Archive of Our Own ^beta

DISCLAIMER: You know, I don't own *anything* (sigh). Pet Fly and UPN own these guys, Rupert Murdock owns half the world... Me, I own a cat--and even *that* ownership is debatable.

RATING: PG I guess. Just a light-hearted little piece. Okay, not so light-hearted, but... (shrug)

NOTES: Hi all! This is my first non-XF fanfic in a looooong time. Please let me know what you think of it. Thanks! Oh, it's pre-J/B-slash here. I've got two more in the works that'll build off of this one. So, no bisquey now, but definite bisquey later (snerk).

Deprived

by Dean Warner

He could hear his lungs expand and contract, could feel the outline of a mask that covered his nose and mouth, could smell the vague tint of copper to the air he was breathing. His eyes opened slowly, unable to penetrate the darkness around him. He should be able to do that. Sandburg had yet to design a blindfold he couldn't at least see *light* through. And he couldn't feel anything over his eyes, anyway... If he was blind--*really* blind, this time...

He could clearly hear his own heartbeat, but the headphones--or whatever they were--that were over his ears had rendered the outside world a mystery.

Where the hell was he? He tried to remember something--anything--that might explain how he'd come to be like this, but all he could remember was coming home from a long night of poker at Joel's.

"Chief," Jim cautioned strongly. "If you can't lose at least part of the time, you're not going to be welcome at these little get-togethers."

Sandburg smelled of cigars--a habit Simon had gotten him into. In fact, *both* of them smelled like cigars... And beer... He sneezed loudly, and Sandburg just had to rub it in and laugh.

"Bless you. Man, Jim, why don't you just ask those guys not to smoke, okay?" Blair shrugged out of his jacket, hanging it on its hook by the door. "You should say something."

"Something like, 'Sandburg, the next time I catch you smoking, I'm going to rip your lungs out personally and save the cancer the trouble' maybe?"

His roommate's hands came up in defense. "Hey, man... I'm just trying to fit in."

Jim headed for his room. "Right. Well, try to fit in here by being quiet while you work tonight, okay?" He yawned hugely. "I'm bushed."

"Hey, Jim... About this observer status?" Jim turned toward him, and Blair blushed. "Now that the thesis is done..."

"Come on, Buddy, don't worry about it. It's your call, okay?" He smiled reassuringly. "Simon's ready to sign you on for the next year, if you want it. Just think about it, okay?" He shook a finger. "But do it *quietly*. I have *got* to get some sleep."

"No problem," Blair said with a shy smile. "Night, Jim."

Jim waved a hand on his way up to his room. "Night."

He tried to breathe deeply, but the mask was apparently only giving him a certain amount of air each time. It had to be hooked up to a metered compressor, though he couldn't hear the machine... He tried to relax, felt his muscles trying to lean back and stretch out. He couldn't tell whether they were doing it, but he persevered, closing blind eyes and trying to hear Sandburg's voice in his head as the kid talked him through an exercise designed to increase his sensitivities.

It didn't work, and the attempt reminded him of something, if vaguely. Some experiment that had been a total bust...

Sandburg and his experiments. Sometimes Jim thought the kid stayed up nights figuring out how to give his partner a hard time...

His heartbeat he could focus on... He spread from that to focusing on the feeling of the blood running through his veins. This really was sounding familiar to him now, and he recalled that the next step should be to try to flip his sense of touch outward, so he could feel what his skin was feeling. Only it didn't work. If his brain was correct, his skin wasn't feeling anything.

It took a few more tries for Jim to start getting truly worried. If this was one of Sandburg's tests, all he had to do was tell the kid to stop, and they could try to figure out what happened.

His fear grew as he spoke. He knew he was making sounds, but he couldn't hear them--not even in his head.

"Hey Chief?" he called--he hoped it was loudly. "Chief, this isn't working..."

He was about to call out again when he tasted a change in the air he was being fed. It was subtle, but it smelled like... Ether?

He wondered what the hell kind of test this was, as the smell led him deeper and deeper into sleep... A sleep filled, not with dreams, but with memories...

"Hey Boss?"

Captain Ellison worked his way around his own injuries, heading toward the young kid who'd called his name. "Yeah, Perkins?"

"Boss, I could really use a glass of water... and damn near a bottle of aspirin."

Ellison tried not to close his eyes against the weakness of his lieutenant's voice. Perkins wasn't going to last the night, and Hill and Johnson would be only hours behind him... And Ellison still couldn't feel like it was anything but his fault.

"Sorry, Doc," he whispered, looking up at the clear sky above them. "I'm fresh out of Bayer, but I'll see what I can do about the water, okay?"

"Thanks, Captain."

Ellison picked up his gun, looking back at the kid in sorrow. "Look, Doc, just keep an eye on the others for a couple, okay? I'll be right back."

Perkins pulled his machine gun toward him, holding it in a hand that shouldn't have had the grip to hold cotton. "No problem, Cap. Just don't take too long, huh?"

Ellison worked his way through the wreckage, his leg feeling like it was on fire again. Shit. Not like there was anything he could do about it. Not out here. Out here in the God-forsaken jungle, surrounded by miles and miles of trees, birds, and bugs!

He headed toward the small stream he'd found yesterday, letting the slice in his leg set the pace. He didn't have to hurry--it would only give him more time to watch his men die...

Blair Sandburg became aware of sounds around him. Sounds, and a smell that told him he was somewhere he had no business being--a hospital.

He picked out one voice and clung to it. "Simon?" he asked weakly.

His eyes finally agreed that opening would be the best thing for them, and he saw Simon walking up to him, after nodding to a blue-clad ER nurse. Blair smiled inwardly. He saw too much of this hospital--no one who didn't would know that the ER nurses wore blue. Surgery nurses wore pink, strangely enough, and ward nurses wore the inevitable white...

He pulled himself away from his strange musings as he realised that Simon had called his name.

"What happened?" Blair asked.

His question didn't thrill the captain, he could tell. Simon's jaw clenched tensely. "We were hoping you could tell *us*. Where's Jim?"

Okay, wait, Blair thought coldly, that's supposed to be *my* question. "I don't know."

"What do you *remember,* Sandburg?" Banks asked, an almost-anger in his voice that Blair had learned to read as fear.

Uh-oh... Blair searched his memory. "We got home from Joel's... Jim went straight to bed, and I went into my room to finish setting up my syllabus for next semester's Anthro 201 class."

Simon's eyes were hard, and it was beginning to scare Sandburg. "Then what happened?"

He tried to remember--honestly he did. "I don't know... I guess I fell asleep working, and then I woke up here."

The Captain sighed angrily. "Look, I went by the loft at about nine-thirty this morning, to drop off some files for Jim on the rape case he's been working. I found the door open, you unconscious on the floor in your room, and no Jim."

Blair tried to sit up, wincing as he was struck by a wave of dizziness. "Jim's gone?"

Simon put a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to lie back, and nodded grimly. "And you have some drug in your system that the hospital labs can't even identify. You've been out for at least fifteen hours."

"Jim wouldn't have smelled it," Blair mused, ignoring the personal implications of his extended sleep.

"What?"

He looked up at Simon. "If there was gas or something in the loft. He complained about only being able to smell cigars when we got home. His sense of smell was overloaded..." He trailed off, the look of worry in his eyes mirrored by the man standing over him. "Simon, we've got to find out who took him."

Simon shook his head. "What *you've* got to do is sit there and wait until the hospital lets you go. They don't know what kind of drug this was, but it's still in your system, and you were damn near a coma case when they brought you in. They're just waiting to see if the regional lab can come up with something before they decide whether to let you go or keep you over for observation."

Blair pushed himself up, batting Simon's hand away. "No way, man. I am *not* going to sit in this hospital while Jim is missing. I--" His feet hit the ground, and he swayed dangerously. Only Simon's hand on his shoulder kept him from falling to the ground. The captain pushed him back onto the gurney with more force than was strictly necessary.

"You stay put, Sandburg! I promise I'll let you know as soon as *we* know anything."

Blair wanted to argue, but the sudden pounding in his head wouldn't let him.

"There goes another REM cycle, sir." The young woman turned to him, watching his face as he stared into the blackness below. "Do you want us to continue the temperature rise?"

The man turned to her, his crisp black suit and crew cut marking him as CIA... or worse. He nodded sagely, turning back to look at the instruments that monitored their subject. "Yes... Let's bring it up to one hundred and twelve. And decrease the salinity... We want it oppressive..."

The nights were the worst, once he'd moved on by himself. The temperature never seemed to drop, and the heat just got more oppressive. Who the hell was he kidding? It wasn't the heat that was oppressive, it was the fact that he had buried seven young kids--by himself--and had had to move on, some bizarre sense of duty requiring him to finish the mission they'd been sent here to do...

He shifted once more in the tree he'd picked as tonight's bivouac, groaning slightly at the increasing pain in his thigh. That slash he'd taken when the copter went down was getting infected, he guessed.

Nothing he could do about it now... He just had to hope he held out long enough to get to the village, and start this damned thing...

Alone.

Twelve days later...

Simon was beginning to fray around the edges. They'd gone through each and every case file that Jim had worked on since he *joined* the Cascade P.D., and had come up with absolutely nothing. He looked at the young man before him--who no longer seemed to have any edges left to fray--and instantly knew the reason for his own shortening temper.

Sandburg just would not shake loose! Since the kid had been released from the hospital a week ago--with a stern warning from the doctor to stay put and rest--he'd spent as much time as possible at the station, getting in the way, and basically making a nuisance of himself. Simon had had to order the young man out of the precinct yesterday, bitching loudly that the kid wasn't even a cop, so why the hell was he wasting Simon's time?

That had gone over *real* well. He'd been brought up short by Joel, Ryf, *and* Brown for that one. "Sandburg's worried, Captain," Brown had told him heatedly. "Hell, we *all* are! He's just trying to keep up with what's going on in the investigation." Ryf had been more to the point--as he always was. "Jim's his partner, Captain. With all due respect, sir, give it a rest."

"We don't have anything more on the investigation, Sandburg," Simon sighed, pulling off his glasses and worrying the bridge of his nose. "When we do, I promise I'll let you know."

Sandburg didn't rise from his chair--didn't seem to have the strength to. All he did was rub dejectedly at eyes that hadn't seen sleep in far too long. The doctor hadn't been pleased with the series of blood tests they'd run on the kid, but his vitals were back into a normal range, if barely.

But Simon had the feeling that the drugging he'd received was the least of Blair's problems. The longer Jim was gone, the more exhausted the anthropologist seemed to get.

"Simon," Blair asked quietly. "If it *is*--"

"If that has anything to do with it," Simon promised. "I'll find out." He stood, moving to lean on the edge of his desk, right in front of the young man. "Blair," he whispered sadly. "Look... None of this is your fault. If he'd thought it would put him in danger, he'd never have let you publish." He slipped his glasses on again. "You didn't even use his name, for God's sake."

Blair shot out of his chair. His temper was more changeable than usual these days, and Simon was tired of trying to keep up with it. "Damnit, Simon! Who says they *need* me to use his name? Brackett didn't!"

"Of course not, he was CIA!"

Sandburg's next words were less than a whisper, and for a moment, Simon was sure he'd misheard them. "Maybe that's what we're dealing with now."

"Sandburg, you've got to be kidding me," Simon erupted. "The CIA? If they wanted him--if they knew what he was capable of--don't you think they've got better ways of getting to him than kidnapping him from the loft?" He sighed. "He was military, for God's sake. That kind of duty never wears out."

Blair looked out the window sadly. *Neither does the duty between a Sentinel and his Guide,* he told himself.

Ellison could barely walk by the time he reached Matapui. The village was tiny, and old, and didn't look like it was going to stay in place long enough for him to find someone to help him. Out of nowhere, six small, impossibly tan men descended on him. He had neither the strength nor the desire to fight them as they picked him up and carried him to the main hut at the center of the village...

The man paced, looking into the room below him. Ellison was doing well... He'd given them what they wanted about the crash that should have aborted the operation, and now, it looked like they were almost assured of the answers to his solo time in Peru.

He turned again, heading back to the other corner of the room. Damn Military Intelligence, he thought coldly. They keep us too much in the dark. Hell, he snorted, they keep *themselves* too much in the dark. They never seemed to understand that the details of an operation gone wrong were at least as important as the reason it went wrong in the first place. If they could find out what happened to Ellison in Peru--find out how, even with an injury that should have killed him, even with all the strikes against him, he had managed not only to survive his trial, but to thrive and to come back better than he'd been before--maybe they had a chance here to build something.

He fingered the little-known journal before him. *Anthropology Annual*. It rarely had anything worth reading--and most people these days would have found the long treatise by a Rainier University Doctoral candidate equally worthless--but the man found Dr. Blair Sandburg's *Investigation of Modern-Day Sentinels* absolutely fascinating, and he hoped that the man who had led him to it was properly repaid in the afterlife.

He looked down again, the room below him cloaked in a darkness that only the infrared cameras could dispel, and smiled. Ellison had reached Matapui.

Here's where things were about to get interesting...

"I was told to expect many of you," the old chief told him, speaking slowly so his tribe's dialect didn't confuse the man before him, and nodding to a small young woman who had joined them with the hope of repairing the damage done to the captain's leg. "Why are you here alone?"

Ellison tried to focus, tried to remember the Quechua language skills that he had spent six months cramming into his brain. He felt for his partner now. Blair's cramming for exams had always amused him--

Ellison shook his head to clear it. Blair? It *was* a name he knew... But he didn't know when he had learned it. He shook his head again, and closed his eyes, trying to formulate his answer to the chief.

"Sir?" The young woman's voice pulled the man from his study of the infrared cameras. "Sir, something's happening."

"Give me something more concrete than that, Sylvia," he said calmly.

"I'm not sure I can," she replied. "His brainwaves are... Sir, I'm not sure at all what's happening here."

When Ellison opened his eyes again, he saw nothing. No hut, no stars... not even the blood vessels that roamed over his retinas. He cleared his throat, a little worried when he heard no sound emerge. He couldn't even feel the sensation of his vocal chords.

"Chief?"

The man looked down into the room, watching as Ellison floated gently in the deprivation tank. The man's eyes seemed to be open, but he should have been well under the drug they'd given him only days ago.

"Chief... Can you hear me?" Ellison asked, a slight tremor to his voice.

"What is he doing?" the man asked coldly.

"I don't know, sir," Sylvia replied, wheeling her chair to the other side of her desk. "I don't know how, sir, but he's awake."

The man leaned into the monitor that carried the camera feed. "So why does he think he's still in Peru?"

Blair closed the door behind him, trying to block out the silence of the loft. *Their* loft... But there was no "them" anymore. He tossed his jacket on the couch, and immediately picked it up again, routine demanding that he hang it by the door. Jim would be pissed if he came in and saw it lying in the living room, especially if he'd had--

He caught himself in a despairing sigh. Jim wouldn't have seen the jacket there anyway. He wondered, in his darker moments, whether Jim was seeing anything at all anymore.

No way, man, he told himself sharply. There is no way he's dead!

But it had been two weeks. Two weeks since Blair had woken in a hospital emergency room, coming out from under the influence of a drug that the hospital still couldn't identify, to find that his roommate and partner had been kidnapped from their loft. There had been no clues, no notes or ransom demands--nothing to indicate where Jim might be.

And the trail just kept getting colder every day. As did the weather, almost as if Mother Nature was mourning the Sentinel's loss as deeply as the Cascade Police Department. He was almost glad of it. Sunny June weather would have been an insult at this point.

Blair sighed, heading for the refrigerator and grabbing the last beer. He'd have to go shopping soon--last week had been Jim's week to go, but he'd been in the hospital himself for four days, and he'd just kept hoping that somehow... Damn! He yanked the cap off of his beer, striding angrily to the balcony and dropping himself into a chair, letting the spring squall wash over him. Where the *hell* was Jim!

The guys at the precinct had tried to make him feel comfortable there--or as comfortable as he could get without Jim around--but he couldn't shake the feeling that he had no right to be there. He couldn't shake the feeling that his thesis was the reason Jim was taken.

Simon was probably right--it probably had nothing to do with him--but the fact that his thesis had been published only three weeks before Jim's disappearance was still weighing heavily on the anthropologist's soul. He'd thrown himself into his new duties as a full-fledged associate professor at the university--at least, he'd *tried* to. But all he had was the sinking feeling that he was the cause of this, coupled with the pain of the idea that he'd never see Jim alive again.

He stood, his beer drained before he'd noticed it, and headed back inside toward the front door, picking up two week's worth of mail that he hadn't had the heart to go through. But the rent was due tomorrow, and there'd be bills that had to be taken care of... He flipped through the collection of envelopes, weeding out the spam from the meat.

There were circulars, and credit card offers, and bills, and... He looked closely at the unmarked envelope. It simply had Jim's name and their address typed on the front. Postmarked seventeen days ago. No return address, no markers of any kind. He didn't know why, but he just knew that this had something to do with Jim's disappearance.

And if it didn't, he thought as he dragged a finger under the flap to open it, then he'd apologize to Jim--the next time he saw him.

Inside was an almost-blank white piece of paper with two simple words, type-written and untraceable:

"They know."

They know? They know what? *Who* knows what? Blair groped for the phone, dialing Simon's number at the precinct.

Okay, Ellison, he told himself quietly. Concentrate. You're not dead. You can think, so you're not dead... The young native girl had given him something--something for the pain, he thought she had said. Was that what was causing this? Man, Blair would want to know about this. Maybe it had something to do with...

Blair. There was that name again. There was a last name attached, too, but he couldn't remember it. He was having a hard time remembering his *own* name right now, so he guessed he shouldn't be too surprised...

"He's stuck on something," the man realised suddenly. "Ellison's remembered something that he doesn't want to remember, and now he's stuck." He paced again, thinking aloud. "...So how do we get him *un*stuck?" He sighed. "Maybe--Sylvia, take the salinity up a bit and decrease the temperature to 94 degrees... If he thinks he's back in the civilized world, maybe he'll move beyond this..."

"Sandburg, how the hell do you think we're supposed to trace this?" Simon chewed on an unlit cigar angrily. Granted, this was the *only* thing they'd had in fifteen days that even looked like a clue, but what the hell was he supposed to do with it?

Ryf took the envelope from Simon's hand and looked it over carefully. "The postmark says it came from Seattle... There'd be a lot of different fingerprints on it, but maybe we could find something to connect it to Jim."

Simon shook himself from his thoughts and nodded. "Take it down to Serena--see what *she* can do with it."

Ryf nodded encouragingly to Blair, who smiled tightly and headed out with him. God, this *had* to help. This *had* to have something to do with Jim's disappearance...

He pushed away the recurrent thought that all of this would be too little, too late. It didn't matter now. He remembered the plane in Peru--

"I doubt they are still alive, senor."

"Then I'll bring back their bodies!"

--He'd do the same. Jim was his best friend, and there was no way he was just going to let him vanish without a trace.

"Captain Ellison?"

It was the tall, good-looking one. She was svelte, and blonde, and he really wanted to just forget that she was also an army-appointed psychiatrist whose job was to decide that he was truly a nutcase after all, and should be locked away forever. Or worse, sent back to the jungle where he belonged.

He was clean now--really clean, for the first time in eighteen months. He had shaved with an honest-to-God razor and slept in an honest-to-God bed... And he felt good. The strange flashes he was having were finally going away. No more weird noises, no more bizarre smells. He was back to normal...

So why wouldn't they just let him go home?

"You're going to have to speak to Army Intelligence tomorrow, Captain," the woman was saying. "Do you think you're ready for that?"

"Look, Doctor Litton," the man heard Ellison saying clearly. "I'm fine. All I want is to get out of this hospital and home to the States for some extended R&R."

"He's back in a stable rhythm, sir," Sylvia informed him.

The man smiled. Many of these discussions with his psychiatrist were so classified that even the Agency had been unable to get hold of them.

"No..." Ellison continued, speaking to no one. "I just... After I'd buried my team, I proceeded on to Matapui as instructed... The chief's name was Hil'raya... He told me I could train his troops, in return for helping them control the borders and hunt the surrounding area for game."

"Get to the good part, Ellison," the man muttered. "Get to the good part..."

"It took some time to get them organized--and to learn their particular dialect. Not like my language training did me a whole lot of good down there... And it took a while for my leg to heal up. They had a doctor there, her name was--"

The man listened to the silence for a moment before turning on his assistant. One look at her face told him his answer. Her words were unnecessary.

"He's gone again, sir."

*Damnit!* What the hell was going on in that brain of his? the man wondered, turning back to the monitors and watching Ellison float, his head shaking occasionally.

"I don't know what's going on here," Ellison spoke clearly, frightening the man for a moment before he continued. "It's like, all of a sudden, everything's turned off. Sight. Sound--Damnit, Chief, I can't even feel myself talking anymore..."

"Well," Serena said calmly. "I've lifted no less than twenty sets of prints off of this thing. I can discount yours and Sandburg's and Ryf's..." She shook her head despairingly at Captain Banks. "I'm running the others through the NCIC database, but it's going to take some time."

Blair paced behind the captain. Time was something that he had an idea they were fast running out of.

Ellison tried to stay calm, but there was a dread certainty growing in him that he was losing his mind. He *thought* he was awake... He was thinking, he was forming words--though he had no idea whether they were coming out of him or not. It was like every sense he had had just shut down.

Sandburg had to know that there was something wrong by now, right? He'd obviously zoned-out big time, but he had no idea what he could have zoned out *on*! He couldn't even hear his own heartbeat, for God's sake!

"Okay, Chief," he said--at least, he *hoped* he said it. "It's time to shut this one down."

The man almost smacked himself. "Chief." Ellison wasn't talking to the head of Matapui's village consul--he was talking to the good Dr. Sandburg--his "Guide", as Brackett's notes had called him.

Maybe *Sandburg's* notes could give them an idea of what was going on here. Maybe the memories had caused some kind of short circuit in Ellison's abilities.

He reached for the phone, still listening to Ellison as he called out occasionally for his partner. The voice on the other end of the phone was gravely, as if the man had spent all of his young life smoking.

"Yeah," the smoke-pitted voice said.

"I have a job I need you to do."

"Another one? So soon?"

The man tsked angrily. "Yes another one! In Cascade, again..."

Blair unlocked his office quietly, sunk into thoughts of his partner. With Simon kicking him out of the precinct every chance he got, the only thing left for him was the University. And he'd decided, after coasting around town all evening, that he just couldn't stand to go home to the loft tonight. It was too quiet. Too lonely.

He dropped into his chair tiredly, booting up his computer as he shuffled through his papers, trying to find the syllabus he'd started before all this happened. Classes had ended three weeks ago, and he had to get that syllabus approved by the department chair by Monday at the latest if he was going to get the final okay for the class for next semester.

It was nearly two hours later that a hand settled lightly on his office door, and by then, Blair was far too engrossed in his work to notice the sound of the door opening. He did turn slightly as the man came up behind him, but the blackjack the dark form wielded was more than sufficient to make sure that Blair wouldn't be bothering him any time soon.

The fever was rising again. Ellison tried to kick off the coarse blanket above him, but soft hands kept pulling it back into place. The village dialect gave the ancient language a gentler lilt, and the woman's voice alone soothed him, even when he couldn't understand the words.

"You're safe now, Sentinel," she whispered. "Let us care for you, so that you can care for us."

He tried to shake his head. He didn't understand. What was a Sentinel? What did she mean so that he could take care of them? He was here to do a job--a short job, hopefully. This wasn't where he belonged.

"Rest, Sentinel," she whispered, putting a gourd full of bitter, pungent tea to his lips. "Rest, and soon, you will become what you were meant to be..."

Simon was the first officer to arrive at Blair's office, and the one who had to calm the anthropologist down.

"They took all of it, Simon!" Sandburg was ranting. "Every journal, every computer file. The results of every test Jim and I ever did together!" He spun on the police captain, one hand still holding a handkerchief to the sizable cut on his forehead. "Now you *can't* tell me this has nothing to do with our research."

"All right, kid, all right," Simon soothed. "You're right, I can't tell you that, but you have to get yourself under control. The forensics team is on its way to see if we can lift any prints, and I think you should go over to the campus infirmary and make sure that that cut isn't more serious than it looks."

"Damnit, Simon, I don't *care* about the cut! If they need my notes, then that probably means that Jim is still alive." He gazed around his office helplessly. "I just hope that those guys left something that'll give us an idea of where to start."

Anything Simon might have said in return was stopped by the shrilling of his cell phone. He turned away from the seething anthropologist and answered, hoping it was someone who could give him a lead.

"Banks."

"Captain Banks, it's Serena Chang. I've got one set of prints off of that envelope that might interest you, but I don't know what you're going to be able to do with it."

"Just give me a name, Serena. It'll be more than we have now," Simon sighed.

"Okay. I ended up running all the prints through the federal database as well. A set of them belong to a retired Army captain named William Biggs. I tried to check his records with the Corps, but I kept getting a message that the files were classified." She continued over Simon's groan. "I did manage to get an address, though. 55 North Limon, in Seattle."

"Thanks, Serena," Simon returned, ignoring the interested look that Blair was giving him. "I'll see what I can turn up."

"No problem, Captain," she returned quietly.

Simon met Blair's eyes. "What, Simon?" the anthropologist asked. "What did she find?"

"Hopefully someone who can help us figure out what's going on." He turned to the door to meet the forensics team that was just arriving. Brown came in behind them and looked expectantly at his captain.

"Brown, I want you to take care of things here--give me a call on my cell phone if you come up with anything."

Brown nodded. "No problem, Captain. Where are you going?"

Simon looked at Jim's partner. "We're going to Seattle. We'll be back this evening sometime."

The man looked through the files before him, cursing soundlessly. He should have had these taken when they first acquired Ellison. Maybe then they'd have known to use a different technique on him. The notebook he had in his hands detailed an abortive attempt at researching the effects of sensory deprivation on Sentinel abilities:

"The subject experienced a complete shut down of all sensory functions, requiring some ninety minutes to reawaken after a thirty minute test. The subject retained no memory of the session, even with use of the most advanced recall techniques available to the researcher."

Damnit! So, Ellison had lost it with a half hour jag in the tank. Would he be able to recover at all from the two weeks he'd spent in it here? The man doubted it--didn't even want to try it. The only hope he had was that Ellison still seemed to be trying to communicate. Maybe, if they could change the parameters, and cast the Captain's mind back to his time in the jungle, he could still glean something from this test.

His musings were interrupted by the arrival of a young crewcut man.

"Sir," the crewcut said without preamble. "We've got a problem. A *big* one."

"Wake up, Sentinel."

The voice was soft, the dialect lilting. Ellison was beginning to think of Quechua as his native language now. Though he remembered the sound of English, he even thought in the sweet, tribal tongue.

"Sentinel. You must wake up."

"I'm awake," he told her, sitting quietly as he opened sensitive eyes. Too sensitive. "Something's happened."

The woman beside him nodded, helping him to his feet. "You are the Sentinel. All things are different now."

His leg wound was only a dull ache now, and his hearing seemed so clear, as if he could have heard a bird flying miles away. "What is this?" he asked, looking around in the predawn light.

"We must go, Sentinel. All things will be known to you in time."

She led him into the jungle, far from the village, and sat with him at the edge of a waterfall. He figured the drop must be at least three hundred feet.

"Do you hear the water on the rocks below?" she asked softly.

He concentrated a moment, then smiled in surprise. "Yes... And the fish."

She grasped his arm happily. "You will be strong, Sentinel. Our village will be safe, now that you are here."

Ellison just looked at her, at the enthusiasm in her eyes, the joy in her face. "My Guide," he whispered, the words coming to him unbidden.

"Mak'laya," she whispered back.

Blair fidgeted, waiting for Simon to return. He'd forced the young man to stay in the car, and given the headache that Sandburg had, he was inclined to agree with Simon's wisdom. While the cut on his head had finally stopped bleeding, he could tell that the bruise was going to truly spectacular.

The house they had found was a rundown rancher that looked to have had its last paint job forty years or more ago. Not the kind of place Blair would have expected to see a retired Army Captain with a classified file.

His breath caught slightly when he saw the look on Simon's face as the captain returned.

"What happened?"

"Biggs is dead," Simon growled, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.

"What?"

"Shot in the head. Execution style. Looks like he's been there a long time--" Simon broke off as the cell phone got a connection. "Yes, this is Captain Simon Banks of the Cascade Police Department. I'd like to report a murder."

The Sentinel made his way through the trees, fascinated by the way his Guide kept up with him. Mak'laya was small, and she looked *so* fragile... But she had never failed to follow him, never failed to be there when he needed her.

Which was as it should be. A Guide was vital. Without one, a Sentinel was nothing...

Simon cursed as his cell phone chirped again on their way out of Seattle.

"Banks!"

"Captain." Ryf sounded spooked. "Sir, we've got someone here who insists that he speak with you."

"I'll be back in Cascade in two hours," Banks snapped. "Who is it?"

The voice that came over the line was a little too precise. "Captain Banks? This is Agent Carvey of the Central Intelligence Agency... I think we need to talk about a mutual problem."

"Wait, Sentinel."

He turned, looking at her coal-black eyes as they scanned the area. He was almost amused. What could she see that he could not?

"This is a good place," she decreed finally.

"But the hunt," her Sentinel replied. "We'll lose the game."

"There will be other game, Sentinel," she assured him. "You must come with me now, or there will be trouble."

He didn't understand. "What trouble?"

"Please, Sentinel. You must come with me."

Ellison was a dead weight, but the man couldn't have cared less. They had to get him out of here quickly. There was a hands-off order on Ellison, and if the Agency found out what he'd been doing here, as a result of the Cascade PD's inquiries, he was sure to lose a whole lot more than his job.

"Just call it in Sylvia," he called over his shoulder.

The woman nodded, finishing her packing of Dr. Sandburg's files before she headed for the phone.

The voice that met her over the line was tired, but crisp and efficient. "Cascade P.D."

"Yes," she said calmly. "I'd like to report a body..."

Carvey was as tall and thin and nondescript as he had sounded on the phone, and Simon didn't bother to take the time for niceties. "What do you know about my missing detective," he asked sharply. "And the death of William Biggs?"

Carvey took a deep breath and handed over a file. "William Biggs was one of the men who debriefed Captain Ellison after his time in Peru," he began, sliding uncomfortably into a chair, while Simon perched on the edge of his desk. The captain chose not to notice that Sandburg had accompanied him all the way to his office, and had taken up a position leaning against the closed door.

Carvey continued. "Captains Biggs and Ellison kept in touch over the years. Biggs had been a medic, and had shown an interest in psychophysiology. He'd been interested by Ellison's auditory and visual hallucinations after his time in Peru, and had kept close tabs on the Captain."

"What does this have to do with Jim's disappearance?" Blair asked quietly.

"Captain Biggs has been... having problems, of late. We got word last week that he may have sold some information to one of our... less reputable... researchers at the Agency. When your inquiry came over the network for information on Biggs, we realised that we had a problem."

"He was selling information about Ellison." Simon's words were a statement, not a question.

"Yes," Carvey admitted. "We attempted to intercept this researcher today, but he had already cleared out his lab. There's evidence that he was using... certain techniques of memory recall to elicit information from Ellison."

He made it sound bad. Blair licked his lips nervously and asked, "What techniques?"

"A combination of sensory deprivation and drug--"

"Sensory deprivation!" Blair's fists balled angrily. "Damnit, Simon, *that's* why they came in and stole my notes!"

Simon just looked at him, catching his agitation, if not the drift of his thoughts. "I don't understand."

"Do you remember about eight months ago? Jim and I did an experiment in sensory deprivation?"

Simon nodded, and it took a moment for his face to go absolutely slack. "Oh my God." Jim had been off work for a week while the effects wore off, and Simon had spent the entire time fearing for his detective's sanity.

Carvey was looking from one to the other in consternation. "I'm not sure what the problem is here, but--"

"The problem is," Blair gritted angrily. "Your 'disreputable researcher' might have just turned Jim into a permanent headcase."

Simon was getting over his shock, and he realised that Carvey had never addressed one of his own major concerns. "Just what is the Agency's interest in Detective Ellison?"

Carvey shrugged genuinely. "As a whole, we have no interest in him at all." Simon's distrust knocked the man slightly off balance. "Honestly. It's a phenomenon we've encountered before, and we've come to realize that, while potentially very useful in certain situations, hypersensory individuals are not a reliable tool for us."

Blair straightened. "Why not?"

"They need a support mechanism." Carvey stated the case simply, and didn't look as if he'd say any more.

Simon was about to push it when his desk phone rang shrilly. "Banks..." His eyes closed. "And? ...All right, Corby. I'll meet them there."

He turned to Blair gently. "The switchboard got a call about a body on the waterfront..."

"Oh my God..." The kid looked like he was going to faint, and Simon strode over quickly to hold him up.

"Blair, they've got vitals on him. They're taking him to the hospital."

Simon didn't stop Carvey as he followed them out of the precinct and into the parking garage.

"Mak'laya?"

Her voice was infinitely tender. "Yes, Sentinel?"

"Why here?"

She affected a look of confusion, but he could see that she had known exactly where they would end up. He could smell the metal from the crash as they approached the site, and he felt memories trembling within him. "Why bring me back here?"

"This is where you began, Sentinel," she replied simply. "You must remember where you were, or you will never go forward."

"But this is over now," he insisted. "I protect the village. I hunt. This is not my life anymore."

"Your life is your life, Sentinel," she whispered, leading him closer to the site. "In time, you will realize that all things build from others. Your life is incomplete if you do not know yourself."

The Sentinel looked at the graves, half overgrown with ferns, and knelt before one of them. He hadn't dared to hope that the markers would withstand the jungle, but even now, after what he had counted as fifteen months, the name of his second was still visible. he reached out a hand, feeling every bump and pit in the metal gravestone before him.

His voice was rough, and, as he cried, he felt his Guide keeping watch behind him.

"Hey, Doc..."

Blair ran from the sedan to the hospital's doors, pulling them open recklessly.

The first nurse he met had no answers for him. The second took his hand and led him to a quiet room, catching Simon's eye as he walked in and gesturing for him to follow.

"How is he?" Blair asked immediately.

The nurse shook her head. "I want you to stay here, Mr. Sandburg," she said slowly, smiling as Blair suddenly recognized her from his stay after his dosing with Golden. "I'm going to go get the doctor, and he'll explain Detective Ellison's condition."

As she walked out, Blair turned to Simon and began pacing. "That doesn't sound good, does it? 'Explain his condition.' That sounds like he's in a coma or something."

Simon put a strong hand on Blair's shoulder and forced the kid into a seat. "Just wait for it, Sandburg," he gritted, his own worry showing. "Let the doctor tell us what's up."

What was up, it turned out, was exactly what Blair had feared in the first place. By all signs, Jim was awake. His brain waves didn't indicate anything approaching coma, and his reflex responses and vital signs, while not fantastic, were nonetheless *there* in a way that they wouldn't have been had he been comatose.

None of this helped, of course, because Jim was completely non-responsive.

Dr. Gilbert showed Simon and Blair up to the private room the department had arranged for the detective, and left them there, telling them that he would check in with toxicology about Jim's blood tests before he made his next rounds.

"Hey, Jim?" Blair walked up to the bed, looking a little forlornly at the monitors. At least they didn't have him hooked up to a respirator or anything. Not that he needed it. If this was the same thing Jim had gone through eight months ago, then it wasn't a normal zone-out--he wouldn't stop breathing with this one.

"That's because he doesn't realize he *is* breathing."

Simon looked over at the anthropologist. "What?"

Had he said that out loud? "Um... This kind of reaction..." Blair took a deep breath. "Okay, now, a normal zone out is where he focuses in on one thing so intensely, he doesn't keep track of anything else, right?"

"Right."

"So this zone out... He's actually zoning out on what he *doesn't* feel."

Simon didn't understand, but he nodded anyway. "So what do we do?"

Blair ran a nervous hand through his hair. "When this happened in the lab, I just... kept talking to him."

"Like a coma patient?"

"Yeah, sort of... He came out of it eventually. But Simon... Man, who knows how long he was in there?" The kid stood shaking for a moment before he pulled up a chair.

"Hey, Jim," he began, his voice shaking. "Um, look... You need to come back soon, man. I don't know if I can vouch for the cleanliness of the loft... But it's your fault man. I mean, without you to piss and moan at me, you know I'm never going to be able to keep it clean, right?"

Simon moved to the door, fighting a fit of tears as he heard Sandburg's voice crack slightly. He slipped out quietly as the kid continued his monologue.

"Oh hey, and I talked to Naomi a couple of days ago? She's in California--right, Big Sur--and she said she wants to come up and visit..."

He felt the soft pressure of her lips on the top of his head, and the Sentinel looked up at her with tears in his eyes. "Why did this happen, Mak'laya?" he asked sadly.

"Loss is part of life, Sentinel."

He got to his feet, smiling down at her. "Do you always speak in platitudes?"

Her smile could have lit the world. "I am your Guide, Sentinel. I tell you what you need to hear."

He laughed, his tears drying as he encircled her in a hug. "I'm lucky to have you, my Guide--"

He broke off as another voice invaded their jungle. The language was familiar... but different. Not *his* language. Not the language of this Sentinel and his Guide.

It was the language that he remembered only in the heat of battle...

It had been three days, and Simon was beginning to worry about Sandburg as much as he worried about Jim. The kid spent all of his time at the hospital--all of it. He didn't go home to eat, or sleep. The nurses let him shower in the bathroom that was attached to Jim's room... The kid talked all the time, too--always to Jim. Always about nothing...

Blair was losing his voice--and, very probably, his mind.

"Sandburg?" The captain watched bloodshot eyes jerk up to meet his, and gestured for the kid to come outside with him.

"No, Simon," Blair said, not moving from his seat. "Come on in. We can talk here." His voice fell dejectedly. "Not like Jim is going overhear us, anyway..."

Another voice, also in that other language, joined the first. He looked at his Guide.

"Do you hear that?"

She shook her head, straight black hair shaking with the motion. "No, Sentinel. I hear only the trees, and the wind..."

The Sentinel shook his own head vigorously, looking at the crash site in pain. "Can we leave now?"

Mak'laya nodded, putting a hand on his arm. "Come, Sentinel."

"Look, Sandburg..." Simon sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly. "Why don't you just go home for a while. Get some sleep." His temper flared as the kid shook his head. "At least give your voice a chance to recover!"

"No, Simon," he croaked quietly. "I'll stay. He's got to come out of it soon." He looked back at his partner. "He's got to."

Simon just groaned. The kid wasn't going to listen to him, obviously. "I'm going to talk to Dr. Gilbert."

"Yeah, man," Blair whispered. "Fine."

He waited until Simon had left to grab a glass of water and to again lay a hand on Jim's arm--

The Sentinel looked down at his arm, feeling his Guide's hand there, though she was trailing behind him. He turned to her, puzzled. "Mak'laya?"

She looked up at him questioningly, but he held up his hand to silence her. There was that voice again, and suddenly, he understood the words...

"Come on, Jim." The voice was scratchy... but he knew it. "You're killing me here. Just--Look, I tell you what... You just open those eyes, and I'll do the shopping for a month."

The Sentinel turned to his Guide, his eyes lost. "I know him," he whispered.

"Do you hear the future, Sentinel?"

The voice came again, blending with that of his Guide. "Course, you *will* have to pay me back for your half of this month's rent. I mean, Teaching Fellows are *not* made of money, man. And I don't start pulling Associate Professor salary until next year."

The jungle around the Sentinel wavered...

"Mak'laya?"

She looked at him, but slowly, slowly, her features changed... The black hair lightened, curled; her face became paler, broader; her eyes transformed to a piercing blue... She spoke, but all he could hear was the rusty voice that he knew he recognized.

"Jim? Jim, please... Come on, man, this is getting really old. Pretty soon, I'm going to start playing some of that drum music you hate so much..."

His perspective was changing, though he couldn't have said exactly how... But he knew himself differently--he knew the world differently...

"Okay, Jim," Blair croaked quietly. "You leave me no choice." He pulled out a journal and smiled. "Now, as much as you'd like to pretend you *did* read this, I know you didn't. So here goes... Blair Sandburg's Doctoral thesis..."

Somewhere, the fates were smiling, Jim decided, as he found his voice. "Don't." Well, okay, so it was a cold, rusty, painful voice, but it was a voice.

"Jim?" Blair's face lit up, and Jim's mind flashed on another face, at another time... Almost in another life... "Man, how are you feeling?" He reached for the pitcher of water next to the bed, letting Jim have a few, small sips.

"Are you going read that thing to me?" Jim inquired tiredly.

"No, man." Blair grinned, a little pink in the face. "No way."

"Then I'm feeling fine."

"Oh, ha ha, very funny."

Jim noticed the door opening behind his partner, but kept talking anyway. "Yeah, well you set yourself up for it, Chief."

Simon walked in with Dr. Gilbert in tow, and a broad smile spread over his face. "Jim!" he boomed, causing the Sentinel to wince painfully at the volume. "About time you woke up!"

The doctor walked over to Jim's bed, running the usual battery of tests designed to drive an almost-healthy person crazy.

"How long have I been out?" Jim asked, confused.

Blair's eyes looked suddenly pained. "Almost three days."

"Three days?" Jim shook his head. "What the hell happened?"

Simon and Blair shared a blackly amused grin.

"That is a long story, my friend," Blair said.

"So what about this 'less than reputable researcher' the CIA was talking about?"

Jim let his partner help him into the loft and drop Jim's small bag of necessities on the couch, as Simon closed the door behind them.

"We don't know," Blair answered, heading for the fridge. "Carvey didn't tell us anything--of course. He just kind of disappeared, you know?"

"So this guy could still be out there, waiting for another chance."

"I doubt it, Jim," Simon answered, grabbing a beer from Blair's hand. "I think he's probably likely to end up face down in a storm drain somewhere."

"How do you figure that?" Jim looked up at Blair, groaning when the kid handed him a soda instead of a beer. The whole time he'd been missing, he'd apparently been fed intravenously, and that didn't stop during the three days he'd been "out". Now, a week later, he was just barely on solid foods, and alcohol definitely wasn't in his diet plan.

Simon shrugged. "You don't mess with the Agency, Jim."

The detective nodded uncertainly.

"So, Jim?" Blair sat on the edge of the couch, facing his partner. "What do you remember?"

Ellison sat a moment, considering. Then he shrugged. "Nothing. I remember coming home from the poker game, and then..." His smile was tired, but teasing. "And then you were threatening me with that paper of yours."

Blair reddened again, and Simon took that as his cue to leave. When he'd finally managed to get Sandburg to go home and sleep after Jim had woken up, he'd explained to the detective that Blair seemed to think this was all his fault for publishing their research. The partners were going to have to have a long talk if Jim was going to convince Sandburg to stay on as an observer for the department now that that research was done.

"Jim, man," Blair began after Simon left. "I'm really sorry."

Jim feigned surprise. "About?"

"Well, if I hadn't published that thesis, this CIA jerk would never have known about you..." He hung his head. "And this would never have happened."

"Oh really?"

"Well... yeah."

Jim pursed his lips and rose, turning to look at his roommate... and hopefully, still, his partner. "So, this journal you published in--It's pretty well-known, right?"

"Not... well, not well-known, per se, but--"

"But a little journal that almost nobody reads," Jim stated evenly.

"Hey!" Blair stood up, pegging his roommate with hurt eyes. "It's not exactly *un*known!"

"But it's not exactly the kind of thing that a CIA researcher would pick up on his own, right?"

Blair shrugged angrily. "I guess not."

Jim put a comforting hand on his partner's shoulder. "Chief, the reason this guy knew was because Biggs told him--and *he* got killed for his trouble."

"But if I hadn't--"

Jim shook his head. "No, Blair. Biggs knew enough about me to pique anyone's interest."

"Yeah... but now they have all my research--*our* research." The anthropologist ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Man, if I had just published something simple, like... like..."

"Like the short-term effects of violent television on barbary apes?" Jim waited until Blair laughed to chuckle himself. Blair's relieved laughter reminded the Sentinel of something... someone...

"Hey Jim?" His Guide shook his shoulder lightly. "Jim? Man, you zoning on me already?"

Jim shook himself, and smiled at his Guide. "No, I'm okay. Just... something I remembered."

"Oh yeah? About the last two weeks?"

The Sentinel shook his head. It was a far older memory than that. Ancient...

"I don't know, Chief," he lied. "Maybe." Blair got that look in his eyes, and Jim held up a hand to stop him. "But whatever it is, I don't remember enough of it to make any difference. All I *do* remember is that it's been more than three weeks now since I have seen my own bed--even if I don't remember being *gone* that long." He grabbed his overnight bag carefully, and headed for the stairs.

"Hey, Jim?" B

lair's voice was suddenly so low and so soft, that Jim turned around quickly, unsurprised to find a hint of tears in the young man's eyes. "Yeah, Chief."

"Welcome home..." His Guide smiled. "Partner."

Email the author with comments.
Use your browsers back button to return to your story selections or submit a new query.