Sinking down into the seat as the Suburban shot southward to the next interstate feeder, she concentrated on not feeling the despair, or hunger. Looking at her skeletal hand in the flickering light, she felt the cramping in her guts. Maybe… “Hey, Karl,” she said softly. “Do we have any food in here?”

The minder ignored her. She could tell he felt personally betrayed by her attempt to escape, since he’d always been respectful of her. Or perhaps it was because they’d lost the younger Jenkins. Yes, that must have been it. He must feel like he’d failed in his duty.

“Look,” she reminded them, “you know my caloric needs. You know how valuable I am to the program. My body weight is under a hundred pounds and falling right now.” She held up her papery-skinned hand for his inspection. “By the time we get back to the lab there might be irreversible damage.”

“Should have thought about that before you tried to run, puta,” snarled Miguel.

“She’s right, though,” responded Karl, resigned. “If we bring her in damaged it will just be worse. There’s some kind of burger drive-through up there; pull in.”

“You buy the food, then,” grumbled Miguel. “I gotta take a piss.” He hopped out as they pulled up to the microphone.

“Thanks,” Elise said.

“Shut up,” Karl said flatly. “I’m not your buddy, and even if I was, buddy’s only half a word.”

She wondered what he meant. Some kind of military thing.

Occupying herself, she thought about Daniel, about his tortured eyes, eyes she had to run from out of necessity, but eyes that perhaps could be part of someone that would – what? Save her? If she’d read his file right, he would. That’s why she had tricked Jenkins into choosing him.

At least it was a chance.

***

Sleep was a big black scary thing inhabited by dreams where Daniel pumped round after round into Men In Black. They either wouldn’t go down, or the bullets would exit the gun with a little pop and bounce off their chests, and he would end up in a fistfight where he’d punch and punch and couldn’t hurt them and they would laugh. Then it would turn into something else, something from his past, like dragging his dead best buddy Hector Koltunczyk into a hollow in the dirt, trying to plug the leaks in him with his fingers, but Hector sprouted fountains of blood like one of those flexible hose sprinklers where the water came out the holes.

Long ago he had come to the realization that not even his new, Pararescue-trained self of several years later could have saved his friend, but if there was any one thing that drove him to leave the Army Airborne and try out for PJ, it was that incident where Hector died in his hands in Mogadishu.

It had taken a boatload of pushing, a break in service, giving up his stripes and starting over to make the move to the Air Force Pararescue program. The Army hated it when people didn’t re-up, and they dangled goodies, choice assignments and choice jobs, in front of him. He’d wanted to learn to save lives as well as take them, though, and they couldn’t guarantee him Special Forces Medic, which was the only other possibility he’d considered.

So he went PJ. That was the nickname for “parajumper,” Pararescueman. Despite the ninety percent odds of washout, he had not only qualified, but had excelled at it all the way through the Pipeline. Seventeen months of training just to graduate, “That Others May Live.” That was the Pararescue motto.

At the end of it Daniel Markis was one of fewer than three hundred of the very best combat lifesavers in the world, cross-trained with a variety of special ops expertise. Small arms, water operations, light aircraft, survival, mountaineering, demolitions, you name it, he’d done it in sixteen years in the PJs. Some of his Army buddies had thought he was a pogue or some kind of traitor for going green to blue, but none of his real friends did. Nobody that met an Air Force PJ at work ever thought so either.

That Others May Live. That’s why he did it.

He was elite of the elite, back then, a sky-god in a blood-red beret, before that IED took it all away from him, leaving him with a bum knee and a bad back and a serpent in his brain.

Daniel realized he’d gone from dreaming to drowsy reminiscing somewhere along the line, as dawn was breaking over Quantico. The sounds of Marines at morning PT came from off in the distance, and a five-ton truck drove by his parking place with a rattle.

Sitting up, he sucked down a half-liter bottle of water, then slipped out the side door and took a leak between the vans. He was hungry again, really hungry, so he went to the Mickey Dee’s one more time and ate his fill. Nobody seemed to be looking for him, and with hair cut high and tight he blended in pretty well here, though his shave was a day old.

Halfway through his third McMuffin it hit him: no headaches this morning, and the serpent was hiding.

Usually he woke up with a near-migraine that took four ibuprofen, a vicodin and a triple espresso to tamp it all down to a manageable level. His knee should’ve been locked up stiff too, and his back hurting, but right now he was pain-free for the first time in a long while. Since Afghanistan. And jones-free too, for that matter.

Looking at the gauze on his hand, on impulse he unwound it to check the wound. He rubbed at the dried blood, then finished the sandwich and got up to go into the restroom. After washing his hand he stared at it.

Nothing there.

No bite, no bruise, smooth pristine skin. And he felt good, better than he’d felt in a while. His face stared back at him in the scratched-up mirror for a while, until someone else came in to use the toilet. Shaking himself out of his reverie, he went back out to finish his breakfast, pancakes and hash brown patties and coffee and large orange juice.

He sat and thought about super-healing. Stupid, pulp-sci-fi name, but what else should he call it? X-factor? Sounded like a TV talent show. Wolverine, like that comic-book guy? Maybe H-factor. Or XH, experimental healing. Because it had to be experimental. The government could never keep secrets for long, no matter what the conspiracy nuts thought. The government was made up of people, good people and bad people and heroes and stupid arrogant people like Jenkins who lost control of missions and secrets. But what was the secret this time?

The obvious answer was it was a kind of drug. Shoot up, accelerate the body’s natural healing, instant cure. But a drug couldn’t be passed on with a bite, like what he thought had happened. Elise bit me, deliberately, and said I’d understand. So she transferred it to me, at least some of it. Already he was grateful to her for that.

Discounting the supernatural – and he wasn’t, not completely, but his mind shied away from that for now – it would have to be some kind of parasite or bacteria or virus, that was able to spread from person to person and help them out. Or maybe…what about nanites? Like in science fiction, like those Borg things that injected you and took over your body and mind with germ-sized machines. But no matter what, it had to be something small, and self-replicating, self-sustaining.

He wondered how much the XH could cure. Obviously gross injuries were possible. And cancer, if he could believe Elise. What about AIDS? What about aging? Life extension, even immortality? Did they even realize what they had?

His mind whirled with the possibilities.

If it conferred youth and immortality, it would change the world like nothing ever. The rich would pay anything, and people would kill for it. People would go to war for it. In fact, it might win wars, making soldiers into fearless super-warriors. And who would decide who got it?

But Elise had said something about a downside, some kind of disadvantage…maybe some kind of burnout? Maybe instead of immortality it used up the bearer, ate up his vitality so the more healing he had to do, the shorter his life was. Maybe. But Elise had looked younger than Daniel was, twenties maybe, and cute and gutsy, under all that blood and stress.