Steve stumbled along in darkness, following Jesse's scent more than her hand. He heard her dodge left past a squeaking cart. He followed, caroming off the wall before he righted himself.

"Hang in there, Steve. We're to the elevator. It should be here soon."

"I hear it. Needs maintenance." Even with the cotton in his ears, every little sound rapped his skull with a drumstick. His own words each echoed endlessly, until he couldn't think straight. The plugs in his nose stank of his own sweat. He pawed at them until Jesse swatted his hands away.

"Stop that, moron. I need to get you up to Angie so she can look at you, and I don't want to go carrying you again."

The elevator dinged. The doors scraped open, stopped halfway with a crunch and squeal.

"Dammit. I thought Charlie fixed this. Lean on the wall for a second, I need to let go of your hand."

"Hurry back. I'll cry every second without you." Sometimes a good line was worth a little pain.

Metal screamed, driving Steve to his knees. It went on and on, forcing an answering howl from him. He pounded the floor, hoping to kill the pain in his head with the pain in his hands. It didn't work. He punched the hard tiles again and again. Crackles vibrated up his arms as his knuckles shattered under the pounding. The screeching metal stopped, but his torment continued until Jesse grabbed his arms. He strained fruitlessly against her grip as the pain in his hands and head slowly receded.

"Holy carp. Holy carp on flaming toast!"

"What's wrong now? Did I hit the rat by accident?"

"Do you still have a head?"

"Unfortunately, yeah."

"Then you didn't hit Cory."

He heaved a sigh. Everything about her except that damned rodent smelled so good. "Then what's wrong now?"

"Your hands..."

"Yeah. They've gone numb. Angela's gonna have to splint me up, isn't she?"

"No..."

"Then what is it?"

"Angela told me about it, but I guess I didn't really believe. Your hands..." She petered off again.

He couldn't help himself; he lost it entirely. "What! What about my hands! Tell me!"

In answer, she yanked the cloth from his eyes, wrapped a hand around the back of his head, and forced it down until he stared at the floor. Cracks in the marbled tile spiderwebbed out from where his fists rested against the floor. Faintly glowing window cleaner covered the floor, slowly seeping away through the cracks. Jesse grabbed his wrist and lifted his hand up in front of his face. Window cleaner covered it, but no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see a single cut, a single distorted bone, or even any bruising.

"First, you just healed multiple open fractures in less time than it takes most people to stop screaming about them. That's really freaky, but it's not why I'm freaked out."

Asking over and over was getting tedious, but her grip was like high grade stainless. This was why he didn't do any of that bondage stuff. "So, what does have you freaked out?"

"I can't tell you. You won't believe it."

"Try me."

Still, she hesitated. "Do you trust me?"

He shrugged. "Sure. Why not."

She reached over to a nearby equipment shelf, flipped his hand over, and before he could scream or pull away, slashed his palm with a scalpel. Pain shot up his arm, and he tried to yank his hand away, but Jesse held him down, forcing him to look at the deep cut on his hand. Even as he watched, the ends sealed themselves, knitting together like time lapse photography, but that didn't compare to the blood gushing from the wound.

The glowing, blue, blood.

***

Jack stopped at the top of the sixth flight of stairs to catch his breath. As far as anyone could tell, the ball healed his cancer, but running up steps told him it hadn't really cured his age. At the age he looked now, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, he could run up twenty flights before he started to feel it. He looked down at the faint dents and scuff marks in the stairwell tile with a rueful smile.

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"No use complaining. I still feel better than I have since I hit forty."

He pushed open the door and stepped carefully into the hallway, his ears open for the telltale creak telling him the floor couldn't take his weight. He'd learned that trick moving around shelled buildings with a full combat load, refined it moving construction equipment through half-finished houses, but he'd never expected to use it wearing nothing more than jeans and a tee shirt, carrying nothing more than a sunny disposition and a post it note with the doc's room number penciled on it.

After a moment spent checking to confirm the room numbers followed the same pattern as his own floor, Jack strode down the hallway. Up around the next turn someone was arguing, either with themselves or on a cell phone. Whoever she was, her voice grabbed at the back of his neck and the base of his spine and propelled him forward, pickup lines queuing up in his head.

Before he rounded the corner a muted crash echoed down the hall.

"...pretty clear. I gotta go!"

The floor seemed solid, but he couldn't chance falling through. Instead, he shifted to a shuffling run he'd learned back in his early twenties. Back then it let him move quickly through caltrops, now it let him run without his feet ever hitting the floor very hard. He rounded the corner at a shuffling run, and a series of images burned themselves into his brain.

The hot lady cop from the radiation room, her shoulder bouncing off a heavy hospital door. Even falling on her butt from the impact she drew his gaze like a magnet.

A petite Asian girl charged up the hallway behind the lady cop. Despite the intervening years and the certain knowledge of the prejudice of his own reaction, his balls drew up and his mouth went dry. If he'd had a weapon, he'd have brought it up to his shoulder.

A young Italian guy following the Asian girl. He had a washcloth draped over his head, cotton sticking from his ears and nose, and none of those things compared to the double handful of glowing blue goo he cradled in his hands.

"Need a hand?"

The hot cop glanced over at him, and his pants got tight again. "Sergeant Maliss. Any chance you have some experience working entries?"

"I might. If there are hostiles in the room, you ought to wait for SWAT."

His warning fell on deaf ears. Young people could never wait. "I'm not sure if there are hostiles or not, but Doctor Merilyn is in there. I think she's hurt."

That made a world of difference. "Okay, then. I can..."

The little Asian girl won some points in her favor just then. With a muttered, 'give me a little space', she shouldered the cop aside, set one foot back from the door, the opposite shoulder against the door just above the handle, and pushed. The cop was too busy watching the door, ready to charge in, but Jack saw the girl's shoe stretch, then rip. Her foot popped out, and melted sideways until it covered nearly a whole floor tile. She heaved, a cry exploding from her, and the door frame popped inward with a crash of glass and rattle of plastic.

The lady cop poked her head through the resulting crack and called out, "Angela! Are you okay in there? Angela!"

From inside the room, came a faint, mumbled, 'Go 'way!'

The cop extricated herself, then looked down at the little Asian girl. Before she could say anything, the Italian guy arrived. "Oh, man, Jesse. Charlie is so gonna kick your ass into next week. D'you know how much of a pain those card reader locks are to install?"

"Oh, fudge your card reader locks, Steve," piped Jesse, "Angela's in there, didn't you hear?"

"Yeah, whatever. She's too mean to be hurt."

At that, the girl trapped in the room muttered, "you all hate me," followed by muted sobbing.

Before things got out of hand between Steve and Jesse, Jack stepped up to the door. A half decade as a drill sergeant helped his words squash their argument. "As I was gonna say," he flicked the metal adorning one side of the door, "if you can find me a screwdriver, I can get the hinges off in about sixty seconds." He wrapped one hand around each of the door frame's uprights and pulled, twisting it to the side as he did. "Kinda moot now, though."

"Man, Charlie doesn't even know you and he's gonna read you the riot act."

Jack ignored him and stepped carefully into the room. The old work boots he'd come to the hospital in didn't have much tread left, but the steel sole still protected him from the glass littering the floor. Moving in his caltrop clearing shuffle again, he slid over to the huddled figure crouched in the contorted remains of a cheap couch.

"Doc? Doc Merilyn, is that you?"

She looked up, recognition entering her sorrow filled eyes. A child's voice whispered from her lips, "Jack! I tried to make a fort to hide in, but the pillows don't come off this stupid sofa. I..." A grimace twisted her face, pure fury staring into his eyes, and then the little girl returned. "Please, don't be sad. I didn't save any magic chocolate for anyone else. The angry voice is going to yell at you."

Jack had seen men crack before. At least Doc Merilyn didn't have a rifle. A quick glance at her hands showed she didn't have any syringes or scalpels, either. He reached out and held one hand a hair's breadth from her head. "Doc? Everything's going to be okay, Doc. Nobody's angry at you."

With that, she started keening, a quiet, high-pitched moan that slowly warbled its way into sobs. Doc Merilyn leaned against his hand and wept, her whole body shaking every few seconds when she moaned.

The lady cop spoke from behind him. "Is she hurt?"

Without moving, he whispered, "Not sure. Looks like PTSD though. Seen that before, too often."

"Ah, man. Just when we need her most Angela goes and takes a vacation to lala land."

Jack had tried to leave his old life behind, but some parts of it still clung. Some of them, like the chivalry that had driven him into the service, then driven him out, he never really wanted to let go of. "Son, if you don't shut the hell up, I'm gonna shove your foot straight up your ass."

In one sentence, Jesse earned his trust despite her eyes. "Don't do that, mister. You'll cause brain damage."

He couldn't help it; a laugh forced its way out. Beneath him, snorts of angry laughter interspersed themselves among the sobs. A few seconds later both were overwhelmed by the deep groan of physical pain. Slowly Doc formed words from her moaning. "Oh, god. I think I'm gonna be sick. Somebody get me a bedpan."