Sturmzeit was one of those places where you could feel the beat in your sternum one moment and then hear the treble buzzing in your skull the next. The lighting was all electro-luminescent, there were fog machines so thick you could taste the chemicals like a film on your tongue, and teenagers who fancied they could reinvent the whole genre danced around like bugged-up robots on the floor.

It was fun just to people watch, hell, never mind getting out on the floor and grinding it up with someone she didn't even know.

She sat with Abraham in a corner, for now, though. The sushi and steak dinner had yet to settle, and she really had mellowed some since they'd dated regularly. She hadn't been kidding about that part. Less gung ho to get out on the dance floor, less putting herself out there and more sitting back and enjoying the company. Plus, the headache from the sun earlier in the day had yet to subside even with copious amounts of water and some food.

"So, what were you doing downtown?" he asked, having to yell it across the table almost and she still barely heard him.

Kim shrugged. "Government contract," she yelled back. Hopefully he would leave it at that; being a top secret government employee himself, he should know better than to push.

"No, you told me that, I mean, where..." and that was all he got out before she kicked him under the table, hard. Apparently he didn't know better. She leaned over after kicking him again for good measure to get as close as she could to him and be able to talk somewhat more privately.

"I am amazed you still have your clearance, you know that?" she said. Maybe only at shouting volume. He'd been like this as far back as she could remember, just blathering on about everything in general, never mind whether or not it was classified. It should have gotten him into trouble long ago, but someone in the higher-ups liked him. Either that or everything he'd blathered about and told her wasn't the classified stuff, which was a little unnerving because it had sounded pretty advanced and secretive at the time.

Come to think of it, It bothered Kim because on some deep dark level that she didn't admit to having, she did believe at least a little bit of those stories. The ones that started out with this message will self destruct and usually ended bloody. In the middle there was a bit about if I told you I'd have to kill you.

She didn't figure his job was that glamorous, but she did think the government took its attempts at biowarfare seriously. And, babbling or no, he was one of the best microbiologists on this coast.

"All right, all right. Can you at least tell me what building?" He really was going to push this, wasn't he. She could feel the little red dot on the back of her neck as they spoke.

"I can tell you it's the tall one with the glass windows, that's about it."

He gave her the look. "All of them are tall with glass windows."

"Look, what do you want me to say, Brom, okay? You want me to spill out who I'm working for right here in the club? You might be secure in your clearance..." She blinked. "No pun intended, but I'm not." And she damn well wanted to keep her clearance and her job.

The music thumped while she waited for him to return fire, but all he did was lean back into the shadows and stay silent. Loudly silent. The kind of silence that spoke volumes but this was at a frequency she didn't understand. And only now did it occur to her that since the clearance level was about the same, maybe he did know something about the project she was likely to be shuttling. And maybe he was worried.

That gave her a moment's pause. Although asking what he was worried about wouldn't get her anywhere, she thought. He wouldn't be able to tell her either and after her outburst just now he would be expecting her to yell some more if he tried.

"Hey," she reached over instead, laying a hand on his arm. "It's just data, okay? I'm not going into any offices, I'm not in danger of stumbling across any secrets. Whatever you're worrying about, quit it."

He threw her a rueful smile. "Not much chance of that happening anytime soon. But I'll stop asking about it, okay?"

"Fair enough." Which it was. She couldn't physically make him stop worrying. "We came here to have a good time anyway, right?"

His eyebrows shot up and he grinned. His teeth looked pale blue in the light. "What, you're not having a good time?" he teased, in his rumbling, happy voice. She grinned back.

"Not yet..."

It was far too early in the morning for this. Again. It was far too early in the morning for this on the morning after a night of clubbing, which made it ten times worse to her aching head.

Kim rolled over and smacked the table until her hand hit her device, which stopped ringing but let out the familiar sounds of a person breathing on the other end of her phone. Either it was a crank call or her boss was waiting for her to say something. "If you woke me up at this ungodly hour to breathe into my phone I'm going to hunt you down and make you wish I'd killed you."

"It's eleven, Kim."

Her boss, then. Slightly better than a heavy breather. "What do you want. I'm off. The calendar says so. Trust the calend--"

"Not anymore. It's just another quick run, then you can go back to your hangover, but they need this shuttled over ASAP. Kim. Come on, you're the best I've got at that security level."

He started with the sweet talk first off. She really must sound cranky if he started the wheedling and coaxing without her saying anything, usually it took her fifteen minutes of bitching. "And I know I'm getting overtime for this." Beat. "And hazard pay."

"I'm not paying hazard pay because you have a hangover, but yes, you are getting overtime. They don't drag my couriers out of bed on their day off for nothing."

She sat up at that and frowned, brows knitting together. First wheedling, then protective threats. Well, not threats, but statements of territory and being all domineering and what was this? This wasn't her usual (laconic) boss, this was someone who could act vaguely like a professional. Now she wondered if something really was wrong. Or if he'd heard something about the client or maybe her mind was inventing half a dozen conspiracy scenarios because she needed sleep. Never mind.

"All right, all right. ASAP is after I have a shower, though. Where am I picking up and where am I dropping off?"

"Details are on your phone." And then the click.

Well, that was more like him, anyway. He didn't believe in such niceties as please or thank you or hello or good-bye.

She dove into the shower to scrub away the rest of last night. Scum in her eyes and fog juice in her hair, little sticky patches where she'd gotten her or someone else's drink all over her. Hazards of hanging out at a club with dancers who were mostly drunk and some of them on various kinds of entertainment drugs.

After the shower came food, no matter what she'd told her boss. Food could happen while getting dressed; she held a protein bar in her teeth as she pulled on her shorts, peeled off the rest of the wrapper and wolfed it down while she wrapped her top half in a shirt. Armor came next, then her wheels and she was ready to go, or as ready as she was going to get anyway. At least she had the skyways. If she'd had to use the street level approaches when she was this out of it, and she was feeling her exhaustion, she'd be screwed.

The address was familiar, too. Not the place where she'd dropped it off, it took her until she was in front of the building to realize where she was. She'd never taken note of the address before, not as it related to personal matters anyway.

"Son of a three-legged bitch."

Abraham would wonder why she turned up at his building a second time. Especially on her day off. She didn't call up although the receptionist did remember her, and frowned slightly. "Here on business this time," she flashed her courier badge, shaking her head.

"Miss Traang, yes, you're listed here. Go on up." And her visitor's pass was activated and handed over; she swiped it into the elevator and rolled back and forth with one hand resting on the bar at the back. Her mind kept returning to the questions he'd asked, or tried to ask, last night. As though he'd known what was going to happen or what was happening. At least within his department. She didn't even know what floor he worked on, although she did know his phone number at work and his employee code. Yes, she could read upside-down. A lot of people could; they should keep that log book better hidden.

The elevator chimes were so quiet she barely knew they were there, which did not help her nerves. Elevators should bong when you hit the floor you were looking for, that was the way they'd been for a century or more. They should go ting when they passed a floor, and bong right before the doors opened. She glared around at the inside of it before wheeling out into the hallway. "I'll be back for you later," she muttered to no one in particular, because it made her feel better.

Down the hall to the office. She hadn't been in this building before, not up this high. The walls were opaque, but behind the smartglass she could see forms moving. Rough shapes of human beings, people in lab coats, no doubt. When the building was secure the smartglass would be de-colored again so that everyone could see each other and there was slightly greater building security on an internal level, when it was assumed that no one who didn't have clearance to be here was here. It was a good idea. She was pretty sure it also encouraged all kinds of corporate and government espionage, but it was a good idea.

"Aaand... no, here we are." Hit the brakes, then wheel back. She knocked on the door, blinking a bit at the harsh lights on the other side when it slid open. Something about that smell was familiar. "Hey, got a package for pickup?"

To his credit, he glanced at her ID before reaching around behind her field of vision, behind the open door, and grabbing the package. Both IDs, her visitor's pass and her courier's badge that she was required to display at all times in all secure areas. It had her face on it, her thumbprint if they wanted to scan it. Her full profile if they really wanted to get invasive, which she hoped they didn't. The scientist gave her a look and the badge a look, twice, before signing the package under the send field and stamping his DNA and thumbprint on it. He then stared at her until she did the same, where the spaces were for the bonded courier's identification. Then he nodded and turned away.

"Thanks..." she said to the closed door. "Okay, that was a little rude."

Not a word. Not a word, and a muted elevator. And her thumb stung longer than she thought was usual for the DNA sampler/stamper. She shook her head, sucked on her thumb and rolled back into it the elevator and started down for the ground floor, trying to quash the feeling that it was going to snap and send her plummeting into the basement. She'd never had that feeling in an elevator before, and feeling that vulnerable left a bad taste in her mouth. Rather than wait for the receptionist to get off the phone she yanked off her visitor's ID and flicked it across the partition as she signed out, then wheeled out the door as fast as she safely could, leaving the creepy building and its freaky mad scientists as far behind as possible.

"No... No, no, this is wrong, this is all wrong!" Two clenched fists slammed onto the table, making dishes and racks and test tubes jump. Making his assistants jump, too, and then quickly move for other parts of the lab.

Murdoch pushed his hands through his grayed out curls, pacing up and down along the table. "This is wrong, these cells should not be reacting to the retrovirus, these proteins should tolerate the virus, it's the same damned virus!"

But it wasn't the same virus. Or it wasn't the same tissue sample, something was wrong. Something had caused the body to reject the antivirus, setting up what would undoubtedly be a lethal cascade of events in a live subject. He recognized the signs. He had originally constructed this retrovirus out of, among other things, a lethal virus. And it was returning to its origins, destroying the proteins, the muscle tissue, the host, while he watched. It was frustrating, endlessly frustrating.

"End footage," he muttered, then remembered that this wasn't a voice-activated setup and pushed the buttons. Stabbed them, really, with a thick gloved finger. "Dammit. That was not what I hoped for."

His assistants had at least stopped retreating by now; he hated it when they were so timid. As though a man with a temper was anything to be afraid of. Failure, abject failure and the humiliation that came with it, deprivation of funds and loss of status and pay, that was something to be afraid of. And that was what faced him if they did not solve this problem within the time frame that the defense department mandated. That was what faced all of them, but himself especially.

He pushed his hands through his hair again, clenching them into fists as though he could pull out handfuls of hair to relieve the frustration. He couldn't, likely wouldn't even if he could. The spasms of his hands were more an exhibition of tension.

"Someone, an idea. Offer me an idea, anything." Offer wasn't quite the right word, but he was beyond verbal dexterity at the moment.

The young woman, the only woman in the lab, was also the only one to approach him.

"Shouldn't we ..." she startled at his abrupt scrutiny, blinking.

"Yes? yes, go on." Fluttering hands at her did nothing for her peace of mind, clearly. He should remember that. "I'm sorry, please. You were saying?"

The woman, he couldn't remember her name for some reason, took a breath and began again. "You created this retrovirus using a lethal virus as a part of your base; if you ... if we want to figure out why the body rejects it, shouldn't we also be looking at case records from the original virus, not just the retrovirus?"

He opened his mouth to say how stupid that was, of course he had. And then he realized that he hadn't. "Yes. Yes! You see, that's exactly the type of initiative I want in this laboratory!" Every syllable punctuated with a stabbing finger around the room at each of them, a few test tubes, and a mass spectrometer. "That's the type of thinking I want to see from each of you. Yes, go," he flapped a hand at the woman. "Go, find me the records, sort through them and organize them by similarity, data points, I need as many data points as possible. We're looking for, for rejection, natural immunities. Anything that gives us a clue as to why this virus behaves in these people in a different manner than it does in everyone else."

She was, he remembered as she nodded and ran out to tell someone in archives who could more quickly locate and collect the information for her, she was a virologist. This was her specialty. No wonder she had thought of it first. Heh. No wonder she was on his team.

"Valuable asset, that woman," Murdoch frowned. "What was her name?"

Didn't matter. Irrelevant data, never mind, he had more important things to call to mind at the moment, not the least of which was coordinating some attack of immunosuppresants to perhaps better achieve integration of retrovirus to host body, or at least to give the retrovirus time to complete the transformation. Perhaps the same combination that they gave to transplant patients. A short, strong dosage.

"What are you..." The young man jumped backwards as he abruptly found himself the subject of intense scrutiny. "Do, I mean, um. These tissue samples..."

"Are useless, yes, I know that."

"Do you want to keep them, or...?"

"Of course I want to keep them, are you mad?" He blinked. "Wait, no. Store these tissue samples. We will... we will collect another round, I need to... I need to contact..."

Someone. He needed to contact someone in the testing facility, he needed to get samples from every available subject. The boy had reminded him. What had changed in the test subjects, the test tissues, that caused the rejection. He needed a more full spread of possibilities, of comparisons. And it had been about a week since he had last checked in with the testing facility, he should see how they were doing.

"Yes! Gerald, thank you, I was just thinking. It is about time for you to send me the week's results, isn't it?"

Gerald looked frazzled. He wondered obliquely why. "Ah, yes, Dr. Murdoch, yes it is, but, there was a problem..."

"Problem, what sort of problem?"

Behind Gerald, someone waved a hand frantically for him to come over; he must have muted the connection before going over to speak with whoever was off camera, because suddenly instead of the clatter of the labs there was silence. Then Gerald came back to the camera just as he was starting to dance from foot to foot and demand an explanation for the delay.

"No major problem, doctor," Gerald forced lightness into his voice, he still looked frazzled. "Just some of the test subjects are being a little.. unruly, there was a problem with some of the collection."

"But the samples, are the samples intact? You know, if you need assistance..."

"No, no, we're all fine here, we've got the samples intact and uncontaminated and ready for you, we just... I hope you aren't intending to start another round of live tests."

"No, not yet." He shook his head. "Not yet. But soon."

Gerald looked a little sick. "We'll up our security and safety protocols, we'll be ready for you."

"Good," he said, and terminated the connection without further banter or listening to Gerald complain about his problems. They were designed to be docile, for Pete's sake! A bunch of, he must say, very large and well-built scientists should have no problem with that.

It was far, far too late by the time she was ready to head home. She had spent about an hour arguing with her boss over the re-upping of her security clearance, when that could be scheduled in and who they would get to cover her shift that day. Or whether or not she should do it on one of her days off, and then the company compensate her for however long it took. And after that there had been discussing the schedule, arguing about her overtime, and her boss trying to figure out what exactly it was that she was doing that needed a bonded courier on call for so much of the day, for so many days of the week. Surely, the government could consolidate their labs into one facility they could walk around safely, and information could be transmitted over secure networks.

Apparently not, though. Apparently this project was so secure and so complicated that when they had been building these laboratories and government offices they hadn't anticipated anything like it. Which meant that they either had to spare someone to go out into the world for the fifteen minutes it took to get from one building to the closest next over, or they had to hire a bonded courier to shuttle everything back and forth, back and forth, for weeks on end. For as long as the project lasted. Your tax dollars at work.

Yeah, Kim thought it was stupid too, but on the other hand they paid her well and they didn't harass her or ask her to do anything outside of her job description. The number of times she had been told to go fetch pizza or take out from a place that delivered to the law offices she was working for, just because they had her on hourly and didn't want to pay an extra two bucks for a delivery person, well. It was a long list of offenders.

And the only reason she was justifying all this to herself was because she needed something to think about while her muscles screamed in protest at the long schlep home. It was night, it was so humid the sweat lingered on her skin like a persistent lover, and the city reeked of all the accumulated body filth and food detritus from the day.

Something clanked in an alley ahead of her. Not unusual, the streets were never deserted in the city, even late at night. But this wasn't a normal clank. This was the kind of clank that happened in horror movies were before the monster leapt out and grab you.

Kim reached into her pocket for her mini taser, then kept her hand there so it wouldn't look like she was going for a weapon. no point starting trouble until it was ready to start itself.

When she passed under the streetlight and nothing happened she drew her hand out of her pocket again. Okay, maybe it had just been someone kicking a can or bottle across the alley.

They attacked when she got out of the circle of the streetlight. Faster than she could put her hand back in her pocket and grab her taser, one of them pounced. Actually pounced, like a jungle cat on unwary prey animal that didn't even know was being hunted. Her shoulder hit the cement and scraped, leaving an instant burning stripe along her back. Something sniffed at her neck, giving her time to get at least a glimpse of her assailants. She glimpsed, and her mind abruptly rejected the image.

For one thing, they were gray. Not the kind of pearly gray that they used for benign aliens on TV, some kind of weird mottled gray like a bunch of naked special forces soldiers had rubbed themselves in various shades of charcoal. They were lean, almost entirely muscle, and they moved low to the ground. Their hair was almost uniformly curly, of football helmet of ringlets that would've been cute under other circumstances. And they were naked. That part, her mind recorded in the same wry tone with which most people rolled their eyes at the strange sights you saw on the street and said, oh, that's just the city.

This wasn't just the city. This was the city at night.

They sniffed her all over and knocked her to the ground when she resisted. The assault was quick and brutal and not only too unexpected for her to react, but also too unusual.They pawed at her skin, at her clothes, and then when it seemed like they didn't understand what they were doing or couldn't find what they were looking for they beat her, frustrated. She curled up into a ball, protecting her head and her most vital parts, but they didn't seem to have knives. Just fists.

When the next overhead light along the sidewalk clicked on, they scattered. A few moments later, she had no idea how many actual minutes had passed, someone said something. She tried to move, to walk under her own power or at least to get her phone device out of her pocket. You couldn't trust the kindness of strangers, in the city either they would shield you with their bodies or pick your pocket, sometimes both at once. She managed to push a few buttons, but lost consciousness before she could tell which ones they were.

The hospital lights were bright and harsh, and did absolutely nothing for the sight of her. She could tell this by the dismayed expression on Clayton and Lyle's faces when they came in.

"I'm fine, you guys," she said, rolling her eyes.

Clayton scowled at her. "You're not fine, you're in the hospital." As though she didn't know where she was. Then again, one of the things listed on her chart was "head injury", so maybe that wasn't an unreasonable assumption. It still grated on her nerves.

"I know I'm in the hospital," she told him with her jaw clenched to avoid snapping or yelling at him. "It reeks of chemicals, disinfectant, and piss. Everything is smothered in some kind of mild white or beige and I'm covered in blankets and wires. Where else would I be but a hospital?"

"A really bad porno set?" Lyle offered, grinning unrepentantly when his dad glared at him and She laughed, though, and relaxed a little. It made her head hurt, but the laugh was totally worth it.

"Where have you seen the medical porno? No, wait a minute, don't answer that." The joke was over, they didn't need to start discussing the poor kids pornography habits in front of his dad. "I'm going to be fine. As far as muggings go it was actually a really polite one."

Clayton had exactly the sort of expression she would expect from someone who just described their assault as a really polite mugging. On the other hand, she didn't really know how else to describe it. They hadn't taken anything, all they had done was roughed her up a bit. They hadn't even said who they were roughing her up for, if they had been sent by anyone. They hadn't even been that good at roughing her up.

She was saved from justifying her choice of words by Brom's entrance, and he came bearing flowers made of chocolate.

"I'm not sure if you're allowed to have these yet, but…" he grinned when she glared at him.

"Are you actually standing between a woman and her chocolate?" Kim pointed out, before snatching them from his hand and curling around them protectively.

Brom rolled his eyes and rumbled, "but," he continued, "I figured I would bring them to you anyway." It probably helped that he was a doctor, both of microbiology and of medicine, having and had spent some time as an emergency medical technician. He just might have scanned her chart in the hospital and tailored his offering to what she could have.

Clayton snickered. So did Lyle even if he didn't quite understand the joke yet, not paying attention to actual women right at the moment. One of these days, he was going to meet someone who wasn't virtual, and she was going to have to give him the talk or three that his mother had run out on. Kim unwrapped a flower and broke off a petal, nibbling to calm herself. Being the injured friend with all her friends crowding around in the hospital wasn't fun. Well, the having friends to crowd around her part was gratifying, but she could have done without the rest.

"You look like you're recovering well," Brom continued, pulling up the last remaining empty chair and folding his massive bulk into it. She eyed the arms of the chair to see if they bowed out any.

"It wasn't as bad as it looked, like I was just telling these guys. I got jumped, I got groped and beat a little bit, and then they all ran off. It was pretty weird, but it wasn't that bad."

"Then why are you in the hospital?"

All three of the adults stared at Lyle, but no one had an answer for him. With bruises, scrapes, mild head injury that had been scanned into submission, and a wrenched shoulder she shouldn't be in the hospital. But they were keeping her in here for 24 hour observation anyway. She kind of guessed that it might be so that the police could talk to her, or to keep an eye on her in case the scan had missed something in her head, but that only lasted until that evening. After that, either they would discharge her or they would have to come up with a different excuse.

"They're not telling you anything, are they?"

She shook her head, rubbed her temples and wished Clayton hadn't asked that. "The police were by, asked a couple questions. I don't know if they got what they wanted or if they were just taking down things to put on a report. They asked…" It was hard to remember. She hadn't been all that coherent at the time, doped up on painkillers and still in some pain despite them. "I don't think they knew what was going on anymore than I did."

"That's comforting," Brom muttered.