"The path of least resistance is the path of the loser."

H. G. Wells

3 years earlier…

The snow crunched underfoot as Jake hiked his way up the steep hill, flanked all around by the straight, towering trunks of trees that reached far above him. Occasionally he would lose his footing on some hidden patch of ice and swear as his leg flew out, pulling at one muscle or another. His breath billowed out in front of him and hung in the still air as he fought his way over fallen branches and gnarled roots.

Curiously, though, he was significantly under-dressed for the environment. A light sweater was the only concession he had made to the below-freezing temperatures. Had there been any bystanders, they would have wondered at his disregard for the unusually extreme cold in this part of Maryland, USA.

Too much fabric just gets heavy and in the way, Jake thought to himself as he climbed.

It still felt strange to have absolutely no reaction to extremes of cold, but every day spent with his new capillary-swimming friends brought some new experience, some new benefit. In this case, it was their ability to stimulate his metabolism to such a degree that his core temperature was maintained even in the most taxing of environments. To see just how much cold he could now tolerate, they'd even put him in an 'arctic survival camp' that simulated the conditions of a Siberian winter. He'd managed 14 days without difficulty, his only worry being that the exercise must mean he was being sent to somewhere in deepest Russia. Finding out his target was in America was a massive relief.

He reached the summit of the hill and rested against a trunk, staring out ahead. Sprawled out below him was the town of Bethesda, and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre, the shining white of it making it difficult to separate from the snow. It didn't matter, he knew what he was looking for.

Some way away from the main complex of the medical centre, obscured from sight from almost anywhere save the place Jake now stood, was a clearing in the trees and a small, bland brick building that looked run-down and forgotten. The shapes of fallen tree trunks and rusting machinery were visible under the snow, and the fencing that must have once stood tall around it was sagging with age. It looked, to the innocent observer, like an abandoned building. To Jake, however, it looked very different.

He'd spent some time in the area before making his hike up this hill, fulfilling his role as a tourist come to see the great United States and the Capitol. He'd seen the White House, been down the Potomac, feigned interest in all the historical titbits offered by tour guides and locals he'd done his best to strike up conversation with, slowly gleaning details that would corroborate or disprove the information he'd already received.

Everything he heard agreed with the information the Ministry had received from its 'other' sources. Since 2011, with the merger of the National Naval Medical Center into the centre he currently saw before him, this building had been considered abandoned and derelict, left to the elements and mother nature. Even before that, people knew, it had only been a storage area for old financial records and stock counts.

Jake, of course, knew nothing could be further from the truth. He lay down in the snow and began to focus on his respiration, slowing his breathing into calm, slow inhalations and exhalations.

He still wasn't sure how he made it happen, or if he really played any conscious part in it at all, but the nanotech within his blood registered the new circumstances and began the steps that would render him almost totally invisible to the IR cameras he knew were posted around the woods ahead. His breaths no longer misted in the cold air, and the light snow that began to fall a few minutes later did not melt where it landed on his cheeks. He lay there, growing cooler by the minute, unmoving, as the sun dropped below the horizon.

It was more than a few hours later that Jake moved again. The snow that lay over him like a blanket suddenly lifted up and slid to the sides, startling a nearby skunk that sprung up on all fours and bounded away. It stopped suddenly, turning and thumping the ground with its front feet whilst Jake slowly stood, white flakes pouring off him. Both were framed in the moonlight as Jake backed hesitantly away from the animal - this was one potentiality he had definitely not prepared for, and he was just as definite that he was not going to fail because he got sprayed by some stinking rodent. He wished he had a gun, but it had been surprisingly difficult to find one. Not his image of the US at all.

Eventually the skunk turned and scurried off into the darkness, allowing Jake the chance to take the breath he had not realised he had been holding. Of course, he could go without breath for well over minute without any ill-effects whatsoever, but it wasn't something he'd get used to. Marv had tried to explain about how the nanites could hyperoxygenate his blood at any time, about how his stamina had increased tenfold, but Jake still felt the exhaustion after a run, still felt the tension in his lungs when he didn't breathe. He didn't think such feelings would ever go away.

Jake walked slowly through the snow, maintaining as low a profile as he could as he crept towards the old building several hundred metres away. He knew the IR cameras above would not trigger any alarms without detecting a large source of heat such as a human body, but he still didn't like the thought of standing out.

He made it to the edge of the clearing without incident. Clambering over the sagging metal fence with minimal noise, he stood up straight and dusted himself off. Now it was just the matter of the guardhouse, in which he knew would be two NCOs, corporals whose wives he had just happened to meet during his tours of the area.

It had really taken some effort for those meetings to 'just happen,' too.

Sliding along the wall until he was beside the steel door that led in, he reached for the round handle and stopped, slowly raising his hand to his eyes for a closer look. It always amazed him how white his skin got when he was like this - it was whiter than bone. He hoped this would help him in what he was about to do.

Reaching back down, he tried to turn the doorknob but it resisted, locked.

That would have been too easy, anyway, he thought.

Taking a deep breath, he fell to his knees in front of the door and began to tap gently at it, sometimes harder and sometimes softer, taking time now and again to scratch instead. It took some minutes for the guards inside to notice the sounds, and further time for them to come to the conclusion that it was more than just some woodland critter trying its luck. Eventually, Jake heard the sound of footsteps coming closer to the door, which swung inwards.

The corporal who looked out was shocked to see the form lying in the snow, pale and weak. It was almost a corpse, eyes deep in their sockets and lips a dark, frigid blue. He took a step back in surprise, calling out to his fellow soldier for help. Jake hung limply between them as they carried him in and lay him on some blankets on the floor of the guard room.

The guard room was little more than a box, a square functional area with a bank of screens on one wall that showed grey images of the forest outside, the occasional blur of orange as a small animal shot past the only colour in the place. Jake heard the guards panicked voices beside him.

"We should call HQ," said one, the worry clear in his voice.

"Are you an idiot? They're going to want to know how he got past us. The alarms didn't go off, but we should have still seen him on night cam moving around out there. We need a story. This is your damn fault for wanting to play poker." The second voice was barely calmer.

Jake swore to himself. He'd got lucky - none of his information had said anything about the guards doing visual checks.

"Ok, we say we saw him out there and brought him in. Easy. Now we need to call HQ before the guy dies on us," came the first voice.

"Actually, that won't be necessary," said Jake, sitting up, colour now returned to his cheeks. He wasn't sure why he chose to put on an upper-class aristocratic British accent, but he did. The reaction of the two soldiers was exactly what he'd hoped.

Springing away from him, they both levelled pistols in shaking hands directly at his face.

"Now, now, gentleman," Jake said, hamming for all he was worth and loving it, "there's no need for that. Put the guns down and we can talk like civilised folk."

"Who the fuck are you?" asked the owner of the second voice.

"I'm the foreigner you allowed into this storage facility. Hmm, strange - what is your one responsibility here?" He looked from one stunned face to the other, "Oh yes, that's right. Your one responsibility is to prevent foreigners, like me, from entering this place. Oh dear..." He made a puzzled expression.

The two corporals looked at each other.

"Who the hell is this Limey?" asked one.

"Search me. Keep an eye on him and I'll radio base."

"I wouldn't do that," said Jake quickly, slipping back into his normal, earthier dialect. "Not unless you want to be answering a lot of questions before being reassigned to, I don't know, the Gulf?"

Jake looked at them, but after a few moments hesitation the one guard resumed his walk towards the radio.

"Icanmakeyourich!" shouted Jake, words tumbling out one after the other.

The soldier paused and turned around.

"Rich?" he asked, eyeing Jake suspiciously.

"How rich?" asked the other.

"Enough that you can get your wife that Mediterranean cruise she's always wanted," said Jake, looking at the first guard and hoping he'd picked the right wife.

He hadn't.

The puzzled expression on the first guard's face was matched only by the look of dawning realisation, followed by rage, on the second's.

"He's threatening our families!" he growled.

"Nonononono," stammered Jake.

Shit, this went wrong quickly.

"I would never do such a thing! Look, I'm a goddam Brit! We're practically the same side! Just let me offer you some bloody money so I can take some bloody pictures, will you?"

The two soldiers seemed to calm down, and Jake soldiered on trying to placate them.

"Look, I didn't come here to cause any trouble, alright. I'm with you on this. They've stuck you out here in a dead-end posting looking after some mouldy old documents, right?"

There were some noncommittal nods of agreement.

"It's not what you signed up for, I can see that from here. How are you two ever going to get further up the ranks doing this, am I right? Let me help you, ok? I've got some cash here..." and he drew thick wads of bills from within the sides of his pants, "...and I will get more to your families as soon as I'm done here, ok?"

He passed the wad tentatively over to the closest guard.

"These are all hundred dollar bills!" He exclaimed as the other leaned over.

"There's at least a hundred thousand in there," said the second, less breathlessly. Jake knew he was the one to be wary of.

"Alright," said the more dangerous guard, "Say we take the money. What exactly are you after?"

"There's a box of files somewhere downstairs. I need to take a few pictures of certain ones."

"There's a lot of boxes down there, you know. Not all of them are supposed to see the light of day. What exactly are you after?"

"I'm not sure exactly. I know they start from 1953, and should tail off around '73. I was kind of hoping you would help me out..."

The two soldiers looked at each other.

"'53 to '73? That's a lot of files you're going to have to look through." The guard looked at his compatriot. "Ok, Dusty, what do you think?"

It took only a couple of hours. Once Jake had got a handle on how the files were organised, it hadn't taken long to find the documents he wanted. They'd all been lumped away in one corner of the basement downstairs, gathering dust. These were not documents of the top secret, state-threatening variety. They were merely documents that would preferably not again see the light of day, but were kept because, well, that's what bureaucracies do. They keep the paperwork.

He left soon after, promising the guards that he wouldn't set off the IR alarms but refusing to tell them how. The two soldiers sat in the guardroom after he left, staring at their newly-acquired wealth. These were good men, good soldiers, but it had always been a fairly tough life living on an NCOs salary and now dreams of greater things filled their heads. They hardly thought about the documents the strange Brit had wanted. They certainly weren't highly classified. It was all old news, old information that no-one took seriously anymore.

They'd picked up the boxes labelled 'MK-ULTRA' and placed them back on their shelf, to continue their slow burial by dust.

Jake was on the next flight out, heading to Montreal where further files were supposedly stored. He never did send the money on.