Kidman started by hooking Jack and Lillian up to vital sign monitors, which displayed the output on one of the monitors at the computer station. Jack's heart rate was stable, while Lillian's was almost stopping. There were other vital sign readings that Hunter didn't recognize, but he knew that Lillian's weren't normal.

"I need your help here, Agent Black." Kidman said as she prepared an injection. "Hold the girl down."

Hunter held Lillian down by the shoulders as Kidman injected something into her arm. Lillian shook violently, nearly knocking Hunter backwards. After a few seconds of struggling, Lillian settled down again, and her vital signs stabilized. A little color returned to her cheeks, and her breathing stabalized.

"What did you give her?" Hunter asked.

"A little something to buy her some time." Kidman said, reaching for another needle. She used this one to collect a sample of Lillian's blood.

"Have you ever stopped an alien virus outbreak before?"

"A few. The viruses I've seen all caused light flu symptoms. Headache, low fevers, that kind of stuff. In all those cases, we blamed the outbreak on radiation and chemical leaks. But what this girl has? I've never seen anything like it."

Kidman injected Lillian's blood sample into a small, metallic capsule she took from her pocket. She inserted the capsule into a port in one of the computers, and in turn one of the many monitors started to flash text as the blood was analyzed.

Hunter watched the text on the monitor as the computer did it's magic. He didn't understand a word of what was being shown to him, but he knew it all had to do with medicine. Kidman watched the screen too, muttering mental notes to herself as the text flew by. After about a minute, a phrase that Hunter understood showed up on the screen: 'No viral pathogen found'.

"Oh, Thank God." Kidman said, putting a hand over her chest. "It's not a virus."

"Then what is it?"

"The computer will tell us. It could be radiation poisoning, but I'm not sure. She should be showing signs of hair loss and skin peeling if that were the case."

A couple more minutes passed as the computer did it's work, flashing loads of text on screen. Hunter paced around the room impatiently, and even took a sip from his rum canteen. He wanted nothing more than to just finish his mission and go home. It had been a very long day. When he turned back towards the monitor, he saw that the text had stopped. A single sentence was shown on screen: 'No cause found'.

"What does that mean?" Hunter asked. "Does that mean she'll be okay?"

"It means that whatever she has hasn't been discovered yet. I'm going to do a few more tests on her. Tissue sampling, biometric tests and DNA sequencing."

"If it's not viral, does it mean I can go?"

"Protocol states that a field agent has to stand by while a medical officer is in possession of a living witness, so no. If you're going to stand here and bitch about, I'm going to have to ask you to wait downstairs. You can take your friend with you."

Kidman pointed to Jack, who was starting to show signs of waking up. 

"Don't kill him." Kidman said. "Until we knew what this is, I need him alive."

...

Jack woke up with a throbbing pin in the pack of his head and the slight taste of blood in his mouth. He was sitting in a chair with his arms tied behind his back. There was nobody else in the living room with him, and the front door was wide open. He listened for anyone else in the house, and deciding he was alone, stood up with his hands still bound to the chair and made for the door. He stopped immediately when Hunter entered the house.

Hunter was holding a cleaning agent bottle in his hand and a bloody rag in the other. He was surprised to find Jack awake and laughed at the awkward position he caught his captive in.

"I don't think you'll get very far like that." Hunter quiped.

Jack backed up and sat the chair down more or less where it was before. He kept an eye on the bloody rag that Hunter was holding. Hunter, seeing the direction of Jack's gaze, laughed again and went to the kitchen to put away the cleaning products. He returned to the living room with a handful of cookies and sat in the chair across from where Jack was sitting in.

"Sorry about, I was just cleaning your girlfriend's blood from the backseat."

"Where is she?" 

"Upstairs. The guy, gal, I mentioned is taking a look at her. She's stable, but we still don't now what's wrong with her."

"I want to see her."

"You will. First I have to make sure you won't try to take me or go bolting out the door. My friend upstairs says I can't kill you, but that doesn't mean you're completely safe." Hunter took out his revolver and scratched the back of his head with it. "Try anything, and I'll have to break the promise I made to my friend. Got that?"

Jack nodded.

"Good. I'm going to untie one of your hands, and we'll see how well you behave."

Hunter got up and left some cookies in Jack's lap. He untied Jack's left hand and sat back in his seat, watching his captive for any sudden movements.

"Eat." Hunter said. "And I'll untie your other hand."

Jack ate his cookies with a strong feeling of annoyance. He was annoyed at how mocking his captive was and wished for nothing more than to yank the gun from his hand and free himself.

"Thristy?" Hunter asked as he took out his rum canteen.

"Only if it's water." 

"Trust me buddy, this isn't water. I'll go get you some."

Hunter went to the kitchen once again and returned with a glass of water. He gave it to Jack and watched as he drank it in a series of long gulps. 

"I'm going to free you other hand now. Promise you'll be cool?"

Jack nodded again.

While Hunter untied his other hand, Jack wrapped his fingers tightly around the empty glass in his free hand. It felt weighty, and found himself imagining what kind of damage it could to Hunter's head. 

"There you are." Hunter said, finally freeing Jack's hand. 

Jack waited for Hunter to back a few inches away from him, then swung the glass as hard as he could at his captor's head. Hunter swiftly blocked Jack's blow and sent the glass flying across the room, where it shattered on the floor. He quickly turned Jack around and pinned his arm behind his back in the most painful way possible.

"What did I just say?" Hunter asked through gritted teeth.

Jack let out a pain filled grunt in reply. He tried shaking himself free of Hunter's grip, but that only earned him a blow to his rib cage. He shuddered and nearly fell over with the sudden sting of pain.

"Listen here, you nerdy little shit." Hunter said. "Try anything like that again and I'll splatter yuor brains all over the lady's carpet."

"No one's brains is going anywhere near my carpet." Said Kidman's voice coming from a speaker in the chandelier. "And what was that that broke just now? That better had not been one of my wine glasses."

"It wasn't." Hunter replied to the chandelier."

"I hope so. Get up here, I found out what's wrong with the girl."

...

The first thing Jack did when he stepped out of the elevator and into the attic was run up to Lillian. Hunter stepped out after him and joined Kidman by the monitors. Kidman was smoking a cigarette with a very worried look on her face.

"I didn't take you for a smoker." Hunter said as he let a cigarette for himself.

"I wasn't, for 15 years. But this was enough to break that streak." Kidman tapped her finger on a monitor showing a sequence of As, Ts, Cs and Gs.

"A DNA sequence?"

"Yep. Hers."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing. That's the problem. It's behaving like it's supposed to."

"Since when is coughing up blood and having a swollen brain normal?"

Kidman stopped to rub the space between her eyebrows and sighed. She took another puff from her cigarette, put it out on the ash tray next to the monitor and walked towards the occupied operating table. 

"What's wrong with her?" Jack asked Kidman as she approached.

"Something that's going to happen to every human alive some thousand or so years from now. Something we're carrying in our DNA and passing down to our children, who then pass it down to their children. A tiny piece of our genetic code that's designed to wipe out the entire human race."

"You can't be serious." Hunter said. "Are you saying that the Doomsday Strand is real and not some cooky conspiracy theory?"

"I'm afraid so." Kidman said gravely. "The Agency doesn't regard it's existence, but the Compadians do. It explains all their abductions and experiements. They've been trying to speed up the development of the Doomsday Strand, and with her, they've finally done it."

"Excuse me." Jack cut in. "What's the Doomsday Strand?"