Chapter 1

Zeus

...

I blinked my eyes open. I felt pretty good, actually. Then I tried to move and stretch my legs, and my left leg exploded in pain. I shut my eyes again.

'What the hell? I got hit in the head from the IED, not in the leg.' That's what I tried to say. It actually came out, "W ... hea ... eg."

Martinez said, "You're all right, L.T. You got hurt in the swamp, and drugged afterwards. You're safe now. You can wake up."

I'm awake, Martinez. I just don't want to open my eyes, because my leg hurts too much.

It didn't make much sense to me, either, so I opened my eyes.

Arti had my arm over her shoulder and she was holding me up in a sitting position, in the bed.

She said, "Good. You're awake. There's some ice chips in the cup on the table next to the bed. Can you reach them?"

Then she disentangled herself from me and sat back a little on the side of the bed. I sat back against the pillows. I brought the cup to my lips and noticed that I had a needle in the vein of the back of my hand. It was hooked to a plastic tube that ran up to an IV bag on a stand near the bed.

I switched the cup to my left hand, so the IV wouldn't hurt my hand so much. I gestured toward the IV dripping into me.

"IV?"

As a question it was, perhaps, unclear. But I couldn't do much more than that.

"The IV is antibiotics, saline and glucose. Ramon set it up," Arti explained.

"Ramon?" I asked.

"He is Middie's partner. You're in Scottsdale, now. It's been three days. You were drugged."

"Drugged? Who?"

I closed my eyes. I was so tired.

"5225. But I don't know who he was ... is," she said. "I think he got away from the police somehow."

"You saved my life in the swamp?"

She didn't answer.

"And you got me out of that loopy dream?"

She didn't answer that one either.

"Thanks."

I fell asleep. This time I wasn't so hot and cold. This time I remembered that I was in the camper. This time I remembered that she saved my life. Twice ... Maybe three times.

Artemis

Well, Zeus had come out of it. His fever had broken. There never was much doubt that he'd come around. The infection in his leg wasn't that bad, not life threatening.

Ramon was a big help. He was a nurse at Phoenix Veterans Memorial Hospital. He was also Midnight's partner. At first, he didn't understand why we just didn't take Zeus in to get medical treatment. There'd be full time care, and doctors, and he'd get the right drugs; as opposed to us guessing at what the right drugs were. He didn't understand.

I didn't want to take Zeus into a hospital and establish a trail from Florida to here, but I couldn't tell Ramon or Midnight that.

Midnight and Ramon were like a two pieces from a matched set of a salt shaker and a sugar bowl; okay, there were several pieces missing from the 'matched set.' Midnight was about five inches shorter, at 5'8", and heavier in the body – not exactly fat, just not thin. Ramon was a second generation Mexican-American, and was a tall, lean drink of tequila, with a fiery temper. Middie was about 30 and Ramon was a few years younger. What they 'matched' on was their attitude about each other.

Middie just took him into their bedroom and explained. I don't know what he said, but from then on, Ramon 'got it.'

I'm Artemis Desmonopolous, intrepid woman of mystery. Except there isn't much mystery about me. I'm twenty-six – okay, only twenty-three -- 5'7", dark of hair and darker of outlook – my parents were killed in a car crash when I was fourteen and I was trapped in the backseat for twenty minutes, hearing them die. The car crashed because my father was drunk. Oh, one other thing, I'm not very happy with the average male. Well, I would be if they ever started thinking with their big head instead of the other. As a general rule, men are hopeless, sex-crazed beings. If they aren't thinking about sex, they are thinking about sports or other forms of violence.

Except for Zeus. He's somebody I met about three weeks ago, and I've decided to keep him. I think he knows, but maybe not – he can be dense sometimes. He has been ignoring the whole man-woman thing. Maybe he's damaged somehow, physically, and can't, you know, perform. Men can get so hung up on that. He's got a plate in his head from an IED in Afghanistan. He's also got Master Chief Martinez living in his brain – somehow. Don't ask, 'cause nobody knows. Martinez gets visions of the future. 'Future facts' he calls them.

Ramon got us supplied with stuff pinched from the ER at PVMH. We had set up a twenty-four hour watch in Zeus' bedroom. I was 'on' from breakfast through the end of Ramon's shift, which was at about midnight. Then I'd go to bed and Ramon would be 'on' overnight.

There wasn't much to do actually, until Zeus started having dreams, and talking to imaginary people. I had explained to Ramon about his PTSD and his brain injury. That was another reason, he said, to take Zeus to the hospital ... but his heart wasn't really in it, I could tell.

Middie lived in a bedroom community of ranch houses, their yards all covered with pebbles and native cactus. We'd pulled our rig – the H2 pulling the camper – around to his backyard. It was fenced in with a privacy fence that was about six feet high. I'd never seen such an immaculately tidy home. Even the computer cave, where Middie had scattered his equipment, was neat. It made me nervous, it was so neat.

He was an internet friend who lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. I'd never met him – in RL (Real Life, as opposed to VL or Virtual Life) prior to this trip.

Middie started gawking at the H2 almost as soon it arrived. He soon had the rear cover completely removed and had 'Barney', my old desktop PC and Io's temporary home, disconnected and set up in his computer room, with a spare monitor and everything, for me. I introduced him to Io, talking from her home on the internet, through the dashboard display. They set about to preparing for the new computer equipment, to be delivered, now, within days.