May 21, 1999
Washington, D.C
4:35pm

They sat in the silence of a parked car, eating take-out burgers and sipping at milkshakes that had long since become tepid and separated in the heat. Their trip had started out with excited tension. A readiness, the energy of a shared enemy. Over the hours, the high May sun climbed and hung and then began its descent, had taken that pointed aggressive optimism with it. Now it just felt like wasted time. Reynolds hated wasting time.

The women in tan waitress uniforms they'd watched walk to restaurants in early morning were now returning back the way they came, their stringed red aprons in hand. The businessmen who'd made their ways down the sidewalks in important peacock struts with cell phones held to their ears were trudging, loosening their neckties, shoulders slumped in defeat.

And still no sign of her.

"Maybe she went another way," Sullivan said, turning the last quarter of her hamburger to look for an edge that didn't look wilted, soaked with grease. She gave up, tossed it into the paper take-out bag with a puff of disgust. "May have missed her."

Reynolds shook his head. His strawberry blonde hair was clipped close in a short, businesslike style, but he never managed to pull off the image of the consummate professional he tried for; he always seemed to look a little more like a stand-up comedian than anything respectable or fearsome. The hours in the pre-summer sun had baked his fair complexion around the edges, darkened his freckles.

"I'd know her," he said, "from a thousand paces, I'd know her."

"Oh yeah?" Sully said, and it was less of a question than it was an air-filler. They sat in silence.

"So how are we splitting the 200k?" Reynolds asked. He kept his tone still, conversational.

"I figure 100k for you, 100k for me," Sullivan shrugged. "Seems fair. We get double if we get her to take the check and not 86 her, though. We should do that."

The argument was long-worn and tired, but Sullivan was a bulldog, and she shook it like one. Reynolds looked aside at her — her blonde hair, tied up in a ponytail, her face too severe to be considered pretty by conventional standards. She rested the knuckles of her fist against her mouth as she watched the people.

200k. She had said 200k, again. The first time wasn't a mistake.

"You don't know her," Reynolds said, "I do. You're not getting her to take that check."

"I can," Sullivan responded, unconcerned. "I can be pretty persuasive."

Reynolds dropped it. She'd just have to see for herself.

She had said 200k, though. Not 350k. Of that he was certain.

They hadn't offered Jill a car. The last time, they'd offered her a car. She found that strange, but didn't think much of it until later that night.

Dr. Behara had offered her a car.

Jill began her walk home — well, not home, but home to Carlos' apartment, empty and silent as a tomb. It wasn't very far — perhaps an hour, hour and a half on foot. She'd agreed to stay there until the court proceedings had wrapped up, for her own safety. But, she reasoned, this was important. A single walk or two hidden in the shuffle of the D.C foot traffic in broad daylight wouldn't kill her. She had the benefit of hiding in plain sight, along with thousands of other people. Being cooped up in that apartment brought back bad memories of not being able to leave. She was glad for the walks, when she found a reason to take them.

Jill passed all manners of delis, small churches packed onto street corners, small coffee shops whose smell normally would have enticed her and intoxicated her brain, but now just made her feel vaguely queasy. The people around her were talking on their phones, to each other, or walking in silence, ears blocked by circular foam phones that pumped music.

Something felt off. Jill felt eyes everywhere. The feeling crept up her body like rising water, cold and shimmering. The sea of bodies became less like a place to hide and more like a crushing tide, hot and thick and smelling like perfume and heat and laundry detergent and cigarette smoke, suddenly claustrophobic. She didn't have anywhere to move if she needed to. No space to dodge or juke or get away. Nobody was looking at her — she swung her head around, looking for the source of that feeling. The Eyes. None were pointed at her, but she felt them on her back, against the standing hairs on her neck all the same. It became hard to breathe. Her heart hammered inside her chest, like a knock on a door.

Jill broke through the side of the column of people and detoured away from the sidewalk. "Hey, watch it!" Someone yelled, but she didn't turn to look, continued through the gates of a nearby park. Its immense black wrought-iron fences stood open, a wide gravel path winding deep into its ferns and tree boughs and flowering bushes like a gray tongue. Jill stopped beside a dirt expanse that held a display of greenish-pink succulents, hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath. It stopped somewhere above the meridian of her lungs, puffing in and out but never making it easier to breathe, her chest tight. Footsteps behind her, crunching the gravel underfoot. Jill steeled herself and turned to a young woman pushing an expensive-looking baby stroller. The woman said hello and passed by.

Jill put her hand on her forehead. Maybe she wasn't ready to go outside yet. Where earlier in the day she'd hungered for open spaces, now she wanted to scramble into whatever small crack or hole she could find, feel its confines squeezing her like a hug. Telling her she was safe. That it would be okay. Jill had never yearned for safety. Had actively avoided it almost all of her life, in fact. Something in her brain was unraveling.

"Fuck," she mumbled, and forced her legs to move, forced herself to walk. It got easier as she did it. The Eyes went away, by degrees, as if the trees and gazebos and plants were blocking her from them. A barricade. Somewhere to hide.

The park extended so far that the sun began to set before Jill reached the other side. The groups of schoolchildren with their chaperones had long since left. The joggers in their bright nylon outfits had all passed, thumped against the path, and were gone. Now it was just Jill and the gravel and the trees and the purple-yellow of the fading sun. The walk was long and she was tired, but that unraveling had been burned from her brain.

On a bench up ahead, two lovers sat engaged in conversation that managed to be enthusiastic and shy all at once. A young man with his arm around a woman's shoulders, the woman with her knees together, tilted towards him as she talked. Jill ducked her head and quickened her pace, not wanting to look the interloper on a position so far from the front entrance they had surely sought to give them some privacy. Despite her stress, Jill smiled to herself and glanced at them again — what better time for romantic conversation than May, under the pastel sunset, surrounded by the heavy weight of blooming things?

The man was glancing back. He looked away, quickly. Without thinking, Jill's eyes flicked to the woman — who just a moment ago was so engrossed in her man, but now also looked away from Jill, as if she had been caught doing something inappropriate. What was a charming picture of young love just a moment before twisted and swirled and turned the more Jill thought about it.

They were both young, but both wearing business suits. The woman didn't have a purse. Nowhere to keep money or cosmetics or your phone if you were on a date. But maybe they weren't on a date? Maybe it was an affair? Maybe it was a million other things that were none of her business? Maybe…

The feeling of The Eyes came back. Staring. Plucking at the hair on the back of her neck. Jill shook her head and her feet moved faster without her having to think much about it. She shook her head and wiped at her face. You're being paranoid, You're letting your mind get the better of you. Turn the station, like your therapist told you. Just turn the stat—

"Excuse me," the young lady called out. Jill started, as if someone had just cracked off a rifle round. She turned; they were both on their feet now. Following her. "You dropped something." The woman continued. "I've got it just here, if you'd like—"

"You can keep it," Jill said, and exited the back gate of the park. She thought about running. There was no reason — young people in business suits were more common than young people in anything else, on Capitol Hill. It didn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything.

Her feet moved faster. She turned the corner, around a flower shop with a cracked, faded sign, down the street over a large series of grates that blew air up against her from empty space. The dead marquee of a theater sat, silent and dark, and Jill scuttled under its gray lights, as if to hide in its shadows. Ahead, a yellow-and-chrome skeleton loomed. The bones of a dragon, perhaps, until her brain adjusted and saw only a construction site, as dark and sleeping as all the other landmarks in this forgotten stretch of the glittering rot.

"Hello?" The young woman called, her voice bouncing off the street, the buildings. Jill didn't turn around.

Jill crossed the street. After a moment, the patter of footsteps sounded behind her in the distance. Jill looked back. The woman was behind her again at so many paces. Her blonde ponytail caught a stiff wind and fluttered. Cold for May. Something in Jill's stomach clenched at the confirmation, but also at the new information — the man was gone. There was just the woman, now.

"If I could just talk to you a moment," the woman continued, "my phone is dead."

"Just leave me alone, please," Jill said, "I can't help you." The open, yawning stretch between two tall patches of chain-link fence invited her in, and Jill ducked between them. The scaffolding of the site stretched up to the sky. Something new and tall and grand brewing. The man slunk out from behind a piece of equipment, directly into Jill's path, a quiet smile on his face.

"Awfully dangerous part of town, isn't it?" He said. As he moved, his suitcoat fluttered and he pulled it closed with a debonair gesture. It was enough movement to see; against one flat side of his dress shirt snugly sat a holstered gun. Against his other side, the brown ribbed pommel of a combat knife.

Jill backed away from him, and when the woman followed behind her, Jill backed away again, at an angle, moved herself from between them. Her eyes darted back and forth, tried to keep tabs on both at once.

"But we can help you," the woman said.

"I don't have any money," Jill lied, "I've got nothing on me."

"That makes our meeting especially fortuitous, for you." The woman said. She drew closer and Jill jerked away; the woman held out her hands in a gesture of peace. "Easy now. We're just here to talk."

Jill's eyes flicked to the man — he was watching the woman, his expression unreadable.

Jill looked her up and down. "On behalf of who?"

"Sully," he said, his voice full of warning. "We talked about this."

The woman laughed, then gestured to him as well in that wave of I come in peace. "I'm sure we can come to some kind of an agree—"

A loud report, dry and echoing like a firecracker. A spray of dark, jeweled blood and shattered loops of gray matter popped out of the back of the woman's head from the other side of a dark hole burrowed into her face, right above her left eyebrow. She touched her fingers to it, gingerly, then collapsed to the gravel and shook. Jill froze in place, her clothes and face spattered with it, salty and warm and wet.

The man looked at what he'd done, and swallowed, hard. His eyes were wide and near to bulging, his expression a look of hard consternation. When he turned a moment later to finish the job, Jill was closer. Close enough to smell her, see the color in her eyes. She slammed her elbow down into the joint of his arm and the nerves of his hand failed, fingers flying open. He dropped the gun, tried to grope for it with his other hand, but it tumbled to the gravel. Jill ducked him again, scooped it up, and removed the entire top of its gleaming chrome slide with a single, practiced movement. Threw them over the fence, and out of sight.

Jill was fast but she was also small, built strong for a woman but narrow compared to the man before her. He ate her steps with one of his own and fired a shot across her face with a fist. It jangled reality and made it puff into cancerous black spots, the teeth on the side of her mouth loosened, her face numb with the promise of later pain. He grabbed the sweater around her waist and stripped it off with a hard yank, wrapped it around her neck and stepped behind her. He had to pull and squeeze until his hands shook, but it cinched tight, cinched until the air stopped moving and Jill pawed at it, desperately tried to get her fingers under its seam.

"I told her you wouldn't take the money," he explained, "she wouldn't listen."

Jill choked and sputtered and tried to move her feet to displace him. He lifted her off the ground, against him just by an inch, but it was enough.

"She doesn't know you. But I do. I've been watching you a while. Almost like we're frien—"

Jill groped backwards, closed her hand around leather, yanked as hard as she could. Freed it from its sheath and its snap closure. She drove the blade into the large muscle of the man's thigh until its sharp tip chinked against the solidity of bone. The man dropped the sweater, clutched at his leg with a scream of pain, of outrage. Jill danced away from him, boots scuffing across the gravel, dust kicked into the air. She carried the knife with her, coughing and gagging and clutching her neck with her other hand. Her sweater fluttered to the ground between them, like a referee with its arms outstretched: alright, back to your corners, let's have a good clean fight.

"You stupid bitch," he spat. Blood poured from the wound on his leg, wetted his pantleg dark and glistening and spilled to the ground around his dress shoe. "Fuck!"

Jill's breath returned, slow and ragged. She brandished the knife in his direction, one hand held up to its side to block incoming blows. Walked in a circle so she blocked the exit, her back to it. In her eyes, steely silver and hard and cold, there was a thread of desperation. He found himself, sudden as a thunderbolt, with no weapon, no partner, in that dangerous position where he was the only thing between her and something important, the high ground surrendered.

For the first time in years, Tim Reynolds was afraid. Not on edge. Not alert.

Afraid.

"You're right. You do know me." Jill said. The blade caught the light and his blood gleamed upon it. It looked less like a threat and more like a promise. "And I'm not taking anything from you that you'll be able to get back."

May 21, 1999
Ecuador

The glass door swung shut on its hinges with a quiet clap behind them. As they passed from the beat of the late-day Ecuadorian sun into the damp shadows of the facility, there was no light but the milky spreading spots of the small lamps clipped to their gear. Kevin scanned the room. It was empty — a desk with a rolling computer chair. No papers, no computer equipment that he could see. No people, no bodies, no blood. Nothing but motes of dust floating on the stale, warm, thick air. An oppressive, hot blanket of silence over the soft shuffle of boots and equipment as they spread and cased their surroundings.

Then, a flash: a wire, taut and thin like fishing line, glinted back at Kevin when his light fell across its span between the two frames of the door jamb.

"Heavy," Kevin said, grabbed the damp warmth of his shoulder to still him, and pointed. "The door, near the bottom. Look."

Heavy craned his head, squinted. "Hold here," he said, his deep voice a just above a whisper. He shuffled up alongside the single doorway leading back further into the facility, put his rifle on the floor, and knelt to look at the frame. "Okay, back up." He said, gestured with one hand towards them, didn't turn around. "Back towards the wall." Heavy tightened the knot on the black bandanna wrapped around the slick wet coils of his hair, having given up on controlling the pieces that snaked from underneath it down the back of his glistening neck. Wiped his hands on the thighs of his pants. Then he leaned over, unfurled a canvas tube upon the floor, thin steel tools bound to its surface with elastic bands. He used one of them to tinker with a small bracket on one side of the door, near ankle-height.

"Good eye," Kennedy said to Kevin, one eyebrow cocked. "That was almost bad."

"Just jumped out at me. Didn't fit with the rest of the environment."

"I don't get it," Kennedy continued, "there's one door. Why trip wire your way back out? Were they trying to keep something from getting in, after them? There was nothing out there."

"Unless this isn't the only exit," Kevin said, half-watching Heavy's wide shoulders work while he labored. "Whoever dug that hole didn't want any unexpected guests while they rounded up the incriminating evidence, maybe."

The wire fell, slack, its metal bracket hitting against the tile floor with a clink. An electronic device came off of the wall in one of Heavy's hands. He turned it, looked it over. It didn't look like much of anything to Kevin — maybe a distant cousin of a smoke alarm.

"What'd you find?" Kennedy asked.

"Well, we got ourselves a real Scoobarific mystery." Heavy said, rolled up his tools, tucked them in a pocket, and stood. "Whoever bugged this place did it long enough ago the batteries on the detonator died." He collected the trip wire, wound it around one of his fists and also tucked it away for safe keeping.

"So they're long gone?" Kevin asked.

Heavy shook his head and sniffed, wiped his face with a forearm. "Nah, it don't tell us much. These things suck battery like crazy, you gotta use 'em quick. Sixteen hours, twenty tops if it wasn't just a dud. Move slow. Watch your ankles and elbows."

Heavy fell back ahead of them, pushed the door open with one large, tentative hand. It swung with a high, unsure creak. There was only one more room; a treatment room, filled with empty gurneys and hospital beds outfitted with cranks, flanked by shining chrome IV poles. Ambient emergency lights cast a dim pall over the room. Barely enough to read by.

They tore the place apart. A small doctor's office held more of the same. Emptiness, darkness, silence. No files, no computer. Nothing.

"I don't see any documents," Kevin said, and pushed the chair against the desk aside again, the way a man might open a fridge door he'd just closed to see if food had spontaneously apparated. "It's dry, Heavy. There's nothin' here."

Kevin sat back and glassed the room again. Nothing jumped out — no secrets, no panels, no buttons. Well… except one, tiny, minuscule thing, not even worth commenting on. But, because Kevin was Kevin, he commented on everything, even the things that need not be, just to fill the air.

"Stupid motherfuckers left a bag of IV fluid hanging," he said in a offhanded way, pushed the empty bag — about the size of his fist — and watched it swing. "Someone must've been here recently at least. There's still stuff in it."

Kennedy perked and looked at him. Stalked over to him and looked at the bag, the bed.

"What?" Kevin said.

"Move," Kennedy said, "get off the bed."

"Why, you—"

Kevin and Kennedy saw it at the same time. They looked to each other, then crouched on their haunches to investigate.

"It's bolted to the floor," Kevin said, "Under the wheels."

"A stretcher that ain't supposed to move?" Heavy said, and shook his head. "Can you move those beds? Over, on the other side of the room."

The men checked them. All of the beds, even locked, screamed metallic and shrieked against the floor, but would scoot if pushed hard enough. Kevin and Kennedy tried to push this one, but it didn't budge.

Kevin looked around. "They've all got these pole things…" he said, "but this is the only one with a bag of shit on it. Was someone in here?"

Kennedy rounded the bed, looked at the bag again. He pressed down the red power button with a long thumb, and the machine made a jingle, neon green numbers parading across its screen. "How do these work?" He asked.

"Drip tubing from an IV," volunteered one of the men, "wife is…" he caught himself, "was… a nurse. Had to do these all the time for her mom that was on dialysis while she stayed with us."

"Watched her a million times," the man said, "here. You press…" he showed Kennedy, who tried a few combinations of numbers. Boo-woop, the machine sang, and it sounded to Kevin like the Price Is Right's losing horn, reminded him of days home sick from school. Heavy came up behind them to watch.

"Four milligrams per 30 minutes…" Kennedy mumbled to himself, reading the order printed on the bag's label. He tried again. Boo-woop. "I'm missing something."

"Machine says over 60, right? That's an hour." Kevin volunteered. "So it'd be 8 milligrams an hour if it's 4 per 30 minutes. Try putting 8 in, instead."

Kennedy thought about this, then followed the directions, input the orders on the bag — 8 mg / 60 m. As soon as he hit the "start infusion" button, the floor rumbled. The bed started to move, move towards the other wall, but was stopped, ramming against something on the floor that blocked its path.

"Holy fuck," Kevin said, and jumped back as the floor shook and trembled, the gurney ramming against something solid underneath it.

"It's the tiles," Heavy said, "move 'em out of the way."

They crouched and pried the heavy stone tiles up with their knives, lifting them and tossing them onto the empty beds. Once the path was clear, he nodded to Kennedy, took a step back out of the way. "Try it again."

This time, the deep rocky cha-chunk sounded and the bed ground on its island, slid with ominous slowness towards the other wall. A staircase, black and narrow and steep as a mountainside led down a black corridor that led to a blue square of broad steel tiles somewhere far below. Broad steel tiles dashed through with great black splashes. A red light spun somewhere down below, winking against the blue in steady increments. The sudden smell of blood and rot and sickly-sweet infection puffed from the basement level on a gust of sterile, cold air.

Kevin gagged, the sound wet and guttural with impending vomit. He stilled his mouth against his fist, turned his head. The men fell back a step, squeezed their eyes closed and coughed, waved their hands in front of their faces to waft the smell away.

"Jesus Christ," Heavy said. "It's a NEST. No wonder they wanted these documents so bad."

"And no wonder there's nobody here," one of the other men said, "look at all that fucking blood down there."

"How the fuck'd you figure that out?" Kevin asked. Kennedy just shrugged.

"Looked for something that didn't fit with the rest of the environment, just like you did," he said, and knelt. "You pointed out that it was the only bag. Why would they just leave one, by a bed that doesn't move?"

"Look at Yale over here," one of the men laughed, and Kennedy looked halfway between embarrassed and proud.

"Alright," Heavy said, "Kennedy. You know what to do."

"Already on it," Kennedy said, "you guys cover me if you can and I'll grab the information."

"Be ready to cover your eyes," Heavy said, and freed a cobalt blue cylinder from his belt. "Somethin's down there, and we're at a choke point on the stair case. If I see it, I'll throw and buy you some time to get in formation. We good?"

"I got you," Kevin said, "give me a second to find cover and we'll have some dead BOW for dinner tonight."

They descended the staircase, cautious and slow. Despite his everpresent bravado, Kevin couldn't shake the feeling of not belonging — that they weren't supposed to be here. That they were playing dice with the universe, and that something greater than them had kept them safe so far, but was absent this time. That their guardian angels had taken a vacation. A chill fired down his spine.

Something was wrong.