"Doc!  Doctor, wake up!"

Surely it was not morning yet?  He was so warm and comfortable.  Yet some fool was shaking him insistently.  Annoyed, the Time Lord slapped at the offender, but his hand met air.

Clever bugger.  Dodged out of reach, did he?  The Doctor opened his eyes.  Standing several feet away, Gerry beckoned frantically.  "Doc!  Get out of there!"

It took a moment before the Doctor, half asleep, realized that it was the ground that was shaking.  Seizing Captain McAllister, he pushed her out into the open, tumbling after her.  He got to his feet somehow, dancing a bit to keep his balance.  All around them, the forest swayed wildly, wet snow sliding from swinging branches.  Everywhere was a deep groaning as the earth convulsed.

It was over in seconds.

The Doctor turned to his companions.  Gerry, clinging to a large rock, gave him a panicked look.  Captain McAllister was seated on the ground, eyes open but dazed.

"Is everyone all right?"

"I'm OK," Gerry replied.  "Captain?"

Captain McAllister shook her head.  "What happened?"

It was just past dawn.  The sky was still overcast, but in the east the Doctor saw breaks in the swiftly moving clouds.  It was warmer, as well.

"Earthquake," the Doctor replied.  "Are you all right?"

'Earthquake?  Here?"

"Unusual, I agree."

"I'll say," growled Gerry.  "First we get blizzards and now the ground shakes.  I dunno, Captain.  You think there's anything to the Prophet's patter?"

"That the end of the world is coming?"  Captain McAllister stood up, brushing off snow.  "Eventually, I suppose it will.  But now?  Doubt it."

Sleep had clearly done her good.  Her complexion was healthy and she was steady on her feet.  She stretched, then put a finger to her lips and whistled sharply.  Satan trotted out of the surrounding wood, Dancer at his heels.  The grey came with less enthusiasm, his ears laid back and skittish.

"Let's get the gear together," she called.  "I'd rather be well away from these trees if we get aftershocks."

They gathered everything, hauling it back over the rocks to the waiting horses.  When the animals were saddled and loaded, Captain McAllister turned to Gerry.

"I've been trying to keep things straight in my head," she told him.  "And I think we're northwest of Deet."

"Forty miles or thereabouts," the Doctor confirmed.

She looked at him, startled, then turned back to her rider. "Return to camp.  Find Nelson and tell him about the Scourge patrols.  Have him send out four more recon units.  And tell him - this is very important, Sergeant - to begin the roundup."

"Begin the roundup," Gerry repeated solemnly.  "Yes, ma'am."

"You're not going back?"  the Doctor asked.  "Surely, with the Scourge at your doorstep, this vendetta of yours can be set aside?"

"It's not a vendetta, Doctor."

"Than what is it, Captain McAllister?  I'm a reasonable man.  I will at least listen to your point of view."

She said nothing, only jumped into the saddle and, with a flick of the reins, started up the hill.  The Doctor gave Gerry a friendly wave and followed.  At the top of the hill, she stopped, waiting for him to catch her up.

"Gerry is right about one thing," the Doctor said after several minutes of silence.  "A lot of very unusual things have occurred."

"I know."  She turned and for the first time, the Time Lord saw real concern.  "This happened once before."

"The cataclysms?"

Captain McAllister nodded soberly.

"Any idea what causes it?" he asked.

"I have a theory."

"So do I."  The Doctor smiled sweetly.  "If you tell me yours, I'll tell you mine."

The Captain, however, had reached her limit of sociability, for she simply shrugged and nudged Satan forward again.

Sunlight broke momentarily through the clouds, isolated beams that struck the snow and generated small spots of brilliance.  A warm, damp wind raced past them from the south, a promise of more seasonable weather. Circling lazily overhead, a hawk screamed its challenge before angling sharply away.

"Captain!"  He gave Dancer a nudge with his heel, coming up beside her. "Do you realize we've been riding west?  Straight west?"

"Yes."  She hesitated.  "And it feels different today, somehow.  Do you know what I mean?"

He nodded.  It was hard to put a name to, but there was an absence of something just beyond his ken - something that had definitely been present before.

"Let's travel southwest," he suggested.  "Just to see if we're imagining things."

They rode for a time across flatlands - grain fields gone wild, tufted stalks pushing up through the snow.  There were few signs of the earthquake - fallen branches beneath the occasional tree, a fresh crack running through an old road.  The Doctor imagined the effect was a little more obvious back in Deet.

By midmorning, the heath began to give way to a series of low, glacial ridges.  Forest once more blanketed the slopes, growing denser as they climbed higher into the hills.   The brief moments of sunlight came less frequently.  Clouds thickened and raced low across the countryside.   Snow began to melt in earnest, its cool vapors hitting the warmer air and generating a thin layer of fog.

It was difficult going through the forest.  The already dense growth was rendered nearly impassable by trees overturned in the quake. The two riders were forced to take a wide path around the fallen giants and their massive, unearthed roots.

As they reached the top of a hill higher than the rest, they came upon an unexpected sight.  Among several old, toppled trees, a steel tower lay on its side, frame bent, cables snarled throughout the hodgepodge of metal and wood.

"Well, well," the Doctor murmured.  "This is a surprise."

"Isn't it?" agreed the Witchhorde commander.  "I'm going to look around a little bit."

Only half-listening, the Doctor nodded, dismounting and leading Dancer closer to the tower.  The absence of corrosion suggested the tower had a recent origin.  Leaving his horse to search hopefully for something tasty under the snow, he climbed over the fallen trees to have a closer look.

He found the tower's crown half hidden in a pile of broken shrubbery and saplings.  Pushing aside the greenery, he saw what looked like a transmitter.  It took him several more minutes of stripping away vines and boughs to reach the
device.

An audio transmitter, all right.  He started to work on it with his screwdriver, intending to remove the thing and take it apart.  Captain McAllister's voice distracted him.

"Doctor!  Where are you?"

"Over here!"  He shook some branches.

"Someone's coming!  Get out of there!"

"Just another minute!"

"They're armed, Doctor!" Drat!  The Doctor shoved the screwdriver into his pocket and struggled out of the trees.

"Hurry!  Can you hear them?"

He could - the low rumbling of engines was clearly audible in the quiet woodland.

"Motor cars?" he asked in disbelief.

"I'll take your word for it," she agreed.  "Here!"

She had Dancer's reins - held them out to him.  Together they moved as quickly as they could away from the tower toward a large stand of pines.  The branches were low and dense enough to provide concealment.

The noise of approaching vehicles grew louder, reverberating against the hills.  A moment later, they saw the first of these -- a jeep bouncing over the debris-strewn hillside.  Two more followed it, pulling up as close as possible to the fallen tower.

Men in familiar black uniforms jumped out of the lead vehicle.  They were heavily armed, fanning out around the tower, looking suspiciously in every direction.  The Doctor ducked further down in the undergrowth.

"Are these the men who took the blackstone?"

"Same uniform," the Doctor whispered.  "I can't tell if they're the same men."

The occupants of the two remaining jeeps emerged.  They wore civilian clothing and carried large containers.  Circling the tower, their dismay was audible.

". . . real mess . . ."

" . . .gonna need a crane. . ."

"Technicians," the Doctor guessed quietly.  "Would you like to wager whether we've found the reason for going off course?"

"Does it have something to do with that thing you were trying to take apart?"

"Exactly. I'd guess that it broadcasts sound at a frequency we're not equipped to hear, but has a profound emotional effect -- probably induces anxiety."

"Very clever," she breathed.  "This is starting to get interesting."

"It certainly is."

They fell silent as one of the black-uniformed guards approached their hiding place.  The Doctor held his breath, hoping the horses would not give them away.  Fortunately, the Captain had not been making idle boasts about their training.  At a soft touch from her, both animals became very still.

It was fortunate, the Doctor realized belatedly, that the earthquake had churned up the ground so thoroughly.  In last night's snow, their passage would otherwise have been obvious.  As it was, the guard gave the trees only a cursory look and moved on.

There was an earnest conference by the fallen tower that included all the technicians and one of the guards.  Then the techs got back into their jeeps and drove off.  The guard shouted to the others and they were quickly gone, as well.

"They'll be back," the Doctor promised.  "Shall we follow them?"

"Oh horseback?"  She smiled faintly.  "Not for long, I imagine. "

Nevertheless, they mounted up and started after the jeeps.  The tracks were easy to follow for a while, deep ruts in the melting snow and mud.  They ran down the hill, up another, then ended at a narrow, graveled lane.

"That way,"  Captain McAllister said, pointing to the left.  Bits of mud in the shapes of tire treads could be clearly seen on the road.

The Doctor, however, had caught sight of something vastly more intriguing - a white dome in the distance.

"Doctor, are you coming?"

"Not yet.  I'm going to have a look at that."

"What?"

"An observatory."

"Nice try," she observed, "but it won't work. You're staying where I can see you - and I don't have time for stalling games."

"I am going to the observatory," he repeated firmly.

She shrugged, turned away and started down the road without him.  His eyes on her back narrowed suspiciously.

Any time now . . .

Dancer suddenly kicked up her hind legs, tossing her head and rolling her eyes.  The Doctor shouted, grabbing at her mane. The strands slipped through his fingers and he was catapulted over her head.  The road rushed up to meet him.

He hit the paving hard.  At that precise moment, the captain slammed into his mind.  He had his shields in place; her attack was absorbed, but not without cost.  The force being applied against him was incredible.

Again, the Time Lord was aware of rage overlaid with all manner of violent emotion.  It battered his shields relentlessly, forcing him to divert increasing amounts of his consciousness to protect himself.  His vision splintered.  His breath grew ragged and uneven, but the shields held.  Frustration and surprise began to color the assault.

A clear thought -- his own -- blew through the chaos.  No species with this kind of power would stay long on the sidelines of the universe.  This was no Rathi.

He dropped his shields. What remained of vision and coherent thought disappeared.  She blasted through his synapses and neural networks, found nightmares and rooted them out of the dark, safe places where he had pushed them.  He was dimly aware of memories being ripped from their beds, of dreams ruthlessly examined and tossed aside.  He tried, too late, to draw back, to push her out, furious and terrified that she would go so far or so deeply.  She brushed his feeble resistance aside, smashed onward,  looking, looking -- for what?

There was a period of non-awareness.  The Doctor had no idea how long it lasted, but he returned to reality face down in the mud. Every nerve in his body had been dipped in fire.   To move even his fingers required all his strength and concentration.

"Doctor?"

There were hands on him, pulling him to his knees.

"No!" he managed.  "Leave me -- alone!"

The hands were withdrawn.  He knelt, head down, breathing slowly and deeply.  The pain faded.  Strength seeped back. It took a moment before he could trust himself to look at her calmly.   She stood at the edge of the road, holding Satan's reins, watching him.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

A stiff nod.

"And may I ask what that was?"

"I'm sorry," she said tightly.  "I thought - I thought you were something else"

He rubbed his aching temples.  "Something?"

"I've known about them for a long time," the captain continued. "I know they are responsible for what's happened to us."

"Them?"

"The aliens."

"Have you seen them?  Talked to them?"

She tilted her head back and looked toward the sky. "No.  But they are there, Doctor, and in our midst. I've felt them."

The Doctor got up carefully.  As before, in her tent, the experience had left him wobbly.  He tottered across the road to a mossy log and sat.  "And you know now that I'm alien."

She nodded.

"I'm a Time Lord.  Neither I nor my people have anything to do with what is happening here.  I was traveling - on my way to somewhere else when my TARDIS landed here.  At first, I thought it was by accident.  Now I'm not so certain."

Captain McAllister reached up and stroked her horse's  nose.  Satan tossed his head and nudged her.  She looked back at the Doctor.

"I am sorry," she said then.  "Back at camp, that little glimpse of your mind was enough to show me that you were not human.  I assumed you were the enemy.  I should not have done so."

The Doctor grinned ruefully. "Jumping to conclusions is always dangerous.  I confess to doing the same thing, Captain.  Terrans are occasionally psychic, but no human I've ever met was anywhere near your level.  I've rejected the notion that you're one of the rathi, but reserve judgment on the question of whether you're human.  Are you human, Captain McAllister?"

She looked away, jaw set.  He could see her struggling with something.  "Yes," she said finally.  "I am what Danner is.  I'm a plague carrier."

*   *   *

Anna was late. With her coat slipping off her shoulders, papers flapping from her hastily stuffed and closed briefcase, she flew up the steps of the Medical Sciences Building.  The security guard grinned broadly, holding the door open she dashed past him.

"Mornin', Dr. Taylor!" he shouted after her as she continued toward the elevators.  "D'ja feel that quake this morning?"

"Yes!"  She whirled around without breaking stride.  "I spent all morning putting things back on my shelves!"

When she reached the Unit, she stopped by the desk. "Arnie?"

The secretary popped up with a collection of notebooks in his hand. "Dr. Taylor!  Hi.  Sorry, just picking things up."

"It doesn't look too bad here."

She saw little evidence of the quake...a picture crooked on the wall -- and Arnie with his notebooks.

"It wasn't.  Stuff fell off my desk and a cabinet in the infirmary tipped over.  We cleaned it up, though.  And your office looks pretty normal."  He peered closely at her.   "Are you OK, Dr. Taylor?"

"What about Max?  Is he here?"  She ignored his question.

"Nope.  Tree fell on his house.  He says he'll be late."

Poor Max - first snowed in, now crushed by an earthquake.  Shaking her head, she continued down the hall.

Danner was in her office, stretched  out the couch, leafing through a thick report.  She stopped in the doorway.   Tossingthe report onto a file cabinet next to the couch, he sat up, eyes sharp on her face.  She avoided that knowing gaze by hurrying around her desk, sitting and opening her briefcase.

"I locked this office last night," she said. "How'd you get in?"

"Picked the lock."   Danner was matter-of-fact. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong.  What do you mean, picked the lock?"

"Your eyes are red.  You've been crying."

"Hmmph.  Tactless of you to mention it."  She found Masterson's pictures at the bottom of the briefcase.  "You didn't answer my question."

"Did you have a fight with Sheridan?"

She took a deep breath and looked up.  She hoped she looked stern.

"Lieutenant Sheridan and I have decided that -- we don't suit.  Not that it's any of your business!"

Anna was suddenly overcome by another wave of anger as she thought about the arrogant security officer.  Damn him!  He had not even denied it when she had confronted him with Alan's information.

"Yes, I agreed to recommend transfer," he had said hotly.  "You're getting emotionally involved here, and it's no good. He's a blackstone and a killer, woman!  Have some sense!"

The bastard.  How could she have been such an idiot?

"I'm sorry," the blackstone and killer said soberly.

She shook her head.  "Don't be.  It was long overdue.  And I really would appreciate an explanation about your presence in this, my locked and private office."

"Trying to find out all I can about the Consortium and the plague," he replied, glancing over at the report he had been reading.  "Like this paper here.  It says that blackstones may not be contagious after all.  Do you mean to tell people about this any time soon?"

"I don't know.  None of this information will go out until the project is completed."

"Why not?  This seems fairly clear-cut.  The virus mutates inside the host and can't be transferred.  It says right here..." he picked up the report again, turning the pages until he came to one in particular.  "It says, and I quote:

"....viral DNA taken from the subjects during overload has been shown repeatedly to have a molecular structure distinct from that identified during the initial onset of infection.  The altered viral material, when injected into control hosts, did not cause an onset of the symptoms. When blood was drawn from controls three, six, nine and twenty-one days post-injection, no trace of any virus remained . . . "

"I've read it," she said.

"Right now, hundreds, possibly thousands of us are being relentlessly persecuted because everyone thinks we're giving them the plague.  You should publish this, send it out all over the place.  I know you guys have a pilot project in Deet, you could start there."

She stared at him in amazement.  "You have been busy."

"It's not like I have a lot to do," he pointed out.

"But breaking into our files, reading confidential material."

"I'm here against my will. As far as I'm concerned, that gives me license to do whatever I can get away with.  What are you going to do about it -- kill me?"

They glared at each other."Oh, fine," she said, capitulating first.  "Read whatever you like.  I guess I can't blame you.  Just do me a favor.  Don't move stuff around, OK?  I'm not sure how Dawson would take it."

"How could he tell?  Have you seen his office?"

She chuckled.  "Awful, isn't it?"

"The worst!  It took me all night to dig up anything  interesting."   Danner leaned back against the couch cushions.  "So - got some pictures for me?"

"I do.  I'm hoping these will trigger detailed memories of the days immediately after the plague..."

"But I remember that!"

"Really?  Can you give me a complete account of what happened to you right after you were infected?"

Silence.  He bit his lip.

"That's what I thought. Ready?"

He nodded.  She handed him the first picture - the one with the chain gang.  He took it, only moderately interested and shook his head.

"Sorry."

"Hmm.  How about this?"

The next three pictures got nothing.  The fifth looked no more promising than the others.  Older than the others, it was an out-of-focus shot of a barbed wire fence.  Seen indistinctly through the fence were a collection of low buildings.  Beyond knowing that it had been in the area somewhere, Anna had no idea what it was.  Danner started to hand it back with a shrug and froze, going very white and still.  The small paper square slipped from frozen fingers.  Anna dove frantically after it,
snatching the precious item before it hit the linoleum.

After a few moments, he seemed to regain his composure, though he remained pale.  He held out a trembling hand.  Wordlessly, she returned the photograph.

 Danner sat for a long time, not speaking or looking at her.  He was riveted by the image, tracing its faded outlines with one lean, trembling finger.  When he looked up, his eyes were stark.

"What is it?"  She was almost afraid to ask.  "What do you
remember?"

He blinked at her, then looked down at the picture again.  It took him so long to speak she began to worry.  They did not know, after all, what the effects of such a memory surge would be on someone as old as he.

"This was the quarantine camp in Brighton.  They set it up in an old juvenile detention facility."

There was another long pause.  He set the photo carefully on the couch beside him. "I got sick about two months after the plague first appeared,"  Danner said finally, haltingly.  He seemed to be struggling to make sense of his thoughts.   "It spread very fast.  Although no one had so much as heard about it three months before, the disease had already begun to make serious inroads into the population.  I don't remember exactly when I got it. but I remember that a lot of people I knew had died.  Things were starting to fall apart.  It was not yet Bodies In The Streets, but close."

He paused, frowning in concentration.  "I remember collapsing and waking up in the hospital.  Someone must have brought me in, but I don't remember who or how.  The beds were all filled, there were even people on gurneys lining the halls.  The doctors and nurses were just as sick as everyone else.  God, Anna!  I don't want to remember all this!"

"Sorry," she said quietly.  "But we need to know,  Danner.  We need all the clues we can get and the records from that time are almost nonexistent.  Men like you are the only hope we have of filling in all the pieces."

He shook his head again, but continued.  "There was -- there was a doctor, I remember him walking through the ward.  All of a sudden, he fell down.  I was in and out of consciousness a lot, delirious mostly, but I do recall waking up after a long time and he was still on the floor.  I'm sure he was dead."

"What do you remember about the sickness itself?"

"I remember pain.  A lot of it.  I remember finally blacking out and when I woke up, there was blood all over the pillow, my face . . . "  He shuddered, looking sick.  "This thing had broken through."

He touched the brilliant black gem in his forehead.  There was a flash of bitterness and loathing in his eyes.  He caught himself and went on.

"There were corpses everywhere.  The place stank -- and the flies. . . "

She waited patiently.  It took him a while to regain his composure, but when he did, he plowed on grimly. "I finally figured out that I was still alive and was probably going to stay that way.  There was no one around.  I got up -- could hardly walk, I was so weak.  I tried to find someone, anyone, who was still alive.  But the entire hospital was a morgue.  Patients rotting in their beds, staff lying where they had fallen, for how many days, I don't know.  Hell, it could have been weeks!"

"So you left the hospital?" she prompted gently.

He nodded.

"What did you find?"

"Dead people.  Lots, and lots of dead people.  I'm really amazed that I could forget that smell."  His voice trailed away.   He slumped back against the couch and stared up into the ceiling.   "It was a feast for dogs and rats.  Cars piled up in the streets -- some of them empty, most of them not.  I wandered around, looking for people I knew, but all I ever found were bodies."

"What was the condition of society as a whole by this time?"

"What do you think?  Chaos.  No electricity, phones didn't work.  Things caught fire and burned because there was no one to put the fires out.  Survivors looted at will.  There was still government, of sorts, but it was a martial government.  Soldiers were starting to move into the towns and attempting to restore order, but it was an uphill battle.

"And the word was out about us.  Plague-carriers.  The madness had begun."

His voice was stronger now, steadier, but he continued to stare upward, reliving the nightmare from which he had been spared for years.  The nightmare she had given back to him.  "The Norms were terrified of us - much more so than they are today, impossible as it seems.  They hunted us down with a fanaticism that was truly terrifying."  His mouth twisted.  "We were so easy to catch, too.  None of us could believe it was really happening.  We should have.  It seems us humans routinely indulge ourselves in fits of genocide."

He sighed and leaned forward, elbows on knees.  "If you got caught by civilian vigilantes," he continued, "you were dead, burned alive.  If the army got you, your chances were slightly better.  They had camps set up - they called them quarantine facilities.

 "I was captured, oh, about six weeks after I left the hospital.  Do you know how they got me?  I had a friend, at least he had been my friend before the plague; they used him for bait.  He set me up, promising me a way out of town.  I got out of town, all right -- crammed into the back of a van with fifteen other blackstones."  He hesitated.  "Brighton.  That's where it was.  Right near here, actually.  They had turned a maximum security juvenile facility into a concentration camp and were bringing us in from all over the state.  That's what this picture reminds me of.  Camp Brighton."

"What was it like there?"

Danner stood up abruptly and walked to the window.  She watched him, wondering which Anor he was seeing.

"It was surrounded by double rows of steel fence, electrified and topped with barbed wire.  Except for one, the roads in and out of the entire area were mined.  Soldiers patrolled the perimeter.  If you ran, you were shot on sight.

"Oh - they made a token attempt at decent treatment in the beginning.  There was even a medical staff, of sorts.  They promised us that this was only temporary, until they could find a cure.  But as things got worse outside, things inside began to deteriorate.  The staff began to abandon the place, just sneaked out in the middle of the night.  Food shipments dwindled until they were only bringing it in once a week. They'd throw it over the fences because no Norm wanted to get within arms' length of us.  And there was never enough.  Men would fight for it like animals.   The plumbing broke, so there was no running water.

"One night a fire started in one of the dormitories.  What was left of the staff didn't even make an attempt to put it out.  The entire placed burned down.  A lot of us died.  Those who were unlucky enough to escape the flames were left to survive as best we could in the ruins.

"It was pretty grim.  No water except what we could gather from rain, and later, snow.  No sanitary facilities -- we dug open pits at the edge of camp. And still the prison trucks kept coming, bringing more of us, each new transport telling terrible stories of murder gangs, bounty hunters and mass burning.  Norms believed that fire was purifying, you see.  They were convinced it was the only way to destroy the virus.  I guess it was then that the fences took on a new meaning for us.  They became protection as well as barriers."

Danner went quiet then and Anna, her pen frozen above blank paper, could not speak.

"Near the end, our numbers had grown to the point where that wretched hole could no longer support us.  We began to die in that camp, not from lack of food or disease -- though those were rampant.  We were dying from murder and suicide -- especially suicide.  Too many rats in too small a place, I guess.  But it wasn't fast enough for the Norms."

He turned around, leaning against the window, his expression bleak

"One week, the food drops stopped.  Just stopped.  So did the trucks bringing new inmates.  We should have realized then that the end was near, but most of us were too sick and too weak to think about anything except wresting the next bit of food from our neighbor."  He paused, shivering suddenly.

"Have you ever seen those old Frankenstein movies?"  he asked.

She nodded.

"Do you remember the scene at the end where the villagers storm the castle?  They come at night, armed with anything they can get their hands on -- carrying torches -- a bloodthirsty, terrified mob?  That's what happened to us.  There was a town to the east of the camp; the Norms who lived there were convinced the wind was carrying the virus into their streets and homes.  So they got up their courage -- and their guns -- and came to finish us off.

"Our first clue was the mines going off.  We watched them coming across the fields, the headlights on their four-wheelers bouncing up and down, their flashlights like tiny spotlights in the dark.  They were shouting and cursing us.

"The guards didn't even try to stop them; most joined in.  They literally trampled the fences.  We didn't have a chance.  Too weak to defend ourselves, we were easy prey.  They threw gasoline over the bodies and set them afire.  Not all the bodies they burned were dead."

Anna was distantly aware of someone in the hall, talking, of the hum of the fluorescent bulb in the silent office.  Her throat seemed unnaturally tight and her eyes ached.

"I remember thinking that this must have been hell.  Flames and screams and tall, dark figures moving through the smoke."

"How...how did you escape?"  she managed.

He did not answer immediately. "I was shot," he said, frowning, as if the memory was difficult to retrieve.  "A couple times, I think.  I crawled away, but I didn't know where I was.  Things were too confused -- fire everywhere, boots stomping up and down, ground was muddy, but it was from blood and gasoline, not water.
 
"In the end, I fell into one of the cesspits and passed out.  That's what saved my life.  Covered in shit and garbage, they never saw me."

He smiled briefly, wry and self-deprecating. "When I came to, it was raining.  All you could smell was death.  There were Norms moving through the camp, making sure they'd got everyone, but with all the smoke and rain, they missed me.  I made it into the surrounding fields.  Don't remember much about the days that followed.  The bullet wounds healed, of course, but slowly.  There were fever dreams, and visions.  I traveled at night, no particular direction, spent the days hiding in ditches or high weeds.  I'd come upon towns, but I was too scared to approach anyone.  I'd hide and listen to the people talking and laughing, or stand on the outskirts at night and watch the lights go in the houses.  In some ways that was worse than being in the camp, where at least you had others to talk with.  Out there, it was just miles of emptiness, and handfuls of people, all of whom wanted me dead."

Anna blinked and cleared her throat when he stopped talking.  She had not taken down a single word, but she knew that she would never forget a syllable of it.
 
"Not too far, like you pointed out.  West somewhere -- I think.  Near the lake."

He returned to the couch, falling onto it with a heavy thud.  He looked very tired.  "I'm almost sure it was . . .  God!  Is it ever going to stop?"

He was off the couch, moving across the room with unexpected, almost feral grace.  It was a reminder that he was perhaps not quite the quiet, mild-mannered blackstone she had so far seen.  Anna remembered that he had killed two security agents before they had taken him and a chill ran down her spine.  He spun around and leaned over her, bracing himself against the arms of her chair.

"I have to get out of here," he said in a low, intense voice.  "Help me!"

"I -- I can't," she whispered.  "Please don't ask me this!"

"Why not?  You don't want me to die -- I know you don't."

"Of course not!"

"It's your precious Consortium, isn't it?  Your noble mission to restore civilization.  You'll sacrifice anyone for that, won't you?  How can you be so sure it's worth it?"

"This isn't fair!"

She was close to tears again.  Everything was happening too fast.  It was the second time in twenty-fours she was being asked to instantly make a decision that would profoundly affect the rest of her life.  Anger rose up in her then, anger, guilt and something else she was scared to look at too closely.  She pushed him away, jumping up, notebook and pen flying in two different directions.  He withdrew, every motion rigidly controlled.

"They are going to kill me, you know," he said coldly.  "Your Regulatory Committee is going to meet on it tomorrow."

"How do you..."

"I've read the memos, Dr. Taylor.  Breaking and entering is a hobby of mine, remember?  Who is Wayland?"

She swallowed. "An immunologist."

"That's nice.  What does he want?"

"He's found there are certain places in the body where the virus is concentrated, the virus, not the biochemical -- it was unexpected and the implications. . . Look -- just because the Committee is meeting doesn't mean they'll approve his petition."

"It doesn't mean they won't.  I can't speak in my own defense, and this damn thing," he brandished the leather wristband at her, "pretty much insures that I don't have a fighting chance at escape!"

Whirling about in an agony of frustration, he smashed his fist into the wall.  The hole it left was impressively deep.

"Danner!  Stop it!"

He stood utterly still for one long moment, then turned and slammed out of the office.

Anna was numb.  She retrieved her pen and notebook, more from reflex than conscious volition.  She looked around her office, at the clutter of a fine career, a future carefully mapped out, orderly, satisfying, predictable.  But the images he had painted were stark in her mind, almost as if she, too, had seen them.   They superimposed themselves over the desk, the carpeting, the window that overlooked the courtyard, her latest degree mounted so proudly on the wall.  Suddenly, it seemed suffocating in the room.  She grabbed her coat and purse, fumbled with the doorknob.

Anna did not remember how she got home.

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