Disclaimers in part 1
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"A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all"

~~William Butler Yeats -- The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats~~
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TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2000
SKINNER'S BEACH HOUSE
MARYLAND COAST
1:04 PM

BYERS:

Oh shit. We've been found. Frohike and Langly run from the window, and once again, it feels like everyone's trying to hide behind me. Langly's taller; he's the one who should be in front, but it never happens that way.

"We're screwed," Langly moans.

The door's lock is released; I can hear the cylinders tumble, and the mechanism clicks ominously. Without thinking, I grab Sari and pull her in to me hard as she hits the floor next to me. We're all huddled in a tight clump, cowering behind the couch. I don't know how much good trying to shield her will do once the bullets start flying, but maybe she'll have a chance. I can tell she's trying to control her breathing, without much success.

Deborah and Langly have given up breathing altogether. They're more tightly wound around one another than most people are when they're copulating.

Frohike's got one of my arms like a vise. His expression is like an angry bulldog's, but I've known him long enough to know it's his panic face.

"Ow, John," Sari hisses. I have her in a death grip, and I try to ease my hold on her shoulder but I can't, I'm just too scared. Great, the last thing I do to her is leave bruises. Smart move, Byers -- if we survive, she's going to hate me. I promised I'd never hurt her.

"If my advisor finds out about this, I'm dead meat," Deborah squeaks, terrified.

"Your advisor's the least of your problems," Langly snaps at her in a hiss. She clearly doesn't appreciate the remark, but she isn't letting go of him, either.

We're doomed. The door is opening. A large, bulky man fills the frame; a tall, broad-shouldered, balding man with glasses.

"You know, you could've called first. I'd have given you the key." A.D. Skinner proffers it to Frohike as we peek over the top of the couch. "You're just lucky the management company came by the other day, or you'd have had dirty linens and a foot of dust to contend with."

He slams the door behind him. The five of us release a collective sigh. It's been a while since anyone exhaled. We all stand up slowly as Skinner stares at us. Sari rubs her shoulder.

"I would have if we'd had time," Frohike says.

"You scared us," I mumble, like a helpless seven-year-old. I am so utterly pathetic. God, I'm so embarrassed. At least Frohike doesn't heap scorn on me; he was as terrified as the rest of us.

"And how do you think I felt when I discovered the perimeter alarms were tripped?" He can monitor them from a control panel in his apartment. "Thank you for at least having the decency to call me, Melvin. I was ready to send in the troops."

"It's a nice place," Deborah has recovered some of her equilibrium and is trying to be courteous.

"Sit down, people, let's talk," Skinner instructs, and we all comply; he's accustomed to having his orders followed, and since it's his beach house, we do feel obligated to do as we're told. "Here's what I've got so far."

He pulls several manila envelopes from his briefcase. They're all blank, which gives a new twist to the phrase 'plain brown wrapper.' Different than the plain brown wrappers we're accustomed to anyway -- the delivery of various and sundry 'adult' magazine subscriptions, and the 'sex aids' Frohike orders.

"I've got agents at your place, but unfortunately they didn't get there before it had been completely tossed. I'm assuming you have some sort of fail-safe in place?"

"Please, give us a little credit," I say rather sharply. Does he think we're complete idiots?

Frohike glares at me.

"Byers, shut up." I've heard that before.

Skinner just looks at me. I shut up. "It looks as if whoever paid you a visit knew exactly what they were looking for, because there were only selected items damaged. However, what they lacked in quantity, they more than made up for in brute force. Hope you've got some legitimate work lined up, preferably with a check that has lots of zeros."

"We do," Frohike says, without giving the details. I'm glad we do.

We've had a job doing programming and consulting with FPS in California, and we're supposed to go there in May for some on-site consult and game testing. The Sierra money was great, except now we'll have to spend it all on replacement equipment. At least we got dinner at Yamato out of it. The one thing we do have in common with Middle America is that we live paycheck to paycheck, except for the 'leave the country' fund, and nobody touches that. It could be the difference between life and death if things get worse than they are now.

"What's the word on Wildfire? Was the analysis completed? What about Dana's contact?" Sari's very concerned.

"Let's see, that's in here. Wildfire is... 5, alpha dichloromethobromo... oh, forget it. I can't pronounce this. But the analysis from the Bureau labs indicate that the substance is highly neurotoxic in humans and animals, especially in the developmental stages, but there's some toxic effect in all stages. It's apparently got a tough membrane that can survive up to about 50 degrees Celsius and will maintain its integrity at zero Celsius, although it becomes less active at that point. It's easily inserted through E. coli into the gut and transmitted through the blood, settling in the central nervous system. Scully believes that the membrane and chemical bonds can be broken, but not by standard water treatments. Very high sodium levels will disable it but you don't want that amount of salt going into the ground water, so the challenge is to find some way to disable or destroy the substance in the water without making it toxic in some other way. That may be tough." He shakes his head miserably. "I hate this shit. Give me green-blooded aliens and fat-sucking monsters any day of the week."

We all laugh uneasily, though the joke is lost on Sari and Deborah, who pass a confused look between them. Sari shakes her head.

"Scully indicated that she made successful contact with the person in charge of storing the sample. Let's hope no one else got wind of it."

"Is Dana all right?" Sari asks nervously, "Nicole and my sister?"

"She's fine. They all are." There's a deep sigh of relief all around. "Now, about our not-so-friendly hacker." That relief was certainly short-lived.

"Major Jack Monroe, USAF, Whitestone, New Mexico; works for the NSA," I respond. The name tastes vile in my mouth. Skinner looks nauseous.

"I'm well aware of his identity, Scully filled me in. You guys couldn't just find some pimple-faced teenaged joyrider, could you? No, you had to find an intelligence top gun."

"We did confirm his identity, isn't that what you needed?" Langly sounds a bit defensive.

"Yes, it is, and you have no idea how much interagency fighting is going on over this right now. It's going to be really ugly, but you did get proof, and it'll probably save your asses from national security charges if you live long enough. Makes me think I should be careful what I wish for." He groans audibly. Skinner stands; this isn't a social call, and he's not pretending it is. "Stay as long as you need to, but if you so much as think about touching my 1932 Lafitte Rothschild, you're better off having Black Widow coming after you. At least he'd make it quick and painless."

"We've been sticking to the Oregon vineyard selections," Frohike assures him.

"Good stuff," is the last thing Skinner says as he heads out.

Langly turns to me, baffled. "What's a 1932 Lafitte Rothschild?"

"A bottle of wine that costs more than all the equipment we're going to have to replace," Frohike moans.

"Really? Maybe we could auction it on E-Bay and get up enough scratch to..." We're all staring at him. "Okay, okay, no go on the vino."

"I guess we can't go outside anymore," Deborah sulks.

"No, you can't," I remind her sharply. "That goes for everyone."

I head for the bathroom to get my eye meds.

I hear Langly say "What, is he on the rag or something?" It gets a chuckle from Frohike, but the women give him the look of death. Apparently they think it's about as funny as I do.

"I'll do your eye meds, John, but only if you promise to lie down for a while and not do anything visual," Sari calls to me.

"I have to see what's on the otaku boards."

"The what?" she asks.

"The outlaw hacker boards. They're inaccessible to most users, but a lifeline for those of us in the business," I tell her.

I want to see if any news of our latest exploit has reached the boards. It's not likely; most hackers know Black Widow's rep and fear him accordingly. It's not even so much that he's better than we are, but his hardware's a lot bigger, and like everything else in a predominantly male culture, size matters. It would help everyone, knowing who he really is, though. It would make him a lot easier to track or avoid, but I'm debating the wisdom of posting our latest coup just yet. I sure don't feel victorious.

"John, I will not stand by and watch you damage your eyes permanently," Sari says, and I feel my gut clench. I know she means well, but I need to help the guys; the least I can do is get caught up with my backlog of email contacts and information, unread now for a month. Who knows what we've missed?

"You are not my mother," I snap at her.

"No, but I am your friend," she snaps back.

"She's right, y'know," Deborah says, not looking up from the journal she's engrossed in.

"How would you know? You don't do eye stuff," Langly snips.

She bristles. "I do enough emergency eye stuff to know!" Then she returns to her reading, miffed.

Langly, knowing he's been wrong, sidles over to her on the sofa. "Hey, you just gonna read that all day or what?"

She slaps the journal down. American Society of Critical Care Physicians. Maybe she's reading up on what to do in the event we do get our asses shot off. "Listen, what do you expect me to do? You're on the computer, I can't go outside, and there aren't even any good movies here."

"Actually, there are," Sari comments. Skinner has a small selection, and most of them are titles I can appreciate. He's heavily into Ingmar Bergman.

"What, movies about people sitting in a room being miserable? Shit, I can get that right here," Frohike mutters. "Look Langly, check the online TV schedules, see if there's something we could all possibly enjoy."

"Be nice if we could put on some cartoons," Langly grumbles.

"Oh, please, I don't think I can endure hours on end of anime." I can't. I won't. Doe-eyed androgynous assassins, precocious seven year olds, and stupid sidekicks; it'll make me crazy.

"What's wrong with anime?" Deborah's irritated with me.

"Like I can take hours of that black and white crap in weird languages," Langly snaps. "He doesn't even have any Godzilla, man. Now, that's my kind of foreign flick."

"All right, boys and girls, let's settle down," Frohike snaps at all of us. "We have to be here at least another day and a half. If we're gonna get killed, let's not make it by each other's hands."

Right now, that's a much more likely possibility than having the door kicked in. I ask Sari to take care of my medication. After that, I'll lie down on my bed and close my eyes, just to avoid the bickering. Maybe she'll read to me.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 2000
5:30 PM

FROHIKE:

Considering the stress we're under, everyone's doing pretty well, but the squabbling is getting to me. This isn't a large house; we're all on top of each other, and our movement is very restricted. What's even worse is that there's only one TV. Nobody agrees on what to watch. Byers keeps whining that he hasn't seen anything in ages, and that he should get to pick. About the only thing we all agree on is the news. A TV in each room would go a long way toward peace in the ranks, but there's nothing we can do about that right now. Maybe I'll put a bug in Walter's ear when we get back.

Sari's spent time out on the back porch doing yoga a couple of times a day -- seems it's the only place here with enough open floor space for it -- and she also did some strange ritual thing in her and Byers' room this morning. Sure doesn't look like any church stuff I ever attended as a kid.

She says she was doing puja, which is some kind of devotional ceremony, and that she doesn't usually impose it on other people, but there isn't a private place for it here. It involves a couple of little statues that she packed along, food, weird pasty stuff I can't identify, incense, and some other things she pulled out of a small bag, and she sort of mumbles quietly for a while in Sanskrit or something. She said it was the bare minimum required for the short version. It seemed pretty complicated to me, and she got water all over, but it made her a lot happier and easier to deal with.

Sari's supposed to call her boss tonight and get the details on the press conference tomorrow. She and Byers have been sniping at each other a little, but not too badly. We're all on edge, and they're trying hard not to get in each other's face despite the mood -- they do have to share a bedroom.

Langly and Deborah haven't been occupied with each other in nearly the way I expected them to be either. I think they're both too wired up to be much in the mood, and they've been going at each other as well, a lot worse than Byers and Sari. Their sniping is interspersed with profuse apologies and far more PDA than is appropriate in such crowded quarters.

I just bitch at all four of them. I have to do something with my stress, after all. The one safety valve I have is the Cardinal. Having him sit in my lap, purring as if all's right with the world, is calming.

Sari promised to help with some Indian food tonight for dinner. She bought stuff for it yesterday when we went on our provisioning expedition. Veggie samosas, chicken curry for the carnivores, raita, Indian spiced basmati rice, potato-stuffed cherry peppers, and saag paneer are on the menu, along with chai and sweet lassi, and everyone even seems satisfied with the idea. Most of it's pretty hearty stuff, and very tasty. I've had everything we're making except those stuffed cherry peppers, which she assures me has made even her potato-loathing friend enjoy the tubers. I'm looking forward to getting a new recipe, particularly from a cook as good as Sari.

Byers has managed to stay away from eye work today, with the exception of one hour spent trying to catch up on email. Everyone's been on his ass about it. It doesn't make him happy, but he knows he can't escape, and we know he really does want his normal vision back. Deborah's been telling him horror stories about unsuccessful recoveries, and it's scaring him into compliance.

I hope we get through this without killing each other.

THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2000
8:00 AM

BYERS:

Everyone is up, and we're getting things packed to head back to DC before we sit down to breakfast and do the final dishes. Sari and Nicole's conference is supposed to be at 2:30 this afternoon. We're going to have to get in touch with Devi and Nicole just before we leave to let them know when to be ready, and to arrange Nicole's transfer.

Mulder and Scully are meeting us at the Hoover building with an armored van to carry everyone to the site. We can leave our van there, where Skinner says he'll have people keeping an eye on it so the NSA doesn't get their hands on our stuff. Mulder said that Major Monroe is in custody, but there's a massive battle going on about who gets to keep him and whether we and Sari and Nicole are wanted on national security violations charges, and nobody knows if Monroe's goons are going to attempt an assassination when we're back in town and vulnerable.

Sari did her puja this morning at dawn. She was quiet, but I didn't sleep well, and just got up when she did to give her some privacy. She did her yoga after that, out on the back porch, as though everything was normal. I don't know how she's managing to stay so calm.

Frohike is driving everyone insane issuing orders, the Cardinal is hiding somewhere under the furniture, Deborah and Langly are complaining about needing coffee, and Sari is silently packing her things and helping haul equipment out to the van.

"Are you holding out okay?" I ask her.

She nods. "Yeah, I'm fine," she answers, but her voice is tired and stressed.

She doesn't have her hands full at the moment, so I offer her a hug. "Come here."

She leans into me and we put our arms around each other. She's trembling slightly, a thing I didn't notice when I looked at her. She must be terrified.

"I'll be with you the whole time," I tell her. She's already dressed in her suit for the press conference, basic black pants and blazer with a white silk shirt. Around her neck she's wearing a clear crystal mala, strung with a red cord and tassel. At her wrist, over the cast, is the silver cuff she's been wearing constantly the last few days. It's all very conservative, and carries a look of confidence and authority.

"I'm sorry I've been such a bitch the past couple of days, John," she says. "I wasn't angry with you, I'm just very afraid, and it's hard to be together when I feel that way."

I stroke her hair and speak quietly to her. "I've been a real pill myself. It's not your fault. We've all been on edge, and it takes its toll on everyone. You've been doing really well, actually. I can't tell you not to be afraid, but like I said, I'm here and I'll be with you the whole time. We'll get through this."

She looks up and kisses me on the cheek. "Thank you, John, it really helps. You've been so good to me through all of this. I wish... I wish there was something I could do to thank you properly."

"It's all right," I tell her. Now she has seen us with our backs against the wall, and she's getting through it like a champ. "I don't need any thanks. I just need to be sure you're all right."

She sighs and gives me a final squeeze, then goes back to her work. I wish Susanne had been more like this. We might still be together. I go back to my unwiring project.

SAME DAY
WASHINGTON, DC
1:18 PM

BYERS:

Everything's been reasonably smooth so far. Aside from the flat tire, the return trip was uneventful. We met Mulder and Scully only about 15 minutes late at the Hoover Building, got the boxes of press packets that Scully put together to hand out, and now we're at the designated rendezvous to pick up Nicole.

It's a non-descript diner in a quiet backwater neighborhood, and Sari, Devi and Nicole have spent the last ten minutes crying and hugging each other, each assuring the others that they're fine, they're holding together, and everything's going to be all right. Then we get down to the pre-conference discussion. Nicole needs to be updated with the information from the FBI lab tests. We talk for about fifteen minutes about the details that will need to be covered at the conference, then Scully describes the Wildfire organism to Nicole.

"Yes," Nicole says, "that really is a nasty one. I had no idea what we were working with, they always kept it from us. We'd run the lab processes, compile statistics, take field samples, all that, but there was no real way for me to actually analyze the material itself without compromising myself far too much."

Sari nods. "Everything you've done has been vital work, Nicole. We could never have exposed all this without you. I'm so glad you'll be with me for this. After the conference, I'm sure the FBI will set you up in the witness protection program."

Agent Scully nods and takes Nicole's hand.

"We've already got it set up. You'll have a whole new life, a new identity, and a new job that will be safe for you."

"Thank you, all of you," Nicole says. "Especially you, Devi." She looks at Sari's sister and smiles. "You've been so kind and generous to let me stay in your home. I felt very safe there.

"I loved having you," Devi says. "You're welcome to come back anytime and visit. And if you can swing it, maybe you'd like to visit me in Sri Lanka some day?"

Nicole looks genuinely delighted. "Oh, that sounds like a wonderful idea, I'd love it!"

"It's time we got going," Mulder says. "We need to be at the site on time so you'll be ready for the cameras."

We all pack up the papers and diagrams, and Devi picks up the tab.

Mulder brings the armored van around to the sidewalk in front of the door. Scully keeps a watchful eye as Mulder opens the side door of the van, and Langly and Deborah start the procession, hurrying for the vehicle. It may not be over quite yet, but I think we're going to be all right.

As we walk through the diner door to the sidewalk, Sari just in front of me, I hear the sharp snap of gunfire. Oh my God, no.

End part 22