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“Damn!” Bellum cried, shaking his fingers. Jason hadn’t even thought about how hard he’d been holding Bellum’s hand, but Bellum flexed his fingers, apparently trying to get some feeling back into them.

“Did you catch that?” Stegmeyer said to her cameraman.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Amazing,” the Washington Post reporter said. “So, he’s an alien?”

“No,” Lachlan said swiftly, cutting her off. From the tone of his voice, it was clear the professor was defending Jason, and Jason appreciated that. With everything that had happened, Jason felt almost a sense of vertigo. He wasn’t physically dizzy, but mentally he was struggling to come to terms with the pace of events unfolding around him. To have Lachlan staunchly defending him was reassuring.

“He’s unique,” Lachlan added.

“Look at him,” Bellum protested, getting up and sitting in his seat. “There’s no way he’s human.”

“I’ve heard the rumors,” Stegmeyer said. “Either he’s an alien or he’s some alien hybrid experiment.”

Lachlan was visibly annoyed with both Stegmeyer and Bellum. Jason could see him going red in the face, but somehow he retained his composure and spoke with deliberation.

“You have no idea what we’re dealing with here. Wild and fanciful guesses will not help.”

“So what is he?” Stegmeyer asked. She was abrupt, and Jason got the feeling he was seeing the real April Stegmeyer, the cold, calculating reporter behind the warm smile.

“Human,” Lachlan said, with a note of triumph as though that one word required no more explanation.

“Nah,” Bellum replied. “Not with strength like that!”

“You don’t understand,” Lachlan continued. “You’ve heard the old mantra so many times you’ve come to believe it, that all men are created equal. They’re not. No two men are physically alike. This is something Charles Darwin understood, but lately we seem to have forgotten it.

“Not only is your fingerprint unique among over seven billion of us walking around on this planet, so too is your nervous system, the attenuation of your muscle shape, size and tendons, your skeletal structure, and your cardiovascular and lymphatic system. They’re similar and yet distinctly different.”

“But he’s too different,” Stegmeyer stated bluntly.

“Is he?” Lachlan asked. “Usain Bolt can run a hundred meters in less than ten seconds. Does that make him an alien? Or does it make him exceptional in both his physical capabilities and discipline?”

Jason was fascinated by the professor’s perspective, and somewhat relieved to know he was counted in the ranks of humanity.

“But … But there’s no discipline here,” Bellum countered, gesturing with his hands toward Jason.

“No, there’s not,” the professor replied. “But Jason is human. I assure you, the scientists at DARPA are wrong in their assessment of his physical origins.”

“How can you know that?” Stegmeyer demanded.

“Because science is founded on the principle that you don’t jump to conclusions. Honestly, what’s more likely? That Jason’s an alien? Or that Jason has exceptional physical characteristics for some entirely valid reason we’ve yet to discover?”

“And that’s enough for you?” Stegmeyer asked. Jason noticed she didn’t answer Lachlan’s question.

“It is,” Lachlan replied. Jason’s admiration for the professor grew in that instant. Lachlan wasn’t going to abandon him. Jason might only just now be grasping at the threads of all that was happening, but he was confident he was in the right place, with the right people, with Lachlan and Lily by his side.

Lee peered through the bars of his sunken cage.

After hearing that these narrow, low confines were used to house animals during winter, he couldn’t think of his confinement as a jail. They’d imprisoned him in a stock holding pen, a stall.

The moon fought to break through the low clouds. The bars covering the window of his cage were level with the ground, allowing him to see out across the courtyard. In the darkness, he could make out the main gate roughly two hundred yards away. A dim light hung from a high pole, illuminating the barrier by the guardhouse. There must have been fences stretching to either side, but in the dark of night he couldn’t see them.

Somewhere to his right, a yellow light bulb flickered slowly above a door, stuttering as it struggled to produce light from the irregular surges of electricity. Every now and then, the clouds would part and allow the full moon to shine through, highlighting the feeble effort of the artificial lights.

Lee cradled his wounded hand, trying not to feel sorry for himself. With spasms of pain shooting up his arm from time to time, he struggled not to let the weight of hopelessness bear down upon him.

“I’m going to make it,” he muttered to himself, reminding himself of the note, trying to convince himself this wasn’t the end.

Lee felt useless. It was an irrational feeling, he knew that, but knowing didn’t help. An impending sense of dread swept over him.

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself,” he whispered, trying to buoy his spirits. “Don’t go there, you dumb son of a bitch! You’re alive, that’s all that matters. Now, get yourself the hell out of here!”

Lee steeled himself, trying to remain grounded in the present.

A series of huts lined three sides of the yard outside his low cage, with the road to the main gate passing where the fourth side of the square should have been. What he’d thought of as a courtyard was little more than a muddy parade ground surrounded by a gravel road that ran past each of the old wooden buildings. A truck was parked to one side, but in the dark he couldn’t make out what kind of truck it was, only that it looked old, like something from the Korean War in the 1950s. Surely, they couldn’t have nursed their aging technology that long, he thought. Perhaps it was just that they had no need for new models and considered the old style trucks perfectly adequate.

There was a car on the far side of the truck, but all Lee could make out was the hood and the front wheel guard. Small flags were proudly displayed on either side of the curved hood. He hadn’t noticed the car before, but then he hadn’t noticed much of anything before now. Only now was his mind starting to think tactically, trying to glean any information that might help with his bid for freedom.

Who was helping him?

Had one of the Navy SEALs somehow escaped?

Or perhaps the SEALs had evaded capture in the first place?

Why would they come for him?

How did they know where he’d been taken?

Why would they risk exposing themselves by sneaking into a military base to free him?

He didn’t know the answers to these questions, but he was glad they had.

Lee could see the hut where he had been tortured directly opposite his sunken cage, on the far side of the yard. It didn’t look that different from any of the other old wooden huts, with their warped weatherboards and peeling paint. Lee could pick out that building only by remembering what direction he’d been dragged in as he staggered across the gravel road.

Even back then, through the haze of pain, he’d fought to retain at least a vague notion of distance and direction. His mind was all he had left. Physically, they had taken away his freedom. He had to fight to ensure they didn’t win the mental battle.

His hand still throbbed but the tablets had taken the edge off the pain.

Trying to think objectively about where he was distracted him from the physical torment of his injuries. Focusing his mind brought relief, restoring his confidence.

Lee watched the guards, observing their routines, noting how they switched routes over by a darkened building he assumed was used for administration. They would retrace each other’s steps to the barracks where he was located before marching past. The camp must have extended further to his right, as they marched out of sight for roughly ten minutes. He knew his helper had come from that direction with the painkillers, creeping up silently behind the guards as they marched on, and that seemed to validate that this wasn’t another ruse by the North Koreans. Whoever it was that brought the painkillers, they had to be watching the camp, observing the same routine, and that thought gave Lee hope. He reasoned that it couldn’t just be one person. It might have been a single person who came in and made the drop, but there had to be several people working together. Lee was buoyed by that thought.