Staring Down the Barrel

by zillah975

Summary:

In which there are unexpected reunions, a plot to end the world, a certain amount of gunfire, and a great many questions.

Not every question has an answer.

But then, not every question needs one.

Notes:

For Ponderosa.

Rated "Teen and up" for foul language, some violence, and one instance of a homophobic slur.

Cougar gave the pot of barley another stir, leaning in to welcome the warm steam in the cold kitchen. The snow outside was beginning to turn from blue-white to gold as the sun rose in the clear sky; it was going to be a bright, cold day, maybe good for hunting. He'd seen pheasant tracks in the snow yesterday when he'd gone out to fill up the generator. It would be a nice change.

Behind him came footsteps, and he glanced up as Jensen padded into the kitchen with his laptop, wearing their blanket like a robe and wool socks on his feet. He could hear Jensen's stomach growl but knew what he would need first, and he nodded towards the coffeepot.

Jensen put the laptop down and reached for a cup. "What is that? It smells awesome."

"Breakfast," Cougar answered, and smirked as he dodged Jensen's half-hearted swat.

"Very funny. Where's Clay?"

Cougar shook his head. "Asleep, I guess."

"He never sleeps this late." Pooch came into the kitchen and grabbed a cup as well, and Jensen poured for him. "Wonder if he made it back."

They'd been out the night before, celebrating the fact that they'd fucked up another of Max's plans without any of them getting killed. Or at least, any more of them. Sometimes, when Cougar wasn't even thinking about it, the explosion of the plane lit up behind his eyes like the hammer of God. He just wasn't always sure whether God was aiming it at Roque, or at him.

He didn't know whether any of the others even cared anymore. For the first month, Jensen had kept after all of them trying to get them to talk about it. None of them would. Even Cougar just listened to that litany of questions until he could tune it out.

You think he was working a con on Max, maybe, that just went wrong? I mean, it's Roque, Cougar, he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't betray us that way. Maybe Max had something on him. Well, I mean more than what he has on all of us, you know what I mean. Maybe Roque secretly has a mom and dad and Max found them and was holding them hostage. You remember that time in Luhansk when....

And on and on until Cougar wanted to punch him just to shut him up. He didn't do that, either, of course.

But eventually Jensen stopped asking, and no one had so much as uttered Roque's name since. Sometimes Cougar wanted to ask Jensen about it now, if he still thought about the man, if he still wondered why he'd done it. But he couldn't get the words out past all the times Jensen had asked him and Cougar had turned away. Past the memory of that bullet leaving his gun, the explosion that killed his friend.

"Maybe he got lucky," Jensen said. "There was that blond lady in the tight blue dress. The one with the long legs and the--" he grinned, "--the huge tracts of land."

Cougar frowned at him. "She owns land?"

Jensen snorted. "Come on, Cougs, you remember! Monty Python? The little dude with the scary father?" He raised his eyebrows. "Dude, come on, really? I can't believe you -- the wedding? With the -- where the hero like accidentally kills the whole wedding party? Come on!"

Cougar snickered. He knew the scene, but it was funny to watch Jensen's face.

"Last time I saw him," Pooch said, "he was talking to that guy who was hitting on you, Jensen. The one who kept trying to get you outside to 'show you his Hummer.' Looked like he had intentions, too."

Jensen's eyebrows shot up. "Clay? Wait a minute, who had 'intentions'?"

"Clay had intentions." Pooch raised his mug in a salute. "Like, 'hell yeah, I want to see your hummer' intentions."

"Clay? Clay of the 'I love women, all women, but especially ones who want to kill me,' that Clay?"

Pooch pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, holding his coffee mug between his hands. "Hey, maybe I'm wrong, but you know Clay. By the book, man. Don't ask, don't tell. If he swung that way, you really think he'd let us know? He still doesn't admit out loud to knowing about you two."

Jensen snorted. "That's because he's too cheap to get us an anniversary present. I'm gonna go wake him up. He needs to see this."

"Tell him I'm making a gasoline run later for the generator, if he wants anything," Pooch called after him, then pulled the laptop around to see what was on the screen. Cougar turned and read over his shoulder.

From: Kimberly Lowen
To: Michael Hoffman
Cc: Supervisory Staff
Subject: Re: Factor 17 progress report

Mike,

You have to get authorization to terminate the project. We've all seen the reports, but let me give you the short-and-sweet just in case you skimmed over the important parts. We have a 92% failure rate with this project. Only 8% are responding as we hoped. 40% died before the parasite reached their brains, and the rest are locked in containment cells to keep them from infecting every living thing they can catch. Even the 8% need constant supervision. Does he really want super-soldiers that can't make any decisions for themselves?

We have to terminate the project and destroy the parasite. If it gets into the populace we'll be facing a pandemic that'll make the Black Death look like an ice cream social.

Convince him, Mike, or I'll call him myself.

-Kim

--
Dr. Kimberly Lowen
Senior Project Manager
Poiesis Biotech
(Bio)engineering A Better Future

Jensen came trotting into the kitchen a moment later. "He's not here, bed's still made. I'm going to call him." He had gotten dressed and was patting down his pockets. "Cougs, you seen my phone?"

Pooch nodded to the email. "Is this for real? Some parasite they're using to make super-soldiers? Is this from that place your anonymous whistleblower turned you on to?"

"Yeah, their security's tight, but I finally got in this morning, and this is the first thing I saw that made any sense."

"What kind of sense is that?" Pooch pushed the laptop around to face Jensen. "What is it even talking about?"

Jensen dragged a chair out and sat down at the computer. "You ever heard of Toxoplasma gondii? Or Xenos vesparum? Ophiocordyceps unilateralis? There are all kinds of parasites and fungi that can bend their infected victims to their dastardly parasitic will. It's not impossible that Max has got his hands on one and is trying to use it. Where the hell's my phone?"

"Charging?" Cougar suggested.

Jensen leapt for the little pile of dish towels next to the sink and dug underneath them. "Bingo! Cougar wins again."

"I can't believe you can even pronounce that stuff," Pooch said. "Has Aisha checked in? Does she know anything about it?"

Jensen shook his head and started dialing. "She logged on from Seattle a few days ago, but I don't know if this is what she's chasing or not. All she said was that she was getting closer, and she thinks she'll be back within the week."

Cougar got bowls down from the cabinet and started dishing up. It was kind of a meager breakfast. "Pooch, we need eggs," he said absently.

"Guys." Jensen put the phone down and frowned. "He's not answering. I even did the 'ring once, call back' thing, he didn't pick up. He always picks up for that."

The three of them looked at each other.

"Okay, parasites or no parasites," Pooch said, "I think we need to find the guy with the Hummer."

Jensen's fingers were already flying over the keyboard.

So much for hunting pheasant.

~§~

Roque stood up from the desk and stretched, the muscles in his back protesting painfully. One nice thing about this job was the office with the view, but he wasn't sure that made up for the amount of time he spent sitting on his ass, hunched over a goddamned computer. He didn't know how Jensen could stand it. He winced when he leaned over again and alt-tabbed into the command line, where the text had slowed to a stop and returned to his home directory. He wasn't sure which data would help Jensen get into the system and which was just junk, so he hoped the kid had gotten what he needed.

He put the phone on speaker and dialed Gina's desk.

"Hey, Colonel Nash," she answered. "What's up?"

The name, he was used to -- it was better than some he'd had to go by -- but the rank still sounded strange to him, and he'd been wearing it for almost a year. "Hi, Gina. I'm heading down to Lab Two. Putting my mic on, can you buzz me when Operative One gets here?"

Lab Two was as close as he'd been able to get so far to the center of Max's attentions, which seemed to all be focused on whatever was two levels further down, in Lab Six. All Roque had been able to learn about it was that it had to do with string theory and tesseracts, and solving the rare earth minerals shortage that was going to eventually threaten pretty much everything ever. A virtually unlimited supply of the stuff, Max said, controlled -- of course -- by the United States. Or really by Max, as far as Roque could tell. The man had delusions of grandeur that Roque would have been more comfortable with if they'd been a little more delusional.

"He's already here, Colonel. He's upstairs with the guy Cliff brought in. Want me to try to get him for you?"

Roque's heart lurched. "Wait, when did Cliff get back?"

"Last night. Op One said not to bother you with it. He said he'd get with you about it himself. He didn't?"

"Son of a bitch." Roque forced his breathing to steady, tried to slow the racing of his heart. Cliff shouldn't have been bringing anyone back. The plan was carefully crafted to be a complete fucking failure.

"Colonel?" Gina sounded nervous. "I'm sorry, should I have called you anyway?"

"No, Gina, don't worry. I know how he gets."

'You know how he gets' was pretty much the universal excuse for anyone to do anything where Max was concerned. Roque didn't know a single person who didn't hate Max or who wasn't scared to death of him, or both, but the money was good enough that people stayed and tried not to piss him off.

"Gina," he said, "did you see the guy he brought in? What he looks like?"

"No sir, but I can, if you want."

He hesitated, but only for a moment. He needed to know which of them he was walking in on when he went up there.

"Yeah. Please."

"Sure thing, boss. I'll buzz you in a sec."

Something had gone very wrong. Cliff wasn't the cream of the crop, sure -- ever since the fiasco at the Port those guys were too smart to get involved with Max or anyone associated with him, no matter how good the money was. But he came recommended, and Jensen would never have gone for him.... Unless something had happened. If Cougs and Jensen had split up, maybe then. Roque rubbed a hand over his face. He wasn't in a position to kick the crap out of either of them for being dumb fucks, not anymore.

Or else Cliff had come back with the wrong guy. Roque prayed it was that. If he was going to meet any of his old team again, he sure as hell didn't want it to be like this.

He cleared the screen and tabbed back to The Yarn Works intranet, then closed the laptop and headed for the door. As long as Max was tied up with whoever he had upstairs, Roque was clear to try Max's office again.

He took the stairs two at a time down to the lowest level and exited into the hallway. When Max had first moved him in here, he'd been surprised by what looked like lax security -- only a handful of rent-a-cops upstairs, and downstairs were labs and Max's office, guarded by nothing more than a bunch of fancy locks.

But the house was way below anybody's radar -- they hadn't had a single attempt since Roque had been here. And those fancy locks were pretty damned fancy. If he was right, though, this time he'd finally popped the code and he'd be able to get in and out in a minute, maybe less. Get the drive that Max kept locked up in there, and then he could finish this.

Gina's voice came over his comm. "I went up and had a look, boss," she said, sounding nervous.

"Did he see you?"

"I don't think so. The guy he's got in there is blindfolded, but he's got dark hair and a five o'clock shadow, and he's wearing a black suit and a white shirt. I don't think he's awake." She hesitated and then said, "Stevens is in there with them, and Op One is pretty pissed. The guy in the suit's in kind of a bad way, Colonel, and I think it's about to get worse."

Roque swallowed a curse. "All right, thanks."

"Look Colonel, this isn't really standard procedure for a Yarn Works facility, you know?"

He leaned against the wall and rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it, Gina, he's a bad man. Op One is just...taking care of something."

"Okay, well, I just think maybe I should tell someone."

"And you just did. Let me handle it."

She hesitated, then said, "All right. If you say so."

He thought of Clay looking up at him from the concrete floor of the hangar, beaten and bloodied and still so goddamned sure of himself. Kill me now, and maybe you walk away from this. The team was in custody and on their way to LAX and Clay still thought he could win.

Roque had had a plan, though. It had been a good plan, but it had all gone balls-up, and that was the last he'd seen of any of them until he'd spotted Jensen's unmistakable fingerprints on the NanoSine firewall back when Max was trying to cut a deal for one of their micro nukes. Roque pointed him to a back door, and that had been the start. But he hadn't planned on them ever finding out.

Now Clay was here gumming up the works, and Roque had to make a decision.

He didn't owe Clay anything. Not a goddamned thing.

You're going to die very badly.

"Yeah, fuck you, Clay," he muttered. "Fuck you. You're gonna have to try harder than that."

He turned back towards the stairs. He'd waited this long to get the drive, he could wait a little longer.

~§~

Clay struggled towards consciousness, drawn by the muffled, watery echo of the voice on the radio. It was dark, and his head ached, his mouth bitter and dry.

"Now, I want you to look at the man in the chair. Does he look like a young, blond, boy-in-the-porn-film-next-door type to you?"

"I told you, the guy you wanted wouldn't have anything to do with me." It was the voice of the kid who'd picked him up in the bar last night, the one who'd started off trying to get between Cougar and Jensen, and Clay groaned inwardly. He should've let Cougar pummel the guy. "He's got some boyfriend he's fucking nuts about, but this is his C.O. He's better, right?"

They were close by, Max and the kid, maybe five feet away. The room felt big, sounded big, the floors sounded like wood, or maybe that fake wood that was so popular in new homes. Metal cuffs bit into Clay's wrists and ankles, binding him to an upholstered wooden chair. The heavy arms dug into the soft of his elbows, and the place smelled...really good, like lemons and cigar smoke. It didn't seem like an interrogation room. He tried to open his eyes but something held them closed, and he realized he was blindfolded.

There were footsteps behind him and then someone brushed by, and what drifted in his wake was the smell of oil stone and the past, scarred skin, sweat as familiar as his own. Clay's pulse leapt and his heart started hammering.

It wasn't possible. He'd seen Roque die.

"Cliff," Max said patiently, "I don't pay you to have opinions, I pay you to do as you're told. Stevens."

Then there was a flurry of noises -- the smack of a fist on flesh and Cliff's grunt of pain, a round being chambered in a pistol, and then a scuffling and, "No."

Cliff was panting, and there was another scuffle, and then the thud of someone hitting the wall and a voice Clay supposed was Stevens' let out a curse.

"All right, that's enough," Max said. He sounded annoyed. "Stevens, wait outside."

"Yes sir." The door opened and closed again.

"So you've taken a liking to the little whore, Bill?" Max asked. "I thought you only had eyes for your old boss."

"Fuck you, Max. I hired him, I pay him, and you don't get to beat up guys I hired."

That voice like a hand on Clay's skin, warm as leather.

Clay forced himself to keep still. Roque probably knew he was awake. He'd be able to tell from his breathing, from the shape of his shoulders.

There was the distinctive sound of bills being counted. "Go on, get out of here. I'm going to be checking up on him, Max. Anything happens to him, I'll cut your throat for you, save us all a lot more trouble." The door opened and shut again, and someone locked it.

"I didn't know you were such a softie, Bill."

Clay knew what Roque would be doing, the way he'd look away and put his hand over his mouth, and then shake his head before speaking. "This 'shoot anything that annoys you' bullshit you do has already gotten out. The only people I can hire are dipshits with more balls than brains and guys who've never heard of you, and if it gets any worse, it'll just be you and me. How about you do your job, and leave mine the fuck alone."

"I would, Bill, if you were doing your job." There was a scuff of a chair on the floor, and the sound of someone sitting down. Not heavy enough for Roque -- and Roque wouldn't sit for this kind of conversation anyway. "How did you manage to avoid knowing that two of your teammates were.... How do I put this delicately? Fucking each other stupid three times a week?"

"Hey, how was I supposed to know? Don't ask, don't tell, right? I had no fucking idea."

But that was bullshit. Clay's head was throbbing, and something ground unpleasantly in his side if he moved. He knew he wasn't thinking straight, but it was bullshit.

"You knew he liked boys," Max said.

"Eh, I saw him one night drunk, kissing on some guy in this crappy little bar in San Diego. Never thought he'd shit where he eats."

The little origami cougar Roque had made for Jensen the first time Cougs went on a solo mission after they hooked up, camo-colored from the back of an ancient issue of Guns And Ammo. He'd left it on Jensen's jacket and pretended he didn't know where it came from. He'd given them a bottle of goddamned Cristal after the first year, and he and Cougs had almost come to blows shortly after, when Cougar's Catholicism made him break it off.

"Do you really expect me to believe that?"

"You think I spend a lot of time figuring out who my teammates are hooking up with? I probably would've been out of this operation months ago if I knew what you do in your spare time."

"Why, Bill, are you jealous?"

A brief burst of static cut off Roque's reply, and a woman's voice said, "Sorry to interrupt, sir, but you said if Dr. Hoffman called again. He's on the phone."

"Go on," Roque said. "I'm going to wake up sleeping beauty here."

"No," Max said, "I need you with me. Stevens will keep an eye on Colonel Clay for us."

"No new bruises, I mean it. Here on out, no one hurts him but me."

"You're very attached to him, aren't you Bill? It's touching, really. I feel quite moved."

"Shut up."

The door opened and shut with a heavy sound, but Clay's heart still hammered wildly, and all he could hear was the single thought, impossible to get past or to understand.

Roque was alive.

~§~

Cougar lounged in the tall chair and watched Jensen try to flirt with the bartender. How someone so smart and so damned good-looking could be such a pendejo at this always amused the hell out of him.

It was apparently amusing the bartender, too, since she hadn't brushed Jensen off yet.

The name of the guy with the Hummer, Jensen had discovered, was Cliff Morgan, and he'd only had the thing for four and a half weeks. He'd paid cash at the lot on the north side of town, and oh yes, the bartender remembered him.

"Yeah, he wouldn't shut up about that Humvee," she said, leaning on the long stretch of the bar. "He wanted me to come meet him at his hotel after I got off work, said he'd give me the tour, he just had something he had to do first." She shrugged. "I blew him off. I mean he was hot and everything, but way too sure of himself."

Jensen chuckled, shaking his head and casting Cougar a quick sideways glance. "Yeah, that's so unattractive." Cougar swallowed his laugh. "So, did he tell you where he's staying?"

She gave Jensen a skeptical look. "Why do you want to find him?"

"He was trying to sell me his old truck." Jensen shrugged. "He said they wouldn't give him what it was worth so he was going to sell it himself, and I just wanted to see if he's still got it. I'm thinking I might make him an offer."

Cougar wondered again why Jensen could never be that smooth when he flirted. Maybe lying just brought it out in him.

"Well, I threw out his room number," she said, "but he's staying at the old Squeeze Inn on Route 5, north of town. I think it was, like, room 301, or 103, or something like that. They'll probably call him for you from the desk."

 

The sun was high overhead by the time they got there. Pooch spotted the Humvee parked alone in front of room 103, pulled the truck in across from it and killed the engine. Yellowish light filtered through the closed curtains of the room, the only lighted one on the row.

"So we're just going to bust in on him?"

"I thought we could start by knocking, and then bust in," Jensen said, deadpan, and then shook his head, staring at the door. "No, come on, man, we don't even know if the guy's done anything. Something else could have happened, or, you know, he and Clay might be in there right now eating at the old In-and-Out."

Pooch groaned. "Thanks for that image, man, seriously."

"Let's just, you know, go knock on the door, and see what we learn."

The three of them got out of the truck and into the cold January afternoon. They walked across the icy parking lot to room 103. Cougar could hear someone moving around inside, and he raised his hand to rap on the door, but it opened before he could. The guy from last night jerked up short, staring at him with surprised brown eyes and holding an empty ice bucket.

Then the door slammed shut in Cougar's face and the lock slid home. Pooch cursed, and Cougar stepped back and kicked the door once, hard, at the lock, then twice, and the door frame gave with a splintering crack. He pushed inside. Cliff was on the other side of the room with a gun in his hand and a panicked expression on his face. "Did Max send you?"

Pooch advanced on him. "Do you work for Max?"

"No! Do you? Nash'll have your ass if you--wait a minute, I remember you! Shit!" The gun was shaking in his hand. "Listen, the guy I'm working for is a very serious dude, and he's gonna be here in, like, two minutes! You really don't want to piss him off!"

Pooch leveled his MAG-7 at Cliff. "The man you left the bar with last night, where is he now?"

"Him? Hell, I don't know." Cliff shook his head, trying too hard to look sincere, and Cougar narrowed his eyes. "I just--I showed him the Hummer, he got in his car and left, okay?"

"Yeah?" Pooch took another step forward. "If that's all that happened, why are you piss-your-pants scared right now?"

"Because three guys with guns just broke down my door!"

"That's a good reason to be frightened," Cougar said, advancing towards him. "So answer the question."

Cliff laughed, high-pitched and panicky. "Yeah, uh, no. Remember what I said about you didn't want to piss him off? Well, neither do I."

"So who is this terrifying guy, who's scarier than facing down three men with guns and all you've got is an ice bucket and a pea-shooter?" Pooch asked.

"Bill Nash could take down a squad with just the freakin' ice bucket," Cliff said. "Anyway, he didn't tell me jack, he just told me who to look for and where to bring him."

"And where was that?"

"No, no, man, you don't double-cross this guy. He'll kill me."

"Not if we kill him first," Cougar said.

"What makes you think you even can?" Cliff asked. Jensen was easing around to his other side, unnoticed; Cliff's gaze was locked on Cougar's. "Listen, the guy's indestructible. You should see him. He's all scarred up and fucking blind in one eye, but he still has moves like you would not believe. Said his last boss blew up a motherfucking plane to take him out, but he's still here, right?" He shook his head. "I ain't telling you shit."

Then Jensen moved, a quick kick to the back of Cliff's knee that sent him to the ground with a pained yelp, and Jensen snatched the pistol from his hand and sent him sprawling with a boot to the chest.

Pooch thrust the barrel of the rifle under Cliff's chin. "One of y'all is gonna die," he said. "It can be you, right here, right now, or him when we find him."

"But you are lucky," Cougar added, meeting Cliff's panicked eyes. "You get to choose which one."

~§~

Clay didn't know how much time had passed before Roque came back, but he knew the tread of his step like it was carved into him. A moment later the blindfold was pulled off and he was blinking in the bright light with Roque standing over him. Scars snaked down Roque's neck and under his black sweater, and his right eye was a milky blue-white.

Behind him, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over manicured grounds bounded by an iron fence, a battered asphalt road beyond it, a pine forest. Through another long window by the door Clay could see what looked like an open atrium and a railed walkway that wound around to the other side. Where the hell were they? A white leather couch graced the corner, facing outside, and the pale wood floors gleamed.

"Seriously, Clay? The guy had 'I am a trap' tattooed on his goddamned forehead."

Clay sat up with a groan. It wasn't how he would have wanted Roque to find out, but there it was. No point in pretending. And hell, Roque didn't get to have an opinion on Clay's private life anyway, not anymore. "I wasn't looking at his forehead," and the grin that followed was like muscle memory. How many years? How many years had it been the two of them against all comers? Until Bolivia happened, and everything went to shit. The smile faltered, and he brought it back with an effort. There was a cut on his face that stretched with it and stung; he wondered how bad it was. "How the hell are you alive?"

Roque spread his arms. "Why wouldn't I be? You blew up half a plane. That's a fifty percent chance of survival right there. Better odds than we usually get." And Clay could swear Roque almost smiled. "You want me dead, you should do it up close. And since when do you pick up men in bars? You go through all the women in town?"

The cut stretched wider with Clay's grin. "You're just mad I never put the moves on you."

Roque looked at him sharply, then away. Something twisted in Clay's chest, just above his hammering heart, some old injury he'd forgotten about, or pretended never happened.

"Look at you," Roque said after a moment. "You're a mess." He glanced towards the door and then back at Clay. "We need to get you out of here."

None of this made sense. "What were you doing setting a honey trap for Jensen? You knew he'd never go for it."

Roque checked the clip in his sidearm. "Let's just focus on the problem at hand."

"What the hell game are you playing, Roque?" Clay's voice sounded like gravel to his own ears, felt worse.

Roque scrubbed his hand over his neck, looking at Clay like he was trying to decide whether to punch him. Finally he leaned close and started talking low and fast. "When Max figured out he'd sprung a leak and that Jensen was getting the intel, his first plan was to take Jenny and Beth. Use them as leverage, yeah? Make you stop what you were doing, get Jensen to turn himself over."

Clay stared at him, and Roque raised his eyebrows, nodded once. Jensen's sister and niece. It could have worked. Jensen would have done anything to keep those two safe.

"I talked him out of it," Roque went on. "Told him he'd get the local PD involved, it'd make the newspapers, it was too risky. Told him I could handle it, and I set up a trap for Jensen that had zero chance of catching him. Just trying to buy some time. How was I supposed to know that you--"

Roque stopped. He was looking at Clay, narrow-eyed, and shook his head. "Never thought you'd go for a guy, Clay."

"Well, you know. Don't ask, don't tell, right?" But judging from the look Roque gave him, Roque didn't see the humor. "You hypocritical sonofabitch," Clay growled, and would've shot to his feet if he hadn't been handcuffed to the damned chair. "You've got no problem with Cougar and Jensen -- or was that an act too?"

"Now wait a minute," Roque began, but Clay didn't want to hear it. Not after everything -- all those years, the betrayal, a year of Roque being dead and buried. "I don't know what you think--"

"I made damned sure you never had to know about any of it!" Clay broke in. "After that night on Naxos with--" But it stung to remember it and Clay bit back the rest. "So now I've messed up some strategic plan of yours because you 'never thought'? You're a goddamned traitor, Roque, so drop the self-righteous act."

Roque was staring at him like he'd grown a second head. "In that little bar, in Filoti? You thought...? Clay." Roque sighed and rubbed his eyes. "You're a goddamned idiot. Or I am."

Clay remembered the way Roque had kept looking at them, the two men at the other table, so wrapped up in each other that they hadn't noticed Roque staring, the expression on his face.

At the time, Clay thought it was disgust.

"What are you saying?" he asked, but this time it was Roque's turn to cut him off.

"Here's how it is." He dropped into a crouch in front of Clay. "I'm still trying to get my hands on the drive with the Bolivia intel, and I need you to stay the fuck out my way until then. Can you do that?" he asked. "I know what I'm doing."

The night in Filoti fled back to the past, and Clay's mouth twisted. "Like you knew what you were doing at the Port?"

"Like you knew what we were doing in Miami?" Roque's fingers twitched against Clay's arm. "Anyway. You're alive. They're alive."

"Not for lack of trying."

Roque shook his head. "I could have shot you where you lay on the goddamned tarmac, or did you forget that part?"

"I remember how you tried to run me over with a plane."

"And you wouldn't have stepped out of the way?"

Clay almost had to laugh at that, but the memory of that day was too fresh even after so long, the sight of his team on their knees. "What about the men? You think about them?"

Roque looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"The executions that didn't happen?"

"What executions?" Roque was staring at him, his eyebrows furrowed, and Clay stared back.

It didn't make sense. "Are you trying to tell me you didn't know?" he asked.

"Know what?" Roque shook his head. "Shit, is that what that gunfire was?" Roque pushed to his feet, and on his face was shock that Clay knew he couldn't fake. "That sonofabitch," he muttered, and then, "Jesus Christ, Clay, they weren't even supposed to be there!"

Then it registered what Roque had said, and Clay dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. "Wait a minute, you're the leak? You're the one who's been feeding Jensen intel on Max's operations?"

Roque made a fist and then opened his hand like the effort hurt him. "Yeah. I told you a dozen times, you can't kill something that big from the outside, you've gotta go in it." He shook his head. "You should have listened to me, Clay. You shouldn't have pushed me out like that, not for a woman you already knew was lying to us. Not for anyone."

The door opened and Roque turned to face it; Max came in and leaned against the wall. "What the hell is this?" Roque motioned to Clay. "You fucking scrambled his brains. You're not going to get anything out of him right now."

Light from the hallway gleamed on the pale wood floor. "I don't need to," Max said. "He's not here to provide answers, he's here to draw his team out and get the man your amateur rent-boy was too incompetent to come back with." He smiled, closed-mouthed. "Too bad you talked me out of Jenny and her little girl. What is it he calls her, 'Bethy'? Jenny and Bethy, that's so...well, that's just adorable. They would've been much more fun."

Roque was staring at Max like he was something that crawled out of a sewer. "You're a sick fuck, Max, you know that?"

Clay snorted. "This is news to you, Roque?"

Max put his hand over his heart. "Words hurt, Bill. Why don't you take a little of that unchanneled aggression out on the man who betrayed you, hm?" He nodded towards Clay. "Let's see. How did you put it? He 'threw you over for a lying, scheming piece of ass'? Go ahead, it'll make you feel better."

Roque looked at Clay and then turned back to Max. "Tell me something first," he said, his fingers skimming over the black KA-BAR straight edge strapped to his thigh. "What happened to the men, at the Port? To Cougar, Pooch, and Jensen?"

Max hesitated. "Exactly what I promised would happen, Bill. Are you saying you don't trust me?"

"Just answer the question." Roque drew the knife, and the sound of that carbon steel blade leaving the sheath shivered on Clay's skin. His hands were cold, his scalp prickling.

Max spread his arms. "My men put them in the van, drove them to Los Angeles International Airport and dropped them off at passenger unloading, as agreed."

Clay cursed and opened his mouth to deny it, but Roque spoke first.

"You're lying to me." Roque kept his eyes on Max, and dug a key out of his pocket and went to work on Clay's cuffs.

"What do you think you're doing, Bill?" Max asked, not making a move to leave.

"I'm setting him loose. He's going to go back to his team, I'm going to find your leak and plug it, and then you and I are done."

"That doesn't sound like a very good deal to me." Max smiled thinly at Clay. "And I don't think your last job wants you back."

"I could always kill you right now," Roque said. The cuffs fell free, and Clay took the key Roque offered and leaned down to unlock the others. Roque's sidearm was loose in its holster.

Max faced Roque again. "You know why you can't do that."

"I can do anything I want, Max," Roque said. "I'm already dead, remember?"

"Well." Max cocked his head to the side and then drew a pistol from beneath his jacket and pointed it at Roque's chest. "Apart from the fact that your aim's been off ever since Clay here put your eye out, you know one reason you can't do that. There are always more, though, aren't there." It wasn't a question.

Roque took a step forward as if the gun wasn't even there. "Don't worry about my aim, I could cut the stripes off that cheap American flag pin at this range. Now what the hell are you talking about?"

Max gestured towards the door with his free hand. "It isn't just this place, or the bombs, or what's down in the basement. That's only the beginning."

"Well why don't you tell me the middle and the end? Jesus, Max," Roque snapped, "you don't think I need to know this shit?"

"You need to know what I tell you, and not a thing more. Now sit down before I put you down." Max nodded at the couch and then gestured towards Clay with the gun. "Both of you."

"Fuck you," Roque spat, "that shit might have worked with Wade, but I ain't Wade." A second knife materialized in Roque's other hand and Max swung around to face him, the pistol raised. Without thinking, Clay reached for Roque's sidearm, drew it and aimed. The gunshot cracked like a lightning bolt through the room. Max's eyes went wide and surprised, and a wet, red flower bloomed on his shirtfront. He slumped against the wall, and left a dark smear on it as he sank to the floor.

Roque spun around to face Clay. "What the hell did you do that for?"

Clay looked up at him, and for a split second he only wanted to hear Roque say 'thanks.' Roque looked furious. Clay smirked. "Oops, did I kill your new best pal?" The words felt like stone in his throat, but came out clear. "What happened to 'I could always kill you right now'?"

"I was bluffing!" Roque sheathed the KA-Bar and shook his head. "That was a bluff." Then he reached for the weapon but Clay pulled it back, aimed it at Roque. Roque stared at him. "You gonna shoot me now, too?"

"I was thinking about it," Clay said.

"Yeah, well, think about it later. We need to get out of here before this whole place goes up."

Clay frowned. "What do you mean, 'goes up'?"

But Roque was already thumbing his throat mic and pacing over to the big window that looked out over the grounds. "Negative, negative, Gina, it's fine, just uh, listen, there's been a containment breach in Lab Two, we need to evacuate."

"What do you mean, 'goes up'?" Clay repeated, louder.

"No, I'll take care of it, just get everyone out. Three minutes, Gina. I want security and staff outside the perimeter."

"Roque!"

"Seriously?" Roque looked him up and down. "Jesus, bro, how hard did they hit you? Goes up. Boom. Why do you think I didn't kill him already?" He spread his arms. "Whole place is rigged. Five minutes after that shithead's heart stops, explosions kick in that burn everything in here to ash."

It still didn't make sense. "Five minutes is plenty of time," Clay said. "Hell, we could get to the next county by then."

"I need the drive from Max's office," Roque snapped. "That's four levels down from here behind a goddamned security door."

"Fine, let's go." Clay got to his feet. The room wobbled and spun, and Roque caught him before he went down. The smell of oil stone and soap, and Roque's skin, salt-sweet and cool against his own.

"You don't think you're coming with me, do you? Look at you. You got the coordination of a three-day old puppy. Come on, we'll get you out and I'll come back for it."

"You're going to walk back into a building that's about to blow up?"

"Just trying to finish the job you started, Clay."

Clay didn't know whether he meant getting blown up or getting the Bolivia intel, and he didn't ask. They headed out into the hallway.

"You been working for him ever since the Port?" Clay asked.

"I don't know," Roque said, "what do you call 'working for him'?"

Clay gave him a sideways look. "He's been paying you?"

"Yeah, he's been paying me." Roque steered him around a curve in the walkway. "And I've been keeping enough bumps in the road that he hasn't accomplished anything in a year."

"And he never knew."

Roque's jaw clenched. "Yeah, sure he knew. That's why he's dead and we're not, because I'm just that stupid. Here we go." They started down a long spiral staircase that seemed to sway under Clay's feet. Roque's arm steadied him.

"If I remember right," Clay said, dry as dust, "he's dead because I just shot him in the heart."

"Because I didn't kill you when I obviously should have." Roque paused to readjust Clay's weight and then headed down the stairs. "Save your breath, you sound like you need it."

The steps looked like alabaster, maybe, and the sunlight that flooded through those huge windows seemed to soak into them and make them glow. They reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped onto smooth wood floors that were the same pale color as upstairs. Some kind of translucent sculpture hung on the wall above a stone fireplace. Clay couldn't tell what it was.

"What is this place, anyway?" he asked as Roque steered them past the fireplace. "It's way too nice to be CIA."

Roque shook his head. "Max's summer house or something. He's moved in a team from an outfit called The Yarn Works, a spin-off of NASA controlled by the NSA. They're working on a project for him, something about tesseracts and string theory. He wanted them close by, I guess."

"Tesseracts?" Clay snorted. Science fiction crap. But then, he would have said that about SNUKEs. "So how come Jensen hasn't heard anything about this 'tesseract' project, if you've been so good about feeding him intel?"

"I don't have any intel on it yet. I'm not a magician, Clay, I can't pull this stuff out of my ass."

"Or you're bullshitting me to save your ass."

Roque gave him a disgusted look. "Right, because shooting you in the face wouldn't have been easier."

Clay chuffed and shrugged. "Point."

"Security should be evacuating with the staff, and Gina thinks I've got Lab Two covered. Our way out's through the kitchen." He nodded towards a wide hallway that led deeper into the house.

"What about that hard drive?"

"Look at you. You're not gonna walk out of here on your own. I'll come back for it."

"There won't be time, Roque. You've got, what, four minutes? You'll never make it."

"What do you want me to do, Clay?" Roque's hold tightened and Clay winced, would have gasped if it wouldn't have hurt so damned much. Roque eased up. "Unless you've been faking all of this vertigo because you just enjoy having my arm around you."

Clay looked at him. "Why are you helping me at all, Roque?"

Roque grabbed him around the waist again and started for the hallway. "Don't ask stupid questions."

~§~

"'The Yarn Works'?" Jensen said. "Seriously, what kind of name is that for a super-secret NSA research facility?"

"An inconspicuous one?" Pooch offered. Cougar was in the back of the Hummer babysitting the weapons while Pooch navigated the icy two-lane blacktop. Jensen rode shotgun.

"And which is it," Jensen went on. "Is it 'the yarn works' like 'the iron works', where Ripley finally destroyed the Alien in a flood of molten steel? Or is it like, 'Why yes, the yarn does work, and exceptionally well, thanks'?"

Pooch shot Jensen a skeptical look. "Do you really care?"

"Maybe a little."

"You find anything on them?"

"Not much. Two hundred employees worldwide working on some very far-out things, string theory and dimensional compactification and tesseracts and a bunch of other Madeleine L'Engle, Arthur C. Clarke, Clifford Simak kind of stuff, but only five at this facility. It's actually a private residence on a three-hundred acre site, but about a year ago the owner had an HVAC installed that's spec'd for a facility the size of an auto factory. No other construction plans, though, and the area is zoned residential."

"Underground?"

"That's my guess. The entrance is probably through the house."

"So that at least limits the area we have to cover going in." Pooch tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. "But we've got nothing on what's underneath."

"Not yet. I'm thinking Cougar provides cover, you prep for our get-away if it all goes bad, and I go in and see if I can find something that'll give us an idea of what's downstairs and how to get there."

Cougar was reading Jensen's handheld over his shoulder when he realized Pooch was slowing down. They had crested a hill, and below them was a split-level house of glass and steel surrounded about forty yards out by an iron fence. Cars were parked in the circular driveway, and a small crowd was gathered near the entrance. Cougar grabbed the binoculars. "Five security. Small arms." He looked again, scanning the crowd for Clay or for anyone in charge and found a dark-skinned woman who seemed to be arguing with a man in a lab coat. She was gesturing towards the cars. "Evacuation," he said.

"You see Clay?"

"No."

"This is going to complicate getting in," Pooch said. "No way to sneak around back, the whole area's exposed. Can't just walk in the front when they're evacuating everyone out the front."

Cougar looked from Jensen to Pooch and then to himself. Fatigues, Army greens, weapons. Even Jensen's fighting robots tee-shirt was covered by his tac vest and coat. "They evacuate for a reason," he said.

Jensen grinned. "We're the clean-up crew?"

Pooch looked between them. "Think they'll go for it?"

The woman was still arguing with the man in the lab coat, and the security guards looked nervous and cold, casting glances back at the woman and at the house as if they were hoping someone would let them evacuate, too. They might appreciate being told they could go. Cougar shrugged.

"Let's try it," Jensen said. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"Jensen," Pooch groaned, "I swear, it's like you want to jinx us." He put the truck in gear, though, and drove through the front gate as if they belonged there, and the three of them exited the vehicle and headed for the dark-skinned woman.

She met them halfway. "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. We're--"

Pooch interrupted. "Ma'am, I'm Captain Frank Munroe. We've been sent by Command to deal with the situation. If you could just complete the evacuation, we'll take it from here."

She looked from Pooch to the gaggle of security and scientists. "Could-- could I see some ID?" She pulled her coat more tightly around herself, her breath frosting the air. "We have people inside who are handling things."

"Yes ma'am, we're here to assist them. Ma'am." Pooch dropped his tone a notch. "This is a very dangerous situation. We really need you and your people to move to safety."

"I appreciate that, Captain," she said, frowning, "but we're a secure facility. I can't let you just waltz in there without seeing your ID and your orders."

While Pooch and the woman argued, Cougar scanned the perimeter of the grounds, and movement caught his eye near the back of the house to the east. He raised the binoculars and focused on it, found two men, one supporting the other as if he was injured. He zoomed in, and his heart seemed to stop. "A la verga," he breathed, "es imposible."

"What is it?" Jensen asked, and shifted closer.

Cougar looked again. It couldn't be, but it couldn't be anyone else, either. Cougar would have known the pair of them anywhere. "It's Clay."

"Who's that with him?"

From far below ground came a low rumble. Snow slid off the roof of the house with a muffled sound, and the earth shuddered.

The woman immediately abandoned her argument with Pooch and started towards the small group of security guards and scientists, snapping out orders to get moving. Pooch started for the building, but Jensen grabbed his arm and pointed. "Clay," he said. "Come on."

"Who's the other guy?" Pooch asked.

Cougar drew his M9. "Roque."

Jensen and Pooch both stopped and looked at him. In the distance, Roque was dragging Clay towards the far gate.

"What did you say?"

Cougar tossed the binoculars to Jensen. "It's Roque," he repeated, and took off towards them at a run. Behind him, he could hear glass shattering as the house began to give way.

"It can't be Roque, Roque's dead!"

It might be impossible, but Roque and Clay were almost at the gate, too far for the M9. He shoved it back in its holster and unslung his rifle.

"Cougar! What the hell are you doing?"

Cougar had Roque in his sight, he could make the shot. The earth shuddered again and Clay stumbled, caught at Roque.

"Clay!" Jensen's voice carried even over the explosions. Clay and Roque turned. Jensen was pounding towards them with Pooch on his heels.

Cougar bit out a curse and followed.

~§~

Roque grabbed Clay's belt and hauled him upright again, mindful of his busted ribs. "Come on, come on," he muttered and then shouted, "Outside the fence! Move!"

Jensen always was a fast motherfucker. He skidded to a stop in front of them and stared at Roque with a ridiculous expression on his face, like a kid who'd just found out Santa Claus is real but is here to kill him. Pooch and Cougar made it a second later.

"How are you alive, man?" Pooch asked. He was shrugging out of his coat and wrapping it around Clay.

"Never mind that right now," Roque said. Pooch was getting up under Clay's arm, and Roque started towards the building again. There was still time.

But before he got ten feet, Cougar was in front of him with a gun in his face. "No. Turn around."

"Listen, there's no time," Roque began, but Cougar jerked his chin towards the road. The gun didn't waver.

Roque wasn't sure he could get it away from him without getting his face blown off. "This is Max's base of operations," he tried again. "There's a hard drive, I need to get back in there. I think it--"

He was cut off when the ground shook beneath them, and smoke was starting to billow out from the shattered windows.

"We're out of time, Roque," Clay said. "Come on."

Roque spat a curse and then turned and headed for the gate. Jensen and Pooch all but carried Clay the rest of the way, and they staggered out onto the road just as the last of the explosions went, losing the house in a haze of smoke and dirt. They scrambled down the snowy embankment into the trees.

Then Cougar was pointing that big damned rifle at him again and Roque couldn't hear anything but the blood pounding in his ears. They locked eyes over the barrel, Cougar's hot gaze gone cold as the air around them.

"Cougar." Clay was hunkered out of the wind at the base of a big pine, still wrapped in Pooch's coat. "He saved my life."

Cougar's gaze didn't waver, and neither did the gun. "Why?"

"Well, I haven't found that part out yet. And if you kill him, I never will."

"Hmm?" Cougar jerked his chin at Roque, and Roque looked at Clay. He looked the same as always. A little older, a little more tired. A little more beat up than usual, maybe. But still Clay.

"It isn't a stupid question," Clay said, meeting his gaze. "Any of it. It was a big risk, helping me back there. And why have you been feeding Jensen intel all this time? If Max had found out--"

Jensen looked up from where he was crouched next to Pooch. "Wait a minute, that's you? That was you?" He turned to Clay. "How do you know?"

"Never mind how, Jensen, but yeah. That was him."

Roque felt that familiar irritation swelling into anger. "You're still doing it, man, why do you do that? 'It doesn't matter how I know, I just know. Doesn't matter what you think, I'm right, we're doing it my way. There's the door if you don't like it.'" He looked at Jensen. "He's not -- he's not God, bro, he doesn't know everything. You shouldn't just, just accept it because the almighty Franklin Clay says so."

"Was it you?" Jensen asked.

Roque scowled. "Yeah, it was me, but that's not the point!"

"Sure it is." Jensen shrugged. "You just can't help pushing him."

Clay had the gall to smirk, and if it hadn't been for that big-assed rifle Cougar was holding, Roque would have hauled off and punched him.

"Sometimes he needs it," he snapped instead. "Christ knows none of you ever do."

"Sure we do!" Jensen said. "Just ask him, right, Clay? Sometimes he threatens to gag me two or three times a day, so obviously I'm pushing something."

"Your luck, Jensen," Clay drawled, and Roque didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or punch both of them now.

"What's Max even doing here?" Jensen asked. "There's got to be a whole underground section of that building that's as big as a couple football fields."

"Looking for rare earth minerals," Roque said. "He's got this idea it's the next big threat to homeland security. He thinks we're going to run out, China's not going to share, and then we're not going to have computers anymore, or cell phones, or medical equipment, or who knows what."

"And he thinks he's going to mine them here?" Jensen looked around. "I mean, yeah, there are a lot of rocks, but I don't think they're the right kind."

Roque shook his head. "Not mine them. He had a team trying to work out where to find them -- someplace he could control access to. Why he picked this team, I don't know." He shrugged. "They're theoretical physicists and fucking rocket scientists or some shit, but whatever. I guess that's why they pay him the big bucks."

"To make crazy plans like something out of a Mission Impossible movie?" Pooch said. "Hell, we oughta put Jensen to work then."

Jensen lobbed a pebble at Pooch and it bounced off his tac vest.

Then Jensen looked back at Roque, suddenly serious. "What happened, man?" he asked. "At the Port."

Roque shrugged. "Front half of the plane blew up. I made it to the back half."

"Not that." Jensen shook his head. "I mean why'd you do it? Why'd you turn on us?"

Roque's heart started hammering and he forced himself to meet Jensen's gaze. He'd figured the question would come, but he hadn't expected it so soon. "We weren't going anywhere good," he said quietly. "Just one fucked up mission after another trying to take down some CIA ghost, and Clay--"

Clay sniffing after Aisha like a dog after a bone, wouldn't see anything else, including what she was really doing, what she was really after.

He didn't say that. "He was going to get us all killed," he said instead. "I didn't want to die on Clay's revenge mission."

"And to hell with the rest of us?" Pooch was looking at Roque like Roque was something he'd scraped off the bumper of his truck. "Figured we should've died in that 'copter crash anyway, you'd just take care of that little mistake?"

"No." Roque's chest was tight. "No. Max's men were going to take you out of there, that was the deal. Out of the way and alive. I didn't know the rest of it until today."

Clay snorted. "Why in the hell would you think you could trust a deal with Max?"

Roque rounded on Clay. "Like you thought you could trust a lying bitch who was using us from the start?"

"That 'bitch' saved our lives," Pooch said.

"Why did she even lie in the first place, hm?" Roque asked. "'Oh, I've got this great plan to get leverage on Max, but if I tell these assholes what it is, they'll never agree to help me'? So she just manipulated us into doing whatever she wanted, and I'm the bad guy?"

Clay was looking at him with that smirk he got, the one that always made Roque want to either punch him or push him down and bite his way in. "You saying you would've gone along with it if she'd told us what we were really after in that van?"

"Is that even the point?" Roque asked. "Yeah, I probably would have. It was a good plan, but Jesus, Clay!" The anger was getting the better of him, and he ground it between his teeth. "And you just -- you just went along, like it didn't even matter that she'd lied to us about everything, moved us around like pieces on her goddamned chess board, so who the fuck are you to talk about trust?"

Nobody answered. This time, Clay at least had the decency to look away.

He could still see the haze across the road rising into the darkening sky. It was starting to snow again, and the fat white flakes drifted down with the ash. When they settled on his black sweater they looked perfect before they melted away, but the ash settled and stayed. He rubbed his sleeve and the ash streaked grey, and the snow was wet on his fingers.

"Listen, it's freezing out here," Pooch said at last. "Let's just get the truck and we can do this back at the house."

Cougar shook his head. "I don't trust him that far."

"Well that's okay, Cougs." Roque ignored the way Cougar's lip twitched at the old familiarity. "'Cause I ain't going anywhere. That drive could have survived the explosions, I need to find it."

"What drive are you talking about?" Jensen asked. "What's on it?"

Roque blew into his cupped hands and rubbed them together. "The Bolivia intel, I think. Maybe a lot of things."

"Really?" The snow crunched under Pooch's boots, and he dropped into a crouch beside Roque. "You think it's enough to clear us?"

"I don't know." He shook his head and looked at Pooch, but Pooch's expression was closed, Roque couldn't read it. He blew on his hands again, watching the ground instead. "Can't be sure until I get to it, but if it's there at all, yeah, I think so."

"What caused the explosions?" Pooch asked. "Any idea?"

"Yeah, the place was wired to go up if Max died." Roque shrugged. "Clay shot him."

"You could've warned me about the explosives," Clay grumbled.

"You could've done what I asked you for a goddamned change," Roque snapped back.

"It worked out, didn't it?" Clay said. "Hell, you ever think you should've killed him a goddamned year ago, instead of trying to do Jensen's job for yourself?"

"Okay, seriously," Pooch said, "we're not doing this right now." He was still looking at Roque with that closed expression, narrow-eyed and watchful. "Will you two can it at least long enough for us to figure out the next step? Jesus, I used to think I even missed this part."

"I'll tell you the next step," Roque said, ignoring the sudden tightness in his chest. "You four get the hell out of here and I go find the drive I've been looking for the last year."

"On your own, in a building that's just been blown up?" Pooch shook his head, looking doubtfully towards the smoky haze on the other side of the road. "I don't know, man, that doesn't seem like a great idea."

"What makes you think there'll be anything left, anyway?" Clay asked. "Don't you think if he was going to destroy the place, he'd start with his own files?"

"Maybe. Maybe we'll get lucky, though." Roque shrugged. "Anyway, it's that, or Max's goon squad gets here and we lose our chance to find out."

"You've got to wait for it to cool down at least," Pooch said.

"There's a fire system in there, it'll take care of the fire and most of the smoke," Roque answered. "Anyway, I'll take my chances. With Max dead, I don't know how else we're going to turn back the clock on this one."

Clay looked at him, and Roque looked away. "I don't think there's any turning back the clock, Roque," he said quietly.

It stung, like rubbing a burn. "Yeah, maybe not. But maybe we can at least clear our names." He scrambled up the embankment to get a look at the facility, ignoring the distinctive kchnk-chnk of Cougar chambering a round in the rifle. All but two cars were gone from across the road, just Gina's and the security company van remaining. Gina stood at the front gate with the last two guards, talking. He looked over his shoulder. "Are we doing this, or are you going to shoot me in the back?"

~§~

Cougar shook his head. "No. Why should we believe anything he says, eh? He should be dead."

He wanted to feel cold, but he couldn't stop the pounding of his heart, the blood rushing in his ears. He couldn't stop seeing Clay's face at the Port when he said Roque's name, echoing like a death sentence for everything, everything. Couldn't stop feeling Jensen going to his knees, hearing his own raw shout when those bastardos shot Pooch's legs out from under him.

"I believe him, Cougar," Clay said. "Maybe he wanted to kill me, but that's between me and him."

Anger seethed up from Cougar's heart to his mouth, and he swallowed a string of curses. This should have been easy. If he had ever thought he would see Roque again, he would have thought this would be easy.

"Then how did Max get you, eh?" he snapped at last. "If he was on our side all along. Why didn't he stop it?"

"Max was after Jensen," Clay said, and Cougar's heart lurched, his breath stopping in his lungs. He looked at Jensen. "Roque was protecting him. Protecting Jenny and Beth, too, they were Max's first target."

Jensen jerked around to look at him. "My Jenny? My Jenny and Beth?"

Clay nodded. "I heard it from Max's own mouth, Jensen. Apparently Roque talked him out of it. Offered to get you instead, and set up a trap he knew you wouldn't fall into."

"Just didn't know you would, did he?" Pooch asked quietly, and Clay looked away.

"Come on, Cougs," Jensen said. "Let's just get the drive while we have the chance, and then we'll figure out what the hell happened and what to do next."

"Cougar." Clay had that quiet tone, the one he got when he really meant it.

Cougar snarled and lowered the rifle.

Pooch rubbed a hand over his face. "Jesus. Come on, let's just do this before someone shows up and tries to stop us. It's going to be dark soon."

"All right, who are we dealing with over there?" Clay asked.

"Two rent-a-cops and Gina Bates," Roque said as Cougar shimmied up the embankment next to him. "They won't be any problem." They were in easy range, too, and Cougar started to take aim at the guard on the left, but Roque cursed and shoved the barrel of the rifle down. Cougar jerked away from him.

"They're just security guards. They're no threat to us. Just let me handle this."

"Well, they do work for Max," Jensen said. "That kind of makes them a threat, doesn't it?"

"Gina's a fucking office manager, for God's sake, she works for The Yarn Works! The guards, they've got no idea what's going on here, but they know me. I'm just gonna go over there and talk to them, they'll do what I tell them."

"So you're just going to walk away from us again?" Pooch said.

"I'm not walking away, I'm -- I didn't walk away before, goddamn it. Clay told me to leave!"

"What?" Clay sat forward, staring at Roque. "When did I tell you to leave?"

"Right before you punched me in the face, bro. Remember that?"

"For Chrissake." Clay rubbed his eyes. "You knew I didn't mean it."

"I knew that? How in the hell would I know that?"

Pooch dropped to a crouch between them. "We don't have time for this. You can kick the shit out of each other after we're done here, but for now, just shut the hell up and pretend you remember how to work together."

Roque sighed and glanced at his watch. "All right, give me five minutes to get Gina and the guys out of the way."

"I'm going with you," Cougar said.

Roque shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"No, I'll go," Jensen said. "Cougs should stay here, in case something goes wrong and we need a--"

Roque started to protest that nothing was going to go wrong, but Cougar ignored him. "I'm going," he said, his eyes locked on Jensen's. He wouldn't watch Jensen walking away with the man who tried to have them killed, towards strangers with guns whose loyalties, if they had any, might be to that very man. He wouldn't.

After a moment Jensen backed off. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

"No time like the present, ladies," Roque said. "If we're doing this, let's do it."

The two guards had their backs turned; they waited until the woman looked away before Roque scrambled up and across the road, Cougar on his heels. Together, they slipped through the back gate, and then Roque was striding towards the woman and the security guards like he belonged there.

She saw them at twenty yards out and clapped her hands over her mouth, then came trotting towards them. "Bill! Oh my god, Bill, I was sure you were dead! What happened?"

"Containment failure," Roque said. She fell into step beside him. "It triggered a self-destruct. Did everyone else get out?"

"I can't reach Stevens or Operative One," she answered, "but the staff and security all made it. I sent most of them home."

Roque nodded. "Op One left about ten minutes before the failure. I've notified him, clean-up is on the way." She glanced at Cougar and frowned, but Roque continued smoothly, "Some of the team is already inside. We're headed down there now."

"Into the building?" Her gaze flitted between Roque and the smoky wreck of the house. "Well, I mean, is that safe?"

Roque grinned. "They don't pay us to stay safe. But listen, I need the three of you to leave before they get here. Security may be blown down on the lower levels, and I don't want them thinking any of you might have tried to go down there, might have seen something you weren't supposed to."

Gina's eyebrows furrowed together and she started to protest, but Roque cut her off. "No arguments. With Op One off site I'm in command, and I'm ordering the three of you to leave. As far as anyone knows, you evacuated with the rest of the staff."

After a moment, Gina nodded. "Yes, Colonel. Just...be careful, okay?" Then she offered him a weak smile and added, "And get a coat before you freeze."

While Gina and the guards headed for their vehicles, Cougar turned and surveyed the house. The huge glass windows had shattered, and it looked as though the structure inside hadn't held up very well either. Smoke was billowing up from somewhere below ground, as if part of the floor had given way.

By the time the sound of the engines had faded, Cougar could see Jensen, Clay, and Pooch heading toward them.

"You're a colonel now?" he asked while they waited for the team.

Roque shook his head. "Bill Nash is a colonel. William Roque is still dead."

But William Roque was no more dead than Cougar was. It seemed wrong to have carried the weight of his death all these months only to find him still alive, and Cougar wasn't sure whether he wanted to kill him to make up for it, or for revenge, or to set things right...or not at all. It pounded in his heart like a drumbeat that he didn't know how to answer.

"All right, what have we got here?" Clay asked as they walked up.

Roque nodded inside. "Emergency staircase to the east goes all the way down. Labs one and two are one level down, three and four on the next, and five and six are on the lowest level -- Max's office is down there."

"Let's go see if the stairs are intact."

They wrapped their faces before heading into the house, but the smoke was still acrid, stinging their eyes. Emergency power seemed to be on, although the lights were flickering. Maybe the ventilation system was on as well. Roque led the way and found the door to the stairs unlocked. Emergency lights lit the stairwell, and Roque peered down into the reddish darkness. "They're intact," he said. "Let's go."

~§~

Roque stood next to Clay, staring at the black water. He couldn't tell how deep, but a light far below glimmered faintly, like someone had left a lamp on. The water lapped almost to the edge of Max's office door; Roque's code hadn't worked, so now Jensen was trying to hack it and Roque was standing here beside Clay, and if someone didn't know, they wouldn't know anything had changed from this time two years ago, three years, ten.

'Course everyone who was there knew.

"Where's that light coming from?" Clay asked.

Roque shrugged. "Don't know. As far as I ever knew, this is the lowest level -- there shouldn't be anything down there at all. Max talked about 'the basement' a couple times but I thought he meant right here."

Pooch was standing at the edge where the floor fell away, shining his flashlight into the murky depths. "Looks like there's a bearing wall beneath us. We should be okay for now unless the water keeps coming up."

Clay hunkered down and put his hand in the water, snatched it back and shook off the drops. "Cold," he said. "Like it's from an outside source."

"Too much water too fast to be busted pipes anyway," Pooch said, "unless it started way before the explosions."

Behind them came a satisfying click, and Jensen's crow of victory. "I knew you loved me, baby. We're in. You were close, Roque," he said as he pushed the door open. "Last two numbers were off."

But the sight that greeted them on the other side made Roque's stomach drop, and he bit off a curse. The fire suppression system had put the fire out and the ventilation system had cleared out most of the smoke, but the interior of the office was a blackened wreck.

Clay stepped in and looked around with a tired expression. "Goddamn it."

"Now, don't be such a gloomy gus," Jensen said. "Just because the place is a cinder doesn't mean Roque's mythical hard drive didn't make it. There's about a million kinds of safes that would laugh their asses off at a fire like this -- if, you know, they had asses -- and there are MilSpec drives that'll probably outlive the cockroaches. We're here, let's take a look."

It was ten minutes of fruitless sifting through the wreckage before Pooch let out a whistle. "Something like this?" he asked. He was brushing debris off a steel safe about the size of an old record player. It was scorched black, but the lock looked intact and nothing seemed to have breached the safe itself.

"How heavy is it?" Clay asked. "Can we carry it out of here?"

"It's still pretty hot. Jensen, give me your coat."

Jensen shrugged out of it and handed it over; Pooch wrapped it around the safe and hefted it with a grunt. "Not easy," he said, "but yeah. Not--not gonna be outrunning anyone, though."

"Well, let's get a move on," Clay said, "and maybe you won't have to."

Pooch heaved the safe higher in his grip and Roque followed Clay into the hallway.

Jensen was standing at the edge of the water and squinting at it. "Dude, what did Max keep down here?"

"Nothing," Roque said. "Nothing he ever told me about, anyway."

"No secret menageries of alien life forms or anything? Because I swear to you, I saw something move." Jensen pointed. "Right there, like a snake, but way, way bigger."

"There aren't any snakes here this time of year, Jensen, you know that." Roque hunkered down and peered into the water. "Probably some piece of equipment that tore loose, floating around."

"And why is there a light on down there?" Jensen went on. He was frowning. "Maybe Max had, like, a lap pool down here or something? Hot tub?"

"Guys, can we just go?" Pooch asked. His voice was strained.

Then Cougar jerked around to face the open stairway door as the sound of booted feet reached them. They were moving fast, too. Whoever it was must have heard them.

"Shit," Clay muttered. "Back inside!"

There was the heavy thud of Pooch putting the safe down as Cougar bolted through the office doorway and swung around to train his rifle on the stairs, and then everything seemed to happen at once. Three men barreled into the hallway, weapons drawn and barking orders to get down! Down on the ground! that were interrupted by the pop of Cougar's rifle and a sudden eruption from the water. A pair of silvery-slick tentacles wrapped around Jensen and jerked him off his feet. He crashed into the water with a shout. More men were on the stairs, Pooch and Cougar were already engaged and Clay was drawing Roque's pistol, Roque saw it all in a flash, and he launched himself into the churning water after Jensen.

The icy cold hit him like a fist. He choked off the urge to gasp and kicked hard after Jensen and the thing that had taken him. They were like something out of an old horror movie silhouetted against the glimmering light far below, Jensen struggling against the creature and the light strobing around them. Blood was in the water, but Roque didn't know whose.

Then one of those crazy-long tentacles flailed close and he grabbed it and started pulling himself forward. The thing had smooth, cold, snake-like skin, all muscle underneath and rippling in Roque's hand. It was dragging them deeper, towards the light that shouldn't be there, and his chest ached, his fingers already clumsy from the cold. They needed to finish this fast.

He fought his way to Jensen's side. One tentacle was wrapped tight around Jensen's chest, and Roque drew his knife and cut across it, hard. It was tough as shark skin, but a cloud of blackish blood filled the water; he thought he could taste it, oily and strange. One of the tentacles lashed across his face, another around his thigh, and he and Jensen were slashing at it, his lungs burning, he could barely grip his knife. And then suddenly it was shooting away from them and they were free. They kicked for the surface and broke through.

Four intruders lay sprawled on the floor and Clay struggled with a fifth; Pooch cracked the guy with the butt of his rifle as Roque tried to clear his eyes. Cougar was scrambling towards the water, reaching for Jensen.

"I'm okay," Jensen sputtered as he grabbed Cougar's hand. "I'm okay, it's just a scratch. Roque's hurt though."

"What?" Roque hauled himself out of the freezing water onto the floor. "No, I'm not."

"Yeah, dude, you are," Jensen said, and pointed. "Look."

Roque looked. A dark red gash slit his sweater across his forearm, just above his wrist, and blood was soaking the sleeve. "Goddamn it."

"I was cutting at that thing when you grabbed for me. Sorry, man."

"Don't worry about it." Roque looked at the water again. "What the hell was that? They keeping mutant octopuses down there?"

"Octopi," Jensen said absently, "and no, that was not an octopus. That was like, motherfucking Cthulu or something. I've never seen anything like it."

Roque felt cold from the inside out, and his teeth were starting to chatter. He bit down. "Let's just--just get the fuck outta here."

"Cougs," Clay said, "go get the truck. Pooch, can you carry that safe?"

"Yeah, boss."

"Jensen, Roque, shirts off. Now." Clay was stripping off Pooch's coat, and he tossed it to Jensen and shrugged out of his suit jacket. Roque pulled off his soaked cotton sweater and Clay thrust the jacket into his hands. It was warm from Clay's body, and smelled like him, Old Spice and Irish Spring soap and the musky odor of Clay's sweat. "Come on."

~§~

Cougar brought the truck fishtailing to a stop in front of the demolished house and left the engine running, went pounding towards his team where they were emerging from the wreckage. Jensen was dripping wet; Cougar needed to get him out of those clothes and into something that wouldn't freeze him.

He was dimly aware of Pooch throwing the safe into the truck, of Clay and Roque arguing about something as he manhandled a protesting Jensen into the back seat and scrambled in after him, but none of it mattered. No one was shooting at them, so the only thing that mattered was Jensen. He started unbuckling Jensen's belt as Roque climbed in beside them and Clay slammed the front passenger side door.

Jensen batted at him with cold hands. "Dude, seriously, I'm not -- hey, hey now, is this really the time and place? We've talked about appropriate-- hey!"

Pooch slid behind the wheel and put the truck in gear. "Shut up, Jensen, you're soaked, take your damn pants off."

"You too, Roque," Clay said.

Cougar tugged Jensen's BDUs and smalls down over his hips. His skin was cold to the touch. "In back," he said, and crouched on the floorboards to work on Jensen's bootlaces while Roque dug around for the blankets. The truck rumbled out over the grounds and towards the road.

"Hey, thanks man," Jensen said, taking the blanket and wrapping it around himself. "Starting to feel a little vulnerable here." Cougar shrugged out of his coat and tucked it around Jensen as well, then went back to work on the boots.

"Don't be stupid, Roque," Pooch said, and Cougar realized they were still arguing. "Heater in this thing is for shit, and it won't do you much good anyway if you don't get out of those wet clothes. There's no heat at the house 'til I make a gasoline run. You want to freeze to death?"

"I'm not gonna f-freeze to death, just get us out of here."

"Not like we've never seen you without your pants on Roque, get 'em off." Clay twisted around and reached for him and Roque grabbed Clay's wrist.

After a moment, Clay shrugged. "Suit yourself."

The knots of Jensen's laces were swollen and stiff, and Cougar cursed under his breath, and finally just drew his knife and cut through them. He pulled the boots and socks off and Jensen kicked the rest of the way out of his BDUs. His feet were white from cold. Cougar yanked his shirt up squirmed lower until he could hug them to his chest.

Jensen grinned at him and wiggled his toes. "See?" he said. "Not dead. Not even close."

Cougar's heart was pounding like a drum. He couldn't shake the sight of that thing jerking Jensen back and Jensen plunging into the water, and Cougar unable to get to him, unable to do anything but fight for his own life while Jensen was fighting, alone, for his.

Except he hadn't been alone. Roque had gone in after him.

Roque was huddled in on himself and shivering. He looked ridiculous in Clay's suit coat and his wet trousers turning the green Army blanket dark. Blood smeared his hand.

He didn't owe Roque anything. Not a moment's thought.

"Hey," Jensen said, and turned to Roque. "Thanks, man."

Roque shrugged. "I needed a swim."

Jensen was shivering under the blanket, and Cougar reached up to tuck the coat tighter around him.

He didn't owe Roque anything.

 

"Cougar, you know you don't need an excuse to cuddle up with me," Jensen said, and grinned, and Cougar gave him a shove but resisted the urge to push him off the bed. It would have been too much trouble, and Cougar would have lost his Jensen-shaped lap-warmer.

The team had dressed for the weather before heading out, so Jensen had been well-insulated against the cold. Now he was bundled up in dry clothes and blankets, leaning back into Cougar's arms as his fingers danced over the laptop keyboard to tease out the secrets of the hard drive Pooch had extracted from the safe before he left on his gasoline run.

The hard drive Roque had led them to.

Roque, who should have been dead. Cougar had meant to kill him the moment he saw him there with Clay, and only Jensen's shout had stopped him.

He had had the shot, but he lost it when he hesitated.

And when that thing had dragged Jensen under, Roque hadn't. He'd hit the water barely a heartbeat after Jensen, while Cougar was trapped by Max's hired guns -- and who was to say Roque wasn't still one of them? Just because Max was dead didn't mean he was no longer a threat. A new devil by an old name -- Roque himself, maybe, taking up his former master's mantle.

But Roque had dived in after Jensen, not knowing -- or claiming not to know -- what was down there, only what they all knew, that something had snatched Jensen from dry land and pulled him under with barely time to shout. Jensen might be dead if not for Roque.

But if not for Roque, they never would have come here. But then, if not for Roque's intel, who knew whether they would have been as successful against Max as they had been.

But that intelligence had never given them enough to catch up to Max himself. Except now they had caught up with him and found Roque working for him, angry when Clay had killed him -- and Cougar wasn't even considering the question of what that would mean when Aisha got back -- but Clay wouldn't have had the chance to kill Max if Roque hadn't been helping Clay escape.

There were too many threads and they were too tangled up, and the only thing Cougar knew for sure about Roque was that he was in the next room trying to get warm. He rested his forehead against the back of Jensen's head and drew in a breath.

"I can hear you thinking, Cougar," Jensen said. "For a guy who doesn't talk much you sure do think a lot. And loudly."

Cougar smiled.

"I know what you're thinking about, too," he went on. "Same thing I'm thinking about."

"Sex?" Cougar offered.

"Always," Jensen said, and then, "but apart from that, I'm thinking about how the hell is Roque still alive, and how come none of us have killed him yet."

In Jensen's voice, it was actually a question. Cougar suspected that if he himself had said that, it would have come out a threat.

"And I have some theories on that," Jensen continued, "most of which boil down to-- whoa, wait a minute." He leaned forward, and Cougar could feel his focus shift to the computer and whatever he had found. He looked over Jensen's shoulder. "Holy shit, Cougs, check this out."

Cougar read what Jensen was showing him, but it made as little sense to him as if it had been written in hieroglyphics. He could feel Jensen's heartbeat speeding up, though. "What is it?"

"Dude, this is unreal. Max has a portal to a whole other planet! He's found a way to create a--I don't know, like, a cross-dimensional doorway or something. It'll take me a while to understand the calculations, if I even can, but Cougs!" He turned and grinned at Cougar, wide and bright as a child on Christmas morning. "If this is true, do you know what it means?"

Even for Cougar it was sometimes difficult to follow what Jensen was saying, but this made less sense than usual. Finally he shook his head.

Jensen laughed and twisted around to kiss him. "I'm going to be an astronaut!"

~§~

Roque couldn't stop shivering. He was curled up in the bed in Clay's room -- he couldn't think of it as Clay's bed, that was too weird. It was just the bed in the room Clay had chosen in this old farmhouse. But even though he was huddled under a couple of blankets and a sleeping bag and was finally dry, he still couldn't get warm.

Clay was standing in the doorway watching him, and Roque was pretending not to know. Awkward enough that he was doing it at all without Roque having to admit to noticing.

Finally he came into the room. Roque heard him taking his coat off. "I swear, it's like you've got a death wish."

"F-fuck you, Clay." His voice was muffled by the blankets.

He heard the shirt go next and then the bed dipped, and he rolled halfway over to see Clay sitting on the edge of it, unlacing his boots.

"First, you turn on us," Clay said. "Then you go to work for the man who tried to kill us."

Who would have succeeded, too, he didn't say, if it hadn't been for those kids. Roque still felt sick when he thought of them.

"And then you go after Cougar's boyfriend? Like he didn't already have it in for you."

Clay's voice had a teasing edge to it, but Roque rose to the bait anyway. "You know I w-w-wasn't. Fucking trying to keep the little shit out of trouble." He shifted lower in the bed and pulled the blankets close. "Anyway, saved him from a m-monster octopus, gotta count for something."

Clay stripped off his slacks and tossed them across the foot of the bed and then he tugged the blankets down just enough to scoot in behind Roque before he pulled them back up. Roque pushed him away, but this time Clay pushed back, wrapping his arm across Roque to pin his bandaged wrist there.

Clay's skin was warm, and an ache curled low in Roque's belly, familiar from too long ago to remember. It spread to his heart and lodged there, crept like heat to his groin. Clay tucked his knees up behind Roque's, his smooth skin against the scars that traced Roque's body like a map of just how fucked up his life had become.

"Is this why?" Clay asked. His fingertips skimmed the scars on Roque's thigh, and Roque grabbed his hand and pulled it away. "We've all got scars, Roque," Clay said quietly.

"Not like these."

Clay twisted his hand free and set it flat against Roque's chest, over his heart. After a while, he said, "Why'd you do it?"

Roque let the question tremble in the air until the air felt tight with it. Then answered at last, "The reason I told you. You kept acting like Aisha had all the answers, like she w-wasn't lying to us from the start, manipulating us -- manipulating you. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen, you didn't hear a word I said from the day you met her." He shook his head. "I didn't turn on you, Clay. You would've had to have been facing me for that."

Clay didn't say anything for a long time. Finally he pulled the blankets closer around them and said, "It's a stupid reason to let yourself get hypothermia."

Roque didn't know what answer he'd expected, but that wasn't it. "Not hypothermic," he said. He was pretty sure. "Just cold."

"Glad to hear it." But Clay stayed where he was, and Roque didn't push him away.

 

He had drifted into a dream, something about Max's house, the glass shattering, water crashing through, when the growl of an engine outside pulled him awake. He felt warmer, and he wasn't shivering anymore, and Clay was still curled loosely behind him.

He heard the scrape of metal outside, and after a while, the rumble of the generator started up, and the front door opened and then banged shut. A few minutes later, the heat came on, and then there was a murmur of voices. He recognized Aisha's clear tone and his heart stuttered, but he couldn't make out what she was saying.

Clay's breathing changed. He was awake.

"I was wondering where your girlfriend was," Roque said.

"She's not my girlfriend."

Roque snorted.

"She was never my girlfriend." Clay sounded aggrieved.

"Could've fooled me."

"Anyway, we haven't...we're not that way anymore. Not since the Port. She's more like..."

"...like your crazy cousin who's going to stab you to death in your sleep?"

Clay didn't say anything for a long time. Then, "Like a business partner." Then he shrugged. "A business partner who might stab me to death in my sleep."

"So are you over women who want to kill you?"

"It just works out that way, Roque," Clay said. "I don't like them because they want to kill me--"

"They want to kill you because you like them?" Roque asked. "Makes sense to me."

"Shut up."

There were footsteps on the stairs, and then the door to the bedroom banged open and Aisha said, "Clay, you need to hear-- Oh, oh, you have got to be kidding me."

Clay groaned.

"Hello, Aisha," Roque said.

"Seriously?" Aisha was staring at Clay. "Seriously?"

Pooch's voice came up from below: "I told you."

"You told me Roque was here," Aisha called down, "you didn't tell me he and Clay were cuddled up like goddamned puppies!"

"Aisha," Clay said.

"Put your damn pants on, and get your ass downstairs. You need to hear this." Then she was gone, slamming the door shut.

Clay pushed the covers back and got to his feet with a sigh, grabbed his slacks from the foot of the bed. "You'd better come, too."

"Only if you get me some pants."

~§~

Clay waited for Roque to finish pulling on his borrowed clothes in the dim light, his back to Clay the whole time. He was right about the scars, they were impressive, a lattice of injury healed and toughened. They looked silvery in the moonlight, though, and Clay wanted to touch them again, trace his fingers over them. He remembered Roque's thighs before the fire, smooth and strong with their dusting of dark hair, his muscled calves, the soft backs of his knees. Clay had always been so careful not to let on that he saw. So sure of what he needed to be for Roque.

He thought now that maybe he'd been wrong about a lot of things.

Downstairs Aisha was perched on the back of the couch, her boots on either side of a file folder that rested on the battered seat. Pooch leaned in the kitchen doorway. They were still conserving gasoline so all the lights were off, and someone -- probably Pooch -- had lit candles. The golden glow gave the room a welcoming feeling, softening the edges and hiding the stains on the floor, the peeling wallpaper.

"Welcome home," Jensen said, and plunked down on the couch with his computer in his lap. He had Max's hard drive still connected. Cougar sat next to him. "How was your trip?"

"Informative," Aisha said. She looked at Roque. "What the hell is he doing here?"

"Back from the dead," Jensen said. "Amazing, isn't it?"

Clay brushed the crumbs off the old sprung loveseat that dominated one corner of the room and sat down. "It's a long story." He ignored Jensen's muttered "not that long." Roque seated himself at the foot of the stairs and leaned back. "So what's this news that won't wait?"

Aisha didn't answer at first, still watching Roque, then she shook her head and picked up the folder. "About thirty miles north of here is a research facility owned by a biotechnology consulting firm that's been working on a project for Max for the last eight months," she began. "The short version is that they were trying to create a super-soldier, but what they created is a monster. About two hundred monsters, actually," she added, "and the ability for Max to start Armageddon any time he wants to."

Another day at the office. Clay rubbed his eyes. "Do I even want to know the long version?"

"Uh, this consulting firm," Jensen said, "it wouldn't happen to be called Poiesis, by any chance, would it?"

She looked at him, and her expression said everything.

"Shit." Jensen snapped open his laptop. "This, this," and he pointed at Roque, "I got in there this morning, here, look at this." He held the screen up for Aisha. "Is this your super-soldier?"

She pressed her lips together and nodded. "That's them. They developed a formula they called Factor 17 that was only intended to make the subject stronger and faster. The parasite was something Max dug up."

"What does it do?" Clay asked.

Aisha's expression was grim. "Combined with the serum, it was supposed to also make them utterly obedient, and cheaper to feed."

"'Cause there's no way that could go horribly wrong," Jensen muttered.

"And it actually does that," Aisha went on, "and also makes them practically impossible to kill. You can't even starve them to death. The parasite keeps them alive."

There was a pause, and then Jensen said, "Cheap to feed, impossible to kill. So much for getting our old jobs back."

Aisha shook her head. "There's more. One of Dr. Lowen's colleagues thinks it's extra-terrestrial in origin, but wherever it comes from, she said it's like nothing they've seen before. Very aggressive. Apparently its primary effect is to force the victim to infect new victims, passing the parasite into the bloodstream."

"So, what, like, attacking them?"

She nodded. "They've got the subjects who didn't die outright from the parasite or the serum housed at that facility, locked in a containment area to prevent the spread of the infection. They're not super-soldiers. They're incredibly tough and resilient plague carriers, and there are over a hundred of them."

"Awesome," Jensen muttered. "Dear Santa: when I asked for Zombie Apocalypse for Christmas, I meant the video game."

"Is there a cure?" Pooch asked.

"There might be." Aisha stepped down from the couch and started leafing through the file. "They were testing a variant on an anti-parasitic drug, mebendazole. If you can keep the victim's body temperature below ninety-six degrees, the parasite goes dormant, and they think this mebendazole compound they've created will kill it while it's in the dormant state. Then things got out of hand and now the subjects are too dangerous to test it on. But it gets a lot worse."

She started passing around a sheaf of papers. "Lowen told me Max has a delivery system. That was the thread that finally tied it all together, everything I've found over the last six and a half months. It's all detailed in these files. He has people ready to infect the blood supply in almost five hundred cities worldwide. I just don't know when or why."

She shook her head and paced over to the window. "Why would he do it? There wouldn't be any containing the chaos. There wouldn't be a government left to control. He'd be in the shit along with all the rest of us."

"Any idea what the signal is to begin?" Clay asked.

"Not yet." She turned and leaned against the sill. "He sends them a coded transmission on the first of each month, it's the same every time. He must be telling them to hold, but I don't know what the signal is to start."

Roque put his hands over his face and took a breath. "He wanted to take it with him," he murmured. "If he died, so did everybody else."

The back of Clay's neck went cold. "Jensen, anything on that drive that'll help us? Today's the twenty-sixth."

"I'm looking, boss," Jensen said, head down over the keyboard.

Clay glanced over to find Aisha watching him. "What do you mean, 'today's the twenty-sixth'?" she asked. "Clay."

She was looking at him like she had that day at the Port, holding her gun on him and then choosing not to shoot. Not then. Pooch's hand was on his sidearm, and he was watching Aisha. Clay faced her. "Max is dead, Aisha."

Aisha stared at him. She gripped the windowsill so tightly her hand shook. "When? How?"

"Earlier today. I shot him in the heart."

She didn't answer. The air felt as brittle as ice.

"He was going to kill us," Clay said. "I didn't have a choice."

Aisha sucked in a breath. "No, that's. He's dead. That's what I wanted."

Jensen was looking at her like he thought she might break. He started to get up, but she gave the smallest jerk of her head and he subsided.

Finally she looked at Clay again. "How did it happen?"

Clay glanced over at Roque, who was still on the stairs, watching them both. "I got caught in a trap Max set for Jensen. Roque was trying to get me out when Max turned up with a gun, threatened to kill us both, so I shot him."

"Why was Roque even there?" Aisha asked, and turned to Roque. "Why were you there?"

But Jensen interrupted. "Don't forget to tell her about the part where the house blew up," he said, "and we almost froze to death before we went back to get Max's hard drive, and Roque and I were attacked by Cthu--wait a minute." He looked at her, his eyes wide. "Shit. You said one doctor thought the parasite was extra-terrestrial?"

Aisha nodded. "So what?"

"So, so, so, look at this." He turned the laptop towards her. "Guys, I know what's down there. I know what's in Max's basement, and where all that water came from. Look, Roque said Max was looking for a source for rare earth minerals, right?"

Roque nodded. "One he could maintain control over."

"And he was using a team of theoretical physicists and ex-NASA geeks from The Yarn Works to do it," Jensen continued. "Well, here--" He pointed to the screen. "--is what The Yarn Works was doing. They've figured out how to...how to pinch space, so you can move from point A to point Z without having to go through points B through Y."

"Now wait a minute," Clay said, "this sounds like one of your bad science fiction movies."

"Like SNUKEs?" Jensen said. "Don't diss the science fiction, Clay. It usually turns into science fact." He started ticking things off on his fingers. "Helicopters -- DaVinci invented those centuries before anyone built one. Space flight, cell phones, cloning, the internet, bionics, nanotechnology--"

"Okay, I get it, I get it," Clay broke in.

"--time travel--"

Clay frowned. "Time trav...never mind. Just...just go on with what you were saying."

Jensen cleared his throat. "Anyway, it wouldn't have to be on another planet, it could be right here on Earth. We've only explored, like, five percent of the ocean, there could be anything down there. But what if," he went on, while Aisha skimmed the text on his computer screen, "what if while he was looking for those minerals, he found that parasite and decided to use it? And that's what's down in that basement. I figure the explosions took out whatever Max's team was using to contain the...the portal, or whatever you want to call it, and that's why the place was flooded, that's why the water was so much colder than it should have been. And that's why there was a whatever-the-hell-that-was in there, either some undiscovered animal from Earth's deep oceans, or something from another planet altogether."

"And a parasite that gets in through the blood," Clay said.

Jensen's eyes went wide, and he touched the light red scratch that creased his throat.

Roque was looking at his bandaged wrist. "Goddamn it."

~§~

What surprised Roque was that nobody shot him on the spot just to be safe.

"No! No, no." He pushed to his feet and paced towards Clay. "If Jensen's right, we need to go back there and close that thing before anything worse happens."

"Not until after we get you two looked at." Clay was leaning in the kitchen doorway, and in the low light from the candles Roque couldn't read his face, but there was tension in his studied slouch. "Aisha says these doctors can help. We're going to get help."

"Roque, come on, sit down," Jensen said. Cougar was hovering near him. "If you've got that thing in you, then the more you move around, the faster it moves!"

"You too, Jensen." Pooch pointed to a chair. "Sit down and chill. You were in that water with him, you could both be infected."

That was enough for Cougar, and he grabbed Jensen and started for the couch. Jensen snagged Roque's arm as they passed and pulled him down beside them.

"Jensen, I'm not--"

"Shut up and breathe, Roque," Jensen said. "Nice, deep, slow breaths. In through the nose, out through--"

"Will you please shut up," Aisha hissed, "I'm-- Yes, I'm trying to reach Doctor Kimberly Lowen. Yes, I'll hold."

"Look." Roque tried to get up again but Jensen hauled him back down. "Why are we going to get treatment and then just turn around and go back to where we'll get infected again?"

"We need a plan." Clay came over to join them and leaned against the wall beside Pooch. "We need to know how to close the thing before we go back and try to do it, and you two can see these doctors and let them help you while we figure that out."

"Okay, all right, Gina," Roque said. "She can put us in touch with the project lead, his name's Burwell. He tells us how to close it, and boom. Done. Then we--"

"That's great, we'll do that," Clay said, "but first we're getting you and Jensen checked out."

"You're not breathing, Roque," Jensen said. He wafted air towards them with his hands. "In through the nose, out through the mouth. Do it with me."

Aisha hung up and looked at Clay. "I can't raise anyone at Poiesis, but there are two doctors and four nurses on site twenty-four seven, plus security. Someone will be there who can help."

"You heard the lady," Clay said, and got to his feet. "Let's move.

 

They took the Ford crew cab pickup that Pooch had acquired somewhere, and piled in with Jensen and Roque huddled in the bed of the truck, the idea being that if the parasite went dormant when the body dropped below 96 degrees, maybe the cold would slow it down a little.

They rode in silence for a while, quiet except for the sound of Jensen's fingers tapping on his keyboard. Roque watched the snow swirl behind them like a tunnel as Pooch navigated the icy road.

Finally, Jensen shut the laptop. "For my next trick, after we find out whether we're infected with zombie parasites, I'm going to become an astronaut."

Roque's mouth twitched in a smile. "I thought astronauts had rocket ships."

Jensen waved him off. "I'll be on another planet. I think that counts no matter how I get there."

"Just watch out for parasites. Next one might turn us into aliens instead of zombies."

"I'm sure we're fine," Jensen said. "That was a lot of water. What are the odds some tiny little parasite would have found these tiny little cuts in all that water?"

Roque shrugged. "Hope you're right. I'd hate to survive Cougar's death-glares only to get taken out by something too small to see." Cougar was still watching him like he thought Roque might jump out the back and take Jensen with him.

Jensen grinned and shook his head. "You pissed him off pretty badly when you double-crossed us," he said. "I don't think he's really over it yet."

Roque looked at him. "You seem awfully chill about it, bro. What's up with that?"

"You mean why don't I keep looking at you like I'm going to blow your face off at the first opportunity?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

Jensen was quiet for a while, until Roque started to wonder if he was going to answer at all. Then he said, "After it happened, the thing I didn't get was how they could all go on like it was nothing." He shook his head, staring past Roque's shoulder. The snowy landscape was flashing by in black-and-white. "It was weird. They acted like... like you'd never even been there. Like you'd just been some stranger, or one of Max's hired guns."

It was a knife sliding in, and Roque wasn't prepared for how much it hurt. He felt stupid to have expected anything else. "Yeah, 'course they did," he murmured.

"Yeah, they didn't, though, not really," Jensen said. Roque looked at him. "I figured it out after a couple of months. That was just how they wanted to feel, so they pretended they did -- pretended all of us did, until they thought we really all felt that way."

"But not you."

Jensen shrugged. "You know me, I wouldn't shut up about it for like a month and a half after. It drove me nuts. I kept starting to say something 'cause I knew it'd irritate you, or looking around for you like you were going to be there, f-f-fuck it's cold out here." He huddled in on himself, and Roque wished he had a coat or something for the guy.

"This is bullshit," he muttered. "Freezing our asses off back here."

"Yeah." Jensen blew into his cupped hands and nodded. "Makes them feel better though. And hey, who knows, maybe it will slow the little bastards down."

"Yeah, maybe." Roque tucked his hands under his armpits anyway, and tried to hunker down out of the wind.

After a while, Jensen spoke again. "So yeah. I kept trying to corner Clay, or Pooch, but even Cougar wouldn't talk to me about it." He glanced Cougar's way again, but there was no way any of the others would be able to hear them, not out here with the wind whipping their words away into the snow. He met Roque's eyes. "He loved you, Roque," he said. "We all did." Another blade sliding in beside the first. "And they never grieved for you, they never dealt with any of it, and now you're back, and all those feelings are up at the surface again. Do they hate you, do they not, why'd you do it, all of that, and they're getting all turned inside out."

"Why not you?" Roque asked.

"You mean why don't I hate you?"

Roque nodded.

"I did for a while," he said. "Like, for a long time, even after I shut up about it. I hated you a lot. But hate isn't the opposite of love, you know," he added. "Indifference is."

It was another little twist of the knife, and Roque asked even though he didn't think he wanted to know the answer. "And you're indifferent now, is that it?"

Jensen laughed. "To you? Hell no." He shook his head. "No, I'm kind of back to hating you."

"Hey now, you just said you didn't."

Jensen smirked at him. "I said kind of. Listen, man, if Cougar jerked me around the way Clay did you?"

"Oh, whoa, wait a minute," Roque said, leaning forward and glancing towards the front, even though he knew they couldn't hear. "Wait a minute."

Jensen just rolled on. "I've been thinking about this, Roque, and okay, maybe I didn't see it then, but everything moved so fast, you know? I was just trying to get from one crisis to the next without dying, I wasn't really spending a lot of mental cycles on your and Clay's epic bromance."

Roque snorted. "Our what?"

"Come on, keep up, Roque, your epic bromance. Get with the new century. And Aisha's awesome -- now don't give me that look, man, you don't know her. She is. But from your perspective?" He shook his head. "You and Clay had been -- you know. You-and-Clay, since like the dinosaurs, and then here she comes, another woman who's probably going to wind up trying to kill him. So she burns our hotel down and suddenly it's Clay and Aisha making the plans, Clay and Aisha having the midnight strategy sessions, it's Aisha he's listening to even after she lied to us, and not just 'cause she's footing the bill, either. I would've been pissed too."

Roque's chest was aching. He blew on his hands and pushed them up into his sleeves, and tried to ignore it. "I didn't do it 'cause I was pissed," he said quietly.

Jensen heard him in spite of the wind. "No, you didn't. But if you hadn't been pissed, would you have done it?"

Roque dug his hands further into his sleeves. "I don't know," he said at last. "Maybe not."

"Anyway, you weren't indifferent to us, either," Jensen added. "Sending us all that intel. Did it start with NanoSine? Was that you?"

Roque nodded. "Yeah, I was setting up a buy for Max and found out someone was poking at the firewall. Had your name all over it, for anyone who'd watched you do that shit for as long as I have."

"We really thought it was a trap." Jensen was hunkering down, too. He sniffed and rubbed his nose on his sleeve. "Went in armed to the teeth."

"Yeah, good for you," Roque said. "You should have thought it was a trap. Shit like that, too easy."

Jensen snorted. "Wasn't that easy."

Aisha pounded on the glass that separated them and pointed, and Roque stood up and looked. The dome of the building Roque supposed must be Poiesis was just ahead, glowing soft white against the black sky. "Looks like we're here."

"Hey." Jensen was looking up at him. "I spilled my guts, it's your turn."

Surprised, Roque dropped back into a crouch, bracing himself against the side of the truck as Pooch drove up the long, curving road to Poiesis. "About what?"

"Us," Jensen said. "The team. I mean maybe you didn't mean to get us all killed, but you had to know it was a possibility."

"It was always a possibility," Roque said. "Every op we ever ran. But no, I didn't mean for it."

Jensen blew into his hands and looked past the cab of the truck, then turned back to Roque. "So what I'm wondering is whether you're going to do it again."

"Hey, I jumped in after you, didn't I?" Roque pointed out. It wasn't much of an answer, but it was what he had. He couldn't swear that if the situation was the same, he'd do any different. But then, the situation was never going to be the same, he was sure of that, at least. "Anyway, I doubt Clay's going to let me stick around long enough to get the chance."

"I don't know, man," Jensen said. "Would you stay if he did?"

The truck slowed to a stop and the doors opened, and Roque shrugged. "Ask me once I know whether I'm going to be zombiefied, bro. Maybe I'll have an answer."

He offered Jensen his hand and Jensen took it, and they climbed out of the truck. The others were already out, and Roque heard Clay curse under his breath. He turned to look.

There was a body lying in the open doorway to the building, blood pooled around it. Roque couldn't see it well in the dim light that washed over it from inside, but he thought there were bloody footprints, some leading back inside, some out away from the building and into the darkness.

"Cougar," Clay said, "get Roque a weapon. And make sure Jensen has his."

"I have my gun!" Jensen said. "Honestly, a guy forgets it one little time and no one ever lets him live it down."

Roque slapped him on the shoulder. "Just want to keep you alive long enough to give you shit about it," he said. "Take it as a compliment."

 

The body was a man, maybe forty years old, wearing a lab coat and dead only a few minutes. His throat was torn out. Roque looked at his ID badge and then unclipped it and pocketed it. "Michael Hoffman," he said. "Senior Project Director. This might get us through a couple of doors if we need it."

"Aisha, you take point," Clay said, and for once Roque didn't disagree. She'd been here before, she knew the layout. They fell in behind her with Cougar at the rear, and Roque stepped carefully over the body and followed Clay and Aisha inside.

The lights were on, but there wasn't any sound except for the low hum of the heater and their own footsteps on the parquet lobby floor.

"No alarms," Jensen said. "Maybe whatever happened here is over."

"Or no one got to the alarm to sound it in the first place," Pooch said.

Roque moved further inside, the weight of his borrowed M9 comforting in his hand as Pooch, Jensen, and Cougar spread out in the lobby. Hallways branched off to two sides, and the bloody footprints led down the left one.

"At least three people," Aisha said, keeping her voice low. "The tracks are heading towards the main lab."

"Think that's where the staff would go?"

She nodded. "It's the most secure part of the facility except for the containment area itself."

"And look how well that worked," Jensen grumbled.

"Stow it, Jensen. How far to the lab?" Clay's voice was tight, and Roque could hear the worry in it. This was, after all, his only chance to find out whether Jensen was okay, short of Jensen turning into a face-eating monster. Clay might not have a problem killing Roque, but Jensen was another matter.

"Left, right, another left, and then the stairs leading up to it. It's behind a security door."

"All right, let's move."

 

The only lights in the hallway were small yellow ones near the floor that barely cast a glow, and the only sounds were the AC and their careful footsteps as they filed past the closed doors that led off to either side. The bloody footprints turned right at the end of the hallway. Aisha went left and Roque started to follow, but then pulled up short, listening. "Hold up, hold up," he said quietly. "I heard something."

It came again, a rattle of metal like someone testing a chain link fence far down the hallway to the right.

"What's down that way?" Clay asked.

"Server room, that's all," Aisha said. She was tightly-drawn line, alert and ready.

The sound came again, louder, and then a growling clamor that sounded like voices if the voices were split open and shredded bloody, and the clatter became crashing, and then a woman screamed and kept screaming.

Clay didn't even have to give the order. Roque pounded towards the racket with the others at his heels, and barreled into the server room. A woman had locked herself inside the server cage -- a massive wire structure that held maybe two dozen rack mounts -- and outside the cage were half a dozen men in bloodied uniforms trying to tear their way through it. It looked like they were about to succeed.

"Stand down," Clay shouted, "or we will fire!" and one of them turned.

Half his jaw was gone.

He let out a howl and launched himself at Clay, his hands grasping, and the others were only a heartbeat behind. Roque raised his weapon and fired. Behind him Cougar did the same, and then there was the roar of guns as they all opened fire.

It didn't make a difference. The bullets hit them but none of them went down, and then the team was firing again, the KAK-KAK-KAK of Pooch's automatic and the distinctive pop of Cougar's rifle, the deafening sound of those hand-canons Clay and Aisha carried. Roque fired off six rounds and each one of them hit home, but they didn't even slow his attacker down -- he slammed into Roque sent two of them crashing backwards. Roque hit the edge of a computer cart and went down with a shout, the cart crashing into the wall and the guy on top of him grabbing at him, snapping his teeth like a dog.

Someone was shouting Roque's name. He had his arm across the guy's throat, and that ruined face was inches from his, his eyes bloody and the smell rank, as if he was already dead. Roque struggled to push him off but it was all he could do to hold steady, his gun hand trapped between them. He could hear the chaos and shouting as the others tried to take down the rest, and then there was that pop and blood spattered Roque's face. The man went limp. Roque rolled him off and staggered to his feet.

Cougar was standing there with his rifle. He nodded to Roque.

Roque wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve. "Thanks, man."

"Head shots." Jensen sounded like he wanted to laugh. "Just like in the movies."

The woman had stopped screaming, and Aisha approached the server cage. "Hey," she said. "Hey. Are you all right?"

The woman nodded. "I. They didn't get me. I...don't. I'm not sure I'd call this all right, though." She got to her feet and pushed her hair back out of her eyes. "Thank you. God." Then she frowned. "Who are you people?"

Aisha glanced over her shoulder at them and then turned back to her. "I'm Elena Sanders," she said. "I'm looking for Doctor Kimberly Lowen."

"I'm Jamie Erving. I'm -- are there more of those things out there?"

"Probably," Aisha answered. "But you'll be safer with us than you are in here."

Jamie looked at the battered cage, and nodded. "Yeah, I think you're right."

Roque stared at the bodies that littered the floor and cupped his hand around his wrist. "Goddamn it," he muttered.

 

They reached the main lab without seeing any more of them. The doors were big, heavy, with slitted windows like hospital doors. Pooch peered through them and then turned and shook his head. "Can't see much. There might be someone in there, I can't tell. Didn't see any blood, though."

"Well, that's encouraging," Clay said.

Cougar and Pooch leveled their weapons on the door while Roque swiped Hoffman's card. The door beeped but didn't open.

"Must need a code, too," Jensen said, and was moving to see what he could do when a woman appeared at the window.

"Fuck me," Jensen gasped. "Jesus, give a guy a heart attack."

"Doctor Lowen," Aisha said, pushing her way forward.

The woman punched something into a keypad on the other side and then pushed the door open. "Jamie! Oh my god, you're all right. Doctor Sanders, what are you doing here? Please, get in here, all of you, it's not safe!"

"Yeah, we noticed that," Roque said as he shut the door behind them.

"What happened here?" Aisha asked. "When I left this morning, everything was fine!"

Dr. Lowen ushered them into the lab, where two men in white coats were seated at workstations looking shell-shocked. "We're still not sure," she answered. "Everything was fine, but at two-fifteen, the doors...." She shook her head, her eyes wide. "The doors to the containment area just...unlocked. All of them. The cells and the doors into the main facility."

Roque looked at Clay, and Clay rubbed his eyes. "That sounds about right," he murmured.

Lowen looked at him sharply. "Do you know something about this?"

"We have a working theory, yeah," Clay answered. "Listen, doc, we need your help."

~§~

Clay shoved his hands in his pockets so no one would see his tightly-curled fists. The scanner had showed no sign of the parasite in Jensen, or in the rest of them after their run-in with the infected who'd been trying to get to Jamie. Roque hadn't been so lucky.

"Colonel Nash, this is not a death sentence," Dr. Lowen said, and Roque barked a laugh.

"No? You got funny ideas about being alive, then," he answered. "I'm not going to be one of those -- those things we fought, so I would really appreciate it," he shouted at the camera, "if someone would give me back my goddamned sidearm so I can take care of this problem!" The monitors showed them in crisp color, and Clay could hear Roque's frustration and fear, see the tension in every line of his body.

"Look, Colonel, the parasite hasn't even reached your heart yet. We have plenty of time to get your body temperature down and render it dormant so we can treat you, if you'll just let us."

"You don't even know whether the treatment works," Roque answered. He was pacing in front of her, still dressed in Clay's BDUs and tee-shirt. The scars made a tracery of vines on his neck and the backs of his arms -- scars Clay had put there. "What happens when you wake me up and find out it didn't, hm? What then?"

"We won't," Dr. Lowen said. She reached out to touch his shoulder but he pulled away. "I promise you, if the treatment doesn't work, we won't wake you up."

"No." He stopped pacing and shook his head, pointing at the camera again as if it could give him what he wanted. "No, if I'm going to go, I'm going on my own terms. I won't just drift off to sleep like...like some old man!"

"You'd rather kill yourself than take that chance?"

"Yes, goddamn it!"

Dr. Lowen looked more baffled than angry, and started to say something else, but Clay didn't want to hear Roque's angry response. He snapped off the monitor.

Jensen shifted uncomfortably beside him. "You going to do something about this?"

"What do you want me to do?" Clay asked. His chest felt like someone had punched it.

"Go talk to him!"

"And say what? He's not one of us anymore, Jensen! He's not my problem."

Jensen pushed away from him. "Bullshit. If you don't talk to him, I will."

Clay shoved his hands back into his pockets and dug his blunt fingernails into his palms. He couldn't wipe the image of those things that had attacked them out of his mind, couldn't stop seeing Roque's face in them.

No matter what he'd done, or for what reason, he didn't deserve that. No one did.

"We need to see if the treatment works," Aisha said. "Some of those...things escaped, so there are going to be casualties." She nodded to the monitor. "He's the only subject we have to test it on."

Clay muttered a curse and then wrenched his pistol out and handed it to Jensen. "Fine. I'll talk to him."

 

Roque was on his feet and striding towards Clay before the door to the examination room had even shut behind him. "No. No. I'm coming with you. We're going to close that goddamned thing--you don't know the layout of the building, what if the whole thing's flooded by now, how you going to find it, huh? I won't even take a weapon, and you shoot me the first sign that I'm turning into one of those things. Come on, Clay." He smiled, razor-edged. "You already tried to kill me once, it shouldn't bother you doing it again."

Clay fought the urge to smack the grin off his face. "Dr. Lowen, give us the room."

She started to protest but then she glanced from Clay to Roque and back again, and nodded. "Of course, Colonel."

When the door had closed, Clay rounded on Roque. "I don't care how scared you are, you are not dying today, and you are not coming with us. You're staying here and you're going to let them do what they need to do."

"Scared?" Roque scowled. "You think this is because I'm scared?"

"Of course you are, you're terrified. Anyone would be. Come here." He grabbed Roque by his shirt and hauled him towards the exam bed. "Sit down and listen to me."

Somewhat to Clay's surprise, Roque did. Clay stood close to him, almost within the V of his thighs, and realized he didn't have any idea what he was going to say.

When he opened his mouth, though, the words just started.

"That night on Naxos," he began. "We were in that little bar in Filoti. Pooch was stateside with Jolene, and Cougar and Jensen were off someplace, I don't know where."

Roque nodded. "Yeah, they'd left us there, and you kept ordering us bottles of retsina until we lost count. Surprisingly, I do remember."

"And there were those two men at the other table," Clay went on. They'd been young, dark-haired, smooth-skinned. Clay had found it harder and harder to look away from them, the way they touched each other. So familiar it made Clay ache, sitting close, their heads bent together, their fingers entwined, sometimes kissing, mostly laughing.

Roque nodded. "I said I remember."

"You kept looking over at them."

"So did you," Roque said, a defensive edge to his voice, and Clay shook his head.

"No. Yeah, neither one of us.... And you asked me if I wanted to leave."

Roque looked away. "Clay, what--"

"Roque," Clay said.

"You turned me down," Roque snapped, "I get it, I got it then, why the fuck are you bringing this up now?"

"You don't get it, Roque," Clay said. "I didn't get it. I thought...I thought you wanted to leave because you didn't like sitting next to a couple of--" He took a breath and rubbed his mouth like he could rub away the taste of the memory. "Next to a couple of damn faggots."

Roque blinked and leaned back. "You thought.... Is that why you bailed when I invited you in? You thought I actually meant 'you want to keep drinking?'"

Clay nodded. "And that's why I was so careful not to let on. I didn't want to make things wrong between us. Mess up the team, mess up...." He shrugged.

"Mess up our friendship," Roque finished for him. A wry smile slid across his face and then vanished. "And the way I was with Cougar and Jensen, that didn't give you a clue?"

"I thought... You were friends with them, you put up with it because they were on the team," Clay admitted. "But I couldn't risk it. I was your C.O., Roque. We couldn't have gone there even if I'd known. You were under my command."

"I'm not under your command now." Roque was watching him steadily, those familiar dark eyes locked on his own, and he arched an eyebrow. Only Roque could make that single arched brow look like a threat and an invitation and a challenge all at once.

Clay smiled. "All right. But you're going to stay here anyway. We need to get that parasite out of you, and we need to find out if the treatment works. You're the only one who can help with that."

Roque looked at him for what seemed like a long time and then said, "So you want me to stick around here and be a guinea pig for these people?"

"I want you to let them treat you so you don't die again, Roque," Clay said. He rubbed his cheek; his beard was getting itchy, he needed a shave. He wondered what it would feel like next to Roque's skin, what Roque's would feel like on his. Like any other man, or would it be so Roque that he'd know it blind in the dark, like everything else about him?

"I don't know what happens after this," he went on finally. "I wanted us to get our lives back, Roque. I don't know if we ever do, I don't know what happens with the team, or with anything else. But I know that you died once, and that's enough. You don't need to do it again."

Roque was quiet. Then he said, "So if I'd been a little more obvious that night on Naxos, would anything be different?"

Clay stopped and thought about that for a while. It was true, they couldn't have done anything about it as long as Roque reported to him, too much opportunity for things to go sideways, for everything to get fucked up.

But everything had gotten fucked up anyway.

Finally, he said, "Well, you would have known I might fall for your trap, so we might not be here right now, about to save the world again." And then added, "But we might not be here anyway, or it might all be even worse, because I might have done this a year and a half ago instead of now. And if you want to punch me, well, hell, I won't blame you."

He slid his hand around the back of Roque's neck, scars like silver beneath his fingers, and for the first time since Miami, Roque met him halfway.

~§~

The sun was creeping over the horizon by the time they reached the site. The night's snowfall had softened the edges where the house had begun to fall in on itself, and Cougar was reminded of the morning before, the smell of barley, the light turning golden on the blue-white snow.

It seemed much longer ago than that.

Roque had called Gina and gotten the contact info for the head of the project that had started the whole mess, and Cougar had grabbed a nap with Jensen while Pooch was conferencing with him. Turned out a couple of small explosives would be enough to do it, and it hadn't taken Pooch but a couple of hours to put them together. Now Pooch, Clay, and Aisha were asleep in the back while Cougar drove. Jensen was beside him, still searching through the contents of Max's hard drive for the clue that would tell them how to stop the world from ending.

He pulled up to the same place he had the day before, and put the truck in park. "We're here," he said.

"I'm going to be an astronaaauuut," Jensen sang quietly, and shut the laptop. "Check that one off the bucket list."

Cougar was on high alert as they headed into the ruined house and down to where Burwill said the wetsuits were, and Jensen gave a little whoop of delight when he found the gear safe in its fireproof locker. "Come on, Pooch, there's three of these things. Don't you want to come?"

"Yeah, not really," Pooch said. "Other planet means possibly very large things that want to eat me, kind of like that very large thing that tried to eat you. Not really on my list."

"Pooch, I'm shocked! Outer space, man, I would have thought you'd be all over that!"

Pooch shook his head. "It's not the planets, it's the very fast machines that take you there. This," he said, nodding in the general direction of the portal, "is like stepping through a door. Not interested."

They grabbed the gear and headed down to the lowest level. The bodies of the guards were gone -- a fact which set Cougar's already heightened awareness into overdrive -- but other than that, nothing had changed. He and Jensen geared up, and Pooch handed over the explosives.

"You have to start the countdown on them at the same time," he said. "There's no way to remote detonate when one of them's on another planet, so start the countdown before you go through, then get your asses back here."

"Are you kidding?" Jensen was vibrating with excitement. "I'm getting video of this place! Cougar and Jensen's Interplanetary Vacation, it'll be the next viral video hit! We'll start the timers before we come back."

"Jensen," Pooch began, but Clay interrupted.

"No, it makes sense," he said. "We don't know what's on the other side. We don't want those timers already counting down if they run into trouble."

"Ah, see?" Jensen tapped his finger against the side of his nose. "That's why he's Operational Control."

"Fine, fine," Pooch grumbled, "Just be sure they go off at the same time, or it won't work. And be sure you come back."

Jensen grinned. "The Pooch is worried about us! That's sweet. Not to fret, man, you won't get rid of us that easy."

"I'm worried about finding that code," Pooch countered. "I'm serious, man. Five hundred of Max's operatives are poised to infect the entire global blood supply and you're the only one who can figure out the code to stop them." He shrugged. "No pressure, though."

Jensen looked a little pale.

Clay thumbed his mic and Cougar heard the echo in his ear, "Radio check," and Jensen's answer, "Five by five." Cougar gave a thumbs-up, and Clay nodded. "Ten minutes," he said. "If you're not back, I'm sending Aisha in after you."

Aisha thumped him on the shoulder and Jensen saluted, grinning. "Yes sir. Don't want that." Then he slapped Cougar on the back. "Come on, Cougar. Let's go be astronauts."

He plunged into the water after Jensen and they kicked for the bottom and the glimmering light of the portal. Nothing disturbed the water around them, though it was strange to swim through what had once clearly been a laboratory. Some of the equipment appeared to still be intact, but most of it was scattered along the floor of the room as if the blast had emanated from the portal itself. Cougar wondered if Max had been trying to close it with the explosion, or if he'd been trying to make sure it stayed open.

Jensen reached the portal and looked back for Cougar, and Cougar closed the gap. Jensen grabbed his hand, and they swam through.

The sensation was how he imagined a bubble might feel just before it popped, stretching out and out as if he could go forever, and then they were through, and in the bright ocean of some other world. The portal hovered just above a floating platform that was anchored, somehow, far below, and the surface glittered close above them. They kicked for it and broke through into cold sunlight.

Jensen pushed up his face mask and whooped. "Look at this place, Cougar! Look at it!"

The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun vivid orange, small and high overhead. Two moons were low in the sky on the far horizon. There was a white shoreline maybe half a mile away, and he grabbed his binoculars and took a closer look. He could see something that had to be vegetation, brightly colored against the stone or sand, or maybe it was snow, it was hard to tell at this distance, and movement that vanished just as quickly as he saw it. Beside him Jensen was filming, his hand-held camera in its waterproof casing.

"Goddamn it, why do we have to blow it up?" Jensen was treading water in a circle, taking in everything he could see. "We should come here! Jesus, Cougar, it's a whole other planet!"

"With zombie parasites," Cougar reminded him.

"Well, no, with parasites that make zombies," Jensen said, "it's not quite the same thing, but okay, I take your point."

"Also with Cthulu," Cougar added.

"Ah. Yes." Jensen glanced around, then ducked under the water and looked again. "Okay," he said when he surfaced, "but Cthulu doesn't seem to be here right now."

"Anyway," Cougar said, and gestured to the portal below them, "they made this one. They could make another."

"I am never losing that man's phone number," Jensen said. "You think Clay would let us finance a dimensional portal to another world? We could, I don't know, steal something big and sell it, the government owes us for this, even though they'll never know it, it'll be like payment only without the part where they agree."

Cougar shrugged. Clay could be tractable sometimes, and Jensen could be very winning. And very persistent.

"If we can't find the code and stop the zombie apocalypse," Jensen went on, "first thing we do is save the guy who can make the portals."

"And the lady who can kill the zombie parasites," Cougar added.

"They'll be our aces in the hole. Clay will go along with it, won't he? You'll help me convince him, right Cougar?"

Cougar grinned. Jensen's joy was infectious. "Sí, cariño, por supuesto."

Jensen took several more minutes of footage while Cougar swam down and around the platform, looking for the best place to secure the explosive. He found a spot, then surfaced again and tapped Jensen's shoulder. "We should go."

Jensen nodded. "Okay, but listen," he said. "Don't you think it makes a difference? Being on another planet?"

Cougar frowned.

"This, I mean." Jensen gestured at the world around them. "We're light-years away from everyone we have ever known. Listen. Before the light we're looking at right now reaches Earth, we will all be dead and dust. Everything we thought mattered, it'll all be gone before this light," and he pointed to the small orange sun, "ever gets home. It's like...it's like we're in a time machine. And -- and everybody we love is already dead."

It was like a punch to the chest, and Cougar reached for him. "Jake."

"No, I mean, it's not -- I'm not being morbid," Jensen said. "I'm just saying." He pulled Cougar close and kissed him, and his mouth was warm against Cougar's in the cold air, with the water lapping against them. "I'm just saying. When we get back, it'll be like...a whole new start. A re-set. Yeah? A do-over."

"For Roque, you mean," Cougar said, and Jensen shrugged. The name felt like some forgotten thing he might trip over in the dark.

"Maybe," Jensen answered. "Yeah, okay, yes. For us, with Roque."

"I thought you didn't care anymore."

"You thought I didn't care?" Jensen grinned and splashed water at him. "You were the one who wouldn't talk about it, man. I cared, hell, Cougar, it's Roque. He was our friend."

"Was," Cougar said. "He turned on us."

"Well, arguably Clay started that ball rolling," Jensen said, "but you know, ignoring that, we already killed him for it. Just because he's not dead -- we still took his whole life away from him."

Cougar shook his head. "No, he did that, when he betrayed us." But although Roque had betrayed them, and Clay had given the order, it was Cougar who had pulled the trigger, Cougar who had killed a man he had called friend for more years than he had once thought he would survive.

The flash of the plane exploding, and sometimes Cougar thought he could track the bullet with his eyes, could even see Roque through the windows of the plane. Every time, he wanted to reach out and take it back. It shouldn't have been like that.

"And now he's here again," Jensen said.

"And for that he deserves forgiveness?" Cougar asked. It was still too tangled up, he couldn't pick it apart. "Para que, cariño?"

"I don't know." Jensen shrugged and tilted his head, glancing past Cougar to the shore. "Is that the point? Do you have to deserve forgiveness to get it?"

Unbidden, Father Gaspar's voice whispered in his mind. And if by grace, then it is no more of works. Otherwise grace is no more grace. He wondered what the old priest would make of all this if he were still alive, or if he would be able to forgive him for the life he'd chosen. For all the people he'd killed, some for less reason than he had killed Roque. Did Roque deserve forgiveness any less than he himself? Did anyone?

"I still don't trust him," he said.

Jensen shrugged. "I'm not asking you to."

At last he nodded. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

"Okay." Jensen grinned and tugged his hand. "Let's go home."

~§~

Roque tried to open his eyes, but the sedative still held him. The cooling gel pads felt heavy on his chest and legs, and someone's hand was on his wrist, delicate. Taking his pulse. He wondered why, when he was hooked up to every machine in the universe.

"But you got it? All of it?"

"We got all of it."

It was Clay and Dr. Lowen.

"There's no trace of the living parasite in his system," she continued. "It was completely successful."

"And you're re-warming him now?"

"It'll take time, Colonel. You should probably get some sleep. I understand it's been a very long several days for you and your team."

"I'll stay here for now, thanks."

"Clay, you need to rest."

It was Aisha.

"I'll-- I don't know, move a couch in here or something."

"Fine, but I'm going to get some breakfast." Roque could hear her light tread heading for the door, and then she paused. "You want a bagel or something?"

"Yeah. And some coffee?"

She let out a breath. "God, Clay, you're so demanding."

He laughed, and the door closed behind her.

"Doctor." Someone else's voice. "He's waking up."

"Mmm, it's probably too soon," Dr. Lowen said. "Increase to 250 mcg for the next two hours, then start bringing it down."

The door banged open. "Clay!" Jensen's voice. "I think I've got it, I think I've figured out the code that keeps Max's people from infecting the blood supply every month."

"Show me."

"It's based on an old encryption the KGB used in the 1950s," Jensen began, but the sedative was kicking in and Roque drifted down into darkness.

 

When he came to again, the room was dim, the gel pads gone, and he was warm for the first time in what felt like a week. He could see Clay's profile against the slitted light that filtered through the blinds, and he remembered the warmth of Clay's mouth on his and Clay's hand. He remembered Clay's fingers brushing over his scars.

He tried to sit up, but it seemed like a lot of work. Instead he just pushed back against the pillow. Clay shifted and opened his eyes.

"Hey," Roque said. His voice was cracked.

"Hey. You're awake." Clay leaned forward and reached for the lamp but didn't turn it on after all. "How do you feel?"

"Like someone thawed me out of a glacier. How long was I out?"

"Almost seventy-two hours."

"Huh. So I'm not going to be a zombie?"

Clay shook his head. "Full recovery."

"That's good. And the portal? The code?"

"The portal's gone like it was never there. We think Jensen's cracked the code that Max was using to keep his operatives from infecting the entire goddamned world with the parasite, and Aisha's working on a plan to track them down and take them out of the picture. If Jensen's got the code right, we should have plenty of time. If he doesn't. Well." He shrugged. "Things will get very interesting for a very short while."

"What about the ones who escaped?" Roque asked.

"That's another problem." Clay reached for the pitcher on the table and poured a glass of water, handed it to Roque. "There are reports about people going crazy, attacking folks. Neighbors, families. Doctor Lowen says it might burn itself out if they keep killing everyone they attack, but not everyone who's attacked is dying. She's trying to coordinate with the CDC, but it isn't going real well." He rubbed his eyes; he looked as tired as Roque felt. "Apparently they were put off by hearing 'we think it's extra-terrestrial.' I think she's just trying to be optimistic."

Roque huffed a humorless laugh. "Hell of a definition for 'optimistic.' 'We can always hope they all die.'"

"Better than the alternative."

Roque tried again to sit up, and this time he managed it. "Did the drive have the Bolivia intel on it?"

"Jensen's still working on it," Clay said. "There's almost a terabyte of information on that thing, all of it encrypted. If it's there, he'll find it, but it's back-burnered until we can get these other issues dealt with."

"So, what's next?"

"I guess we try to stop those operatives. We'll be ready to move out pretty soon."

It felt like a fist closing around Roque's heart. "Yeah, well, let me know where you are," he said. "If Jensen follows through on that 'portal to another planet' thing, I want in."

Clay leaned back, watching him. "So, what? You've got someplace else to be?"

The fist grew tighter. "Are you asking me to go someplace with you?"

"If I was," Clay said quietly, "would you go?"

He remembered Jensen in the freezing bed of the truck, asking him the same thing while the snow came down around them. Ask me once I know whether I'm going to be zombiefied, bro. Maybe I'll have an answer.

The scars on the back of his neck ached, and outside, they might be staring down the barrel of the world's end.

Maybe they were losers. Maybe they were all losers, the whole goddamned planet. And who else would he want to be with at the end of the world?

Notes:

Hugest and most grateful thanks to my ROCK STAR beta readers, kate and lady_krysis. They are awesome and I owe them big-time for the thorough and detailed work they did on this. Their help was invaluable and I cannot thank them enough! ♥ ♥ ♥