Aw, you guys are all awesome. Hearts out to all you reviewers and other people who read the first chapter. I've done some serious brain-storming and I believe I've finally got the plot down. Or at least I know what they're doing out in the desert. And what the bad guys are up to.

Thuraya Known – I'm glad you think the characters are complex! That's good feedback for me, I never really have a sense of how I'm doing with that, so thank you.

WhiseFoohL – Yeah… not sure if it's right, but I do enjoy my Riley angst. I've been keeping an eyeball on your story, I really love it!

Ellina HOPE – Thanks for the advice on where to find research: Wiki is pretty much my hero. No Abigail yet, she doesn't seem like she'd be fun to write with so I'm not going to. I like writing about Ben and Riley. This won't be slash, though. Not a thing against slash, I just don't think I could write it. Actually I have a hard time with romance in general, so there probably won't be much romance between anyone in this story. As for the jacket – heheh, it's already a shirt. I found it on under Geekwear. I'm not cool enough to invent something like that!

Rebell – Gah, I love your review! 'Twas long. And made me smile vastly! Thanks so much for all the stuff about clusters, too. Yeah, episodic sounds about right. Ben didn't know about clusters because, well, no-one really does. Whenever I bring them up, (for whatever inane reason) no-one knows what I'm talking about. Anyways. Yeah, they'll probably have a few shots fired at their heads. He'll probably end up running, and it's probably going to be during a headache. We'll see what happens…

And finally, about p.47. I tried, I really tried, to work that into the plot I came up with, but as of right now, it has nothing to do with p.47. It really should but I can't make that make sense. And yes, this is pretty world-altering… haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but if this was real, we'd all have reason to worry.

riley-poole27 – You gave me a great idea! I think I will send them off to the Hoodoos at some point, although it sure won't be for sight-seeing!

And thanks so much to everyone else! If I didn't reply here I replied in my head and it's all great big 'thank-you's'! You're the reason I'm continuing!

In this chapter I mention American Indian style medicine and healing. I know next to nothing about it but I hold it in the highest esteem. I'm just writing what I think Ben would be thinking.

Riley seemed to have enough consciousness left to preserve what I'm sure he'd have called his dignity, had he been willing to speak. I helped him out of the car but he refused to use me as support for the first few steps to the splintery wooden stairs of the clinic. I had trouble believing he could see were he was going, as both his eyes were squeezed shut. When we came to the stairs I decided he was going to trip and kill himself if I didn't help him up, so I did, and was surprised at his complete lack of protestation, even after I opened the door and walked him in. At this point he was leaning shamelessly into me and I was afraid he was going to fall over.

A quick scan of the place revealed it to be not quite as dingy as the exterior had made it seem… and just as unpopulated as I should have suspected. There had been no cars in the parking lot, and there was no-one waiting to be seen. Neither was there anyone behind the desk. I deposited Riley carefully in one of those terrible wooden 'waiting room' chairs and took a look down the hall. I opened my mouth to say 'anyone here' when, like a charm, the door behind me opened. I whirled around. An old man stared back at me.

"Oh, I thought I heard someone come in. My hearing isn't what it used to be. Can I help you?"

Any hope I had had of this place being able to help Riley went down the drain. From the looks of it, this old man was the only inhabitant of the entire clinic. I wondered when had been the last time he'd had a patient. He looked to be an American Indian, short black hair graying at the roots, and, although I was guilty to admit it to myself, I sincerely hoped this wasn't a tribal medicine kind of building. I'd never doubted the ability of that kind of healing, but cluster headaches seemed like it was a pretty obscure condition, as I'd never heard of it. I felt that specialized, scientific treatment might work better than chanting and herbs.

"Yes, yes you can help us. My friend," I said, dragging him to the waiting room, "he's having a cluster headache, I don't know what that is or what to do but please…" I petered off as I watched his face register the pathetic picture Riley made, crumpled in the chair, breaths shaking and head in his hands. His face didn't show much emotion. He turned back to me.

"How long has this spell lasted?"

"Over an hour."

"Do you know how long his spells usually last?"

"I've only ever seen one other, it may have been an hour, fifty minutes."

He approached Riley and squatted in front of him.

"Hello there. My name is Dr. Garrison Blackwell, can you answer me a few questions?" Riley may have nodded.

"Is this your first period of cluster headaches?" Riley shook his head.

"Have you tried any abortive treatment that hasn't worked?" Riley nodded. He spoke through his teeth.

"Lidocaine."

"Alright, I'll be right back." Dr. Blackwell left and disappeared down the hall. I took a seat next to Riley and put my arm around his shoulders, hoping Dr. Blackwell knew what he was doing. The ride here had seemed so long to me but I wondered then how long it had seemed to Riley. Constant severe pain allows no distractions to pass the time. Every minute lasted exactly sixty seconds for him. For me every minute flew by as I counted the sagebrush we passed, minutes of surreal landscape and strange buttes and mesas, clusters of 'beeflower'.

Dr. Blackwell arrived carrying a syringe. My dislike of needles, that phobia everyone claims to have, opened my mouth to speak for Riley.

"Um, he seems to think pure oxygen helps. Can't you do that instead?"

"Pure oxygen helps to abort an attack at the very onset. At his stage I doubt even this will help, but it's the only possibility available." He knelt in front of Riley.

"Need your arm for a moment, there, kid. This might dull the pain." Riley eyed the needle warily for a moment before handing over his left arm. The doctor made quick and smooth work of sticking him in the crook of the arm, then taping gauze over the area. When his arm was released it went back to its position over his face. I'm fairly certain the whole procedure bothered me more than it did Riley, who was a bit distracted at the moment. The doctor took a seat next to me.

"Waiting room is the friendliest room in this building; else we'd be somewhere else. I doubt anyone will come in while we sit, though. Your friend should be fine in due time, with any luck that sedative will kick in soon. I'll have to talk with him afterwards to try to determine what we can do for the rest of the attacks." He miraculously procured a clipboard from thin air, and a needle-sharp pencil as well.

"Mind answering a few preliminary questions for me?" Oh no. Here we go. I sat awkwardly for a moment, wondering what in the heck I was going to tell this man.

"That… really depends on what you want to know."

"Well, things like name and age."

"He's twenty-something. Maybe twenty three or four." I didn't even know how old he was, drat myself. We threw him a little party every year and I couldn't tell this man how old my best friend was. The man barely raised an eyebrow.

"How about name?" His voice was kindly and soft, as if he knew we'd just been through a whole lot of stress and sincerely wanted to help.

"His name is Ri. Ri Fasjovik," I replied, pulling the name out of some vague memory of way back when. Scribbling. I noticed he'd written down 'Riley Fasjovik'.

"How long have you known Ri?" His question didn't really register to me.

"Um, 'Ri' isn't short for 'Riley', it's, ah, his name is Ryan. Sorry." The doctor patiently erased 'Riley' and wrote 'Ryan' while I hastily re-wrote 'Ri' as 'Rye' in my head.

"Alright. Ryan Fasjovik. How long have you known him?"

"Quite a while but I've never known him to have these things."

"And how long will you be staying in Henrytown? Or were you just on your way through?" Stick to consistency, I thought, trying to recall what it was Riley had told Laudes.

"Because of this we'll probably be staying here for a night, but we were planning on heading east, to… the rock drawings. The petroglyphs." The doctor nodded in understanding, and his eyes caught something to my side. I turned to look at Riley.

"Ryan, how are you feeling?" I asked with great deliberation. He looked almost as if the headache had stopped. The tightness had left his muscles and his breathing was normal. Riley groaned.

"I'm great," he said, using the tone of voice one usually reserves for 'pass the morphine'. Dr. Blackwell smiled.

"I'm glad to see you lived through it. You know, it's kind of odd, in a town with a population of 362 we've already got one other guy running around having cluster headaches, and now you come along. What are the odds of that? Guess you're lucky, because of the other guy I have some stuff laying around that's likely to help. Unfortunately I can't give out any oxygen tanks now, we've got a criminal that's been blowing things up by igniting gasses." I almost laughed at the casual way he said it. You'd think it would be the most excitement these people ever got.

"So I'd suggest you start taking a calcium channel blocker, Verapamil, as a prophylactic. Works really well for the other guy, and it's pretty safe. Ever used sumatriptan?"

"Don't remember what I've used."

"It's abortive, you'd be using it subcutaneously. It's prescription, though, I'll have to write up a file." Write up a file? That didn't sound good.

"Excuse me, Dr. Blackwell, but isn't there something over-the-counter we could use instead?" Oh, this wasn't suspicious sounding at all. The doctor gave me a funny look. Riley was shaking his head.

"There's nothing that would help Ryan that isn't prescription, not that I've heard of. Is there going to be a problem?" I floundered in words. Could I pull off a fake identity for him? Well, too late to avert suspicion, the doctor was giving me another look, which I read clearly as, 'what the hell is going on here'.

"I can tell something's not quite right here," he muttered, proving my mind-reading skills as mostly accurate. Thoughtfulness clouded his face for a moment.

"Fasjovik is a very Swedish surname, my friend." I glanced at Riley's total lack of blonde hair. How did he know that?

"Well it's not like he's 100 Swedish. His mother was Irish," I said, which was possibly the stupidest thing I'd said to date. I didn't need to do any deep analysis to know that the doctor's glance at Riley didn't reveal any pale, freckled skin or orange hair either.

"Aside from the fact that you're obviously not telling me his real name, you don't seem to want a prescription. That makes me a bit suspicious, and I'm sure you understand why." He stopped talking and stared at me. It was no longer a suspicious stare. It wasn't a hateful stare. It was a waiting stare. He was simply waiting to see what I was going to say, and from the looks of it he was prepared to wait all day.

"We're not criminals," I said, stating the first thing I wanted to assure him of. He nodded, waiting for more. As if he expected the whole story of our lives and what we were doing to spill out of my mouth. I can't say I wasn't tempted to do so; something about the man made me want to tell him everything. Something about the situation made me want to grab Riley and run out the door. But there was something that could help Riley, we'd been told. The headaches could stop. But how to go about it? Stealing the medication wouldn't be smart, we didn't want to bring the cops down on us and attract attention. Having a medical file made up for Riley Poole, for surely he would no longer accept any name but the real one, wasn't going to happen either.

Dr. Garrison Blackwell stared at me patiently. His kind brown eyes stared out from wrinkled skin and he could be trusted. I don't know why I knew that but I did. I'd never experienced anything like that before, looking at anyone and knowing something about them so surely. He was waiting for an answer and he knew I was going to tell him something.

"Well, Dr. Blackwell, I'm pretty much putting our lives in your hands now." He nodded, amusement in his eyes.

"As a doctor, I'm used to that." He leaned forward, stopping me from continuing. "Just let me know why I should figure out how to justify non-prescription Verapamil and sumatriptan." I stared at him. I can see me trusting him unconditionally, because, well, I knew I could. But here he was trusting me to tell him the truth and basically saying he'd be willing to get what we wanted if we could give him a reason to justify doing that.

"First of all, my very good friend Dr. Blackwell… as far as you can work with safely, you never met anyone that looks like me or him, and we didn't lie to you about his name. Neither did we protest the prospect of getting a prescription because we didn't want his name on file." What to tell him…

"Ok… again, we're not criminals. But we are quite possibly being chased. If we're caught, we're probably going to get killed. This is a top-secret chase, one in which no-one else should be involved with. And me and him are… investigating something of grave importance. We can't be found. If we're found, we die. If a record is filed-"

"Your whereabouts can't be known because the bad guys will come track you down and prevent you from saving the world." A pause.

"Well, yes. That's the gist of it. Can you find it in your heart to believe it?" He smiled and I knew he believed it. What the heck, this guy wore his thoughts on his face.

"I'm going to take some medications out of storage in advance in the name of the other man with headaches. I'm going to take out two weeks worth and tell the man I'm giving him two weeks worth, and when he comes back in a week wondering why he's run out already, I'm going to tell him he's lost an entire weeks worth of prescription and he should be more careful. So your friend only has a weeks worth of drugs, I hope you can move along to somewhere else and find another supply." He stood up. Riley and I stared after him as he went behind the front desk and started scribbling on a slip of paper. I got out my wallet and started rummaging around, wondering how in the heck I could ever repay the man. I looked up in time to see Riley attack him with a hug, the relief on his face quite evident.

"I love you," he told Dr. Blackwell. I'd only ever seen him show that much affection to his car. And a certain bluish-green man with a strange looking goatee. Dr. Blackwell gave a merry laugh and patted Riley on the shoulder.

"I'm glad that headache is gone."

I tried to make him take payment for his trouble but he wouldn't let us. I mean, I really tried, as we should have at least paid for the medication, and I told him so, but to no avail. Our luck was running high, and I hoped it wasn't running out any time soon. Unfortunately it kind of did. He gave Riley an apologetic look before breaking the news.

"I can't get into the drug store until tomorrow – it's closed today. I can get it to you by eight o'clock tomorrow morning." Riley's face fell. I sympathized. He'd been looking forward to a headache-free week, and now knew he needed to get through a few more headaches before that was even possible. Me and the doctor simultaneously reached to put our hands on his shoulder, and fortunately they were different shoulders, or it would have been particularly awkward. The doctor at least had some reassuring words for him.

"You stay here overnight and use the oxygen. I can set you up in a room in the back, no-one else will be here tonight. Might want to move the car out of the parking lot, though, someone might wonder. We don't get that many serious cases, and when we do, everyone wants to know about it." I nodded. Riley was looking up at the man in awe. I was beyond awe. I could ask myself why this man was being so nice to us, and why I found it so easy to trust him, but both questions would probably go unanswered.

"I'll go park the car in the hotel lot, then."

"Ryan, you go with your friend," said Dr. Blackwell, "Probably do you some good to get some oxygen to your brain on the walk back. I'll set up a room." He turned and walked down the hall. If it were anyone else they'd be headed to the phone to call the cops on two weirdoes who showed up looking for drugs and hiding their identity.

"Dr. Blackwell," I called after him. He turned.

"Thank you." His answer was a smile. We headed out the door. The drive to the hotel was silent, as was the first quarter-mile back to the clinic. The night air was crisp and cold and the sun was setting rapidly, stars beginning to emerge high in the Eastern sky. It was amazing how many stars you could see out in the desert, I'd noticed nights before. When it was completely dark out there was no light pollution or smog, and the stars were brighter than I'd ever seen in my life.

"So, Ben, why are we being followed by ninjas?" His abrupt and matter-of-fact way of asking it made me glance behind us. No-one was following us.

"What?"

"I mean, are you ever going to tell me what's going on? Why we're out here and why it's so important to hide our identities? Who's searching for us?" I realized he had no idea how important it was that our identities remained secret. He would protect his, out of common sense, and because I had told him to, but he still had no idea why. He didn't know why I was making it so hard for him to get prescription medications. I looked around. No-one was out; for all intents and purposes, the little town was dead. The sidewalk we occupied was far away from any buildings. Everything was placed back away from the road. The wind was rustling the scrubby tree branches and making somewhat of a racket in the dry grass of the unkempt yards. We were about two miles from the clinic. May as well tell him now.

"Well, Riley, the president and myself had a little chat a few weeks back." I tried to make it as apparent as possible to anyone who may be watching that we were actually talking about something boring, like the weather or an upcoming family reunion. Riley did his best to look disinterested at my mention of a private meeting with the president.

"We were officially talking about the night of his birthday. You know, delving deeper into the map I'd shown him, maybe a little bit about property rights of the tunnels. He was actually telling me about a conversation he had had with one of his men, someone in security. Apparently…" I paused, wondering how to tell him. It was complicated. He looked at me expectantly.

"There's a very secret organization out there. No-one knows about it. Knew about it, until this security guy managed to tip the president off. The security guard was part of the organization but changed his mind about what he was getting into and so… told the president of the United States." Riley's eyes widened. I had been in his shoes weeks ago.

"He couldn't tell the president that much about the organization. Apparently he wasn't in the well-informed circles of the group. But he warned the president not to tell the CIA, FBI, NSA, any group of people that would make a big noisy fuss over a secret and very dangerous organization."

"Yeah, those secret services type sure are noisy. I can totally tell when they're tapping my phone line, it sounds like a party on the other end."

"This dangerous group is everywhere. There are members in the secret services. There are hacker members. If anyone is told anything, they'll know."

"And so? What if someone is alerted?"

"Then they set their ultimate plan into action." Riley smiled a bit.

"Their ultimate plan. Haha. Let me guess, they plan to overthrow the government, take over the world using terror and chaos, and laugh maniacally as they sit upon the backs of all the good innocents that would be betrampled by their regime." I sensed a bitter sort of humor within myself. If only it were like that. Riley looked up at me and I must not have been smiling.

"Was that seriously it?"

"No, no it wasn't. I believe their ultimate plan involves the death of the population of the United States." There wasn't much of a reaction from Riley. We walked in silence for a minute.

"Isn't that, like, impossible?"

"I don't think so. From what the guy told the president, this group isn't quite prepared to unleash whatever it is that they think will wipe everyone out, but if need be they can set it into action and do some pretty serious damage. In the meantime they've been doing a lot of experiments and long-term work."

"What the heck does that mean?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I think it has something to do with mass-distribution of certain products. They've somehow been adding weird substances to much-used products in America, which results in heightened disease and death rates. They're being really sneaky about it, though, and no-one's traced these death rates back to the products the victims use. It's been so well-covered it doesn't look suspicious."

"Example?"

"Don't have one yet, I'm just repeating what the president told me."

"So do we even know who's behind everything?"

"The security guard didn't say, but me and the president strongly suspect it has something to do with foreign affairs. Maybe terrorist groups from Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia, Honduras, all of the above, none of the above, a combination of the above. Maybe some huge international terrorism complex." A light blinked on in the house across the street from us. A bird screeched piercingly a few blocks down.

"Holy lord, Ben, this is huge." Riley sounded far from delighted.

"So, pretty much we have to find a way to stop this from happening, or we're all gonna die, kinda?"

"Exactly. As far as we can tell so far."

"And I just about guaranteed us certain death."

"No, Riley, you didn't. Look, we're fine. No records, no names, no identity revealed. No harm done." We walked in silence for a few blocks. Riley's face wasn't like Dr. Blackwell's. It was hard to read, especially in the darkening shadows. I suspected he was feeling a certain amount of guilt and helplessness. I wondered what would have happened had we found a different doctor. Not just anyone would have done this for Riley. Our luck had been impeccable. It would have been so easy for a different doctor to have called the authorities on us, incredibly easy for a different doctor to deny Riley a prescription without a file. What if? Would I have allowed a file to have been created? Would I have tried to come up with a plot to steal the medication? Or a tank of oxygen? Risk the suspicion of local authorities? Or would I have walked away, Riley in tow? I honestly couldn't tell myself what I would have done, and that bothered me deeply. I liked to think I would have gotten him the medication somehow, but I couldn't truly believe myself. I tried to stop thinking about that but it lurked in my mind. Earlier I had thought that I could put Riley before my, our, mission. When I hadn't been certain that our identity would have been revealed. But in the face of a situation where it was either end Riley's suffering but possibly reveal our location and identity versus suffer the Riley but remain undercover… when millions of people's lives are at stake, no risks could be taken. I couldn't have assumed that no-one would get a hold of a record we may have created, that would have been a terrible risk. Like Riley had said, it was up to us to save the United States.

I felt cold. I had just told myself that, under the circumstances, I would have denied Riley relief from extreme pain in order to protect our mission, in order to protect the people. It made sense to me. What was the pain of one person next to the death of millions? I hated that. I needed to know that though. If I was doing what I was doing, I needed to know that.

I glanced over at him and his saddened face and felt even worse. My best friend, long-time buddy. He had relied on me so many times. He trusted me so unconditionally. He had helped me out of countless holes. It wasn't fair that I had to know where to place him, and the level he was at wasn't at the top. It wasn't fair he was the best hacker I'd ever encountered and he was one of the smartest people I'd ever met. It wasn't fair I cared so much about him but had to drag him into something like this.

Suddenly the night didn't seem so peaceful. It darkened with my mood and a terrible sense of dread settled in my gut. There would be danger, I was sure of it. This mission was just so that it wasn't possible to accomplish anything without certain peril. What was going to happen? I prayed nothing would happen that would end in me loosing Riley for the rest of the population of the United States. The population, who had no idea what was going on. Who were out there gambling and watching TV and being unfriendly to their neighbors and having family feuds over last year's fruitcake. I felt a wave of bittersweet affection for him. I didn't care about the rest of the population I had to put before him. And yet there the entire population of the United States was. Sitting on my shoulders.

A shorter chapter, and kind of a boring one. Well, I had to do the explaining sometime, I suppose. And all the explaining isn't even done… oh no…what's really happening is much more interesting than Ben realizes. But there should be some action coming up pretty quick. Hope I didn't get too philosophical and boring near the end there, couldn't help myself. Thanks for reading! Bork.