She said she had been a scientist before her cancer was deemed terminal, that she had worked for them a few years…seemed about right. And what had she said – “Yeah, there’s a downside, at least for the Company.” Not for her, but for the Company. So it couldn’t be a shortened lifespan, he thought. Maybe it had no effect on lifespan. Maybe it froze your age just as you were, like in a vampire story. That might be nice, if you got it young.

He sighed, rubbing his face. Too many questions, too many possibilities. And he needed answers, because whatever it was, it was inside him too.

He had no way to contact Elise, so he would just have to hope she was all right and could get in touch with him sometime. Putting her out of his mind for now, he told himself he didn’t owe her anything.

Leave her to rot.

Right.

His conscience sharply disagreed with him. Kind of funny, because the serpent had held his conscience captive for quite a while. Maybe the XH was healing some of his brain damage, and if the XH healed his body too, got rid of the headaches and concussions and bum knee and aching back and the persistent spiral fractures from too many hard landings and everything else, even if that was all it did, then he guessed he owed her a lot. Besides, there was the way she’d looked at him, even while he pointed a gun at her. No terror. Caution, sure, but a kind of trust and hope, too, emotions he had missed for a long time in his life, feelings that tugged at him and made him think of things beyond just rescuing her.

Building castles in his mind.

He pushed that aside for now. First he had to get an idea of what was happening at his house. He wouldn’t be any good to anyone, least of all Elise, if he walked blindly into a manhunt. No, he had to reach out, get some help.

He drove to a beer joint he knew of in Quantico Town. This was a unique little municipality, a tenth of a square mile, entirely enclosed by Quantico Marine Base. Residents got passes to come and go, all five hundred of them or so. But what was even more unique, the unusual thing that he needed, was the pay phone inside. Not too many of those around but things didn’t change very fast in quaint old Quantico Town.

Ignoring the “closed” sign on the door of the Forward Observer pub, he shoved the door open and went on in. If you looked like you belonged, Felix the owner would ignore the archaic eighteenth-century law still on the books that said you can’t sell alcohol before noon. That’s why the door wasn’t locked, that and they made a few bucks in the morning selling coffee and smokes and breakfast sandwiches and day-old donuts to guys on their way to work. Fortunately, Felix wasn’t in to recognize him, just a chesty young thing with a wedding ring, in too-tight jeans and a tee shirt, makeup over acne, probably the teen wife of a teen Marine, making a few extra bucks.

“Whatcha want?” she said with that fake brightness servers put on. Standing hipshot, she pointed with one long nail over her shoulder at the menu chalked on the wall.

Ah, the brashness of the young.

Daniel didn’t sit down. “Three ham cheese and egg bagels, large coffee to go.” He pulled a gallon of milk out of a fridge. “This too. The head that way?” She nodded, and he went back in the direction of the facilities, which happened to be where he knew the phone was.

His first call was to his next-door neighbor Trey, a friendly Creole from Louisiana who’d married a nice German girl on a tour in Bitburg and eventually settled down in Virginia after retiring from the Army. Even in the twenty-first century, a black man bringing a white girl home to “N’awlins” had a tough row to hoe.

“No, nothing unusual going on, DJ, what’s up?” he asked.

“Nobody in my driveway, no visitors, nothing like that?” They kept an eye on each others’ houses, because there were four schools in the area and a few kids always had sticky fingers.

“Nope. Why, something wrong?” he pried gently.

Daniel would have loved to tell him, the way he was feeling right now. Trey was a neighbor, a fellow vet but not really a brother in arms. He could probably be trusted to a point, but Daniel didn’t want to involve him if he didn’t have to, so he dissembled, though it was painful to do so. “No, just missed a meeting with a friend, wondered if he came by there.”

“Okay…well, you let me know if I can do anything.”

Daniel could tell Trey didn’t buy it, but he stuck to the plan. “Thanks, Trey. Hey I might be out of town for a week or two, could you pick up my mail and keep an eye on the place for me?”

“Yeah, DJ. Sure.” He sounded hurt.

Man, he hated that.

“Look – Trey, I can’t talk about it right now, okay? You know how it is. But I’ll tell you when I can.” With that half-lie and half-promise, he hung up. Then he called work, told them he was really sick and wouldn’t be in for a week. In that time it either wouldn’t matter or it would be all over.

Daniel thought of calling his dad, who was a good guy to have with you in a situation. David Jonah Markis, Chief Warrant Officer Four, US Army retired. He’d fought in Vietnam, driving Hueys, and had been wounded a bunch of times flying guys in and out of hot landing zones. Purple Heart with oak leaf clusters, and a Silver Star for the time he went down and carried his wounded copilot seven miles through enemy territory to the nearest US firebase, with an AK round in his left lung. He lived in South Carolina now, had sixty acres and his own grass airstrip south of Blacksburg, and an old but airworthy Piper Cub to keep him busy. But if they knew who Daniel was, they knew his dad too and might be watching him. If Daniel wanted to talk to him he’d have to figure out a way to do it without bringing the trouble to the elder Markis.

But there were some that they didn’t know about, he hoped. They couldn’t cover everyone. No one had unlimited resources, not even the Agency. And they had limited powers inside the US anyway; they had already broken any number of laws and while a certain amount of that could be covered up, it became more and more risky the more they did. He had to depend on them not knowing he had the XH in him. He hoped they thought it was just a missed opportunity and they wouldn’t frame a federal charge to get the FBI and every other law enforcement agency in the country looking for him.

He got out his beat-up Army-issue green memo book that he’d had forever, that he’d carried to the Gulf and back. It had long since been laminated and converted into a home address book and retired to a drawer, but he had grabbed it on the way out of the house and now looked up Ezekiel “Zeke” Johnstone’s number. He had to risk it, and since he hadn’t contacted Zeke since forever, he hoped they hadn’t connected the two of them yet.

Calling, he reached a screening service. Right, this number isn’t on his safe list. He said, “720th” at the beep, waited through Please Enjoy The Music While We Reach Your Party, and almost gasped with relief when he heard Zeke pick up.

“Yeah?” he said, his voice neutral.

“It’s me, man. Deej. Think a few years back. 720th, Kandahar. I can’t say any more, they might have a keyword trace.”

“Yeah man, I got it. Let me call you back on a better line.”

He could hear a woman’s voice, a shriek of childish mirth in the background. He closed his eyes as he hung up. Damn, I hate to drag him into this.

A minute later the pay phone rang and Daniel picked back up.

“All right, I’m on a one-off. You sure they ain’t got your end?”

“Not a hundred percent, but ninety-nine-point nine. It’s a pay phone and if they knew where I was they’d already have picked me up.”

“All right. What you get into this time? Another loan shark?”

Daniel used to gamble, and lose. It was one risk of being an adrenaline junkie – when ops slowed down, you had to find something for a jolt. Some guys drank too much, chased women, or took up high-risk sports. Skydiving, that was a given. Bungee jumping, jet-ski, flying, racing…he did all of that, especially the drinking…he had also played craps. A lot. He’d gotten stuck. The inevitable mathematics of the house odds had eventually strangled him, and he borrowed from the wrong people. Zeke and some of his guys had helped him out with that. Daniel paid him back and he’d been clean ever since.