incident. "Questions?" she had said at the end, just like every other kid standing in front of the class with too many notes on little pieces of stiff paper, and then there were no questions, just a polite "Thank you" from Mr. Deltree. The same look from the few kids who were looking at her: You don't ask us, we don't ask you, it'll go faster this way.

She concluded that the assignment sucked.

She stepped into her room and dumped the backpack onto her bed. The almost empty water bottle in the side pocket had to go; after a week of refilling it from the school's water fountains, the aftertaste in it had gotten fairly noticeable. Becca dumped it into the trash can next to her desk and continued on to the backpack's main compartment. The netbook in the back was playing the part of dead weight this week; it seemed like Becca just couldn't catch a quiet moment to sit down with it. Mr. Merchant's soldering iron – probably old enough to have long forgotten the box it came in – was next, in a plastic bag on top of her other stuff. Technically speaking, she had some more assignments to do for tomorrow, but the urge to procrastinate was persistent. She'd just work after dinner: everything got done on time, one way or another.

Becca took the time to have a look around her room. There wasn't anything wrong with it that a minute of shuffling things around wouldn't fix, well, except for the pyramid of soda cans – she had a few empty ones on her desk that needed cleaning before they could be added to the larger context of her living art project. The walls were still disappointingly bare, and she had to fill the room somehow. Her stomach growled in agreement with the word "fill".

Right. Dinner.

She made her way into the kitchen and tried to figure out what she should eat. There were some leftovers from yesterday, but truth be told Becca considered William Anthros's cooking skills to fall rather short of her big sister's opinion on the same. The noodles were too greasy, the sauce congealed from spending a day in the freezer, and the less said about the decidedly overdone bell pepper note in his ragout, the better.

She closed the fridge. Maybe the answer to her culinary woes was ordering some Thai, but her train of thought jumped the tracks when her eyes locked onto a picture Blu-Tack'd to a wall tile. It was one of these "self-portrait by outstretched arm" photos, with Jaime and Becca in front of the California/Nevada state line at Lake Tahoe. The longer Becca stared at it, the more fake Jaime's broad grin looked.

Becca wondered when she'd be caught showing her teeth on camera.

---

Sometimes, Jonas Bledsoe regretted drilling his employees to be mindful of time-critical tasks and waste as little time as possible.

Talking to a showering Dr. Anthros was one of those times.

The splatter of water on plastic echoed through the cellphone connection and was lovingly rendered by the speakers in the command center. Bledsoe stood in the middle, his arms folded in front of his chest. Nathan Ambrose sat at his desk, leaning back in his chair; Jae Kim stood beside him and pointed to the screen.

"Do we really need a waveform display of the shower's sound?" Kim asked in a hushed tone.

"It looks cool," Nathan replied tersely. After a moment, he added "Shut up."

"A little certainty would be helpful, Dr. Anthros," Bledsoe said, his voice easily overpowering anything short of a street riot.

"Yes, it would be," Will replied, clearly shouting at a distant phone. "If I could get a blood sample to my lab, I could probably tell you for sure. But with the equipment here, I'm about…80%, give or take, well – maybe 75% sure he's got traces of anthrocytes in his blood."

"See, that's the stuff that interests me. How'd they get there?"

"That's the thing. I'm not sure if anthrocytes were used as a delivery system, if they were present for other reasons –"

"You think he could be an augment?"

"Let me finish. There's a significant chance that my results are simply wrong, just like I said, the portable lab has been known to give some bizarre readings. And we have to consider production capability, or lack thereof. It's a no go either way, a practical impossibility to manufacture that many anthrocytes or that much VX without us noticing. You know how careful we are with our tech, and VX is one of the most controlled substances on the planet. And to cap it all off –" Will said, then was heard to ask Truewell for a towel – "to cap it off, we have a sample size of one. For all I know, whatever's in Peters's system isn't what actually killed the rest of the town. Even after all the aerial surveillance we can't be sure that it got everyone. We're just working with way, way, way too many assumptions right now."

"I hear you," Bledsoe said. "The mission hasn't changed. Suit up, get into town, investigate. Start with Peters's house. Now, put Truewell back on."

---

Jaime had half the commute back to her home behind her, hitting the stretch of the Shoreline Highway – a misnomer on the Highway part, at the very least - that went past Tomales Bay. Now that she had the route all figured out and was willing to hit and surpass the speed limit (just to match traffic flow, of course), she could budget less time to get to and from Wolf Creek, but it still wasn't what she'd gladly accept as a daily drive. The talk with Becca she had avoided yesterday was coming due once more, with renewed vigor. And if that training schedule was supposed to work out – to say nothing of actually being on duty – she would have to leave her little sister alone for days at a time.

Jaime was emphatically not looking forward to actually telling Becca that.

A glance at her car's fuel gauge told Jaime that making it back to the bay was in the cards, but that didn't include getting home. As if to complement the momentary glance of the important, the thought that there was a gas station up ahead in Point Reyes Station was carefully spliced into the tapestry of her consciousness. Jaime wondered if her next romantic evening with Will would yield a knowledgeable assessment of his wine choice.

A few minutes later, Jaime slowed and turned onto the plot of the gas station, stopping her car next to an unoccupied fuel pump. It was now that Jaime consciously noticed the gray panel van that had been just behind her since she had gotten onto the main road from Wolf Creek's rather more adventurous route. Okay, so there hadn't been much occasion to notice it beforehand, just a regular part of traffic going down the only big road in the vicinity, but the way it had followed her and then driven right past the pumps to park next to the vacuum cleaners made Jaime nervous. Maybe, she reasoned, playing chicken with them would work. Just stay in the car, Jaime thought, either they'll get out first, or they don't and you know they're fishy.

Or maybe that will spook them. Hey, head-voice, advice?

Jaime closed her eyes and counted to five. Then, she grabbed her Berkut bag and got out of the car. A glance at the van offered no movement; she walked around her car, opened the fuel filler flap and unscrewed the cap. With a well-practiced grab, she snatched a nozzle from the pump, pushed it into her car and set to swiping her credit card. The bag – loaded gun inside – weighed weirdly on her right shoulder as she fumbled for her wallet, finally producing her card. Her eyes darted to the van as often as she dared to, but detected no menace. Still, Jaime wasn't feeling safe. The pump station sprung to life, refilling her car's gas tank. With another glance at the van, Jaime took off towards the station's restrooms. The gas station lot was mostly empty – the attendant inside with a newspaper, a couple in their car getting ready to take off, a businessman fighting with his cell phone. On her way to the restroom building, Jaime spotted a small window that would let her watch the lot from inside.

Perfect.

The ladies' room looked like it had convinced many tourists to hold it in a while longer. Jaime didn't care about the facilities as such; she simply crouched down to check beneath the stall doors for occupants, did not find any, and hurried to the window. She pulled herself up with her new arm and looked outside. After a few seconds, the van's side door opened; two men climbed out, both dressed in nondescript, dark clothing. Jaime mentally labeled them Mr. Blonde and Emobangs, though precisely what that said about her opinions on Tarantino and post-hardcore music would, perhaps, never be discovered. The interior of the van, however, was arguably the more interesting glimpse: computers, rack-mounted hardware with a serious case of blinkenlights, and a few screens. Jaime didn't know what it meant, but it wasn't good.

For a few seconds, it looked like the men would just stand around there, though one of them made gestures towards her car. Jaime's urge to keep them away from it was answered, in a way, when Mr. Blonde locked eyes with her. And Jaime knew that had happened because they both started moving towards the restrooms. At that stage, letting go and ducking away from the window was an understandable yet mostly useless reaction on Jaime's part.

Get out? Only one exit. Who are these guys? Is it so much to ask to have enemies with easily identifiable uniforms? Hang on, maybe they're not even my enemies, or after me at all. I have a gun but I can't shoot them, it's public and I haven't fired a gun ever and oh God if I have to actually shoot someone I swear I'm going to the cops and then I'll tell them everything and…

Maybe I can punch them. Maybe that's okay.

With the fleet thinking of desperation, Jaime opened one of the toilet stalls and closed the door behind her. The door was too high off the ground to make a credible hiding attempt by crouching on the toilet itself; the only possibility was to squeeze herself into the space right behind the stall door, as far off the ground as possible, and pray that they wouldn't want to escalate the situation by breaking down the stall doors. Jaime leaned against the stall partition, the door just to her right; she drew her right leg up until her heel touched her rear, then set that foot against the partition and grabbed the upper edge of the stall door with her hand. In a quick move, she raised her left leg, dangling for the fraction of a second before she managed to put it against the partition opposite her and stabilize her position. Compared to getting into this position, using it to climb up a few more inches with a chimneying motion was almost laughably easy. As a result, Jaime had her back curled down as far as possible to not stick out over the top edge, and her arms against her body, leaning slightly against the door to keep from being unbalanced. It wasn't a very comfortable position, but it did the job.

She heard the door creak, and the footsteps of what she presumed to be Mr. Blonde and Emobangs. She could sense the confusion even without spoken words, could hear them move through the room. In an instant, she became aware that her gambit wouldn't hold them off.

Time for egress.

In one smooth motion, her arms sprang to life, clutching the upper edge of the stall door; the energy coiled into her right leg was released, and she vaulted over the partition, right past Mr. Blonde searching the last corner of the room. Before Emobangs could react, she hit the ground and rolled past him, then darted for the exit. The beginning of a shout rose in Mr. Blonde's throat just as she reached the door, pulled it open and rushed out. Her car was dead ahead, and she slowed to a normal walk again, just in time to not be noticed by the few civilians. With a casual stroll (and her heart breaking 150 bpm), she closed the distance, removed the nozzle, then replaced the cap and closed the filler flap. Her two pursuers were still at the door to the ladies' room when she walked around her car; she stopped briefly and locked eyes with Mr. Blonde, then tapped her Berkut bag once. With no response from the men, she got into her car, started the engine and drove off, homeward bound.

The van didn't follow her.