Disclaimer: Not my world, not my characters. I just love writing about them.

My first story, reviews welcome.

Lucy blinked at her screen fuzzily. It was about 4:00 AM and she had been trying to concentrate on this latest test result for almost 15 minutes now, without success. Warden James was currently in the infirmary at the ops center, and Dr. Beauregard had taken advantage of the broken arm to hook him up to a staggeringly large variety of monitoring equipment. They had already determined that he did not have the silver-enhanced blood. He had spoken barely a dozen words, and was certainly not answering any questions – Lucy had already made preparations for a more intensive interrogation, but it would have to wait until he was healed.

The four guards did have the silver-enhanced blood. Lucy and Dr. Beauregard had drawn samples from each of them and had begun several experiments on ways to separate the elements – by centrifuge, by membrane filter, by electrolysis. The silver had so far resisted all their efforts and they were working on the possibility that there was another factor in the production of the colloid. They also had some experiments running on ways to create such a bond between silver and red blood cells, hoping to be able to figure out how to undo it if they knew how it had been done.

Lucy rubbed her eyes and stood up. She'd caught Emerson almost dozing off around midnight over the paperwork for the new prisoners and had sent him home to get some sleep. He'd tried to deny that he needed any, but she'd threatened to sedate him if he didn't go and then steered him towards the elevator. With all the guards around a good-night kiss was out, but he'd discreetly kissed her hand before the elevator took him away. She'd spent the last four hours wishing that he was still here with her, or that she was there with him. This place seemed so cold. Maybe I'll try to have a nap in the infirmary.

Lucy was woken by the sound of the elevator being used. It was just past 6:00 by the clock on the wall, and she'd slept longer than she'd wanted to. She got out of the uncomfortable hospital bed and headed towards her office. She was just reviewing the negative results from the experiments when Emerson came in. He looked little better than he had six hours ago, and he walked straight over to her and pulled her out of her chair into a tight embrace.

"Is something the matter?" she asked.

"Just dreams. I don't remember most of them, but the last one...You were standing at the foot of my bed, you'd been chased by someone trying to kill you, and you were calling my name. I couldn't move, I couldn't even turn over, I couldn't speak. I managed to wake up, and didn't want to try sleeping again after that one."

She turned in his arms and looked up at him. "Dreamed of not being able to move, and panicking because you needed to? Sounds like sleep paralysis. It means you were starting to wake up, but the sleep phase where your muscles don't respond hadn't stopped. It can cause panic."

He smiled at her and relaxed his arms a little. "I love how you can turn a crazy dream into something that sounds perfectly rational." He stepped back a pace and looked at her computer. "Did you find anything useful?"

"No, all the trials failed to separate the silver from the blood. I wish we knew how the tracking was done, it might give us a clue."

"Let's take a ride back to that cellar door, and see what's down there. None of the surveillance on it has triggered so either there aren't any more of them around or none of them know what happened last night."

The sun was well up in the sky by the time they arrived at the camouflaged door in the ground. Emerson used the key he'd gotten off the warden, and they descended the dirty, poorly-lit stairs with caution. Emerson went in front, gun ready, and they both had flashlights. Lucy stopped at the bottom of the stairs. It looked like one big room, filled with shelves. The shelves were packed with boxes and cases, all neatly closed or lidded. Emerson checked the whole room for any occupants, and when he didn't find any Lucy went further in, and lifted the lid on the closest box.

"Papers," she said. The next 3 boxes she checked also had papers in them. "Looks like legal or maybe financial paperwork."

"I think I've got the more... interesting end of it, then," said Emerson from the far end. "I've found at least two cases of gold bars and one of medical supplies. I think we're going to need to be a bit more methodical about this."

Lucy got out the notebook and pen she always carried. They started with the boxes nearest the door, and opened everything on every shelf. In the end, the list was a cross between a survivalist's wish list (including 6 cases of gold, 3 of first aid supplies, 4 of guns and 3 of ammunition) and a file catalog. And one large metal case filled with vials of blood, each labeled with a prisoner's number.

"Let's take this one back to the ops center with us," Emerson said. "We can lock up and leave the rest for now. I'll report what we've found and get a forensic accounting team to work on these documents to find out what they're for."

They left the cellar, and Emerson locked it with a new lock he'd brought with him. They left the surveillance equipment and loaded the case with the vials of blood into the SUV. "This may have some answers for us about the colloidal silver," said Lucy, "especially if we can convince the warden to start talking to us."

Dr. Beauregard was sitting in the lab when she and Emerson arrived with the case. "Hello, Dr. Sengupta, Hauser. I'm afraid I have only more negative results to report. Have you found some answers for us?" he said.

"I think what we have are more questions, though they may be related," Lucy said. "How is the warden doing? These questions may be better put to him than to ourselves."

"Oh, tolerably well. His arm is set, and if you'd like to try questioning him, I don't see any reason not to. Probably best to leave anything...stronger for later, though." His eyes lit on her left hand, and he looked up with a sardonic twist to his smile. "Well, it looks like congr-" Emerson, standing nearby maneuvering the other end of the heavy case, leaned towards him and frowned. "-mm. It looks like, it looks like I should go check on him. Excuse me."

Lucy watched him leave, and then turned to Emerson with a little smile on her face. "At least you didn't threaten to shoot him."

"Oh, he probably knows I won't shoot him, he's too valuable to this project. But let me know if he gets offensive."

Still smiling at him, she kissed him on the cheek. "I'm sure he'll keep his sarcasm to himself. Now, I should get to work on this. Don't you have some forensic accountants to talk to?" She handed him the list they'd made of the cellar contents and turned towards her computer.

"Alright, I'll get out of your way. I may be in and out today, I should go back out to the island to check in with the team there. Just call me if you need anything."

He paused at her door. "I could call in a few favors today and get us an appointment with a friend of mine, a judge. He could marry us before the end of the day."

She straightened up and looked at him. Bits and pieces of the last couple of days flew through her mind: the argument they had had over her going with him to San Rafael, Emerson holding her tightly this morning because of a dream that had woken him up, seeing him handcuffed at gunpoint, waking up in his arms. No words seemed appropriate, so she just nodded her head. He nodded back and turned for the door.

After he left, she released the breath she had been holding, and opened up the case they'd brought in. The vials were in a rack, and she discovered that she could lift the whole rack out of the case. So what's so heavy in this thing? But first, the vials themselves. She opened up the database of information they had on the '63s, and found that the inmates and guards that they had identified as having the silver-enhanced blood all had vials with their ID numbers on this rack. Any that they had found to not have the enhanced blood also lacked a vial. We've found so few of them so far, but it looks like we now know which will have silver in their blood. There were 60 vials. She drew a tiny sample from the vials belonging to the '63s they had not yet caught to test this as much as possible. Dr. Beauregard came back in and looked a little relieved that she was alone in the room.

"The warden is well-restrained, if you'd care to... what did you find?" he asked, noticing the tiny vials.

"Vials of blood labeled with the ID numbers of some of the '63s. I believe they came from only the ones with silver in their blood, but I'd like to test them to confirm this. The more important question is, what are they for?"

"Then we return to what I was saying before I interrupted myself. The warden is well-restrained, if you would care to pay him a visit."

"Perhaps in a bit. There's more in this case than these vials. It looks like it comes apart."

A little fumbling with the sides revealed that the side were hinged on the bottom and soon they were folded flat. What had looked like the bottom had been a false bottom, which turned out to be another hinged piece that lifted aside to show a piece of electronics. There were several rows of lights, a large dial, and a small cup of glass in the middle of the whole thing. Lucy looked at the cup with a frown. It was only big enough to hold perhaps two milliliters, and it was detachable from the rest of the piece.

"That piece of glass, I wonder what happens if I..." She reached for the vial labeled 2012 and put a drop of the blood from it in the cup. Immediately the needle on the dial swung around and about half of the lights on the top row lit up. "Yes, that's the direction of Mr. Porter's cell. And the lights..." She picked up the cup and emptied it, replacing it with a drop from vial 2024. When she snapped it into place, the dial pointed in very nearly the same direction, but this time there was one fewer light lit on the top row. "Mr. Sylvane's cell is closer to us. The lights may indicate the strength of the signal." She tried a third drop of blood, this time from an inmate they had not yet caught. The dial pointed a different direction and this time some lights from the third row lit up. "It's an exponential scale. The last row must track a distance of thousands of miles, and clearly the first row can track even a few feet. It needs a sample, though. Is the signal emitted by the blood different in the samples we've taken so far?"

"Indeed. This equipment must be very sensitive – I found the difference to be very slight."

"I think it's time to go have a talk with Mr. James."

"Hello, Mr. James," she said, walking into the warden's recovery room. As Dr. Beauregard had promised, he was securely strapped to the bed. "Do you feel like talking today?"

"To you? How could I refuse? How are you and your young man doing these days... oh, he's not so young anymore, is he? A shame, that," said the warden caustically.

"I see you've managed to remember him. Perhaps you can remember a few more things. Let's start with the question of what it is you were trying to do with all of this."

"Hmp. Pass."

"Alright, we'll come back to that another time. What about the colloidal silver in their blood, do you feel like telling me what purpose that served?"

"Perhaps I was merely giving some poor benighted prisoners a gift. I was feeling benevolent."

"Towards 60 of them? That seems like a large number for benevolence." A shrug. "We have the... tracking device, I see it requires a sample of the blood. Is that because each person's blood, once joined with the silver, produces a slightly different signal?"

"You have, no doubt, noticed that difference already. We had hopes for a tracker that could track them all without needing a comparison. You have so many more resources than we had, perhaps if you work on it you'll be able to come up with one." Lucy took that to mean that it was impossible, and he would like to see them waste their time trying. I think that's about as much of an admission as I'll get from simple questioning.

"Thank you, Mr. James," she said, heading for the door. "Until next time."

She headed straight for the infirmary, and scoured it and the lab for samples of her blood, both before and after the silver. She fed them all into the incinerator that they had for biological waste. Then she sat down with the vials from the cellar and the tracking device. If we don 't want to run out of samples before we find them all, maybe we can build more trackers and track them all at the same time. She called Art on the island to get his help, and he seemed very interested in the tracking technology, though she did not share the nature of the necessary sample with him.

Two hours and some simple disassembling later, Art had some ideas on how to build a similar tracker and Emerson walked back in carrying one of the file boxes they had found that morning.

"There were 59 boxes of financial paperwork, currently being pored over by some of the Bureau's accountants. This is the first of 22 boxes of medical records," he said, nodding over his shoulder at the guards carrying more boxes to the lab. "The rest are on their way. I hope you and Dr. Beauregard can make some sense of them. But first..." He looked over towards the screen were they could see Art rummaging through some boxes of electronic equipment.

"I think I'm about done here for now," she said, "Art seems to have gotten the idea of this thing, yes?"

"Yes, thank you for your patience Dr. Banerjee, I have quite a bit to play with here. I'm sure you have more important things to do than turn that thing around in front of the camera for me." Art smiled and waved before shutting his camera off.

"Can you fill me in on the way into the city?" Emerson asked.

A long drive later, Lucy was sitting in an office at the courthouse, filling in the last on her part of the marriage license paperwork. I am glad they don't require a blood test, she thought as she turned it all in the the clerk and sat back down to wait. Emerson had finished his portion and had gone on ahead to see Judge Reid. She didn't have very long to wait, and then she was walking down the same hallway Emerson had gone down, freshly printed license in hand.

When she entered the judge's office, the two men were standing by the corner of the large desk, talking. They looked up when they heard her; the judge's eyes widened and he murmured something to Emerson.

"Why don't you just get on with it and find out?" Emerson replied grumpily and walked over to her. Her shook his head at her puzzled look, and rolled his eyes a little.

"Well, well, the woman who convinced Emerson Hauser to leave his bachelorhood. Wonderful to meet you," Judge Reid boomed, "and if this wasn't a confidential license, I can think of several people who might have heart attacks at the news, eh?"

"Nice to meet you too," she said, shaking his offered hand and then handing him the license.

He scrutinized it and pronounced it in order. "Yes, let us, as you say, get on with it." He picked up a paper from his desk and began reading from it.

"Are you, Lucy Banerjee, here of your own free will, and do you intend to marry Emerson Hauser?"

"I do," she said, reaching for Emerson's hand and facing him.

"Are you, Emerson Hauser, here of your own free will, and do you intend to marry Lucy Banerjee?"

"I do," he said, squeezing her hand.

"Repeat after me: I, Lucy Banerjee, take you, Emerson Hauser... to be my lawfully wedded husband." She looked up at Emerson and saw his eyes glitter with sudden unshed tears. She repeated the words, hardly knowing what she was saying. In the background, she could hear Judge Reid say something, and it must have been Emerson's prompt because now he was talking.

"I, Emerson Hauser, take you, Lucy Banerjee, to be my lawfully wedded wife."

There was more she didn't hear from the judge, then Emerson was leaning down and she stretched up to meet his lips. Her world shrunk to contain only the two of them, and she stepped closer to his warmth. When the too-brief kiss ended they were both smiling. The happiness was fragile, though, and crumbled when the judge spoke.

"Let me be the first to congratulate you two. Clearly, Emerson has been single all this time because he was waiting for you," he said jovially.

The smile drained away from Lucy's face. She knew the judge thought it was a joke and didn't know how horribly right he was, but that didn't stop the tears from stinging her eyes. "I'm so sorry," she breathed, for only Emerson to hear.

He reached to pull her closer and cradled her head on his chest. "This was worth every day," he said, replying to both of them.