"Oh lord! Martin, they're moving all those boxes into this room," Mira says, jumping away from the door. "We've got company coming in quick. We'd better find a place to hide or get that other door open!"

Jesus, Martin thinks, looking around frantically, we've either got to leave or hide! He eyes the other door, partially concealed behind the boxes, judging its accessibility. When are we going to catch a break with this job?

"The door," Martin decides instantly. "Here," he pulls Mira over to where the box rests on his pack frame, "Lash that down quickly - I'll get the door clear."

Without another word, he leaps to the blocked door and begins to carefully move the blocking boxes aside. Careful, he reminds himself, move too much and they'll see the disturbed dust in the air and know something's wrong as soon as they open the door. Craning his neck, he peers over the box he's preparing to move, C'mon, he thinks at the silent door, open towards the other side. If I have to move all of these boxes we're dead.

Mira rapidly starts pulling and tying the straps on the pack, adrenaline rushing through her at a breakneck speed.

The door opens to the inside, Martin notices with relief, as Mira picks up the sound of keys jingling outside the main door. With a pop, the door marked "Scientific Personnel Only" opens; a whoosh of stale air escapes, and, hopping over the remaining boxes, Mira and Martin – and the Nazi box – escape into the room.

Clicking the door shut again – their ears pop slightly as they do so -- just as the outside one opens, Mira sighs relief. "Damn Grabowski left the lights on again," a voice grumbles quietly outside. "Damn idiot. Damn PRIMUS frigging projects, take too much damn room, not even military anymore," he grouses under his breath, but within Mira’s range. "Bring ‘em here," he calls more loudly. "We’ll move ‘em as soon as Orange area is cleared to take them."

Mira exhales a ragged breath that sounds more like a typhoon in her ears. Quietly, oh so quietly, she makes sure that the lock to the door is shut. Resting her forehead lightly against the door she visualizes a silent thank you to whoever has been watching their butts on this mission. Now, if they just don't stack those boxes in front of this door. Her thoughts trail off as she turns around to get a better look at the room they have stumbled into.

The room they are standing in would be completely dark, except for an eerie green glow coming from the corner, from underneath a white bedsheet. The room is decorated in typical military metal furniture, and a 1954 calendar hangs over a metal desk.

It appears to be a lab, or at least an examining room. Test tubes, a centrifuge, and old steel syringes sit next to a steel sink. An examining table sits in the middle of the room, and several lab books are neatly stacked on a counter.

Martin carefully extracts the Maglite from his vest again, "I'm turning on a flashlight Stafford," he murmurs softly, "Watch your eyes." After a second for her to avert them, he clicks the light on and begins to play it around the room, trying to get a better look at things.

"Martin, please tell me that you notice that glow too," Mira says, wincing as she pulls herself away from the door. Damn ribs, she thinks. Cautiously she approaches the sheet that shrouds the "thing" in the corner. Reaching for a corner she pulls the sheet back to get a better look.

"Stafford!" Martin hisses from across the room where he's checking for another exit, "What the hell are you doing? "

Underneath the sheet is a jet-black capsule, about seven feet in length and standing up. Though a strange silvery script runs down its length, that isn’t what draws Mira’s attention. A window – of some clear plastic, or other synthetic material – reveals a very handsome (and very naked) dark-haired man inside. His breath comes very slowly, in time with blinking lights in a display at the machine’s base. The machine is certainly beyond current medical technology, she knows, and the script itself looks alien.

'Mira, didn't I..." Martin's voice trails off behind his partner as he moves closer and sees the contents of the cylinder. Stepping around to one side for a better look, he carefully eyes the figure and it's now revealed housing. "Well," he says finally, "at least he doesn't look like E.T...."

"Figures," Mira mutters. "All the good-looking ones are either married, gay or aliens from another world. Present company excluded of course," she adds quirking a smile in Martin's direction. "So what do you think? Personally, I'm favoring the Superman, Krypton exploding theory," Mira quietly says squatting down to look more closely at the inscription on the capsule. "Hmmm, I wonder what is Kryptonian for 'Press here to open capsule?' "

"Perhaps there's some paperwork around here," Mira whispers getting up. "Erff," she says stifling a painful groan. "I've got to stop doing this." Walking over to the research area she starts carefully looking through cupboards and drawers for any documentation.

All of the lab books on the counter are marked "Project: Extraction" and are very elaborate accounts of testing done to one Isaac Rosenberg. Flipping through the lab books, she finds that the last entry in the last book reads:

September 14, 1954

DNA from IR [the abbreviation used through the books to describe Isaac Rosenberg] transferred into alien virus and injected into subjects 1731, 1822, and 1136. 1822 and 1136 immediately rejected the sample and expired. 1731 did not suffer rejection, instead developing flu-like symptoms that passed after three hours. When treated with CBLN-46-a, subject’s strength and reflexes increased exponentially. Precisely 7 hrs 21 minutes following injection 1731 suffered delayed rejection sickness and died. Treatment with CBLN-46-b did not have any visible effect. Autopsy toxicology results expected tomorrow.

Adequate amount of IR’s DNA has been successfully replicated in vitro to continue with project goals. IR has been placed back into suspension in Fassai capsule until further notice.

Have received notification project will continue in new lab facility at Groom Lake.

Dr. Julius Merrill MD, Ph.D

 "Biology," groans Mira. "Why did it have to be biology?" Sighing she looks at the guy again. "OK, here's a wild stab in the dark, but it sounds like they were doing some genetic cooking in the lab. DNA taken from this guy, Isaac Rosenberg, and some alien virus. Mixed them and then injected them into test subjects. It mentions another compound CBLN-46-a. You don't suppose CBLN is an abbreviation for Cyberline do you?"

"But what makes this Isaac Rosenberg so special? I mean, why his DNA and not some other poor schmuck? And where in the hell did this alien contraption come from? Rosenberg, Rosenberg. The only Rosenberg I know is Howard Rosenberg. He's a film critic. Teaches a few classes at UNR. Also, there were those Rosenbergs who were executed for espionage – they sold secrets about nuclear weapons to the Russians during the 40s. Well, he certainly doesn't look like Howard Rosenberg." She continues, "I don't know about you, but I think the guy deserves a wake up call. Hell. It's been 40 years. Maybe there's some instructions about how they put him in that capsule around here," Mira says. She quickly tucks the notebook in her pack and begins looking for more information.

 "It sounds simple enough to me Stafford," Martin says, bending over to take a

closer look at the capsule, his eyes drawn to a deep groove on its right side. "They were using this guy's DNA for some project back in the 50's, right?" He slides his fingers along the groove as he speaks, checking for a catch or button. "And they were injecting some other compound into the subjects with it, presumeably to make the DNA bond to the subject's like a retro-virus, right?" Suddenly, the capsule hisses – and the window slides back.

The naked man opens brown eyes, appraises Martin, his Maglite and the examining room with one sweeping glance, and then promptly throws up at his feet.

"Then if you're right about your identification of the compound they were using," he finishes, pointing at the retching figure at his feet. "The man who fathered every Silver and Gold Avenger just threw up on my right boot."

" I guess this is your 15 minutes of fame," Mira jokes.

Martin sighs, "Well, it can't be much worse than R.G.'s dog-slobber. I'd say 'Dad' here hasn't had anything solid to eat in... oh, forty years or so..." He leans over to check the gagging figure, "Make that closer to fifty."

"Golly, did you get the license plate on that truck?" he says, after he recovers.

Man oh Man! This adventure has just got to into my memoirs. I may be dead when they finally get published, but this is too weird not to be remember someplace, Mira thinks.

Hoping that the noise of the moving boxes into the room next door has drowned out their conversation and the sudden wake-up call for Isaac Rosenberg, Mira moves quickly across the room.

"Sir, please be quiet," Mira whispers. "If you keep talking this loud we're all going to be in a lot of trouble." Glancing around quickly, "Um, here," she says, dragging the sheet around. "You uh, might need this because, uh, you know you’re, umm, naked."

The man looks at Mira with a slight grin. "What, a pretty nurse like you hasn’t seen a jarhead naked before? What a shame!"

Yep, he's a Marine, all right, Martin sighs to himself. In a tube for close to fifty years, and the first thing he does is hit on a woman.

"I am not a nurse!" Mira whispers furiously. "I'm a journalist. Well, Martin, I'm open to suggestions," Mira whispers. "Any ideas how we get out of here?"

"What is a lady reporter doing in the middle of a war zone?" he asks, puzzled. "You really shouldn’t be here, miss, it’s too dangerous."

"Well... I was really hoping for an invisibility belt," Martin shoots back to Mira, a deadpan expression on his face as he steps over to his pack and begins extracting his spare set of clothes, "or a transporter at the very least. Since we have to settle for 'Dad' here..." he indicates Isaac. "We could always see if he's got, like real powers or something - maybe he can zap us out of here."

"What are you talking about, corpsman?" Isaac asks, with a slight New York accent. "I need to take a whiz. You got any bedpans around here?" He looks around. "Man, it’s awfully dusty for a hospital ship."

Martin sighs, turning around to hand his spare clothing to Isaac, "First things first - get into these, and then we'll work on the rest of it." Shaking his head, he glances over at Mira, "Well, Stafford? You want the dirty job - or do you want to find 'Dad' a bedpan?"

"Hold on a sec," Mira says. "I think we need to talk to this guy first."

"That, Stafford, IS the dirty job - and you're welcome to it for the moment," Martin replies. "I'm going to check out the rest of the room here and see whether or not we've got another exit. Shouldn't take but a minute." He pauses, then continues, "Who knows? I might even find a bedpan for him. Of course, in this place, who could tell?"

A few minutes later, now fully clothed, Isaac asks, "What happened to the rest of my unit? Those damn gooks came from nowhere!" He reaches a well-muscled arm up to his neck, and frowns. "Why do you keep calling me dad, and where the hell are my dog tags?"

"Look, sir," Mira says. "You'd better sit down for a second. Now I don't want to give you a heart attack, but you are not on a ship. You are in a top secret facility run by a super secret organization who will kill us all if they figure out that one, we are in here and two, we woke you up out that nice little refrigerator capsule. Trust me when I tell you that these are not nice guys. Now, can you tell me what the last thing you remember?"

"I don't have to talk to the press, lady reporter or no," Isaac says, stretching his back. "And I have no idea about any secret organizations. You can go talk to Senator McCarthy and HUAC about that."

"Insufferable idiot, figures it would have to be a Marine," Mira says under her breath. Her temper slowly rises as she stares at the guy. "Look you idiot, try to get this through your big, thick skull," she says, whispering furiously. "This is not some battlefield in the middle of the Korean War! You sir have been on ice for the past 40 years courtesy of some very nasty individuals! I thought we might be able to help you, but I see I was mistaken. Far be it from some Marine to exercise a little common sense. Now I've been irradiated, broken a rib and just generally beat-up in this little adventure. At this point I could care less what you think or not. This is your chance to come with us and get out of here. Or if you'd like you can go sit back in your little Amana and wait another 40 years for a rescue."

Isaac chuckles softly to himself and shakes his head. "Anyone ever tell you how pretty you get when you’re mad, miss?" he asks. He starts walking towards the door. "I just want to see the officer of the day and clear all of this up."

"No!" Mira says, fear pushing her adrenaline level to do something very stupid, given a broken rib. She launches herself at the big Marine, attempting to tackle him. "You're going to get us killed!"

I know I’m going to regret this, Martin thinks, drawing the Browning. A soft metallic click sounds from the other side of the room where Martin has been examining the desk. "Both of you stop it - right now!" he says quietly, the Browning Hi-Power in his hand covering the area in front of the door professionally. " Mira - stop acting like you're a linebacker for the 49'ers and calm down. Isaac - I really wish you wouldn't do that. I've only just gotten Mira as a partner - It'd be a shame if I had to shoot her before I really got to know her."

"Damn, they stuck me in the loony ward," Mira hears Isaac mutter under his breath. "I knew I shouldn’t have declared my party membership when I was commissioned."

Faster than a speeding, er, bullet, Isaac covers the eight or so feet between himself and Martin before Mira can blink. The expression on his face is dark as he grabs the barrel of the gun – and squeezes, hard. The steel barrel cracks like glass under his grip and shards bite deep into Martin’s hand. "That is quite enough, mister," Isaac says, his voice a low growl. He releases the broken steel barrel, and backhands Martin.

The force of the blow sends Martin reeling backwards, into the desk. There is a crack as pain explodes from his nose, and his head smacks against the wall. Though still conscious, the room spins nauseatingly around him and Martin fights the urge to duplicate Isaac’s mother bird routine. Through the pain, a single thought makes its way free, I was right - I regret it.

Taking a deep breath, Martin leans into the wall for a moment until his head clears, and then blinks his eyes and reaches up to press fingers on either side of his nose for a second, as if straightening it. Well, he thinks to himself, I was right about one more thing - nobody human hits like that. Wincing, he looks over at Isaac, "I probably deserved that. Do you suppose we can try and start this whole thing over?"

Before the Marine can reply, Martin holds up his free hand top forestall a comment and turns towards Mira, his words oddly nasal from the pressure he's placing on his nose, "Stafford - no more okay? If you piss him off any more he's going to take my head off the next time, and I'm kind of attached to it. Let me handle this one solo."

There's somewhat of a disgruntled gasping noise coming from Mira, but she doesn't interrupt him

Moving over to where she is lying on the floor, Martin helps her up with his free hand and carefully sets her in the desk's chair. "Sit," he says firmly. "You aren't going to do me any good if that broken rib shifts and punctures a lung, damn it. And," he continues, stepping back, "be quiet - just breathe and rest - that's an order partner. I can still find some handcuffs if I have to."

"Forget the handcuffs," Mira says, wincing as she settles into the seat. "What I could really use is a shot of painkillers. Or a nice stiff drink."

Turning back to Isaac, Martin removes his fingers from their position at his nose, then wipes the blood off with a bandanna and stows it back in the vest before offering a gloved hand to the Marine. "I'm Martin DuQuense, and you, if we read the right material a moment ago, are Isaac Rosenberg, right?"

"Captain Isaac Rosenberg, First Pioneer Battalion," he answers sharply, shaking Martin’s hand. Martin notices for the first time how young he looks – maybe around 23 or 24. "What the hell is going on here? I haven’t seen a more screwed up situation since Chosin Reservoir."

Martin winces during the handshake, and holds up his left hand for a second, "Hold on." Peeling back the glove, he extracts a small bit of bloodied metal from his palm, looks at it, and drops it into a random vest pocket. "Sorry about that," he says apologetically, rolling the glove back down, "extractor housing I think."

"Anyway," he continues, looking back at Isaac, "No - we're not in a POW facility. And, despite indications to the contrary, we are not in an asylum either."

"It looks more like somebody’s cellar than hospital," Isaac comments. "But you must be crazy to threaten to shoot your own partner, and a girl at that. Which paper are you from, anyway?"

"Freelancer," Mira pipes in. "Plus I write books."

Martin shakes his head, "No, not crazy. I'd just rather shoot her myself than let the people out there get their hands on her - it would be kinder. Although," he adds mock-seriously, "sometimes I wonder for whom."

Reaching down to the desktop as he speaks, Martin picks up the journal, "And this isn't a hospital either - at least not exactly. You're closer with the basement idea. We're in a storage facility."

Rosenberg raises a dark eyebrow. "Since going through that door is going to ‘get us all killed,’" he says with a glance at Mira before turning back to Martin, "Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me exactly who you are and what we are all doing in this storage facility together?"

Flipping back to the appropriate pages in the journal that identify Isaac as the Marine speaks, Martin marks them with his thumb, and begins, "Like I said - I'm Martin DuQuense, and this, "he indicates Mira, "is my partner Mira Stafford. We're..." he shrugs, "Private investigators is the best term for it I guess."

Shifting position to prop one hip on the edge of the desk, he continues, "This storage facility is... well... it's a place that things that people would rather everyone forgot about get dumped. A place for all sorts of embarrassing failures to be hidden, and projects that're too valuable to be destroyed to be stored in case they're wanted or needed again."

"You mean like something from Amazing Stories," he says flatly. "OK, so what are you two investigating here?"

Clearing her throat, Mira says, "We we're trying to retrieve a package that was stolen from our client. But while we were here we also wanted to uncover any other evidence of nefarious dealings. There are a few secret projects we were trying to find evidence on, including something called Project Redwing and Project 2318."

"We stumbled on this room when we had to make a hasty exit from the room next door. The guys who run this play were preparing to move boxes in there. That's why I didn't want you to open the door. I figured those guys were still there and would shoot first and ask questions later." She shrugs her shoulders. "When we got in here, we saw that capsule and Martin was able to get it open and let you out."

Martin points to the pack leaning against the wall next to the door, "We were actually looking for that box there for our client - but I'm having... second thoughts, I guess you'd say. It appears that we were, at the very least, not given all the relevant information on the box and it's contents." He nods towards Mira, "But Stafford and both think there's a fair chance we were outright lied to about certain things - like whether or not the item was, in truth, actually the property of our client at all, or the potential uses it might be put to."

"What sort of thing are you taking about?" he asks, stepping over to the pack to which they’d strapped the box. His eyes narrow as he sees the Nazi emblem on it, and he turns back to the pair with a cold glint in his eyes. His voice is flat and low when he says, "I think you better start doing better explaining than that. Where does your client live, Argentina?"

"That's one of the problems," Martin admits honestly. "I don't know. Whoever she is, the client essentially claims that the contents of the box is her property - but they also claim that the object was found in the desert of North Africa by Rommel's Afrika Corps during World War II after it fell out of the sky like a meteorite. A somewhat contradictory story. Especially considering that the object in question is supposed to be some sort of 'extra-terrestrial artifact,'" he says, emphasizing the last part somewhat skeptically.

He steps over to the box and kicks it with his toe, "We were also told that the contents of the box were possibly dangerous. The majority of the crate's weight is composed of lead shielding on the inside of the box, as if the contents were some sort of radioactive substance. Lead shielding," he adds, "that was apparently added by the Germans – despite the generally accepted fact that their knowledge of nuclear science was significantly less advanced than ours. My brief examination of the contents," he glances at Mira, "convinced me that while they might not be radioactive - they certainly aren't anything I intend to turn over to someone I've never met without a damn sight more information than we've been given so far."

"Finally," he sighs, "the client failed to mention that this box has apparently already been retrieved no less than twice before now – and returned to storage both times. The problem was, we didn't discover any of that until after we were here. Taken all together," he shrugs and makes a face, "I'd say that our client was up to no good, and simply using us to do the dirty work of retrieving whatever that is for them - almost certainly for some purpose I would consider illegal."

"I don't know, Martin," Mira says, "I still trust Armitage. He's a bright guy and retired Navy. He checks out the clients and given his resources, I think he would have discovered if this client were up to something nefarious. And I know that Armitage would never be involved in something that was wrong. I trust him. Don't forget you're basing a lot of what you saying on the information from a 3 by 5 card located in the files here. There's no guarantee that it wasn't phrased to be favorable toward them. I wouldn't trust the source of this information implicitly; everyone has a bias."

Really? Martin thinks, Heaven forbid, I never would have thought that....

She continues, "For all we know, Rommel's forces may have taken this object away from a nomadic tribe in Africa. Our client could be someone from that tribe. Or maybe Rommel took it from a facility in North Africa. A lot treasures and artifacts made there way back to Germany when Rommel occupied Africa."

Mira shrugs her shoulders, "At this point, I think that staying here is becoming extremely unhealthy. We need to get out of this facility and get to a safe spot. Then we can talk to Armitage and find out what's going on."

Thinking to himself that he is in the company of two very odd ducks, Isaac walks slowly to the door and listens. "Okay," he whispers, "unless I am completely insane or I'm under the influence of Chinese brainwashing I'm going to take this one step at a time." Turning to Mira he says, "Maybe what you say is true or maybe not, but I believe my eyes. His lop-sided grin appears and he says, "I'm more inclined to believe the empirical evidence over any communist plot anyway. We engineers are just trained that way."

Isaac walks over to the door, silently cracks the door open and peeks out. "Looks clear to me," he says.

"Wait a moment Captain," Martin asks, stepping over to the remains of the Browning and gathering up all of the pieces of it he can locate. As he's stowing them away, he hands the journal to Mira, "Slip this back in you pack please - I know one of us will want to read it later for sure."

Mira tosses the notebook into her pack. "Can we wait long enough for me to get a pencil rubbing of that inscription," she points to the capsule. "It may be helpful for Mr. Rosenberg to have it later on."

"I think so - but hurry," Martin nods. "You might want to use the camera too," he adds, "I'm pretty sure the film got toasted earlier, but you never know."

"Captain," he says quietly, turning back to Isaac, "I need to ask a favor - would you mind carrying Mira? She broke at least one rib coming in, and once we start to move again she's going to be moving slower than I think advisable under the circumstances." He pauses, then continues, "Unless you have an abnormally, " he stresses the word meaningfully, "high tolerance for radiation exposure?"

The dark-haired man raises an eyebrow in what looks to Martin to be his habitual reaction to unusual questions. "Could be," he says cryptically.

"That's very nice of you, Martin, but I'm not dead yet," Mira says. "I can walk and run if necessary. Mr. Rosenberg might need to have his hands free if we're going to get out of here safely. I don't want to be an inconvenience."

Sighing, Martin shakes his head, "Stafford, I was willing to shoot you to keep you out of those men's hands a couple of minutes ago - I'll be damned if I'm going to let you get yourself killed trying to keep up." He pauses, then adds bitterly, "No one gets my partners killed but me."

"Martin, no one is going to die here. So stop worrying," she stares at him. "Believe me. Everything will be fine. A week from now you'll be laughing at how I got you into this adventure. A station wagon. I can't believe I had to drive a station wagon, " she shakes her head walking through to the other room. "Now a 'vette, that would have been cool or a '56 Mustang convertible, cherry red."

"Horses, we should have ridden horses," Mira says, turning toward Isaac. "You ever ridden a horse, Captain Rosenberg? I love riding. Our neighbors had a great ranch. I used to get to ride all the time."

"I’d ridden a few times at the Academy, nothing more than what was required," Isaac says. "I prefer cars to horses if you are going to get from point A to B, and like airplanes even better."