Grocery shopping in Chicago. Exactly how I wanted to spend my Friday night. In most people's minds, that would have been sarcastic. I'm not most people. I actually enjoy it all - the bustle, the squeals of the trains above me, and of course I have a few more stops on my trip than most. I check the list in my hands again as I cross the street to the junkyard.

Eggs, milk, potatoes, pork chops, at least three two-inch bore, three thousand PSI hydraulic rams, garlic, and I'm sure I've forgotten something. I wrote everything important down, though, so whatever I'm forgetting, it's probably irrelevant. I wave to the junkyard owner, and he smiles back. I don't actually know him, and he doesn't actually know me, despite the fact that I'm here at least twice a week. I prefer it that way, honestly. He's an idiot.

Not to demean him, I'm not putting any malice behind that at all. He just is. Nine out of ten people are. Compared to me, anyway. I'm fine with that. Idiocy isn't bad, exactly. I just don't tolerate its infringement upon my territory. The life of Jen Meredith is to remain free of idiocy at all times, please and thank you. I simply don't have time for it, time to slow myself down and explain things to people again and again and again. It's the reason I own my house now. My landlord was always making me explain my latest invention, stressing how safe and reliable and non-flammable it was. It was exhausting. As I grab three hydraulic rams that look like they're in decent condition from the scrap pile, I feel someone run past me. Whoever it is, they knock my bag out of my arms, spilling my groceries all over the ground.

I spin around to shout at them, and the hydraulic cylinders slung over my shoulder hit something with a clang! that I probably shouldn't find as satisfying as I do. I turn back to see a man sprawled on the ground, his head bleeding slightly, in a sharp suit. He was holding a gun, but it slipped out of his hands as he fell. He's definitely unconscious, and I owe him first aid at the very least. I see another shiny object on the ground near him, a badge, and as I pick it up, three sickening realizations hit me at once.

One, I just clocked a Federal agent in the head so hard he won't be getting back up today.

Two, this downed G-man is my high school crush.

Three, there is absolutely no way in the universe that anyone from my past should know where I am.

I'm very positive I did all the steps correctly; moving across the country not one, not two, but five separate times, using aliases each time. Not to hide criminal activities, of course; I'm the most scrupulous when it comes to ensuring that all my research is technically legal. I did it to get so far away from my so-called family that they literally could not find me. And here someone is, straight from my past, with a Federal badge no less. I'd love to lean on my technically squeaky clean record, but after 9/11? After San Francisco? If a Fed wants someone to disappear, they're dust in the wind. I'm going to have to bend the rules a bit here.

Three hundred dollars and two very unamused cab drivers later, I'm at the door of my lab, sans groceries, carrying a Fed over my shoulder like a sack of rice. I set him down on the couch I tend to sleep in, make sure he gets plenty of rest, and settle in for the night with my biggest coffee mug. I'm never going to solve viable fusion at this rate.

I give the equations another go, but something's just not right. I'm probably tired. Not enough coffee. I wander over to my kitchen, start another pot brewing, when I hear sneaking noises from my lab. Jesus, the man has not gotten subtle with age. I figure he's got about three hours before he figures out how to disable the locks keeping him in there, so taking a couple minutes to get coffee for both of us couldn't hurt. Mine is filled to the brim with cream and sugar, his with just a touch of each. I stand in the clean room, pressing the right codes to get through into the lab without setting off decontamination, and step through quietly before the airlock rotates back. Sitting in a chair across from the sofa, I set the coffee down silently on my table and watch him struggle valiantly against my Model 3 combo lock.

"You're not going to break the lock, Adrian. Sit down, have a coffee. You really shouldn't be stressing your head any, considering you have a concussion," I say softly.

He turns around almost immediately, snarling at me. "Do you realize how much trouble you're in, kidnapping a Federal agent? The Eternal Mind won't get away with this. You can't comprehend the wrath you're bringing down on yourself."

I gesture toward the table and the quickly-cooling beverages. "Coffee. It's not laced. Seriously. And I have no idea what the Eternal Mind is, but it seems like you weren't after me. Which, frankly, is both a relief and a disappointment. If I haven't tripped any red flags in Washington, what are you doing here?"

"I have no idea who you are, and you're not going to enjoy the consequences here."

I laugh. "You know, I would not have pegged you as the guy who grew up to be a G-man, threatening people every time he didn't get his way. Makes me regret voting for you for prom king, honestly."

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"Prom king? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Coffee's getting cold, Adrian," I say as I sip my own.

He walks over slowly, trying to be intimidating, and gets up in my face. "Who the fuck are you, lady?"

I whisper in his ear, "We had a treehouse, you wanted it painted red. I told you that you were an idiot."

His face drops the rage for a minute, and his body loses its tension. The name he says, softly, is one I haven't heard in a decade.

I wince. "Not exactly. I go by Jen now. Seriously, you're concussed. You shouldn't be up. Grab your coffee, sit down, and I'll get water for you too."

He sits down, confused. "You're a woman now, and you live in Chicago, and you have me locked up in some kind of lab. Why the fuck?"

"The first one's harder to answer. For the other two, I like the Cubs, and I don't trust you not to report me. And no, I don't mean to Uncle Sam."

He just drinks his coffee until the mug is empty, not taking his eyes off me the entire time. "Everyone thought you died. Everyone. Why would you run like that?"

I don't answer. He sets the mug down and gives me a strange look. "You're not with them?"

"Nope," I say, popping the P. "I don't know who 'they' are. I just build things and license the patents. All above the board, if barely."

"So you're what, a mad scientist?"

I grab my laptop from a nearby desk and show Adrian what I'm working on. "Sure, if you want to call it that. Mostly, I want to power all of Illinois for free."

"For free, huh?" he scoffs.

"Yeah. Wisconsin has to pay, though," I joke with what I'm positive is a winning smile.

"You really have to let me go. I'm in the middle of the biggest case in years."

I ask him simply, "Which case?"

He looks at me with confusion. "Which case? My case. Stopping them."

"Stopping who? These Eternal Mind people?"

He looks at me even more blankly. "Who?"

Okay, this might be a problem. I repeat myself slowly. "Just a few moments ago, you were ranting about Eternal Mind."

"I'm pretty sure I'd remember that," he says with a frown, before he reaches into a pocket and pulls out a stack of notebook cards. "Eternal Mind, the Chicago Condition, fuck! Fuck, I'm compromised."

Adrian buries his face in his hands for a minute. "Jen, buddy, I'm fucked. I am incredibly fucked."

"How so, Adrian?"

He offers me the notecards wordlessly, and I read the NSA-issue "rebriefing" on something they're calling the Chicago Condition. It's a rebriefing because the people it's intended for have already been briefed, before having the information disappear right out of their minds. The Chicago Condition is an acute amnesia that the CDC is estimating to affect ninety percent of Chicago-area residents at stage one and ten percent at stage two. Stage one patients display degradation of long term memory at about twice the rates of an unaffected person. Stage two patients have twice the rate of a stage one patient, and short term memory begins to be affected. I can see Adrian's state described in the harsh, clinical bullet points under "STAGE TWO."

The next two cards are even more ludicrous than the first two. The CDC and NSA believe this condition isn't natural, and have been tracking communications from a Chicago area group calling themselves the Eternal Mind that seem to indicate they're behind the spread of the Chicago Condition. Not much in the way of useful information beyond that, though. Apparently if the agents need to get all the way to the last card, they're useless in the field, because it's just the address of a laundromat I've long suspected was a government front, along with a seeming code phrase. "Your Georgia Tech hoodie is in the back." I may not be the most well-mannered person around, but it seems to me like an invitation.

"Adrian," I ask, "do you remember why you're here?"

"I, uh, I was working a case here in Chicago, and you brought me here because... "

"Because?" I ask, with a soft smile.

"Because of the Chicago Condition," he says, seeing the cards in my hands. Yep, this is going to be an interesting night.

"That's exactly right, Adrian. You're a stage two patient, do you know what that means?"

His eyes widen. "Fuck. I'm compromised."

I reach out and take one of his hands. "Yes, that's what you said the last time too. This is the best lab in the state of Illinois. Do I have your permission to treat you?"

"Are you a doctor?"

"Yes," I reply, knowing full well that he meant the medical kind of doctor, which I most definitely am not. Medicine, well, it isn't even science really. When push comes to shove, I'd rather trust a good engineer than a great physician. He nods his head weakly, still unsure about anything.

"Okay. From here out, this is a quarantine lab. We're going to do tests daily, and you're going to get better. We're going to find out what's causing this, and we're going to fix this. You can rely on me, Adrian."

"Of course, buddy. I trust you," he says. And why shouldn't he? He's in the safest possible hands. Whatever half-cocked investigation those morons at the NSA have cooked up, it's nothing compared to the power of my goddamn garage.