June 3rd. For most of the team that date would remain in memory a long time. The day they’d had to kill one of their own. Each of them dealt with Reg’s death in his or her own way over the remaining course of the summer. Thankfully, the Unknown seemed to stay away for a change.

Karen returned to her dig, taking David with her. At first, he spent his days doing little more than sitting by the water and contemplating nature. And nights were spent fighting the demons that inhabited his dreams.

Karen stayed beside him as much as she could without neglecting her students, making sure he ate and helping him with any of the other daily habits that he couldn’t tend to entirely by himself right now. She knew that his mind was slowly rebuilding its defenses, working out ways to deal with a reality that included the Unknown and direct contact with Death. The best she could do for him was to let him know, just by her presence, that she would be there when he needed her.

Eventually, the nightmares subsided, at least to the point that David was able to get a little restful sleep most nights; and he began to take an interest in the world around him again. Especially in the ‘hot’ college girls.

Karen’s students had readily accepted her story about David being a ‘brother’ who’d had a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t hard to sell the story since it was basically the truth. And when he started to come around, a few students, mostly female, were happy to help Karen teach him a little about their work there, so he could take part in the dig.

And as long as he didn’t have to deal with bones or dead things, he did quite well. He was comfortable with the slow pace of the detailed work, whether it was carefully cleaning a pottery shard or slowly uncovering a chipped scraping tool or broken arrowhead. Anything that focused his attention.

But hand him a bone to catalog, no matter what sort of creature it was from, and he would go pale, then keel over in a dead faint. And if one of the students brought back an early morning’s catch of fish, or a startled hawk dropped its freshly-killed prey from its perch above the camp, David would panic, stumbling as far away as he could until the dead thing was removed from view.

Back in Detroit, Justin threw himself back into his work, and filled his free time with workouts and occasional trips up to visit Karen.

Master Naka spent his summer ‘boning up’ on comparative religion. Between a couple brief trips home, he talked extensively with Fr. Jerzy and Fr. Colin, learning all he could about the intricacies of Catholic rituals.

Frank and Terri had disappeared as abruptly as they’d appeared. The morning after Frank returned from Long Island with Karen, David and Justin, Justin and Karen looked out to find that the motorhome had vanished from the street in front of their house. Karen was a little sad that Frank and Terri were gone; but she didn’t doubt that the neighbors were relieved to have the motorhome gone.

Leigh spent some of her time doing charity work, some up at the dig, some visiting Angie, and some just relaxing at home. Though she mourned Reg’s death, she felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Ever since she and the team had discovered Reg’s alter-ego, she’d carried the burden of knowing that she might one day have to kill him to prevent him from committing some unspeakable horror. She owed him that much because of the love she had for him.

Now that it was over, she nurtured the happy memories, occasionally cried over the sad ones, and lifted her head to look toward the future.

For the first week after Reg’s death, Tony went on a bender. The others weren’t sure if it was because he was trying to drown the memory of helping to kill ‘Tommy’, or because he was celebrating his new-found skills in exorcism. But it didn’t matter. They made sure that he always had a safe ride back to the firehouse from whichever bar he passed out in.

Eventually, he sobered up and flew off to the Vatican to file a report about his experience. He spent a little time relaxing with his friends there, then ‘noodled’ around Europe for a while. Whenever he got bored, he’d call CDI and find something to blow up for them, then go back to his R and R.

The summer was winding down, and Tony was back in the States, visiting family in New York. But he wasn’t sleeping well, and the longer he stayed in New York, the crankier he got. It was September, and he knew what the problem was.

Usually, the dreams only came once in a while. Never more than once or twice a month. And never this vivid. But last night was the second night in a row he’d woken in a cold sweat. Maybe getting out of the city would stop ‘em. So he went back to Detroit, and to his comfy bed at the firehouse.

Tony looked around himself. He was in the stairwell of a large, well-built building. Something told him it was a skyscraper. The building shuddered, and his gut told him something really bad had just happened. The engineer in him knew that a building that size didn’t just shake for no reason.

He started down the stairs. It was strangely dark, too dark to see the floor number painted on the door he’d just passed, but he figured he must be up around the 30th floor. He caught a glimpse of something from the corner of his eye. Shadows moving? Or wisps of fog? Smoke?

He got to a landing and swung around the corner to start down the next flight of stairs, and almost crashed into a woman in a wheelchair. She looked up at him, then looked down helplessly at the stairs below her. “Help me,” she pleaded.

Tony lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and started down the stairs. He could hear her sobbing, feel her tears running down the middle of his back.

The lower he went, the darker it got, as if all the lights were slowly dimming. He could smell smoke now. He was trying to keep track of the floors as he went down. He’d gone no more than two or three since picking up the woman. Her sobbing had stopped and she was whispering, “Thank you, thank you.”

He rounded the corner at the next landing, and the stairwell went completely black. All the lights had gone out, and he felt the building shudder again.

And then he saw the eyes. Hundreds and hundreds of little red eyes…waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs….

Tony woke, sweating, his heart pounding. He was having trouble breathing, and he could smell smoke. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was in his bed at the firehouse. His legs felt all rubbery, as if he really had been running down all those stairs with a helpless woman on his back.

He rolled out of bed and belly-crawled to the bedroom door, below where the smoke would be hanging. Reaching out slowly, he felt the door, first with his fingertips, then with his whole hand. It was cold…safe to go out. He stood and opened the door carefully, then went up and down the hall, checking each room for both fire and occupants. He found neither upstairs, so he continued down, checking around.

The firehouse was empty, and there was no sign of a fire. That was when Tony finally realized that the smell of smoke was coming off his own skin. He doubled-checked the security system, then went back upstairs for a quick shower. He put on sweats and a t-shirt, then went to the kitchen for milk and cookies.

It was about 3:30am, so Tony grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV as he settled onto the couch. Most channels had the infomercials common at this hour of the morning. CNN talking heads were spouting stuff about the Republican convention.

He checked the DVR. Good thing it had gotten the season premiere of Bones…he’d forgotten that was on last night. SciFi had a couple shows on, but he wasn’t really in the mood for that after the nightmare. He kept surfing, stopping occasionally to brush off cookie crumbs and take a sip of milk.

Every so often, when there was a gap in the sound from the TV, Tony would have sworn he could hear skittering sounds, like large claws on tile or cement. He would look around, and, seeing nothing, turn up the volume on the TV.

Tony woke with a start and squinted at his watch. 6:30am, Sept. 3. The TV was blaring, and his ankles itched like crazy. He felt around for the remote with one hand, as he leaned forward to scratch his ankle with the other…and felt solid metal pressing into the tops of his thighs and the bottom of his ribcage. It was one of his guns, the biggest handgun he owned.

Tony turned off the TV, then rubbed his eyes. His ankles still itched. He tugged up one pant leg and saw red marks around his ankle. He pulled up the other pant leg and found the same marks on that ankle, too. What the hell…?

He set the gun on the couch and leaned down to get a better look at the marks. They were raised now, from the scratching. They looked like…like rows of bite marks. They hadn’t punctured his skin, though.

Tony rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his head to the right and left, getting a series of ‘pops.’ “Must’a slept on it wrong,” he said to the empty room. He laughed. As if he’d actually gotten much sleep at all….

He stood and stretched, then went to the closet and dug around in his coat pocket. Pulling out his cell phone, he thumbed it open and put it in “Photo” mode. He pulled up a pant leg with one hand, and snapped a picture of the marks, then sent the picture to Karen with the note, “What is this? Do I need to disinfect?”

Tony shuffled to the kitchen and rummaged around under the sink. No rat traps there. That was where he’d’ve kept ‘em. He searched all the other logical places, but came up empty. Slipping on his shoes, he went out to the car and drove to Meijer for those huge ‘snap’ traps for rats.

A couple day’s worth of stubble, sweatpants and a t-shirt, no socks…. Tony hadn’t thought about what he looked like until the cashier gave him a weird look. ‘Course, that could’a been ‘cuz’a the basket full’a rat traps.

Too bad he forgot his wallet, too. He apologized, and asked if she could hold the basket there until he got back. “No more’n twenty minutes,” he told her. “Swear.”

The cashier rolled her eyes, but set the basket on the shelf under her register.

Twenty minutes later, Tony was back at register 5, wearing clean street clothes, wallet in hand. “Must be infested pretty bad,” the cashier commented without looking at Tony, as she scanned the first trap.

“Don’ wanna led it get out’a hand,” Tony told her.

“Total’s $38.16.”

Tony swiped his credit card, and signed the screen above the keypad.

“Good luck,” the cashier said, stuffing the receipt in the bag as she lifted it off its metal stand and handed it to Tony.

“T’anks.”

Karen heard an insistent knock on the bedroom door, and rolled over to look at the clock. 6:45am?!

Justin had spent the night on the far side of Toledo, waiting on a special part for a custom conversion he was working on. So it was just Karen and David at home. “What the hell does David want at this hour,” Karen muttered to herself as she pulled on her bathrobe.

David looked a little grumpy, too, when Karen opened the door. He had the room next to Justin and Karen’s, and had been working on translations into English of old stories he’d learned in ancient Ojibwah. “Maybe you should keep your cell closer to your bed, Essiban…where you can hear it. It’s buzzing…loudly.”

Karen padded over to the dresser and picked up the phone. There was a message from Tony. She pulled it up to find a photo of a man’s hairy ankle and leg, with the message, “What is this? Do I need to disinfect?” She studied the picture a couple seconds. He must have been talking about the red marks, but she wouldn’t have had any idea in either case. Still too much meat on those bones.

Karen handed the phone to David. “It’s from Tony. You got any ideas?”

“Uh, maybe he oughta find a new girlfriend.” David snickered. “It looks like rat. But….”

He headed down the hall to Karen’s office, with the phone, and Karen followed him. She found him at the desk, hunched over the phone with a ruler and a calculator. “I don’t know where he is, but they’ve got a bad case of really old, giant rats with no strength. They’re about 4 times the size of normal rats…which would be about twice the size of Detroit city rats. But they couldn’t even muster the strength to puncture his skin.”

David handed the phone back to Karen, and she dialed Tony.

Tony kicked the door shut with his toe and dropped the bag of traps on the bar when he felt his phone vibrating against his belt. “Yo, Karen. So, whad is dat on my ankle?”

“You’re askin’ the wrong person,” Karen told him. “I know bones. But I had David take a look, and he wants to know if your girlfriend has had her shots.”

Tony could hear David talking in the background. “Ha ha. I’m serious.”

“David says they look like rat bites…but from really big rats that were too weak to break the skin.” Karen heard what almost sounded like a gasp, then the sound of the phone bouncing on the floor. A moment later…

“I’ll call youse back.” Tony closed the phone and went back out to his car. This was gonna take more than snap traps. He headed for Lowe’s, and began collecting the makings of tiny flame throwers, which looked like so many cleaning products to any untrained eye.

Karen shrugged, and went to take a shower. David went back to his translating. He’d realized, at one point, that he could kill two birds with one stone if he translated from Ancient Ojibwah into both English and modern Ojibwah at the same time. Since he was fluent in both, it only took him the extra time for typing everything twice.

When Tony got back to the firehouse, he set the Lowe’s bag on the counter, grabbed the bag of traps, and headed to the workshop. After replacing the smaller, more discrete gun he’d had in the shoulder holster for his shopping trips, with the biggest handgun he owned, he set to work modifying the traps.

It took almost no time to cut rows and rows of teeth into the strips of sheet-metal, once he’d worked out the pattern. Then he carefully welded strips of teeth onto the metal snap-bar of one rat trap. He ran to the kitchen and grabbed a hot dog from the freezer, checking to make sure no one else had come in while he’d been busy.

When the trap sliced the frozen hot dog cleanly in half during the ‘test-fire,’ Tony was satisfied that his first line of defense would be effective. He modified six of the traps at a time, then laid them out in discrete places around the firehouse, doing his best to make sure that Drew couldn’t reach them either. Then he went back to work on the next six.

Leigh got to the firehouse about 9am. She’d gotten into the habit, over the summer, of swinging by there at least a couple times a week to check on the plants, and to make sure nothing in the ‘fridge had turned into a science experiment. She never knew when she would run into someone else there, so she usually brought along some of whatever she’d been baking that morning…fresh bread this time.

Tony’s car was in the parking bay when she pulled in. So after setting the bread on the counter, next to the bag of cleaning products someone had dropped off there, she went to see if he was up. His bed was a mess, but empty. She couldn’t hear him in any of the bathrooms, so she checked the security system and found him in the workshop. When she walked in, he was working on what looked like tiny bear traps.

“Why are you making badger traps?”

“Leigh! Hi!” Tony turned, startled, and pushed the trap aside into the jumble of parts lying on the bench. Then, in fluent Danish, he asked, “How was your summer?!” He stepped away from the workbench and gave Leigh a little hug, turning her as he let her go, and ushering her back toward the kitchen.

“Very good, thank you!” Leigh replied in Danish. She was genuinely impressed that Tony had spent the time to learn her native language. But right now he seemed slightly spooked. He kept looking around, nervous and shifty-eyed. “Have you eaten? What would you like me to make you for breakfast?” she asked in Danish.

Tony didn’t hear her. He was trying to make sure none of the traps were too easy to spot. Then he noticed the Lowe’s bag where he’d left it on the counter.

“Tony! Are you hungry? What would you like me to make?” Leigh asked again.

“Hunh? Oh! Uh, bacon an’ eggs’d be fine.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you recently had a CPD. You have the same odd look Frank gets when he has them. And he says I get that look when I’ve had them, too.”

“Uh, sure…right!” Tony laughed nervously. He picked up the Lowe’s bag, trying to act nonchalant, and took it to the workshop. When he got back to the kitchen, he asked Leigh, “So, how’s dat French toast comin’?”

“The bacon and eggs are coming along fine,” Leigh replied, “but I can switch to French toast if you like.”

“Have ya been practicin’ yer pistol shootin’?” Tony asked.

Leigh raised one eyebrow. Talk about a non sequitur! “No.”

“Well, ya might be more comf’ter’ble wid ‘em if ya carried one aroun’ wit’ ya more…like when yer in here.”

“Maybe. I’d have to get mine from the car.” Leigh held up the tongs and glanced down at the frying pan of bacon to indicate that wasn’t going to be happening soon.

“I’ll get it!” Tony offered a little too brightly. “Keys?”

Leigh sighed and nodded toward her purse. Tony dug in and pulled out the keys, then practically sprinted for the garage.

As soon as Tony was out of the kitchen, Leigh grabbed her phone and rang David. “Would you like to come to the firehouse and have breakfast? Tony’s back in town, and he’s acting a little strange.”

“I know,” David told her. “He’s been sending Karen foot-fetish pictures.” There was silence on the other end of the line. David chuckled. “I’ll be there shortly, probably with Karen.”

Leigh dropped the phone back into her purse and went back to the stove when she heard the garage door slam.

Tony rushed back into the kitchen, and gently tucked Leigh’s gun into her waistband. Whenever he thought she wasn’t paying attention, he would sneak a peek behind the appliances. He hadn’t heard any of the traps go off yet; but he couldn’t be too careful with these things.

Leigh did notice the odd behavior, and when she set Tony’s plate of food on the table, she gave him a quick hug and peck on the cheek before he sat down.

“Guess I should’a learned Danish earlier,” Tony said, grinning.

Master Naka came in and nodded to Leigh and Tony. With winter coming, the plants on the roof, especially the bonsai, needed special attention. At home, they would have been left outside, to encounter the natural weather of all the seasons. But winters were much harsher in Michigan, so special care was needed to protect their delicate root systems.

“Master Naka, I’ve made some tea. Would you like to join us?” Leigh invited.

Master Naka could tell from the look on her face and the way she said this that there was more going on than the words might indicate. “Hai. Domo.” He sat at the table and Leigh brought cups of tea for him and herself.

After her shower, Karen was semi-awake, and David found her in the kitchen. “Essiban, how would you like to go over to the firehouse for breakfast?” David asked. “Leigh just called. Tony’s there and she thinks he’s acting a little more strangely than usual. She wants a consult.”

Karen shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I just have to call and arrange a sub for today’s classes.”

“T’anks, Leigh,” Tony said, standing. He picked up the now-empty plate and silverware and set them in the sink. “Dat was great. But I need ta get back ta my project now.” He made a beeline for the workshop, though he tried to look like he was in no particular hurry.

“He’s been acting very strangely this morning,” Leigh whispered to Master Naka as she put her hair up in a quick bun. Then she followed Tony to the workshop. He’d smelled faintly of smoke when she kissed him a short time ago. But not of wood or cigarette smoke. It was much fainter than those, and more acrid, and she couldn’t quite place it.

“Tony, what fires have you been around lately?” she asked, walking into the shop behind him.

“None. Ya mus’ smell some ‘a da arc-weldin’ I’ve been doin’.” Tony tightened the welding mask’s headband around his head.

“Nice try, Tony,” Leigh said, “but it’s not working.”

Tony lit the torch. “Wha’?! Sorry! I can’ hear ya!” He turned to the bench and continued working on the last of the traps, hoping Leigh would get bored and go away.

He welded teeth onto bars for a few minutes, then shut off the torch and flipped up the mask. Leigh’d been waiting so quietly, he didn’t realize she was still there until she grabbed his arm. Startled, he dropped the torch on the bench as she dragged him toward the door.

“Wha?! Whad’re ya doin’?!”

“Tony, talk to me. The fire, the big rats…. What’s going on?” Leigh kept one hand on Tony’s arm, expecting him to bolt. Master Naka stood patiently nearby, sipping tea and watching them.

“How’d you know ‘bout my dream?” Tony asked, surprised.

“I talked to David, and I know there are some kind of bites on your leg. You’re building something that looks like badger traps. And you smell like smoke…not wood, nor smudging, nor welding, nor cigarettes.” Leigh laid out all her cards for him, then softened. “Look…I’ve had those kinds of dreams, too.”

“I jus’…It was jus’ a nightmare. So I got some milk an’cook…I mean, I got some beer an’ pretzels, an’ watched some TV, an’ fell asleep. An’ I woke up wi’ dese bites.” Tony pulled up one pant leg to show them the red marks.

“They are weird,” Leigh said, squatting down to look at them.

“I have an inkling what they are,” Master Naka told him.

“So do I,” Tony shot back. “I killed t’ousands of ‘em in Ground Zero.”

“You are familiar with dream badgers?” Master Naka asked, his eyebrows going up. “They have been in my dreams, and I am sorry if they have latched onto you.”

The three didn’t notice David and Karen coming in from the garage.

“No,” Tony told them. “Dat ain’t it.” He described his dream to them…the dark stairwell, the helpless woman, the smoke, and the red eyes at the bottom.

“Ah.” Master Naka said nothing else, simply turning and walking back to the kitchen.

“I think you just need a better class of girlfriend,” David laughed, walking past and into the workshop.

“So is that what the picture was about?” Karen asked, dropping her coat on the back of a chair.

David came back with calipers and a notepad, and made Tony put his foot up on a chair. He began taking detailed measurements of the bites and Tony’s ankle. Karen got a camera and took pictures to record them as well.

When Justin got back to town, he dropped the part off at the shop, then went past the house to see Karen and get a change of clothes. He hadn’t planned on spending the night south of Toledo. But when he found that the part wasn’t quite ready to go when he got there last night, he didn’t see much sense in wasting the gas to drive all the way home then all the way back the next day. Unfortunately, that meant he hadn’t bothered to take a change of clothes along; and since he was heading straight home anyway, he didn’t bother using the spares he kept in the truck for emergencies.

Karen wasn’t home when he got there. Justin checked his watch. Still a little early for her to have left for class…. He looked around. David was gone, too. But there were no signs that they’d left unwillingly. The bed was made, and there was a damp towel hanging on the bar in the bathroom. Karen’s pack was gone, as was David’s briefcase.

Justin cleaned up and changed, then went over to the firehouse, to check there. From the crowd of cars in the bay, if looked like everyone else was already there. He walked in to find Tony waving his hairy ankle around, David measuring it with calipers and Karen taking pictures of it. Leigh and Master Naka were cleaning up the kitchen.

“From these measurements,” David was saying, “it looks like these were made by a rat about the size of a medium-sized dog. But a rat that big should’ve punctured the skin, and this one left only bruises.”

David stood and set down the calipers and notepad. “When you saw Tommy in the spiritual plane,” he looked from Tony to Karen and back, “he didn’t have a severe overbite, did he?”

“No,” both Karen and Tony answered.

Karen was pleased. David managed to mention the spiritual plane without his usual mocking tone. Maybe he was making some progress. “Have you ever had these dreams before?” she asked Tony.

“No, never.”

Karen raised an eyebrow. “That’s strange, since it kind of sounds like it’s related to the work you did at Ground Zero. I’d have thought…”

“Well, I mean, dis is da firs’ time wit’ da bites. Dey was jus’ flash backs before,” Tony clarified.

“So…what’s going on?” Justin asked, joining the huddle.

Karen wrapped her arms around him and gave him a kiss. “Tony, if it’s not too hard, can you tell Justin about the dream?”

On this retelling, Tony got up, went straight for the beer and pretzels, was watching skin flicks, then fell asleep and woke with the marks.

“This sounds like it’s up Leigh’s alley,” David suggested.

“No! I mean…dese are demon rats…wererats!” Tony protested.

“So…which are they?” Karen asked.

“They’re two different things,” Justin added. He’d noticed that Tony happened to be packing the biggest gun he owned.

“Perhaps we need to find the Pied Piper,” Leigh suggested with a chuckle, as she came out of the kitchen.

David disappeared upstairs for a moment, then came back with his flute. “Will this help?” He started playing.

“So, Tony, when did you start having this problem with rats?” Justin asked.

“I don’ have a problem wid’ rats. I woke up wit’ dese!”

“Maybe dream rats can’t break skin,” Justin suggested.

“I didn’ wake from da dream wit’ dese.” Tony said it like he was patiently explaining something to a child.

“Right. You were watching skin flicks and woke with ‘em,” Justin agreed.

“No. I didn’ dream dat time.”

“Maybe you just didn’t remember it.”

“No, I always remember my dreams. Dat’s how I know I dreamt.”

“Just remember,” Justin warned him, “before you touch off that hand cannon—make sure of your ‘downrange.’”

David had set down the flute and was moving around the room lighting incense in the corners.

“Dese are jus’ da babies, anyway,” Tony told them. “An’ dis,” he patted the gun, “won’t go t’rew da mommas. Dere horse-sized.

Everyone in the room tensed when they heard a key in the front door lock. Aiden walked in, and they all relaxed. Leigh ran over and hugged him. He looked more relaxed himself than he’d been in a long time, and not particularly stressed-out for a change.

“So what brings you back?” Leigh asked lightly.

“I didn’t want Receiving to forget I still work there,” Aiden answered. “So…something’s going on….”

“Tony has an ankle-biter,” David joked.

“Oh. One of your by-blows find you?” Aiden laughed.

Tony scowled.

“It might help to have a medic look at it,” Karen suggested, looking at Tony. “Especially one with your background.” She looked pointedly at Aiden.

“Ya know, when I wuz in Ground Zero, some ‘a da sounds dat people heard and t’ought wuz us blowin’ up stuff, wuz small weapons fire from us takin’ out nests,” Tony explained.

“Dream badgers,” Master Naka commented from the kitchen.

“Aren’t badgers good luck?” David asked.

“Not in Japan,” Master Naka told him.

“We aren’t in Japan,” David replied.

“And Tony isn’t Japanese,” Karen added.

“As long as we do not have migrating Japanese dream badgers here,” Master Naka said, coming out of the kitchen. He winked at David.

Aiden guided a reluctant Tony over to a couch and made him sit with one foot up on the coffee table. He pushed Tony’s pant leg up so the marks were visible, then closed his eyes to center himself.

David moved around behind Tony, so he could see what Aiden was doing.

Aiden took in a long breath, then let it out slowly, putting his hands on Tony’s ankle. David was pretty sure he saw Aiden’s hands give off a slight warm glow. When he moved his hands away, the marks were gone. David’s eyebrows went up, then he caught himself and they went back down just as quickly.

“Well, that answers that,” Aiden said. “They were caused by the Unknown.”

“Right,” Tony agreed. “We already knew dat. Dey were from giant demon wererats. We were fightin’ ‘em, and when we were done, dis guy hands us dese pins and tells us ta kiss our asses goodbye.”

“Tony, you say ‘demon rats.’ Is this anything you recognize from your Vatican studies?” Justin asked.

“No. Demons prefer people…or, failin’ dat, t’ings dat fly. Rats…not so much.”

Karen quietly slipped away and walked around the firehouse, trying to sense if there was anything Unknown there now, or the residual feeling of the Unknown having been there recently. She started at Tony’s room, then moved around where he said he’d gone, then checking the rest of the building. There was a very faint sense of something having been there, but nothing actively around at the moment. She told the others.

“Have you seen any rats, or any spore, around here?” Aiden asked.

With the attention off him for the moment, Tony went back to the workshop.

“Nothing so far,” Leigh told him.

Master Naka nodded agreement.

Justin checked the security system, but found no evidence of any small critters having triggered the motion sensors recently, other than Drew.

“Well, if you’re here, Master Naka, then I don’t have to check on the plants,” Aiden said. “So I guess I’ll go see if I still have a job here in Detroit.”

“I’m betting they’re just glad you finally took a break,” Justin teased him.

“And I’ve been keeping in touch with them, letting them know a bit about what was going on,” Leigh told him.

“Angie’s brother and wife and their brood finally moved in to stay with their mom,” Aiden explained. “Angie’s dealing with her issues. But I’m worried about her mom. She’s fading.”

“Can’t exist without her other half?” Justin asked.

“Right.”

“She wouldn’t be the first who pined away for her other half.”

“I think if we break up, it’ll be OK between us,” Aiden told them. “I don’t feel like she’s on the run anymore. And her brothers don’t let her get away with crap. They all think I’m terrific…for a wussy guy.” He laughed. “I can actually beat 3 of them at arm wrestling.”

“The smaller ones?” Justin teased.

“No! Her oldest brother because he’s a crappy arm wrestler! Anyway, I am gonna be going back this weekend.”

Several of the team had been chatting beside the security monitors while Justin was checking them. On one of the screens they could see that the red light was flashing outside the door of Tony’s ‘special’ workshop. That meant he was working with live explosives.

Downstairs in his explosives lab, Tony was working on a new modification for the traps: shaped charges that would vaporize anything located up to 6 inches directly above the center of the trap.

David looked at the flashing light for a minute, then wondered aloud, “Think we should be calling Frank to get Tony on the couch?”