NEVER JUMP SHARKS

By Loke

Adam Pierson swore in several languages as he read the words which glowed out from the computer monitor. He should have realized Kronos' allies would have kept some of the virus for themselves.

Though his medical degree was decades out of date, he'd had more than enough opportunity to catch up on the latest advances while he'd recovered from being held captive, experimented on, and tortured by an American pharmiceutical company. They'd had the assistance of an Immortal who had called himself Mr. Smith, but was recorded in the Watchers' Archives under a number of names starting with Quintus Metellus Pollio and including Tomas de Torquemada. Smith had been trying to break Pierson and get him to reveal the names and locations of other Immortals. It had become his obsession, and Pierson had killed him for it.

He'd spent months in a private facility for government agents who'd "gone off the deep end" but knew too much to be treated in regular institutions. He'd spent even more time at a secret facility in the French countryside, founded by an Immortal and specializing in the needs of those people.

It was while he was there that he heard the first rumors of the continued existence of Kronos' virus, from one of the other patients. He'd been skeptical at first. He'd spent weeks at Bordeaux making sure everything in that lab had been burned, melted down, and/or vitrified, sealed away in an underground bunker which had immediately been covered in several dozen meters of concrete.

In vain, as he'd come to learn.

He'd started by having a few people check out his fellow patient's claims and learned to his horror they were true -- the people who'd developed the engineered virus for his former "brother" had kept samples for themselves. They'd gone on to offer it to an unscruplous billionaire with ties to terrorist groups, who'd greedily agreed to their terms.

He'd hunted down the people who'd worked on the virus and pointed out their mistakes -- just before making sure they'd never make them again. He used the information he "persuaded" out of them to locate his next target.

And in the course of events he'd learned some old friends were indirectly involved.

He'd run across a young man with the improbable sorbiquet of Jimmy Bond, who was looking for a woman who had used the alias Yves Adele Harlow. It turned out the lady was the daughter of the billionaire and had been trying to foil his plans.

It also turned out Jimmy was working for The Lone Gunmen, a trio of men to whom he owed his life and sanity. He only hoped he could keep them far away from the horror he was chasing.

He hoped New Jersey was far enough away, because the trail went there.

And from what he'd just read, there was very little time.


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He'd picked up the trail at a small New Jersey college, and almost immediately ran into Jimmy, who told him he'd seen Yves, whom he now knew as Lois. Pierson gave the young man a false lead, hoping he could keep the Gunmen away.

He should have known better.

He'd hoped he could find the other carrier and dispose of the body before the container dissolved and the virus was released.

But the Gunmen were too good, and they'd -- unfortunately -- found him first.

Leading them to give their lives for the good of others.

If only it were that simple.


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By the time the containment vehicles from USAMRIID pulled up, Pierson was ready with fake ID and equally fraudulent documents for what he needed to do. He mingled with the personnel in the changing area and after donning protective gear for versimilitude, was allowed into the "hot zone", passing through the portable airlock which covered the no longer locked exit which had thwarted the carrier at the end and allowed him to be trapped
inside the airtight fire control area.

The bodies were in two locations. One -- the carrier -- was against a wall midway between the outer wall and the temporary partition sealing the hallway from the rest of the building. The other three bodies -- the Gunmen -- were huddled together near where the inner firewall had been. Pierson heard someone say they'd talked to their friends while they'd still been able.

Pierson helped bag the bodies and take them to the special vehicle for transport to the Fort Detrick, Maryland facility. He put on his "just a guy" persona and persuaded the vehicle's driver to let him ride along.

The driver never realized what was up when he pulled into a rest stop halfway to his goal and entered the restroom with Pierson right behind him. After they'd both taken a leak, his passenger started to shout at him and shove him around until they were interrupted by the arrival of a third man, who was tall, handsome, athletic, and well-dressed, with his hair pulled back in a tail. Pierson told the driver he'd have to go on alone, and the driver got into his vehicle and drove away, never knowing three of the bodies, while contaminated with the virus, were not the ones from the site he'd left earlier.

"You've got bloody heavy friends, Adam," the man whose entrance had broken up the shoving match said to Pierson. He spoke with a British accent garnished with a Scottish lilt.

"I'm told you at least *saw* Frohike while I was at that government nuthouse," replied Pierson.

"One of those was Frohike?" Duncan MacLeod, for that was the man's name, asked. "I suppose the other two were Byers and what's-his-name."

"Langly. His name was -- is -- Langly," Pierson said in an annoyed tone.

The two men were walking toward a large RV as they spoke. As they reached the RV, the door opened and a platium blonde head popped out. The head belonged to a friend of MacLeod and Pierson's named Amanda, who had documents with a variety of surnames. She'd found changing surnames quite useful in the past, being as she was a
somewhat-reformed thief.

"Are we ready to go, darlings?"

"No reason to stay here," Pierson said as they got into the RV.

They had to move somewhat carefully once they were inside, as most of the floor was occupied by body bags. Pierson was introduced to their driver, a friend of Amanda's named Nick Wolfe, and they left the rest area.

Once they were underway Pierson immediately bent down and started removing the body bags from the three men. "I take it there were no problems, or at least no major ones."

MacLeod was also separating body and bag. "None. We brought in the bodies on a charter as antiques. Agent Scully and AD Skinner will identify them, and the remains will be promptly cremated, except for a few tissue samples. Skinner's even going to call in a few favors and give them a service at Arlington."

"He needn't overdo it. Maybe I should give him a call."

"Nick and I managed to change the fingerprint cards in all the Police departments in which they'd been booked," Amanda added.

"She changed the cards," Wolfe said, "but I had all the fun of taking the prints."

By then the bodies had been unpacked, and all that was left to do was wait.

The wait wasn't long.

Frohike was first, gasping in the first breath of his Immortal life, followed shortly by Langly and then Byers.

They weren't exactly happy campers.

"Ah, crap!" were Frohike's first words. "Do you people realize you're all going to *die*, along with everybody in a five-mile radius?" Then he got a good look at Pierson. "Well, maybe not you."

"Do you idiots have any idea what you've *done*?" Langly demanded.

"We're alive," Byers said. "Why aren't we dead?"

"You're not dead," Pierson told them, "because like me and everyone else here, you're Immortal."

"We're Immortal?" Byers asked.

"You mean like you?" Langly echoed.

"Waitaminute," said Frohike, "just how did you know we were Immortal, or going to be?"

Pierson took a deep breath and said, "All right, I know you have a lot of questions, and I have some things I need to tell you about being Immortal. Please try not to interrupt too often."

He went on to explain about Immortality, the Game, and some basic rules for survival.

Of course, the guys had questions -- and comments.

"Swords? We have to learn to fight with swords?" Byers asked.

"Or remain on Holy Ground forever," said Pierson.

Frohike nudged Langly. "As often as you get laid, you might as well stay in a monastery."

"Look who's talking! At least I died young enough to learn," the younger man fired back. "Y'know, this might not be that bad a thing. Lord Manhammer can go from virtuality to actuality."

"This is no game!" MacLeod admonished. "If you lose your head, there's no 'Reset' button you can push!" He shook his head, then turned to Pierson. "Adam, I'm getting less certain of this as we go along."

"What choice do we have? It's either train them, get them to Holy Ground, or leave them to fend for themselves."

"They'd not survive their first encounter with a hunter, unless they had an incredible amount of luck," the Highlander said, "and we both know Holy Ground is no guarantee of safety."

"Then training it is," Pierson said.

Byers decided to change the subject. "You never did explain how you knew we'd be Immortal."

"Do you hear -- or maybe feel -- a sort of buzzing in your heads?" Pierson asked.

The three men exchanged glances. "Now that you mention it, yeah," said Frohike.

"You'll always feel it if another Immortal is near," MacLeod said.

"And you'll feel a minor amount of it should you run into someone who has the potential to be Immortal," Pierson added. "We refer to them as 'Pre-Immortals'. Most of us don't usually tell a Pre-Immortal what he or she is before their First Death. It's sort of an unwritten rule."

"You mean there are written ones?" Langly asked.

"Ringo," Byers warned, then turned back to the Immortal as a thought struck him. "That would mean 'Mr. Smith' -- or whatever you want to call him -- knew what I was when he interviewed me." He paled, realizing he'd been in more danger than he'd known at the time.

"Probably," Pierson admitted, "but he knew you didn't know anything, being only Pre-Immortal, and by that time he was so obsessed with me he didn't care about the company's desires. He may have decided to keep an eye on you and tell his bosses later, if he needed leverage. Would it help you to know if I had known I would have vetoed the plan? Of course I'd have had to explain why, and we would have had this conversation then instead of now."

"OK then," said Frohike, "we need training, and I assume one or more of you intend to provide it. So where do we go now?"

"How do you feel about living in the Pacific Northwest?" asked MacLeod.


The End?
Loke