Jack settled himself slowly onto the broad back of the motionless giant polar bear. Stiff, slippery fur crunched under his feet. Long habit had him planting his feet at right angles without thinking about it, sliding them sideways through shattering, glassy fur. Oddly, once he'd broken bits off, they drifted to the ground like normal, if thick, hair. He reached down and lifted a few strands; they felt normal as well.

"So, what's this thing you summoned up, Widget?"

The doc stood next to a white sarcophagus which reflected the remaining lights of Boathouse Row. She poked dispiritedly at a set of buttons on one side. She'd found a panel shortly after wishing the thing into being, but after that she'd just stared at it. Her shoulders slumped lower and lower until he walked over, sliding his feet through the snapping, wiry hairs, and lay a hand on her shoulder.

"Widget?" Long habit forced his voice to a whisper that wouldn't carry past the white noise of the water gently lapping against the sides of the bear. "Doc?"

She shook her head and spoke in a voice three octaves higher than normal. "I can read. I know I can. I learned. I taught myself. This isn't fair!" She pulled back one hand, balling her hand into an inexpertly made fist. Not knowing whether to protect her or the thing which ought to be able to help Charlie, he grabbed her elbow, fingers gently squeezing pressure points to keep her from pulling without hurting her. She swung, and he found himself pressed against the back of a very healthy young woman, suddenly remembering he no longer lived in the body of a nearly dead old man.

She turned her head slowly to face him, stopped when he could barely see her eyes in the darkness. "Jack... hammer? I don't think you oughta..." The doc's whole body twitched. Jack felt his cheeks heat like a schoolboy when he realized how little she'd moved, and why he'd known anyway. Her fist unclenched, fingers spreading across the top of the sarcophagus. They remained tense; years of experience told him how much she wanted to move, to do something. Even with all those years he had no idea whether her tension stemmed from a need to hit or a desire to do... something else.

Either way, he slowly opened his hand, releasing her elbow, and stepped backward. If she wanted to hit him for getting so close, he ought to back off, and if the drumming of her fingers across the top of the gleaming white box had another reason, now wasn't the time or the place.

"Widget?"

"I'm fine, Jackhammer." She looked around, the lines around her mouth and eyes giving the lie to her words. "I'll be fine, anyhow. I wonder where I'm pulling these things from."

"You sure you're not just creating them from scratch?"

Her lips, curled into a parody of a smile, dropped down into a natural frown. "The mirror I summoned had a simplified Mandarin ideogram for a name. Roughly translated it meant 'great cuts'. I looked it up, but the Chinese aren't quite up to speed on every mom-and-pop hairdressing salon having a website, and I really didn't have time to explain how I'd stolen their mirror."

Jack nodded. Way back in his military days, he'd learned to deal with techies. Nod and mimic their facial expressions and wait until they gave you some hard info. Maybe ask a question when the silence dragged a bit. "What did you do with that mirror, anyhow?"

"After a while it disappeared. I'm not sure exactly when; I had Charlie haul it down to my lab for study, and then one morning it was gone."

"Huh. Wonder if there's some kind of time limit."

"The ball of nanomachines and catalytic compounds I wished up hasn't disappeared." Her frown deepened. "Yet. At any rate, no one on Earth has technology as advanced as the dust. Also," she waved at the control panel on the side of the sarcophagus, "this thing is using a non-Terran alphabet."

"You sure it's not a cipher?"

Doc Merilyn waved at the box again. "Feel free to take a look."

He leaned in to see, and she tensed again. He still couldn't tell why. He focused on the strange, swirling letters on the panel on the side of the box, trying to remember what the code breakers he'd worked with so long ago had told him about ciphers. For a moment, comprehension teased at the edges of his brain, but a thick, wet cough tore it away from him.

"Dammit. What the fuck has a guy got to do to get medical attention around here?" Jack could barely make out Steve's words, thick with dark water bubbling from his mouth. He grabbed another hunk of polar bear hair and dragged himself forward leaving a man wide trail of blackness behind him.

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"Hang on, Axeman." He hurried over, but his gut clenched when he saw the extent of the firefighter's injuries. His arms were covered in blood, the reinforced coat torn to tattered shreds. The lower part of the coat, not so tightly fitted, fared better, and it hid the lower half of Steve's body. Jack didn't need to see Steve's front or legs; a single ropy intestine ran out from the tail of the coat and stretched out into the darkened water.

"Hang on," he repeated. He hated this feeling. He'd left mercenary work because of one too many youngsters dying after pushing themselves far beyond what rational men thought possible. Still, he'd seen Steve heal some really ugly smaller injuries, and Doc Merilyn could work wonders. Hell, she might even figure out how the sarcophagus worked. Done reassuring himself, he flipped Steve's coat out of the way so he could see the extent of his injuries.

His teeth ground together with the effort of not vomiting. He'd seen worse, years ago, but not much, and not too many times. Steve ended just below the waist. His intestine, gleaming pink in the moonlight, stretched from the gaping hole where his hips ought to be. Jack knew from experience if he had light and the right angle, he could see the pink of lungs and the deep dark red of liver.

"So... am I gonna be able to tap dance after I heal up?"

Jack almost choked on his reply. "Yeah... yeah, you'll be fine, Axe... you'll be fine, Steve."

"Great. I never could before. Chicks dig that shit."

Jack stood there, torn between laughter and tears. "Doc, I think Steve... I think you need to take a look at him."

"While your own code name is quite similar to your real name, not all of us have gone that route, Jackhammer. Also, I suspect Steve's injuries aren't as severe as he's led you to believe."

Steve scowled and coughed, the noise interrupting Jack's own reply. "Dammit, you icy bitch, I can't feel my legs over here."

Jack laid his hand on Steve's shoulder. "That's cause they're not there, son."

Doc Merilyn stood from where she knelt by Charlie's side, strode quickly over to where Steve lay, glanced at him once, then returned to the sarcophagus to study the control panel. "Do you still have your Axe?"

"Oh, yeah, I have it right here, strapped to my leg." Steve flailed his right arm through the stiff hair to one side of where his legs ought to be. "Oh, fuck, that's right. I forgot my fuckin' legs in the fuckin' bear's fucking alimentary canal! Shit, what's a guy got to do to get some first aid around here?"

The doc didn't look up from where she continued to tinker with the box. Nothing opened or moved, but the controls morphed and twisted, finally eliciting a soft beeping tone from the panel. "Pardon me, Axeman, but I thought you said you couldn't feel your legs?"

"No, I can't. My guts, on the other hand, hurt like a motherfucker. Mind doing something about that?"

Flex stepped out of the water, her legs shrinking to normal size as she did so. She set a cooler down next to the doc, then handed her a small pill bottle. "Couple dozen bottles of ibuprofen, but only this one of aspirin. I looked for powder but couldn't find any. I've got all the abandoned booze, cola, and snacks I could cram in here."

"Great, we can have a fuckin' picnic. Oh, wait, I can't, I forgot half of my fuckin' digestive tract. Mind doing me a favor and telling me why you're not doing something about this, Widget?"

Angela reached into the cooler, pulled out a half full bottle of cola, and tried to grind the aspirin tablets into the bottle. When Jesse saw what the doc wanted, she took the bottle, squeezed it around for a few seconds, then poured the resulting powder into the soda bottle. After the fizzing died down, she handed it back.

"Hello? Screaming pain over here! Torn in half! Dying as we speak!"

"Don't lie, Axeman. It's unbecoming in a hero." She nodded to the cooler. "The rest of that is for him. If he can't, or won't, eat it and drink it, force it into him." She moved back to Charlie's side, lifted his upper body, and started pouring the aspirin-laced soda into his mouth. She tried to hold him up, pour the drink in his mouth, and massage his throat all at the same time, but with only two hands she couldn't quite manage it.

Jack couldn't just stand by and watch, even if he didn't like the doc's triage. "Dammit." He started toward the doc, intent on taking over part of the job of force-feeding Charlie, but she waved him off.

"Sorry, Jack, but I don't know how radiation would affect Charlie right now. Not too much research on radiation therapy for stroke patients. Besides, I need you to do something else." Before she could continue, Jesse reached one long arm across the ten-foot gap between Steve and Charlie, sliding her forearm behind Charlie's back. With her other hand she poured cheap whiskey into Steve's spluttering mouth from three feet above his face.

Angela nodded, satisfied, and focused on getting Charlie to drink his aspirin. "Okay. Jack, I need you to do something for me. It's a medical necessity, and I'll need you to do it without asking questions or hesitating. Okay?"

Jack took a deep breath. "Yes, ma'am."

"Tear Steve's intestine free."

Jack had lived a long time taking orders without thinking. He relied on that life now. A few seconds screaming and thrashing later, Steve lay panting, trying to avoid the jalapeno popper Jesse tried to stuff in his mouth as the remains of his intestine slithered away into the water. Right before Jack's eyes the bottom of Steve's torso sealed itself over, two stumps already protruding.

"Shit. That actually feels better," he sighed, then tensed. "Oh hell, no it doesn't!" he screamed, thrashing as the stumps shot to full length through the crunching forest of bear hair, lacerating themselves as they did. Without thinking Jack stomped the whole area flat, trying not to stomp Steve's new legs too much as he did.

"Oh, crap. That stung like a motherfucker. Remind me never to get eaten by a giant bear again."

"Will do, Axey!" chorused Jesse.

Steve leaned back in her lap as she knelt next to him, talking around bites of food she shoved into his mouth as fast as she could pull them from the cooler.

"At least I don't have to be the one to babysit Midnight when she wakes up."

"You wish, Axey. We've only got the two beds set up!"