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staring up at her. Her first thought was to scare them back to their cars so that she could be alone in this terrible place, but after a moment of contemplation, she turned away and walked further up the bridge. The last time she had been here, there were police crawling down that very same path. The memory teased at her, but she wasn’t ready to relive that evening; still, the face of an impossibly young state trooper, and the images of flashlight beams whipping through the air, seeped through her mental walls. It had been more than a month after her husband and son’s funeral, and she had resolved to join them, but a despondent farmer with his own impossibly heavy burden had gotten to the bridge before her.
    The pain of their loss could only echo in her empty heart; a distant reminder of a life she had once lived. A life that now she both cherished and reviled, a life stolen by nothing more significant than a flu virus. A simple set of proteins and a strand of DNA had hollowed her out and remade her into something she had never imagined, or wanted. Something that for the last six years she had kept hidden from the world, and herself.
    She watched the water cascade off the large rocks below for another five minutes before the first kayaker entered the water with a triumphant yell. She took that as her cue to leave. This place had no memory of her, her father, her family; it was nothing more than a metal bridge and a small, inconsequential river.

The blisters were back; they always came back when he was frustrated. It had been over six weeks since he had arrived in this frozen corner of hell, and he had almost nothing to show for it. Time wasn’t running out anymore, it had already run out. Klaus was more than two weeks overdue, but he couldn’t make himself leave.
    It doesn’t really matter , he thought. What are they going to do, start without me? The thought made him laugh.
    They could try to kill me . That thought didn’t make him laugh. They had made it quite clear that while they did need him, they didn’t necessarily need him alive. But trying to kill him would be a major inconvenience, and he was balancing that against extra time. Soon, however, the balance would tip.
    The professional inside told him to leave—to pack up, and slip away before anyone even knew that he had been there. He had already completed his primary objective, and his remaining responsibility could be completed anywhere. He knew that the risk of discovery, capture, and failure grew with each passing moment, but still he stayed. He had to find her. He had to know who Amanda Flynn was, and what she had become.
    From the moment he learned of her existence, the significance of Amanda grew in his mind; he tried to convince the planners that she posed an unacceptable risk to the mission, but no one listened. He was told that she would die along with everyone else, and that he should let them worry about the overall strategy. For the first time in his professional life, he seriously considered using his considerable talents against those who had engaged him. The only thing that stopped him was the undeniable and inconvenient truth that, for a while, he needed their logistical support. They were fools, but well funded and organized fools. He turned his back to the shaded window and tried to suppress his growing anger. When all of this was over, he would pay them a visit and extract from their flesh the three weeks he had wasted trying to find Amanda.
    They weren’t really fools; he admitted after his frustration began to ebb. They were simply focused on the singular opportunity that had fallen into their collective laps, and they would not tolerate any distractions. He couldn’t fault them for not seeing Amanda’s unique potential, or threat; it required his particular, unique perspective to fully appreciate it. Maybe, for a while, he would spare them. Still, they could have helped him; they had the resources, and with just a little assistance