Hanlon actually lived in DC, rather than Virginia, which certainly had its drawbacks, though it at least meant that getting to the J. Edgar Hoover building was a trip involving minimal effort. However, getting through the building itself was incredibly hard today. For one thing, his feet were so swollen that his old dress shoes felt like cruel vices. For another, he'd gotten used to the semi-comfortable way he was able to maneuver casually through his apartment – waddling, leaning backwards, one hand rubbing at the small of his back to try to ease the pain there, the other serving a similar purpose as it hoisted up under his belly in front. But he was damned if he was going to go through FBI headquarters emphasizing the fact that he looked like he was ready to drop. Anyway, if he leaned backwards, he knew his pants and shirt would refuse to meet again – the struggle with the shoes had proved that much. Hanlon squared his shoulders, straightened up, and tried not to waddle. Everything on his body hurt after the first thirty seconds, and he began to mentally shut out everything around him that wasn't directly necessary to move himself, his briefcase, and his forty extra pounds of baby bulge to Pinker's office.

It wasn't that he expected anyone to be fooled, or for anyone not to know why he looked the way he did. The handful of agents who had agreed to subject themselves to the procedure had become well-known figures by now, and most departments had done a pretty good job of briefing everyone on the situation, essentially saying: "There are some male agents who've agreed to be implanted with artificial wombs and who are carrying pregnancies to term. They're doing it because they've been asked to, and nothing they do or the reason we've asked them to do it is any of your business." Like most government employees who lasted longer than a week in the job, everyone shut right the hell up about it. Somewhere, someone knew what the whole thing was for, but not even the surrogate fathers had most of the picture; Uncle Sam had asked them to do a job, and they were doing it.

Of course, no two pregnancies were the same. For one thing, everyone had undergone the operation on a different date, so the development was staggered. But there were other variations as well. Rogers' artificial uterus had shut down, killing the embryo inside and, nearly, the man carrying it. Fisher, similarly, had lost his pregnancy at three months and had to take a long time off before he was well enough to work again. Fricano had ended up with twins and a long bedrest that he was still on. Some of the surrogates were downright cheerful about it: Smithson had been incredulously grinning for months about the whole thing, and invited people to feel kicks when they happened. Dietrich had been the first to actually complete the process, and had pinned above his desk some of the snapshots of the baby girl he'd carried that the carefully-chosen adoptive parents sent to him every few weeks. Men like Smithson and Dietrich had an air of privilege about them, secrecy, knowledge that they'd been chosen to do something that very few men would ever do.

Not Hanlon. He'd agreed to the abstract idea, but been unprepared for the physical reality of pregnancy. Hanlon had lost all feeling of control over his body after about the sixth week when he'd been so wracked with nausea that he'd spent hours curled around the base of his toilet, and he was deeply, deeply resentful of the thing inside him that was doing it all. He'd been told he was carrying a boy: "He's definitely big," Doc Kranz had said. "Though it might be that you implanted earlier than we thought. Otherwise looks perfectly healthy." Hanlon, however, never used the word "he" in his mind when he thought about what was inside him. He always thought "it," or "that thing," when he thought about it at all, and that was only when he had to, when he could feel it moving, or when Kranz or someone else he had to answer to asked him about it. And right now, it was making it very difficult to even get to the third goddamn floor of his own office building, an intensely frustrating experience for a man who'd run three miles a day whenever he could find the time.

Pinker was shut up in his office, talking to someone else when he got there, and Hanlon frowned meaningfully at the secretary who couldn't stop staring at his poorly-disguised pregnancy. He didn't want to further feed her voyeurism by struggling in and out of a chair in front of her, but he didn't have much of a choice, if he wanted to have any energy at all left in about five minutes. He avoided the low leather sofa that he knew he'd never be able to rise from unassisted, and instead lowered himself clumsily backwards into an uncomfortable high-backed wooden chair next to her desk, letting his briefcase slip to the floor. He couldn't help but cave in to his weariness a little; he leaned his elbow on the armrest to support his tired head with his hand.

The secretary's voice came at him: "Do you need –"

"No. I'm fine." His tone was icy. He'd started to doze a little, sitting up, when Pinker's door opened.

"Oh, Agent Hanlon, good. Come in." Hanlon woke abruptly at the hatefully cheerful voice, forgot that he had a hefty baby inside him that wouldn't let him bend at the waist, and tried unsuccessfully to spring to his feet. He managed to use his arms to more carefully hoist his way upwards on the second try, then realized that his briefcase was still on the floor and that he was going to have to pick it up. He glared at it for betraying him as Pinker's back disappeared through the doorframe, then braced himself hard against the secretary's desk and bent gingerly at his complaining knees to grab the handle. He shot her a look of warning, daring her to comment, as he straightened, and she shrank back a little. Hanlon's angry struggles in dealing with his increasing girth sure weren't making him any friends, and he couldn't have cared less.

"Boy, Agent Hanlon, looks like you're really carrying quite a load there," Pinker beamed at him. He'd been loudly proud about having one of "his boys" be picked for the whole experiment, and his enthusiasm had been humiliating for Hanlon since almost day one.

". . . yes." Resisting the urge to tell his boss to go fuck himself, Hanlon thought ahead this time and put the briefcase in an adjoining chair before he sank into his own. "The asylum. What's up?"

"Well, you know they've been in the process of closing up the entire facility for years. They're finally doing their last big push, and they decided we could take what we need from the records for the criminally insane. Just those records, you know, not everything they have."

Hanlon's heart leapt inside his bony chest, and he arched his back in a mostly-unsuccessful effort to lean forward in excitement; the movement strained his exaggeratedly round belly against the buttons on his oversized blazer. "That's all I ever wanted. That's great. That's going to fix about fifty holes in old cases, if we're lucky. How long do I have?"

Pinker stared at him for a second, then grimaced. "Well . . . I mean, we've only got about a week, right now, so you're not going, of course."

"What?" Hanlon exploded; his jaw dropped with disbelief. "No. That is my project! I have been hammering away at them for two years. Those are my. Files."

"Come on, Agent Hanlon," Pinker seemed genuinely surprised, uncomfortable. "Look at yourself. You're enormous. If I didn't know your official due date was two weeks away, I'd say you look overdue. And you don't look well, either; you're even paler than usual. If I tried to send you somewhere right now, Doc Kranz would have my head. I wanted you to come in so you could start organizing the paperwork and I could ask you who you wanted to send in your place – Miller or Conrad. They both know the basics of what we need, right?"

"What I need." Hanlon was getting flustered, tried to remind himself that he was doing this work for the FBI, not himself, but this was too much. The worst timing possible. "Unacceptable. It would take me at least a week to even write down detailed enough instructions so that either of them could be productive."

Pinker's eyes were narrowed now. "As I said on the phone, I don't have to consult you about this at all. I was doing so as a courtesy and asking your preference. You're not getting on a plane in the next week. You have two options. You can go home with an escort that retrieves the files I know you took home with you and you can sulk there, or you can pick either Miller or Conrad to go in your place and give them everything they need so that they can be as effective as possible."

Hanlon felt like he'd just been mugged. He stared at Pinker with dismay for nearly a full minute. Finally, he swallowed. "All right," he said. "Okay. I need to get my materials together. There's a week?"

"More or less. Probably a little more."

"Good." Hanlon, puffing, started to heave his front-heavy self out of his chair. "I'll sleep on it, call in tomorrow with my decision. Probably Miller, Miller's very good. But I want to think about it, put together the instructions. Give me at least that much." He made it to his aching feet with difficulty, grabbed for the briefcase.

Pinker considered. "All right. But don't wait too long. Time is limited."

Hanlon didn't even say goodbye as he began his slow, painful way back to his own office, which he hadn't seen in two weeks. There were some lists there he needed, some data he needed to transfer, a few slim files that he hadn't taken home. Jim Swenson whistled at him in wonder as he walked in.

"Holy smokes, Peter. You're the goddamn Goodyear blimp. Didn't expect to see you in here. Are you allowed back because you ate Doc Kranz? Jesus."

"Shut the fuck up, Jim," Hanlon snarled back, and Swenson promptly shut up; they derided each other unmercifully as a matter of course, but Swenson could tell when Hanlon was furious, and that was now. Hanlon did a sweep of his desk, mind going a mile a minute, body slowing down as it begged for a little more rest. The thing inside him stomped viciously at his ribs. He mentally told it to shut the fuck up, too, and limped his way back out to his car in his increasingly-painful shoes. He wrestled his way back behind the wheel and leaned his head against the headrest for a minute to think about what he was doing, forced himself to consider the ramifications of the choices he was making even now. His biggest mistake was closing his eyes to think without distractions, and he woke up in a panic after he slumped downwards in sleep so that his elbow banged the horn on the wheel. In some ways, that decided him: he had to do it. He had so very little time, and his body might not cooperate with him for very much longer. He focused hard on driving on his way back to the apartment.

Hanlon tried to hurry as he moved from the car to the front doors of the empty asylum; he increasingly felt like he was playing some sort of child's game, hopping from one air conditioned spot to another as quickly as possible. It was like when he was young and he and his brother would try to jump from sofa to chair to sofa, pretending the floor was lava, only now the air felt like lava. Of course, his top speed at the moment was only about two miles an hour, so "hurrying" was an overly generous way to describe the way he was moving. He currently had the hand not carrying his briefcase shoved deep into one pocket of his blazer, hoping that its position would disguise the fact that he was trying to support his achingly heavy front with it. Somehow, he doubted that he was being very convincing. He pushed his way through the front doors into a reception area that had clearly seen better times: every surface he could see was scuffed and marred, and the furniture dated from the 1970s, at best. It was also hideously muggy; he felt like he'd walked into a swamp.

There was a slim girl, probably in her mid-twenties, sitting behind the faded reception desk with her feet up on another chair and about five electric fans arranged around her in a circle, so that her faded sundress waved faintly around her. She looked up curiously at Hanlon from the paperback romance in her hands, snapping her gum: "Yes?"

"There's no air conditioning," Hanlon said, stupidly.

The girl snorted. "You don't have to tell me," she replied. "They won't even give me a stinkin' window unit. This whole place is just about to be shut down for good and they said it's not worth the money." She blew an emphatic bubble at him. "Like to see them explain that to my prickly heat."

It was a psychological blow for him. "I'd like to sit down for a minute," he said faintly, and slid clumsily into one of the hard plastic chairs along the wall, wincing when his spine and hips ground into it. He was too worn to force himself into better posture, and his round belly drove his legs far apart as he slumped.

The girl peered curiously at him: "What are you doing here, anyway? Do you need something from my boss? Because if you're one of those drug reps, you are way behind the times."

Hanlon paused to puff a little as his occupant punched him in the kidneys, then pressed ahead automatically, numbly. "I guess I'm hoping you can help me," he said. "I'm with the FBI. I'm supposed to have access to the old records?"

"Oh, yeah." The girl nodded. "He told me you were coming. I can show you where you're supposed to go." She swung her feet off the chair, cocked her head wryly as Hanlon reluctantly worked his way upright again, trying to keep his prize pumpkin centered without making it too obvious. "Boy," she continued, "wearing that suit in here is not going to do you any favors."

Hanlon repressed the urge to throw his briefcase at her, told himself to be grateful that she cared so little that she hadn't even bothered to ask for identification, much less place a call to verify that he was supposed to be there. He followed her through a short labyrinth of hallways until she opened the door to a file room that was simultaneously one of the most terrible and wonderful things Hanlon had ever seen. He gasped, genuinely taken aback by the revelation. It was enormous and needlessly ornate, complete with rotting wood paneling halfway up the walls, and had clearly been originally used for some purpose more formal than its current use as a dumping ground for old paperwork. Because there was a lot of paper, boxes upon boxes stacked high on industrial metal shelving. There were even more stacked on the floor, on each other, in corners, partially blocking the windows. It looked like the kind of storage space in which might hold the Ark of the Covenant. Hanlon almost wanted to drool at the thought of how much buried information those boxes must contain. The place was breathtaking, and not just because it was approximately eight thousand degrees inside. He registered the stifling heat first as intense discomfort, and then began to worry that it might have degraded some of the files he was after.

"Jesus," he said.

"Yeah, that's why I try not to come in here." He stared at her, puzzled, then realized she was talking about the temperature, not the treasure trove of data. "I don't ever work with this stuff, really, but I guess there's like a directory there." She pointed at a pile of three-ring binders jumbled on the room's battered folding table. "Some guys dropped off a bunch of empty boxes that you're supposed to ship things in, too, they're in the corner over there. I . . . guess I was supposed to tell you you're not allowed to take everything? Only some stuff? I've got a note about it somewhere." She was frowning in concentration, working her gum around her teeth.

"It's all right, I've got my orders," he assured her, without mentioning that he was disobeying about ninety percent of them. Something was wrong, and it took him a few seconds to put his finger on it: the problem was that, wrapped in a suit in this stifling tomb, sweating and panting in the still air of the overheated file room, he was already beginning to feel a little light-headed. "Let's step back into the hallway for a second," he suggested.

"Yeah," she said, sweeping her hair up into a ponytail. "I sure don't want to be in here any more." There were heavy wooden benches outside in the hall, which was still hot, but not as tortuous as the file room, and Hanlon immediately sank back down into one to let his brain work on his mission without having to worry about whether he was going to fall down. This project was manageable, he decided; this was something he could do. He just needed help, and time, and a good plan. The receptionist flapped the skirt of her sundress to cool her legs and blew her bangs off her forehead as she stared at him.

"Listen," he said, "I'm sick, and I've got a bad back."

"Uh-huh," the girl replied. He flinched as he caught her eyes sliding over the fat swell beneath his straining blazer.

"I've got to go through a lot of these boxes, but I'm not going to be able to manage moving them around on my own. I know this is short notice, but do you think there's anyone you could get to help me? Maybe a high school student who needs a little extra money? I'll pay, obviously."

To his relief, she was already nodding. "I bet Willie'll help you. He's been coming in a lot to do stuff like that. I'll call him and have him meet you out front. You want him here, like, nine?"

Hanlon immediately felt a deep rush of gratitude and regretted his previous urge to cause her bodily harm. "That would be fantastic," he said. "Listen, do you think I could borrow one of your fans, as well?"

She shrugged. "I guess you guys will probably need some. There's some extras in storage; I'll have Willie get you a couple. You can open the windows while you're here, too, but you have to close them when you go so stuff doesn't get messed up."

"Great. Okay. Look, is there a supermarket around here? Just a place I could pick up some bottled water and things?"

"There's a Wal-Mart," she said, doubtfully.

Of course; there would be. He got directions from her and let his mind plunge ahead at ninety miles an hour as he limped his way out of the building and back to the comparative relief of his car. His brain kept busily whirring along as he made it through the Wal-Mart, stocking up for a siege against the files with supplies that he hoped would keep his disastrously fickle body running: trail mix, granola bars, apples, gallon jugs of water that he could barely lift into the cart because of which muscles were currently refusing to speak to each other. Hanlon spent a few minutes staring blankly at a display of canned tomatoes before he realized that he was again nearing total burnout. Whatever he'd managed to pick up was simply going to have to be good enough, because his biological stopwatch was quickly running out. He struggled through the register, struggled harder to get it all in his trunk. By the time he got back to the hotel, it was slamming angrily into his ribs again, and he abandoned everything in the car except for one lonely decent-sized sub sandwich and his ever-present briefcase.

Back in his hotel room, Hanlon immediately dropped what was in his hands and waddled hastily to sit on the toilet, where he sleepily shed his clothes on the floor as his complaining bladder did what it could to alleviate the neverending tension inside him. He fell asleep for a moment on the seat, woke as his inner ear told him he was starting to fall off it. He checked his watch – seven in the evening. "Lightweight," he muttered. With no one around to be ashamed for, Hanlon eased his way to the floor, wriggled his way back into his boxers, and crawled on all fours to the bed in his long-suffering, inadequate underwear and undershirt. Crawling was easier than getting up, and the position let his enormously mounded belly push outwards in surprisingly comfortable ways, letting all of that tightly naked weight hang downwards. He made a detour to grab the sandwich he'd bought; his wrists were aching by the time he reached the bed.

Resting back on the carpet on his bony haunches, Hanlon slowly shoved everything on the bed – pillows, sheets, blankets – towards the headboard to make a lumpy mass of bedding he could recline against, heaved himself slowly up onto the mattress, and fumbled the sandwich out of its wrapper. He got the TV on for company, some channel he didn't bother to identify, and began tearing slowly through the sandwich, realizing that some of his shakiness was probably due to the fact that he hadn't eaten since the cereal in his apartment that morning. The fabric creases around the orb of his belly began to fill with flakes of crust and lettuce shreds. "This is so goddamned classy," he announced spitefully to his complaining digestive system.

He slept with the low murmur from the screen washing over him, crawling his way back to the bathroom occasionally. Hanlon and the thing inside him entered an uneasy truce for the evening, establishing a rhythm: he'd sleep until it punched at him, then he'd gnaw through some more sandwich until it let him be, and drift off again. By two in the morning, he was getting it to shut up by chewing drowsily on lettuce he'd picked out of his boxers, but eventually, thirteen hours of rest and a temporarily satisfied stomach paid off: by morning, Peter Hanlon was still sore, still exploding out of out of his clothing, but felt ready to conquer the file room of the lunatic asylum.

By the time he'd finished received his extensive and, to some degree, conflicting instructions, it was already the most uncomfortable assignment of Andrew Miller's stint in the FBI. He respected Peter Hanlon; the man was better at his job than Miller would ever be, and he didn't mind admitting it. Some part of him even shyly idolized the older man a little bit: Hanlon's startling fluency in manipulating data analysis and pattern recognition, his smooth efficiency, his devotion to order. And now, Miller had been sent to bundle Hanlon up and send him home like a naughty child.

"I don't think he'll give you too much of a fight," Doc Kranz had said to him, arms folded in anger. "He's a little off his nut right now, but he's still Agent Hanlon, and you know how he is. I'm pretty sure he can only break rules for so long before he collapses under the weight of his own fear of chaos, and he knows he's fucked this up. He's probably just trying to get away with as much as he can before we catch up to him. Got you a room in the same hotel he's registered at; check there first. You're his babysitter now; do not involve the Atlanta branch office or any medical personnel unless you call me first and I tell you to do so. Agent Hanlon's insides are currently functioning abnormally and hooked up to each other in a way that nobody's going to understand but me and the rest of the people working on the program, and we're the only ones who should treat him. You remember everything I told you?"

"I took notes," Miller had promised, and he now felt anxiously at the breast pocket of his shirt to feel them crinkle under his hand as he simultaneously cranked at the steering wheel with the other, trying to stay on-route to the asylum he'd been told Hanlon was probably holed up in. When he got there, the place looked deserted, dilapidated, like it might be haunted. That fit right in with everything Miller knew about it – it'd had a pretty dark history before it'd been shut down, and some of the people who'd been kept here, the ones he knew Hanlon was interested in, were not nice at all. The asphalt sizzled up at him as he got out of the car – the sun was high in the sky, two p.m., and the whole city felt like it was close-range with a flamethrower.

Reception held a bored-looking girl encircled by a Greek chorus of electric fans; she still had large sweat stains under her arms and breasts, despite their whirring efforts. The girl was fussing with a cell phone when he entered, and scowled at him: "What do you want?"

Miller immediately turned on the Black Irish charm that usually served him so well: he was uninspiringly short and stocky, he knew, but experience told him that a grin and a wink of one dark eye could get him pretty far with just about anyone. "I'm with the FBI, miss. Looking for a colleague of mine who's been doing work here."

"Oh." He could see her melt a little. "Yeah, I guess he's here." Miller felt a wave of relief. "Sorry, I thought you were like a salesman or something. He's all dressed in a suit and everything, and you're not."

"No," Miller said, with a cheerfulness he almost felt at being so near his purpose, and spread his arms out to emphasize his short sleeves. "Not in this heat, I'm not. My associate, he's a little more formal than I am. Where's he at? Can you show me?"

She eased her way out of her seat, led him most of the way, and pointed him towards a doorway. After he thanked her, she turned to walk away with a pert wriggle in his direction that he was pretty sure was purposeful; maybe he'd cranked up the charm a little harder than he'd intended. He shrugged, mentally – at this point, that was the least of his problems.

He hovered outside the room for a few moments, chewed his lip as he thought about the confrontation script he'd had hours to put together in his head, squared his shoulders; he could feel a wave of heat rolling out of the doorway he was about to walk into. Finally, he made himself stride boldly into the hideously hot room, and promptly froze in astonishment. There was Hanlon, all right, but not like Miller had ever seen him before. The pale agent, more heavily pregnant than Miller had been led to anticipate, was stripped down to a sweat-soaked undershirt that was creeping its way up his shockingly distended belly and a pair of dress pants that it looked like he'd long ago burst out of, barely held up with a pair of suspenders. He looked terrible, drenched in his own sweat, drooping with exhaustion.

"Agent Hanlon?" Miller ventured, stunned by the transformation in front of him. The script had fled his brain.

Hanlon's head slowly swiveled towards him, the eyes half-lidded. Beyond him, a shirtless black teenager popped up off a seat on a pile of boxes. "Andy Miller," Hanlon said wearily. "I'm glad they sent you; you know what you're doing." He paused to wipe unsteadily at the sweat on his face, and Miller hurried towards him.

"Jesus, Peter," Miller said. "We've got to get you out of here. You're going to get heatstroke." He examined the other agent's white, clammy face. "If you don't have it already."

"I've been trying to be good about it," Hanlon said, gesturing towards nearby plastic jugs of water, empty and full. "Will helped a lot." The teenager smiled shyly.

"Okay," Miller said, grabbing Hanlon's elbow, "Come on."

"No, wait." Hanlon pulled away so clumsily that he flopped in his chair for a second, unable to keep his drained body from following the momentum that came with moving his heavy belly. "Are you just here to take me home, or are you here to send me home and finish the job?"

"Ideally, the second one, but I don't know if you're going to make it on a plane by yourself at this point. You look like you're going to fall over. Come on, Hanlon, let me help you at least lie down for a minute. I'll find some ice."

"No. Just let me talk for five minutes. I'll tell you everything you need to know about finishing the job, and then I'll go with you. Meek as a baby lamb."

Miller hesitated. "All right," he said, finally, and grabbed a full gallon jug of water, scrabbled for a glass. "Here, drink while you talk."

Hanlon accepted it and began sipping. "First, there's Will. Will, grab my jacket, will you?" The slim youth came towards them, shyly slipping on a t-shirt, and handed Hanlon his oversized blazer. "Will's been absolutely invaluable. I've been paying him ten bucks an hour to do all the heavy lifting and carrying and keeping the water filled, and he's well worth the investment." Hanlon retrieved his wallet and counted out a wad of cash that he put into Will's outstretched hand. "Patient as hell and extremely conscientious." Will had the good grace to look embarrassed. "I know you don't have the same limitations I do, but I'd absolutely recommend that you have him come back here to help you tomorrow. You could finish this in no time flat with him helping you."

Miller was sighing impatiently. "All right," he said, and addressed Will. "What time do you usually come?"

"Nine," the teenager replied.

"Sounds good. I'll meet you here." Will, sensing tension, bolted. "Is that it?" Miller noted with concern that Hanlon's hands were trembling around the glass he held.

"No. Here, look." Hanlon went over carefully what he'd spent much of the morning preparing – a guide to exactly which files he'd managed to find and set aside, the system he'd been using to go through them, detailed instructions as to what remained to be done, a visual chart of nearly impeccable straight lines, arrows, parentheticals, marginalia. Miller had to admit that it was, as always, impressive work on Hanlon's part. The pregnant agent trailed off a few times as he talked, losing his train of thought, and Miller's anxiety grew. Finally, he looked up at Miller. "That's it," he said. "I think that's everything you need to know. Anything else, you can call me."

"Will do. Come on, let's get out of this microwave."

"Gotta shut the windows first, turn off the fan, so things don't get messed up if it storms overnight. Will usually does it. I forgot to ask him."

Miller rolled his eyes and ran around the room, sweating through his own shirt now, shutting the place up. Hanlon was leaning heavily, limply on the desk by the time he was done. "I don't think I can get up," Hanlon admitted. "This chair's absolutely killed my back over the last two days. And I'm dizzy. And my feet . . ." He trailed off, his head sagging.

"Okay." Miller was mentally processing his options, worried about the dizziness. "I'm going to get you out of here and into the car, get the air conditioning on. You've got to cool down before you bake to death. I'll come back for all of your things. Can you get up if I help you?"

"I want to put my shirt on. I look like a freak."

"Fuck it, Peter," Miller snapped, and Hanlon blinked at him in surprise. "This place is deserted. There's only about two people here, you're never going to see them again, and nobody cares what you're wearing. But I care that you look like you're about to pass out and I am going to be in deep shit if you die in this room. Come on." Miller got one of Hanlon's arms around his neck, and wrapped both of his own low around the other man's distended gut. Surprised by its firmness, Miller had to readjust his grip slightly before he lifted the other agent forcibly out of his chair. Hanlon did his best to cooperate, swaying, and the tortuous journey to the car began.

They shuffled their way out a side door. Hanlon was lurching unsteadily, barely managing to stay on his feet because of the combination of his unsteady waddle and a pronounced limp. He kept his right arm around Miller's shoulders, and had to use the other hand to press desperately at his arching back to make the pain bearable as he moved, his breath hissing between his teeth. Miller had, in turn, wrapped his left arm fully around the other man, so far that his hand helped to support the ponderously round belly that preceded them both, swaying emphatically from side to side as Hanlon stumbled his way forward. He had to keep his other one free to manage doors. They made it to the car, Miller fumbled the passenger side door open, and gently eased Hanlon into it, lifting his legs in after him as the pregnant man struggled with them, helping to turn him straight towards the dashboard.

"Do you want me to recline the seat?" Miller asked. Hanlon nodded, grimacing, and Miller lowered him backwards as far as the seat would go; the other man moaned as some of the strained muscles in his back were allowed to relax. Miller leaned over him to turn the key in the ignition, blasted the air conditioning, then slammed shut the passenger side door and ran back inside to get everything else. He grabbed the rest of Hanlon's damp clothing and his briefcase, stuffing it with the files that were too sensitive to simply leave behind, but abandoned the food and water scattered around the table. Hanlon was still panting when he got back out to the car, his taut belly quivering in and out as though it were deciding whether or not to explode.

"My rental car's here in the lot," Hanlon said, rubbing wearily at his jutting sides.

"I'll do something about it later. You're in no shape to drive. God damn it," Miller said, starting to back up out of the spot, "I should have grabbed some more water so you could drink it in the car. You look like shit. You've run yourself right into the ground, haven't you?"

"Wouldn't have been so bad," Hanlon managed to slur, "If I'd had more time. I could have gone slower. Taken some breaks today. But I knew Kranz was sending someone after me."

"Oh, so now you're saying this is my fault?" He looked over at Hanlon, whose eyes were closing. "I'm going to have to get you back up again in about ten minutes, you know."

"Mm." The noise could have indicated either protest or agreement, but it hardly mattered.

In the early evening, Miller made his way back into Hanlon's room; the sleeping agent was in nearly the same position, dead to the world, motionless under the weight of his overly pregnant belly. By now, he was wearing his rumpled pants like handcuffs around his ankles. Miller dropped his burdens on the bed and began to gently shake Hanlon awake.

"Hey," he started. "Hey, Peter. Wake up. It's Andy Miller. Feeling better?"

Hanlon slowly came to, twitching drowsily. He made eye contact with Miller and stared for a second, then his eyes widened and he began to frantically try to jerk himself upright.

"It's okay," Miller said hastily. "You're in your hotel room. Calm down."

"No," Hanlon panted, "I'm going to piss myself." Miller took a few seconds to react, then jumped back to yank Hanlon's pants off entirely so that the other man wouldn't fall on his face when he got his huge pregnancy into motion. With an emphatic grunt and clumsy one-legged kick, Hanlon managed to roll over and scoot backwards off the bed, his knees hitting the floor. He hoisted himself up by pushing against the bed with both arms, and staggered, leaning heavily on the wall, into the bathroom. He didn't manage to shut the door behind him, and Miller stood back awkwardly, retreating to the door of the room, as he listened in embarrassment to the other man urinate. It . . . went on for a while.

The toilet flushed, there was more grunting, and Hanlon eventually emerged, trying in vain to get his undershirt and boxers to meet over his overinflated belly. "Sorry about that," he said, briefly meeting Miller's eyes and flicking his own away in shame. "There's . . . a lot of pressure in here. I'm probably lucky you woke me up when you did." He grimaced and groaned, rubbing at his back, as he waddled his way back to the bed. "Oh, god, I got up too fast. I feel like I just ran a marathon."

"No problem," Miller said. He felt like he should apologize for having witnessed the whole thing, but couldn't figure out a way to construct the apology. Hanlon lowered himself and his extra burden back down onto the edge of the bed with difficulty, puffing. "You look like you're doing better, anyway. That's good."

"Yeah," Hanlon said, and his breath became ragged as he once again hoisted his legs on to the bed. He was awake and focused enough now to be painfully aware of just how much skin he was showing, and began alternately fumbling with his inadequate clothing and groping for a sheet to cover him. Miller's sympathetic gaze made him newly sensitive to just how much discomfort he couldn't help showing all the time at his current size – he looked miles past overdue, and everyone in the room knew it. "I'm tired again already, though, and everything still hurts." He paused. "I honestly don't know how long I could stay on my feet right now. Thanks for getting Kranz to let me rest another night."

"I think you did some of that yourself," Miller said, digging into one of the plastic bags he'd brought. "You even sounded terrible, earlier. Does this look good to you?" He held up a plastic deli container containing a large chef's salad. "If not, you can trade for my soup."

"Oh, Jesus, Miller, that looks like the most delicious thing I have ever seen. Is that ham and turkey in there?" Hanlon squirmed his way more upright in bed and reached for it; his undershirt instantly snapped up to his chest, and he hastily tried to smooth it down. "Dammit."

"Maybe I should give you these, first," Miller said, and chucked some of his other purchases at Hanlon's head; the reclining agent just managed to catch them and unfolded them, puzzled. "My guess is that the shirt's going to be a little big and the pants are going to be a little small, but it's not like you're entering a fashion show. I got you some sneakers, too. Sorry, they're really cheap and crappy, but I guess they just need to work for you for a day or so. I don't know if they'll be big enough, but if not, I figured you can take out the laces and they'll still be more comfortable than what you have. Oh, and there's a . . ." Miller peered at the wad of fabric in his hand for a second, then pitched that at Hanlon as well. ". . . I guess it's like a zip-up jersey thing you can wear instead of that suit jacket if you want to cover up a little more." It didn't seem wise to mention that he'd found it in the maternity department.

Hanlon stared at the clothing in his lap for a long beat. Finally, he shook his head emphatically, and got the blue t-shirt on, struggling to work it down between his back and his wad of cushiony bedding. Though it was too big across the shoulders and through the chest, hanging loosely, it hugged his grotesquely full belly comfortably and fell all the way past his crotch. He looked piercingly at Miller. "Did god send you?" he asked.

"No," Miller said placidly. "Doc Kranz sent me. He just thinks he's god." Hanlon smiled a little. "You can thank me if you're sure you still want to after you're done getting all of the crumbs out of your bed. We're sharing the bread." He handed Hanlon the salad again, followed by dressing packets, a fork, and a bottle of soda. Then Miller kicked off his own shoes, grabbed his soup and a half-loaf of French bread, and settled himself onto the bed next to Hanlon. "Put on the news."

The two men let CNN take over the conversation, munching in companionable silence, tearing off hunks of the loaf as they went. Hanlon only made it halfway through the salad before he put it aside, belching uneasily: "Ooof."

Miller looked over with concern. "Really? That's all? Is that gonna be enough?"

Hanlon shrugged, rubbed his protruding belly, and belched again. "It takes up a lot of space – I can't eat much, these days. I'll have the rest later. God, that hit the spot, though." CNN filled the silence between them again. After a few minutes, Hanlon grunted and winced, hands pressing lightly around the lower edge of his shrouded belly, trying to calm it.

The gesture emphasized just how big it was, a full moon rising its way out of the lean agent's front, and Miller stared uneasily at the quivering movement he could see through the fabric of the shirt. "Contraction?"

"No," Hanlon puffed, "It's been moving a lot. Incredibly uncomfortable, especially when I'm full."

"Oh, yeah. I guess they do that, huh."

Hanlon ventured: "Kranz give you any indication of just how much trouble I'm in? Are you being nice to me because this is this the last meal of the condemned?"

Miller shrugged and scraped the last of his soup out of the bowl. "I think you have an inflated idea of my place in the chain of information. I have no idea what's going to happen to you when you get back to DC, beyond eventually getting the baby out. I'm being nice to you because you look miserable and I'd want someone to be nice to me if I were miserable."

Hanlon looked uncomfortable at the expression of empathy, tried to get back on topic. "The Doc sounds like he's going to put me in front of a firing squad when I get back."

"Not surprised. You scared the shit out of him."

"I what?"

"Oh, yeah. You scared the shit out of everyone. I guess you were supposed to call me about this trip, and then when Pinker found out you didn't and nobody could raise you for a while, it really hit the fan. I got dragged into the whole thing just when everyone was getting really crazy. Kranz was convinced you were lying dead in your apartment because you'd had a stroke or fell down in the shower or something, and he broke in. Swear to god, apparently he went there and jimmied the lock. I guess he has hidden talents. He was really torn up that you weren't there; I saw him afterwards, and he was just about tearing his hair out, thought you were maybe lying in a gutter somewhere. Then Pinker told him what you were supposed to be calling me about, and the Doc put two and two together. He wanted to come get you himself in case you weren't okay, but he had to stay in DC in case anything else went wrong with another one of the carriers. I'm glad they sent me down instead; he would've had a stroke if he'd seen you in that file room."

"Oh." Hanlon felt a deep wave of guilt. "I was sort of hoping no one would notice if I skipped town for a few days."

". . . you are the dumbest smart guy I know, Hanlon. The Doc is good people, you know. He yells because he cares."

"You're never going to make it in the FBI if you don't learn to talk shit about people behind their backs."

"Pinker's a stupid douchebag," Miller responded promptly, and they grinned at each other for a few seconds before turning their gazes lazily towards the television. Eventually, Miller rubbed his eyes, tired himself now, and looked back over. Hanlon looked like he was asleep again, his head bowed down towards one shoulder, his arms still loosely cradling the disproportionate globe between his sternum and his hips. Miller imagined that haggard face falling asleep by itself every night for months through what little he knew about pregnancy: being alone every night after days of puking, swelling, pain, hormonal shifts. He felt bad now about having been reluctant to hug Hanlon before; he reflected that, after months of all those lonely nights, the least the guy deserved was one time where someone gave him a goddamned hug before he went to sleep. "Jesus, buddy," he whispered. "This whole thing's really done a number on you, hasn't it? I'd better get you home quick as you can make it."

The sleeping Hanlon let loose with a long, squealing fart, and Miller nearly bit his tongue in half as he choked with laughter. Served him right for trying to pity a man who'd nearly self-destructed rather than admit incapability. Miller spent a few minutes scribbling down details for the next day onto a page of hotel stationery, then kicked gently with one stockinged foot at the man next to him in the bed. "Wake up, I've got to tell you how you're getting home. Eat more while you're listening."

Hanlon grumbled, rubbing at his eyes, but grabbed his half-finished meal. "You sound like Kranz, now. 'Eat more.'" He began picking through the salad with his fingers.

"I'm surprised total strangers don't say it to you. You look half-starved."

Hanlon stared hard at Miller for a few seconds, looked down at the dense mound that had been crushing against everything inside him for weeks, and back to Miller. "Are we seeing the same thing? I'm so fat I have to take a break when I'm trying to roll over in bed."

It was Miller's turn to frown. "You're so pregnant that I bet you haven't been able to see your feet for a while, but you can't seriously tell me you think you're fat. Fat people don't have collarbones that stick out as far as yours do. You look thin, and tired, and very, very pregnant. Eat." Out of objections, Hanlon obediently chewed as Miller ran through the details from Doc Kranz – the time, the airline – and handed over the notes for future reference. "So I'll come grab you at eight thirty in the morning," Miller finished. "It's much earlier than we need to be on the road, but it'll give us a little margin for error, you know. I got a pass to see you all the way to the gate, just in case you're not feeling too good tomorrow, okay?"

Hanlon nodded thoughtfully, picked at his teeth with his heavy-lidded eyes closed. "What about my rental car?"

"I took a taxi out to get it and ran most of my errands in it this afternoon. It's parked downstairs. I'll take you in with it and get a cab back here. Don't worry about it. It's my problem, now. Dammit, Peter," he kicked again at Hanlon's slack legs, "Are you awake?"

"Muh."

Kick, kick. "Come on. Wake up enough to set your alarm so we can get out of here in time."

"I hope some of the boxes in the asylum fall on you and crush you to death." Hanlon responded spitefully, but flailed one long-fingered hand out far enough to punch numbers into the hotel's clock radio. "Done. Can you help me get a sheet out of this mess?" Miller dug around behind Hanlon's back until he pulled out the crumpled topsheet, handed it off and watched as other man settled himself down onto one side in the bed, rearranging pillows, tucking himself in, still in the new shirt.

Hanlon mumbled out of a half-slack mouth: "The boxes that need to be shipped all have to have that records release form taped to the top."

"I know." Miller shoved his own feet back into his shoes.

"Some of the old records are out of order because some idiot confused uppercase I and lowercase L." Hanlon's voice was growing fainter.

"I know how people screw up filing systems, Hanlon. I'll find the right folders."

"Scnif vebbem cirnel."

". . . sure, okay."

"Snerk."

Hanlon was already snoring faintly as the stocky agent left, a weighty mound in the bed. But Miller was beginning to feel better about the whole thing: clearly, what the heavily pregnant man needed was rest, and he was getting it. Things were getting better. This was going to work out.

The van began to slow, and Hanlon fretted over whether he should slow with it. They were already the only two cars on the empty stretch of road, and he felt his pursuit was becoming hideously transparent. He didn't have to think about it long – the van pulled over onto the shoulder, stopped, and Hanlon was out of options. He could hardly park and wait for them to get going again. He stamped down on the gas pedal and shot by the stopped vehicle. He just needed to get out of sight now, get somewhere he could stop so he could go after his phone. He'd done enough already.

He didn't have to go too far, as it turned out – there was a gas station only about a mile further on. As soon as Hanlon pulled in, he could see it was closed up, long abandoned. It hardly mattered, he thought as he put the car into park, put on the emergency brake – he didn't need the gas, anyway. He just had to get his mobile phone off the floorboards. Wriggling, he managed to hook one foot backwards underneath himself, and started kicking the phone forwards into a position where he had a prayer of being able to reach it. Finally, he managed.

It rang again as he picked it up: Miller was calling, no doubt wondering where the hell he was. Hanlon mentally apologized to him, ignored the call, and dug into the phone's history to get back to the woman he'd just been talking to. He had to navigate a call center much less efficient than the one he was used to; it didn't help that he hadn't listened to her name when they'd spoken before. Finally, someone figured out what he was talking about, and put him through.

"We got cut off," she said. "I'm trying to send some people out your way."

"Yeah, I had to hang up," he said, a half-lie. "I've sort of lost them; they pulled over on the side of . . . County Road R, I think it is? Theoretically, they're about a mile back behind me, unless they turned around for some reason."

"Okay," she said. "Where on R?"

"I'm not entirely sure," he admitted. "My GPS is saying that there's nothing here. It looks like I'm at an old Shell station. It's abandoned. I don't see an address." He heard another car pull up behind him, and immediately wondered what they were doing there; maybe they could tell him where he was. A look into his rear-view mirror showed him – the Chevy cargo van, with Connor and Carlos barging out of their respective doors. "Oh, shit. Oh, shit, they've spotted me. Oh, fuck." He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and began fumbling the car into gear, searching with his foot for the gas pedal he couldn't see beyond the swell of his belly. The window next to his head exploded, showering him with pebbles of safety glass, and he knew it was already too late. Carlos had a gun nearly in his face.

"Put your hands on your head, asshole! Right fucking now!" He did, facing straight ahead. Connor opened the passenger door, grabbed the phone off the seat, and chucked it in the general direction of the station. Out of the corner of his eye, Hanlon watched it go with despair. His own gun was locked up in his luggage, ready to be checked in at the airport.

"You've been following us, asshole," Carlos challenged. "Why are you following us?"

Hanlon licked his lips. "I wasn't. There's supposed to be construction on the highway, so I'm just trying a back route."

"Bullshit. Hand over your wallet."

Hanlon's jaw clenched, involuntarily. "Can't," he lied, desperately. "I'm about to go to the airport. Wallet's in my luggage, in the trunk."

"Check his pockets, Sam." Hanlon tried not to flinch visibly; he'd transferred all of the contents of his blazer pockets into the ones on the zip-up jersey he was wearing. His wallet, his keys, all manner of miscellany was rattling around in there.

"Shit, Bill, this guy has a beer gut you won't believe." It took Connor about ten seconds to find the slim billfold on Hanlon's left side, while the sweating agent stared impassively at the steering wheel.

"In your trunk, huh? You lying sack of shit." Hanlon didn't bother to respond.

"Bill," Connor said slowly, "You've got to see this." He handed over the wallet; Hanlon could see, in his mind's eye, his FBI identification peering through the clear plastic.

Carlos stared at it for a minute, then looked coldly back at Hanlon as he wrenched the driver's side door open. "Keep your hands on your head and get out of the car, you fat fuck."

None of his options were attractive. "I need to use my hands to get myself out," Hanlon warned him, reluctantly. "I'm too big."

Carlos nodded. "All right, but go slow." He watched Hanlon's movements cautiously, and continued: "What are you, on vacation? Thought maybe you got lucky, were gonna take down Bill Carlos? Stupid bastard."

"Something like that," Hanlon grunted, legs braced widely on the asphalt to help himself get out of the car. He again had trouble balancing the heavily distended weight of his belly, had to lean on the car a little and thrust it out so he could get it centered properly over his pelvis.

"Jesus," Connor said. "Don't you have to pass some sort of fitness test to get in the FBI?" Both of the other men ignored him, staring each other down expressionlessly.

"Who were you on the phone with?" Carlos asked.

"My colleagues at the bureau."

"You tell them we were here?"

"Yes."

"You expecting them to come save your fat ass?"

". . . ideally." Hanlon wasn't sure if telling the truth was helping him any, but he also wasn't sure what lies he could tell at this point that would be better.

Carlos' eyes narrowed, and he began chewing on his lip. Hanlon was focusing on a slim hope: Carlos was a violent thug, but he wasn't a murderer, not yet. At least, there were no pending murder charges against him, and Hanlon was pretty sure that Carlos wasn't interested in tacking them on, particularly not by starting with the death of a federal agent.

"Bill," Connor hissed, "Someone's gonna see." The road was still empty, but it couldn't stay that way forever.

"Yeah," Carlos agreed thoughtfully, and began to close the distance between himself and the wary agent. "Get in the back of the van, FBI."

"No thank you," Hanlon said with as much desperate civility as he could muster. "Why don't you just take my keys and my phone and leave me here? Hell, take the whole car. What am I going to do, run for help? Look at me."

Without warning, Carlos punched him hard in the gut.

Hanlon dropped like a rock onto the asphalt, vomiting, writhing in agony around the explosion of pain inside him. He was too shocked to scream. "Get the jumper cables, Sam," he dimly heard above him, and felt a fresh wave of pain that it took him a few seconds to understand, doubled over as he was. He was choking; Carlos had grabbed the back collars of his layered shirts and was dragging him across the asphalt by them. Hanlon flailed his hands at the ground, trying to stop the painful abrasions, trying to right himself, trying to get a grip on his attacker. None of the combat training he'd received had accounted in any way for the circumstances he was in now – overwhelmed by his pregnancy, spasming with pain, weakened by stress and exhaustion.

"You can't," he choked out, his vision blurred from lack of air. "Don't do this. Oh, god, I've got to go to a hospital." Two sets of hands hauled up at him and forced his hands behind his back. "You're going to kill us," he said wildly, obscurely, kicking desperately towards the men holding him, and somebody hit him again, in the face this time, so hard his head started to ring. He lost a lot of fight for a few seconds after that, dazed, and it was all the time Carlos' experienced hands needed to hogtie him with the thick jumper cables. "I –" Hanlon started, and gagged as crumpled paper was stuffed into his mouth. He began shaking his head hard in distress, wheezing through his nose and around the paper as best he could, trying to work it out with his tongue. The van doors slammed shut, and he felt it lurch into motion.

Hanlon tried to calm himself; he'd stand a much better chance of getting out of this if he kept his head straight. But he was getting dizzy, not getting enough air into his wheezing lungs. He put all of the energy he could into working the gag out of his mouth, feeling its sharp edges cut at the insides of his cheeks, at his tongue. It softened a little as it soaked up his saliva, and he was finally able to force it out with one final convulsion. He kept gasping, blinking, and began to take in his surroundings.

He was bouncing on plywood that had been laid down in the back of the van; there were only two bucket seats in front, currently occupied by the two fugitives. Connor was driving, Carlos glaring back at the FBI agent, daring him to try talking again now that he'd worked the gag out. Hanlon didn't feel like taking him up on that, not yet. He was surrounded by debris on the floor around him – clothing, food wrappers, maps, plastic bags. There was a hot, raw ache in his belly that he tried not to think about too much, knowing it would only make him panic. His face was throbbing, as were the patches of skin that had been torn at by the pitted asphalt. Low on options, Hanlon began gently testing to see just how well he was tied up, chafing his wrists against the thick cables.

"What now?" Connor said softly.

The man in the passenger seat shot him a warning glance. "Nothing changes. You take him in your car when we get there."

"By myself? I can't watch him the whole time while I'm driving. What if he gets loose?"

"We'll put him in the trunk." Worse and worse, thought Hanlon. He was breathing easily now, but was having trouble ignoring the pain he was in. Struggling had made the loop around his left wrist even tighter, and he began slowly working at loosening it again, not wanting to risk losing all circulation in his hand. There didn't seem to be anything around him he could use as a tool, though his inability to move and the belly blocking some of his view made it hard to tell. "Don't talk about it any more, Sammy. Not in the van."

They went on in silence. Squirming, Hanlon detected a rising odor, realized with shame that he'd lost control of his shrunken bladder at some point, probably when he'd been punched. It wasn't the first time he'd done so in the last few weeks, and it was the least of his worries at the moment, but he still desperately wished he hadn't done so in front of these two men. He stared at Carlos, who was staring right back at him again.

"Please," Hanlon tried, "I'm sick. I am. I'm on medical leave."

"You saying you want me to put a fucking sock in your mouth? Or, you know, I could just choke you out."

Hanlon closed his lips, stared at the plywood in front of his face. It felt like everything was throbbing. The only sounds in the van were the motor and the coughing muffler. Slowly, he did what he did best: went inside his head to figure things out. He stopped seeing, hearing, even feeling, to some extent. If Miller could have seen it, he would have known that look, that distant, intense concentration. Though his range of movement was nearly nonexistent, Hanlon began to softly rub his feet against each other, working patiently at those laceless shoes.

As time stopped registering consciously for him, his life became a series of tiny triumphs: easing one shoe off. The other. Beginning to work the cord down around his left heel, constantly stopping to readjust, keep as much slack as he could in the line. It got harder as he went: various muscles were starting to quiver with the strain of the controlled movements. Finally, at the cost of the cord pulling chokingly at his three other bound extremities, he got a foot out.

Hanlon let himself see again. How much later was it? It looked like the quality of the daylight had changed. He shook aside the thought, focused on the rear doors of the van. Unlocked. Could he manage the handle with that one stockinged foot? He thought so, but he'd have to be careful. If he simply kicked it open and fell out, at the speed it felt like they were going, he'd die. No question. If he kicked it open and didn't fall out but they were still the only car on the road, the two other men in the car would simply stop, subdue him again, and he would have wasted all that effort. He'd have to wait until he could hear other cars, he decided, hear other people around, and open it hoping to attract attention.

In the meanwhile, he began to patiently wriggle again to get the blood back into his hands and remaining foot; his partial escape hadn't given him as much slack as he'd anticipated, and the fatigue was starting to build painfully in his muscles. There was an ache curling all through his groin and across the bottom of his heavily distended front.

The van stopped, and he froze. Still no sound from outside; he shot his eyes forward to the two fugitives, who whispered between themselves for a moment, then exited. Too late for the door, too late. He tried to draw his knees up to his chest – maybe if he kicked out powerfully enough with that free leg, he could at least incapacitate one of them briefly. But his belly was impossibly in the way of the effort; he still had almost no range of motion.

The rear door opened, and Hanlon heard, "What the –" He shot that one free foot in the direction of the voice.

It hit nothing.

Strong fingers immediately grabbed his ankle and hauled him out of the back entirely by it; he thudded painfully onto a patch of hot dirt and gravel, tucking his head down to protect it.

"Dumb move, FBI." Hanlon tried to jerk his leg back towards himself to try again, but Carlos had started dragging him along the ground by it. "You're pretty shitty at your job, aren't you? Get the trunk, Sam. See if there's another set of cables."

Hanlon tried to flail wildly as they retied him, bound him tightly, but couldn't move much. He was hoisted, dropped heavily into the trunk of a car he didn't see clearly enough to identify, landing painfully on something hard, possibly metal. He panted up at the two faces looking down on him; Carlos looked contemptuous, Connor curious. "Come on," Hanlon said. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded slightly pathetic, strained. "This is only going to be worse for everyone. You guys, too."

Carlos punched Connor lightly on the shoulder. "See you in a while, Sam." He disappeared from view.

"Yeah," Connor agreed absently, still thoughtfully considering the man bound in the trunk of his car.

"My name is Peter," Hanlon said desperately. "I mostly do paperwork. I'm hurt, and I'm frightened, and I really don't want to die. I don't want anyone to die."

The lid of the trunk closed in his face.

Hanlon was so blind with shock that he barely noticed that he was being moved again; this time Connor was dragging him by his shoulders, out of the bathroom back to his designated corner of the hotel room. As he was abandoned again on the floor, Hanlon began pushing his shirts out of the way so he could lay his hands against his abdomen skin-to-skin, to better search for evidence that he was wrong, mistaken. A contraction built up around him, within him, through him, and he sighed hoarsely at its passage, straining the tendons in his neck as he reeled under its force, but that was the extent of the movement he could feel under his desperate hands. He pressed at the bumps in there, at one of the protrusions that he thought might be its buttocks; there was no response.

Searching for that movement consumed him all through the interval until the next contraction after that, and then the next, and then the next. He'd cursed it so many times, telling it to stop moving, to let him get some sleep, to just be still. And now he needed so desperately for it to move, to quiver, to kick. He hugged it, rubbed at it, tried to will it into movement. "I'm sorry," he breathed. "Oh, god, I take it all back. No, please no."

The world shrank to his patch of carpet and his laboring womb. He had to keep letting his body slump into unconsciousness every so often when he wasn't hissing through that sensation of being torn apart from his center outwards. But whenever he was awake, he was probing, praying, bargaining, feeling frantically. They were coming harder, the contractions, and faster. He was getting less time to recover between them; sometimes, it felt like no time at all. The increasing pain felt like it was going to crack his thin pelvis in half. He began to rock a little, trying to establish a rhythmic comfort, and let himself return to his watch to orient himself. Two minutes, and then a crashing wave of pain. Again. Those hard contractions were still the only sensation he could get through his palms and fingertips.

He heard the door to the room swing open, and cracked his eyes in crazed hope towards it. He wasn't sure what he thought he'd see there, but there was nothing in view that could help him. Just Sam Connor, silhouetted against the sunrise – beyond him, the desolate sweep of the rose-tinged parking lot of the motel. It was a striking image, could even have been pretty, under other circumstances. But another contraction was swelling its way through Hanlon' body, screaming at all of his pain receptors to work double duty. He managed to understand that it had been another two minutes, just two, before he was lost in the pain again.

When he came back from it, Hanlon decided that he knew for sure. The baby was dead, and his body, the uterus that was and was not part of him, was desperately trying to get rid of it. And it couldn't. There was no way out for the fresh corpse in his belly, but that artificial womb was going to keep trying until it killed him. And Hanlon deserved it, because of everything he'd done. He tried to cry, but there wasn't enough moisture in him for tears.

He hadn't wanted it; hadn't wanted him, had even hated him for making life so difficult. Never bothered with wondering what the baby inside him would look like or what he'd grow up to be. He'd hated his pseudo-son, had grudgingly done just enough to keep them both alive and functioning, and now that poor baby was dead. Peter Hanlon had failed him. Nearly nine months, they'd struggled through, and all for nothing. Nothing at the end of it but death and failure.

His ability to follow a line of thought disappeared again for a while – he couldn't get enough of a break to pass out fully, but the rational portion of his brain shorted out for a long, long series of those wrenching convulsions. Most of what he was aware of was the tearing sensation scything its way through his hips, as the artificial womb tried to force its sorrowful failure down towards the birth canal that didn't exist. He could hear himself groaning. He tried again to come back to himself, to take full possession of his brain and body, and was met with that inescapable wall of pain and grief.

Hanlon realized that he didn't even have a name for him, for his baby that was lost forever now. No name, after all that time together. "You wouldn't treat a dog that way," he whispered into the carpet. "I'm so sorry, son." There was no way out of what he'd done. He dry-sobbed through the next contraction. When it was over, he'd already decided to give up, to let the pain take him. He had a desperate need to be punished, and this seemed as good a way as any.

It shorted out his brain a little, making that decision, and Hanlon went back to nowhere. He was vaguely aware that there were sometimes terrible noises around him: the muffled screams of a dying animal, a child weeping. In moments of greater clarity, he knew he was making those noises, but sometimes they just frightened him. Reality shifted with frightening speed. The only constant was the hard, hard belly that he was trying to smother with his hands; he was so unaware of the intervals between contractions that the crests of pain became most of his experience. Sometimes there was a gag in his mouth, sometimes not. Sometimes he was tied to something, sometimes not. Sometimes, his eyes opened onto carpet, sometimes the ceiling, sometimes the bathtub. It was bewildering, disorienting.

It went on, his hips bending backwards, his back arching, his throat torn raw. It might have been forever.

The catalyst for the beginning of the end was another round of drowning. Hanlon gargled his way through the water that had unexpectedly filled his mouth and throat, choking himself awake and into a period of lucidity. He was back in his original corner, propped up again – if, in fact, he had ever left it at all. Connor was kneeling in front of him with that plastic cup, squinting at him. Evaluating him as though he were a curious problem. Peter Hanlon felt a sudden, deep clarity.

He knew already that if he didn't get help, he would die, and he was beginning to understand just how long it would take and how much it would hurt. But when he died, these men would take him and his son and dump them, hide them as best they could – a swamp, a quarry – and father and son might stay there for days. Months. Years. Forever. Hanlon and his baby would become a mystery, like those victims in the files he plowed through, with no one to speak for them, to explain the tragedy. No marker for their grave. Hanlon felt a deep rush of rage, and his pulse rose; he couldn't let his life end with that kind of whirlwind of injustice and disorder. He'd let his son die, and he was going to have to pay for that, but he was damned if he was going to let him disappear. Let him go back to being just an it.

"I'm going to die," he managed to announce to the room, just before the next contraction hit him. It went on and on and on, and he gripped his hands hard into his thighs rather than scream. When it was over, he had to start the thought over again, couldn't remember where he'd left off. "You killed the baby, and I'm going to die, too, and you're going to have a dead FBI agent on your hands. Call an ambulance."

"I think he is, Bill. He might not be making any sense, but I think he might be right about dying." Connor stood up and walked away as though the idea didn't concern him very much, went back to his own bed, stretched out on his back to continue studying the television.

"Not fast enough," Carlos' voice came. "You know what? I don't think this is worth it any more. I have never had a worse hostage. It's been almost a day, and I can't listen to the fucker any more. I can hear him through the gag, over the TV, through the fucking bathroom door . . . fuck, I bet someone would hear him if we put him back in the trunk, even."

"Just leave me here," Hanlon was riding a rush of adrenaline now, maybe the last one he had in him. "Just go, and I'll fix it. I have to tell someone why he died. He needs to be a person. I don't want him to be just a footnote in your file."

"Do you want I should put his gag back in?" Connor asked, without moving.

"No, because it doesn't fucking help. I'm done." Carlos got off of his bed, grabbed his gun and a pillow, and walked to Hanlon.

"You're not allowed to do this," Hanlon told him, wildly, trying to haul himself up higher in his corner. "I'm not going to let you."

"Wouldn't have to, if you would have just shut up, you crazy fuck," Carlos growled, bracing himself against the wall so he could lean in close with the gun, preparing to deaden the noise with the pillow.

Hanlon was choking himself with those dry sobs, again. They were loud. Through them, he threatened, "I put things in order. That's my job. I am going to put you in your place."

"Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut –" Carlos never finished. At the sight of the gun barrel inches in front of his eyes, Hanlon shot both his hands towards it in a panic, body memory kicking in, reminding him how to do a disarm. He grabbed successfully, but the angle was wrong, his hands were weak, and instead of managing to turn the gun out of Carlos' grasp, he turned it upwards, hard. Carlos, surprised, started trying to jerk away, lost his balance . . . and pressed the trigger just as the gun jammed into the underside of his chin. There was a muffled bang, Carlos convulsed, hard, and dropped to the floor partially on top of Hanlon. Carlos' mangled head came to rest in the crook of Hanlon's neck, the underside of his face gushing blood from the muzzle blast.

The whole thing had taken only seconds; Connor was staring from his bed in shock at his accomplice's quivering, dying body. Hanlon was still gripping Carlos' slackening hand and the gun it contained, blinking in confusion. With an effort of concentration, he grabbed the pistol by its slide, shook it loose from the dying man's grip, and got it aimed shakily at Connor.

"Call –" Hanlon started, and the next contraction took away his words, rushing up and through the painful landscape that had been the girdle of muscles around his landscape. He nearly fired the gun again as it racked him, and he had to pour everything he had into keeping it pointed at Connor, who, wide-eyed, was slowly standing up. The effort cost Hanlon dearly; he nearly blacked out as the peak of the contraction began to pass, and he knew he couldn't maintain the standoff for long. Connor's face indicated that he was figuring that out, as well.

"Take off your pants," Hanlon croaked, after he thought he could control his voice again. He needed to get Connor locked out of the room, get himself safe. "Do it. I'll start shooting. I might not hit you the first time. I'll shoot more." Connor hesitated, looking confused, but slowly slid out of his jeans and let them fall to the floor, stood there awkwardly in a t-shirt and jockey shorts. Hanlon nodded. "Now get out. Go. Run."

The timing was almost perfect; the subsequent contraction tore through Hanlon's body just as the door closed on Connor's puzzled face, and the agent let the gun drop to the floor as he surrendered entirely to his jerking body. He could finally try to get help, end this.

Andrew Miller screeched into a parking space outside the hospital, vaguely thankful that he hadn't killed himself on the way there. The past two days had turned into sheer insanity after Hanlon had failed to appear at the airport. Miller himself had grown increasingly frantic at the terminal; it had taken a long time for the rat's nest of information to cohere around everyone involved. During the panicked conversations between the Atlanta branch office, headquarters, Kranz, and Miller, a picture began to cohere around what had happened, and the FBI and local police had started to awkwardly muster their forces in a search. The discovery of Hanlon's battered rental car and abandoned phone had not painted an encouraging picture.

Miller himself had been forbidden to participate in the process.

"No," Kranz had said. "I refuse to lose track of the only man there who has most of the picture of what's going on. You stay in one place. Think you can handle that? Since you can't handle looking after the one goddamned man you were supposed to take care of? Pinker says you might as well do the other job you were sent there for, but don't you go anywhere but the hotel or the asylum, so if we need you, we know where you are. Or if he needs you. You are on some thin ice, Miller."

So Miller had spent most of a terrible day and a half in that terrible sweatbox of a file room, barely managing to get through any of the information. He'd sent Will away, couldn't bear the company at the moment, and stared miserably at the boxes he no longer had any interest in going through. The more time dragged on, the worse he knew Hanlon's chances were of showing up alive – Carlos' records indicated he wasn't a patient enough man to hold on to a human bargaining chip for long.

Then came the call on his cell phone in the middle of the night. Miller fumbled for the phone in his sleep, managed to more or less answer it with real words: "YezzhelloMillerhere?"

"Is this . . . Special Agent Andrew Miller? With the FBI?"

"Yeah?" He rubbed at the sand in his eyes.

"I am sorry about the time. I'm calling from St. Joseph's hospital in Atlanta. We've just had an emergency admittal of a patient who says he's an FBI agent, though he doesn't have any identifi- "

"Hanlon," Miller said, and shot up in bed. "Peter Hanlon? Oh, god, is it him?"

The voice responded with a little more confidence: "He's very difficult to understand, but he's said that name several times. He had your card in his pocket. He's asking for his doctor, and –"

Miller was already in motion, fumbling for paper, a pen. He barked into the phone: "He's one of ours. What hospital? What's the number there? How hurt is he?"

He rushed the voice on the phone through the essential details, hung up, and immediately roused Kranz, who started the conversation sounding sleepy and then became frantic, hung up after getting the hospital's phone number. Miller had already been driving to St. Joseph's, dressed in the sweats he'd struggled into, when Kranz called him back.

"Get to the hospital. Now. Fucking cocksuckers."

"Already on my way," Miller had said, easing his way through a red light as he fumbled with the phone. It was two in the morning and the roads were relatively empty. "What do you need me to do there?"

"I'm in motion. I've got what I can of the surgical team heading towards you. The hospital there is refusing to treat Hanlon the way I'm telling them to because I am telling them to do absolutely crazy shit that makes no sense and I can't get them any evidence that I'm an actual doctor because I don't have the time and headquarters is shut down. Get there and flash your ID and tell them to do everything I just fucking told them to do and nothing else."

"Got it." Thank god he'd grabbed his wallet and ID.

"Get in with Hanlon, try to call me back to tell me how bad it is." Kranz had rattled off a list of questions to ask that Miller half-caught, but before he could ask for a repetition, the doctor continued, "You might not be able to reach me. Try. I'm hanging up."

Now Miller skidded through the emergency room doors and bypassed triage to show his ID and demand to know where Agent Peter Hanlon was and who his doctor was, now. The resulting confrontations with medical personnel were as shocking to him as they appeared to be to the faces he shouted at; Miller had genuinely never known he could be such a bully, but apparently that was inside him, somewhere, and it was coming out tonight.

"I hope you were taking notes when Kranz was talking," he ended up snapping at Hanlon's doctor, "Because otherwise you probably just killed this poor bastard!" He kept on the guy's heels all the way to Hanlon's room.

Hanlon was already set up with an IV and oxygen line when they entered; he was also shaking visibly, his eyes closed, grasping weakly at his huge pregnancy. Miller's heart sank at his appearance: not only was he bruised and bandaged, but his face looked grey, older, as though he'd gained a decade in the last two days. The doctor began to inject a syringe into the IV line, and Miller clasped gently at the fingers on Hanlon's right hand.

"Peter," he said, and squeezed. "Peter, it's me. It's Andy Miller."

Hanlon's eyes struggled open. "They killed him. I shot Bill Carlos."

"Okay, slow down. Forget Carlos. When did it start? When did labor start?" The doctor was staring at Miller now, looking dismayed. Hanlon began jerking helplessly in the bed, choking, and Miller stared for a few seconds until he guessed that he was seeing a contraction.

"Hey," he said, and grabbed both of Hanlon's hands, now, hard. "Okay. Okay. Breathe, Peter." Miller looked up at the hapless doctor. "What did you give him?"

"Nifedipine, as the man on the phone –"

"I have no idea what that means. What does it do?"

"It . . . well, it's for high blood pressure. But . . . it can slow labor." The doctor was looking increasingly lost. "But if he's . . . I don't know if it could . . ."

"Okay." Miller squeezed Hanlon's hot hands. "Keep breathing. Just look at me, Peter." The pale blue eyes were trying, he could tell, and he held his gaze on them as he shot another question at the doctor: "What are the bandages for?"

"He's got some relatively minor trauma," the doctor said promptly; this, he could manage. "Cuts and abrasions. The more serious problem is that he's extremely dehydrated. Dangerously so. That's . . . we were speculating that the cramping and the spasms were related to that issue. We're trying to restore his fluid levels. We think the dehydration is why he's so confused. Is . . . is him talking about a baby not part of that confusion? Because he's definitely . . . male. We were hoping that you could give us some insight on why he . . . looks . . . like that."

Hanlon's movements had begun to slow, and Miller tried to smile at him encouragingly. "Just do whatever Kranz said. I'm not a doctor. Hey, Peter, Doc Kranz wanted me to ask you some stuff. Work with me, here. When did this start? Can you remember at all?"

Hanlon was swallowing. "You have to put gas in it before you return it," he replied.

Miller shook his head, puzzled. "Labor, Peter. When did the contractions start?"

"I woke up at three. Three in the morning. They left my watch on. Before that." Based on when Miller had received the call, he was guessing that meant about twenty-four hours ago, not this morning. "Is this happening?"

"Yeah, buddy. You're in the hospital, getting help. You're safe. Do you know how long it's been like this? This bad?" Hanlon shook his head helplessly.

"Quickly. It got very hard very quickly. It hurts, Andy," he said. "I'm so sorry. I'm going to hell. I let him die. I'm in hell. I'm a coffin." Miller shook his head at Hanlon, trying to wordlessly calm him down as he dialed Kranz. No answer. The Doc must be in transit. "He's going to kill me because I let him die."

"Peter, listen to me," but Hanlon couldn't, because he was being seized by another terrible, jarring contraction, and all Miller could do was wait and offer empty comfort, order him to keep breathing. In his grasp, Hanlon's hands were dry, papery, feverish. Miller looked up at the doctor: "Why the hell haven't you given him anything for the pain?"

"Because it's irresponsible to medicate without having any kind of patient history or understanding what's wrong. He hasn't been able to provide us with much. And now I'm afraid to touch him until I can talk to his doctor again." Miller wanted to be angry, but the answer was too reasonable for him to manage rage.

Hanlon finished, gasping, and Miller tried again: "Peter, listen. Everyone's trying to help you, okay? It's going to be all right. It's going to be fine. Help me tell Kranz what happened."

"Dawn, when the door opened. It got very bad at dawn. Like this. Two minutes."

"Yeah? You've been having contractions every two minutes since dawn? Is that right?"

Hanlon nodded. "I don't remember a lot of time. It hurt the whole time. I don't remember all of it. Most of it."

Miller was trying to remember what time the sun had been rising here. Six thirty? Seven? So, if it was the day before . . . "Okay. Maybe twenty hours? Shit. Good job remembering."

"It seems," the bewildered doctor contributed, "As though they're lasting maybe a minute."

"Is that good?"

"I . . . it would be normal for part of labor, but not for a full day. I have no idea what's going on!"

"I'm thirsty," Hanlon said. "Please, I'm thirsty."

"I'll get something," the doctor said with palpable relief at having received an attainable task, and made a break for it.

"Don't go anywhere," Hanlon pleaded, fumbling at Miller's hand with his own dry one.

"I won't. It's going to get better," Miller said, earnestly, and stopped as Hanlon quivered against the bed again, his belly hardening in another spasm. Miller waited, feeling helpless, useless, as the other agent whimpered through his nose. There was so much of that shaking bulge compared to Hanlon's thin body that it looked like it was pushing him away from itself. Miller had a desperate urge to aid him, stop the pain, but there was so very little he could do that the frustration was killing him. When it seemed to be over, Miller continued: "They gave you something to slow it down. I think maybe they can't stop it. But it's not going to be so hard. Not going to hurt so much. Hang in there a little bit, all right?"

Hanlon was shaking his head. "Killed him. Killed both of them."

"Hey, shhhhhhhhh. No. C'mon. I know it hurts. Try to relax as much as you can." Miller felt like an idiot; the idea of "relaxing" was clearly an unreasonable suggestion, given the state the man in front of him was in. "Don't be scared."

"He hit me," Hanlon said, and appeared to launch forth on a heavily garbled version of the events that had brought him into his current narrow bed of pain.

"Don't think about it," Miller said, and cupped one side of Hanlon's jaw in his palm to get his attention. "Don't wear yourself out. Listen, do you know what I found in those files today? Bradley Conniff was in that place in '56, swear to god. Bit an orderly." Miller began to flail his way through talking about anything he could think of to provide a distraction from what was going on, tried to soothe him during the recurring contractions, helped him drink from the plastic mug a nurse had appeared with, without the nervous doctor. Hanlon moaned, gasped, sometimes screamed a little, but he was listening to all of the aimless jabbering coming out of Miller's mouth as though it were amazing. The nurse came back to administer another syringe into the IV, and, eventually, the medication began to take effect. As the space between the contractions lengthened, Hanlon began being able to fall asleep between them, became slightly more coherent when he was awake.

"Kranz is on his way," Miller promised again after another one had passed and Hanlon's eyelids were drooping again. He'd kept trying to raise the Doc, been unable to. "It's going to be over soon."

"Can I roll over?" Hanlon asked. "I can't. Can you help me?"

"Yeah, okay," Miller decided that he was sure as hell not going to ask anyone here if it was allowed; Hanlon deserved any comfort he could get at this point. Miller managed to shift the IV and oxygen lines to provide enough slack, and gently wrestled Hanlon onto his left side; the laboring man was nearly dead weight in his hands, fumbling feebly at the sheets as he tried to help turn his bulk. It took a while to manage it without putting too much pressure on the painfully torn abdominal muscles that the womb had been hammering against, and as they finished the process, another contraction came. Hanlon fumbled for his belly, and Miller laid his own hand over his, amazed, distressed at that rigid quaking he could feel.

"Is that any better?" Miller asked after it had swept through like a hurricane.

"Yes. No. Nothing will ever be better." Hanlon was trying to curl into a ball around the dead, dense pain in his belly. "Can you . . . can you rub my back?"

"Shit, yes." Miller felt incoherent relief at having been asked to do things that he could manage. "Peter, I would give you a handjob if it would help." But Hanlon was already asleep again and, after a moment's reflection, Miller was intensely glad that he wouldn't remember that. He pressed hard on the quivering muscles in the man's shaking back whenever one of the slowing contractions hit, working his thumbs along that jutting spine; began holding the other man's hand while slept, so that when he woke up, Hanlon would already know he wasn't alone.

Eventually, Miller started falling asleep whenever Hanlon did, giving in to his own weariness and slumping in his chair, leaving their hands twined together. He woke over and over at the feeling of trembling or the sound of gasping, mumbled comforting words that he wasn't sure were making any more sense than those of the man in the bed, rubbed again at the torturous rack that was Hanlon's back. Medical personnel drifted in and out, did things he didn't understand. More machines appeared. Someone tried to make him leave at some point – a doctor? A nurse? Miller wasn't really sure – and he flashed his ID and told them to get lost, because this was a matter of national security.

Miller lost track of time, too; he'd forgotten his watch in the hotel room, anyway. Someone squeezed his shoulder again, and he was just about ready to punch whoever it was. "Listen," he slurred, working himself awake, "I have to –"

"Agent Miller. Let go of him." It was Kranz. Doc Kranz; no mistaking the impossibly blonde hair, the rangy Teutonic frame. There were other people in the room, too. Miller blinked at him stupidly. "Now, Miller." Miller hastily worked his fingers free from Hanlon's.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Thank Christ. Twenty hours. Every two minutes for twenty hours. I don't know what time it is. It was twenty hours at three in the morning." They were moving Hanlon onto a gurney; he hadn't awakened.

Kranz was shaking his head. "We're taking care of it right now. I've got enough info from staff here. I will talk to you when I can. Leave your phone on. Find someplace to lie down." And then they were gone, and Miller was still blinking, now at the space where the medical team had been. He stared for another few seconds, then crawled into Hanlon's empty bed to see how long he could get away with sleeping in it. He slept for hours and woke up with tears on his face that he couldn't remember having cried.

"Hey." On his way back to his own desk in the office they shared, Conrad kicked one of the rear legs of the chair Miller was leaning back in precariously, and he nearly tumbled to the floor. "Hanlon's back today. I just passed him in the hall."

Miller stopped scrambling for balance and snapped to attention. "Already? How does he look?"

"Like he's always looked," Conrad shrugged. "The world's most anal-retentive ghost."

Miller was already scrambling eagerly out of his now-steady chair. "I'd better go see if he's had a chance to look at the stuff I did for him in Atlanta, see if he has any questions."

It was an excuse, of course; after holding the suffering man's hand through those endless, painful hours of terrifying labor he had an indefinable need to see for himself that Hanlon was all right. In the aftermath of the disaster that the asylum trip had become, he'd only been able to visit the hospital once before he'd had to head back to DC, and Hanlon had been asleep for its duration, looking white and shrunken in the bed. Miller had begun to feel like he could hardly remember what Hanlon looked like when he was awake.

After that, Miller had tried to call a few times, left a few messages. None of the calls were answered or the messages returned, and he stopped after a while, not wanting to appear creepy. He had an inkling of why there was no response: If Hanlon was anything like his old self, he would not want to talk about what had happened, be reminded of it. The man was intensely private, most of the time, and Miller suspected that he himself might now have become an embarrassment because he was a reminder of that terrible nightmare. But he needed to see him, anyway, needed to try.

Thankfully, Hanlon was in his office, behind his usually-impeccable desk, now crammed with accumulated work – overstuffed boxes and stacks of files. His officemate Jim Swenson was an overly aggressive jokester, and Miller was relieved to see that he was out for the moment – it would make it a little easier to talk. As he entered, Hanlon turned towards him, and Miller was surprised to see that he was still cloaked in his oversized blazer, though he was swimming in it now; the poor fit made him look weirdly adolescent. But there was much more of his usual self about him: serious, wary.

Miller smiled cautiously: "Hey! Boy, you look good."

That earned him an immediate scowl. "I look like an extra from a zombie movie."

Miller laughed. "You kind of do." Hanlon still appeared more tired than he should, certainly, and his time spent recovering in bed hadn't improved his tan. "Even that looks about a thousand times better than the last time I saw you."

Hanlon nodded softly. "I'd pretty much have to be dead to be worse. I feel better than I have in a while, though I guess it'll be a little bit until I'm back to a hundred percent."

"Yeah, I'm surprised they let you come back so early. I . . . guess the disciplinary hearing went pretty well?"

"I'm not allowed to have a gun right now, not until the shrink says I can. And even after that, I'm restricted to desk work only for a while. Not like I've ever done much else, anyway. Kranz fought for me pretty hard through the whole thing." Hanlon smiled a little, crookedly. "Said that, in his professional opinion, it was psychologically necessary that I be allowed back as soon as I thought I was up to it."

"Told you. He cares."

"I guess. In private, he made it pretty clear that it was his call, not mine. When I asked him to sign off on me coming back about a week ago, he told me he wanted to see me climb a flight of stairs first." He made a rueful face. "I made it halfway up and he put me back in bed for two days. Worked out, though. I sort of wanted to wait until I could get through the day without a nap, anyway."

"I bet nobody would care if you crashed a little at your desk, anyway." Hanlon looked furious now. ". . . what? What did I say?"

Hanlon regarded him suspiciously. "You really don't know about that?"

"Know about what?"

There was a pause, then Hanlon admitted, "I did that once, slept in my chair, when I was, you know. I was so tired all the time when I got really big." A longer pause, during which Miller drew his eyebrows together in deep confusion. "Jim taped a 'Baby on Board' sign to my back."

Miller exploded into helpless laughter. "No," he said, shaking his head. "I don't know how I missed hearing that, but I did. What a douchebag. I can never decide if I think it's amazing or terrible that you guys share an office."

Hanlon ignored that: "They read your report during the hearing, too, by the way. Thanks for leaving out . . . the stuff you did. I wasn't really feeling like myself, you know."

After blinking in confusion for a few seconds, Miller realized that "stuff" was Hanlon's code word for the crying, the terror, the comfort. The hug. He squinted a little. "Didn't seem relevant to include it, really. Don't worry, if anyone here got the impression that you're a human being, they didn't hear it from me."

"Fuck you." Hanlon was grinning shyly at his keyboard, and Miller was pretty sure that, in this case, "fuck you" meant "thank you."

Miller hesitated for a minute. "Listen, if you're not busy this Sunday, you should come over to my place. There's this thing we do sometimes where my sister's husband and some of his friends come over and watch the game. My girlfriend always splits so she doesn't have to listen to us, and it'd be nice to have someone there who doesn't show up already drunk. What do you say?"

"I . . . what? I mean," Hanlon was clearly flustered. "I was going to come in and catch up on some more stuff. I hate it that my desk looks like this."

"Jeez, Peter. If you do that, I'll rat you out, tell Kranz you're working too hard already. Come on over, have a couple of beers. I bet it's been a long time since you had a beer." Miller scribbled his address on the back of one of his cards, pushed it towards him.

Hanlon looked at that card; it was almost just like the one that the EMTs had found in his pocket in that stinking hotel room. He thought about that for a while, as Miller's smile faded anxiously. "Yeah," he said, accepted it, and slid it into his pocket. Again. "Okay. I'll be there."

"Great." The smile was back. "I'll understand if you need to crash at home or something instead. Just – what is it?"

Hanlon had frozen in his chair, was looking past him at the doorway, eyes narrowed. "Hey, killer!" Miller heard. Swenson was back, striding to his desk.

Miller was startled. "I'm sorry?"

"He's talking to me," Hanlon muttered darkly, already plunging back into his computer screen.

Swenson grinned. "Don't pretend like you don't know. He's no longer the size of a bus, so Hanlon here has to kill people now to make himself feel like a big man." Miller stared at him, horrified.

"No," Hanlon said, almost absentmindedly, fingers rattling at his keyboard, "I already feel like a big man every time your mother chokes on my dick."

Miller fled, wondering which one would finally cave and ask for an office reassignment.

Sunday afternoon, after the first knock at his front door, Miller peered at the clock. It was theoretically far too early for anyone to be arriving, but when he opened the door, there was Hanlon, holding a six-pack, that familiar look of embarrassment on his face.

"Sorry," Hanlon said, and shoved the beer at him. "I thought it'd take longer to get here. I felt like an idiot just sitting in the car."

Miller smiled at yet another version of Peter Hanlon he'd never seen before: sloppily dressed in jeans and an untucked button-up, still looking uncharacteristically fat around the middle.  He had a sudden realization about why Hanlon was still wearing that giant blazer at work: there was a fair amount of flabby-looking baby baggage still haning around that thin frame. "No problem. Come on in. Living room's just through there." He grabbed a beer for each of them, put the rest in the fridge, and followed the other man, noticing quizzically that Hanlon had some trouble lowering himself onto the sofa. "You all right, there?"

Hanlon nodded. "I'm off the pain meds, but it's still pretty sore all through, you know," he moved his hand lightly from his ribcage to his crotch, "Here. They cut me up good."

"Well, chicks dig scars, you know."

"I've heard that," Hanlon replied solemnly. "That what a woman's really looking for is a guy with stretch marks and cesarean scars."

Miller snickered, collected himself. Maybe Hanlon didn't want to talk, but he did. "So Kranz told me when the baby got to go home, said I should talk to you about it. He was pretty reserved about the whole thing. But he told me . . . look, Peter, I'm really sorry. I guess now that I think about it, I should have realized in the hospital that you were trying to say you thought the baby was dead. I wasn't listening to you as much as I should have, because I was just, you know. Worried about you looking as bad as you did. I thought you were talking about the guys who'd taken you, about having killed one or both of them. Sorry, if I'd understood, I would've asked someone there if they could check to see. I'm sorry you had to keep thinking that."

Hanlon shrugged noncommittally, took a swig of beer. "I don't know that it would have made much difference if you had. Half the time, I thought I was hallucinating you being there, that's how screwed up I was. You don't have a thing to be sorry for. Everyone made it out alive except Carlos, that's all it really comes down to, and it could have been much worse. I don't even mind Connor getting away, not really."

"Are you going to keep in touch with the parents? I know Dietrich's got some sort of open arrangement deal with his."

"No." Hanlon hesitated. "That's part of why they picked us, you know. Looked at our psych profiles, thought we were unlikely to fight for custody. Whatever they're doing with those kids, they need us out of the picture. Talked to his new folks, though, they seem like good people. I guess the Bureau would make sure they were. They wheeled me down so I could see him when I still couldn't get around on my own yet. He . . ."

There was a long, long pause while Miller stared at Hanlon and Hanlon stared at his beer.

"I still can't wrap my head around the idea that he's okay," Hanlon finally finished. "I never really did believe in miracles. Still don't, I think, but he looked . . . god, better than I did at the time. I fainted in the chair because they kept me up too long and the painkillers wore off, as well. We all got yelled at for that. He was all pink and alive and sort of . . . miraculous. But, you know, when I was looking at his amazing face, all I could think of was being frightened out of my mind and Bill Carlos dying on top of me. Maybe it'll be different when the kid's like sixteen, if he wants to know who I am, but for right now, it'll be better if we're not in each other's lives, I think. For both of us, probably."

Miller made a sympathetic face; it was impossible to work this job without hearing about terrible shit that happened to people you knew, but Hanlon's story was pretty bad. "Hey, if that's what you gotta do, that's what you gotta do."

"They let me name him. Really nice of them, after I nearly got us both killed."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. They offered, and I started thinking 'Carlos,' maybe."

Miller stared, wondering, not for the first time, just how emotionally retarded Hanlon was. ". . . Jesus, Peter. That's dark. Too dark."

Hanlon shrugged. "I felt like it had a kind of symmetry to it. One Carlos dies and another one gets born. But, yeah, I guess I finally thought that if that was how I'd ended up with my name, I'd never want to know that."

"Fuckin' A. Good call." Miller shook his head in disbelief.

"So his name is Andrew Miller." Miller stared, and Hanlon continued, mumbling a little. "Andrew Miller Conklin. I guess the 'Conklin' kind of ruins the effect."

The television ran on for a while, uninterrupted, while Miller struggled to understand. Finally, he managed to say, solemnly, "Peter Hanlon, you are a deceptively complicated man. I don't know what to say except that I'm honored."

Hanlon, directing a small smile at his knees, held up his beer bottle, and the two men clinked them together. "I don't think either of us would be around without you, Andy. Thank you. I can never thank you enough."

Then the doorbell rang, and it was Andy's brother-in-law Ray and his two extremely drunk friends, and that was all right, because it helped to lighten the mood. The game was more or less decided by halftime, but that was all right, because it gave them a break to crack dirty jokes and complain about the coach. Hanlon fell asleep on the sofa after his third beer, and that was all right, too. Nobody minded.

Andrew Miller, grabbing a sidelong glance at Hanlon's peaceful face, was pretty sure that this was what it looked like when things worked out.

-----------------------------------------

A/N: The end.  This entire thing was meant to be a more polished, shorter, less obscure version of an mpreg fanfic I never intended to publish - the thing I started putting up anyway, as "Heavy."  That's why some big chunks of them are nearly identical.  I don't really have an FBI fetish.  I tried to change some of this in its final incarnation so it didn't repeat the other one quite so much.

-- Edited by Please Stand By on Wednesday 23rd of February 2011 12:46:51 AM

-- Edited by Please Stand By on Saturday 26th of February 2011 04:33:38 AM

-- Edited by Please Stand By on Wednesday 27th of April 2011 02:54:04 AM

is there more?  I like this a lot.