I followed the border patrol agent through the door and down the hall. I could see the most glorious thing at the end of the hallway. Okay, not the most glorious; it wasn’t my wife and daughter standing there ready to greet me. But sunlight was one of the top three, maybe five things I had missed. I had been trapped in the darkness and artificial green for a long time.

My wife would make fun of me at this point. I was always the one who wanted to stay indoors, or put on too much sunscreen, while she just went tromping out on hikes with no concerns about skin cancer. She would claim she enjoyed life more than me. I maintained that I would enjoy life longer. I frowned at the thought. Recent events would certainly suggest otherwise.

When we finally made it through the doors, I closed my eyes and lifted my head to the sunlight. I could smell the clean, clear air of daytime now that I was no longer trapped indoors. I kept pace with the agent easily after that, despite the burden over my shoulder.

Oh, that was right. My friend was hurt. I shuddered as the sense of euphoria washed off me. Suddenly, I did not feel as strong. I stumbled but caught myself before I fell or dropped my friend. The agent noticed my slip-up and gave me a questioning look.

“I’m good,” I said. “Keep going.” I let determination wash away all the happy thoughts I’d felt before. Now was not the time for celebration. Now was the time for action. I had a friend hurt, and I needed to report what I’d learned to my commanding officer, or whoever was in charge.

“This way,” the agent said, gesturing to a structure the size of my woodshed back home. It was even smaller than the cell I’d just left. My attention, however, was on the watch commander. His back was to the structure, and he was watching me carefully. When I was still ten feet back, he raised a fist in a stop motion, which I obeyed.

“I’m afraid I do not know your name.”

“Lieutenant Ward, sir.”

“I apologize for the inconvenience, lieutenant, but I hope you will understand.” The man stepped to the side, and my eyes fell on what was inside the structure. No, not a what — a who. There was a… person inside a cage. My eyes met a feral gaze that stared hatred back at me.

“What did he do?” My voice came out hoarse, and I didn’t dare speak above a whisper.

“Killed one of my men with his bare hands and tried to come after me before I had help.” The commander also spoke in a quiet voice, but I assumed he was holding back rage. Unlike me. I was not angry at the situation. I was not confused or upset. I met the eyes of Captain Ares, and I saw his pale skin. And all I could feel was need. I needed whatever that stone was in his chest. I needed to get it out and absorb the energy. I needed to have that feeling of calm strength.

I took a step toward the cage and felt the guns coming up to aim at me.

“We cannot allow you to get closer. Until we can determine what this is, you will be put in quarantine as well. I’m sorry, but we do not have the facilities to manage something like this properly. You will have a similar cell.”

“This also happened to three of my other companions. They went mad and tried to attack.” I tore my gaze away from Captain Ares and met the commander’s eyes. “I understand your concern, but how long do you intend to keep me locked up?”

“Until we can be sure that whatever this is, it has not also affected you.”

----

They erected two cages on either side of the one Eyes was in. The whole time, the changed man would not stop looking at me. His eyes never wavered to anyone else, unless they were next to his cage.

“Well, this isn’t creepy at all,” I mumbled to myself. The man I called Eyes said nothing but smiled his wild smile. I turned my back on the grim features.

Since there was nothing to do but wait, I sat down. There were no chairs in my enclosure, which was a sturdy three-by-three space of welded steel bars. When I sat, I couldn’t stretch my legs out all the way, which I found highly irritating.

I waited a few more hours until the screaming started. I was not surprised, but I had hoped that whatever was happening would be limited to my small group.

I looked down at my hands and traced back everything that happened. We had avoided major roadways and contact with others. We did the same on the way into Matamoros. A group of covert operatives was accustomed to outside contact only when necessary. There was only one person we each had physical contact with. Except that didn’t quite match up. Chewy and Yankee had been the ones carrying the tranquilized body of the target and Yankee had been the first to change in my cell. But Chewy had shown no signs of changing. Then X-Ray had changed, then Crash at some point too. Eyes transformed during his meeting with the watch commander. That left me, Andy, and Chewy unaffected. Well, Andy and Chewy at least. I grimaced at the memories of myself tearing open the bodies for the gemstones inside, and, for the first time, I wondered what kind of monster I was becoming as well.

Louder than the screams, the consistent pops of gunfire cut the air. I caught the familiar sounds of the M4 rifles, then the quieter 9mm rounds from handguns — Glock, maybe?

“You going to let me out of here?” I asked the agent standing near my cage.

“Not likely,” he said. “I got orders.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see how the orders stand up when you see these things for yourself.” I turned back to the cage next to mine. Eyes continued to stare at me, not bothering to turn his head at the sound of gunfire.

“Run!” My head snapped around to see who’d spoken. A woman in a border patrol uniform ran toward us. I saw the two parallel bars on the shoulder of her uniform, and I wondered what level that signified in USBP. From around the corner behind her loped Watch Commander Flores, his once tanned skin turned white in defiance of his Hispanic heritage. His head was on a swivel, taking in everything. When his eyes locked onto me, I saw the same gleam enter his eye as was present in the cage next to me.

The border patrol agent did not run, however. He raised his rifle and put two rounds into the watch commander, who went down with a yell. He pulled the keys from his belt and tossed them to the female officer.

“Get him out. We need all the help we can get.”

“He could turn on us.”

“Maybe, but don’t you think that would have happened already?”

She fumbled with the key but inserted it into the padlock holding the chain in place on my slapdash jail.

“Give me your sidearm,” I said to the border patrol agent, and he did after only a moment’s hesitation. I checked the weapon, ensuring a live round was in the chamber before I looked at the supervisor. “Gonzales, let my other companion out of the cage. He hasn’t changed yet.”

“He’ll be dead weight,” she protested. “He hasn’t become infected. If we are going to figure this out, we need samples of people with immunity.”

“We have you,” she said.

I shook my head. “If he wakes up, Lieutenant Anderson will be an invaluable resource to help us survive. Just trust me on this and open up the cage.” She went over to the other cage, while I walked up to Eyes. The day had not been kind to him. His skin seemed even paler, his eyes sunken back in his face, and where muscle stretched before, the skin hung loose and flabby. “Sorry, Captain.” I raised the sidearm and fired. His head rocked back, pulling the rest of the body to the ground with him. I fired a second round into the center of his chest, then a third round at the lock on the cage.

“What the hell was that?” one of the junior border patrol agents asked.

“Just watch our back,” I said. I stepped into the cage and pushed my fingers into the hole in the man’s chest. I felt around for a few moments before I felt something solid, and I felt the familiar rush of power up my arm. This was a cool stream as well, similar to what I felt from Crash. I heard the border patrol supervisor retching near the other cage.

I exited and hustled over to the body of the watch commander, putting another round into the middle of his chest, then feeling around with dogged determination. This time, the feeling was an intense heat flowing up my arm and into my chest, where it fought with the cold energy already there.

“What the hell, man!?” the same border patrol agent said when I made my way back over to them, wiping my bloody hand on my pants.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll carry Anderson.” I held the sidearm out to the woman, who was rinsing her mouth out with water and spitting it onto the ground. “You good?”

“Yeah,” she grabbed the proffered weapon. “I wouldn’t mind knowing what is going on.”

“That makes two of us,” I said. I went into the cage and lifted Andy, hoisting him over my shoulder just like before. “Let’s go get some weapons. And a first aid kit.”

“That will be in the supply lockup in the station.”

“I feel like I’m running in circles,” I said. “Anyone have a knife I can borrow? Anything I could use as a weapon, really.”

“You really can’t wait?” the first border patrol agent asked.

“I suppose I can wait a little longer. Would be bad if we were attacked, and I couldn’t defend myself.”

“I think we can handle a handful of rabid people running straight for us.”

We trotted the rest of the way in silence, a sense of foreboding settled into my gut, which put quite the damper on my euphoria. The feeling only intensified as we drew closer to the station entrance.

“Eyes sharp,” I said. “Something is wrong.”

“You a psychic now too?” the supervisor said. She hadn’t spoken a word to me after I ordered her about. I would have to apologize for that, but it felt like the wrong time.

“Yeah, and my sixth sense is telling me there’s something wrong with the station entrance.”

The two junior agents kept their guns trained on the front entrance, but the supervisor showed no caution as she walked directly to the front door and pulled it open. The scorpion stinger flashed out and hit her directly in the chest. The stinger retracted just as fast, leaving the body of the agent standing in the door for a heartbeat before it fell limply to the ground.

For a moment, none of us moved, and it was hesitation that got a second agent killed. Not that I blamed us. The scorpion in front of us was the size of a large dog, like one of those German Shepherd dogs trained to take down a criminal. The stinger extended high over its back. What was more frightening was the hole in the woman’s body armor. The stinger had punched straight through the Kevlar vest meant to stop bullets.

The predator scuttled forward on its eight legs. This time, when it struck, it was the massive pincers that sliced into the unarmored legs of the leading agent. He screamed, reflexively pulling the trigger on his M4 and sending a three-round burst into the armored back of the creature. The bullets ricocheted off the hard shell, and the agent died screaming and cursing.

While the scorpion had passed by the body of the supervisor, it spent more time on the corpse of the agent, the claws digging into his chest. I had a momentary view of a ruby red gemstone before the scorpion snapped at it with a claw, and the rock disappeared.

“What the—“ the rest of what the second agent said was lost as he emptied the magazine from the M4 into the body of the scorpion. One advantage of having a fully automatic weapon at close range is that you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll hit your opponent a lot. The rifle was aimed directly at the face of the creature, which did not have the same protective shell as its back. The bullets ripped straight through the head and into the body, and I could hear the bullets ricochet around inside the carapace.

The scorpion did not move after that, so I moved to the body of the first agent and retrieved her sidearm. I set Andy down on the ground. I was still going to save him if I could, but after what I’d just seen, there was a low probability I would go anywhere without a gun.

“What do we do now?” The agent was standing over the body of the scorpion, staring down at it.

I walked over to the body of the dead agent with the M4 and pulled the weapon from his still-tight grip. I pulled him out from under the scorpion and took the spare magazine and combat knife from his belt, tucking them into mine.

Finally, I examined the body of the scorpion. The first thing I had to do was find out if it had a gemstone in its body too. It had gone after the first border patrol agent, and successfully retrieved a gemstone itself. I had been shocked to see the one inside the agent, who hadn’t gone crazy. I thought back to Chewy and considered checking his body too. I mean, it would only be a minor diversion…. Shaking away the thought, I brought the butt of the rifle down on the belly of the scorpion until the carapace cracked open. I used the knife to pry the opening apart and pushed my fingers into the gap.

I only felt pulverized meat and organs on the inside, so I dug deeper, forcing my entire hand into the crack, up to my elbow as I dug through the creature’s body. Finally, I felt it. I knew it was what I wanted because I felt the energy course into my body. And this one was different. It was not confined to a single sensation. Fire coursed through my veins again, but it was balanced by the liquid metal sensation I received from Yankee and X-Ray.

I grinned as the elation flooded my body.

“Grab Lieutenant Anderson. I lead this time.” So saying, I brought the stock of the assault rifle up to my shoulder, my head lowering to sight down the barrel.

“What if there are more of those things?” The agent asked.

“Then I aim for the head and kill them. What could go wrong?”