Disclaimer: Not my world, not my characters. I just love writing about them.
My first story, reviews welcome.
By the time they arrived back at the ops center, Lucy remembered to ask Emerson what he and the judge had been talking about when she walked in the office.
"He said when he heard I wanted to get married, he wondered what woman could have roped me in. Then you walked in and he said never mind that, what did you see in me, he didn't think federal agents made that much money. Frank and his damn sense of humor," he growled.
She laughed. "It is a little funny."
"Mm. He didn't have to be so crude about it." The corner of his mouth lifted a little as they entered the elevator.
When they reached the bottom, they could see Dr. Beauregard in the lab, surrounded by boxes and stacks of paper. "Have you determined what our treasure trove is, Dr. Beauregard?" Lucy asked.
"Experiments, my dear. It seems Dr. Maxwell, the warden's biggest secret of all, ran some quite extensive experiments on colloidal silver and blood. I'd suggest we try to question him some more, but quite frankly these notes and results have already given me a thousand times more information than he's even hinted at. Rats, monkeys, humans. The prisoners weren't even the first human subjects – San Francisco lost a handful of bums in 1958. We have here 22 boxes of all the data on every conceivable aspect of the project, except for the question of why. I've only just finished putting them in what might be chronological order."
Before he was halfway finished, Lucy was already elbows deep in a box. "This is incredible," she said. "We could find so many answers here. It may... take a while, though. Perhaps we'd better start with the human trials. They wouldn't have moved on to humans if the rat and monkey trials hadn't gone well." She pulled her arms out of the box and looked around. "I'll be right back," she said, and headed down the hallway to her office.
"Is there any way I can help?" Emerson asked Dr. Beauregard.
"Why in God's name would you want to try? I understand a little of it and I'm hopelessly lost in the rest."
"Because if there's something wrong with what we did for Lucy, I need to know. And if there's anything we can do about it now."
"Well, we're going to be categorizing things for a while, I suppose you could help with that. I'm not sure you'll find the answers you're looking for, but it would help."
Lucy came back into the room, carrying a notebook. "I'm staying," said Emerson, "We won't be catching any more inmates until Art can tell us more about the tracker."
"I hope you know what you're getting yourself into," she said with a smile. "Alright gentlemen, let's get started."
Lucy looked at her watch; it was almost 3 a.m. We have got to start sleeping more regularly around here. Her notebook was full of interesting little tidbits and fascinating big discoveries they had come across just in putting the documents in some kind of order.
They knew at least one reason why not all of the '63s had silver in their blood (40% of the people who had their blood altered this way died, usually within an hour) and they knew some of the things the blood wouldn't help with (sudden death and psychological disorders being the most notable ones). When they learned about the deaths of the 40%, Emerson had looked nauseous and Dr. Beauregard had inched away from him. Lucy had looked up exasperatedly and said "Obviously, I lived. Can we continue?" She called for a short break when it became obvious that they couldn't, and had then spent the time reassuring Emerson that since she'd been dying to begin with, he'd made the right choice to try something risky.
Later, they'd found the results of some tests on determining who could survive having silver put in their blood. Blood from a person who would die placed in a test tube with colloidal silver would produce a slightly exothermic reaction, according to Dr. Maxwell's results. No wonder they died, Lucy thought. There were several tests on factors that might be common in people who survived or people who died, but he hadn't identified any.
"I think we're slowing down," she said. "It's 3 o'clock, and as fascinating as these results are, we do need to sleep." Dr. Beauregard looked relieved, and Emerson just looked tired. "I'll be back in the morning, we can continue then. By the looks of it, we're almost through the data on the human trials."
The next morning, when Lucy and Emerson drove up to the ops center, there was another car already there.
"Who else knows about this place?" Lucy asked.
"A few people at the Bureau. No one else, it must be one of them." Emerson looked wary as they got out of the SUV and into the elevator. "I don't know what they could want, they've always wanted to keep everything to do with Alcatraz quiet. They shouldn't be here."
The elevator opened and there were two men standing with the usual guards. Lucy assumed they were other guards, as they had guns in holsters plainly visible. The men looked at Emerson and nodded slightly. He frowned and nodded back.
A tall man in a dark suit came out of the lab they'd been working in last night. He smiled woodenly at Lucy and said, "Hello, Dr. Banerjee. I understand you've been making some interesting discoveries about part of our project. You must be anxious to get back to the records you found yesterday. I'll get out of your way. Hauser, there's a few matters I needed to see you about."
Lucy watched the men walk down the long hallway, and then, feeling watched by the new guards, went into the lab. Dr. Beauregard was there, going through one of the stacks of papers they'd already been through last night. She walked over, and saw that that he was only leafing through the pages, apparently aimlessly.
"What's going on? Do you know who that man is?" she asked quietly.
"Apparently he is a Mr. Goodwin from the FBI. All he has told me is that there are going to be some changes soon. There are a couple of other men with him. They don't seem interested in explaining anything, or maybe that's just because they know I'm a '63. Did they go down towards the empty office?" She nodded. "That's right next door to mine. If you'll excuse me, I think I have some experiments in there I need to check." He smiled wanly. Lucy sighed to herself and settled down to continue sorting papers as he left.
She was aimlessly reshuffling papers from one stack to another when Dr. Beauregard came back in. He headed for the corner farthest from the door and gestured to the lab stool nearby, inviting her to join him.
"We need to be quiet," he said in a low voice, "but yes, I did hear some of what they're up to." He looked around before he continued. "They're getting rid of Hauser."
"Wh-" She swallowed a shout and took a deep breath before continuing in a whisper. "What? How? Why?" Getting rid of him? Sending him away? I won't let them separate us!
"I don't know why, but as for how they're pulling the old 'thanks to your years of valuable service, you can leave the rest to us and enjoy the retirement you deserve' garbage. Apparently he's well over the mandatory retirement age for field agents."
She sat on the stool and tried to calm her thoughts. Retirement. What about me, can they keep me here? They're keeping the rest of us, even the other ones who weren't inmates and haven't done anything wrong. Why would they want to get rid of Emerson? Her stomach churned. And how is he feeling, having all of this taken away? Can he get me out?
"I have some... things I need to take care of," murmured Dr. Beauregard.
"Go ahead," she said with a grimace. "I think I'll stay in here for now, and try to figure out what I can... do."
Minutes later, she was still sitting by an empty stretch of lab bench when Emerson walked in. He looked pale and angry as he walked over.
"Dr. Beauregard overheard," she whispered. "Did they tell you why? And... what are we going to do?"
He shook his head. "No, I don't know why. I can guess, though. Since they have the warden and all his records now, they think they don't need me. And maybe... they have some other use in mind for him. If Goodwin thinks I wouldn't go along with it, he had to get rid of me first."
"Some other use? You mean for the..."
"The time travel, yes, and the silver blood possibly. As for what we are going to do, I'll get you out. You'll have to trust me, but I won't let them separate us. Goodwin doesn't know who you are, but we can't hope to keep it a secret. There aren't any records of you from the '60s but all of the prisoners we've got know you. Not by the same name as Goodwin knows you by, but it's only a matter of time. No, I'll have to go talk to the man who helped me get you your new identity. My boss, and Goodwin's boss too, in fact. He knows and he could get you back on the island." He smiled a twisted little smile. "I don't want my 'well-earned retirement' to be running from the Bureau. Can you just stay here for now and try to look like someone they don't need to worry about? I'll be back as soon as I can."
She nodded, but she hadn't missed the uneasy look in his eyes.
She busied herself with the experiment results all day, trying to keep her mind off what Emerson was doing. One of the later conclusions that Dr. Maxwell had drawn had involved the possibility of an increased lifespan for the subjects. Apparently the rats and monkeys had lived longer, and what little data there was for humans suggested a similar effect. Lucy thought about living even more years without Emerson. What will I do after he, after he... She didn't want to even think it. ...dies? She blinked back tears and started on a different file. Dr. Beauregard had started pulling the inmates in to his exam room one at a time and appeared to be busying himself with something new. When Emerson came back in carrying some papers, she was just finishing reorganizing the human trial results (Dr. Beauregard's original guess as to chronological order had been close, but not quite right). He put the papers on the table next to the stack she was working on, and suddenly smiled.
"Shh, the new guards are still out there," he murmured. "I'll explain later, but if you'll sign this non-disclosure agreement, the Bureau won't stop you from leaving."
It was actually many signatures on dozens of pages, but Lucy had never been happier to give herself writer's cramp. She had just started, however, when Dr. Beauregard came in.
"Dr. Banerjee, I have some test results I think you'll be interested in. If you can tear yourself away from the records?"
Puzzled, she went with him to his exam room. There was a stack of small boxes on the floor next to his computer, which looked like it was displaying the results of some kind of blood test. She went and looked at it.
"This is just -" she started.
"Wait," he said, "let me get your sweater. I know it gets hot near all of this machinery."
She frowned at him, but he just looked bland and considerate. The room was not noticeably warm, but after a brief hesitation she took off her sweater and handed it to him. He folded it carefully and put it on top of the stack of boxes, then he gestured for her to have a seat at the computer.
"I think I may have found a predictive factor. As you can see..," he said, pulling up a chair and bending his head down so that he could talk in a hushed tone right into her ear. "Is Hauser getting you away?" She nodded. "I have something for you to take with you. Call it a wedding present." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, but he just backed up a bit and resumed speaking in a normal voice. "The levels of potassium are unusually high. Not high enough to cause problems, but they're all on the high end of the normal range." The blood test on the computer didn't have anything to do with potassium.
"It looks promising. We'll have to monitor that closely in the new inmates we get. It seems premature to form any conclusions when we have so few of them to base those conclusions on."
"Excellent point, my dear, excellent point. I know you were probably just leaving for the day, I won't keep you any longer."
When he handed her back her sweater, it felt like it was covering one of the small boxes from the stack where he'd placed it. She finished signing Emerson's paperwork without it, and shivered a little.
Lucy took a deep breath once she was inside Emerson's SUV. "Where are we going?"
"As far away from the rest of the '63s as we can get. What do you think of the mountains of Colorado?
She smiled. "I hear they're lovely this time of year. Isn't this a little abrupt?"
"Ha. They want to push me into retirement, alright, I'm retired. Now they don't get any say. Is there anything you need from your things on the island?"
"Nothing that can't be replaced. How did you get them to agree to let me go?
Now it was his turn to smile. "My boss knows you're a '63, but he doesn't know what you were doing there. Since there weren't any records of you, I've been trying to hint that you hadn't been working there very long. Maybe just a one-time consultation for a particular patient. I convinced him that you didn't know anything about what had been going on, you just got unlucky in getting caught up in it all. I had to tell him that I... used to know you, he wondered why I was so interested in you being able to leave. And I don't think he'll expect both of us to be gone so suddenly, but he can't do anything about it now. Your turn, what was Dr. Beauregard up to just before we left?"
She looked at the sweater in her lap. The package, whatever it was, was freezing cold. She unfolded the sweater.
"He gave me, or maybe us, this." She opened the box – it contained a note and a frozen unit of blood. The note had a stoppered test tube taped to it.
"'Congratulations on getting out of here, and I think the two of you should have this, if only to disappoint the warden. I used the only sample of Hauser's blood that I had to test for the exothermic reaction, and it stayed room temperature. I enclose that sample here, so that you'll know he won't be trackable. Good luck.'"