Sleep paralysis is not a phrase you know. The terms of sleep psychology are not in your vocabulary. But when you woke up for the first several minutes you couldn't move, and it was terrifying.

Pieces of the world came back to you. Light, or the lack of it. Sound, the rushing of water around you, the drip of water above your head, the hiss and hum and clack of traffic. More sounds than you had ever heard in all your memories, which were small and short now. The sensation of cold, pricking against your skin and making your bones hurt and your bodies clench in on itself. Pieces of the world coming awake as you do, and then you realized you were in a tunnel.

Not a used tunnel. A tunnel that hadn't been used in a long time. You were the only living thing in it. But you climbed up out of your box nonetheless and looked around, up the tunnel and down, where there was no light and where there was a little light. Water on the ground. The walls were stone, cold and solid and rough to the touch. You put your hands on them as you walked to feel your way and make sure you didn't turn in a circle. Slowly, through the water. Strange things had happened and you wanted to make sure they weren't going to kill you.

But your memories came back and thickened as you walked. And you remembered that this was a safe place, if anything could be safe down here. There were no needles to stab you, the light didn't blind your eyes, they didn't hurt you or feed you strange things that tasted not like food. You didn't know the words for chalk or antibiotics or vomit but it tasted like those things anyway. There wasn't any of that down here. There was much less hostility, and they didn't push you into or against things, or pull you out of them.

The closer you got to the blue-tinged light in the chamber, you hadn't known the chamber was there until you got close to it but it was, and the closer you got the clearer your mind became. This was a good place, a strong place where you could live and grow in peace. There was enough light in the big chamber, and there was more than enough food up above. Some of it tasty, some of it not so much, but there was an abundance of it. And all you had to do was take it.

And then you stepped, blinking, into the light of the open chamber so that you could look and see how you looked, emaciated and fragile from all that time asleep. But that didn't matter, because you would eat and be whole and strong very quickly.

Clayton put away the dishes and was picking up the living room, or at least making a valiant effort of it, before he realized how long Lyle had been in his nook. Maybe the boy was doing his homework. Maybe the conversation earlier, though it had piqued his interest, hadn't given him enough to work with.

And maybe the rain would turn from hissing acid steam to clear mountain water, too. Maybe the cities would stop baking in the heat.

"Lyle..." he called, giving the kid at least enough warning to assemble a plausible lie to him. Or maybe the boy really was doing his homework and he was doing his son a disservice by thinking he was hacking the defense department's databases of DARPA projects.

Precedent suggested otherwise. They'd had to move once before because Lyle's curiosity got the better of him; fortunately there really hadn't been any proof and no charges had been filed. Which meant only that he'd been smart enough not to break in from their house. Clayton wondered sometimes why it didn't seem that Lyle had learned anything from that little escapade, or if he had really gotten that much better that he felt it was secure. With all the cockiness of the average teenager, he wasn't willing to bet his or his son's freedom on it.

"Lyle..." He pulled the makeshift curtain back from his son's bunk. The screen flickered and displayed bootleg media sites, all of which were halfway legitimate anyway. Not what he'd been looking at. "Please tell me you haven't been looking into it."

"It?" His son's eyes were wide, his mouth pouting in the same tiny frown his mother had made when she swore she wasn't up to anything.

It was the only excuse he could come up with for what he said next. "You're not smart enough or fast enough to beat defense department security, and you know it. You're going to get me arrested and you put into foster care, and I don't think you'd much like foster care."

Lyle gave him a look that was two parts hurt and one part fury. Clayton hid his face behind his hands, thumb and forefinger rubbing just in front of his temples. They both breathed hard and furious, and after another couple of seconds, Lyle slammed the keyboard up into the box and swung around, dropping down from the bunk.

"Lyle..."

"Don't worry about it, Dad, I'm offline."

"Lyle, I'm sorry..."

The window slammed open hard enough to rattle the glass in its frame; Clayton winced. It might be super-durable, but he always felt like there was nothing so durable it wouldn't break eventually, with enough abuse, and there was no telling how old this apartment building was. For a second he thought Lyle might go down the fire escape, but the boy just sat on it, knees drawn up and scowling out at the opposite apartment wall.

He sat down next to the window and waited for enough time to pass that Lyle's temper would ease and he'd be willing to listen to his old man instead of to his anger. Not that Clayton didn't deserve some of it. He was too tired, too stressed, and sometimes just too stupid to talk to his boy.

When the rain started to pour instead of trickle down on him, Lyle came back in. Whether or not the water had cooled his temper, the time certainly had. He still wouldn't look at his father, but at least it was a beginning.

"I'm sorry, Lyle," he repeated. "I didn't mean to yell at you like that, and I..." No, he couldn't say he hadn't meant what he'd said, because he had, at least at the time. Clayton groped for words. "It was stupid. It was stupid, and I'm sorry, I shouldn't yell at you like that."

Lyle shook his head, unwilling or unable to cope with either his father's words or his father's genuine apology. It was just plain awkward. Clayton couldn't blame him. "I just want to help, you know?" The admission or excuse dragged itself out of him even though he probably wanted nothing more than to stand up to his father belligerently and make the older man agree with the sheer force of his rightness. "I just... she's got this job that's so secret they won't even tell her about it..."

"That's kind of her job, you know? She's a courier. They're not supposed to tell her what's in the packages they send."

Logic wasn't something that should ever be brought up in defense of the world against teenaged prejudices; Lyle gave him a truly ugly stare. He wanted to be Kim's white knight, and reality and his father, as he saw it, was getting in the way of that. "I just wanted to help," he repeated, in lieu of an actual argument.

"Look, if you want to help? You'll leave it alone. Hacking that kind of project could result in the security being upped past what she's cleared for. If they ever connect it back to her through you, it could result in her security clearance being yanked. No more jobs like this for her, no more government contracts, no more government pay, plus it'd be a black mark even off the record. They trust her, and she trusts us not to do anything stupid to jeopardize her job with what she tells us. If she knows she can't trust you, she just won't tell you anything," he added. His trump card, and by the kid's crestfallen look he hadn't even thought of that.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I didn't know."

You didn't think, you mean, Clayton thought. But he didn't say it. If every teenager was called out on every instance of not thinking there'd be no time to actually be a parent. He had to pick and choose his battles. "It's okay. I know you didn't, that's why I told you. Don't worry, if the time comes when she does need someone to find out what all this is about?" Unlikely as that might be. "I'll make sure she knows you're ready and willing for any help she might need."

Lyle nodded, and that made everything better. His father and his friend had faith in him, his Dad said so. Amazing how much faith Lyle had in his father simply telling him things as though they were fact. That scared Clayton, some days. Today, he was only relieved that it meant his son wouldn't be hacking any more government computers, wouldn't be getting into trouble. Today, at least. Tomorrow he'd worry about when it got there.

"Bernard, where in the hell did you put that data packet?"

The two scientists behind the raging Dr. Murdoch looked at each other and shook their heads. Bernard had clocked out for lunch half an hour ago, although neither of them wanted to tell him that. Not that they didn't miss their colleagues' comings and goings themselves now and again, but when Murdoch was frustrated he tended to bite. Sometimes literally.

"Is it really too much to ask that we keep an orderly office? A little decorum and neatness is invaluable to placing the right tool to hand at the right time, exactly when one needs it!" The tirade continued regardless of answer, question, or interjection from any outside party. "This is essential, not only to the maintenance of scientific objectivity and ..."

"How?"

Rimbaugh leaned in the doorway, beckoning to Murdoch's research assistants who scurried out as quickly as they could manage without drawing attention.

"I beg your pardon?" Murdoch asked, in the same tone he might ask if someone told him to eat a piece of beef off the floor.

"How is a tidy working environment correlated to scientific objectivity? I only ask, you realize, out of intellectual curiosity." His mouth was thinly pressed in a suspiciously amused way, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

"What... I don't know, it's not my job to know these things! My job is to find out..."

Rimbaugh reached forward and touched his friend's arm until he stopped flailing, then held up a data chip. A chip approximately the same color and brand as the one onto which the sought-after data packet had been loaded. Murdoch blinked at him, frowning. "Where did you get that?"

"Stuck to your sleeve."

"... Ah."

Murdoch shook his head, pretending to be irritated still while he slotted the chip into the computer and messed about with the folders that popped up. "There. Everything from the origins, the new alterations to the protein sequence, and the effects of the, the enzymes on the test tissue samples. With the new results, we should be able to integrate the full data into the simulation and have a projected response before we begin any more experiments..."

Rimbaugh sighed. "John, you know we've tried that before, and it doesn't do any good."

"Ah," Murdoch held up a finger. "But the principle is sound. Just because it didn't do any good the last two times, just because the results we experienced in field trials did, er, did not match the ones the simulation came up with does not mean the principle should be discarded. We could at least observe the variables in play, and perhaps by observation determine what we have not yet accounted for."

From the expression on his face, the tightness of the lines around his eyes and nose, Rimbaugh wanted to argue. But there wasn't any arguing with Murdoch when he was like this, and besides that, he was right. The government much preferred to pay for simulation software once than experiments on living subjects several times over, plus the security for it, plus the administrative cost, plus any of half a dozen things they didn't bother thinking about because all they were interested in was the research and results. The test subjects that they had managed to wrangle came with a number of rendition protocols to sanitize all record of where they came from; officially, they were monkeys. Of course, by the time they got to the labs they were little better than monkeys, but that was beside the point.

"All right," he sighed after several minutes of being stared at by his colleague with the eager look of a cocker spaniel out to play. "All right. Go ahead and run the simulation."

Murdoch chuckled, bouncing on his battered loafers in glee. Several keystrokes later and both scientists were staring at an entire wall's worth of screen, arms folded, watching the results of their latest parameters unfold in time-lapsed digital renderings.

An observer could see the progress and how closely it matched their expectations Murdoch leaned forward and forward until he was on his toes and so precariously balanced that Rimbaugh reached out (without looking) and grabbed the back of his lab coat to keep him from planting his face into the wall. As the simulation progressed he came back onto his heels again, and finally heaved a sigh of deep and bewildered disappointment.

"It didn't work." There was a pout in there somewhere.

"Yes, I can see that." Rimbaugh chewed on his lower lip, arms folding again and fingers tapping on the opposite bicep. "But why didn't it work. That failure was cascading from a completely unexpected point, our last trials made it through that stage of development smoothly."

Murdoch had turned away from the screen even before he'd finished, discarding the simulation as it progressed again from the beginning and then narrowing it down to a single prompt window with a blinking cursor asking innocently for direction. "Perhaps there's some sort of human element we introduced in the last trials that would account for it."

"It's possible... we should go over the records if that's the case, match our steps to the ones we took..." He glanced over at the shorter man. "You did record all the steps and actions properly..."

"Of course I did, what do you take me for?" Murdoch puffed up like an indignant turkey, and Rimbaugh held up his hands.

"Of course, that's not what I meant. I mean, you did input every action and so on exactly as we performed it, yes?"

"Yes," his head bobbed again, his face ruddy and swollen.

The other scientist frowned. "Perhaps it was some sort of factor we weren't aware of, body language, scent, even the ambient temperature in the room because of our bodies..."

"No, we were recording temperature, it couldn't have been..."

They turned and stared at each other. If the conclusion they'd reached roughly at the same time wasn't the same, it almost might as well have been. Too many years of habit had them talking at the same time, and it was a good thing no one else was in the room or no one would have understood them.

"Ambient temperature..."

"... body language..."

"... interpretation..."

"... heat patterns..."

"Yes, of course! If we apply the additional factor of, of heat patterns, pheromones!"

Rimbaugh rolled his eyes while his colleague's back was turned. "Why does it always have to be pheromones? Why are they always the answer when no one can think of the answer, is it some bizarre corollary to the idea that sex sells..."

"Hmm? What was that?"

Bland expression firmly back in place. "Nothing. Go on."

"If we include the information that, say, a dog, or, or a wolf, or some other pack or herd creature would be looking at... the body language, micro-expressions and the, the patterns of heat under the skin, yes? We've already established, after all, that they have some degree of thermal reception. Then perhaps the implied messages in the, in our behavior as we train them, perhaps that..."

He clapped Murdoch on the shoulder, chuckling. "Well, if you want me to help you collect all that information, we're going to have to order out for lunch."

"Lunch?" his friend blinked at him behind the spectrumscopes. "Oh, yes. Did I eat lunch?"

"If you have to ask, you probably didn't. We'll package this up once we're done and send it to the lab and they can run a short trial, yes, John, they can. They'll have to; we can't possibly account for all of the data just by thinking of things we've forgotten. We'll tell them to widen the scope of their recordings, and then see if this idea of yours has any bearing on the divergence."

"Right. Yes, of course. I'm sorry, I got carried away."

"I know you did."

Murdoch chuckled, turning back to the computer and beginning the edits to the simulation, requiring it to take into account other factors. "But I'm right," he added, fingers hovering over the laser keyboard splayed out on the counter and pointing a stubborn mouth at his friend. "You know I'm right."

Rimbaugh was already on the phone ordering sandwiches, and graced the other man only with a lift of the eyebrows before he interrupted himself. "I'm sorry, one moment... yes? No, I know you're probably right, but we still need to be certain."

"Yes, of course." And back to work he went, poking at the laser keyboard and humming happily to himself. Rimbaugh sighed, continued to order their sandwiches. His friend would be useless until they ran the simulation or small trial again and discovered whether or not it would work. At least it was a different direction to go in. That in and of itself had some promise.

Kim had had the day off. She knew she'd had the day off because it said so on the calendar. The damn thing might be buried under a pile of take-out menus, club cards and music parties, but she still kept a calendar, and today it said 'OFF' in big, crayon letters.

Then again, if a defense department contractor had a sub-contract with your courier company that could be measured in the five figures, that deal alone got you a lot of pull. Including the pull of the shift director to pull her dumb ass in when she was barely awake. Her blankets twisted over her torso as she lay half-on and half-off her bed, and she tripped over her shoes on the way to the shower. They could damn well wait until she'd scrubbed herself clean and gotten dressed before she called them back and reported in.

It turned out not to be a rush job after all. Just a security issue. Test results to go to the other lab in the other part of town, "quick as you can, please, there's a girl." If anyone else had said that she might have slapped them. From this guy, it sounded more like a kindly old uncle who was a little too senile to know that you didn't talk to people that way anymore.

As she hit the skyways she wondered why, if he was that far gone, was he still allowed at that company. Especially on a classified project. Either that or maybe he wasn't that far gone and acting like that got him a lot of leeway, now that she thought about it a little further. Next time she saw him she'd have to make sure he knew not to call her that.

The streets hadn't heated back up yet, although they also hadn't lost their summer heat even overnight. Still, it was better than it might have been. She double checked the address as she wound her way through the two or three other couriers who were out and about this early in the morning. And resisted her urge to kick over a pedestrian.

"One oh nine... hey, I recognize this address," she frowned up at the building, squinting along the steel-glass as she looked up against the reflected sun.

After delivery she called and checked in with the package originator, made sure they knew she'd made it and dropped it off. Just in case the transmitters were on the fritz again. Then, though, she was taking the rest of the day for herself since they had so kindly granted it to her. "It was already my day off," she muttered after they clicked off. "Jackasses. Call Abraham."

The search tone buzzed in her ear, but not for long. "Abraham here."

"Hey, buddy. Was in your neighborhood, thought I might see if you wanted to grab bre-- uh, lunch." A quick glance at her device said, yes, it was about lunch time. No wonder she was cranky. She'd taken one peek in her fridge and decided there wasn't anything worth cramming into her stomach.

"You sure? Wait, didn't you have today off? What are you doing down here?"

"Had, key word. Past tense. Anyway, I figured..." she dropped down to street level and came in the front door, toes of her right foot popping up as she engaged the brake in front of the reception desk. "Sorry, had to sign in. I figured I'd see if you wanted to do lunch. Haven't seen you in a while."

"It's been less than two weeks. Sign in? Wait, you're already here..."

He clicked off, swearing. Kim smirked and twirled around in circles until he reappeared at the top of the stairs from the first floor balcony, frowning down at her. She couldn't mistake anyone else for Abraham, that was for sure. The guy was six foot four at the very least and built like a brick, square shoulders and thick body. Black as a Caracas cocoa bar and with a voice so deep animals could feel his vibrations. Sweet as a lick of honey, though.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, coming down the stairs and not two at a time, either, although she kind of thought he wanted to. "And don't say for lunch."

"For dinner?" Her eyes widened behind the glasses, and she smirked at him in person this time instead of over the phone where he couldn't see it. "No, seriously, I was in the neighborhood. Boss took a government contract and now they have me shuttling tests and results back and forth. It's piece-work, and easy, but they needed a bonded courier with a high security clearance, and there weren't many of those who weren't assigned."

Abraham frowned again. "I didn't think your security clearance was..."

"Cleared for Top Secret and below, man." She shrugged.

"Huh. They really don't tell me these things, you know."

She chuckled. "No, I know. That's why I'm telling you now."

And he chuckled too, but then he sighed and shook his head. "No, Kim, I'm sorry, I can't do lunch right now. We're trying to pick up the pieces of this project that's going way south, it's just too crazy. Rain check?"

Her teeth caught her lower lip for a second to keep from asking him why he'd come all the way down to reception if he hadn't meant to come out to lunch with her, but she shook her head. That was the kind of thing a whiny girlfriend would say, and they'd been broken up for years. "Yeah, sure."

And then he did do something unexpected. "There's a theme night at the Sturmzeit tomorrow if you want to go? I'll buy the drinks."

Kim's mouth twitched like she had to sneeze, which she wished she could still blame on heat allergies but which was mostly just surprise. "You sure you wanna go out if you're that busy?" she asked, eyebrows scrunched.

He chuckled, which was a more tired sound than she liked to hear. "I'm sure I'll need to go out and cut loose some if it stays this crazy. They're riding us pretty hard for results, and we can't just make the results they want happen out of thin air. They don't ease off soon, someone's going to pop."

Heh. "Fair point. Okay, tomorrow night. Meet you at eight, we'll have dinner first."

"Make it nine, and a light dinner," he grinned a little. "I remember what you get like when you go out clubbing."

She was already turning, but circled around just to call back: "I might have mellowed since then!"

His laughter echoed all through reception, drawing stares as he clambered back up the escalator and disappeared into the hall. Cheered, Kim turned and rolled straight through some over-primped secretary's cloud of perfume as she left. And she didn't even mind.