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“Okay, I want you to stay awake, John. Stay awake, you hear me?”It was hard not to be frantic, more frantic than they were with other patients. The situation was bad, after all. John’s eyes were still open, but he looked terrified. Which was no wonder.“Come on, Carter, stay with me, man,” Benton was saying as they hurried toward the elevators. Jing-Mei wasn’t sure John even really noticed when Dr. Greene and Dr. Corday rushed in.And then suddenly Benton swore as John’s eyes rolled back into his head and he started to seize. This was not what any of them were expecting, with wounds like this. “What the hell is going on here?” Benton shouted, as he helped hold John on the gurney.She was about to tell him she had no idea, when John’s eyes opened wide, the seizures stopped, and he took a long, ragged breath. He was staring straight ahead and he looked even more terrified than before. “John?”“No,” John whispered. He didn’t seem to have heard her. He shook his head, and then squeezed his eyes shut. “No!”“Is he hallucinating?” Abby asked as she jogged alongside them.“Maybe,” she said. But they couldn’t worry about that now. They were almost at the elevator.“Okay,” Benton ordered. “Just three of us and Lydia in the elevator. We’ve got to keep moving!”It was only when they got into the elevator that Jing-Mei saw it. Abby saw it just a second later, and she heard her gasp and swear under her breath. “It can’t be.”“I think it is,” she said, aware that she sounded as amazed and surprised as she was. “I’ve only ever read about this, but it’s pretty unmistakeable.”“What?”Jing-Mei pointed to the lock of hair at John’s right temple, which was in the process of turning silver. Not white, not gray – but actual silver.Benton’s eyebrows rose. “Wait. That has to mean--”“His second Gift is awakening. A near-death experience is what triggers it, on those rare occasions when it happens – and this would qualify.” If John was lucky, the Gift would be something that would help him recover from the stab wounds. If he wasn’t…Just as they exited the elevator, his eyes shot open again. This time, it was clear that he saw them – or at least, that he saw something. His mouth gaped, as he panted and stared around at them all in obvious terror. And then, before Jing-Mei or any of them could try to offer some words of comfort, he started to scream.Jing-Mei hated any time she had to help restrain a patient. When she knew the patient personally, it was always much worse. Finally, as he thrashed, and his heartrate climbed and his O2 sats dropped, they managed to wrestle him into restraints and sedate him. But she was sure she wasn’t going to forget the absolute fear in John’s eyes for a long while. Even if he and Lucy made it through this.~~
John didn’t have very many clear memories of the next several hours. Looking back, he was sure that was a good thing. Every little flash of memory he did have was terrifying and bewildering: glimpses of distorted, unfamiliar figures bending over him, making sounds that he couldn’t understand as they forced him to lie back, to stay still. And of course there was the pain, underlying all of that. At least he vaguely remembered why he hurt so badly.When he finally woke up completely, his first sensation was one of relief. He knew he had been injured, but the pain was very dull and he was pretty comfortable, considering. And judging by the quiet, familiar rhythmic beeps of a monitor, he was doing all right for the moment. He opened his eyes.He was alone in a recovery room, wearing a gown and covered from the waist down in a light sheet. It felt like there was a pillow behind his head. He wasn’t fully reclined. There was an IV in the back of his left hand. He could see his chart at the foot of the bed, but when he made to sit up, he frowned. Both his wrists and his ankles were restrained. And-- and something about that was bringing back flashes of really awful memories.Just as he was starting to try not to panic, a crackling sound from the bedside table made him flinch. John turned, and saw to his confusion that there was-- was that a walkie-talkie there? It must have been, because a second later, he heard Weaver’s voice. “John, hi. Sorry to make you wake up by yourself.”He was about to reply, and then realized of course that would be pointless, since he couldn’t push the button to activate his side of the conversation. Instead, he looked around, until he saw a small gap in the blinds covering the other side of the glass on his room’s window. As he watched, the blinds moved slightly. So, still looking in that direction, he raised an eyebrow, and said slowly and clearly, “What’s going on, Dr. Weaver?”There was a rustling sound over the walkie-talkie, and then he heard her sigh. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re more than a little confused. We thought it would be better not to have anyone in the room when you woke up, just in case – but then we had to come up with some way of communicating with you, and we realize this is definitely not optimal.”He frowned. Better not to have anyone in the room with him? “Why?” he asked, and hoped she understood what he was asking about.Of course she did. “You probably don’t remember, but right after Dr. Chen and Dr. Benton got you stable enough to bring you up here, something happened to you, and you started-- well, you were terrified, and so you started getting very hostile to everyone who was trying to stabilize you and prep you for surgery. They had to restrain you. Any time you regained consciousness afterward, the same thing started to happen. And we think we know at least part of the reason why.”Swallowing, John looked down for a second and then back at the camera. “Don’t leave me in suspense here,” he said, trying for a smile and maybe succeeding.“You almost died, and that was enough to awaken your second Gift,” she said then, after a short pause. “Obviously we don’t know for sure what that Gift is, but it’s affected the way you see the world. That much is clear. Or--” There was some muffled conversation, and then she went on, “Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it’s affected the way you see other people.”John was thunderstruck. His second Gift? What the hell? He shook his head. “No, that-- that can’t be.” That kind of thing was so rare as to be almost nonexistent. But if it was true … what the hell kind of Gift made people react like that, to people they knew?“I know it sounds crazy,” said Weaver. She sounded exhausted. John wondered how long she’d been working. How long it had been since--“Lucy!” He tried to sit up again, only to be halted by the restraints. Wincing, he looked back at the camera. “What’s going on with Lucy? Is she all right?”There was a long pause. John’s heart sank. Then Benton’s voice came on the walkie-talkie. “I’m sorry, Carter. She didn’t make it. But, uh, they found the patient who did it. He’s being taken care of now.”Lucy. John shut his eyes, now remembering all too clearly the way she had looked the last time he saw her, with their friends and colleagues desperately trying to stop her from bleeding out. This-- this was his fault. If he had just listened to her, taken her seriously…“Anyway, I just came up here to check how you’re doing. We’ll give you some time to rest now,” said Weaver. “The nurse will knock on the door before coming in to check on you, and-- um, you can either keep your eyes closed for now, or we’ll just see what happens.”John snorted, even as he wished he had a hand free to wipe under his eyes. But he was tired, that was true. Tired enough that even though he hadn’t asked about his own prognosis, he wasn’t going to bother with that right now. He was alive. Lucy wasn’t. They would have told him if he was still in any serious danger. That was enough for now.~
He woke up some time later to the sound of a knock on the door. “Carter? It’s Haleh. Can I come in?”John yawned and tried to stretch, finding quickly that that had been a bad idea. His wound site was aching now, and that was only after the very limited movement that the restraints allowed. It was time for another dose of whatever painkiller they had him on – or at least he hoped so. “Uh, yeah, you can come in, Haleh,” he called. “I’ll keep my eyes closed.”“Thank you.” She sounded relieved enough that John wondered just how freaked out he had been before by whatever he had seen.The door opened, and John quickly shut his eyes, though he turned his face toward where he assumed the nurse was. “Hi,” he said. “What are you doing all the way up here? Not that I mind at all.”“Hi, Dr. Carter,” she said. It sounded like she was smiling. “They’re short-staffed today in surgery, so I said I’d help out. I’m just going to check your vitals, and then Dr. Benton will be in to talk to you, examine your wound site, and check your reflexes. Okay?”“Fine,” he said. “Thank you.” This was weird. It would have been weird and unpleasant enough to be a patient in his own hospital (not to mention knowing Lucy wasn’t), but adding this whole second Gift thing on top of that? He wasn’t sure how he was going to handle it.He lay still while Haleh went through the vitals check, only half able to pay attention to the stats she said out loud. It sounded like he was doing okay, considering the nature of the attack. But the pain was getting to be distracting.“And it looks like it’s time for another dose of morphine, too,” said Haleh just then. “I’ll be sure to tell Dr. Benton.”John didn’t try to pretend she was wrong. “Thanks, Haleh.”She patted his shoulder. “You’re welcome.”Thankfully it was just seconds after that when there was a knock on the door again. “Hey, Carter,” called Benton’s voice. “You ready for another visitor?”John cleared his throat. “Sure.” He blinked, and then remembered he wasn’t supposed to keep his eyes open.The door opened, and John heard Benton come in. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”“Was the last time you saw me on the operating table? Or when I was freaking out afterward?”The other doctor laughed a little. “Well, okay, either of those two times.”There was a brief pause, and then John made himself try to focus. “So, uh, how am I doing? I don’t really remember … if you told me or tried to tell me before.”He listened to the short summary Benton gave of how the stab wound had missed his spine and several vital organs including his pancreas, and how he and Anspaugh had saved Carter’s kidney, and how Carter was lucky, even in spite of the minor re-injury that had been caused when he had woken up briefly the first time.“I know,” John said. He had to have been lucky, if he’d survived while Lucy died. But he did need to say something to Benton. “Thank you.”“You’re welcome. Now, Haleh told me your pain is coming back. So I’m going to check your sutures first, and then do some quick reflex and mobility tests, and then get you some morphine.”John nodded. He knew these tests were important, and that Benton wouldn’t draw them out any longer than necessary. But of course the tests would also make his pain worse. “Go ahead.”“I’m going to have to take off the restraints for this. Which isn’t a problem now, right?”Sighing, John nodded again. “I can just keep my eyes shut for the time being.” Although the curiosity mixed with fear about what the hell it was that he had been seeing was going to start driving him crazy soon, he was sure.“Okay. That’s good. I’ll turn you on your side first.”John waited until the straps had been removed. Then he flexed his wrists and ankles, and stayed as relaxed as he could while he was rolled onto his side. The pain was just about manageable, even when Benton started poking around a little. “How’s it look?”“Pretty good,” was his friend’s reply. “If everything else checks out, you’ll definitely be safe to try some walking in not too long. Once we get the, uh, other issue figured out, that is.”“Right.”Everything seemed to be progressing normally. The mobility and reflex tests went better than he had been afraid they might, to be honest. Though they did leave him gritting his teeth against the pain. It wasn’t exactly any easier to do all of this with his eyes shut, either.“Okay, Carter. You did great.”“It, uh, it really hurts,” John admitted, taking a few uneven breaths.“Yeah, I know, man,” Benton said. “That’s the lumbar hematoma. I’ll get you your next dose of morphine. And then once you get some more rest, I want to see you up and walking in the next twelve hours or so.”“Uh huh.” He could hear Benton moving around right next to him. The pain was getting worse. Before he could stop himself, he opened his eyes just for a second. And that was when he saw it.Where Benton had to be standing, there was a tall, hulking creature, whose edges flickered and changed even as John stared at it. It was sort of like a lion. The eyes glowed golden, and they were staring straight back at him. The flickering, undefined-ness of it was somehow worse than any other aspect. He tried to take a breath, but it was not easy.“Carter?” said the strange lion thing. Its voice sounded mostly like Benton’s, but it was like there were dozens of-- of layers there. Most of them didn’t sound even remotely human. It held up its hands/paws. They were huge. It took a step back. “Carter, take it easy, okay? Whatever you’re seeing right now, I’m not going to hurt you.”John forced himself to look away from the paws, back at the thing’s face. “That’s--” He choked, and cleared his dry throat frantically. His back felt like it was on fire. His heart was pounding. The monitor was making corresponding frantic shrill wail. He was close to a panic attack, but not there yet. He didn’t want to get there. “That’s … really you, Benton?”“It’s me,” said the lion thing. “I promise. Uh, let me see here. A long time ago, when you first got here as a student, I taught you how to put in an IV and suture a wound. And I have a kid, a son. Reese.”He took a shaky breath in and let it out. “Right.” Those things were true. The creature could have been lying, but something about it – something about him? - made John start to believe he wasn’t. “Okay.” All the same, he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take right now. He shut his eyes.“Good,” said Benton. Because it was him, not some terrifying monster. “All right. I think you--”But before he could finish speaking, there was the sound of running footsteps, and several more people pushed into the room. John flinched and covered his face with an arm. It was too much.“What’s going on? Is he all right?” “Carter, are you okay?” “Peter, what the hell did you--” “Is he crashing?”“Hey!” Benton’s voice was loud, though not quite a shout. Thankfully it made everyone else quiet down, though. “It’s fine. Carter’s fine, just – startled. He, uh, saw me for a little while. But we’re fine. Right, Carter?”Fighting back a wildly inappropriate and unhelpful laugh (just because ‘fine’ seemed like an overstatement didn’t mean he wanted to risk being put in a psych hold), John nodded, still covering his eyes. He tried to breathe normally. “Right.”“Okay.” That was Romano. “Good. Since this isn’t actually an emergency, let’s get back to work, people.” There were the sounds of several people leaving the room. The door closed.“Dr. Romano, I’m going to leave his restraints off now.”“Fine. As long as we’re not going to have a repeat of this,” said Romano. He cleared his throat. “Dr. Carter, I realize this may not be very comforting at the moment, but I was just coming to tell you that Dr. Weaver and I have been in contact with the Bureau of Gift Management. Whatever else anyone can say about them, we can all assume they’re the best people to help you figure out your situation. When they show up, that is.”Romano was right: that was only kind of comforting. He’d been sort of trying to pretend the BGM wouldn’t have to get involved here, but of course they would. “Right. Um. Thank you.”“You’re welcome. Get some rest.”John took a breath. He waited until it sounded like Romano was leaving. Then he cracked one eye open in his direction.Romano didn’t look human, either. Instead, there was another strange, flickering creature (Benton was still in the room, too) near the door. It was facing away from him, and again it was hard to see a defined shape, but John thought it might be like some kind of gigantic bird. With folded wings and everything. He swallowed and shut his eye. No wonder he had reacted so badly before. What the hell was his new Gift – and was there any way to get rid of it?“I’ve got to get back to the OR, but you should be feeling some relief soon,” said Benton then. He paused. “You, uh, you don’t have to tell me, but … what do I look like to you right now?”John let out a breath, reaching blindly for the cup of water he had seen on his bedside table. A second later, it was put into his hand. He took a sip from the straw and then set the cup down mostly successfully. “It’s pretty hard to put into words,” he said. “But as I’m sure you gathered, it’s-- really unsettling. Even your voice sounds different.”“But only when you’re looking at me?”“That’s right.” He sounded perfectly normal right now. Which made no sense. Not that second Gifts were known to follow the normal laws of physics or anything.“Huh.” Benton sighed. “Well, I’ll admit I don’t envy you figuring that out. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think you will.”When the relief of the meds hit him through the IV, it was like cool water extinguishing a fire. He sighed. “Thanks,” he mumbled. Sleep was pulling at him already.~~No one thought much about the Bureau of Gift Management in daily life. First Gifts were generally so minor and common as to attract little or no attention. Almost everyone had one, after all – they were just skills that ended up being useful for particular career paths. So beyond sending in the required official notice as soon as their first Gifts were identified with a routine blood test, most people went through life without interacting with the BGM at all. Sure, everyone grew up knowing that if you happened to awaken a second Gift that was considered rare or powerful, the BGM had the right to take you into custody – for your safety and possibly for the benefit of society at large. But second Gifts were extremely rare to begin with. A second Gift that was powerful enough to cause danger for the Gifted person or others was so rare that it was basically just legend. No one ever interacted with any of these Gifted people, either … although their rank-and-file agents showed up often enough on the street to be instantly recognizable in their dark suits and gloves, going about their mysterious business.Dr. Jing-Mei Chen had gone through her life with this normal attitude toward and experience level with the BGM. It had been average, until the day a patient stabbed two doctors at her hospital – killing one and bringing the other close enough to death to awaken his second Gift. It was a rare enough thing that she’d never seen it happen before. Neither had any of the other doctors who were working to keep Dr. John Carter alive. But even as she and Dr. Benton, Kovac, Abby, and others frantically tried to save John (and another team worked on Lucy), there was a thought at the back of Jing-Mei’s mind: John’s second Gift had awakened. That meant involvement from the BGM, at some point.“At some point” turned out to be shockingly soon. John had regained consciousness a few times – each time obviously terrified by whatever his Gift was causing him to see. Eventually, they had managed to keep him calm enough post-surgery to help him understand what was going on. It was a relief for everyone when they figured out how he could at least communicate without being overwhelmed by fear: he just had to keep his eyes closed.She knew Dr. Benton was scheduled to go in, talk to John, and check his reflexes and mobility. So Jing-Mei ducked out of the ER (things were pretty slow at the moment). She caught up with Dr. Benton just outside John’s exam room. “How’s he doing?” she asked him.“He’s doing pretty well, considering,” Dr. Benton said with a sigh. “He was in a lot of pain by the time I finished, so after the morphine I just gave him, he’s probably already asleep.”“Good.” Jing-Mei was sure she was never going to forget how John had looked as he was carried out of that patient’s room on Valentine’s Day. It was going to be a long road to recovery for him.Just then, the elevators dinged, and both Jing-Mei and Benton turned to see a whole squad of black-uniformed BGM agents coming out into the hall. Behind them (in what must have been an intolerably crowded elevator) was a woman in a pale gray version of the uniform, with gray gloves – and a lock of silver at her right temple matching the one John now had. Dr. Weaver and Dr. Greene were there, too, both looking like they were trying not to lose their cool.“As I told you, Agent Gregg, he’s barely post-op,” Weaver said, struggling to keep up with the group. “I’m concerned that transporting him now will--”“I appreciate your concern, Dr. Weaver,” the uniformed woman cut in, “but I can assure you that the Bureau will take excellent care of Dr. Carter. I’m referring both to his physical care, post-attack, and to helping him learn about his second Gift, of course. The Bureau has several trained and highly Gifted Healers, as you’re no doubt aware. And our facilities are the only proper place for a person in Dr. Carter’s situation to have his Gift identified, so that he can then learn to use it in the safest environment possible.”Dr. Weaver let out a breath, as the whole group stopped outside John’s room. “I understand all that, Agent Gregg.”“It’s just that we all want to make sure—” Dr. Greene started to say.“You need to understand that you don’t have a choice, Doctors,” said the BGM agent next to Gregg.“Clarke, that’s not helpful,” Agent Gregg said, glaring at the man.“Wait, wait,” said Dr. Benton, hurrying over. “You’re taking him now?”Dr. Weaver quickly stepped in. “Agent Gregg, this is Dr. Peter Benton. He’s part of the team who saved Dr. Carter’s life after the attack.”“Then the Bureau of Gift Management owes you a debt of gratitude, Dr. Benton,” said Agent Gregg, with a small smile. “Especially since all indications are that Dr. Carter’s Gift is rare and powerful, with implications for all of us.”“Powerful Gift or not, I didn’t save Carter’s life so he could disappear into a BGM facility for the rest of his days,” Benton shot back, arms crossed. He was in front of the door to the room, Jing-Mei noted as her heart started to pound. She took a step closer to the group.There was a subtle shift, and then all of the agents in black had their hands at their hip holsters. Weaver cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said loudly, and then all but shoved her way to the front of the group to stand next to Benton. Greene was right behind her. “Peter,” she said to him, “I know you’re worried about Carter. We all are. But the BGM has the legal right to take him. They didn’t even have to wait this long.”When Benton didn’t respond, Dr. Greene touched his shoulder briefly. “We don’t really have a lot of options here,” he said, with a heavy sigh. “But we have to let these people help Carter. I know you want there to be some other way. So do I.”Benton stared at Greene, and then at Weaver, for several tense seconds. Then, jaw clenched, he followed the two away from the door.“Thank you,” said Agent Gregg. She nodded to her team. In a matter of minutes, as Jing-Mei watched with Weaver, Greene, Benton, a deeply asleep John Carter was loaded onto a gurney by the BGM agents. He didn’t stir. It only helped Jing-Mei feel slightly better about any of this to see that they really did look like they knew what they were doing: they worked efficiently, no one jostled him, and they were clearly experienced at dealing with monitor leads and IVs. But then again, it was probably pretty common for people with new second Gifts to be seriously injured. So that made sense.“Okay,” said Agent Gregg, once they were ready to go. “The Bureau thanks you for your cooperation, Dr. Weaver. Dr. Greene. We’ll be in touch about having all of his remaining belongings here at the hospital transferred to our intake facility.”“Do we get to ask for updates on him?” Benton asked, arms crossed again.“You can ask,” said the woman, sounding regretful, “but I can’t promise that our security guidelines will allow for much communication from those on the outside.”Jing-Mei held back a gasp. She hadn’t even considered … but of course, the general silence from agents of the BGM would extend to John after he was gone.This might be the last time anyone at County General ever saw him.~~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

John woke up slowly, with the feeling that something was wrong.When he opened his eyes, this feeling was confirmed. He had no idea where he was. He was still on a hospital bed, still in a gown – but it wasn’t even the same gown as he’d been wearing when Benton checked his mobility and reflexes. It was solid gray. And this room was windowless, aside from the tiny window in the black door. It didn’t look like any place at the hospital that John had ever seen, that was for sure. His pain levels were still pretty good, at least.He was about to gear up to call out to whoever might hear, when there was a faint beep from a panel next to his bed that he hadn’t noticed before. An intercom. A woman’s voice spoke a second later. “Hello, Dr. Carter. My name is Alicia Gregg. I’m a senior agent with the Bureau of Gift Management.”John blinked, and then took a sharp breath as he made the connection. They had taken him while he was unconscious?! His heart monitor started to register his increased heart rate.“I apologize for your, uh, sudden removal from your hospital,” Alicia Gregg went on. “We realize it might seem like we did this in a really underhanded way because of the timing, but that wasn’t our intention. Now, I’m going to come into your room in a few moments, so please feel free to close your eyes or do whatever else makes you comfortable before I get in.”John scoffed, even as he closed his eyes. “Free” and “comfortable” were not things he expected he’d be feeling very much in his future from now on. Though really, this situation shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Ever since the mirror had shown him the silver in his hair, he should have known that ending up with the BGM was inevitable. Even without Romano’s reminder.A few seconds later, the door to his room unlocked (so it had been locked) and opened. He heard footsteps, and the door closed again. “Good afternoon, Dr. Carter. How are you feeling – physically, I mean?”“Hi, Agent Gregg,” said John, facing the woman with his eyes still shut. She sounded pleasant enough, at least. He considered her question. “I’m doing all right for now. Not too much pain.”“Good. Glad to hear it. Now, I imagine you have a lot of questions and concerns,” the agent said. “I’ll answer what I can, but first of all, I want to ask if you’ll describe to me what you see when you look at another person.”“So you can tell me what my Gift is?” he asked. It was true that he really wanted to know – despite how little he wanted to be here.“Yes,” Agent Gregg said without hesitation. “I already have a hunch, but I’d like to be more certain.”“Okay.” John did his best to describe the weird, disturbing, shadowy animal-like figures he saw whenever he looked at someone ever since waking up after the stabbing. He described their flickering edges, and how their voices changed, too. “But it’s only while my eyes are open,” he finished. “If I listen to them after I close my eyes, they sound normal.”“Interesting. All right. Thank you,” said Agent Gregg. He thought he could hear an undercurrent of excitement in her voice, though she kept calm overall. “Would you be willing to allow me to use my second Gift on you, to help you during your adjustment period so that you don’t have to keep your eyes closed?”That, he hadn’t been expecting at all. “How would you do that? What would that mean?”“I can quite literally calm your fear,” she said. “All I need to do is touch your head, and you’ll feel a little bit of warmth, and then when you look at other people after that, you won’t have to be afraid of what you see.”“Oh.” John had been hoping for something more along the lines of helping him get his vision back to normal, but he supposed this could be a step along the way. “Okay. Yes, please do that.”It was just like she said. She touched him on the head for maybe ten seconds, he felt warmth, and then she moved away again. “Dr. Carter, I’m nearly positive you have the Sight.”“What?” He was so surprised at this that he looked up at her before he could stop himself. But although she looked just as strange as anyone else he’d seen recently – sort of like a deer, but with huge golden eyes and many layers, with edges that were in constant motion – he didn’t pull back in fear like he had with Benton or anyone else. John shook his head slightly, trying not to think about his colleagues or the hospital, and focused on what she’d just said. “The Sight?” That was impossible. “How is seeing people as creepy monsters the Sight?”The deer thing that was Agent Gregg nodded as she put her gloves back on. Her hands looked kind of like hooves, which made that really weird. “Yes, I can imagine that doesn’t match with what you know about this particular Gift,” she said. “In the next few days, we’ll provide you with all the most pertinent research on the Sight, as well as works written by Seers and all the legends that seem most based in fact. But to start, I’ll tell you that from what I’ve studied on the topic, what you’re seeing may be creatures that represent aspects of people’s characters. Some Seers of the past also wrote about being able to perceive what they called people’s ‘counterparts,’ which look like animals.”John tried to absorb this. “Okay.” Still didn’t sound much like something that would be very useful in this day and age, but at least it was a start. “And, uh … does any of this research tell me how I’m supposed to turn it off and on?” he decided to ask.“Oh, I hope that I’ll be able to help you with that,” said Agent Gregg, with what might have been a smile. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t translate very well on the face of a flickering deer creature. “My main role at the Bureau is to help new arrivals get used to their Gifts. You’re the first Seer I’ve interacted with, but I’m confident I’ll be able to point you in the right direction toward controlling your Sight, with just a little bit of work from both of us.”“Good. Great.” That was much more encouraging. He rubbed his hands on the thin sheet, and looked up at her again. “Then I’m ready to get started on that.”“Glad to hear it,” she said.Over the next half an hour or so, John did his best to follow Agent Gregg’s suggestions about how he could try to control his Sight. At first, they made no discernible progress. It was extremely frustrating, and John would have wanted to give up – except Agent Gregg had already made it clear that her Gift to stop him from being afraid of what he was Seeing was temporary. Plus, there was the small issue of the fact that he very much wanted to be able to see people’s normal faces. He had a strong feeling his adjustment to life here would go really badly if he couldn’t even manage that.During a short break, a nurse in black scrubs came in to check his vitals. Dr. Gregg stepped out to give him privacy, and John tried not to stare too obviously at the woman. The nurse currently looked like some kind of canine creature, with gold eyes and constantly shifting or flickering edges just like every other person he had seen today. Maybe a collie, John thought, if he could see the details of her shape at all. The most unnerving part of the interaction was not how the nurse looked to him, though. It was much more bizarre that she never introduced herself, or addressed him by name. It seemed like she didn’t want to be there at all, in fact. But at least his vitals were holding steady. His pain levels weren’t too bad, either.John was very relieved when another ten minutes of working with Agent Gregg after that produced some more encouraging results. She had come back in and told him she recalled that some people with the Sight (he wondered if he really was going to have to get used to the title of ‘Seer,’ even though it made him feel like a goddamn fortune teller or a wizard or whatever) wrote about their Gift as if it truly was a third eye – one that they could open and close at will.“I can understand how that might sound cheesy or silly,” she said, at his scoff, “but maybe it could help you here. I want you to try closing your eyes and doing some deep breathing for a few minutes. Then, once you’re relaxed, you can try-- hmm, think of it as your own internal systems check. See if you can notice anything new or different. Maybe you’ll be able to sense that ‘third eye’.”John shrugged and did as she advised. At first, although he was able to relax a fair amount, he couldn’t sense anything. And then to his surprise, as he continued to check through all his systems as best he could, he found something. There was a sort of extra … ‘pressure’ wasn’t quite the right word, but it was hard to describe. Like there was a new section of his brain, maybe in the visual cortex, that didn’t quite mesh with the rest of it. Even though it also felt like it belonged to him.Okay. So. He needed to investigate that. He tried to reach toward that area mentally, while maintaining his deep, steady breaths. He guessed he could think of it like he was doing an extremely non-invasive exploratory surgery of that new section. Then he found it. It did feel weirdly similar to an eye, although he didn’t dwell on that part of the sensation. What he needed to do was close it, or stop it. Or at very least, figure out how.When he opened his (regular, physical) eyes a few seconds later, John almost collapsed in relief: he could see a nice-looking older African-American woman with curly black hair that had a streak of silver at her right temple, instead of a flickering, shadowy, otherworldly deer creature. He grinned. “It’s good to finally be able to put a human face to your name, Agent Gregg. Thank you.”“You did most of the work,” she said with an answering smile, “but you’re welcome. And now that you’ve made this first step, I’m comfortable officially registering your second Gift as the Sight. Congratulations, and welcome to the Bureau.”John’s relief faded, but he thought he succeeded at not letting too much of his feelings show as he shook her gloved hand. “Thanks.”“The next item of business will be to bring one of our Healers to see you,” she went on. “You don’t have to take the long way back to full health now that you’re here.”“Right.” Now that was interesting news. “That sounds … good.”“Let me step out for a minute to call Healer Ford,” Agent Gregg said. “Just sit tight for a little while longer.”In fact, it was probably only about three minutes before Gregg came back with a younger woman in a white BGM uniform. Her hair was dark except for the familiar lock of silver, and she was wearing a gold choker necklace with what looked like a real ruby pendant in the shape of a red cross. That part was pretty self-explanatory, John supposed. “All right,” said Agent Gregg. “Healer Ford, this is our newest arrival, Seer John Carter. He’s recovering from two stab wounds. Seer Carter, this is Healer Annette Ford. She’s going to get you well.”“Hi,” said John. He tried not to be too distracted by the term of address directed at him that he guessed he would in fact have to get used to. That wasn’t the most important thing happening right now. He’d never seen an actual Healer in action before. Major healing Gifts were so rare that there weren’t even close to enough Healers to go around. He’d heard County General had been visited by some in the past, but not in quite a few years.As for what he was about to experience, he felt torn. As much as he wasn’t going to complain about not having to “take the long way”, as Agent Gregg had described it, he also couldn’t deny that it felt wrong for him to get this special treatment. His situation was no longer critical. If this woman had been available at the hospital a few days ago, on the other hand, maybe Lucy would be alive.“Hi,” said Healer Ford. She gave him a very clinical once-over. Then she took a deep breath and stepped closer to his bed. “I’m guessing you’ve never experienced or observed a healing before.”“Correct,” he told her. “My experience is as an ER doctor, but, uh, we haven’t had anyone with a Gift like yours at our hospital since I started working there.”Ford’s eyebrows rose slightly. “You’re a doctor?”“I am.” He did his best to ignore the inner voice that reminded him that it was probably more accurate to say, he was a doctor. Since he doubted there was any way he’d be allowed to go back to practicing.“Well, that should help make this next part a little less odd, then,” said the Healer. “The way my Gift works is that I have to get a complete picture of the injury. You don’t have to tell me about it, but when I touch you, it will have the unfortunate side effect of making you relive when it happened – sort of. It’ll be more like you’re a spectator with me, focusing on the damage that still needs to be healed.”John swallowed hard. That did not sound enjoyable, even if he didn’t have to feel it happen again.“Yeah, I know,” said the woman, sighing. “That part sucks for anyone I do this for. But it will be over quickly, and then I’ll get to the actual healing part.”“Okay,” said John. He could do this. He cleared his throat and looked up again. “What do you need me to do?”“Not much,” Ford told him with a quick smile. “Just lie back and try not to move much.”As she was about to come closer to his bedside, Agent Gregg coughed once. “Remember what we talked about, Healer Ford.”Ford glanced over her shoulder. “I remember,” she said, with an eyeroll that didn’t quite cover a flash of something else. And then John couldn’t worry about whatever that had been, because she was taking off her white gloves. “Are you ready, Seer?”“I guess I have to be,” said John. He inhaled slowly and let it out. She said the worst part would be over quickly. He shut his eyes. “Do it.”At least this time, he didn’t feel the knife going in. Not exactly. But watching it happen, in detail, as if he were a spectator (like Ford had said), was bad enough. Especially since the memories and trauma were still so fresh. John clenched his fists and his jaw to keep from crying out.Then it was like the images zoomed in, far more than John expected. He could see – inside his own body. Even though he’d gotten a detailed rundown from Benton about what he and Anspaugh had had to repair, seeing the extent of the initial damage for himself was a shock. But even as he watched, the various damaged areas repaired themselves partially. To where they were now, he guessed. And then it was like John was thrown out of this spectator view, but before he could start to process any of that, he felt a warmth from where the Healer was touching his arm. It spread down to his wound site, and the pain that had just started to get worse now faded to almost nothing.A few seconds later, Healer Ford took her hand away and opened her eyes. She was breathing heavily, John saw. “There,” she said with a smile. “How do you feel, Seer?”John sat up and moved around on the bed a little, carefully. There was basically no pain. “Amazing,” he said, with an answering smile. “Thank you.”“It’s my honor to use my Gift to meet your need,” Healer Ford replied, with a nod. She replaced her glove. After a few more breaths, she smiled again and held out her gloved hand to him. “And it’s also my honor to welcome you to the Bureau, though I’m sure Agent Gregg welcomed you already.”“Thanks,” said John as they shook hands. “She did, but I’ll take another welcome.”Agent Gregg spoke up. “All right. Ford, your schedule should be clear for the next hour or so, so why don’t you go get some rest?”She did seem tired, John noted. But then it wasn’t too hard to imagine that healing someone like she’d just done would take a lot of energy. The Healer nodded to both Gregg and John, and then left the room.“Now,” said Agent Gregg, focusing on John again, “If you’re ready, I can take you to your new quarters, to give you a chance to shower, change, and rest a little bit. After that, you can have your first tour of the place. Or,” she paused, and looked at her wristwatch. “I guess after that it’ll be lunch time, and then the tour.”“Wow,” said Carter, raising his eyebrows. “It, uh, it sounds like it’s going to be a busy first day.”At that, she gave him a sympathetic look. “Yes, I guess so. But if it helps, tomorrow you’ll mostly have the day to yourself to start researching your Gift.”“That does help.” He still wasn’t looking forward to-- well, most of this, if he were honest. But at least they weren’t going to throw him in the deep end immediately.“Good.” Agent Gregg came closer. “So, are you ready to take off all those monitor leads and try standing up? I know from my personal experience that your head might not quite be ready to accept that your body is healed, so you can grab my arm if you need to.”“Oh.” He hadn’t thought that far ahead, but that made sense. A part of him definitely still felt like the healing had been too easy to be real. It was also a good reminder that as strange as all of this was to him, the BGM was full of people who shared at least a couple of basic things in common with him. “Yeah, I think I’ll take you up on that.”“Go ahead. There are some slippers here for you, too.”As it turned out, once all the leads were removed, he was pretty unsteady on his feet, for at least the first several yards of walking. But eventually he started to feel more confident. By the time Agent Gregg had led him down the hall, around a corner, and to an elevator, he was no longer leaning on her. Though he was happy to lean against the rail inside the elevator.“We’re coming from floor one, which is medical. Floor four is dormitories, and floor five is personal quarters,” said Agent Gregg, as she pushed the button for five. At his puzzled expression, she explained, “Dorms are where the security agents stay – the people you’ll see in black uniforms. Those of us with a second Gift stay in personal quarters.”John nodded. Before today, agents in black uniforms had been the only BGM personnel he’d ever seen. He assumed there was meaning to the various shades of gray and white that Gifted personnel wore. There was a ranking system for second Gifts, he knew.When the elevator door opened, it was onto a much larger, more spacious and well-lit hallway than the medical floor they had started from. John blinked and looked around. Even the floors were carpeted – and not with industrial stuff, either. This looked a hell of a lot more like a really upscale hotel than a dormitory. He wondered how many non-Gifted ‘security agents’ even saw this floor.That question was answered in part, to his surprise, when Agent Gregg kept going toward one of the last rooms in the hall. There were two men in black uniforms standing one on each side of the door. They stood at attention when Agent Gregg stopped in front of them.“Good morning, Agent Randolph, Agent Lee,” said Gregg, with a brief smile at each man. “This is Seer John Carter. He just arrived today. Seer Carter, these men are two of those who’ll be on your roster of personal guards.”“Uh, what-- why do I need personal guards?” John asked, aware the question had come out louder than it needed to.Gregg looked at him impassively. “Even though this facility is very secure, your Gift is extremely rare, Seer,” she told him. “I expect your research will give you a more thorough answer to your question, but for now, consider these agents – and the others on your roster, who you’ll meet later – an extra layer of protection for you.”John couldn’t think of anything to say to that. So he stayed silent while Agent Gregg showed him how to use the lock on the door. It was a biometric scanner that was going to be keyed to his handprint. Which proved some of the rumors about how high-tech the security at this place was … although apparently the people in charge here still thought he needed more security beyond that.Once that was set up, Agent Gregg followed John into the room. Or rooms, actually: it was a suite with a front room, a large bedroom, a full bath, and even a small kitchenette. “Most of what you need should be stocked already,” said Gregg. “You can also make a list of what you want brought here from your home, and we’ll get that for you as soon as we can.”It was probably weird that he was starting to feel claustrophobic here, in the middle of a very large suite of rooms. John cleared his throat. “Okay. Thanks.”“Take some time to make yourself at home,” Agent Gregg said, patting him on the shoulder once with one gloved hand. “I’ll be back in about an hour.”“For lunch, right?” There was no clock immediately visible in here, John noted.“That’s right. See you then.”When the door had closed behind her, John let out a breath and walked slowly into the bedroom. His bedroom. Because this was where he would be living for the foreseeable future. And then he let out a half-stifled, fairly hysterical laugh at that word choice – “foreseeable” – as he remembered what Gift he apparently had now. Could Seers really foretell the future? He had no idea … but he supposed he would be figuring that out soon enough.John stood up from the bed quickly, ignoring the tiny twinge in his back. He should shower. Sitting on the bed stewing about all of this was not useful.The shower ended up taking longer than he’d expected, since it turned out to be the place where all his delayed emotional responses caught up to him. But he still felt better afterward. Even the fact that the only thing that was available in his closet to change into was a white BGM uniform didn’t completely erase his improved mood. (He tried not to read too much into the fact that it almost fit – but not quite.) The fabric was high quality and pretty comfortable, at least. The shoes were the right size. The accompanying white gloves, he elected not to put on. There were probably rules about that, but he could honestly claim ignorance if anyone brought it up today.Judging by the little alarm clock that he had found on his bedside table, John knew that it was just after noon when there was a knock on his door. He was about to call out that they (Agent Gregg, he assumed) could come in – and then he remembered that the door was locked. So instead he hurried out into the main room. “Coming,” he called.Thankfully, it wasn’t complicated to open the door from the inside. John did so, revealing Agent Gregg and his two guards. Whose names he was going to have to ask for again, he realized with a sigh.“You ready for some lunch, Seer Carter?” said Agent Gregg, smiling. Then she looked at him more closely, and her smile faded. “It looks like your uniform isn’t exactly the right size. We’ll get that fixed for you.”“Yeah, thanks,” said John. He pulled at the sleeves a little.“Did the gloves fit?”John shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t try them. Are we supposed to wear them all the time?”Agent Gregg shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. It’s your first day. And no, they’re not required when we’re not on duty.”That was a relief. “Okay. Uh, so, is there a cafeteria, or--?”Agent Gregg started down the hallway, and John and the two guards followed. “Yes, we have two cafeterias on the premises. One is mainly for our security agents, and the other is mainly for SGs – those of us with second Gifts. But there’s some crossover, too.” She nodded to another agent in dark gray as they reached the elevator. “Mealtimes are meant to be times when we can interact and be social, since our Gifts and duties mean we might not get much chance aside from that.”John had a sudden flashback to high school, and finding the right table to sit at during lunch. But then he gave himself a mental shake. He was an adult, not some insecure kid. Besides, he already knew at least two people here, not including his guards. Although he supposed, depending on how many personnel there were at the Bureau, there was no guarantee Healer Ford would be eating at the same time as he was.The cafeteria for SGs was on the second floor. The sounds of conversation and the smell of food became clearer as they got closer. John took a breath as one of his personal guards pushed open the door for him and Gregg. Then he stepped into the room.It was large, but not as overwhelmingly big as he’d been afraid it might be. Maybe about twice the size of the hospital’s cafeteria, he thought. Which made sense, on reflection: having an activated second Gift was just really rare, so the cafeteria wouldn’t need to serve that many people.John was grateful that no one paid that much attention to their entrance. People (almost all of whom had the familiar lock of silver hair) looked up, for sure, but most everyone seemed to be focusing on their conversations, or on getting food. Which smelled good, by the way.Agent Gregg leaned closer to speak over the clatter and noise of people talking. “The food’s actually pretty good here,” she told him, “most of the time. And there’s always plenty of it.”“Good to know,” John said loudly in return.After he picked up an entree, a cup of decent-looking coffee, and a few sides, John went with Agent Gregg and his guards to sit down at a table with some free seats. The other people at the table were all in dark gray or gray uniforms, he noted. And in fact, when he glanced around the room, he only saw a few people wearing white or even lighter gray shades. So. That was some interesting information about the ranking system among Gifts.“Hey, Agent Gregg,” said one of the men at the table, who John guessed was probably in his late forties. His uniform was gray, not dark or light. He nodded toward John. “Who’s the new arrival?”“Hi, Agent Mendez,” Agent Gregg said. “This is John Carter. He hasn’t gone through his official induction yet, as you can see.”Mendez nodded, and then gave John a speculative but not unfriendly look, clearly noticing his guards. “Hi, Carter. Welcome.”“Thanks,” said John. “Nice to meet you.” He wondered why Gregg had introduced him to Healer Ford as a Seer, even though that was evidently not official yet. Although he thought she had told him it was official. Whatever. He started to eat.“I remember my first day,” said the guy across from Mendez with a theatrical sigh. “It was--”“Completely confusing and borderline traumatic?” Mendez cut it, cocking an eyebrow.The other guy (whose uniform was the same color as Mendez’s) rolled his eyes. “Now, come on, Mendez. Don’t scare the new guy.”John allowed himself to relax, just a small amount. “Yeah, thanks for that.” But it was actually good to hear that it wasn’t just him. It was also good to see that while Agent Gregg had also rolled her eyes at Mendez’s comment, she seemed totally fine with him expressing a negative opinion about the Bureau. He swallowed a bite of food. “How long have you all been here?”“I’ve been here since before Agent Gregg,” said Mendez. Deadpan, he added, “Which means a hell of a long time.”Gregg narrowed her eyes as she chewed a steak fry. “And just what are you implying, Mendez?”“He’s saying you’re old,” said the other guy, whose name John didn’t know yet.“No, just that you’re an old-timer!” Mendez corrected hastily. “You’ve been here longer than a lot of us!”“Next month will be my eight-year anniversary,” Gregg explained, after giving Mendez another unimpressed look. “That charmer over there has been here almost nine years.”“And I’ve been here just about four years,” said the other guy. He set down his fork so he could shake John’s hand. “I’m Malcolm, by the way. Malcolm Donnell.”“Nice to meet you,” John said again. Then a thought occurred to him, and he looked at his guards, who were at the other end of the table. “And do you know, uh…”“Oh, yeah, good to see you again, Agent Lee. Agent Randolph,” said Donnell. He smiled at them, and then gave John a speculative look like Mendez had. But it was Agent Gregg who he asked, “So, Carter here’s an L1, I take it?”Agent Gregg nodded, meeting John’s eyes briefly. “More details coming soon on that, after his induction.”John was now thoroughly confused about who Agent Gregg was telling about his Gift, and who she wasn’t – and more importantly, why. But this wasn’t the time to ask about it. For now, he would follow her lead. And since he wasn’t sure about the social rules surrounding asking others about their Gifts, he decided not to ask Mendez or Donnell about theirs. At least for now.The rest of the meal passed pleasantly enough. The food was good, like Gregg had told him. His fellow SGs (if that was what he was supposed to call them) seemed happy to chat with each other, without expecting him to contribute much. Probably they remembered feeling what he was feeling on their first days, John thought.After they were finished, Agent Gregg showed him where to leave his tray, and then they left the cafeteria. As soon as they had done so, John stopped in the hall and looked at his guards. “Hey, um, sorry about that – in there,” he said, aware he was fumbling. “I just-- I don’t want to go any further without making sure I actually know your names.”The two agents glanced at each other, and then one of them spoke up. “Thank you, sir. I’m Agent Simon Lee.”John shook his hand, and then the other man introduced himself as Agent Brian Randolph.“Thank you,” said John. He took a breath. “I’m usually pretty good with names, so I won’t forget now.”“We appreciate that, sir,” Agent Randolph said with a nod.Agent Gregg had watched all of this quietly. Now she patted him on the shoulder again. “You’re dealing with a lot of new stuff today,” she said. “You’ll get a handle on it. It doesn’t all have to sink in right away – so it’s good to see you prioritizing what’s important already.”John held onto that advice and encouragement during the tour of the rest of the BGM facility. It was … well, he’d seen it before, from the outside, but that hadn’t given him enough of an idea of its size. By the time evening rolled around, he knew a lot more about the layout of the place (though he hadn’t absorbed all the details yet), and he was exhausted.“You look like you might want to take your dinner in your quarters instead of the cafeteria tonight, Carter,” said Agent Gregg, as they headed for the elevator again.John blinked. “Is that an option?” Then he yawned so hard he almost staggered. Lee and Randolph were right there to keep him upright.“Yes, it is,” she replied. “The process is a lot like room service in a hotel. Pretty straightforward.”“Okay. Then that sounds good,” he told her. “Otherwise, I think I might just faceplant onto my tray at the table.”She chuckled. “Best to avoid that.”Once they reached the elevator, the woman stopped. “Well, I think I will go to dinner. You’re fine with Randolph and Lee to get you to your quarters, right?”“Yeah, that’s fine,” John said quickly. “I’ll be fine. Uh, do I need to-- I mean, when should I be ready to get started tomorrow morning?”“Breakfast starts at six,” was Gregg’s response. “But it’s available until nine, and you don’t have anything scheduled until eleven. Though someone will come by to drop off research materials in the morning before then.”“Thanks.” Once the elevator reached the second floor, he said goodnight to Agent Gregg. Somehow he managed to stay awake and on his feet until the elevator reached the fifth floor, and then until he reached his room. Then he said another goodnight to Lee and Randolph before getting inside and closing the door behind him.This time, when he looked in the closet in his room, even despite his exhaustion he noticed the bag that had been shoved to the back. And then he had to step back and sit down on the bed when he opened it. It held all of his belongings that had been in his locker at work. That wasn’t much, but it was enough to remind him once again of the people he had effectively left behind at the hospital. He wondered if there was a chance he could send his friends a letter, or even a message saying he was sorry he didn’t get to say goodbye.But that was a question for tomorrow. He sighed. In the meantime, he probably had enough mental and physical energy left to order himself some dinner. That was about it.~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Chapter 3John was woken up out of a sound sleep the next morning by a knock on the front door. It took him quite a few seconds to remember where he was. Then he sat up. He was at the Bureau, in his new quarters – and according to the clock by his bed, it was almost six thirty. He had gone to bed at just after eight last night. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d slept that much – not including when he was coming off anesthetic or morphine, of course.The knock at the door repeated. “Seer Carter?”Running a hand through his hair, John got up and went out into the main room. “Yeah, I’m coming,” he called.“This is Agent Iverson, on your new guard shift. You have a delivery out here, sir,” said an unfamiliar man’s voice from outside.“Okay.” He opened the door, to see two new security agents, and three large packages. Two of the packages were cardboard boxes, and one was shrink-wrapped fabric. His new uniform or uniforms, he guessed – and a hell of a lot of books for researching the Sight.“Hi,” said John, deciding it wasn’t worth it to be embarrassed that he had clearly just rolled out of bed. “I’m John Carter.”“Good morning, sir,” said one of the men. “Agent Iverson here.”“I’m Agent Clarke,” the other man said with a nod.“Good to meet you.” Clarke and Iverson. He could remember that.John ended up going down to breakfast twenty minutes after the delivery. It felt a little strange to be walking around without Agent Gregg there this morning. On the other hand, when he got through the breakfast line, he saw Healer Ford sitting at a table with plenty of room. She looked up as he approached (with his escort), and smiled. “Well, you’re looking a lot better today!”“Thanks to you, for the most part,” he replied, returning the smile. Then he gestured to the table. “May we?”“Go ahead,” said Ford.“And do you know Agents Iverson and Clarke?” asked John, gesturing to the men in turn. They greeted each other as all three sat down.Ford gave him a few minutes to start eating, and then said, “So, what are they having you do today, Seer Carter?”“John,” he said, “please.”She smiled again. “John, then. What’s on your schedule for the day?”“Uh, I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I’m supposed to research my Gift, which should be interesting. And then Agent Gregg said I have something at eleven today. Oh, and I guess I haven’t been officially inducted yet, either.”“Well, the research part does sound interesting,” she said with a thoughtful frown. “I can’t say I know much about the Sight off the top of my head.”John took a sip of his coffee, and then sighed. “Yeah, I kind of thought it was a myth. Until Agent Gregg told me she was pretty sure I have it, anyway.”She raised an eyebrow at him. “Hey, you don’t sound very happy about the idea that you have a rare and powerful Gift that’s barely been seen in centuries.”“Well, it’s just—” he started, and then he saw the amusement she wasn’t really hiding. He could tell he was blushing as he muttered, “It’s a lot, okay?”“No, no, I get it,” said Ford, more seriously. “I mean, there are Healers all over the world, but we’re still pretty rare. L1 Gifts come with a lot of expectations – and pressure.”“Yeah.” He could imagine that easily, for Healers. And whenever he let himself think about what people were going to expect him to do with this Gift, John felt the beginnings of panic set in. But at least once he did some research, it wouldn’t have to be so mysterious. Hopefully that would help, not make it worse. He decided to change the subject. “So, how long have you been with the Bureau, Healer Ford?”“Annette,” she corrected, with another smile. “And I’ve been here just over five years. Five years exactly was…” She paused for a second. “Two weeks and one day ago.”“Congrats. Do they give you a bonus at every five-year anniversary here? Maybe engrave your name on a little plaque?” When she stared at him, he quirked an eyebrow, and she chuckled and shook her head. “I’ll take that as a no.”Annette shook her head again. “Yeah, not so much. Though I guess I can’t say for sure after ten years, since I’m not there yet.”Once he was back in his quarters, John opened the first box of books. On top of several very old volumes, there was a much newer-looking, plain paperback. He picked it up. There was nothing on the glossy white cover, but when he opened it, the title page read, The Bureau of Gift Management: An Introductory Handbook for Personnel.“Huh.” Carter sat down in the armchair in his main room and flipped to the first page. This was definitely something he needed – at least as urgently as he needed to know about his Gift.An hour and a half later, John had finished the handbook. It had certainly been an informative read. He now knew all of the second Gifts that had been identified up to this point (he’d been given the most current 1999 edition), how each one was ranked, and a short summary about each one. He had not been at all surprised that the Sight was classified as one of three Level 1A Gifts, along with telekinesis and telepathy. All three were incredibly rare, but the Sight was the rarest. The only individuals who had been identified as having the Sight in the last two hundred and fifty years – a total of two people – had both only had a strong enough version of the Gift to find missing objects or people, and tell if someone was telling the truth or not. But the handbook mentioned that other historical Seers had been able to See into the future “on some occasions”. John assumed there would be more details about Seers’ abilities in his other books, since that description was pretty sparse on details.Healing was ranked as Level 1B. Agent Gregg’s Gift of calming fear, he supposed, was part of the Level 2A Gift called emotion tuning. He could see why a Gift that could calm both fear and anger, as well as incite them, would be ranked near the top. He also gained an increased respect for Agent Gregg. An unscrupulous person with that Gift would be someone to be feared.Aside from this, the handbook also reminded John that the Bureau was not overseen directly by any branch of US government. They were required to consult with any state government before building new facilities, and that was about it. All personnel were also required to follow local, state, and federal laws – except when doing so would “run counter to securing the wellbeing of any Gifted individual.” In practice, John knew, legal complaints against the Bureau never went anywhere. That was most likely because of how broadly that statement could be interpreted. Even BGM security agents had basically the same kind of qualified immunity as police.All in all, while it was definitely useful to have read it, the handbook didn’t exactly make John feel much better about this entity that he basically had no choice but to join. The Bureau didn’t try to hide how it was just the kind of monolithic, untouchable organization full of people with abilities that everyone thought it was. Whoever had written this manual even seemed proud of that fact.John took a break after this. The coffee machine in his kitchenette was obviously top of the line, he discovered. It made much better coffee than he was used to at work, that was for sure. Carter laughed at himself silently then. Here he was, trying to distract himself from all the earth-shattering things he was dealing with by comparing BGM coffee to County’s coffee.The rest of the books and papers John looked through before eleven were all focused on his new Gift. Some were books of legends and folktales, and some were personal accounts from historical Seers. He learned that each of the facets of the Sight had its own name – or they had in the past, anyway. There was truth-telling, seeking, and divination. The latter was (as the Bureau handbook had mentioned) a rarer ability in a Seer, but highly prized. Kings and rulers were counted as blessed by heaven if they had a Seer at their side. John had a brief mental picture of himself standing next to the current president, and then dismissed it. That was absurd. He wished the historical record that had identified each facet had provided more information about them, instead of focusing so much on listing the Seers that had served various rulers.And then there was the volume of collected memoirs from people with the Sight down through history. Not all of their accounts were as interesting as John might have expected. But one man helped to illuminate why John had seen people the way he did when he first woke up with the Sight. Or at least, sort of helped. That Seer wrote that his Gift allowed him:
...to see what men try to hide, for I find their inner selves are not able to disguise their true thoughts and emotions. The truths that they would disguise are revealed in the beasts that stand as their emblems.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself. So the creepy, flickering, layered creatures were people’s “emblems”? And somehow they were how a Seer could tell if someone was lying or telling the truth. He needed to learn more about that. Which would probably involve trying it out a few times with someone else.He remembered suddenly – back to that first day after he regained consciousness. He had seen the lion creature that was Benton, and Benton had assured him it was really him. And John had known somehow that the creature wasn’t lying. Though he couldn’t say now how he had known.Shaking off thoughts of Benton and the rest of his friends at the hospital, John kept reading. He found one page from another Seer. Almost nothing was known about this guy, not even his name. All that had been included from his personal writings was a list of animals, with his interpretation next to them. John took a breath. This could be interesting.He read:
1. Wolf ------ Clever. Loyal. Dangerous when threatened.2. Bear ------ Powerful. Fierce. Not easily provoked, but deadly at that point.3. Tiger ------ Beautiful. Curious. Quick-tempered and deadly in a fight.4. Lion ------ Proud. Powerful. Rarely found without family.5. Dog ------ Loyal. Protector. Caring.-Must investigate variations in this category. Breeds may indicate significant differences.6. Badger ------ Loyal. Fierce. Territorial. Persistent.7. Cat ------ Solitary. Beautiful. Quick-tempered. Agile.8. Eagle ------ Fierce. Intelligent. Practical and clear-sighted.9. Snake ------ Quiet. Dangerous. Compelling.10. Dragon ------ Rare. Powerful. Compelling. Avoid making enemies with these.
 And it continued from there, for a total of forty-five entries. It looked like the author had started with carnivorous or omnivorous animals, and then moved to herbivores. John read the whole list multiple times, and then sat back with a sigh. He wondered if it was exhaustive (other than the different types implied for ‘Dog’, of course), and also if it was completely authoritative or if it was just one Seer trying to make sense of the creatures he saw. It kind of reminded him of what he knew about the Chinese zodiac, where each year had an animal that went along with it. Of course that wasn’t academic at all, which meant it wasn’t exceptionally encouraging as a comparison. Then again, this was all in the field of Gifts, which wasn’t supposed to fit into any scientific field in the same way. Anyway, it was a place to start … and it was comforting to have this evidence he wasn’t the only person to have ever experienced these strange animal-like monsters.Just when he was beginning to think the had found some clarity, however, he read the next entry in the volume. This Seer, a woman, seemed to have an entirely different idea of what the creatures she saw represented. She described them as “our counterparts” (John recalled Agent Gregg mentioning that term), which were apparently something like familiars that each person had, though most people weren’t aware of their existence. They served as essential, extremely close companions to every human, and the shape they took revealed facts about their human’s personality.“Well, that’s not confusing at all,” murmured John, closing the book after he marked his page with a black bookmark that had been on his bedside table. Were the creatures he could see when he chose to use his Sight representations of each person, or were they actual creatures that-- what, lived inside each person but were normally invisible? He shook his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes. He wasn’t sure which option he liked better.The last memoir in the volume that John read that morning was far from comforting. It was written by the friend of a guy who had lived out west at the turn of the century, who had developed the Sight after an accidental fall. He’d had a quiet life before the activation of his second Gift, since his first Gift was a knack for woodworking that had allowed him to open a small carpentry shop. But once word got out about him becoming a Seer, his life got a lot more complicated. People started coming to him and asking him to do things for them: see if their wife or husband was cheating on them, for instance, or find a missing loved one, or locate missing objects. Some people had paid him enormous amounts of money to do these things, which had convinced this reluctant Seer to take the jobs.But then his fame spread, and more and more people started coming and trying to hire him. Eventually, the Seer had refused all job offers, and had moved further out into the countryside to get away from people seeking his help. That allowed him some peace and quiet – but only for a few months. That was when the leader of an outlaw gang had kidnapped him and forced the Seer to work for him. He had been made to confirm the loyalty of all of the members of that gang. Anyone who didn’t pass the test was immediately killed, right in front of the horrified Seer. When he refused to keep using his Gift like this, the gang boss threatened the Seer’s family. It had taken the intervention of soldiers from the fledgling US Office of Second Gift Management, the precursor to the BGM, to save the man and his family. But the author’s friend, the Seer, had never been the same afterward. He had lived for only a few more years – constantly guarded by soldiers from the Office, and rarely interacting with anyone outside his immediate family – before dying in his sleep.John set down the book and rubbed a hand over his face. He had only skimmed the opening pages of the BGM handbook, scoffing at the self-important mission statement of the Bureau that had been included right after the title page. But now he needed to take another look. It read:
The Bureau of Gift Management exists to locate, identify, care for, protect, and train all Americans who develop second Gifts, wherever and at whatever stage of life they may be. Recognizing our unique value as well as our unique vulnerabilities, the Bureau seeks to guard all people Gifted in this way from all those who would exploit and misuse us. At the same time, recognizing that with our many, varied abilities comes a duty and responsibility toward those who lack these Gifts, the Bureau makes serving the public our highest good.
Sighing again, John put the book back on top of the box it had come in. Now he understood more of why the Bureau had assigned him a rotation of personal guards. He might not have been a settler out in the lawless Old West, but word was going to spread eventually about his Gift. And – assuming he could figure out how to do all the things Seers were supposed to be able to do, which he was not at all confident about – he would be in high demand. He thought about Annette, and how Agent Gregg had mentioned that she had a period of rest built into her schedule after she healed him. The Bureau’s mission statement about protecting their people clearly wasn’t just empty words.There was a knock on the door just then. Lost in uneasy thought as he was, the sound was enough to make him flinch. But he shook it off and stood up. His back twinged again, just for a second. “Be right there,” he called.He was startled again when, upon opening his door, he saw a shadowy deer creature instead of Agent Gregg. “Oh. Um.”“Everything all right, Seer Carter?” the creature that was Agent Gregg said, in her oddly multi-layered voice.“Yeah, it’s just--” He shut his eyes for a second, and to his relief, he was able to turn off the Sight just the way he did yesterday. “I’m fine. I’m ready now.”The agent smiled. “Good. How was your morning’s reading?”“Informative,” said John. He followed her out of the room and closed the door behind them, nodding to Clarke and Iverson. “I haven’t gotten that far into the specific stuff about the Sight, but I read the Bureau manual, and a few of the other works.”“Well, that’s a good place to start,” she said. “In fact, I probably should have asked you to make sure you started there, since we like to have new SGs read the manual before their induction.”“Is that where I’m headed now? To my induction?”Gregg nodded. “Yep. After that, you’ll be a fully official member of the Bureau. That means you can start training to refine your use of your Gift, in addition to more research.”“Oh – I guess I might want my gloves for this,” he said. It seemed like some kind of official ceremony should include his full uniform. They’d only made it halfway down the hall, at least.“Oh. Yes, that would be good,” she agreed, glancing down at his hands. “I’ll wait outside.”John and his guards hurried back to his quarters. Thankfully, the white gloves did seem to fit. He pulled them both on and rejoined Agent Gregg. “Sorry.”“Not a problem,” she said. “It’ll become second nature eventually, but you have time to get there.”Nodding, John stayed quiet as they went to the elevator. Then he cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I ask – why does everyone here wear gloves?”“No, that’s a perfectly fair question,” said Gregg. Looking thoughtful, she pressed the button for the first floor. “I think it hearkens back to early days, when an even higher percentage of us had second Gifts that required us to touch the person who was asking for help. Like me, with my emotion tuning, or Healer Ford, or our telepaths. So it actually helps us stay focused, and keep our sense of touch set apart for when we want to use our Gifts.” She paused, and then went on, “You might find that helpful for you, too, when you’re touching objects or photos to find something or someone who’s missing.”“Huh.” John pondered this idea. He could see the logic. Then as the elevator doors opened, he blinked and looked around. “We’re back on the medical floor?”“Yes. Martin – you’ll meet him in just a minute or two – lives down here. He says it’s quieter than most of the other floors.” With that cryptic comment, Agent Gregg started down the hall, in the opposite direction from which she and John had come yesterday after he was healed.Agent Gregg knocked on a large door near the end of another hall. It had another handprint biometric scanner. After a second, the door opened. Iverson and Clarke didn’t follow Gregg and John into the room, though John saw them take their positions outside the door as it closed. Then his attention was firmly taken by the very strange room he and Gregg had just entered.The room was all white – white walls, ceiling, and white carpeted floor. There was a small white couch and an armchair, and a glossy white coffee table. It was a good thing the lights were not fluorescent and also somewhat low, or the effect would have been blinding, John thought.“Martin?” Agent Gregg called. “Martin, there’s someone here to meet you. It’s time for another induction.”John swallowed against a sudden wave of anxiety. He wished he had a better idea of what was about to happen here. If his palms started to sweat too much, he thought with distracted amusement, these gloves were about to get really uncomfortable. He knew that well from personal experience with medical gloves.At least he wasn’t left in suspense for too much longer. The door to the room past the sitting area opened, and a man in white (not a surprise) came out. His long, neat hair and beard were also white, which created an interesting effect with his lock of silver hair. His inquisitive blue eyes swept over Agent Gregg, and a smile of recognition passed across his face. Then his gaze landed on John. “Ah,” he said, and his smile widened. “You must be the newcomer.”“Yes, Martin,” said Agent Gregg, “this is John Carter. We’re pretty sure he’s a Seer.”“My goodness,” said Martin, eyebrows rising. “A Seer? Well, how exciting!”“Seer Carter,” Agent Gregg continued, ushering John forward, “this is Martin. He’s the Bureau’s strongest telepath. He specializes in confirming what a person’s second Gift is.”John held out his hand, and was mildly surprised at the strength of the old telepath’s gloved grip as he shook it. The choker necklace around Martin’s throat had a silver pendant. It took John a few seconds to recognize the Greek letter psi – and another second to make the connection. Psychic, or psionic if you wanted to go really old-school. Clever. Martin himself seemed pleasant and nonthreatening enough, despite his rare Gift. John managed to smile and say, “Nice to meet you, Martin.”“Nice to meet you as well, young man,” Martin said. He let go of John’s hand, and then gestured toward another room past the kitchenette. “If you’re ready, we can get this started.”John looked at Agent Gregg, who gestured for him to go ahead. “Okay,” he said, and then cleared his throat. There was no need to be that nervous, he told himself as he followed Martin. This was something that every SG went through, apparently. It was normal.This room was pretty small, almost as white as the main room, John saw – and the walls looked thicker than usual. Extra insulation, maybe? Thankfully the temperature wasn’t overly warm. Maybe the insulation was something to do with Martin’s Gift. There were two comfortable looking chairs facing each other in the center of the room, and-- John held back a flinch. There was someone else in the room, too, standing in the far corner. A man in a gray uniform.“That’s Ethan,” said Martin, as he followed John’s gaze. “He works with me. Keeps me comfortable.”The man in the corner nodded to John, but said nothing. His eyes almost matched the color of his uniform, and he looked to be younger than John by a few years, though it was hard to tell. John frowned. What the hell did “keeps me comfortable” mean?“Oh, I mean, his Gift is a special one,” Martin explained, as he walked over to one of the chairs and settled himself in it. “You see, I do my best to shield my mind all the time, so I don’t hear the thoughts and feelings of every single person in this facility. But it gets tiring sometimes, especially at my age. So Ethan helps me block them out.”John hadn’t spoken his question out loud. He gulped, and then went to sit down in the other chair. Agent Gregg had come in after him, he noticed. She was standing just inside the door.“Now, take a few good, deep breaths, young man,” Martin was saying. John looked back at him quickly, and did as he was told. “There you are. No reason to be nervous. I’m bound by honor and decency to only scan your mind for the evidence of your second Gift. I won’t look at any of your thoughts or memories. Those are yours, not for me to rifle through even if I had any particular desire to.” He grinned, looking like a cocky teenager for just a second. “Though I bet I wouldn’t find anything in there to shock me too much, as long as I’ve lived.”John laughed a little, and relaxed some. “Okay. I, uh, I appreciate that.”Martin took a moment to stretch his arms over his head, and then leaned forward. “All right. In a moment, I’ll take off my gloves and you’ll do the same,” he said. “I’ll take your hands. You won’t feel anything unusual for a little while. Then you’ll likely notice me in your head – but like I said, I give you my word that I won’t poke around where I’m not meant to. Once I’ve identified your Gift, I’ll give it a nudge, so to speak. That helps us determine how strong it is. And that’s it.”“That’s it?” That sounded … well, it still sounded weird and not really like something he wanted to experience. But at least it also didn’t sound like it would take very long.“Yes, indeed,” said Martin. “After that, I’ll congratulate you on whatever Gift you’ve been given, and then you’ll go receive your emblem from the directors, after you say your pledge.” He glanced over John’s shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Agent Gregg?”“That’s right,” the woman agreed. Her hands were clasped together, John saw. She was almost vibrating with excitement. He turned back to Martin.Martin took off his gloves, resting them on the arm of his chair. “You ready?”Taking another slow, deep breath and letting it out, John removed his own gloves. “Yes.”It was just like the telepath had described. For the first minute or so, John wouldn’t have been able to tell that anything strange was going on in his head. Then he started to feel something odd, in the same part of his brain where he had finally found the “third eye” just yesterday, with Agent Gregg’s guidance. It wasn’t painful at all – more like a faint itch moving around that whole area, which of course he couldn’t scratch. Martin, whose eyes were closed, smiled. John decided to close his own eyes.And then all of a sudden, the faint sensation changed into something like an intense, precise prod of that area. John gasped. He tried to pull away, but Martin was still gripping his hands. And then John threw his head back, eyes wide.But he wasn’t seeing anything in the room. Instead, he saw … he saw his family home. It was exactly like he remembered it from when he was a kid. As he looked, though, he could see it changing. It was like he was watching it go from how it had been back then to how it looked now. He could see it in detail, so all the things that had changed in that time were obvious. Then there was a feeling of movement, of rushing through the air, and now he was looking at the ER at County General. This was today, he knew somehow. It wasn’t too busy at the moment, but that was about to change. There were a couple of ambulances on the way, he could tell. Then he was rushing through the air again, until he could see … a blonde woman he didn’t recognize at first. She looked devastated. She was in a bedroom – her child’s bedroom. She was sitting on the bed and holding a framed photo. John focused on it, curious although he felt like he was intruding. Then horror and crushing guilt welled up as he recognized the happy, smiling teenage girl with her mother in the photo. Lucy. This was Lucy’s mother.A second after that, it was like John was flung back to his seat across from Martin. He was panting and there were tears on his face. Martin had let go of his hands. The old man was breathing heavily as well. He wiped a hand across his face. “Oh, my,” he murmured.Sniffling, John wiped his hands under his eyes, and tried to control his breathing. “What-- what was that?” he panted.“You are indeed a Seer,” said Martin, looking up at him with an intense gaze as he replaced his gloves. “A powerful one, in fact. When I gave you that nudge I mentioned, you Saw three distinct images, am I correct?”“Yeah.” He dried off his hands, and slowly put his own gloves back on. Unlike a dream, the images he’d seen weren’t fading. At least, not quickly. “Two places, and … a person.”Martin nodded. “That person – have you ever met them before?”John thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “No. But I know-- knew someone close to her.”“And the places – are they both in the present time?”He wondered if Martin had seen at least some of those images. “One was. The other was partially in the past, and then I saw it in the present.”Near the door, Agent Gregg let out some kind of half-stifled sound. John glanced at her, and then looked away.“Yes,” Martin said, with a more serious smile than he’d offered before. “As I thought. You are able to truth-tell, of course, but also seek with great accuracy, and divine the future as well as the past. It’s my honor to use my Gift to certify yours, Seer.”John blinked. That was … a lot to take in. He shook his head again. Then he realized a response was probably called for, and met Martin’s eyes. “Thank you.”The telepath nodded once. As they both stood up, he clasped John’s arm briefly. “Good luck and godspeed to you, young Seer.”Martin didn’t follow them out. Agent Gregg stayed quiet until they had left the old man’s quarters, and then she turned to John. “All right. That part is done, and it was pretty intense. How are you feeling?”Right at the moment? Relieved, John didn’t say. He’d been almost afraid the agent was going to start treating him in some different way, now that his Gift was officially identified. But she wasn’t. Not yet, anyway. So instead, he cleared his throat and said, “A little overwhelmed, I guess. Martin seems pretty sure – and I don’t have any reason to doubt him or his Gift – but I still feel like I know next to nothing about the practical aspects. About actually using my Gift, I mean.”Agent Gregg gave him a faint, sympathetic smile. “That’s not surprising. And you’re definitely not the only one who’s felt that way after meeting Martin. I’ll tell you what the agent who helped me after my arrival told me: no one is expecting you to start serving the public before you’re ready. All SGs have an adjustment and training period after their inductions.”John suddenly remembered his first shift in the ER, all those years ago. He was still honestly surprised that he hadn’t caused any medical disasters that day, even though Benton hadn’t let him do anything too risky to patients. It was better to take things slow in this situation, too. “That’s reassuring,” he said. “Thanks.” He wasn’t sure what training would look like in his case, but he was interested to find out.“You’re very welcome.” She started down the hall, and John and his guards fell into step with her. “Sorry for all the time in the elevator today, but we’re heading to the tenth floor now. That’s where the directors convene for their part in the induction.”“All right.” He wondered what emblem he’d be getting – for his necklace thing. Then an idea occurred to him, but he decided not to ask Agent Gregg. He’d just wait and see if his guess was correct.The elevator ride was quiet. John found that he was less nervous about this part. He still didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it probably wouldn’t involve inadvertently intruding on Lucy’s mother as she grieved for her daughter, so whatever it was, it couldn’t be too bad.The elevator doors opened. The weirdest thing about the three men and one woman inside the room they entered on the tenth floor, John thought later, was that they were mostly just dressed like normal rich businesspeople. They were wearing suits – aside from the youngest man, who was in a more usual pale gray Bureau uniform – and also white gloves. So that was odd. But aside from that, their air of bland professionalism was almost comforting.“Good morning, Agent Gregg,” said one of the men, when she and John entered the room (Clarke and Iverson once again waited outside). “And good morning to you as well, Seer Carter.”“Good morning,” John said. He looked at Agent Gregg, unsure of his next move.“Directors,” said Agent Gregg, nodding to each of them. “I trust you saw the footage from our new arrival’s interview with Martin?”As the directors confirmed that they had, John frowned. Footage? They’d been recorded? He hadn’t noticed any cameras, but then again, he hadn’t been looking for them.“Yes, it was very impressive,” said the man who had greeted them. Then he turned to John again. “We’re all thrilled to welcome an L1A Seer to the Bureau, and we want to assure you, Seer Carter, that our resources are at your disposal for whatever you’ll need as you prepare to start your service.”“Thank you, sir,” John said, since he was obviously supposed to say it. He cleared his throat and offered further, “I’m sure I’ll appreciate that even more once I actually know much of anything about what I need.”At that, the directors all smiled or laughed, and the woman said, “Yes, we all remember those days of exploring our new Gifts. There’s always quite a lot to discover.”“Indeed. Well, let’s not keep our young Seer waiting,” said one of the other men. He nodded to the third man, who had been standing sort of in the background. “Jeff, if you’re ready?”Jeff stepped forward, placing the small metal case he’d been holding onto the table. He opened the case, although the angle made it hard for John to see from where he was standing. “I’m ready.”“Agent Wallace is a Metalworker,” explained Agent Gregg. “He’s the one who creates and seals every new L1’s emblem neckband.”“Got it,” said John, taking a step closer to Agent Wallace. He’d read about those SGs who could manipulate metal with a touch. From this vantage point, he could see the pendant in the case. It was pretty much exactly what he’d expected: a triangle with a simple eye inside it. “Uh, should I stand, or get a chair, or--?”“Here you are, Seer Carter,” interjected the first man. He and the woman were bringing over a large-- well, it had to be a cushion, though it was heavier and fancier than average, for sure. Silver fabric, to match everyone’s silver hair, he guessed. They set it on the floor. “You’ll be here. We’ll ask you to make a short pledge for new members of the Bureau first. Then we’ll place the neckband on you, and Agent Wallace will seal it. That’s it.”Okay. So. It seemed like he was supposed to kneel for this. Which was definitely weird. It made this feel more like a coronation than an induction ceremony. Except he wasn’t going to be royalty of any kind. John knelt on the cushion. Everyone else in the room went to stand behind him. He stayed still, though his back protested slightly at this unusual position.“John Carter,” said the second man’s voice, “do you pledge to fulfill your duty and responsibility toward anyone who may have need of your second Gift, and to make serving the public in this way your highest good? And to that end, will you strive to develop your Gift to its greatest potential? If so, you may simply state, ‘I do so pledge.’”John recognized some of these words as coming from the mission statement in the handbook. He had no issue at all with making that promise. It wasn’t even that different from the relevant part of the oath he’d sworn as a doctor. “I do so pledge.”“Good.” The man paused. “Now, for the rest of us, your fellows who have been given second Gifts.”In unison, the directors (and, John thought, Agents Gregg and Wallace) recited, “We pledge to do our utmost to protect and guard Seer John Carter from all those who would exploit and misuse him. To the best of our abilities, we will support him as he learns to use his second Gift, and provide him a safe abode in which to flourish within our Bureau. We do so pledge.”That was … kind of nice, John thought. It was also nice that the woman told him, “Seer Carter, we’re bringing your neckband now,” so he had some warning.He felt several people right behind him, and then the cool metal of the neckband and its pendant settled around his throat. Then there was a brief warmth at the back of the necklace. Agent Wallace, he guessed.“Seer John Carter, you may stand and turn around,” said the second man. Once he had done so, he saw the rest of the assembled SGs smiling at him, and then they all applauded. “Welcome to the Bureau!”~~The news started to spread throughout the whole Bureau like wildfire once their new Seer made his first appearance in the cafeteria for lunch, after his official induction. A Seer. This was big. No one had been Gifted with the Sight in at least a century. Once Seer Carter had mastered his Gift, the Bureau was going to get a lot more attention from the outside world. They were going to need to be ready for all that came with this – good and bad.To that end, construction began immediately on a new facility adjoining the current Community Assistance Center. If demand for the Seer became as high as it was likely to, even the largest room in the existing center wouldn’t be suitable. Plus, if the higher-ups at the Bureau wanted this done right, there needed to be more than just one room. There was a lot more involved in setting this up. Seer Carter himself wouldn’t need to be bothered by these details until the place was much closer to ready.~~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

One Week LaterPeter sighed as he glanced into the staff lounge downstairs. Carter’s locker was still there, where it had been for years – even though Carter himself wasn’t going to come back, short of some kind of miracle. He guessed Carter’s friends were just going to leave his name on the locker until someone needed it. Like a memorial. Meanwhile, Peter was ashamed at how relieved he was that he’d been busy upstairs in surgery when Lucy’s mother had come by to pick up her daughter’s belongings. She’d also been looking for Carter. It had fallen to Kerry to tell her that Lucy’s mentor was gone, that she would have to talk to the people at the BGM if she wanted to see him. Kerry had leaned against the table in the lounge and shut her eyes as she told Benton about it a few hours ago.“You should have seen her face, Peter,” she said. “She just wanted to talk to the doctor that her daughter had told her so much about. And I had to tell her we couldn’t even do that for her. Just like we couldn’t save her daughter.”Peter had offered her what cold comfort he could, even as he felt yet another flash of anger at the Bureau for swooping in and taking Carter like they had. He recognized that it was irrational anger, mostly – but he didn’t care.And now that he was home, Peter found himself flipping through the phonebook to find the BGM’s public contact number. He knew this probably wasn’t going to give him any satisfaction. But on the other hand, they owed it to Carter to at least try. He owed it to him.He wasn’t surprised to find it was an automated menu that he reached first. He also wasn’t surprised that when he communicated that he wanted to speak to one of their “personnel”, he got put on hold for quite a while afterward. But eventually, finally, an actual human answered.“Hello, you’ve reached the front welcome desk at the Chicago branch of the Bureau of Gift Management,” said a tired-sounding woman’s voice. “How may I direct your call?”“Hi, yeah, I’m trying to reach someone who, uh, lives at the Bureau,” Peter said. “He just moved there recently.”“All right. What’s the name?”“John Carter.”There was a pause. The woman cleared her throat. “Hold on one moment, sir. I just need to--” She set down the phone, but he could make out her voice asking someone a muffled question. Then she came back. “I’m sorry, sir, but Seer Carter isn’t ready to receive calls from the public yet. If you’d like to leave a callback number, the Bureau can call you when the Seer’s services do open to the public.”Peter’s grip on the phone was now so tight that his hand started to hurt, but he only barely noticed. Seer. What the hell?“Sir? Would you like to leave a number?”“Uh—” Peter coughed, and then cleared his throat. “Uh, no. Thank you.”“All right. Well, is there--” A voice on her end said something then, sounding annoyed. She took a sharp breath. Judging by the rustling sounds right then, she was trying to cover the receiver as she said to whoever it was, “Oh – I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to--” The other voice said something else, and she came back on the line. “Apologies for that, sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?”“No, thanks,” he managed to say. “Um, have a good night.”“You, too, sir,” the woman said. “It’s the Bureau’s honor to serve.” Then she hung up.Peter sat there with the receiver in his hand until the dial tone finally penetrated his shock. He hung up then, and went to go sit down at the table. A Seer. That woman had called Carter a Seer – unless there was some other recently-arrived John Carter she thought he was talking about. Which was unlikely, even with a pretty common name like his. So that was Carter’s Gift? The Sight? Something that made him terrified of whatever he saw when he looked at people?But no, they would be helping him figure out how to control it, at least, Peter reminded himself. That was one of the reasons the BGM existed – to help people understand and use their second Gifts. So that was a good thing. He had to admit that he couldn’t think of anyone else who would know how to help Carter figure out the Sight, of all things. Peter sighed again, and rubbed a hand over his face.So. Carter was a Seer now, apparently – and the BGM was going to be announcing that fact to the public at some point soon (but not yet). So that Carter could-- what? Find lost things for people? Hell, Peter barely knew anything about the Sight. But he knew enough to know that it was not a common second Gift. No one had heard of any Seers for more than a century, he was pretty sure.And now Peter regretted not following through with the front desk lady, and asking if he could leave a message for Carter, from a friend. Not that he had any confidence they would pass a message on from someone not part of the BGM – but he could have tried, at least. Shaking his head at himself, he stood up. He would try again, he promised himself – and Carter.~~It was a busy first week at the Bureau, that was for sure. John sat back in the armchair of the main room in his quarters, stretching and yawning. He was making clear progress on his Gift, which felt good. Truth-telling was simple, once he knew what to look for. All he had to do was have his Sight active, and watch the person closely. While they looked like their strange, otherworldly creature selves, if they lied, their flame-like edges moved faster, and their eyes darkened. He hadn’t been wrong yet during practice sessions, no matter who he was watching. Seeking – which was locating lost objects or people – took a lot more effort, but he was still getting better at it after every attempt.Plus, he was feeling much more used to how things worked around here. He knew the names of everyone on his security roster, the location of basically everywhere he needed to go on a regular basis in the facility, and his quarters were starting to feel more like home. It helped that he’d gotten all the stuff he’d asked to be delivered from his own apartment. There had been enough free time built into his schedule that he had been able to set it all up where he wanted it.Of course, not everything was great, he acknowledged to himself. Despite working with Agent Gregg and several other SGs to practice truth-telling and seeking every day, he didn’t feel like he’d made many actual friends yet. Part of that was the fact that he was held in awe by a sizable percentage of the population here. Word must have spread quickly about the new Seer after his induction. It hadn’t taken John long to figure that out. Now, whenever he arrived at the cafeteria for a meal, everyone else definitely noticed his entrance. And people wanted to sit at the same table with him – although the younger Bureau personnel mostly just stared at him with wide eyes, instead of even trying to carry on a conversation. Which was… well, it didn’t make for a very pleasant meal.On the other hand, every meal that he had at the same time as Annette was a bright spot. She wasn’t shy or awestruck around him. She was also gorgeous and smart, and wickedly funny. They had started to spend more and more of their free time together. Thankfully, there were no rules or even informal policies preventing members of the Bureau from fraternizing at work. That would have been ridiculous, since most of them didn’t exactly leave the premises after their work was finished for the day.That was the other thing John had found to be a very unpleasant surprise: higher-ranking SGs were basically not allowed to leave the Bureau premises, except for circumstances where it was absolutely necessary in order for them to help people. He’d been pretty upset when that rule had come out. The fact that it had only come out in response to a flippant comment he’d made to Agent Gregg was even more upsetting.She had asked him, on his third day at the Bureau, what he thought of his quarters after a few days settling in. His response had been positive overall. The rooms were nice, and the room service, too. “Though I’ll admit I would spring for the balcony with the city view if I had the choice,” he’d added with a grin.Agent Gregg had smiled back, but then the smile faded. “Well, even if we had any rooms with a city view,” she told him, “unfortunately, you wouldn’t be eligible.”“Wait, what?”“For the safety of our L1s and L2s,” she went on, now deadly serious, “all of us have to stay on the Bureau premises at all times, with only a very few exceptions if we need to leave to reach those who need our Gifts. And on those occasions, we have to be escorted by a full team of security agents.”John stared at her. “Are you saying I’m-- we’re stuck inside? For what, the rest of our lives?”“Given the history of abuse and misuse of our personnel,” said Agent Gregg in a way that made it sound like she was reciting something, “the Bureau has instituted this policy for our protection.” She looked tired now, as she went on, “But you’ve already seen the gym, and there’s a small park on the grounds near the courtyard that we’re all welcome to spend time in, too. So … technically speaking, we’re not trapped inside.”He scoffed. He was angry, and wanted to be angrier at her right then – but he recognized that she was letting him see how much she wasn’t a fan of this rule, too, despite her position of authority within the Bureau. So he swallowed back his anger and just said, “Well, that sucks.” And Agent Gregg agreed. There was no real point in getting mad at her, anyway. She obviously wasn’t the one who had instituted this policy.Still, John reflected, as he leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head, even after reading almost all of the books that had been gathered for him on the topic of the Sight, this level of security didn’t feel warranted. Sure, he had read more than one story about Seers being kidnapped and made to use their Gifts against their wills. He believed it could happen. He believed the same kind of thing could happen to Healers and other L1s and L2s. That didn’t mean he was even remotely okay with living out his whole life as a very well-treated prisoner. After that conversation with Agent Gregg, it hadn’t taken long for him to realize that his personal guards were there both to keep him safe, and keep him where he was supposed to be. What if at some point he got so fed up that he ended up trying to escape? Wasn’t that a cheerful thought?Sighing, John stood up and went into his bedroom. It wasn’t that late, but maybe he could turn in early tonight. Or maybe he could get in some exercise first. He was mentally tired, but physically he doubted he was tired enough to sleep yet.That decided, John changed into clothes more appropriate for a workout, grabbed a water bottle, and headed out of his rooms. He greeted his nightshift guards, Taylor and Lopez.“Good evening, sir,” replied Lopez, as they all started down the hallway. “Getting in some exercise?”“Yep,” said Carter. He kept his tone light. “Can’t let all that cafeteria food get me out of shape.”Lopez laughed, and Taylor agreed. “Got to be careful.”They got to the gym a few minutes later. It was almost empty, John saw to his relief; he wasn’t in the mood to interact with a lot of people right now. There was one guy who he recognized vaguely over on the weights, and a woman on one of the treadmills. Since he had come with the plan of using the punching bags to do some boxing, that meant he wouldn’t have to be near either of the two others. Lopez and Taylor didn’t even have to be right next to him.It was just as therapeutic and relaxing as he’d hoped it would be, to strap on a very different kind of gloves and do some hard physical work. He didn’t have to think, just focus on the bag and his strikes. He went at it until he felt like it was definitely enough for his first workout session in a while.As he was cooling down afterward, drinking his water while sitting on the bench, someone came over. He looked up.“Hey. Seems like you know your way around a punching bag,” said Annette, with a smile. Judging by her clothes and the pair of headphones now around her neck, she was the woman he’d seen across the room on the treadmill.John raised an eyebrow. “Were you watching me, Healer Ford?”“Just for a little while, in my professional capacity,” she replied, shrugging even as her gaze traveled over him. “You know – making sure our only resident Seer didn’t injure himself.”“Well, let me assure you, although I appreciate your concern, I’m uninjured,” he said. He spread out his arms. “See?”“I thought that was more your job description, Seer Carter. But thanks for indulging my worry, anyway.”Chuckling, John shook his head and stood up. “Yeah, you’re welcome. How was your run?” He gestured toward the treadmills.“Good.” She took a drink from her own water bottle. “Just what I needed, I think.”“Yeah.”The two walked out of the gym together. Just as John was turning toward her to say goodnight, Annette surprised him by taking his hand in hers. Since they were both off-duty, they weren’t wearing gloves. But apparently he’d gotten more used to his uniform gloves in the past week or so than he’d thought. “You double-checking to make sure I didn’t damage my hands in there?” he asked the Healer in a low voice, stopping so he could face her even as he wove his fingers through hers.She met his eyes. She was a lot closer to him now. His guards were maintaining a discreet distance behind them. “You know,” she said, “it would really reassure me if I could … take a closer look. A more complete one.”He smirked. “A full examination, huh?” At her nod, he pretended to consider for a second. “Fine, but as a fellow medical professional, I feel like it’s only fair to ask to do the same for you.”At that, Annette gave him an answering slow smile. “Your place or mine?”They ended up in his quarters. John didn’t have time to wonder if her rooms looked any different from his, since he was a little busy. All he spared a moment to think was that it was a good thing his shower was big, since they were going to be using it at the same time. Which they did.Later, when they were in bed after plenty more activity, John lay with Annette resting her head on his shoulder while he stroked her back. They had been good together. Great, in fact. He felt relaxed, but not tired. Not yet. Judging by how little she had moved in the past ten minutes or so, Annette was probably either asleep or almost there.So he almost felt bad about asking her the question that was on his mind now, as he carefully shifted position further down onto the pillow. It would probably ruin the mood, too. “You awake?”She sighed, and he felt her breath on his skin. “Mmm. I guess.”“Can I ask you a question?”“What kind of question?” she said, pulling away slightly so she could look at him. She yawned.John thought about it for another second, and then gave her a sheepish smile. “Uh, one that I hope doesn’t come across as insulting or offensive? Because I definitely don’t mean it that way.”At that, Annette rolled so she could rest her chin on her hands, and stared at him. “Well, now I have to know.”“It’s just…” He searched for the right words. “Is it possible for, uh, someone who’s been healed by a Healer to still have pain at the injury site?”To her credit, she looked concerned rather than annoyed. “You’re still having pain? How bad?”“It’s not severe, and it only happens sometimes,” he told her. “But it’s noticeable when it does.”“Hmm.” She frowned. “Well, in answer to your question: it’s possible, but unusual.” Then she leaned in closer and stretched out one hand. “Do you mind if I check on you again right now? You won’t have to relive getting stabbed this time.”That was a relief. He hadn’t even thought of that until now. “Go for it.”She touched his arm, and a moment later, John felt a slight warmth spreading from that point of contact to his back. His wound site had only been slightly sore, so there was no dramatic change this time. He waited until she pulled her arm back. “What did you see?”“Everything looks pretty good,” she told him, still concerned. “I mean, there’s a little bit of scar tissue, which makes sense because your body had already started to heal itself after your surgery. But otherwise, nothing abnormal.”“Huh.” That was good, he supposed. But confusing, if there was really nothing wrong.Annette leaned forward again, this time to kiss his shoulder. “Maybe it’s something like phantom limb pain, in people who’ve had amputations? I’m guessing you’d have had more experience with patients in that situation than I have, although I’ve done some healings for some people when they got here too late for me to help with reattachment.”He blinked. That was an interesting idea. “I didn’t have any limbs removed, though.”“I know,” she said with a nod. “I know. Just a hypothesis.”“Yeah.” He let out a breath, and then smiled at her. “Well, it definitely makes sense to me that it could be a similar pathology. And anyway, thanks.”She returned the smile, and shifted closer to him. “You’re welcome.”~After another week of training was drawing to a close, Agent Gregg dismissed the other SG who had been helping John practice seeking. “Thank you, Agent Brandon.”The agent nodded to both of them and left the practice room. After he was gone, Agent Gregg turned to John. “That seemed to go well, don’t you think?”“Yeah,” he said, leaning back in the cushioned office chair. He had been able to tell Agent Brandon where the object he had asked about was, after only a minute or so of seeking with his Gift. Obviously these practice sessions weren’t the same as real sessions when people would be coming to him with objects or people who were genuinely missing, but the basic method was the same. Or so he had read.“Do you think you’ll be ready to start interacting with the public next week?” Gregg asked. “Say, mid-week, perhaps?”He stared, and then raised an eyebrow. “That seems oddly specific … so I’m guessing I’m supposed to say yes.”“You’re not supposed to say anything you’re not comfortable with,” she said dryly. “But if you think you’ll be ready – honestly think it, I mean – then the Bureau is ready to support you.”“Oh?” John ignored the rush of nerves this conversation was giving him. “So if I say yes, what would that look like? What-- what would I be setting in motion?”“Well, first of all, we’d make sure the new Petition Hall is completely ready to receive petitioners from the public,” Agent Gregg told him. “That’s been under construction over next to the Community Assistance Center ever since we knew we were going to need one, so I believe it can be ready as soon as you are. At the same time, we would start to put the word out about the availability of a Seer to the public. But since we’re certain demand will be high, we’ll be putting into place a system to make sure you can help as many people as possible, while also making sure you have all the time you need to recover and rest.”“Okay.” That sounded reasonable enough. Intense, but he’d read enough historical accounts about Seers to get the gist of what she was saying. Then he paused. “Hold on. Did you just… Did the Bureau build a whole new hall for-- for me?”“We’re building one, yes,” said the woman calmly. “Otherwise we’d have to repurpose the entire Community Assistance Center for the space we’re going to need – and there are other Gifts the Bureau will still need to share.”“But—” John stopped and shook his head. “I thought we were talking about just a room for me to actually meet with each person who needs my help, and then maybe a waiting area, and that’s it. What am I missing?”“Those are the most essential parts, you’re right.” Agent Gregg now had a similar expression to the one she’d had on her face right after Martin had formally identified his Gift: a kind of focused, controlled excitement that made him feel distinctly uneasy. “But we also need an entry area where petitioners can be vetted and added to the day’s roster, some private space for you and anyone assisting you during breaks, and something to occupy those who are waiting. There are a few simple motel-type rooms along the side, too, for those who come from out of state. And I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things in addition to all of that.”“Oh.” He rubbed a gloved hand over the back of his neck. This was not the first time he’d felt like things were moving too fast around him and he had no ability to control any of it in the past two weeks – but it turned out he wasn’t getting used to that feeling yet.Agent Gregg stepped around the table, and put her hand on his shoulder. “Hey. You’re not alone in this, Seer Carter. Not any of it.”He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You know,” he said, staring at the table in front of him, “if anyone had told me three weeks ago that this is where I’d be today, I would have said they were insane.”Agent Gregg didn’t reply right away. Instead, she sat down in the chair next to him and turned it to face him. “Eight years ago, I was a third grade teacher in the suburbs,” she said with a sigh. “And I was happy with my life.”John looked at her. He had gathered – and had confirmed during a conversation with Annette early on – that it wasn’t considered polite to ask another SG about their near-death experience. If they wanted to talk about it, if they initiated it, that was a different thing. This was not at all hard for him to understand, since he emphatically did not want to talk about the stabbing that had almost killed him and had killed Lucy. So he just waited, to see what Agent Gregg might say.“After my second Gift was activated and I ended up here,” the agent went on, “I remember feeling like I was barely keeping my head above water for the first several-- well, months, if I’m honest. I’d just gone through a trauma, and then on top of that, everything else about my life changed.”“Yeah,” said John, nodding and giving a humorless smile. “That’s a good description.”“The point is, I made it through to the other side,” Agent Gregg said. Her gaze moved from his face, off into the distance of memory. “I didn’t get there by myself, though. I needed help. And I asked for it – although not right away, I’ll admit.” She focused on him again. “And I’m not even an L1. So, please ask for whatever you need, Seer Carter. That’s my other point. If you need time to talk to a counselor or therapist every week, we can arrange that. If you find out you need fewer scheduled sessions with petitioners than we start with, we can do that, too.”A counselor wasn’t a terrible idea, John thought – especially since he or she would no doubt be one who understood at least some of the issues that SGs went through. He’d think about it, anyway. “Thanks,” he said, and he found that he really did mean it. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”“Good. Do that.” Then she gave him an apologetic smile. “Now, I hate to add to the pressure you’re feeling, but … about next week?”He rolled his eyes, even as he considered it. There wasn’t that much more preparation he could do. He still hadn’t practiced divining at all, but from what he’d read, that was more likely to happen kind of by accident than by concentrated effort. So he didn’t need to spend much time trying to do it. “Yeah. Yes. I’ll be ready by the middle of next week.” Before she could respond, he went on, “But I’d like to see the place that I’m going to be working. Tomorrow, if possible.”“I was just about to suggest something similar,” she said, looking pleased. She stood up. “Time to get the community ready to meet their new Seer.”“And me ready to meet them,” John added. This time, along with the rush of nerves came more excitement. It wasn’t going to be the same as helping people in the ER, but it was still going to be meeting a real need that he had the skills to meet. He was looking forward to it.~~The ER was buzzing with the news by the time Mark and Elizabeth got in that morning. Mark had heard about it on the radio at home, and despite everything with his dad, it had been hard to think about much else on the way to work. It was still hard to wrap his mind around. And he was sure he wasn’t the only one.“Hey, boss,” said Malucci, as soon as the man saw him. “Hey, Dr. Corday. Did you hear what they’re saying on the news about Carter? Crazy stuff!”“Yeah, we heard,” he said. “I guess crazier things have happened.”Malucci scoffed and shook his head. “I don’t know, Dr. Greene. Name one!”“Maybe later,” said Mark with a brief smile as he exchanged a look with Elizabeth. It wasn’t like he couldn’t see where Malucci was coming from.“There have been plenty of crazy things that have happened at this hospital,” Elizabeth remarked, as they walked toward the elevator. “But I’d be hard-pressed to come up with something off the top of my head that beats Carter almost dying, then ending up as the first Seer the world has seen in more than a hundred years.”Mark shook his head. “Yeah, I’m not disagreeing.” He squeezed her hand as she started toward the elevator to the OR. “See you later?”“Later,” she confirmed.It was a busy day in the ER, but not abnormally so. Still, the day passed quickly – until it was time for him to keep his appointment with Elizabeth in the lounge in the early afternoon. (She had promised she was fine with coming downstairs to see him, and also to get a change of scene.) Benton was there, too, though, which was unusual. What was pretty understandable, after just a few moments’ thought, was how he was sitting: in the farthest corner of the room, facing away from everyone else. He was holding a cup of coffee, but not drinking it, and staring off into space. Elizabeth was across the table from him, but it didn’t seem like she’d been trying to engage him in conversation. She looked up and smiled when she saw Mark.“Hey.” He sat down next to her, returning her smile. Then he looked at Benton. “Hi, Peter. Rough day?”It took a few seconds, and then the other man seemed to register the greeting. “Mark. Hi. Sorry, what did you say?”“I said, rough day?”Benton blinked. “Oh, not really. The usual. You?”“Yeah, not too bad.” He looked at Elizabeth, and then back at Benton. “But that news this morning about Carter was pretty surprising.”“Yeah.” Benton set down his coffee hard enough that it splashed out onto his hand. He swore under his breath and stood up to grab a napkin from by the coffee pot. “At least it wasn’t still hot.”“He’s not taking this very well, is he?” Elizabeth muttered, after Benton had walked away.“Well, he and Carter have been close almost since Carter first got here. Carter was his student,” said Mark. He smiled, and as Benton came back to sit down, he went on, “I was just thinking back to when Carter got here, actually. He was so green, but so earnest and anxious to get everything right.”Shaking his head, Benton said, “Green is an understatement. How he got that far in his rotations without knowing how to start a damn IV or suture a wound, I can’t begin to imagine.”Elizabeth laughed. “Wow. Neither can I.”“I was pretty hard on him,” Benton added. His smile faded.“Which he ended up appreciating, Peter,” Mark pointed out. “You helped him on his way to becoming a great doctor. He’s always looked up to you.”Benton sighed. “Maybe. Not like he’s going to get a chance to come back to this job now, though.”There was a pause, and then Elizabeth said, “Well, at least he still has the chance to help people. Even if it’s in quite a different way.”“Different.” Scoffing, Benton took a sip of his lukewarm coffee and grimaced. “I just can’t help but think…” Then he trailed off.“Think what?” Elizabeth prompted.“Never mind. It’s nothing. I’ve got to go find Cleo before I head back to work.” Benton stood up, went over to the sink, and dumped out his coffee cup. Then he left the room.“Yep.” Mark sighed, and turned back to his own coffee. “He’s definitely not taking this well.”She covered his hand with hers, and then let out a sigh of her own. “Well, I’m sure it would help all of us process this news if the BGM weren’t so mysterious about everything.”“That would probably help,” he agreed. “Too bad it’s not very likely.”~~“What’s going on with you tonight?”Peter blinked, looking up at her across the cafe table. “What?”“I said, what’s going on with you?” Cleo looked like she was trying to decide whether she should be annoyed or concerned. “It’s not like you’re usually chatty, but you’ve just been staring at your coffee cup for a full minute at least.”“Sorry. Yeah, I know.” Peter rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m just – a little distracted, I guess. Mostly because of the news that broke this morning from the BGM.”“That definitely was a surprise,” Cleo said with a nod. “I don’t think any of us would’ve expected Carter to end up with the BGM, much less as a Seer.”“Yeah.”There was another pause, and then she leaned in closer. “Seriously, Peter. Tell me what’s going on with you, with this news about Carter at the BGM. I know those people are high-handed and full of themselves, but this is obviously more than an abstract dislike.”Peter sighed and nodded. “It is more than that,” he admitted. When she gestured for him to go on, he opened his mouth. Then he stopped. “This isn’t what I wanted our date to be, Cleo. I’m sure you didn’t want me to spend all our time talking about this--”“Well, first of all, thank you for admitting that this is a date,” Cleo interjected, with a quick smile. Then she grew serious. “Second of all, we’re still just getting to know each other, right?”“Right,” Peter agreed.“So, if the BGM having taken Carter is this important to you, then you telling me why will help me get to know you.” She took a sip of her coffee, and said, “So. What’s the history I’m missing here?”He nodded again, and took a moment to compose his thoughts. “Well, you’re not wrong that I’ve never been a fan of the BGM,” he began.“Not that anyone outside of them is,” Cleo agreed with a nod of her own.“But like I said, there’s more to it than that. The main thing is my history with Carter. He was one of my med students back when he started, oh, coming up on six years ago now.” He smiled, remembering, and shook his head. “It was a good thing he’s a fast learner, because he would’ve been absolutely hopeless otherwise.”Over the course of the next hour or so, Peter found himself telling Cleo more about Carter – and about his own history at County General – than he’d expected he would. But it felt good to talk to her. Plus, she was good both at listening and asking questions. Not that that part was a surprise, for a doctor who interacted with so many patients on a daily basis.Thankfully for Peter’s sense of fairness, there was still some time after all of that for Cleo to talk about herself, too. Which he enjoyed. All in all, he reflected, it had ended up being a good evening.“Hey, uh, thanks,” he told her, as they prepared to part ways outside the coffee shop.“For what?” she said, cocking an eyebrow.“For … letting me just talk about what was on my mind, I guess.” He shrugged.Cleo smiled and touched his arm. “You’re welcome, Peter. Thanks for letting me be the one to listen. Good night.”“Yeah, good night.”~~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Wednesday morning, John found himself wide awake in his room at four AM. He wasn’t sure what he’d been dreaming about just a few moments ago, but it hadn’t been pleasant. And now he could tell he wasn’t going back to sleep. Upon reaching alertness, his brain had quickly reminded him of his opening day today, and everything that involved. At least when he jolted awake from whatever bad dream he’d been having, he hadn’t also woken Annette. She was still asleep next to him, peaceful as far as he could tell.He wasn’t too nervous. Not yet, anyway. He really did feel like he was as prepared as possible. It was just … the newness of all of this. The first time he would be using his Gift to help other people. The first time he would be facing any of the public, who now knew about him and, according to the TV news and newspaper articles he’d seen, were excited to meet him. In fact, this excitement expressed itself in almost religious fervor among some of the people the reporters had interviewed. Which made John kind of want to stay in his quarters all day. But only kind of. He had absolute confidence that between his personal guards and other Bureau security agents, no one would be allowed to do anything to him. If there was one thing the Bureau did well (too well, maybe), it was security.After another few minutes of lying there staring at the ceiling, John sighed and carefully extricated himself from the bed without disturbing Annette. Might as well shower, and try to decide what he could order for breakfast that he’d actually be able to eat. Something light would have the least chance of sitting like a rock in his stomach later.When he was finished showering, he came back into the bedroom to see Annette sitting up and looking blinking blearily at him. “Hey. What are you doing up?” she asked through a yawn.“Couldn’t sleep,” he said with a shrug. “Which is annoying. I’m not even really that nervous, either.”“You could’ve woken me,” she said, gesturing to the towel around his waist. “I would have been happy to share the shower with you – again.”Smiling, he shook his head. “I figured you could use the sleep. No reason for us both to be awake at the crack of dawn.”She looked at his alarm clock, and yawned again. “That’s very sweet of you, John, but what exactly are you planning to do for the next three and a half hours until your first shift starts?”“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just didn’t want to lie awake, pointlessly running through everything that’s going to happen today over and over.”Annette nodded. “I get that.”There was a pause, during which John pulled out his uniform for the day and laid it at the foot of the bed. He let out a breath. This was real. This was really about to happen.“I have an idea,” said Annette then, breaking the silence. “How about you lie back down, and I give you a massage? Maybe it’ll relax you enough that you’ll get in a little more sleep at least. It’s a big day, after all.”John looked at her and raised his eyebrows. “Relax me, huh? That’s not how it usually goes.”“I’m not talking about that kind of massage,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. “Trust me, I know the difference.” She held out her hands. “You should be honored, you know. Not many people are offered the chance to get a massage from an actual Healer.”“I guess I can’t argue with that.” He pulled his pajama pants back on, and sat down on the bed.“You’re right, you can’t. Now lie down on your stomach.”“Yes, ma’am. As long as you try to get some more sleep, too,” he said as he did so.“I will. Don’t worry.”And somehow she was right: it felt amazing, and it was exactly what he needed to relax. She kept it professional, too – much as part of him wished she wouldn’t. “Wake me in plenty of time, would you?” he mumbled, as he started to drift off with the feel of her hands on his back.“Go to sleep, John,” was all she said in response.In fact, he woke up naturally a little over an hour later – feeling much more refreshed and relaxed than he had the first time. Based on the sound of running water, Annette was in the shower now. John sat up and stretched. Now he could finish getting ready at a leisurely pace, without there being a ridiculous amount of time left after he was done.Annette came out of the shower as he was about to call in his breakfast order. “Hey. Can I order you something?”“What are you getting?” she asked, as she wrapped the towel around her hair.“Just, uh, granola and fruit.” He glanced at the menu and then back at her. “But I’m not going to be offended if you want something more substantial than that.”“No, that’s fine. And coffee?”“Yeah, I started that already.”It wasn’t too long until they’d both eaten, and then John was standing in the bathroom to look in the mirror as he pulled on his gloves. The uniform fit perfectly now, of course. His neckband with its silver Seer pendant stood out against the white fabric. He looked – well, he hoped he looked ready, and not too obviously nervous.Annette came up behind him and regarded him critically in the mirror. “You look good.”“Thanks.” He turned to look at her. She was just about done getting ready, as well. “You look beautiful.”She smiled and leaned closer to kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”They left his quarters together, slightly before eight. Her workday started at the same time as his – eight thirty – which meant she couldn’t go with him all the way to the new Petition Hall. But she gave him a quick hug and another kiss at the elevator. “You’re going to do great,” she told him, with a proud smile. “I look forward to hearing about your day at dinner.”He thanked her, and then assured her, “I’ll look forward to hearing about yours, too.” It was fascinating to hear what kinds of patients she healed each day, even if it did make him a little wistful every time.With that, it was time to go. He was with his normal two guards as he got into the elevator, but he knew that as soon as he arrived at the ground floor, the rest of his security roster would be there to escort him through the building, and then through the enclosed walkway to the Petition Hall. They had gone through his entire itinerary together yesterday. Even though access to the Bureau was always restricted for members of the public, no one was taking any chances.John greeted all of his personal guard once they arrived on the ground floor. Agent Gregg was there, too, as well as four other security agents who Agent Gregg had said yesterday were trained specifically to spot any signs of trouble in a crowd. Agent Gregg herself gave him a nod and said, “How are you feeling this morning, Seer Carter?”“Ready to go, Agent Gregg,” he told her. His own anticipation was building, and he could almost feel it in the air around him, too.“That’s what we like to hear.”The group went into the Petition Hall by the back entrance, which was only accessible via the enclosed walkway. Despite the various walls between him and the petitioners, John could hear a low hum of voices from the waiting area. He took a breath. Then he, Agent Gregg, and two of his guards went up the short flight of stairs to his receiving rooms.John looked around the room where he would be spending most of his time today. It was just as he’d left it last week, after his first tour of the place – with one exception that made him happy to see. The ridiculously ornate, throne-like chair they had originally put in here for him to sit in was gone, replaced with a way less fancy armchair. That had been his immediate request (or demand, actually) when he’d seen the chair. “I’m supposed to be sitting in here to help people, not intimidate them,” he had pointed out. “They’re already probably going to be nervous enough, coming here.” Not to mention they might already think I’m some kind of saint, he didn’t say. To his relief, Agent Gregg and the rest of the Bureau personnel who were in charge of setup just accepted his comments and promised they would change it.This new chair was upholstered with silver fabric, sure, but at least it was just a chair. It was across a small table from several nice, comfortable-looking chairs for petitioners. John had a stack of paper and several pens and pencils that would be at hand for him to write or draw details of what he Saw.“Okay,” said Agent Gregg, glancing around the room and then looking at John. “Does everything look all right for you?”“Yeah, I think so,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Who’s first?”~It was hard to put into words how that first day went, when John looked back on it that night. It certainly hadn’t been boring. All of his preparation had put him in pretty good stead, as far as using his Gift. But there was no way for him to have been truly prepared for how it felt to interact with each petitioner.His first petitioner had been a man named Gary Bowers, whose son Tony had gone missing on Mount Rainier in Washington state the previous spring. Mr. Bowers had followed the instructions the Bureau made available to the letter: he had brought a photo of Tony, posing with his hiking gear and beaming at the camera, for John to use. He had also brought along an old sweatshirt of his son’s – one of Tony’s favorites.“Before you get started, I just want to say,” the man said, looking at John with what John feared was too much hope given the odds in this situation, “thank you, however this turns out. Thank you, Seer, for being willing to help.”“It’s-- it’s my honor,” said John. He was supposed to save the formal response for the end of the interaction, but he figured he could use a shortened version for right now. He took off his gloves, and Mr. Bowers handed him the objects he’d brought.Once he had the photo and the sweatshirt, John took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and then used his Sight to focus on the objects in front of him. It didn’t feel quite the same as it had during his practice sessions. He made himself not panic about that. That was only logical. After what seemed like far too long of absolutely nothing happening or changing, there was a sudden slight shift. Now he could See the dark reddish aura he was expecting. It was sort of shimmery, and it was all around the photo and on the sweatshirt. He concentrated on that aura.That was when things started going differently again. After a minute or two, the red seemed to turn darker. And … the room seemed to get colder. Almost oppressively colder. John shivered. The room had been a fine temperature until now. He kept focusing.A second later, the temperature went from very cold to absolutely freezing. John struggled to draw a breath as he wrapped his free arm around himself. He knew he had to keep going. The information he needed was here, just out of reach. Or maybe just out of Sight.Still shivering, John pursued this sense, this knowledge that he needed to follow. The room around him vanished. He saw a glimpse of a smiling, laughing Tony Bowers, walking up a mountain trail. The man was clearly turning back to talk to someone. The image faded for a second, but then there Tony was again. This time, he was higher up the mountain, judging by the snow all around him. It didn’t seem like anyone was with him. John saw a distinctive, jutting rock formation, just to Tony’s right. And then Tony took a step further, and the snow and ice he was walking on gave way, and Tony plunged out of sight.Gasping, John pushed away from the table and grabbed for the pad of paper, managing to knock it and the writing implements onto the floor instead. But before he had fully returned to awareness of his surroundings, Agent Gregg was there, replacing the paper and pens while she called out his name. “Seer Carter? Are you all right?”He was still freezing, John realized. But there was something more important he had to do before he dealt with that. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He picked up a pen, and scooted closer to the table to draw on the pad of paper. The image of the jagged rock formation was still fresh in his mind. He’d never considered himself much of an artist, but the sketch he made matched his memory well enough that John was satisfied. “Here,” he said, turning toward Tony’s father. He stumbled a little as he stood up, but stayed upright. “Maybe … maybe a park ranger or someone can recognize … this place. That’s where--” He swallowed. “Tony was there right before he … fell.”A number of emotions passed across Mr. Bowers’ face. He nodded slowly, staring at the sketch in his hand. “I see. Thank you.” Then he looked up. “Hey, are you sure you’re okay, Seer Carter?”He was still shivering, John realized. And his heart rate was elevated, and so was his respiration. He stepped backward, managing to sit in his chair on the first try. “Uh … cold,” he said. But that didn’t make sense. He was indoors, and wearing his uniform, and he hadn’t been cold before this.“You’re cold?” Agent Gregg looked baffled, and so did Bowers and his guards.John nodded. He didn’t blame anyone for being confused, for all the reasons he himself had just listed. It didn’t make sense. All the same, his symptoms pointed to the beginnings of hypothermia.“All right.” Agent Gregg clapped her hands together and looked at Agent Olson and Agent Hill – John’s guards on duty. “You two, help the Seer to his breakroom. I’ll be right there.”“Is he going to be okay?” Bowers was asking, eyes wide. John missed whatever reassuring thing she said in response, because by then Olson and Hill were helping him up so that he could take the several steps necessary to get to the adjoining room. At least he made it there fine.Once he was in the other room, Hill got him a blanket, and Olson asked, “Do you want some coffee, or something else hot to drink, sir?”Warm fluids was a good idea. He should also move around, if he was really borderline hypothermic. John nodded. “Uh, decaf. Please.” With the blanket wrapped around himself, he started to pace the length of the room.Agent Gregg came in then. “How are you feeling, Seer Carter? Are you still cold?”“Doing better,” he said. Olson handed him a mug, so he slowed down enough to be able to drink safely without spilling. That helped right away, too. “Sorry. I don’t know why this is happening.”“No need to apologize,” she said, waving a hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong. And Mr. Bowers has an interesting hypothesis that might help explain what’s going on.”John looked at the doorway. They had left the door open, although he couldn’t see Mr. Bowers from here. “Really? What’s that?”“He asked whether this could have happened because you found his son at high altitude, on a mountain, where it’s very cold.”“Oh.” John blinked again. Now that Agent Gregg had said it, it seemed pretty obvious. “Yeah, I guess.” Then he winced. “God, I-- it was bad news. I didn’t even let him process it before I--”“He wasn’t offended,” she cut in gently. “In fact, if you’re up for it, he’d like to talk to you a little more before his session is done.”He considered his symptoms for a few seconds. He felt mostly back to normal. “Yeah, I’m up for it.”Once they were back in his receiving room, Mr. Bowers came over to him quickly. “Seer Carter! You look like-- Are you feeling better?”“Much better, thanks,” he said with a smile. Then the smile faded. “Look, Mr. Bowers, I-- I didn’t get a chance to say before, I’m sorry about your son. I wish the news was better.”“Thank you,” said Bowers. He sighed, and the grief was clear on his face. “But I knew it wasn’t likely to be good news. And at least now we have something to go on. To find him and bring him home. So, thank you, Seer. This means more to me and my family than I can say.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he sniffed and put out a hand to shake John’s.He had somehow managed to put his gloves back on during all of this, John noted as he shook the man’s hand. And now he could say the full formal response, which he really did mean: “It’s my honor to use my Gift to meet your need.”After the man had left, John turned to Agent Gregg and his guards. He opened his mouth, but then closed it. He couldn’t think of anything to say.“Well, we’ve certainly all learned something important already this morning,” was Agent Gregg’s comment. “Something that you couldn’t have learned during practice sessions.”John thought back to all the ‘missing’ objects he had found for other Bureau personnel as he was learning to seek, and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess none of those sessions really involved extreme temperatures or dangerous environments.”“Exactly. But a lot of what you do from now on will probably involve those kinds of things,” she said. “So we need to be ready for the effect these sessions will have on you, Seer.”He nodded again, and looked at Olson and Hill. “Thank you. For, uh, helping me even though it must have seemed kind of crazy.”“Not at all, sir,” said Hill. “It makes sense that this first day is going to be a learning process for all of us.” Olson agreed.And it continued to be one, throughout the whole day. His second petitioner had been three people, actually – from the Chicago PD. They had a missing kid they wanted John to find. That one was more tense, and also John made a mental note to talk to Agent Gregg right away about making sure situations like this, where the timing was so important, got priority in deciding who saw him first in a day. But he was able to locate the little boy quickly. The kid was scared and hungry, but alive. That felt really good.He had been scheduled to have twenty minutes’ break between each petitioner. Sometimes, he’d found that he needed every minute of that time – just to decompress, to let go of the emotions and images associated with what he had Seen. Sometimes he only needed half that. Agent Gregg deferred to him whenever he told her he was ready early for the next person.By lunchtime, he was happy for a break but also feeling good about how he’d been able to help so many people already. Much like how he used to feel after a busy first half of his shift at the hospital. This was good work. Sure, there were hard parts – like when he had to tell a petitioner that their missing family member was dead – but even that was valuable.By six thirty, although he hadn’t stopped feeling that satisfaction about his work, he was also exhausted. He’d seen sixteen petitioners (both individuals and small groups), and he knew there were still hopeful people waiting in the Hall when he left – but he was just about dead on his feet. He yawned repeatedly on the way back out of the Hall, and through the building, and back to his quarters. His back was bothering him a bit, too, which was annoying.“Are you all right, Seer Carter?” Agent Gregg asked, when he put a hand to his back with a wince as they got to the elevator.“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just – my back has been getting a little sore sometimes. From what Annette-- Healer Ford says, it’s probably mostly in my head, though.”Agent Gregg frowned. “Hmm. Well, in your head or not, you shouldn't have to just deal with it. You know we have a fully-stocked pharmacy down on the medical level, right?”“Yeah.” It had been part of his initial tour. He blinked. “Um. Don’t I have to see a doctor to get meds?”“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” she said mildly.“Okay, but in the outside world, it would be illegal for me to prescribe anything for myself,” he pointed out.She shrugged. “We have another doctor down on the medical floor, but as far as Bureau rules go, it’s not required that you see him.”That was … interesting. There were a lot of reasons it didn’t seem like a great idea to cut out the middleman, but he supposed it was simpler. “We do at least have a pharmacist on duty, right?”“We do.” They got into the elevator. “I’m guessing you’d prefer not to eat dinner in the cafeteria tonight?”He shook his head. “Yeah – not tonight. I’m pretty tired.”“You let me know if you want to adjust your schedule tomorrow, okay?”“I will. Good night, Agent Gregg.”~The extra-strength acetaminophen and ibuprofen (which the pharmacist gave him upon request) took the edge off – for a while. But as John got more used to the rhythm of his work, he found to his displeasure that it wasn’t just the lingering pain issues he was having to deal with. He was having dreams. Nightmares, about the stabbing. Not every night, but frequently. And when he woke up from those nightmares, it was basically impossible for him to get back to sleep. Sometimes Annette was with him and woke up when he did. Those times, she was often able to help him relax enough to get a few more hours. But she wasn’t there every night. And when she was, he didn’t always wake her up – intentionally or unintentionally. He tried not to, in fact. She wasn’t his personal Healer, at his beck and call for every little thing he couldn’t handle. Plus, she needed her rest just as much as he did. Still, the dreams and accompanying lack of sleep were a problem.He still found a lot of satisfaction in his work, most of the time. He was starting to get a lot of missing persons cases from law enforcement, such that he and Agent Gregg had sat down and worked out a few additional guidelines to make sure he didn’t, as she put it, “start doing the police’s job for them.” Which was to say, he had no problem being called on when the police couldn’t find someone, but he wasn’t supposed to be the first or only step in the process. That would have led to no one else having any available time to petition, for one thing.The number of petitioners hadn’t slowed at all in the three weeks since he had first started. In fact, the Chicago location of the Bureau was getting more and more interest from around the country – and even internationally. If John let himself think about his growing fame for more than a few seconds at a time, it was pretty easy to get overwhelmed. So he did his best not to watch any news or read any articles about himself, and to just keep doing his work every day, focusing on each individual petitioner.But the pain was continuing to bother him – usually at the end of a long day. It was clear that the Tylenol and the NSAIDs weren’t going to be enough. That meant he had to decide on a regimen of something stronger.“We have hydrocodone, codeine, Percocet, and a few other options,” the pharmacist said, in response to his question that evening. “Just let me know your preferred dosage and the number you want to start with.”John scratched the back of his neck under the neckband. He was going to have to be careful here. “Let me start with hydrocodone, ten milligrams, just five doses,” he said. He really just needed enough to keep the pain from keeping him awake, on the nights when it bothered him. If he stuck to a limited number, this could work.~He almost missed the signs, when his next petitioner came into the room a few days later. Sure, it had been a while since he’d been in that mindset at all – but still, he wanted to kick himself afterward for not recognizing it right away. At least he could take some comfort in knowing that the woman had gotten the care she needed, and that he’d helped make sure it was in time.As usual, Agent Gregg briefed him ahead of time about his next petitioner. She told him that Amelia Swanson was here to ask the Seer for closure about her missing husband. She wanted to know specifically whether he was alive or dead, and if he was alive, where he was.“So, he ran off? Or he just disappeared?” John asked.“Mrs. Swanson described it as ‘disappeared,’ but of course there could be more to that story. You’ll have to ask her for more details,” Agent Gregg said.“Yep.”The session started normally enough. Mrs. Swanson came into the room, and John greeted her. She looked awed as she shook his gloved hand, which was very normal. John invited her to sit down – and that was when he started to notice something was off. Mrs. Swanson – who looked to be an otherwise healthy middle-aged woman – frowned as she walked toward the petitioners’ chairs, reaching down to rub at a spot on her left leg with the hand that wasn’t currently holding a photo of her husband and a hat of his. “Ouch.”“Are you all right, Mrs. Swanson?” John asked.“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, grimacing a little as she sat down. “Just a little muscle cramp. I’ve been having them off and on. But anyway, let me tell you a bit about my husband, Jeff.”If he’d been thinking in a medical mindset, John would’ve followed up on that comment. But he was so focused on doing his job – not his old job – that he just went on with the session. He took the objects Mrs. Swanson had brought, looking at them carefully and fixing Jeff Swanson’s image in his mind. Then he looked back at his petitioner. “Okay, Mrs. Swanson. What I’m going to do next is-- Mrs. Swanson?”Right then, the woman had grimaced again, this time putting a hand to the left side of her chest. She shook her head. Her face was pale. “Sorry, Seer. I-- it’s just … I don’t feel so well, all of a sudden.”John stood up and went over to her immediately. “Can you describe how you’re feeling exactly?”“Well, just then,” she said, “my heart felt like it wasn’t beating quite right. Not-- not like it stopped, but it just wasn’t usual. And--” She looked up at him, eyes wide. “I don’t think this was the first time, either.”Irregular heartbeat. “How long has it been going on?” he asked. He reached for her wrist, watching for her nod of consent before he took it to check her pulse. It was fast at the moment. He wished he had a stethoscope handy.“Uh, maybe about a day,” she admitted, after a moment. “Not longer than that. Or at least, not that I noticed. Of course, yesterday I was…” She trailed off.“Yesterday you were what?” he prompted.She looked embarrassed. “Still recovering from a bout of food poisoning,” she said, shrugging. “So I was pretty distracted.”Food poisoning – so, vomiting and diarrhea, which might deplete any number of things in her system. “I’m glad you recovered from that,” he said. “But today you’re noticing your heartbeat is irregular. Any other symptoms?”Mrs. Swanson ended up telling him she had been experiencing muscle cramps, tremors, and muscle pain. She also mentioned, upon being asked, that she was taking a particular blood pressure medication, though she’d never noticed any side effects from it before. “I don’t know what’s going on, what it all means,” she said. She sniffed, and wiped under her eyes. “And I’m sorry, Seer. This isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing.”“What I’m supposed to be doing,” John said gently, “is helping people who come here to be helped.” He was getting a clearer picture of what Mrs. Swanson was suffering from, and it was a good thing he had (finally) noticed something was wrong. Obviously he couldn’t confirm his theory because he couldn't personally order the tests she would need, but he could see that she got them here. He turned to Agent Lee. “Agent Lee, I think Mrs. Swanson here has a serious but easily treatable medical condition, but she obviously needs some tests to confirm it. Can you see to it that she gets a blood test and an ECG? She needs to be checked for potassium deficiency, among other possibilities.”“Potassium deficiency?” The woman looked at him. “Is that what you think I have?”“It’s a strong contender,” he told her, smiling as he helped her stand up carefully. “Which would be good news, because if that’s the issue, you probably only need to take some supplements and talk to your doctor about your blood pressure medicine. Some of those medicines can decrease potassium levels, so your doctor might need to change you to a different one.”She looked amazed. “How did you know all that? Did you See it?”He smiled again, fighting back a wave of nostalgia, and shook his head. “Not this time. I used to be an ER doctor at County General, though, so I dealt with this kind of situation pretty often.”“Oh.” Mrs. Swanson blinked.“Seer Carter, two security agents are waiting just outside the room to escort Mrs. Swanson down to medical,” said Agent Lee then. “They’ll make sure she gets the tests and treatment she needs – and ma’am, I’ll personally make sure you’re rescheduled for another session with the Seer for as soon as you’re well.” This last statement was directed to Mrs. Swanson.“Oh,” she said again, and then thanked both of them.“Yes, thank you, Agent Lee,” said John, wishing he’d thought of that last issue.After she had left, John let out a sigh and sat down in his chair again. It was strange, to have this job mix with his old one.“Are you all right, John?” Agent Gregg asked him. She had stayed quiet this whole time, he noted.“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. Clearing his throat, he looked toward the other door. “Who’s next?”~~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Two Months LaterHis last case of the day stuck with him in a way that most of his others hadn’t been sticking with him. He couldn’t figure out why, either. Maybe part of it was how distracted he’d been once he realized he hadn’t brought his pills with him to the Petition Hall – but at least he had still managed to find the missing teenager for the parents. And now he didn’t have that excuse, since he’d taken his evening dose of hydrocodone. So why were that teenager and his parents still lingering in his thoughts?Annette definitely noticed his distraction during dinner – as well as the fact that he didn’t talk much about the petitioners he’d seen that day. “You sure you’re doing all right?” she asked him, as she watched him pick at his dinner at the little table in his suite.“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. He set down his fork. “Just not really hungry, I guess.”It was only after they had gotten into bed that what was bothering him finally crystallized. That image he’d seen, of the teenager shaking and shivering in the alley. (He’d seen his own cousin like that and much worse, not too many years ago.) On the very same day as he found that kid, he’d been anxious, short-tempered, and unable to focus as well as he wanted, almost as soon as he realized he didn’t have his pills with him.John bit back a curse. No, that wasn’t possible. It couldn't be. And yet, he couldn't dismiss it that easily. After all, how long had it been since he’d gone through a day without taking any pills?But no, he had a real need. He only took the pills because of pain. He shut his eyes and tried to relax. He should really get to sleep, instead of obsessing about this.His eyes refused to stay closed. Why was he continuing to deal with so much pain by this point, anyway? Even if it was mostly in his head, like Annette had suggested, some of it had to be physical. Which shouldn't be the case. Annette had healed him. Hadn’t she? That was what she had told him.Now his mind was fully awake, despite the ridiculousness of that last thought. Of course she had healed him completely, as much as she could. What possible reason would she have not to?Unless… He gave himself a mental shake. No. That was absurd. There would be no reason for a Healer to purposefully leave a patient partially unhealed. Not even a patient with an extremely rare, powerful Gift. The Bureau already had plenty of rules and safeguards in place to keep their most powerful SGs away from danger and under their control. They didn’t need to use underhanded, cold-blooded methods like manipulating someone into an addiction.“I can feel you thinking,” Annette said then, startling him enough that he flinched.Taking a breath, John turned toward her. “Sorry.”“No, don’t apologize,” she said, facing him as well. “Just tell me what’s going on. What’s keeping you up?” She reached out a hand to push his bangs away from his face. “Are you still thinking about that teenager – your last case?”“Not really.” He shrugged. Could he talk to her about this? “It’s just … a crazy thought that I can’t seem to tell myself to let go of.” Maybe if he spoke it out loud to her, it would lose any semblance of believability. And then he and Annette could just go to sleep and forget about it.“Well,” she said, with a little smile just visible in the darkness of the room, “how about you get a second opinion? On whether it’s crazy or not, I mean.”He huffed a laugh. “Okay, but you’ve got to be honest with me. Don’t just humor me, all right?”“And when do I do that?”“Fair enough,” he acknowledged with a grin. Then any hint of teasing faded, as it occurred to him that he could make sure she was being honest with him. But did he need to do that? Was this all just paranoia? And if it was, wasn’t that just another sign of what he didn’t want to believe he was dealing with?“Whenever you’re ready,” she prompted, when he fell silent again.“It’s just…” He trailed off. Then he shook his head. He needed to clear the air, or this might just keep worrying him for who knew how long. “It’s just, Seeing that junkie kid today made me realize: I’ve been taking prescription painkillers for months now. If I were anywhere outside the Bureau, I’d be having trouble getting renewals for the prescription by now. People would--” He cleared his throat. “People would be telling me to be worried about chemical dependence. Addiction.”Annette’s eyebrows rose. “Wow. Are you saying … you think you could be addicted?”“I don’t know.” He sighed and turned to gaze at the ceiling. “It’s concerning me, though.”She was quiet for a moment. Then she moved closer. “There’s a simple way to find out if you are addicted, isn’t there? Not that I’m saying it would be fun, of course.”He snorted. “Not at all.” He remembered well the details of helping Chase through his withdrawal, and none of it had looked fun. Although it wouldn't have to last as long for him, he supposed, if he had a Healer right there. Which reminded him of the other big issue. “The other thing that’s worrying me is why I’m still in enough pain to need the pills so often.” He had to look at her for this part. He could even decide to look at her with his Sight, if he thought he needed to. He rolled back toward her. “I know you said some of the pain is probably psychosomatic, but it can’t be all of it. Which kind of makes me wonder if … you did something different from usual, when you healed me.”She looked like a huge cat creature right now. And she wasn’t answering him. In fact, she was looking away. Without looking up at him, she finally said, “I’d be happy to do what I can for you right now, if you want, John.”John stared at her, watching the edges of the shadowy cat that she was right now flicker and move. “Annette,” he insisted, sitting up. “Tell me you healed me completely, back on my first day here. Tell me.”Annette cocked her head at him and tried to smile. “What do you mean? I'm a Healer. Of course I healed you. That's my job.”The speed of the flame-like edges had sped up while she talked, and her golden eyes darkened. John swallowed hard, past the bitter betrayal. He had to keep going now. “So you're saying you didn't purposefully leave enough of my wound imperfectly healed so that I would develop chronic pain, so I would then end up dependent on painkillers? You weren’t trying to keep me under control?”“That's-- that's ridiculous, that's--”“What?” He interrupted. “Crazy? Is that what you were going to say?” Scoffing, he leaned closer to her, and shut his eyes for a second. When he reopened them, he could see her actual face. He wanted to see her reaction. “You really shouldn't bother telling these lies, Annette. Maybe you forgot: my Gift lets me See when someone is lying.”Her eyes went wide, and then she swallowed and looked away. “Oh.”“‘Oh’? That’s it?” John pulled away from her so fast that he almost hit his head on the headboard. “You don’t even have any excuses? Nothing?”“Would you listen to any justification I could give you?” she snapped. “You think you know all the details already, so why should I bother?”He narrowed his eyes. “All right.” Then he reactivated his Sight. “Go ahead. I’m interested to hear what you might possibly have to say.”She took a deep breath, dropping her gaze away from him again. “You’re right that I was … encouraged not to heal you the same way as I would normally heal someone. And I hated it – although I recognize that doesn’t mean much to you, since it’s your body we’re talking about. But it wasn’t-- it wasn’t to make you get addicted to painkillers! I swear it wasn’t.”“Oh, yeah?” She wasn’t lying, but that didn’t mean this was easy to listen to. “Care to tell me why, if it wasn’t for that?”“I don’t know,” the Healer said, sounding miserable even through the effects of his activated Sight. “If I did, I would tell you, John, believe me. All I know is that it was supposed to end up being helpful in some way, for your Gift.”He scoffed again. “Uh huh.” A thought occurred to him then that made him go still for a second. He cleared his throat. “Annette.”“Yeah?”“Can you heal me again? Completely, this time?” He made himself look at her so he would See if she was telling the truth. “And get rid of my dependence, while you’re at it?”Her golden eyes widened. “I-- I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t know.”“Will you try?” he insisted. “You owe me that much, don’t you?”Annette let out a breath as she said, “John, I-- of course I can try. I’d be glad to try. But I want to tell you right now: I wasn’t lying – not totally – when I told you all those weeks ago that I thought at least some of your pain was psychological. And that’s beyond my scope of healing ability, if so. You probably know more than I do – how much of dependence or addiction is physical, and how much is psychological?”John laughed once and rubbed a hand over his face. “Good question. But there’s not a lot of agreement among medical professionals on that topic. So… I can’t say.”“All right.” She swallowed. “Then I guess we try, and see what happens.”“Wait.” He’d had yet another moment of realization, which was bringing all of his anger right back. “I need you to tell me something else first. It was Agent Gregg who told you not to heal me completely, wasn’t it? Because it would be beneficial for my Gift?”Annette sighed and nodded.Agent Gregg. His mentor, the one who had been guiding him through his arrival here and this entire transition. The person he’d relied on the most. Hot tears threatened at the corners of his eyes for a second, but he held them back. Why would she have done this? Annette didn’t think it was to control him, but what other reason was there? How could chronic pain be useful in any way for anyone’s Gift?He needed to talk to her. John stood up, and went to pull on the uniform he’d worn that day. “I’m going to go talk to Agent Gregg,” he said, not looking at Annette. “I’d appreciate it if you were gone by the time I got back.”He heard her take a pained breath. “But John – I still haven’t tried healing you again.”“I’ll call you if I need any more help from you.” As he moved toward the door, he heard her getting up behind him. Which was good. He didn’t want to have to actually throw her out.His guards didn’t seem surprised to see him appear at his door a second later. They’d probably heard the shouting, John thought. He didn’t bother to tell them where he was going. They would follow him.Agent Gregg usually worked late, so that meant she was probably in her office. He could’ve called ahead to be sure, but it was a little too late for that now. He kept going. Her office door had a light under it. She was there.“Agent Gregg!” He pounded on her door, relieved even though his fury that his guards (jailers, they were his jailers, no matter how friendly they were with him) weren't pulling him back. “Agent Gregg! Dammit, open the door!”After a few more seconds, he heard her voice from inside. “Seer Carter, I'm coming to open the door. Please give me a moment.”He stood there, breathing heavily, until her office door finally opened. She looked at him in confusion and concern. “What's going on, Seer? Do you need--”“I need to talk to you,” he interrupted. “Inside. Now.”She stood aside and gestured for him to enter. Once he was in, she shut the door and went to sit behind her desk. “So, what can I help you with, Seer Carter?”Scoffing at this, John pulled out the bottle of Vicodin from his uniform pocket and slammed it onto her desk. Then he activated his Sight. “Are you the one who told Annette-- Healer Ford to do this to me?”The deer creature who was Agent Gregg frowned. “What are you talking about?”She seemed honestly confused, which threw him for a second. But he shook it off. “You can't tell me,” he said through gritted teeth, “that you don't know about my … use of painkillers.”“No, I do know that you've been refilling that prescription for some time now,” said the deer calmly. “Do you want some other course of treatment for your chronic pain issues, John?”Clenching his fists, John made himself speak in something other than a shout. “What I want is for you to tell me that you didn't order Healer Ford to leave enough of my wound unhealed, so I would end up needing painkillers to control the pain. So I would end up as, as an addict. So you would have another way to keep your pet Seer under your control!”At that, Agent Gregg started showing clear signs of distress. She moved her hands restlessly, then made herself stop. “Is that what you think I did?”“Give me a reason to think something else,” he replied, aware that his voice was suddenly raw.She sighed. “John,” she said, and even with all the weird layering, he could hear her grief, “I-- I wasn't trying to make you addicted to pain pills, or trying to keep you under control. Not like that.” Her edges weren't flickering faster, and her eyes were still golden. “But I did encourage Healer Ford to make sure you had a reason to need the pills.”“Why?!” he shouted.Now she wasn't looking up at him. “Because we were all-- I was so sure your Gift was going to be a strong one, but I wanted to make it even stronger. Martin said you have the capability to divine. And the legends, the writings said that a Seer's mind could be … opened, if they had access to the right substances.”John stared. She was telling the truth. He tried to process this without blowing up. Not yet. He needed more answers first. “I don’t remember seeing any of those writings,” he said, amazed at how calm his voice was. Because it was true, he didn’t remember those ones. Unless you counted the ancient stories of the Pythoness, the oracle at Delphi, the line of god-chosen Seer women who had been driven into ecstatic trances by inhaling a mysterious vapor coming out of a chasm in the rock. “Were they not included in the texts you sent me? On purpose, maybe?”“They were not,” she said, her voice low.“And did these legends specify opioids?”“Not exactly,” she admitted, “but they mentioned an extract from a type of poppy. Among other substances.”John let out an incredulous, sharp laugh. “Well, maybe it would have been more effective for you to just give me heroin, so I could shoot up right before I start work every day. It’s more potent in that form, you know. Or maybe you could’ve gone with LSD, if you wanted something that would really expand my mind!”Agent Gregg flinched. “I didn’t--”But he wasn’t done. “Because I’ve been on hydrocodone for two months now, Agent Gregg, and I’m looking back on that time now, and I don’t notice any positive correlation between a recent dose, and feeling like my Gift is any stronger. All I’ve noticed is a tendency to get a little distracted if I go too long without a dose!” He swallowed, as the image of the teenage boy he’d found today in that alley came to mind again. The junkie. He thought of Chase again, too. The nausea that came with the reality of those images was enough to make him turn away and lean one hand against the wall of the office. “My God.”“Seer Carter, are you all--”“No!” he yelled, turning back around to glare at her. “No, I’m not all right. Dammit, Agent Gregg – I’m a doctor! You could’ve discussed this with me, given me the whole story, and we could have figured out a dosage of something, a way to see if I could tap into something that could increase my potential without…” His voice cracked, but he pushed past it. “Without turning me into this!”She didn’t have anything to say to that. But John had one more thing he needed to say. He walked back to stand in front of her desk. “You-- you and the directors pledged to protect me from people who might exploit me, Agent Gregg. But from where I’m standing – and I’m not saying I don’t have any responsibility here, because I do – but from where I’m standing, it looks to me like you’re the one who was trying to exploit me.”Agent Gregg put a hand over her mouth. “No.”“Yes.” He picked up the pill bottle, tucking it back into his pocket. Then he sighed. “I’m taking tomorrow off. I need to try to get a handle on this, all of this. However this all plays out, though, there’s one thing I’m sure of: you need to stay the hell away from me. I don’t want any more of your help.”He left her with that statement.~Saying that the timing of John’s first instance of divination was strange would be an understatement, he thought – much later. Of course, the third facet of the Sight had always been known to be unpredictable, so at least it lived up to its reputation for John.It was only a day after he had found out that Annette and Agent Gregg had been lying to him from the beginning of his time at the Bureau. He hadn’t slept more than an hour or two after he left Agent Gregg in her office, and he had drunk a lot more than he ever would on a work night, in any kind of normal circumstances. Then again, nothing about it had been normal. The hangover the next morning hadn’t been as bad as he feared it might be. The worst part of his alarm going off had been the realization that Annette wasn’t there … and that he couldn’t imagine ever wanting her to be there again, even while he also already missed her. Even the idea of seeing her as her patient, to find out if she could heal him, wasn’t something he could deal with right now. Not after a breach of trust this big.He’d forgotten to turn off his alarm, but at least he’d told Agent Gregg last night not to expect to see him that day. The idea of working was intolerable. Or at least, it was at first. But as morning crept towards noon, the idea of hiding in his room, alone, while today’s petitioners’ hopes faded, became even more intolerable. There was nothing for him to do in his room. Not unless he wanted to drink some more, or reread some of his books about Seers. On the other hand, if he went to work, at least he could accomplish something, and focus on other people’s problems for a while. So he dragged himself out of his room and went to the door. He probably looked like hell, but he still needed to let someone know that he would be available after lunch. So he took a breath, unlocked the door, and opened it.Lee and Randall were there. To their credit, neither of them did more than raise their eyebrows at how he looked. “Hi,” he said, clearing his throat. “I, uh, I don’t know who all needs to be informed, but I think I’ll be ready to go to work in the afternoon.”“Yes, sir,” said Agent Randall. “We’ll let Agent Gregg know right away.”John shut his eyes for a second, and then said, “You can tell her, but – please remind her of what I said to her last night. That still applies.” He couldn’t imagine how he could spend even half a day in a room with Agent Gregg, relying on her if he needed help. Of course, he didn’t know who she’d get to stand in for her, but anyone else would be better.“Understood, sir,” Agent Lee said.A shower and a shave made everything feel slightly better. Still, John found that he could barely stomach the bowl of chicken soup he ordered for lunch. Which was not a good start to a work day, even half of one. He briefly considered changing his mind about going again, but then shook it off. What else was he going to do? It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go, either, or anyone else to talk to. That realization was much more crushing than usual.It felt odd to make his way to the Petition Hall without Agent Gregg at his side. In some ways it was even weirder that the replacement she had decided on was one of the security agents who usually watched the crowd in the receiving area, Agent McCall. John had spoken to him before, but the guy was not exactly a conversationalist. Still, he supposed having someone quiet but good at spotting trouble would be all right. For now, at least.The best thing that could be said about that half-day was that he made it through. Sure, he was able to do the seeking that the petitioners asked him to do, but it didn’t seem to flow as easily as it used to. And although he went ahead and took his full break between each petitioner, that rest wasn’t even close to enough to make up for his lack of sleep. He wasn’t even getting the rush of satisfaction that usually gave him enough energy to keep going. By the time he stopped for the day, he was running on fumes.“Seer, are you doing all right?” Agent Hill asked, as he stumbled on the way out of the receiving room, catching himself on the railing. His guards were right there as usual.John wanted to say he was fine. He took another few steps, and ended up leaning against a wall. “I don’t know.”“We can take it slow, sir,” said Agent Olson. “No rush.”They did make it back to his quarters. It took an absurdly long amount of time. John managed to thank his guards, and then staggered into his bedroom, taking off his gloves, shoes, and outer uniform shirt. His back hurt. He only considered for a few seconds before tossing back a couple of Vicodin with a gulp of water. Then he collapsed onto his bed. He was out like a light.But that only lasted for the first four hours. At a little after ten, he woke up with a gasp and a sense of overwhelming, looming terror. At first, he had no idea what was going on. It didn’t seem like the aftereffects of a nightmare. For one thing, it wasn’t fading – it was getting worse. Then he realized that the fear was accompanied by flashes, quick glimpses of people’s faces and a scene that looked vaguely familiar. This was something to do with his Gift.Once he realized that, John reached out with his Sight the way he would if he were seeking. The results were immediate and overpowering. He Saw something, yes: a scene out of a horrifically realistic nightmare. He was watching it unfold inside a large mall. He recognized which one, he was pretty sure. The place was crowded, and everyone was going about their business. But from his vantage point, John could see when some of the wiring inside one of the bigger department stores, in a back room, started to spark. No one else was noticing, though. He watched, tense and unable to look anywhere else, as the sparks got more and more frequent. The fire caught. It spread quickly, engulfing the supplies in the room. There was a smoke detector – John could see it – but it didn’t go off. And it still didn’t go off, as the fire spread through vents and along walls. And then John was following its progress as it traveled down through the wiring to a lower floor. This place was also storage. To his horror, John saw that some of what was being stored appeared to be pressurized gas or chemicals or something (why was this being stored at a mall?!). He couldn’t see the canisters’ labels clearly because of the smoke. But he could tell the pressure inside them was building. He wished he could find someone, shout a warning. Instead, he was forced to watch as the canisters exploded. The building shook, and the flames roared higher and hotter. People were screaming and running and falling. Some were burning. Some were trapped under fallen pieces of wreckage caused by the explosion. Some were knocked down and trampled. He could feel and see so many people’s terror.Finally, John wrenched himself out of the vision, with enough force that he ended up on the floor by his bed. He was soaked in sweat, trembling and gasping. The vision wasn’t fading. But he needed-- he needed to do something. He needed to tell someone about this. It was going to happen soon, but it hadn’t happened yet. He knew that much. That part made sense, since it was nighttime and the mall wouldn’t be open now.All of these thoughts passed through his head in a few seconds, and yet he was still lying where he had fallen, shaking and trying to breathe. He kept seeing what had happened – what was going to happen – to all those people. As if he was right there with them. He could almost smell the smoke and hear the screams.He wasn’t going to be able to get up and talk to anyone, John thought, under the all-consuming fear that was keeping him stuck where he was. But he had to do something. Then he remembered: there was a panic button on his bedside table, built into the side of the cradle of his phone. Agent Gregg had told him a few days after he moved in that if he needed help but couldn’t get to the door himself, pressing that button would alert his guards and unlock his door for them.With what seemed like a monumental effort, Carter pulled himself partially upright. Then he reached up and felt around blindly until he found the button. He pressed it, and then fell back against the wall. Hopefully that had worked.A few seconds later, he heard Agents Olson and Hill came running in, calling his name. He wished he could answer, but it was all he could do to keep breathing and stay in the present.It didn’t take long for his guards to find him. They holstered their weapons, and rushed over to him. “Seer Carter! Are you injured? Do you need a Healer?”Olson looked like a shifting, flame-edged wolf right now, and Hill like a huge dog. John shook his head, still taking in each breath as a sharp gasp. It was possible he’d hit his head on the way down here, he supposed, but that was not the issue.“Can you tell us what’s wrong then, sir?” Olson asked. Hill turned on the bedside lamp on the other side of the bed, for which John was grateful. He didn’t think he could deal with either the overhead light or the lamp closest to him right now.Shaking his head again, John shut his eyes. Now that help was here, what could he do? He needed… he needed…His eyes snapped open. His Sight was still active, but now he knew what – or who – he needed. “Gregg,” he gasped out. If anyone could get him to the point where he could actually communicate what he’d Seen, it was her.The wolf and the dog looked at each other. “You want us to get Agent Gregg?” Hill asked.John nodded. His lungs hurt, and he was going to have a hell of a lot of sore muscles tomorrow given how he was tensing everything right now. But he just couldn’t stop.Hill took his walkie-talkie off his belt and made a call. John wouldn’t have minded listening to what the man said, but he was slipping back into the vision of the fire at the mall. Oh, God.“Seer Carter! John!” The voice cut through the smoke and fear.John blinked rapidly. The deer creature that was his former friend and mentor was here, crouching right in front of him.“There you are,” said Agent Gregg. He thought she might have smiled, though he could tell she was anxious. “Your guards said you need my help?”He nodded. But she needed a little more explanation than that. He tried and mostly failed to clear his throat. “Scared.”After a second, her golden eyes widened. “Oh! Oh, okay. Of course.” She stretched out her hand, and touched the side of his head. And then the paralyzing fear finally, finally faded.John shut his eyes, letting out a long sigh. When he opened them, he could see his guards and Agent Gregg as their human selves. He met Gregg’s eyes. His anger at her actions was still there, still very real, but there was something more important here. “Thank you.”She swallowed, and then moved back as he very ungracefully pulled himself upright. “It’s-- it’s my honor--” she started to say, but he cut her off.“I had a vision,” he said, sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. “I need to tell you what I Saw before I forget any of it. I think it’s going to happen tomorrow.”Agent Gregg’s eyes got even wider. “Okay. Then let’s turn on the light, and I’ll get a notepad so I can write down the details as you give them.”By the time John had given all the useful details about the fire at the mall (it was the Woodfield, he was almost one hundred percent positive), he was exhausted – but he felt better than he had in a while. Of course, there was still the anxiety of waiting, hoping this could be stopped in time. But he had done what he could. Agent Gregg had passed on everything he said to law enforcement, the fire department, and the various relevant managers at the mall. At very least, the disaster that he had Seen would not happen the same way as it had in the vision.He sat on his bed while Agent Gregg talked to … someone, out in his front room. His guards were already back at their posts. Or maybe it was time for the next shift already. He was so tired. He was pretty sure he could go to sleep if he lay down, but he also really needed a shower. But he was too tired to do that. So instead he just sat there.“John.”John flinched, just the smallest bit, and looked up. Agent Gregg was standing in his bedroom doorway. He let out a breath. “Yeah?”“What are you still doing awake?” She gave him a faint, fond smile, and crossed her arms. “You look like death warmed over.”He snorted. “Kind of how I feel.” Then he looked at the floor. “Truth is, I’d be asleep already … but I’d really like a shower.”“Ah.” She nodded, and then took a step into the room. “If you’d like, I can give you a very temporary jolt of enthusiasm. It’s not quite the same as an actual energy boost, but the feeling will last you at least long enough to get back to bed. Regardless, you have the day off – the whole day off – tomorrow. I suggest you take it all.”Saturday. Tomorrow was Saturday. Normally, he would work a few hours, to accommodate those people who didn’t have any time free during the work week. But he was planning on sleeping as much of tomorrow as he could, so taking the whole day seemed like a great idea. And as for the other thing she’d just said… Eventually his sluggish brain processed it, and he said, “You can do that? The, the enthusiasm thing, I mean?”“Yes. Would you like me to?”He blinked slowly. He hadn’t been watching her with his Sight activated, he realized. But he couldn’t think of any reason why she’d be lying to him right now. “Please.”So she came over and touched his head again. A second later, he felt – well, ‘jolt of enthusiasm’ was a good description. Like he’d just heard a really interesting idea and couldn’t wait to try it. He stood up. “Thanks.”Agent Gregg opened her mouth, and then just said, “Happy to help. Good night, Seer.”He still couldn’t quite bring himself to treat this like a normal interaction that would have happened before he’d learned about her manipulation, but he did nod and walk her to the door.Besides, he thought with a wince as he headed for the bathroom, it was possible she had been right. Or at least partly right. After all, he’d never done any divining before he started taking Vicodin.~~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Saturday AfternoonHaleh didn’t mean to eavesdrop.Okay, she did mean to do it. No one here could expect her not to start listening in on a patient talking to her boyfriend, when the patient in question mentioned Carter. Haleh met Lydia’s eye, and then casually went over to the partially curtained-off area, where Deirdre Jackson (who had come in with a badly sprained wrist and was waiting for a doctor to discharge her) was talking to her boyfriend Ned.“I told you how he looked when I saw him yesterday afternoon, right?” she was saying, in a low but excited tone.Ned sounded confused. “I mean, you said you were glad you ended up getting to see him at all, since he didn’t show up in the morning and they said he wasn’t going to.”“Yeah, that’s right! But it was pretty obvious why he hadn’t showed up in the morning,” Deirdre said, “when I did see him. He looked – I dunno. I mean, he was just as cute as in all the pictures, but like, when he wasn’t talking to me, or doing his seeking thing, he just looked … really tired.”“So?” Ned scoffed. “That’s not exactly a big deal, babe.” At her exclamation, he went on hurriedly, “No, no – obviously it’s a big deal that you got to meet the Seer, and that he found your mom’s will. All I meant was, people get tired. Even Seers, I guess.”“Yeah, I guess,” said the girl, with a heavy sigh. “I just … I felt bad for him. I don’t know why. It didn’t seem like just normal tiredness.”There was a brief pause, and then Ned said, “Well, at least he should feel pretty good today, right? After saving all those people?”Deirdre sounded happier when she said, “Yeah. That’s true. God, imagine what would’ve happened if the Seer hadn’t warned everyone about the mall, Ned! Briana and Melanie were going to go there today. What if--?”“Hey, hey,” said Ned. “Shh. Don’t worry about it. Thanks to the Seer, everyone’s fine.”The conversation moved on to more about Deirdre’s friends then, so Haleh moved away and went back to where Lydia was waiting. “So?” said the other nurse. “What were they saying about Carter?”“Apparently, he was supposed to work a full day yesterday, but only showed up in the afternoon,” Haleh reported quietly. “Deirdre was one of the petitioners who saw him. She said she felt bad for him. That he looked really tired.”Lydia frowned. “Huh. That’s different from how he’s been looking in the papers. He looked pretty happy, I thought.” At Haleh’s look, she put her hands on her hips. “Hey. Don’t pretend I’m the only one who’s been following whatever crumbs of news the BGM chooses to release about him.”“All right, all right,” she said, raising her hands. “I saw those articles, too. And I agree with you.”The two women were quiet for a few seconds, as the ER hummed with activity around them. Then Lydia sighed and said, “It’s not like we can do much about it, if they’re mistreating Carter somehow. Can we?”Haleh was about to agree when she saw Benton coming down the hall, in conversation with Greene. “I don’t know, Lydia, but I know some folks who should be able to find out.”But Dr. Greene wasn’t anywhere to be seen when they had a moment to look later on. And when Haleh and Lydia cornered Benton and asked what he’d done to find out about how Carter was doing, his answer was less than satisfactory.“So you called once, months ago, and didn’t even leave a message?” Haleh crossed her arms. “That was all the effort you thought Carter was worth?”Benton looked around at the people who had started to stare at them and hissed, “Hey, keep your voice down, would you?” Then at both women’s very unimpressed glares, he sighed. “Okay, look, I know that’s not enough. But I don’t know what good leaving a message would do. Hell, what guarantee do we have that they would even pass it on to him?”“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Lydia insisted.“If he does hear it, at least he’ll know we haven’t forgotten about him,” added Haleh. “Don’t you think that could be good for him?”“And I’m the only one who could do this, huh? None of you who are so concerned about him could have done this at any point?”Haleh looked at Lydia. It wasn’t like Benton was totally wrong … but on the other hand-- “We could have,” she admitted. “But who do you think it’ll mean the most coming from, Peter?”“Which isn’t to say we don’t want to get in on this, too,” Lydia added.“Yes,” Haleh agreed. She thought for a second. “So maybe you can try leaving a message first, and then we can all send him a-- a card, or something.”“What, like a, ‘Congratulations for saving a mall full of people’ card?” Benton’s tone was sarcastic, but Haleh didn’t miss the implication that he was following the news about Carter just as much as the rest of them. Although of course it would have been hard to miss the mall story.“I was thinking more one of those ‘Thinking of you’ cards,” she said calmly. “But we’ll work out the details later.”Dr. Benton was quiet for a second. He rubbed a hand over his face, and then nodded. “All right. Fine. I’ll-- I’ll try calling again later today.”“We’re going to hold you to that,” said Lydia.“I’m sure you will,” was his response, as he walked away.~~It was his very empty stomach grumbling that woke John up on Saturday. He groaned and rolled over, peering at the clock on his bedside table. For a second, the sight of the red numbers reading “11:23” sent a jolt of panic through him. He was late, why hadn’t anyone called or tried to wake him up, he’d never been this late…And then he remembered: the vision last night, the mall, calling Agent Gregg. He wasn’t working today. Which was good. But he did need to find out if everyone at the mall was safe.His stomach growled again, and John sat up. Breakfast would be a good first step – or it’d be an early lunch by this point, he supposed. Anyway. At least he’d gotten some of the sleep he had desperately needed.After he had called in his early lunch/late breakfast order, John sighed. Despite how necessary she’d been for him to function last night, he still didn’t want to talk to Agent Gregg this morning. At the same time, he needed to know if they had been able to prevent what he’d Seen. He was ravenous, but he was sure he wouldn’t actually be able to eat anything until he knew. He could ask his guards to find out, but that would make it take longer.Sighing again, John dialed her extension before he could change his mind again. She picked up after two rings. “Seer Carter. Good morning.” Caller ID was a standard feature on all of the Bureau’s internal network. “How are you feeling today?”“Fine,” he said shortly. “Look, I’m just calling because I need to know: did everyone get out of the Woodfield Mall okay?”“Yes, they did,” she told him. “No injuries reported. They found the electrical fault in time. I’ll send you all the details that the fire department sent me. The managers, the fire department – everyone involved wanted to be sure you know how grateful they are.”John let out a breath. No injuries. Thank God. “Okay. Okay, thanks,” he said. It was like a weight had been lifted off his lungs. “I’ll be interested to read the report.”“It’s on its way.” She cleared her throat. “Seer, I know you need your rest, but at some point, can we--”He hung up. He did not have the mental energy to have an actual conversation with anyone right now, much less the woman who had encouraged him down the path to a probable addiction. Even if she might have accidentally been right about the pills strengthening his Gift.Sighing, John rubbed the bridge of his nose. One incidence of taking pills before bed after which he’d Seen the future didn’t constitute good evidence that the pills were what allowed him to do so. But it was possible. Maybe his Gift had needed a couple of months for it to start having an effect. In which case, for the sake of people like those who would have died or been critically injured in the mall, should he not try to get off the Vicodin?“God,” he muttered. This was not productive. He needed to talk to someone else about all of this. Someone who could be objective. So, not him, and not Agent Gregg, and not Annette. Which meant … he was pretty much out of ideas.His lunch arrived at that point. He ate it distractedly, still trying to turn the problem over in his mind. But nothing really got clearer. After he’d showered and gotten dressed (in some non-work clothes), he still hadn’t even worked out a good next step. The default option would, of course, be to keep going as he had been – with the added knowledge that he was going to have to step up the dose at some point, and that he was probably making future withdrawal worse by continuing like this.By the time Monday rolled around, John had made a few decisions. For the moment, he was going to keep taking the hydrocodone. He would give himself maybe another month, and depending on whether he divined the future again in that period of time, he would reconsider after that. Not very satisfying, but at least it was a plan.As far as Agent Gregg’s betrayal of his trust, he wasn’t going to be able to just move on from that. But he wasn’t going to be able to avoid her, either. He had investigated possible avenues for making formal complaints against another Bureau member. There were ways to do that, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to pursue it yet. The process was supposed to be anonymous … but how anonymous could it be, when basically the entire Bureau knew how closely he and Agent Gregg had worked ever since his arrival? Plus, what kind of consequences could she even face? It wasn’t like she could be fired.The other option, he guessed, would be to look into the counseling option that Agent Gregg had mentioned way back before he started meeting petitioners. Of course, he would have to use his Gift to make sure that any counselor or therapist he spoke to was truly not going to tell anyone else at the Bureau anything he said during sessions. And that definitely wasn’t paranoid at all...In the meantime, Agent Gregg seemed to be willing to give him space – for now, at least. He’d gotten the strong impression that she really wanted to make this right. So maybe, depending on if the counselors were trustworthy or not, they could help him come up with a way that that could happen. For himself, he was at a loss. And none of this was even touching the issue of Annette.All in all, although he didn’t feel as awful as he had on Friday afternoon, he wasn’t in the best of moods when he started work on Monday. But he did his best not to let it affect his interactions with each person he was there to help. At least he wasn’t exhausted anymore. That was an improvement.It was a surprise to get a knock on the door during his lunch break – and a much bigger surprise when Agent Lopez handed him a stack of mail. “Sorry to interrupt, Seer,” the man said. “Agent Gregg thought this might be a good time for you to see, uh, a small portion of the mail that’s been coming in for you. There’s also a written message that the front welcome desk took down for you on Saturday.”“Oh.” John took the whole pile, and immediately some of the pieces of mail off the top almost slid off onto the floor. If this was just a small part of it, how much else was there? Carefully, he moved back to the desk where he’d been eating. “Thanks.”“You’re welcome, sir,” said Lopez. He closed the door as he left.John was briefly upset when he saw that all of the cards and letters in the stack had clearly been opened and resealed. But then he saw the little stamp on each one informing him that each piece had passed a Bureau security check, and he understood. He hated the necessity, but he understood. Presumably that meant he wasn’t going to be seeing any hate mail or threats, which he was sure had been among them. There was no reason for him to subject himself to those, anyway.The first few pieces of mail he looked at were simple but heartfelt thank-you cards from a few of the petitioners he had helped over the past months. John remembered each one, and was genuinely touched by the fact that they had thought to send these expressions of gratitude. Gamma had sent him a very sweet card, which made him smile. He would need to write back to her, assuming that was possible. (There was a postcard from his parents, too. He would’ve found that nicer if they’d bothered to write more than a cursory greeting and a line about how they were proud of the honor he was bringing to the Carter name. Nothing about how they had been worried about his health, or anything.) But it was the written message that had been included on a sheet of notebook paper that really got to him. It looked like whoever had taken the message had written it down basically verbatim. At the top, it said: “Message taken from Dr. Peter Benton.”John took a sharp breath, and kept reading:
Carter,

Haleh and Lydia and the other nurses wouldn't get off my back until I tried calling again, so here goes. Hope this message gets to you, and that you’re doing okay. Things are fine here. Work is pretty much the same, although I guess you probably wouldn't have heard that Carol just moved out to Seattle, to be with Doug. Anyway, just wanted to call and check in. You might be getting a card or something from some of the rest of the folks here. Send a message back if that’s something you can do from there. Okay, that’s it. Thanks.
He found himself smiling, easily able to picture Benton saying all of that. In fact, he was pretty sure the last part was supposed to be addressed to the person taking down the message. He was also sure that Benton would be embarrassed if he could see how much just this short message meant to him. Even that one particular phrase – “tried calling again” – meant more to him than Benton probably had even thought about.Quickly, John searched through the rest of the stack (he would read the rest of them later – this wasn’t something he would want to rush through) until he found a card with the hospital listed as the return address. It was also addressed to “Dr. John Carter, MD, Seer” – which made John chuckle. Inside was a “Thinking of You” card. It was signed by everyone who worked at County General, judging by how little white space was left inside the card. Many of his friends had written short notes as well as signing their names. John read all of them. A lot of them were just things like, “We miss you!” or “So proud of you!” And yet, that was enough that he had to go grab the box of tissues before he could get back to his lunch. This … this was exactly what he needed today. None of them could have known just how much he needed it.And he was really going to have to figure out how to send a message back, John thought, as he ate the last bite of his sandwich. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he needed to tell everyone at the hospital that he hadn’t forgotten them, either. As far as he knew, there were no rules against Bureau personnel sending mail from here, even if they themselves couldn't leave. For all he knew, someone would have to read anything he sent before it went out, too. Still, it would be worth it.The rest of the workday passed much quicker after that. Even the usual number of cases with bad endings (which he Saw up close and personally, of course) didn’t entirely destroy his good mood. Although he was tired, he had more than enough energy to get back to his quarters, order dinner, and then start to think about what he would write to his friends. He also brought back a bag with all of the mail Agent Lopez had given him in it. That, he would go through completely, at his leisure.By later that evening, John had composed a message – which he still needed to figure out how to send, but he was sure that wasn’t going to be a problem. Pretty sure, anyway. He read it over a few times, and then set it on the bedside table. Then he went to where he had left the rest of his mail. As he found another card that he hadn’t seen yet, the ache that had been building slowly in his back made itself known more insistently. He sighed, and his good mood dimmed a little further. If his friends at the hospital knew what he was doing to himself…But they weren’t going to find out. He certainly wasn’t going to tell them. And he was doing okay on a reasonable regimen of Vicodin so far. Pushing aside the guilt, John took his evening dose and went back to his mail, deliberately making himself think about something else. That new topic was the question of what he was going to do with this mail once he was done reading it (should he keep it? If so, where?), and just how much more of it there might be, waiting for him in some storage room.~~A week and a half after Peter had called the BGM again and left a message with the receptionist, a letter arrived at the hospital from the Bureau. It was addressed to “The Fine People of County General Hospital,” which somehow didn’t make it undeliverable. Randi was the one who found the letter in the mailbox, but she saved it for Mark to open. Or so Peter heard, when he arrived to start his shift and Chuny promptly waylaid him just inside. “Carter wrote back,” she said, and put the letter into his hands. “Everyone here has already read it.”Eyebrows raised, Peter walked over to the front desk with the letter. “So his handlers actually let him communicate with the outside world, huh?”“I guess so,” Chuny said. She was smiling, though she acknowledged his remark with a huff. “I recognize that handwriting. Don’t you?”“Yeah,” said Peter, distracted as he opened the letter. He’d half expected it to be on some kind of fancy BGM stationery, but it was just regular lined paper. Carter had written:
To all the staff and doctors of County General,

Thank you all for the card and the messages. I read them all, and I appreciated them all. I’ll admit I didn’t see this coming. It was a nice surprise.

I’m doing okay here at the Bureau. It’s been a lot to learn – almost like being a med student all over again, except much less risk of having to deal with patients’ vomit. At least I was already used to wearing a white coat and gloves. Hopefully, I can keep using what I learned in my time in the ER about helping people who need it most, even though that help looks a lot different these days.

Feel free to leave more messages or send more mail. I promise I’ll read it all. And if any of you ever need a Seer for anything, you know where to find me.
It looked like he had signed it with something more complicated, and then crossed it out, just leaving, “Carter.”Peter set down the letter on the desk. Carter sounded like he was fine. Although you didn’t have to read between the cheesy jokes too much to guess that he was lonely. “Okay. Thanks, Chuny. Has everyone else had a chance to read this yet?”“Not quite,” said Chuny. “There’s just--”“Then I’ll leave it here.” With that, he headed for the elevator. He had work to do. Later, when he had the time, he could try to process that letter, and think about what to do next.~~“How have you been sleeping this week?”John looked up at Dr. Allen and gave a wry smile. “You mean you can’t tell?”The woman smiled back, but said, “I can tell you’re tired, but I was hoping for a more detailed answer than that.”“Fair enough.” He sat back against the couch. “I had a few bad nights,” he admitted, after a pause. “The centering and relaxation techniques you’ve had me doing after I wake up from the dreams helped some of the time, but not every time. Sometimes I still couldn’t get back to sleep.”Dr. Allen nodded. “All right. I’m glad you’re noticing some improvement, but it sounds like you need some additional help. Is that correct?”“Yes.”He’d been seeing Dr. Allen for about a month now, once per week. That was all the time they could fit into his schedule. He had used his Gift to check to make sure she was as unbiased as possible before he’d agreed to become a regular patient, but so far, she was honest, and all of her suggestions had been logical and effective. She was an SG as well, but with a lower-tier Gift that didn’t take up much of her time. He liked her, too. They had agreed to focus on the recurring nightmares and accompanying lack of sleep first, though he had hinted at a few of the other issues he was facing, too. Which was not going to cut it with her for much longer, apparently.“Well, I can and will give you more exercises to do for when you come out of a nightmare related to the stabbing, John,” the doctor said. “But I really think we’re only going to make so much progress if you aren’t willing to tell me more about the other issues that are troubling you.”Sighing, John looked down at the carpet. He’d known there was only so long he could avoid getting into this. “Do you, uh, do you ever do joint sessions? For, say, conflict resolution?”When he looked up, Dr. Allen’s eyebrows were raised. “Are you dealing with conflict in your work here?” She sounded surprised.He guessed it was nice that there was at least one person at the Bureau who didn’t follow the Seer’s daily routine so closely that they would have had to notice when Agent Gregg and Annette ceased to be a part of it. “Could you help with that?” he pressed, avoiding a direct answer.“Yes, I could,” Dr. Allen stated, “provided that both parties are willing to work to resolve the conflict.” She leaned forward. “Is that the case for you and this other party?”“I think so,” he said, after a moment. Agent Gregg had reached out to him a few times since the last time they’d spoken. He just hadn’t been able to think of anything constructive he could possibly say to her. “But, uh, I’d need you to hear what this person did to me first. So you can tell me if conflict resolution is even a good idea, I guess.”Dr. Allen looked at her watch quickly. “We have plenty of time. Please, go ahead.”John took a deep breath. And then everything spilled out – starting with when Annette healed him incompletely, to his gradual development of chronic pain, to Agent Gregg’s suggestion about the pharmacy, the progression of painkillers he had tried, and then the revelations from Annette and from Agent Gregg. When he’d finally finished, John felt nearly as drained as he had that first night after he had found out. He took a sip of water from the glass on the coffee table. “So, uh, I haven’t been working with her ever since,” he said, into the silence.Dr. Allen nodded. She had stayed quiet throughout his recitation, though he thought she hadn’t tried to hide her shock at some of what he revealed. Now she shook her head. “Well. First of all, John, let me tell you: I’m impressed that you’ve been handling all of that as well as you have been. On top of adjusting to a rare new Gift, being separated from your former support system, and the trauma that comes with your SG status, when you add in a betrayal of trust on this level, I wouldn't have been surprised if you had ended up not being able to function at all.”Shrugging, he took another drink. “My work is what keeps me going,” he said quietly. “If I didn’t have that…” He trailed off. He didn’t want to think about where he would be, health-wise, if he didn’t have that. Then he scoffed a little. “Besides, I’m not sure how developing what looks a lot like an addiction to painkillers counts as handling all of this well.”“Oh, I didn’t say it was a healthy coping mechanism,” the woman said. “It’s not. It’s a serious problem, and it’s good that you’re very aware of that. But it also sounds like this addiction developed out of a genuine need that you were trying to meet via the resources that were available to you. On top of that, the people who should have been most responsible for helping you stay healthy and safe manipulated you right down that path, instead.”John stared at her, suddenly finding it next to impossible to speak. He hadn’t realized until then just how much he needed to hear that. He took a breath in, and it sounded more like a sob.“John, are you all right?”“Yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s just… Thanks.”Her expression softened. “You’re welcome. And thank you, for telling me about this. I can imagine that must have been hard to do, especially since you haven’t had the support you should have had from other members of the Bureau.”Wiping at his eyes, John nodded and cleared his throat again. “Yeah. Anyway.”Dr. Allen was quiet for a few moments, deep in thought. Then she said, “And you think that Agent Gregg would be willing to work through this with you?”“She seems to feel really bad about it.” He took another sip of water.“All right.” She fixed him with her gaze. “That’s good to know, but I’m going to ask you a more important question before I talk to her: why do you want to resolve this with her? What do you hope to accomplish?”John blinked at her. “Do you think I shouldn't try?”“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “I mean, I want to hear what your ideal result would be from this process.”“Ah.” He considered this. “Well, I don’t think things can really go back to how they were.” At the doctor’s nod, he went on, “But it would be nice to be able to work with her, at least have her there while I’m seeing petitioners. She’s-- she has the most experience and understanding about the Sight of anyone else I’ve interacted with.”“Understandable,” said Dr. Allen. “So just to restate it to see if we’re on the same page: if Agent Gregg were to apologize sincerely and take full responsibility, do you think you would be able to trust her enough to have her assist you, similar to the way she used to?”John thought about it – imagined going back to working with her like that. “I hope so,” he finally said.“Then I’ll talk to her,” she said. Then she looked at her watch again. “We’re almost out of time for this week, but I can’t ignore the topic of your addiction. I may not be a medical doctor like you, John, but I’ve had enough experience to know neither of us should wait to deal with it.”John sighed and nodded. She wasn’t wrong. “It’s not that simple, though.”“What do you mean?”“You know how I’ve Seen the future twice now?” The second time hadn’t been as dramatic as the first, but news had still gotten around. She acknowledged his question, and so he explained, “This most recent time was just as I was getting ready to try to figure out how to go off the pills. I’d given myself a month after my first instance of divination to stay on the hydrocodone, and see if it might be helping me access that part of my Gift. You know, since there doesn’t seem to be a way to predict when I might get a vision of the future – it’s pretty random as far as anyone knows. But it hadn’t happened at all before I started taking the pills.”Dr. Allen frowned. “Just because it’s happened twice since you started taking them doesn’t mean it’s the cause, the reason why you’re able to divine,” she pointed out. “And even if it is--”“I know that’s not enough evidence to say either way!” he cut in sharply. He rubbed a hand over his neck. “But if it is the reason, and I stop, and then I can’t See the future anymore … people will die. People I otherwise might have been able to save.”“I see,” she said slowly. She cocked an eyebrow. “So, you’re willing to risk your own life and health, on the off-chance you doing so will save theoretical people in the future. Seems to me like that’s going a little beyond the scope of your oath as a doctor, or as a Seer.”He stared at her, and then shook his head. “No, it’s not… That’s not what I’m saying.”“Isn’t it?”John scoffed and didn’t answer. She was exaggerating to make her point. Wasn’t she?“All right,” said Dr. Allen into the silence that fell then, “we are unfortunately out of time for this session. I’ll contact Agent Gregg and see if she’s willing to come in for an individual consult before we try having you two meet together with me. But regardless, until next week, I want you to be thinking about what we were discussing just now, John. Think about your own personal health and safety. Don’t let yourself hide behind an extreme interpretation of your duty. And I want you to call me if you decide you want to try going off your painkillers – any time of the day or night.”He stood up as she did. “That, uh, doesn’t seem like it’s going to help me sleep better in the meantime.” None of those things were a relaxing topic to focus on, whether or not he agreed with her interpretation that there was anything he wasn’t facing about his reasons for taking the pills.She gave him a rueful smile, and then said, “You’re right. I’ll send you information on a few other techniques and exercises to try, too.”He thanked her and said goodnight. She had given him plenty to think about, that was for sure.~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

After another three weeks’ appointments, John had let himself be convinced – by both Dr. Allen and, surprisingly, Agent Gregg – that he shouldn't just continue taking his painkillers exactly as he had been. But he also wasn’t ready to stop entirely. Even aside from not wanting to go through withdrawal, or have unregulated pain symptoms afterward if Annette couldn’t heal that (which he had to acknowledge were factors here), he wanted to leave open the possibility that the pills were helping him reach his full Gift potential.With all of that in mind, he had requested that they work with him to start to decrease his dosage, first of all. That also included instituting safeguards with the pharmacist that would mean he wouldn't be able to just ask for more pills beyond the limit they all agreed. But in the unpleasant-to-imagine scenario that John started to demand more than that limit, he had no desire to make any of the pharmacy staff fully responsible for standing up to the Seer. So he, Dr. Allen, and Agent Gregg ended up discussing the whole issue with his security team, as well. John wasn’t thrilled to have more people at the Bureau aware of his problem, but he knew they were trustworthy, at least. And now that included being trusted to keep him safe from himself if things really went downhill. Which they weren’t going to.~He had just gotten another card from the hospital earlier that day. It was a highlight, as usual. That was especially true since it seemed like the day’s petitions had been almost all finding missing kids, most of whom had either been in serious trouble or dead by the time he found them. The card from his friends had been the perfect antidote. Someone (he had his suspicions about who) had decided the theme for this card should be stupid jokes. Although not everyone who signed had participated in that theme, he’d still laughed out loud far too many times given the quality of the humor. God, he missed them.That night, he hadn’t even dropped off to sleep yet when the vision came. It was a different style than his previous two experiences. This one was focused on one person, it looked like. One person … who was inside an extremely familiar hospital, doing a very familiar type of procedure. John was watching everything happen from this doctor’s point of view. That made it all the more disorienting when his vision blurred and sounds became distorted for more than a few seconds. Thankfully, the doctor who had been stitching a patient’s laceration when this hit him didn’t injure the patient, but John could feel the man’s dread. Which was borne out in the next scene of the vision, which he was watching from an outside perspective now. It was Mark Greene, going over the results of a biopsy and a CT scan with another doctor John couldn't recognize. But he heard the results, and his stomach dropped. No. And then the scene changed again, to Mark starting to show more symptoms. John had to watch Mark seizing in the middle of the ER, and then discussing his grim prognosis with a distraught Dr. Corday.John held onto the vision as long as possible. He needed to see if he could See any details that would help narrow down when this was going to happen. But when it faded, all he knew for sure was that this was going to start affecting Mark during the late fall or winter, judging by the coats and hats people were wearing. He also knew – and hadn’t been surprised to see – that Dr. Corday wasn’t going to give up. She would push Mark to try a new procedure with a surgeon in New York to remove the glioblastoma. But although John thought his vision showed that this procedure would be fairly successful, Mark’s long-term prognosis was still dire. He needed more than this new experimental procedure. He needed…John sat up, breathing heavily as the vision ended. Mark needed a Healer. That was the only way to be sure this particularly aggressive and deadly form of cancer didn’t kill him. The question was, how could he make sure Mark had the chance to see one? He didn’t love the idea of using his status as Seer to get Mark onto the very long list of people seeking a Healer. There were always so many people waiting. Annette had told him about it once. Then almost immediately after having this thought, John scoffed. When had he ever used his status to get anything for himself? And if he didn’t do everything he could to stop Mark from dying, then what the hell was the point of this vision?So. The next question was how to warn Mark about this. Though no one had ever straight-up told him he wasn’t allowed to call anyone outside of the Bureau, he had been strongly discouraged from doing so. But he wasn’t going to just send a letter to County General, either. Even if no one else read it, everyone else would know Mark had gotten a letter from the Bureau, and there was no way they wouldn’t pester Mark to tell them what was in the letter. So John either had to find a way to call him directly, or send a letter directly to his house. The Bureau would be able to get him that phone number or address. Of that, he was sure.~~Mark was still taking off his coat at the front door when the phone started ringing. “Can you get that?” he called to Elizabeth. He glanced at his watch. Nine fifty-three was pretty late for a phone call, but not unheard of.“Sure,” she called back. He heard her say hello, and then stop. Her voice sounded odd when she said, “Yes, I’ll hold.” Then there was another pause, and she said, “Oh. Yes, he’s here. I can hand the phone to him.”“Who is it?” Mark said as he came into the dining room.“Didn’t say,” Elizabeth whispered. She shook her head. “But I think… No, you’d better just take it.”Confused, Mark took the phone. “Hello?”“Mark,” said a familiar voice on the other end. “Is this a good time to talk?”He came ridiculously close to dropping the phone when he realized-- “Carter?!”“Yeah, it’s me,” Carter said, with a faint laugh. “Surprise.”“You got that right!” Mark said, sinking onto a chair. He looked over at Elizabeth, whose eyes were as wide as his probably were. “Not a bad one, I mean, but a surprise for sure. How are you doing, Carter?”“I’m doing okay.” Clearing his throat, Carter said, “But uh, listen, Mark, you’ve probably guessed that this isn’t a social call. Much as I’d prefer it to be.”He blinked. “I hadn’t even thought that far yet,” he admitted. “But now I am.” He couldn't imagine any reason Carter would be calling from the BGM that wasn’t at least a little alarming.Carter was quiet for a few seconds, and then he said, “There’s no easy way to say this. I had a vision last night, about you. It’s-- it’s not good news.”“What?” Now his heart was racing. Something bad enough for Carter to have a vision about it? “What kind of not good news?” Across the room, Elizabeth let out a gasp and hurried to stand next to him. He grabbed her hand.He sighed. “Glioblastoma. I didn’t See all the details, but it’s not going to be operable.”Mark’s grip on Elizabeth’s hand tightened. By the look on her face, he could tell she had heard. “You’re-- you’re sure?” That was probably a dumb question, but maybe Carter would cut him some slack.“Yes. I’m sorry,” was Carter’s response. “I wish I could give you better news – and I wish I could give you more details, too. All I Saw was that you start having symptoms in the late fall or early winter. Then you get a biopsy, and after you get the diagnosis and tell Dr. Corday about it, she finds you a doctor, a surgeon in New York who has a new experimental procedure for this type of tumor. I think it would go well. But we both know the long-term prognosis for GBM.”This was beyond surreal. Hearing his future laid out like this … and hearing just how limited his future was going to be. Mark swallowed hard and looked up at Elizabeth. She looked like she was about to cry. “So you called to, uh, warn me? To get me to take a look sooner than I would have?”“That, and…” The other man took a breath. “Look, I can’t guarantee one hundred percent that this will work, but once you have a diagnosis, once you know the tumor is there, call the Bureau. Tell them your name, and get yourself put on the list to see a Healer. I’ve already told them to expect your call. They’ll move you higher up the waiting list.”At that, Elizabeth put her other hand – the one that wasn’t holding his – to her mouth, and shut her eyes. Mark cleared his throat. Of course Carter would have connections like that now. And as the Seer, his word would carry a lot of weight. But those lists were miles long. Some people had been on them for months, he knew. “Carter, I can’t-- I can’t just jump ahead of all those people waiting for a miracle.”“Yes, you can, Mark!” said Elizabeth immediately, glaring at him. She wiped a hand under her eyes. “Don’t be such a noble, self-sacrificing idiot. If what Carter says is true – and it is, obviously – you’re going to need a miracle just as much as anybody else!”Carter, who had started to speak before Elizabeth jumped in, laughed once. “If I heard her right, that’s pretty much what I was going to say. And I’d add that the other times I’ve Seen the future, it’s been so the awful things that were going to happen could be stopped.”“Well,” he said after a moment, “when you put it like that, I guess it’d be pretty idiotic--” he raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth, who returned his gaze unrepentantly, “to just ignore the Seer’s warning.”“You’re right about that,” returned Carter, sounding amused. Then he sighed again. “Seriously, though, please tell me you’ll call the Bureau as soon as you know you have something that needs healing.”“I will,” said Mark. “Elizabeth will make sure of it, if I don’t.”She nodded, and then said, “Mark, thank him.”“Yes! Yes – thank you,” he said. Part of him was still having trouble believing any of this had just happened. He had no idea how much, if any of it, he could tell anyone else at work. But he knew that whatever happened in the future – his future – he wasn’t going to forget this. “I don’t even know what to say, Carter. This means a lot, that you would do this for me.”“I’m just glad to be able to help,” he replied. “Say hi to Dr. Corday, all right? And take care of yourself.”“You, too,” he said. And then there was a dial tone.After a second, Mark stood up, and walked over to replace the phone on the cradle. He turned to face Elizabeth. “Well. That was unexpected.”“You’ve always had a gift for understatement,” she said, smiling and shaking her head. Then her lip trembled, and several tears tracked their way down her face. She took a ragged breath. “Damn.”“Hey.” He crossed the room to her, and pulled her into his arms. “We’re going to get through this.”“Yes, we are,” she agreed. “Thank God you’re a personal friend of the Seer.”~~Mid-NovemberHe ought to have been more excited about this.John was outside the Bureau for the first time in almost nine months. That was genuinely good. Even knowing and understanding the security concerns, he had taken a few extra seconds in the parking garage before going to the car, to breathe. (It was pretty sad that parking garage air felt sort of fresh, compared to the two buildings he spent basically all the rest of his time in.) Sure, he was now in a big, black, unmarked SUV with tinted, bulletproof windows, in the middle of a convoy of similar vehicles. And they had left before dawn to avoid as much traffic and notice as possible so he was even more tired than usual. But it was still a change of scene. They were even near the lake, which was nice.Plus, he was still savoring the relief of the call he’d gotten from Annette a couple of weeks ago. First, he had gotten an initial message from “the office of Healer Ford” when Mark had been officially added to her waiting list, right around the beginning of the month. Annette’s call had come only a few days after that. “Your doctor friend, Mark Greene,” she had told him, after he answered. “I saw him this morning. His brain tumor is entirely gone now. He’s going to be fine.”John shut his eyes, letting out a long breath. “That’s-- that’s really good to hear, Annette,” he’d said, aware that his voice had been a little shaky just then. “Thank you.”“You’re welcome, John,” was her warm response. “The fact that you asked me to take care of your friend, well – I’m glad I could help him, and you.” She hadn’t pressed for anything beyond that, and neither had he. But the situation had turned out just as well as John could have hoped.Even with this good news, though, John had been feeling tense, irritable, and restless this whole past week. That was ever since Agent Gregg had told him about the plans for him to make a visit to the Bureau center in Milwaukee. He couldn't say exactly why he was feeling like this, either.As he looked out the tinted windows at the sky, which was gradually starting to lighten, John snorted at his own thoughts. If he were honest with himself, he knew some of the reason why he was feeling like this. Part of it wasn’t a mystery at all. Part of it had to be because he had agreed to try to step down his dosage of Vicodin starting last week. That was in response to Annette’s concerns about the pills’ effects on his health during her latest checkup. So, even though she had done her best to heal him back to the point of not having built up too high of a tolerance before he reduced the number of pills he took per day, he was feeling those effects. By itself, that would have been enough to make the timing of this visit to the Milwaukee center less than ideal. (Annette had volunteered again to try to heal him entirely, but John hadn’t been sure he wanted that yet. It seemed more legitimate to keep taking pain pills if he was genuinely in pain. And of course, if he stopped taking the pills, that might stop his ability to divine. At his most honest, he could acknowledge that logic was probably not the strongest, but it was where he was.)But there was more to his unease than just that. John was sure of it. He wasn’t against the idea of trying out what it would be like to travel to other parts of the country, to reach more people with his Gift. That was Agent Gregg’s suggestion, passed down from the directors. It made sense. He just wished he had some clearer idea what else was bothering him. Being pretty sure it had something to do with this trip wasn’t good enough to cancel it. After hearing his vague concerns, Agent Gregg had offered to call it off, but eventually he had told her they should just go ahead with it.Sighing, John shifted in his seat. He reached into his pocket, feeling the lid of the pill bottle in there. The bottle only contained two pills – enough for a morning dose and an evening dose. He was supposed to wait until he arrived in Milwaukee to take the first one. Of course, he could take them whenever he wanted, but then he would end up being very distracted during his first day of meeting petitioners in Wisconsin, since there would be no more made available to him before tomorrow. Not for the first time, John wished he hadn’t agreed so easily to this new regimen. It had seemed like a good compromise at the time.He must have dropped off not too long after that, in spite of his tension. The vision hit very quickly after he’d closed his eyes. The images were terrifying – but this time, after he pulled himself out of it, he knew he couldn't wait for Agent Gregg’s help to get rid of the fear. He gasped and sat upright. She was in another car. He had to tell his guards and the driver, now.“Seer, are you--” Agent Lee started to ask, turning to face him from the passenger seat. He was shadowy and flame-like, but his concern was still visible.John forced himself to breathe, even though the fear and agony from the vision was so heavy on his chest. “Someone knows!” he rasped. “I just Saw it – someone knows we’re on the road. They’re going to try to hit the convoy! They have--” He coughed and cleared his throat. “They have weapons. Something huge – like missiles or rockets.” The whole convoy had been burning in his vision. And as for survivors…Agent Lee and Randall both only took a second to react. “Can you tell us when they’re going to strike?” Randall asked, as he got out his walkie-talkie.“Uh…” John shut his eyes for a second, trying to call to mind the pertinent details. “The sky was still pretty dark. Not too long from now.”“All right. We’re aborting.” Randall started to call the other cars (and maybe law enforcement, John wasn’t sure), while Lee told the driver to pull a U-turn ASAP. Luckily, the traffic on the road was, in fact, light.The car turned around, at a speed that made John extra glad he was wearing his seatbelt. Based on what he could see around him, the other vehicles were doing the same. He gripped the armrest. Breaths were still not coming easily, but they were coming.For about a minute, it seemed like maybe they were going to avoid the attack. The streets stayed pretty clear. The sky was continuing to brighten outside. John pulled his coat tighter around himself. Then he glanced back through the rear window – just in time to see and hear something streaking through the air toward the car behind them.“Look out!”The driver must have seen it at almost the exact same time, because he stomped on the accelerator right as the rocket or whatever it was hit the following car. But they hadn’t gained enough distance. The explosion still flung their SUV into the air, back end first. It was upside down when it landed with a horrible, grating, jolting crash – just barely avoiding the vehicle that had been in front of them.John thought he probably lost consciousness for a few seconds. His head had certainly hit something. When he came to, it was to plenty of pain in his head, chest, and other places. But there was also a strange rippling nausea that seemed to come from right behind his sternum. He blinked. He was upside down. There was a ringing in his ears, but he thought he heard gunfire from somewhere close by.“Sir!”John blinked again, turning to his right. That was Agent Randall, who was also upside down though he was in the process of undoing his seatbelt. “Sir, how badly are you hurt?”“I-- I don’t know,” said John. He coughed, which made his ribs complain right away. “I hit my head, and my ribs are sore.” Then through the daze of the crash, he thought of something and turned toward the front of the car. The motion made the ache in his head worse. “Agent Lee? The driver, are they okay?”There was a groan from the passenger’s side. Agent Randall, who had extricated himself from his seatbelt and was now holding his left arm against his side as he moved toward John, said, “I think they’re both alive. We need to get you out of here, sir.”Right. Because there was only one plausible reason why they would be under attack, although John hadn’t waited to find out how his vision would have ended. He fumbled for his own seatbelt release, allowing Agent Randall to support him as he fell the short distance to the top of the car. Even with the man’s help, it still jolted all his injuries.The bulletproof glass in the car window on his side hadn’t shattered. That wasn’t actually a good thing at this point, since the door was locked and seemed to be slightly crooked in the frame. “I can’t get it to open,” he told Randall. “I think the door frame is bent.”“Shit,” the man swore. There was blood on his face, John saw – or at least he thought he saw. His vision kept switching back and forth from normal to Sight at random moments, which was not helpful at all. Probably indicated a concussion, too, if he had to guess. If it weren’t for the pressing need to get the hell out of here, he really should be lying down. Randall, too, most likely.“I’ll try on my side,” his guard was saying, as he made his painful way to the other side door. After a second of reaching down to the lock, he kicked at the door twice. With the second blow, it opened outward – making an awful shrieking, scraping sound against the concrete as it did so. “Okay, Seer,” said Randall. “I’ll check to see if the coast is clear, and then--”“Seer Carter!” came a shout from outside the vehicle. Agent Hill crouched down and looked in at them. “Oh, thank God you’re alive. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”“What about the hostiles?” Randall asked the other agent.“We’ve got them pinned down for the moment,” said Hill. “Which is why we need to move now.”“I’ll go first, just in case,” Agent Randall said to John, putting up a hand to keep him in the car.John clenched his jaw. His guards were putting their lives on the line for him now. Some agents had probably already been killed, in the car that was hit. He wondered if these people wanted the Seer dead for whatever reason, or if they were trying to grab him and didn’t care to make it a precision operation. He wondered which vehicle Agent Gregg was in, and if she was alive. Agent Lee seemed to be the process of getting out of his seatbelt, which was something.The driver. He wasn’t moving. John moved back toward him, took off his gloves, and felt for a pulse. “The driver’s still alive,” he called. His pulse was weak but steady. But the car was crushed around him, and it didn’t look like it was going to be easy to get him out.“Seer Carter, we really need to get you out of here,” Randall called back. “I promise, we’ll do what we can for Walters as soon as we can. But the scene is not secure.”By the time it was secure, Walters would be dead. John had seen enough car accident victims to bet on that. But he couldn't do anything for the man if he stayed, either, except possibly get himself killed or captured. “Fine. I’m coming.”When he finally got out of the car and stood up straight, John almost collapsed. His head felt awful. “Definitely hit my head in the crash,” he groaned, as Randall and Hill supported him. At least he could control his Sight more, for the moment anyway.“A Healer will be ready for you when we get back to the Bureau, sir,” Hill told him. “We called ahead.”He looked around at the scene as they led him off the road. None of the Bureau vehicles looked functional. “How are we going to get anywhere?”“We’ve got a chopper on the way,” was Randall’s response.“Oh.” He hadn’t even known the Bureau had a chopper, but he guessed that made sense.They had just made it off the road when John heard the helicopter in the distance. He looked up. The sky was brighter now, which made it easier to see the devastation around them. There were still some black-uniformed agents crouched behind the wreckage of the SUV that had been behind his car, firing off the occasional round in the direction from which the rocket had been fired. Whoever was there was returning fire even more sporadically. Maybe they’d only had the one rocket.“Let’s keep moving, sir,” Hill said. He and Randall ushered him further away from the crash site, down a slope toward more level ground. But they had only made it a few yards when a shot flew past John’s back, hitting Agent Hill in the upper right side. The agent crumpled.Randall shouted something and pushed John to the ground, behind the terrifyingly inadequate shelter of a leafless bush. “Drop your weapon!” John realized his guard was shouting now, as he pointed his own gun toward the two masked men coming down around the back of the hill toward them.“Give us the Seer, and we won’t shoot you,” one of the men shouted back.Randall fired off a round, striking one of the men in the upper chest. “I said stop!”John watched all of this in horror. The guy Randall had shot must’ve been wearing a bulletproof vest, since the shot made him stagger and drop to his knees, but then he got back up. Randall was outgunned. John thought he could see some other agents running toward them, but it didn’t look like they were going to get here in time. The helicopter was close, but there was no way it was going to land while there were hostile gunmen on the ground. Were there any security agents up there?And then, somehow, things got even worse. Another vehicle pulled up – a black van with tinted windows – and more armed men poured out of it. They were probably masked, although the masks showed up very strangely through John’s activated Sight. Not that he had too much time to focus on that. Within seconds, Randall had been taken down (he didn’t think it had been a fatal shot, but he couldn't stick around to find out). In desperation – hoping they didn’t want him dead, after all – John took a gasping breath and got up to run.That didn’t end up lasting long. What with the pounding headache and bruised ribs, every stride was torture. He’d only made it maybe five or six yards when his foot caught on a rock, and he fell headlong back to the ground.He was in so much pain after that, he didn’t struggle when his pursuers caught up to him and turned him over. “It’s him!” one of them called over his shoulder. The helicopter was still nearby, John thought dully, judging by the sound.“Then get him up!” someone shouted back.“No,” John said, although he wasn’t sure he’d actually managed to speak out loud. He stared up at the wolf and the stag who were reaching down toward him. “No! Please, I can’t--”But despite his struggles and protests, the two lifted him up. The change in position immediately brought on nausea as his headache increased. He shut his eyes. “Going to be sick!”Swearing, the men set him back down on his knees hastily – just in time for him to vomit up what little was in his stomach. Which really felt spectacular on his ribs, too. John stayed where he was after he finished, hands braced on the ground, just breathing.“I told you something like this was going to happen, you idiots!” came a new person’s voice. A woman’s, John thought. She was getting closer. He looked up, and saw an – owl, maybe? No, a hawk or something. She and another guy were carrying a stretcher. “I told all of you we should have been more careful about this. He’s injured! Probably a concussion, at least. That means he’ll be out of commission, instead of ready to work for us right away!”By this point, John didn’t bother trying to get away. He accepted the woman’s help to get onto the stretcher, only vaguely registering it when he was strapped in. “I’m really sorry about all this, Seer,” she told him, as she and the other guy carried him toward the van. “I’ll do my best to treat your injuries on the way.”John blinked at her. She was sincere. He cleared his throat. “Are you a doctor?” he rasped.“Used to be an EMT,” she replied, with a half-shrug.Huh. He tried to marshal his thoughts, with limited success. They were loading him into the back of the van now, and she was climbing in right next to him. “Well, thanks to your friends, I’m pretty sure I have a concussion including brief LOC, and multiple bruised or possibly fractured ribs, not to mention the minor lacerations and bruising elsewhere.” At her widened eyes, he gave her a wry look. “What? Didn’t you read in the papers? I used to be an ER doctor.”“Oh. Yeah.” The woman looked embarrassed, as far as John could tell with the Sight. She busied herself getting out a first aid kit and some other supplies John couldn't see from his angle.The van started to move – fast. The EMT swore under her breath at the sudden jolt, catching herself against the back seat. John licked his lips. “I’m guessing you’re not taking me to a hospital, or anywhere I’d have access to a CT scan or X-rays.”She looked at him, and her embarrassment/guilt got more obvious. “I’ll make sure you have the time you need to recover,” was what she finally said, as she set up an IV pole.At that oblique reminder of what he had to look forward to, John felt his heart rate start to increase again. These people had captured him. They were going to use him, like in that story he’d read about the other Seer hundreds of years ago. If he was lucky, this woman would actually be able to convince them to treat him well enough. But judging by how many people they had killed or seriously wounded to get to him, his captors didn’t care what happened in the process of getting what they wanted. And really, no matter how well they treated him, that wasn’t going to change what had happened to his guards, and all the other Bureau agents that were dead now. Guilt and grief rose up in a wave. He shut his eyes, holding back a sob.Then a few seconds later as he felt the IV line go in, he opened them again. “What are you giving me?” he asked the woman, as the car took a left turn.“Just saline to replace the fluids you lost, and uh, some mild pain reliever.” But with that last phrase, her outline started flickering and moving faster.“No.” John pulled against the straps. His terror came back full force. They could be giving him any number of things, to keep him under control. “No, what are you giving me?! Tell me!”“Hey! You’re supposed to be keeping the Seer quiet!” someone from near the front of the van yelled.“It’s fine!” the woman called back. She looked at John. “It’s just something to help you relax,” the woman said, reaching up toward the IV bag with something that looked a lot like a syringe in her hand.“No! Please!”Just then, John felt another bizarre ripple of nausea. It wasn’t the same as when he’d been forced to stand up just a few minutes ago. The nausea rapidly turned into pressure and almost pain just below his sternum. And then something gave, and there was a huge creature standing right next to him – standing over him. It was shadowy and flickering around the edges, and growling as it looked at the now terrified woman next to him. A dog, John thought, staring at it. As if this whole situation couldn't get any more unbelievable.“What the hell?!” the EMT shrieked, dropping the syringe and backing up to the other side of the van. Not that there was enough room to get away from it. It was truly huge. And obviously she could see it, too – it wasn’t just something he could See.The dog thing snarled at her, and then bent down to pull the IV needle out of John’s hand with its teeth. It – no, he – moved to sniff John’s face for a moment after that. Oddly, John felt no fear at all of the creature. Meanwhile, there were shouts of alarm from the front seats.Apparently reassured by his brief check, the dog gave the EMT another warning growl before – somehow – lunging over the back seat toward the rest of the vehicle’s occupants. The van swerved. John flinched when he heard a gun fire. Something about the idea of the dog getting hurt was upsetting to him. But although he couldn't see from his stretcher, he could hear the dog continue to snarl and attack. Someone screamed, and then the scream was cut off. Another gun fired. There was another frantic yell. Several men were shouting now.John raised his head as much as possible, which wasn’t much, and met the woman’s eyes. “Get these straps off me,” he said. He had a feeling their trip was about to be cut short, and he needed to be able to move. Though he was very much not looking forward to his second car crash in under an hour, either way.“O-- okay,” she stammered. She crept forward and undid the straps. “Seer, please – what is that thing?”He was about to say he had no idea, but then he realized that he might. It was something he had read in one of the accounts written by past Seers. If he was correct, the implications were pretty mind-blowing, and more than a little disturbing. “I’m not sure,” was what he settled on. “But he won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.” Of that, he was sure.“Yes, sir.”She had barely finished removing the final strap when the car lurched again. The woman gasped and quickly moved so that she wouldn't fall on him. John thought about sitting up, but decided not to. Too risky, and too much effort. Of course, if/when this van crashed…At that moment, there was yet another scream from up front, and a bark and growl from the dog. A bullet punched its way through the back seat between John and the EMT, and continued right on out the back door. John stared at the bullet hole. How many men had there been in this van to start, he wondered? By now there was maybe just the one left alive apart from the driver, judging by the shouting.A second later, John grimaced as the van apparently pulled off the paved road onto a – well, he hoped it was a road of some sort, though it jolted along roughly enough that his head and ribs did not appreciate it.“Hey!” the woman called, sitting up just enough to peer over the seat. “Stop trying to fight the dog thing! The Seer says if you stop threatening him, it’ll stop attacking you!”“No way!” a man shouted back, more than a slight edge of panic in his voice. “I’m not going to just sit back and let this freaking Cujo monster tear out my throat!”“You’re going to get us all killed!” the woman returned, gripping onto the edge of the seat. “Just-- just put down your weapon, pull over, and let the Seer go!”“No!” The man fired off another round – which at least didn’t go toward the back of the van this time. The dog’s growling got louder.“Goddammit, Ed, you almost shot me!” another man yelled then. Maybe the driver, given how the car swerved violently at the same time. “I’m pulling over until you get rid of that thing!”“No!” Ed insisted. “We can’t stop now! We have to bring the Seer back with us! Didn’t you hear what Rayan said? The Seer belongs with us. He’ll kill all of us if we don’t bring the Seer back!”“Do you honestly think the Seer’s dog thing is going to let us take him anywhere against his will?” the woman pointed out. “We’re all going to end up dead, anyway!”“Shit!” Ed screamed in response. “No, no, no, we can’t give up now! Please! Seer, call it off!”John said nothing. He saw no reason to just allow himself to be taken to their destination – even if they really had been threatened and ordered to bring him back to whoever their boss was. He wanted to get out of here, away from them. The dog’s methods weren’t what he would have chosen, but they would work. Soon enough. Unless his captors actually took the way out they had been offered.“Seer, please!” Ed shouted again. Then he let out a stream of curses. “All right! Fine. Fine! Stevens, you can-- oh my God, LOOK OUT!”The van swerved violently to the left and struck something. Something huge and solid, judging by the shrieking crunch of metal. The dog barked. John had a sudden flash – maybe it was divining, maybe not – that they were about to drive off the edge of the road into the bushes.Before he could start to panic too much about being flung around yet again, the dog was there. He crouched down over him, completely shielding him just in time. When the van’s downward plunge was halted by whatever it was – John couldn’t see out of any window from down on the floor under his protective dog – the impact was minimal for him. The dog had managed to cushion him very, very well. The sound of the crash was still horrible, of course.Once the car had stopped moving, the dog stood up, shaking himself as he did so. Then he bent down to sniff John’s face again. John chuckled when his new friend whined and licked him on the cheek. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he said quietly, reaching up to pet the dog’s neck. His fur felt mostly like a normal dog’s fur, despite its abnormal appearance. “But we should check on the EMT, too – and then probably get out of here.” Whether or not anyone else in the vehicle was conscious or alive, he at least needed to know if the car was likely to fall any further.Gingerly, John sat up. He held back a moan at the increased headache, but was relieved that the nausea didn’t come back. When he looked past the dog at the other corner of the back, he frowned. The EMT wasn’t moving, and there was blood on her left temple. Just as he was about to move toward her, though, the car groaned and shifted, tilting downward a few more degrees. John slid back against the back seat. “Okay,” he muttered. Getting out of here had just gotten more urgent.Of course, opening the back doors of the van while its nose was pointed downhill was not a fun process. It would have been practically impossible without his counterpart (that was what the Seer in the book had called it, John thought) to help him. John stood up with the dog’s support, climbed toward the doors, and unlocked them. Then he pushed on the lever, while the dog provided the majority of the power to actually push the door open against gravity. Still, by the time both doors were open, John’s head was pounding, his ribs felt awful, and all he wanted was to lie down. But they weren’t done yet.Panting, he turned to the dog. “Is she … alive?” he asked, gesturing with the arm that wasn’t around the dog’s shoulders toward the EMT. Then he released the dog and grabbed on to the edge of the door frame so the dog could move.His counterpart (who needed a name, John thought distractedly) picked his way down to where the woman was lying and sniffed at her face and neck. Then he looked up at John, whining. John took that to mean she was alive. “Okay, well, in normal circumstances I’d say we shouldn’t move her, since we don’t know about spinal injury, but these aren’t normal circumstances.” Which was very obvious, since he was currently talking to a giant, yellowish doglike creature that was probably part of his own self, which had separated from him to save his life. Their life? John rubbed his free hand over his eyes. “Can you drag her out of here? Carefully?”The dog let out another whine and came back to John, nudging at him with his nose and then looking out of the car.“Oh, you want me to get out first?” At the dog’s sort of nod, John sighed. “Fine.” He wasn’t looking forward to this, but he knew it needed to be done.And in fact, the process of leaving the van made him feel worse, such that he ended up sitting down on the ground more heavily than he would have liked. He immediately pulled his knees to his chest and rested his head on his folded arms. He could hear that his counterpart was working to get the EMT out, too, but he just couldn't make himself get up to help.Finally, John felt the dog’s cold nose on his hand. He looked up. The EMT was lying on the ground right next to the van. She didn’t look better or worse than she had before – at least, not as far as he could tell. Maybe it was something to do with the level of danger he knew he was still in, or maybe it was sheer exhaustion, or the concussion. Either way, he didn’t seem to be able to turn off his Sight at the moment.“All right.” John took a deep breath, and then pulled himself upright again. Oddly enough, he still felt awful. If the dog hadn’t been there for him to lean against, he would have fallen over. Once he had recovered as much as possible from the change in position, he looked around. They were in a forest. The car had gone down an embankment, and there were no signs of civilization that he could see from here. He looked back at the dog, raising an eyebrow. “You have any ideas about where we should go?”The dog barked once, softly. Then he started walking, in the opposite direction from the car. John held on to the dog’s side and followed as he went.It was slow, agonizing going. His counterpart obviously knew he needed to take it easy, but it was still much more physical activity than he ought to have been doing. To distract himself from the pain, John said, “Hey, do you have a name? I feel like I should call you something.”At that, the dog stopped and gave him a look. Then he nudged John in the side.“Well, okay, I know you’re basically me,” John acknowledged, between breaths. “But I can’t just call you ‘me’.”The dog kept going, evidently not concerned with the question anymore. John thought about it for a little while longer. “How about Johnny?” No one had called him that in years.The dog’s ears pricked up, but he made no response otherwise.“I’ll take that as an okay.”Time passed. John guessed it had been maybe two hours since the attack, judging by how light it was now. He wondered who was looking for him. Hopefully, it was the cops and the Bureau, and not any associates of the people who had kidnapped him. But he wasn’t sure about that. They had gone to so much effort to try to take him. And given the scale of their kidnapping operation, it also seemed unlikely that there were no other members of that group left. He shuddered.As they kept going, it got harder for him to think about anything beyond how much his head and his ribs were hurting. He knew he was leaning more and more heavily on Johnny. He stumbled and almost fell a few times. But Johnny always kept him from falling, so they kept walking. And then, finally, the dog stopped.It took John several seconds to realize they were no longer moving. When Johnny barked, he looked up. They were standing in front of the porch of what John guessed to be a cabin. He looked around. Yes, they were at a camp site, with several more cabins around the large clearing. Of course, since it was November in Illinois, all the cabins were unoccupied. But if he could get inside one of them … that would be a decent place to rest for a while, at least.“All right, Johnny,” he said, taking a careful, shallow breath. “Let’s try the door.”With the dog’s support, John made his slow, painful way up the steps of the cabin, across the porch, and to the front door. Which was closed and locked, naturally. But before he could start to get too depressed, Johnny brought him over to the heavy wooden bench next to the door. Then his counterpart went back to the door, sniffing around the frame thoroughly. He reared up and leaned his full weight on one part of the frame. The upper hinge gave way. Johnny then pushed against the other hinge. It collapsed in a matter of seconds.“Wow,” said John, as the dog returned to him with his tail wagging happily. “Impressive.” That was probably a weird thing to say to a creature that was essentially part of himself, but it wasn’t like there was anyone else to hear him.With another minute of effort, John was inside the cabin. It was still cold in there, but there was no wind – and there were bunk beds. No mattresses, but by this point, he didn’t care. As soon as Johnny had helped him to the nearest wooden frame, John lay down and fell into an exhausted sleep.~~

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It was like all of Peter’s worst fears about the BGM and what it did to its people were all coming true, and all surrounding the one person he actually knew there.He stood behind the admit desk and stared at the TV screen above. It hadn’t been long since the news broke about the Seer. The images they kept showing of the stretch of road where the attack had happened looked like something out of a war zone. The details they kept repeating made it even worse. Seven dead attackers on the scene. An unknown number of dead BGM agents (because of course the Bureau wouldn't release that number to the public), with unconfirmed reports putting it at least half a dozen. And the Seer was missing. Had been missing since shortly after dawn.“Gee, it’s too bad we don’t have a Seer who could find Carter,” Malucci quipped, from somewhere behind Peter. “Oh, wait.”Peter clenched his fists, but before he could turn around, he heard Malucci yelp, and then Haleh said, “Maybe that’ll teach you to read the room, Doctor.”Malucci didn’t reply, other than to grumble something under his breath. Peter stayed where he was for a few more seconds, but it didn’t take much longer before it started to become clear that there was no new information being reported. He shook his head. He had work to do, and he didn’t want to give Romano another excuse to be pissed at him … though it was going to be hard not to keep checking the news today, he was sure.As he was heading for the elevators, Mark walked past. “Peter,” he said, and then sighed and gestured toward the TV. “This is crazy. I can’t believe the Bureau let this happen to Carter.”“Yeah.” Peter pressed the button for the elevator, giving the other doctor a sideways glance as he did so. Ever since Mark had been fast-tracked to see a Healer at the beginning of the month – for a brain tumor that would have been fatal if Carter hadn’t warned him about it and gotten him in to see the Healer – he’d become a minor celebrity around the hospital. Not that Peter usually paid a lot of attention to that kind of gossip. “Malucci is an idiot, but he’s not wrong that it’d be good if someone with a Gift could help find him.”“Well, I guess all we can do is hope they’re working on that, if there is someone,” Mark replied. He didn’t look even a little bit satisfied with what he’d just said.“Yeah, they better be.”~~It probably wasn’t that many hours later that John woke up. The headache was feeling better, but another kind of pain was making itself known now. He groaned. When he opened his eyes, it took him several seconds to comprehend what he was seeing.There was a huge doglike creature lying on the bed right next to him – pressed up against him, in fact. The dog’s fur was like fire that flickered constantly. He was panting and calm as he looked at John.“Oh.” Right. John sighed. His counterpart was still here, and really, he wasn’t complaining about that. He would be pretty defenseless at the moment without Johnny. But he also wouldn't have minded in the slightest if he’d woken up and found that all of the events of this morning had been an incredibly detailed nightmare.Since it wasn’t, though, John patted Johnny on the neck. Then he slowly sat up, doing his best not to hit his head on the upper bunk. The increase in pain in his head and ribs was still severe. John leaned against the wall as he reached down into his pocket. Yes, the bottle of painkillers was still there. Of course he didn’t have any water to take his morning dose. He was pretty thirsty, but he could dry-swallow it. Unless…“Hey,” he said to Johnny, gesturing toward the mini fridge in the back corner of the cabin. “That doesn’t happen to have anything in it, does it?” Even if it hadn’t been plugged in for a while, that probably wouldn't matter for a water bottle.The dog followed his gaze, and then hopped off the bed – somehow not tipping the whole thing over in the process. He trotted over to the fridge, sniffed it for a few seconds, and then nudged it open with his nose. A few seconds after that, he was trotting back over with a half-frozen water bottle in his teeth.“Thanks,” John said, accepting the bottle. It was deformed and looked like it had cracked at some point due to expansion, but since it wouldn’t have gotten much above freezing anytime recently, and the fridge had been shut, he reasoned it was safe to drink. Assuming no one else had been in here lately, anyway. John looked around. There were no visible signs of anyone else having come in here – and besides, Johnny had had to break down the door for them to get in. That decided, John spent another half minute or so warming up the water bottle inside his coat, and then took his pill.On an empty stomach, relief came quickly. John leaned his head back against the wall. He only had one pill left, and very little hope of getting out of here before this evening. Before his last dose. Which meant that unless someone found him before then, he was going to start going through withdrawal and detox by himself, no later than tomorrow morning, with no medical aid at all. Hell, he was in bad enough shape physically that even the strength of the cravings he could look forward to wouldn’t be enough to get him out looking for another hit. He swallowed. That wasn’t even mentioning that he only had this one bottle of water, and no food.Maybe sensing his distress, Johnny whined then, and jumped up on the bed to lie down with his head in John’s lap. John laid a hand on his head. “Yeah, this isn’t going to be fun,” he said quietly.Johnny looked up at him. It wasn’t like he could hear his counterpart’s thoughts or anything, but he did kind of get some sense from him. He decided he might as well see if he was right about it. “If I asked you to, could you go try to find some food for me? Or even find someone – someone trustworthy – to help?”The dog nodded once. His tail wagged, and then he leaned closer so he could lick John on the chin. Chuckling, John said, “Well, thanks. I appreciate the enthusiasm. Maybe you’d better go soon, before the temperature starts to drop again.” That was another concern to add to his growing pile of worries. Sure, he had his coat, but he’d left his gloves back in the Bureau car, and of course there was no heat in this cabin.Johnny seemed to agree. After licking John’s face again, the dog jumped off the bed. Once he got to the doorway, he turned back to bark softly at John, and then left the cabin. It didn’t take long before he was out of sight.Sighing again, John took a small sip of his water, and then lay back down on the bed. Hopefully, he could get some more sleep. Otherwise he had no idea how he was going to pass the time while he waited for his counterpart to come back.~~The Next MorningDan looked up suddenly, and let out a sharp breath. He’d come out much further than he was planning – not that Tiger seemed bothered by the extra distance. Tugging on the leash gently, he said, “Sorry, Tiger. It’s time to turn around.”The chocolate lab turned to look at him reproachfully, but followed his lead after a second. Dan looked at his watch. It was almost ten thirty. He shook his head. Sure, it was his day off, but he hadn’t been intending to spend it all walking his dog. He’d had other plans.He’d only made it a few yards back up the forest path when Tiger froze, ears up, staring off to the side of the trail. A second later, he growled.Dan stopped moving as well. Tiger was an easygoing dog, rarely reacting to strangers or even strange dogs. So this was something out of the ordinary. Some kind of wild animal? “What is it, Tig?” he whispered.Tiger growled again. Then the growl turned into a whine and he backed up, pressing his side into Dan’s leg. Dan didn’t have too long to wait to see what had inspired this reaction. He saw it now, too:There was a huge, yellowish creature standing under the trees about ten feet away from them. It almost looked like a dog, except it was as big as a man – and it looked like it was on fire. No, made of fire. And it was staring right at them.Heart pounding, Dan tightened his grip on Tiger’s leash. This was insane. This couldn't be real. And yet, there it was. Even after he closed his eyes for a second and opened them again, the creature was still there. It was kind of like a yellow lab – if this particular one had come straight out of hell.The dog thing took a slow step out of the shelter of the trees. Tiger stiffened but didn’t try to run. The creature came a step closer, staring right at Dan. And then its whole attitude seemed to change. It wagged its tail, turned away, and looked back over its shoulder. It barked, moved away a step, and then stopped and turned again.Holy shit. It wanted him to follow it, Dan was almost positive. This was how Tiger had acted once a few years ago, when Emily had fallen down by the creek and needed her parents’ help. He looked down at Tiger. His dog was less scared now, too. Wagging his own tail, he moved toward the dog thing.“Okay,” Dan muttered, taking a deep breath. Whatever this thing was, it didn’t seem like it was going to hurt him, or his dog. And there might be someone out here who needed help this time, too.The flame-edged creature led them along for a good twenty minutes, until Dan started to notice a few more trails and other signs that people used these woods. They were kind of near a campsite, he thought, based on a map he had looked at once. And sure enough, the yellow dog thing kept going into a clearing ringed by small cabins. One of them had a front door that was broken off at its hinges. The dog went right in through that doorway, after giving them one more backward glance.When Dan got onto the porch, he made a quick decision, and tied Tiger’s leash to the heavy wooden bench outside. “I’ll be right in here, okay, buddy?” he said, stroking the dog’s face. Tiger didn’t seem very happy to be left behind, but he didn’t fuss too loudly.Dan was glad he’d had the thought, upon entering the dim interior of the cabin. There wasn’t a lot of space in here. Most of it was taken up by bunk beds – and the huge dog creature, which was sitting next to the one bottom bunk that was occupied. The man on the bed was shivering and moaning.“Hello?” Dan said, clearing his throat. “Sir, do you need help?”The man froze for a moment, and then sat up with a groan, scooting slowly so that his back was against the wall. “Who are you?” he asked hoarsely. He was wearing a dark-colored coat with the hood pulled up, which made it pretty hard to see his face under the top bunk.“My name is Dan Ellis,” he said, holding up his hands to show that they were empty. He glanced at the dog thing, who was still sitting by the bed. “Your, uh, dog brought me here.”The man glanced at the creature, and then back at Dan. “Johnny brought you here?”“That’s right,” said Dan. So it had a name. Didn’t seem to fit with such an alarming-looking creature, but whatever. “Are you okay? What’s your name?”The man sniffed, rubbing a hand under his eyes and nose. “You--” Then he stopped, closing his eyes and clenching his jaw against an apparent wave of pain, or some other discomfort. Once it had passed, he stared at Dan again. “You’re here to help?”“If I can, yes.” Dan took another step closer. This guy looked familiar, somehow. Beyond that, he thought it was starting to become clear what kind of help he needed, too. Which made this a very strange coincidence.The man looked at him for another few seconds. Then he sighed, and pushed back his hood with hands that were visibly shaking. “I’m John.”Dan’s jaw dropped. Without the hood, the lock of silver hair was obvious – and the man’s face was much clearer, too. It was a face that had been on the news constantly over the past twenty-four hours. “Seer!” And now he recognized the part of the white uniform that he could see, too.“Mr. Ellis,” said the Seer, because it was him, “if Johnny brought you here, that means I can trust that you’re not part of the group that tried to kidnap me yesterday – and that you weren’t lying when you said you wanted to help.”It took an embarrassingly long moment before Dan realized he was just standing there, staring, and that Seer Carter had said something to him. He closed his mouth, replayed what the man had said, and cleared his throat again. “Uh. No, I wasn’t lying. And I do-- I do want to help.”The Seer closed his eyes. He was sweating, Dan saw, in spite of the chilly air inside the cabin. There was what might have been dried blood on one side of his head. “How far-- how long would it take for you to get a car out here to wherever we are?” he asked, without opening his eyes.“Uh.” Dan shook his head. He needed to think, not stand here in a daze. “Well, I parked my car out by the service road. I followed your-- um, Johnny for twenty minutes or so from where I’d come with my dog to walk him. We’d come quite a ways before we saw Johnny.”Seer Carter nodded once. “Okay.” He focused on Dan’s face again. “I’m going to be honest, Mr. Ellis: I don’t think I can walk that far. I’ve got a bunch of bruised or fractured ribs, a concussion, and…” He trailed off.Dan came closer. That was when he saw the empty pill bottle on the ground, next to some wrappers that looked like they could be from vending machine snacks. He bent to pick up the bottle. “And you’re in withdrawal, too. Am I right?”The Seer looked at the pill bottle, and then looked away. He swallowed.“Well,” said Dan, after a pause, “strangely enough, Seer Carter, it just so happens that I work at a residential treatment center for opioid addicts. I’m a counselor.”At that, the Seer’s eyes widened. Then he looked at the dog creature, with a very slight smile. “Huh.”“But I’m not qualified to administer the initial medical treatment or observe during our patients’ initial intake period, while they detox,” he said. “And I’m guessing you don’t want to go to my center right now, anyway.”“It’s not safe,” said the Seer, shaking his head. “Not for you, or anyone who-- who lives there or works there.”Well, that was a better excuse than most addicts had for not wanting to go to treatment, Dan thought grimly. Based on what little the BGM and the police were saying, it was true that there was still danger from the group that had launched the attack. “You do need more medical help than I can give you, though, Seer,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed opposite his, even though that was a bit awkward since it was a bunk bed. “So while I’m very willing to help you get out of here, I’ll need you to tell me who else to contact. The BGM?” He clenched his fists. He had hoped never to contact them again, but he would, if the Seer asked him to. On the other hand, there was the question of who had been supplying the Seer with pills.Seer Carter frowned. “Not yet,” he said. “I need to figure out…” He trailed off again, and then just repeated, “Not yet.”“All right.” Dan wasn’t sorry about that. It gave him more evidence that not everyone inside the BGM was happy with how they did things. “Any other suggestions?”The Seer was quiet again, aside from his panting breaths. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “I know some doctors. I’ll-- I’ll tell you who you can call, once we get out of here.”Seer Carter had worked at a hospital before his Gift was awakened, Dan thought he had read. So that made sense. And of course, it also made sense that he wouldn’t be eager to tell his old friends about his addiction. They would deal with that part later. “Fine. Will you be all right while I go get the car?”“Relatively speaking,” was the man’s wry response. Before Dan had made it out of the cabin, he heard the Seer call, “And thank you, by the way. Since I haven’t said it yet.”“I haven’t done anything for you yet, Seer,” said Dan, raising a hand in acknowledgment. “But I’ll be back as soon as I can.”~~John couldn't tell how long it actually took for Dan Ellis to come back. It probably only seemed like hours. But then, when he was sweating and shaking and all around miserable, with deep muscle aches, watery eyes, and a running nose, every minute seemed to drag on.When Mr. Ellis did come back, it was just as unpleasant as John had imagined to try to stand up and walk out of the cabin. Thankfully, he had both Johnny and Mr. Ellis to lean on. It was also a relief to see that Ellis had a large truck, with enough room in it for two humans, one dog (which seemed to be only a little scared by Johnny), and a Seer’s counterpart. With Mr. Ellis’s help, John finally got up into the passenger’s seat, gritting his teeth against the agony in his ribs and his head. After what had to be at least a full minute, the pain had subsided enough that he could pull up his hood and then fumble for the seatbelt. But his hands were shaking so much that in the end, Dan had to insert the buckle for him. “Thanks,” he mumbled, staring at his knees.The trip out of the woods was really unpleasant, as well. The jolting of the truck (there weren’t any paved roads out here) reverberated through his entire body, and it didn’t help the low-level nausea he’d been feeling since he first stood up, either. At least Ellis didn’t appear to expect him to offer any conversation during the drive.Once they were finally onto a real road, John let out a little sigh of relief. His nausea levels started to decrease – at least for now. “Where are we headed?” he asked.“I was just about to ask you that, actually,” Ellis said. He glanced over. “Given what you said about there still being danger from the people who attacked you, I think I’d prefer not to go to the treatment center.”“Not unless there’s a private area where I wouldn't attract any attention,” John agreed. He sniffed yet again, nodding his thanks when Ellis pointed out the packet of tissues on the dashboard. “I guess, wherever you think you could … help me however you can, if it’s also a good place for a doctor to monitor me while I finish--” His voice died away, but he coughed and made himself keep going. There was no point in pretending here. “While I finish going through withdrawal.”The other man was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I might have a place in mind. And for what it’s worth, Seer Carter, I know you’ve probably heard this before, but the fact that you’re facing up to your addiction is an important first step.”John crumpled the tissue in his hand. He had heard that before. He’d probably said something like that to Chase, in fact. It wasn’t tremendously encouraging for him to hear right now. “I’m sure the place you have in mind will work fine.”“Okay.” Ellis looked at him again, clinically. “I’ll try to get you there as soon as possible.”That was a good idea. His symptoms were only going to get worse, he knew – such that he would very much not want to be on the road when he hit the next phase.“So, who should I call for you?” said Ellis, after another pause. “When we get to where we’re going, that is.”John had been trying to think about that question, too – though it was hard to think about anything in particular while distracted by the muscle ache and fever. He was trying to decide between Dr. Benton and Dr. Greene. He knew they would both want to help him. But it was hard to get past the fact that whichever of his old friends and mentors he chose, he would be revealing to them that he was an addict. And once they heard, if they agreed to come help, this would be his first time seeing them face to face after all this time. He shut his eyes. There was no way they wouldn't be disappointed in him. On the other hand, he could imagine what either of them would say if they knew he was even considering going through withdrawal without proper medical supervision or aid.“I have a name in mind,” he said at last. “But you’ll have to call him at the hospital, and then ask him to go somewhere more private to finish the call.”“All right,” said Ellis.~~Peter was just about to go back upstairs after a consult when Chuny hurried over and told him he had a call at the front desk. “Won’t say who it is,” she said, “but he says you have a mutual friend, and that it’s urgent.”Peter frowned in confusion, but started to follow her. “A mutual friend, huh? I’ll be right there.”When he picked up the phone, at first, the man on the other end didn’t seem to want to enlighten him. “Is this Dr. Peter Benton?”“Yeah, that’s me,” said Peter. “Who’s this?”“My name is Dan Ellis,” the man said. He paused. “Is there some way we could talk further in private?”“What’s this about?” Peter asked.Ellis hesitated, and then said, “A mutual friend of ours needs your help.”“And who’s that?”After another pause, he replied, “His name is John. He, uh, recently got a new job.”It only took a second, and then it hit. Carter was alive. Peter lowered his voice and spoke carefully. “I see. What kind of help does he need?”“I’d really prefer to keep talking to you in private, Dr. Benton.”Peter sighed, and mentally cursed Romano. He didn’t currently have anything like an office, not even upstairs. “Okay. Uh, give me a second. Don’t go anywhere.” He set down the phone and hurried to find Mark, who was just leaving Exam 2. “Hey, Mark, I’m going to transfer this call to the break room. Can you try to keep people from coming in for a few minutes?”“Sure,” said Mark, giving him an odd look. “Why? Who is it?”Again looking around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear, Peter told him in an undertone, “Someone who says he knows something about Carter.”“What?!” But Mark managed to keep his voice low, too. “Go. Go find out what he knows.”Once Peter had finally transferred the call, gone into the lounge, and shut the door, he picked up the phone. “Okay, I’m here, and no one else is listening. You still there?”“Yes, I’m still here.”“Good.” Peter cleared his throat. “So let me clarify something: when you say you’re friends with Carter, you don’t mean you’re one of the bastards who attacked and kidnapped him yesterday, do you? Because if you do--”“No, no, nothing like that,” the man said quickly. “He got away from those people yesterday, and I found him in the woods. But he needs medical help that I’m not qualified to give.”A dozen images of what that could mean flashed through Peter’s head – none of them good. Although, if this guy had called here, that meant… “Did he tell you to call me?”“Yes,” said Ellis. “That’s where I got your name.”Okay. That was-- well, aside from anything else, it meant Carter was conscious and able to speak. Which was good news. It was also more proof that this Ellis guy was telling the truth. “What’s his condition? Is he stable?”“He told me he has a concussion and some bruised or broken ribs,” Ellis answered. “Some superficial cuts, too. Other than that, his main issue is serious but not life-threatening.”That was not exactly reassuring. “And what issue is that?”Ellis sighed. “Let’s just say, if you can bring whatever field equipment and medications you’d bring for someone transitioning out of the first stage of opioid withdrawal, that would be perfect.”Peter sank down heavily in the nearest chair. Opioids. Carter was in withdrawal from opioids?! “You’re-- you’re sure about that?” That couldn’t be true.“Dr. Benton, it just so happens that I’m a counselor at a residential treatment center. I’m very sure – and Seer Carter admitted it, although that was probably more for his benefit than mine.”“Okay.” Now Peter was remembering all the experience he’d ever had observing and treating drug addicts in withdrawal (none of which had been even sort of recent), and imagining Carter in the woods, alone, recovering from yet another traumatic event – all while dealing with this. He took a breath. “All right. Where are you?”Ellis told him an address, which Peter quickly wrote down. “The Seer is still worried about the group that organized this attack,” the man went on, “so we’ve been trying to keep all of this under the radar. That’s why I’m not suggesting the main campus of the treatment center. Plus, since I’m not a doctor, I wouldn’t have access to all the medication and equipment that we’re going to need, anyway. But for safety’s sake, I suggest you use the back door when you get here.”Peter swore under his breath, and then said, “Got it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Then he gritted his teeth and made himself ask the question, much as he didn’t want to. “Does Carter want us to contact the BGM?”“Not yet,” was Ellis’s prompt response. He sighed. “He didn’t explain why. But to be honest, Dr. Benton, I’m wondering if it’s because he doesn’t trust them as much after this.”“I wouldn't be surprised,” Peter muttered. “Anyway. It’s going to take me a few minutes to get what I need, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”“Good. We’ll be waiting.” With that, Ellis hung up.Peter allowed himself a moment to breathe and try to absorb everything he’d just heard. Then he stood up. First, he needed to refresh his memory about treatment for detoxing patients. After that, he needed to figure out how to gather all the supplies Carter would need without anyone asking too many questions, and also how to take the rest of the day off without Romano using that as a reason to fire him, again. He also needed to call Jackie and ask her to pick up Reese. Hopefully she’d be okay with that.As soon as he stepped out of the room, Mark called out to him and then hurried over. “So what’s going on? Was the guy telling the truth? Does he know something about Carter?”“Yeah, I think he does,” Peter told him. Keeping his voice low, he explained, “Carter managed to escape, found this guy, and asked for me to come help him, and he doesn’t want the BGM to be contacted yet. But if I leave halfway through my shift…”“Romano will be pissed,” Mark finished for him, frowning. “Well, I can talk to him. I can say you came and asked me to tell him that you had a family emergency and needed to go home.”Peter nodded. “Thanks.” That should work – as long as no one asked him about the supplies he’d be borrowing or outright taking. He didn’t feel like anyone else had a reason to know the main problem Carter was facing. Romano would definitely ask him for details about the “family emergency” tomorrow, but he’d deal with that when he had to.“I won’t keep you any longer,” said Mark then. “But, Peter – is he going to be all right?”He took a second to consider his response. “I think so,” he said finally. He would do what he could for Carter. But assuming Carter was going back to the BGM after this, Peter really wanted to have a chance to talk to his handlers, or whoever it was who had allowed him to get addicted to painkillers in the first place. In fact, as he went to get the supplies, he vowed to himself that he wasn’t going to leave Carter alone with those people again until he’d gotten some answers.Somehow, Peter managed to grab his coat and gather all of the meds he thought Carter might need without anyone bothering him. He managed to call Jackie, got her somewhat exasperated okay that she would come get Reese, and warned her that he might be late getting home. But after that, he guessed it was too much to hope that no one would notice his departure, after he added the various pieces of field monitoring equipment that he needed to the pile of things he was taking out with him.“Peter! Hold the elevator!”Damn. It was Weaver. There was no way to pretend he hadn’t heard her, either. He held the door, and the woman entered the elevator a few seconds later. She raised her eyebrows as she looked at all the stuff with him. “I thought Mark said you had a family emergency, Peter. What is all this?”Peter sighed, and then waited until the door closed. His only option here was the truth. Once the door was shut, he said, “I’m not going home. I’m going to go help Carter.”“Carter?!” She stared at him, and then crossed her arms. “Okay, I’m going to need a little more of an explanation than that.”Quickly, he summarized the phone call he’d gotten from Dan Ellis, though he tried to stay vague about what it was that Carter needed. He shouldn't have bothered, though, because when Kerry asked (it wasn’t really a request, and he knew it) to see what was in his bag of supplies, he could see the moment she put it all together. “These are medications to treat someone going through withdrawal. Is that what this Mr. Ellis told you is happening with John? That’s what he needs your help with?”The elevator arrived at the parking garage level as Peter gave a reluctant nod. “He also said Carter doesn’t want the BGM contacted yet. And Kerry, if the people who are supposed to be looking after him at that place let him get addicted to drugs…”“I see your point, and his,” said Kerry with a frown and a sigh of her own. She followed him out of the elevator. “Well, this is obviously urgent, if he’s going through withdrawal right now. But Peter, you could have come to me directly, you know. Just because he doesn’t work here anymore doesn’t mean I don’t still care about John.”“Yeah, well,” Peter said, “that’s good of you to say, but Carter told Ellis to call me.” He shrugged.Kerry nodded. “All right, fair enough. Well, I’d appreciate it if you called and gave an update if you can – or if you or Carter need anything else…”“Thanks,” said Peter. He was glad that she wasn’t going to make him go through the proper channels or whatever right now. It wasn’t like either of them even really knew what “the proper channels” were in this situation.It took what seemed like forever for Peter to arrive at the address Ellis had given him (though it wasn’t actually that far from the hospital). The address was near the campus of the residential treatment center, as he had mentioned, but the place itself looked like a smaller private residence, not a center. Maybe it was a halfway house for recovering addicts, Peter thought. He frowned and parked a short distance away on the street. At least he shouldn't have to make multiple trips to bring in all his supplies.When he knocked on the back door, several seconds passed before it opened. An unfamiliar man stood there. “Dr. Benton?”“Yeah. You’re Dan Ellis?”Nodding, the man ushered him in. “John – the Seer’s in the bedroom here,” he said, pointing toward the open door on the right. “I cleaned up his cuts. I also gave him some Tylenol and ibuprofen about an hour ago, which he managed to keep down at first, although he’s thrown up since then. Otherwise, I’ve just been doing what I can to keep him comfortable.”“Good.”“Oh, before you go in, I should warn you about the dog,” said Ellis as he followed him toward the room.Peter stared at him. “The dog?”“Yeah. The Seer calls it his counterpart,” Ellis told him, shrugging. “It’s not a normal dog. It’s huge, and kind of terrifying.”“Oookay.” Peter took a breath, preparing himself mentally as best he could, and went into the room. “Carter? It’s Benton. I’m here.”~~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

This entire day was shaping up to somehow be even worse than the day after he’d been stabbed. That was probably because he’d been unconscious for a lot of that day, John acknowledged, in moments when he was able to concentrate on anything but how awful he was feeling. Today, he was conscious. So he got to experience every minute of the fever, cramping, body aches, chills, tremors, restlessness, anxiety, nausea, vomiting, gastrointestinal symptoms – and of course, the cravings.He was so completely miserable that it took him more than a few seconds to even notice when Benton came in and spoke to him. When he did notice, he had to make himself look over at him. What he really wanted to do was shut his eyes and pretend he hadn’t heard. He had avoided looking in the mirror any of the times he’d been in the bathroom since getting here, so he could only imagine how terrible he looked right now. Maybe it was his shame and his wish that he could hide that meant that when he did look at Benton, his Sight was active. But even when Benton looked like a lion with flames around the edges, John could still tell that he was upset. “Hi,” John said. Then he turned away, over to where Johnny was sitting by the other side of the bed. He did close his eyes, but only for a second, so that he could actually see Benton when he looked at him next.“Hi,” said Benton. He came closer. “I’m not going to waste any time asking you how you’re doing. I’ll just move right on to asking whether you’re okay with me starting an IV for you.”John swallowed and nodded. “Please.” At least he would start feeling less horrible in not too long.“Mr. Ellis, can you--” Benton stopped. “Whoa! What the hell?”John followed his gaze. “Oh, yeah. That’s--” He grunted and took a breath, riding out a cramp. “That’s Johnny. He won’t hurt you.”Johnny let out a faint whine and wagged his tail. Benton blinked, looked at the dog for a few more seconds, and then shook his head. “All right. Whatever. Mr. Ellis, can you hang this IV bag for me?”“Yeah, of course,” said Dan. (He and John were on a first-name basis with each other by now, since the man had given him a bucket to throw up into, and also helped him to the bathroom a few times.)After that, it wasn’t long before Benton had the IV ready. He gave John a rundown of all the medications he was going to administer. None of them were a surprise, but John still appreciated it. Pain relief and relief from the nausea came quickly after Benton started the IV, which he appreciated even more. Benton also clipped on an oxygen monitor, and seemed pleased with the results. “Your O2 sats look good. How’s your breathing? Any sharp pains when you inhale or exhale, or pain in your belly?”“Nothing too bad,” he answered. Which was important because … because it probably meant he didn’t have any serious rib fractures or internal bleeding. That was good.“All right, good.” Benton’s next act was to put a blood pressure cuff on John’s arm. He looked slightly less pleased with those results. “Your BP is a little high, but that’s not unexpected, given the stress your body’s under right now. I’ll check it again after you’ve had a chance to respond more to the meds.”“Fine.” There were other things he could have added right now, John thought, but he left it at that.He must have been exhausted, because with the lessening of his cramps, aches, nausea, and fever, John found himself dropping off into a doze a few minutes later. He could still kind of hear Benton talking to Dan, but he didn’t worry about it. He was so tired. The continued cravings and tremors kept him from a deep sleep. Still, any kind of sleep was better than the agony he’d been in ever since his last dose had worn off.When he woke up, Benton was standing next to the bedside table, talking to someone on the phone. But as soon as he saw that John was awake, he said, “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back, all right?” He hung up the phone and came over to the bed, sitting down in the chair. “Hey. Sorry if I woke you.”“You didn’t,” said John. He yawned. Dan didn’t seem to be in the room. “What time is it?”“Almost one. I got here about an hour ago.”It was a lot easier to think straight, now that at least some of the withdrawal symptoms were under control. Not all of them, of course. He tried not to think about how many more days of this he could still have to look forward to. “Who were you talking to?”“Weaver,” was Benton’s response. Whatever look he got in response to that, Benton shook his head and said, “I know, but she saw me leaving the hospital, so I couldn’t get around it. I told her you needed my help, and she didn’t get in the way – but she wanted updates.”John glanced at Johnny, who was now curled up at the foot of his bed. “Does, uh, does she know--?”“She saw the supplies I was bringing, and so she put the pieces together.” Benton sighed. “Sorry. No one else knows. Mark knows that you asked for my help, but no other details.”“Oh.” He couldn't think of anything else to say to that. He knew Kerry Weaver wasn’t going to spread rumors around, but still.“Carter,” said Benton then, leaning forward – and John braced himself. Here was the speech about how he should have known better, should have had some self-control, shouldn’t have been so stupid…“I didn’t have a chance to ask you earlier. Do you want me to do an external exam for your ribs and belly? Obviously we don’t have access to X-rays or a CT scan, but at least we could get a better idea about whether you’re looking at fractures, or just bruising. And I guess we can be pretty sure by now that you’re not bleeding internally, since it’s been so long since the crash.”John looked at him blankly. Right. The car crash. He scoffed at himself. Somehow he’d forgotten again. “Uh, sure. Here.” He pulled up his shirt and leaned back.But before Benton even started the actual exam, he gave a low whistle and shook his head.“What?” John asked. He looked down at himself. “Oh.”The bruising on his chest and abdomen was very noticeable, and in a pattern that was familiar from countless ER patients: right along where the seatbelt had kept him from breaking his neck on something inside the vehicle, most likely. The colors were pretty dramatic, after more than a day.“Carter,” said Benton, “how the hell did you get away from the kidnappers’ vehicle, and then walk all the way to where Ellis found you in the middle of the woods, with bruising like this and a concussion?” John wasn’t sure if he was impressed, horrified, or bemused, or some combination of all three.“Well, I wouldn't have gotten out of the kidnappers’ van at all if it weren’t for Johnny,” John said, smiling down at his counterpart for a moment. The dog thumped his tail on the bed in response. “He got me out of there, and I leaned on him to walk to the cabin where Dan found me. Still wasn’t fun, though.”“I bet.” Benton finished putting on his gloves, and then started the exam. “Take deep breaths, and tell me if anything in particular hurts.”The bruises hurt, but nothing stood out, and he told Benton so. Until Benton got to his lower right quadrant, at which point he winced and gasped at the sharper pain. “That one hurts more.”Before Benton could reply, Johnny raised his head and growled – at the other man. “No, it’s okay,” John told the dog quickly, sitting up a little so that Johnny could see him more clearly. “It’s okay. He’s not hurting me.”The dog lay back down, though his gaze was still fixed on Benton. Who had taken a step back, but remained impressively calm, considering.“Well, this one still doesn’t feel like a serious break,” Benton told him after a pause, stepping close again and doing another careful check. He frowned. “It would be nice to get a better look, but given the situation, this is the best I can do for you.”“It’s fine,” said John. “Thank you.” At least now he knew to be extra careful with his lower right quadrant.Benton nodded and took off his gloves. Then he cleared his throat. “So, uh, what’s with your new friend, anyway?” he asked, gesturing at Johnny. “Mr. Ellis said you call it your counterpart?”“Yeah,” he said. “I read about them in a book written by another Seer. He’s – well, he’s basically me. He showed up right as one of the kidnappers was about to drug—” He faltered. “About to sedate me, and then he … protected me from the rest of them.”Benton’s eyebrows rose. “Wow.” He looked at Johnny, and then back at John. “Can’t say I see the resemblance.”At that, John let out a surprised laugh. “Maybe not.”Benton sat back down in the chair next to his bed. Another silence fell, and that meant it was harder to ignore his remaining symptoms. Especially the cravings. John shut his eyes again, gripping the sheets so tightly that it pulled at the IV in the back of his hand.“So.” Benton cleared his throat, and John felt all his anxiety come rushing back. “Are we going to talk about this?”A number of responses came to mind, none of which were constructive. Like, “Talk about what?” Or even, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Which would be downright stupid, given that John had asked his friend and former mentor to come here to help him, and had given Dan permission to tell him what was wrong. So instead, John opened his eyes and sat up partway, shifting the pillows so he could lean against them rather than the metal headboard. His head and ribs didn’t appreciate the change in position, but he didn’t want to be lying down for this. “I’d rather not,” was what he ended up saying, very quietly. He couldn't bring himself to look up.“I thought the people at the BGM were supposed to look after you,” Benton said, and Carter could hear the anger in his voice now. “That’s one of their whole reasons for existing, isn’t it? To keep Gifted people safe. So how the hell did this happen?” He scoffed. “Why were you even on painkillers to begin with? They said their Healers were going to take care of you.”“They did,” John said. “I don’t even have a visible scar. But…” He trailed off. Benton was obviously predisposed to mistrust the Bureau. Which wasn’t that surprising. A year ago, he hadn’t felt that differently. And now, if he told Benton what Annette and Agent Gregg had done, he would just be confirming Benton’s opinion of them. On the other hand, it wasn’t like he was totally wrong. Then he blinked. “Wait. When did you talk to the Bureau?”“When they came to take you,” said Benton. He rubbed a hand over his face and sat back in the chair. “Agent-- Craig, or whatever her name was, along with a whole squad of armed men in black.”Benton had been there when the Bureau took him. John didn’t know what to feel about that. He, of course, had no memory whatsoever of leaving the hospital. “Agent Gregg had a whole squad of security agents with her, huh?” He frowned. That had to have been a show of force – a clear statement that the Bureau had the authority to take their new member with them. No doubt that hadn’t gone over well with everyone else. Especially Benton, it seemed like.“Yeah.” Benton looked at him again. “So anyway, you were saying that their Healers healed you, but … what?”John felt a flash of anger, which part of him recognized as irrational. Still, he couldn't seem to stop himself. “Look, what does it matter how exactly it happened? I got myself addicted. It was my fault. Okay? Is that what you wanted to hear from me?”“No, that’s not what I--” The other man cut himself off, shaking his head. “It does matter how it happened, Carter! Because if you expect me to just stand here and let these people take you back, knowing that they failed so completely at keeping you safe … well, there’s going to be a problem.”~~Peter watched Carter’s reaction to his statement. Under normal circumstances, Carter didn’t have that great of a poker face, and right now, exhausted and detoxing, it was even worse. In fact, Peter was worried for a second that he was going to have to try to come up with some way to offer comfort to his friend while he started crying, but fortunately Carter got himself under control. He took a shuddering breath and said, “Okay. Well, I appreciate that. But unless you’re planning to smuggle me out of the country, I don’t know how you think you’d stop them.”He stared, and then scratched the side of his face. “It sounds like you’re not disagreeing with me about their failure to keep you safe.”Carter shook his head once. “I’m not disagreeing,” he said, sounding tired. “They messed up, badly. But they know that, and-- and I have a team who’ve been working with me to try to make it right.”“They must not be trying that hard,” Peter said. “A Healer could’ve gotten rid of all the drugs in your system in one sitting, without you having to go through detox. Couldn’t they?” That, of course, was not even mentioning the fact that a Healer should’ve made sure Carter didn’t have enough lingering pain to need a regimen of painkillers in the first place.“It’s more complicated than that,” Carter shot back. Defensive. Not that that was a surprise. But his defensiveness wasn’t enough to hide the underlying shame.With that in mind, Peter worded his next question carefully. “All right. Can you explain what you mean by that? I’m trying to understand here.”“You’re not going to-- It’s not going to make sense to you,” said Carter, shaking his head again.“Try me.” Peter hoped he came across as challenging, not angry.“Fine.” He took a deep breath, wincing, and then cleared his throat. His gaze met Peter’s for a moment before falling again. “The main factor is, there’s some historical evidence to suggest that certain substances can, uh, open a Seer’s mind. Allow him to access more facets of his Gift.”At that, Peter’s jaw dropped. “Carter,” he said, struggling to be able to speak without shouting, “are you telling me that your handlers at the BGM got you addicted to painkillers on purpose?” There were a lot more words he could have added just then, but there would have been no hope of staying even remotely calm if he said any of them.“Not-- not exactly,” Carter explained. “Agent G-- They weren’t intending for me to get addicted. They only wanted me to use enough, often enough to see if it had an effect on my Gift. But like I said, I made sure they knew how badly they messed up.”That was something, Peter supposed. He knew Carter was capable of reading someone the riot act. But still… “Okay. I’m glad you’ve talked to them.” Or her, if this could all be blamed on Agent Gregg. “That doesn’t answer why their Healer didn’t get you off the pills, once you confronted them.”Now he was looking uncomfortable again. He dropped his gaze away from Peter. “She would’ve, if I had asked her to. But… by that point, I had divined – I had Seen the future, and that meant I could save all those people at that mall.”It took him a few more seconds to put those pieces together. Then Peter shook his head. As absurd as it was, it was very much like Carter to draw that kind of conclusion – but it was still wrong. “No. Carter, you can’t tell me you know for sure that using opioids gave you the ability to See the future! There’s no way in hell you possibly have enough data to be certain of the cause and effect relationship there!” He scoffed. “And even if you were sure, that doesn’t mean the risks are--”“I know!” Carter cut in. “My Bureau therapist already told me the same thing.”Raising his eyebrows, Peter said, “Your therapist is exactly right, then. You should listen to him.”“Her,” he corrected. He sighed. “And I’ve been working on it, all right? I’ve been much more careful lately, building in a lot more accountability and-- and decreasing my overall dosage.”Well. If that was true, this whole thing was less dire than Peter had imagined. Though it was still plenty bad. And of course, Carter was still leaving out a lot of details about how he’d ended up addicted in the first place. He was about to press for those details when the dog thing – Carter’s counterpart – sat up suddenly. It stared at the door to the room.“Johnny?” Carter tried to sit up, too. “What’s going on?”The dog leaped off the bed, growling, and ran to stand between the door and where Carter was lying. Peter exchanged a look with Carter. This could not be good. He stood up....And then jumped back when the door was kicked open with enough force to take it off its hinges. There were men in black uniforms holding huge guns, shouting for him to get down on his knees. Peter raised his hands. But Johnny was right there, gigantic and snarling, preventing the men from coming into the room. Meanwhile, Carter was shouting something, too, which Peter couldn't hear over the din from the doorway. But even as he had to pay attention to the people threatening to shoot him, Peter also couldn't fail to notice how much pain Carter’s exertions were causing him.Just as he was positive that either the men with guns were going to start shooting at Johnny, or Johnny was going to attack them, someone outside the room bellowed, “STOP!” It was loud enough to be heard over all the noise. And more importantly, everyone actually obeyed.“Let me through, please,” a woman’s voice said, into the near-silence that followed. It wasn’t totally silent, because Johnny was still growling low, and Carter was panting raggedly. Peter looked at him in concern. He had wrapped his arms around his abdomen, but was still upright. Somehow.When the woman who had spoken finally got into the room, Peter recognized her right away. So did Carter, and evidently Johnny, who took another step closer, still growling. The gray-suited woman stopped. She scanned the room quickly, meeting Peter’s gaze for long enough to recognize him in turn, and then focused on Carter. She looked genuinely worried. “Seer,” she said, “are you all right? Are you – safe?”Carter scoffed. “You tell me,” he said between pained breaths. “Johnny – that’s my counterpart, by the way – doesn’t seem sure about you.”The woman’s eyes went wide, and then she turned her head partway. “Lower your weapons, everyone,” she said. “The Seer isn’t in any immediate danger. Release Mr. Ellis, too.”Letting out a wordless exclamation, Carter tried to sit up further, but winced and collapsed back to the bed instead. “What did … you do to Dan?!” he panted. Peter hurried to close the distance between him and the bedside. The IV was still in, at least.“I’m fine, John,” called Ellis’s voice from outside the room. “Don’t worry about me.”As the men in black lowered their weapons, Johnny finally stopped growling, though he did move to stand in front of Peter, right by Carter – still staring right at the woman.“Agent Gregg, right?” Peter said then. He glanced at the men behind her. “As I recall, when we last saw each other, you were telling Dr. Weaver and Dr. Greene something about how you were going to take excellent care of Carter, and give him a safe environment to learn about his Gift.” He didn’t bother to hold back on the sarcasm as he crossed his arms. “If this is what you meant by that, I can’t say I’m very impressed.”To his mild surprise, Agent Gregg just sighed and nodded. “That’s not unreasonable, Dr. Benton. We’ve let the Seer down, and by doing that, we let his friends down, too.”Before either of them could speak further, Carter interrupted. “Agent Gregg,” he said, “how-- how did you find me?”“I’m sorry it took so long,” she said, sighing again. “We had a system in place for just this kind of eventuality, but it didn’t work anywhere near as well as we’d hoped. Obviously.”“And what was that system?” Peter was glad Carter had been the one to ask. He was staying calmer than Peter would have. (And thankfully, his breathing sounded a lot less labored now.)“There’s a tracking device in your neckband’s emblem,” said the woman, gesturing toward Carter’s neck. “But it’s-- it wasn’t activated, until after the attack on our convoy.”Carter’s eyebrows rose, as he reached up to touch the metal emblem Peter had noticed earlier. “A tracking device?”“There was no need for it to be activated while you were on Bureau premises,” Agent Gregg said, with an unhappy shrug. “But as it turned out, there were some, ah, issues with the tracking program, when we tried to bring it online. So it took a while to get it working.”Peter was really trying to take his cues from Carter here, but he was furious. These people had put a tracking device on him without his knowledge or consent – and then it hadn’t even worked properly when it would have been most useful. “Don’t you think that’s something you should’ve tested earlier?” he asked, through gritted teeth.“Yes,” the woman said.There was a pause, and then Carter cleared his throat. His pain levels seemed to be better, which was good. “Well, I hope no one at the Bureau is expecting me to apologize for not contacting you as soon as I could,” he said. Despite the circumstances – the fact that he was lying on a bed, with an IV in his arm and the effects of his kidnapping and hours of detox clearly visible on his face – Peter was a little surprised at the air of authority Carter managed to project. “Because the only thing I can think is, someone must have leaked my travel schedule in a way that allowed that group to get a hold of it. Someone inside the Bureau.”Agent Gregg looked grim. “Yes, that’s what I have to think, too,” she said. Then she took a breath. “After Healer Ford got me back on my feet, I started to do as much of an investigation into that as I could – but at the same time, for all of us, our priority was to find you of course.”“Oh, God,” interjected Carter then. “How many--” He shut his eyes. “How many of my guards made it? How many security agents are dead?”Of course. Carter had known those BGM personnel that were killed. Some of them he must have known pretty well, if they were his guards.Gregg’s expression got even bleaker. “I’m sorry, John,” she said quietly. “Of your guards, only Lee and Randall made it. All told, the attackers killed nearly two dozen of us.”“God,” Carter repeated. This time, his control didn’t hold. Tears ran down his face, which he covered with shaking hands. Johnny whined and pressed closer to him.Peter cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, and meant it. “Both of you. But, uh, Agent Gregg, can you give me – well, Carter and me – any assurance that he’s not still in danger from the people who caused this destruction?”“I can. That group is no longer a threat,” Agent Gregg stated, without a trace of uncertainty. “All the remaining members are either in custody or dead.”“Good,” said Carter, after a moment. He had looked up when Gregg started speaking. Peter wanted to ask him how he could be sure she was telling the truth, but then he remembered: if anyone could be, Carter could, thanks to his Gift. John took a breath, and wiped a hand over his face. “So, that just leaves the issue of how they found out about my trip in the first place.”“Right,” Gregg said. She looked around the room, her gaze lingering on Carter’s IV pole. “Well, I guess there are two issues left to discuss: how they found out about your trip, and also, how we should take care of you until you can see a Healer.”“And afterward,” Peter put in. He crossed his arms again. “That’s a discussion I think a doctor – another doctor should have a say in, by the way. Since it’s clear you and whoever else is in authority at the Bureau don’t have much of an idea how to manage addiction.”Agent Gregg raised her eyebrows, but didn’t protest the statement. Carter also didn’t protest, although he looked away again. “That’s very logical to me,” the agent said, after a pause. She looked thoughtful. “Seer Carter, are you up for listening to our head of security give you a rundown of everything we’ve found so far about the first issue? He can present it more succinctly than I can.”“Uh, yeah, I can do that,” Carter said.“Good.” Agent Gregg called for someone named McCaffrey to come in – presumably the head of security. Then she went on, “Meanwhile, if it’s all right with you, Dr. Benton and I can step over to the far side of the room and have a conversation about your medical care.”Carter looked at Peter, and then at Agent Gregg. It was harder to read his expression when he said, “That’s fine.”“All right. Dr. Benton?”The two of them walked as far away as they could while staying in the room. It wasn’t a huge room, but if they kept their voices down, this could work all right, Peter thought. He cleared his throat. “Look, Agent Gregg, before we go any further, I need to know: are you prepared to make sure Carter has the support he needs to stay clean and not relapse?”Gregg frowned. “Dr. Benton, whatever you may think of the Bureau and me personally, please believe that we all want the same thing here: for the Seer to stay as healthy as possible. But he’s been insisting to us that he doesn’t want to stop taking the pills entirely, and so we--”“Setting aside for the moment that listening to an addict’s ideas about what’s safe for them to keep taking is never a good idea,” Peter cut in, “we’re past that stage now. Carter is detoxing. That means he’s already gone through almost a full day of extremely unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, and as his friend and his doctor, I’m not planning to let that be for nothing. Which means he’s going to need support.”“And as his friend and his doctor, you’re comfortable deciding that his opinion doesn’t matter here?” the woman replied, her hands on her hips.“In this case? Yes!” Peter realized how loud his voice was getting, and shot a glance at Carter. Carter and the head of security were both staring in their direction. He lowered his voice again. “In this case, being a friend means helping him get off the pills entirely, and if you’d asked Carter whether he agreed with that in general, before he started taking these painkillers, he would have said yes, too.”Agent Gregg looked more convinced now. She sighed. “I believe you, Doctor. But just for the sake of argument, can you tell me what the risks would be of continuing how we have been? I assume the Seer has told you about what he’s been doing…”“Yes, he has.” Peter tried to focus on the fact that she was trying to understand, and not on the frankly alarming fact that someone who was in a position of authority over a large number of people didn’t know these basic facts about addiction. Sure, she wasn’t a doctor – but she could have gotten advice from one long before now. Or done some research of her own, from reputable sources. “Well, the main risk is overdose. I know Carter said he’s been decreasing the amount he’s been taking, which is good. But if he decided at some point to get more pills, and got around whatever safeguards you’ve instituted, he could end up in a coma, with permanent brain damage, or dead.” A thought occurred to him, and he met her gaze directly. “For instance, if he somehow got the idea he needed a higher dosage, in order to make his Gift even stronger.”Gregg flinched. “I see.”“That said, there’s no reason to make him suffer through the rest of withdrawal, either,” Peter added. “The sooner you can get him to one of your Healers, the better.”“There will be one ready for him as soon as we get back to the Bureau,” Agent Gregg said with a nod.“Good.” What Peter could do for him, especially away from the hospital, was limited at best. Although he was still glad he had gotten here when he did.“All right,” said Gregg after a moment. “So, when you talk about support for Seer Carter after he’s seen the Healer, what does that entail? He’s seeing a therapist, as I guess he might have mentioned.”“Yeah, and that’s good,” Peter affirmed. He took a breath as he tried to put this next thought into words. It wasn’t exactly his area of expertise … but he knew quite a few people at County General who would be upset with him if he didn’t try to bring this up. “Does Carter have anyone – any actual friends at the Bureau?”Agent Gregg glanced at Carter, who was facing away from them right now. “It’s a difficult thing,” she said, matching his very quiet tone. “He was close with one of our Healers for a while, but--” She grimaced, and the regret was obvious as she went on, “The issue of our complicity in his addiction damaged that relationship. As it did his friendship with me. And there just aren’t that many people at the Bureau who have L1 Gifts.”That last part was pretty much what Peter had expected, based on Carter’s letter and other things he’d seen and heard. The first part made an unfortunate amount of sense – and it was just another piece of evidence of how thoroughly these people had screwed up. “That’s not going to work in his favor going forward,” he said. “He needs a support network to keep him on track.” That reminded him of the bag of supplies he’d brought. “Once he’s done detoxing, he can and should take naltrexone to help control cravings, but that really only works in conjunction with people who will keep him accountable and--” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Look, I’m not a psychiatrist or a therapist, or an expert on mental health. I’m a surgeon. But I’ve known Carter since he was a med student. He enjoys interacting with patients and their families. He had-- he has a lot of friends among his coworkers, too.”“He still gets that chance to interact with petitioners, on a very personal level,” Gregg said. “But I think I see what you’re getting at, Doctor. And to be frank, that’s one area I’ve disagreed with Bureau policy for a long time – for all of us, not just our L2 and L1 Gifted personnel.”So even the higher-ups didn’t always blindly agree with their policy? That was reassuring to hear. Peter nodded. “Well, you can tell your bosses, from Seer Carter’s doctor, if they need more convincing: isolation is exactly the opposite of what he needs. If you all really want him to stay healthy, don’t keep him cut off from his friends.”“Maybe that will be enough motivation to get them to change their minds,” she said, although she wasn’t really looking at him as she spoke. Then she yawned, apologized, and refocused her gaze on Peter. “I appreciate your honest, straightforward information and recommendations, Dr. Benton. I can’t promise the Bureau will do everything perfectly from here on out, but I promise that I’ll do everything I can to make sure John stays healthy. He’s not just a resource to me.”“I look forward to seeing how you and the rest of your Bureau prove that,” Peter said, after a moment. Those were the right words, but they needed to be put into action. “Now, let’s get Carter to a Healer ASAP.”~~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It was with mixed emotions – but mostly relief – that John opened the door to his suite hours later. It seemed impossible that it had only been two days since he’d left here before dawn. So much had happened in that short amount of time.Before they had all left, John had surprised everyone in the room (which had been Dan, Agent Gregg, Benton, and a few security agents) by calling Johnny to come to him. “I think you did your job,” he’d told his counterpart. “Right?”Johnny had barked once, and then reared up so John could put his arms around him. And then the dog had vanished, bringing him a warmth that settled into him and left him with a fleeting sense of peace. When he looked up, Benton, Agent Gregg, and Dan all had identical expressions of shock on their faces. The security agents were murmuring in quiet awe to one another. John knew he was flushing, but he decided not to let it bother him too much. “All right. Should we go?”Dan had said his farewells next. “Send me a letter or something to let me know how you’re doing, John,” the man said, shaking the hand that didn’t have an IV in it.“I will,” he said. “And thank you again, for everything you did for me.”“You’re more than welcome.” Then he took a breath, and added, “If you see my son Ethan, would you give him my love?”It took a second, and then John’s eyes widened. Now that he was looking, he could see that Dan had the same jawline and eye color as the young man who John had met inside Martin’s room. “I’ll do that, Dan,” he promised. To himself, he pledged to learn more about that situation. He had a feeling there was more to find.Benton had stayed with him until he’d been loaded into the back of the Bureau’s van – much more carefully, on a much more comfortable stretcher than the one his kidnappers had used. Then Benton had asked for a few minutes, and climbed into the back with him. Two security agents (probably part of his new rotation of guards, John thought with a pang) were there as well, but they were clearly trying to give the two doctors some space.“So,” said Benton, after a pause, “you’re okay with going back to the Bureau.”It wasn’t a question, but John nodded. “Yeah. I really do think Agent Gregg wants to make it up to me, as much as she can. And besides, I can’t just stop helping people with my Gift.”“Yeah, I know.” He sounded resigned, but he smiled a little. “It’s good work.”“Thanks.” He let out a slow breath and shut his eyes then, as his need for another hit got stronger again. This was still pretty awful.“I’m sending some naltrexone back with you,” Benton said, probably guessing what he was feeling right then. “Agent Gregg told me there’s at least one practicing doctor there, so they can tell you the right prescription for you, once your Healer gets you through the rest of detox.”Eyes still shut, John nodded. Once he trusted himself to speak, he said, “Good. I’ll take anything that helps keep me from having these cravings.” He knew it wouldn't be so bad once he was healed, but he also knew this wasn’t just going to be done afterward, either.“Yeah,” said Benton. Then he sighed. When John opened his eyes and looked up at his friend, he was looking at him seriously. “You’re going to need support to get through this. More than you have right now. I talked with Agent Gregg, and she agrees.”It was his turn to sigh. Benton was right. He wondered what kinds of things Agent Gregg was planning, in order to meet that need. He honestly didn’t know who else at the Bureau she might be thinking of, other than Dr. Allen, herself, and maybe Annette.“I guess I should go,” Benton said then. He stood up. “I, uh, I’m glad you called me today.”John cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot that--” But then he had to stop, if he wanted to keep his composure at all. He swallowed.“Well, you can feel free to write or call, whenever. And I know everyone else at the hospital would say the same.” He paused, and then leaned forward to put his hand on John’s shoulder for a moment. “You can do this, Carter. All right?”He nodded again, since that was about all he could do. And then Benton was climbing back out of the van, and they were finally on the way back to the Bureau.To his relief, he was taken straight to the parking garage and through the building to medical without stopping or seeing anyone else. And Annette was there waiting for him, looking anxious as several nurses and Agent Gregg all helped transfer him to a bed. “Oh my God. John, I’m so glad you’re back!” she said, even as her gaze traveled over the bruises and the IV pole.John couldn't think of anything to say in response, but he met her eyes for a few seconds.“All right, everyone, let’s give the Healer and the Seer the room,” said Agent Gregg. As everyone was filing out, she hesitated. “Do you want-- I’ll step out as well, John.”“Thank you,” said John. He was so exhausted and still just one step above miserable with the withdrawal symptoms. The fewer people he had to interact with right now, the better.As soon as the door shut behind Agent Gregg, Annette wasted no time in coming over to his side. “Are you ready?”“More than ready,” he told her with a sigh. She took off her glove.Sort of reliving the car crash was deeply unpleasant, as he’d known it would be. But thankfully that part didn’t last long. And then those bruises, the concussion, and the fractured ribs were healed. After that, it was only seconds before all of his withdrawal symptoms were gone. He felt himself relax, as he hadn’t been able to in days. “Thank you,” he said, as Annette took her hand away.“It’s my honor,” she said quietly. Then, going slowly enough that he would have the chance to stop her if he wanted, she brought her hand back, to lay it on his. “We’ve been so worried,” she breathed, and he saw tears shining in her eyes. “I’ve been so worried.”John moved his hand just enough so he could take hers. “Well, I’m back now,” he told her, with a small smile. “Thanks to – a lot of people who helped me.”“I’d love to hear the story sometime,” she said, returning the smile. Then she helped him take out the IV that he no longer needed, and stand up.It almost felt novel to be on his feet without a headache, awful rib pain, or any other real discomfort. Sure, he was exhausted, but he was pain-free. John took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Being pain-free was something he would try not to take for granted.“You doing all right?” she asked, as they moved toward the door of the room.“Pretty good, actually,” he told her. “Now all I need is a shower, and I’ll practically be a new man.” Then he yawned, and rubbed a hand over his chin. “Well, a shower, a shave, and some sleep. And food.” He was ravenous, he realized suddenly.Annette chuckled. “Which one first?”“Shower, definitely,” John said, as she opened the door for him. The others would have to happen soon after, but first he needed to get rid of the last two days’ worth of dirt.“How about I order you some dinner, then, and you can eat it when you’re ready?” she suggested. At his mild look, she clarified quickly, “I’m happy to either eat with you, or leave you alone. Whichever you want.”He took a moment to think about it as they continued down the hall toward the elevator. (Agent Gregg, he saw, was talking to a security agent further down the hall.) Annette had lied to him and hurt him. She had also been doing her best to help and support him ever since then. He didn’t think he was ready for anything beyond dinner, but he also didn’t want to be alone. “Dinner sounds nice,” he said. “I guess I’ll need something easy on the stomach, since I haven’t had much in the way of calories since breakfast yesterday.”She winced. “I’ll keep that in mind.”Agent Gregg saw them coming, and quickly finished her conversation with the security agent. “Seer! You look a lot better.”“Other than being tired and hungry, I feel better than I have in a long time,” he told her.“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, clapping him on the arm as the elevator chimed. Then she looked at him seriously. “And I want to promise you right now, John, that I’m going to do whatever I can to keep you feeling well. Not just physically, I mean.”“Oh?”She followed John, Annette, and his guards into the elevator. “Yes. I’m going to be consulting with the directors and other high-level personnel about changing some of our rules that don’t actually benefit any of the SGs who live here. Things like cutting off basically all contact with friends and family outside the Bureau.” She shook her head. “It shouldn't have taken this attack, and my conversation with your friend Dr. Benton, to drive this change – but the point is, things like that clearly do need to change.”John stared at her, and then felt a smile spread across his face. He looked at Annette, who also looked amazed, and then back at Agent Gregg. “You mean that?”“You can check for sure if you want,” she said, with an answering smile, “but yes, I do. Your friend was very persuasive.”Chuckling, John shook his head. Now he wanted to know what it was exactly that Benton had said to her. Maybe he’d ask him next time he saw him. Which, surprisingly enough, might not be too long of a wait.~~
One Week LaterIt was just that he wanted to get out of the house as soon as possible that morning. Jackie was still not sleeping much (and not accepting any of his tentative offers of help for that problem), which meant she mostly just sat in various spots throughout the day. He understood her grief, of course, but that didn’t keep conversations around the breakfast table from being stilted at best. But leaving the house that early did mean that Peter arrived at the hospital at the same time as the mail delivery. In turn, that meant he happened to see the plain, official-looking envelope poking out of the stack. That return address… He grabbed it out of the stack, and then swore under his breath as the rest of the mail cascaded down onto the floor. Still holding onto the letter from the BGM, he quickly gathered all the rest and put them back into the inbox.“Dr. Benton, what is that?” It was Haleh.She reached for the envelope he was holding, and he pulled it out of the way. “It’s a letter,” he told her, and as she rolled her eyes, he turned away to look at it more closely. It was addressed to “Friends of the Seer at County General Hospital”.Well, he saw no reason not to be the one who opened this – especially since he had an idea of what it might be about. Peter leaned against the desk as he pulled out the crisp, white paper. He read:
To Whom it May Concern,

On behalf of Seer John Carter, the Bureau of Gift Management would like to extend an invitation for the Seer’s friends and former colleagues to attend an informal gathering at the Petition Hall, at a date and time to be arranged. The Bureau understands that, as healthcare professionals at an essential healthcare facility, this gathering must take into account scheduling for each of the Seer’s friends. To that end, we propose at least two separate dates, to accommodate hospital scheduling, and to allow for more intimate gatherings on each occasion.

We request the honor of a response indicating your interest in this type of gathering, and some possible dates and times. The Bureau looks forward to this opportunity to build our ties much closer with the community that both our organizations serve.
The letter was signed by Alicia Gregg as well as two other names Peter didn’t recognize … and then Carter’s signature at the bottom. He definitely hadn’t been the one who wrote this overly formal thing, but that showed he knew about it and approved of it. Peter smiled.“Are you going to share with the class, or what?” Haleh demanded, from right next to him.“Pass it around,” he said, still smiling as he handed the letter to her. He waited, and watched her eyes widen.“Lydia! Conni! Randi! Come read this!”Chen and Abby arrived at that moment. Haleh summoned them over as well, and when they were told who sent the letter, their eyes went wide, too. The women crowded together to read the letter, exclaiming as they did so.“How did anyone manage to convince those people to loosen up their rules?” Haleh looked over at Peter. “What are you still doing here, Dr. Benton? Did you have something to do with this?”Rumors had already been swirling, Peter knew, about what he had or had not done a week ago to help Carter. Out of respect for Carter and for doctor-patient confidentiality, he hadn’t offered any details to anyone. Even to Kerry, he had only told her that Carter had responded well to the treatments he’d offered, and that he had some assurance that he would be getting the follow-up care he needed. (Not that she had pushed him for any more details than that.) To everyone else, all he said was that yes, Carter had asked for his help, and that he had confidence that Carter would be okay when he left.In response to Haleh, Peter smirked and said, “Why don’t you wait and ask Carter when you see him?”“Oh, I’m definitely going to be asking him about this,” Chen chimed in. Then she frowned a little, touching her belly. “That is, if this little one doesn’t get in the way of when we schedule this ‘gathering’.”“I’m sure we can make one of the days work for both of you,” said Conni sympathetically, patting Chen’s shoulder. “But first we need to get this to Dr. Weaver. She can get the ball rolling on the scheduling.”“Scheduling for what?” said Kerry, as she arrived at the desk. Conni passed her the letter. As she read it, her eyebrows rose. “Wow. I have to admit, I was not expecting anything like this from the BGM.”“None of us were,” said Lydia. She nodded toward where Peter was standing. “Except maybe Dr. Benton.”Kerry looked at him. “Peter? This didn’t come as a surprise to you?”“Well, not exactly,” he admitted. “I had an idea we might be hearing something like this. I’m just glad they’re getting it in motion this quickly.”“It’s wonderful,” agreed Kerry. “I’ll put together a spreadsheet for everyone to fill out their availability. Let’s get that done ASAP so we can send it back to Agent Gregg.”Peter really couldn’t justify standing around any longer, but he saw Mark arrive just as he started toward the elevators. He smiled again, to himself. He was sure Mark would jump at the chance to see Carter, and thank him in person for his intervention to get Mark in to see a Healer. He had no doubt both dates would fill up quickly, in fact. For himself, he was looking forward to seeing Carter healthy and drug-free.~~

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Friday, November 24John let out a breath as he got back to his room. His half-day of work had gone well. More than one of the day’s petitioners had told him how glad they were that he was back safe – as had happened every day since he went back to work after the kidnapping. And now, having eaten lunch, all he had left to do today was relax and get ready for the first of two gatherings with his friends this afternoon/evening. An idea that was filling him with excitement and also nervousness, for some reason.The Bureau and County General had worked together to organize these events. They were each going to be a sort of potluck Thanksgiving, with people having signed up in advance to bring the parts of the meal they wanted to bring. He wasn’t much of a cook himself, but thankfully no one was relying on him to make any food. Instead, the cooks at the Bureau had promised to take charge of the turkeys. So he wasn’t nervous about that part of it. Hell, he’d been to enough staff parties when he was at County General to know that many of his friends could either make or otherwise procure really good food.As he took off his uniform and changed into something a little more casual, John made himself try to analyze what it was that was making him nervous. Then he scoffed at himself, imagining what Dr. Allen would say. It wasn’t mysterious. He was worried that his friends, his former colleagues – the ones who didn’t already know – would somehow be able to tell that he was now a recovering addict. That he would no longer have their respect, only their pity.Which was ridiculous, of course. Benton had seen him at his worst, in the middle of detox, and had treated him like a friend. (Also like a doctor, oddly enough.) And no one aside from Benton and Kerry Weaver should even know anything about his addiction, anyway. John shook his head. Yes, it was true that it had been nine months since he’d seen most of the people he was going to see this afternoon. Many of them, in fact, he hadn’t seen since they tried frantically to save his life after the stabbing. So there might be a bit of awkwardness. But the bottom line was, he still really, really wanted to do this. He wanted to see them. And if they had signed up to come to these gatherings – which were completely voluntary of course – that had to mean they wanted to see him, too.John finished changing, and then looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Even after almost two weeks, he was still kind of amazed at how little of his ordeal was visible on his face. Annette had gotten rid of all the outward signs, and time with Dr. Allen had helped him with his other problems. He’d been one of many, many Bureau residents to attend the funeral for all the security agents who had been lost in the attack – with not a single person there showing any hint of blaming John for their deaths. Not that he was under any misconception that he was ‘over’ all that trauma yet, but things were going pretty well. He had even been sleeping all right, the majority of the time.He ran a comb through his hair, nodding once at his reflection. This was good. It was going to be good.Half an hour later, he was doing his best to hold onto that calm assurance. It was about time for the Petition Hall to open for this first odd little Thanksgiving dinner. John’s palms were sweating, though at least he wasn’t wearing his gloves. It was just … weird, he had decided, to be welcoming his old friends to this place. But he had resolved not to let the weirdness mess anything up. He was a Carter, after all. He knew how to be a host. And Agent Gregg would be there to welcome everyone with him, though she had said she would probably slip out after a while.Kerry Weaver was the first to arrive. She was carrying a large covered casserole dish. John quickly came to take it from her after she went through the metal detector (which security staff had required for this event to take place, as ridiculous as it was to imagine anyone of this group bringing any concealed weapons). “Kerry!” he said, with a sincere smile. “Welcome! It’s good to see you.”“Good to see you, too, John,” she replied, with an answering smile. She gave him a critical once-over. “You look well.”Right. Because she knew. John nodded, dropping his gaze for a second. “Thanks.”“How have you been doing?”“Very well,” he told her. He took a breath. Might as well dive right in. “Work has been great, and I haven’t been dealing with any cravings for a while now.”“Glad to hear it.” Before it could get too awkward, Kerry looked around and went on, “It smells wonderful in here.”“Yeah, they’ve been cooking up a storm all day,” he said. Once she was further into the room, he met the eyes of one of the servers who had just finished setting the long banquet table. The server nodded and took the dish from him. “Hope you’re hungry.”“I am,” she said. Then as Agent Gregg came over, she greeted the other woman. “Agent Gregg. Good to see you again.”If she wasn’t as sincere, neither Agent Gregg nor John were offended. Agent Gregg just said, “You, too, Dr. Weaver. Happy Thanksgiving.”Mark Greene and Elizabeth Corday were the next to arrive. John saw they were each carrying a thick paper bag, effectively hiding their contributions to the meal. But he didn’t have time to ask about what was inside those, because Mark was pulling him into a hug as soon as he was through the metal detector.“Carter!”“Hey, Mark,” said John, closing his eyes for a moment before they stepped back from each other. “Good to see you.”“You, too,” said Mark. He shook his head, and then smiled again. “And I’ve gotta say, it’s especially good to be here at the Bureau just to visit, as opposed to as a patient. Or petitioner, or whatever you call them.”“Yeah. Agreed.” No question there. He turned to Elizabeth and greeted her. “I guess you’re going to get more than one Thanksgiving this year.”Elizabeth smiled. “Yes, I suppose so. But that’s very fitting, since Mark and I have so much to be thankful for this year,” she said. Her voice trembled, but she persevered. “First and foremost, we both want to thank you in person for what you did. It means a great deal to both of us. More than we can put into words, really.”“Pretty much what I was going to say,” Mark added quietly. He cleared his throat.John shook their hands in turn. “I’m just glad I Saw it in good time to be able to help,” he told them. He hadn’t had such a specific, targeted vision since that one. He shrugged. “That part of my Gift is the part I have the least control over. Most Seers in history haven’t been able to control that facet, in fact.”“Well,” said Elizabeth, “then we’re even more grateful that everything came together just right.”More people arrived just then, so the three cut their conversation short for the moment. Dave, Lydia, Chuny, and Malik all greeted him enthusiastically, Chuny explaining in the midst of the hubbub that Haleh, Conni, Lily, Randi, Frank, and Yosh would be coming the next day, along with Romano, Abby, Kovac, and Chen. For his part, Malucci slapped him on the back – after jokingly asking if that was okay, or if he should worry about Carter’s guards taking him down. Then Dr. Anspaugh came in a few steps behind this group. He beamed at John and shook his hand vigorously. It was clear that if he hadn’t been aware that there were others waiting to talk to him, Anspaugh would have liked to chat for longer. He did tell him several times that John was doing County General proud – “more than proud” – through all the people he helped every day.John didn’t have too much time to chat individually with Anspaugh or the rest of that group before the next and final group arrived. This was Benton, who had brought Reese, and – to John’s delighted surprise – Cleo with him. He wondered when that had gotten started. “Hi, guys,” he greeted them, making sure to wave so that Reese would see him.“Hi, Carter,” said Cleo with a smile. “It’s good to see you. Been quite a while.”“Yeah. Good to see you, too.” Then he gestured between the two adults. “So when did this happen? Obviously I’m behind on my hospital gossip.”“Obviously,” said Benton, rolling his eyes although he was smiling as well. “It’s been a few months, if you really need to know. All right?”“Okay.” It was not at all surprising that Benton wouldn’t have brought up something personal like this during their last meeting. Not that he was inclined to share much about his personal life in normal circumstances, either. “Well, anyway, welcome.”“Thanks.”The meal started shortly after this. John had already decided ahead of time that he would do his best to divide his time between all the tables, since he didn’t want to let any of his friends feel left out. Of course, that involved carrying his plate between tables. He was sure his relatives would be quietly horrified at this breach of etiquette, but he didn’t care. This was about reconnecting with each of these people who had made the effort to come spend time with him here.Everything was going well. The conversation around each table was relaxed, and everyone seemed happy. Or at least, they did until some minutes after John sat down at the table with Benton, Cleo, Reese, Mark, and Elizabeth.John wondered if Benton would have even brought up the latest drama between him and Romano if Cleo hadn’t hinted at it very heavily. As it was, he gave her an annoyed look. “Cleo, it’s Thanksgiving. Can we just--”“No, no, hold on,” John cut in. He set down his fork and looked across at Cleo. “What do you mean, Benton’s not really still an attending?”“I mean,” she said, returning Benton’s glare calmly, “that Peter went against Romano’s express wishes to do the right thing for a patient, and so that pompous prick--” she lowered her voice just a little, “decided to fire him and then make sure no other nearby hospital would hire him. So he was forced to take whatever job Romano would give him.”John stared at her, and then at Benton. Mark and Elizabeth stayed quiet. Meanwhile, Reese continued eating and also playing with his mashed potatoes, oblivious to the tension. John shook his head. “Let me guess: the position Romano offered was humiliating.”Benton clenched his jaw but didn’t disagree. “The important thing is, I still have a job in Chicago, so I can be a father to Reese.”“That’s important, I get that.” And he did, but John was still furious on his friend’s behalf. Romano was supposed to come tomorrow night, so that meant he had until then to figure out how he should respond to this. It had to be something that wouldn't cause Romano to feel like he needed to take more revenge on Benton, that was for sure.“Carter.”He looked at Benton again. Benton seemed almost alarmed. “What?”“This isn’t the same thing as-- as the situation that you helped out Mark with, all right?” he said, nodding to the other man.John exchanged glances with Mark. Mark shrugged.“I don’t need you to intervene, is what I’m saying,” Benton went on. When Cleo shot him a look, he said, “What? All I’m saying is—”“Yes, we get it, Peter,” interjected Corday with a dry smile. “You have a pathological need to take care of everything yourself.”After a second, almost everyone else at the table started snickering or full-on laughing. Even Reese looked up, saw the others laughing, and giggled. Benton stared around, and then shook his head. “Fine. Fine. I see how it is.” But there was more amused resignation there than real irritation, John could tell.“But seriously, I promise,” John said, when the laughter at Benton’s expense had died down, “that I won’t do anything that would make Romano have any reason to be more annoyed with you. All right?”He met his friend’s gaze. “All right,” Benton said. “Good. Thank you. Though I notice you’re not promising not to do anything.”“Well, Romano’s coming here tomorrow night,” was his response. “It’d be rude for me not to talk to him at all.”“In fact, I’m sure Robert would be delighted to have a chance to talk to you one on one,” Elizabeth pointed out. She poured some more gravy on her turkey, from the gravy dish that the servers had put in the center of the table. “He’s been quite pleased by the secondhand fame you’ve brought to County General, and not infrequently, he brings up the fact to any important visitors that technically, he used to be the Seer’s boss.”There were some more chuckles around the table at that. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” Carter muttered, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.“Not even slightly,” Mark agreed.The rest of the evening passed too quickly. John made sure he got the chance to speak with each of his guests personally again before the meal ended, and he was happy to hear whatever bits of gossip or life updates they wanted to share with him. For his part, as he’d made the rounds throughout the meal, he told a few stories of the more interesting petitioners he’d encountered (not sharing any names or too personal of details, of course), and answered his friends’ questions about life at the Bureau. A few of them – Dave included, of course – had asked whether there was anyone special in his life (or in Malucci’s words, whether there were any “hot chicks in the BGM”). He’d left his answer there a little vague. But all in all, it was … well, it was something to be thankful for, that was for certain.Agent Gregg made another appearance as everyone was leaving. She had, in fact, made a discreet exit early on, but now she shook everyone’s hand (hers were gloveless) before they left, and thanked them for coming. To Kerry and Dr. Anspaugh, Carter heard her say, “I think this turned out very well. Let’s make sure it isn’t a one-time occasion, all right?” Both the two doctors concurred.When John had finally finished saying his reluctant farewells to Mark, Elizabeth, and Cleo (Benton had already taken a tired and cranky Reese out to the car), he watched them go with a sigh. It was so quiet in here now. He heard footsteps behind him, and turned to see Annette approaching.“Hey.”“Hey,” she said, coming up to lay a hand on his arm. “How’d it go?”“It was…” He trailed off, and shook his head. “It’s hard to express it all, actually. I’m just really glad this happened. Excited for tomorrow night, too.”“Good.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back. He’d invited her to join, but she had told him to enjoy his time with his friends tonight and the next night. Although they were looking forward to a chance sometime in the near future for his friends to meet her. John was also looking forward to meeting her sister, since that kind of thing was apparently in the cards now for every SG that wanted it.As he thought about that, he remembered one other reunion he could anticipate now: his Gamma had called repeatedly after he returned to the Bureau, and they had talked several times. She was going to come visit, after the holiday. Whether his parents decided to do more than send him a card remained to be seen.“I, uh,” Annette paused and dropped her gaze for a moment. Her cheeks turned pink. “I have a little confession to make.”“Oh, yeah?” John turned his full attention toward her. “What’s that?” He thought about cracking some sort of joke about the sins she must have committed to need to confess, but decided against it. The two of them were still a little tender on that kind of topic.She scoffed at herself. “I watched you with your friends – just for a few minutes.” She gestured at the main inner door to the Petition Hall, which had windows inset. When he raised his eyebrows, she hurried to add, “Really, just for a few minutes! I’m not a creep. I went and had my own dinner. Even had some turkey and mashed potatoes.”“Okay. Sure.” He hadn’t been using his Sight, but he was pretty sure she was telling the truth. “So what did you see?”“That you all really seem to like each other. I mean, more than a lot of coworkers do. You could tell how much history you all have together.” She shrugged, looking away again for a moment and then back at him. “I’m glad you had that, and that you still do.”He smiled. “Yeah. Me, too.”~~The second Thanksgiving evening went well, too. John was glad to see everyone – even Romano, to some extent – and everyone seemed glad to see him. Haleh gave him a big hug, Kovac brought some kind of homemade Croatian delicacy to share, Abby told him he was still missed in the ER, and all of the other nurses as well as Randi presented him with a large, mysterious, wrapped gift basket from them that they made him promise to open later, after everyone was gone. Deb – whom Carter had not known was pregnant – apologized as she told him that she got tired quickly these days so she might not be able to stay long. He answered quite sincerely that he was just glad to see her, and that she was doing well.It was after people were mostly done with their food that John put his plan into action. He’d prepared for it the previous night, after everyone had gone home and he was back in his room. (Alone this time; he and Annette weren’t quite ready to spend every night together.) He sat down cross-legged in the middle of his bed, taking several deep breaths and letting them out slowly. Honestly, he had no idea if this was even going to work. After all, he hadn’t ever been able to use his ability to divine on demand like this. But it wouldn’t hurt to try, he reasoned.As soon as he was relaxed and calm as possible, he focused on someone he had never imagined himself spending this much energy on: Robert Romano. If his Gift cooperated, his idea was to see if he could learn anything about Romano’s future – whether big or small – that he could then tell the doctor the next night. Obviously, his plan didn’t include using whatever information he got to force Romano to reinstate Benton. That wasn’t his style. It would be a misuse of his Gift. Plus, it would provoke the man, which was the opposite of what he wanted to do. He would tell Romano anything he happened to See, regardless of what the man said he would do in return. But first...To his pleased surprise, after maybe ten minutes of deep breathing with no real Gift-related result, he got something. It wasn’t a full vision – more like a strong hint. He knew it had to do with Romano’s future, it wasn’t good, and it was something the man could probably avoid if he knew about it ahead of time. Satisfied, John had written himself a note, gotten into bed, and gone to sleep.Now, he stood up from his table, and went over to where Dr. Romano was just setting down his knife and fork. “Hey, Dr. Romano, do you have a minute?”“Robert, please,” said the man with a quick smile. He raised an eyebrow. “That is, uh, unless you feel like we all ought to address you as Seer Carter in this context?”John returned the smile and shook his head. “Not at all.”“Good. Then yes, of course I have a minute. What do you need?”“It’s actually something I have that I think you should know,” said John, as the two of them walked a short distance away from the tables. He saw a few of his friends watching them go with interest, but he ignored that for now.“Really? Well, color me intrigued.” Then Romano’s relaxed demeanor shifted, and he swallowed. “Uh, this-- this isn’t like the news you gave to Mark last month, is it?”Shaking his head again, John hurried to say, “Oh, no, no. Nothing as urgent as that.”“Okay.” Romano let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, good.”“But it does have to do with something I Saw about your future,” John went on. He frowned a little, trying to bring to mind the few details he’d divined. “It wasn’t a really detailed vision, I have to admit, but it still seems like something that would be good for you to know.”“Then don’t just leave me in suspense, John,” the other man said, with a slightly strained laugh. “Spit it out, would you?”He relented. It wasn’t fair to be draw this out, even if he was pretty angry at what was being done to Benton. “Right. All I Saw was a quick image of a helicopter, and you, and I got a pretty strong sensation of danger. So my recommendation is to be very, very careful around helicopters in your future.” It was true – that was about all he’d Seen. He genuinely hoped it was enough to be useful.Romano blinked. He shook his head once, and then rubbed a hand over his chin. “Well, it’s not a lot to go on, like you said.” Then he blinked again, met John’s eyes, and added hastily, “Not that I’m not very grateful for you taking the trouble to tell me about it. You can be one hundred percent sure I’ll be careful – and I won’t forget this, either.”“You’re right, it’s pretty vague as warnings go,” John said mildly. “That part of my Gift is hard for me to control – like it has been for most Seers in history, apparently. We just have to take what we can get, I guess.”“Oh, absolutely,” Romano assured him. “I’m not complaining. Knowing this much is definitely better than not having any warning at all. So thank you.”As John shook Romano’s hand, he said, “It’s my honor to use my Gift to help anyone who needs it. And I’m glad to have been able to tell you.” He paused. “Hey, on the topic of helping people, did you happen to hear anything about how it was a friend of mine at County General who helped me after I escaped from those kidnappers earlier this month?”At that, the man cocked his head. “I’ve heard a few rumors. Why? Who was it?”“Peter Benton,” said John, as he started back toward the rest of his guests. Romano quickly followed suit. “I’m just-- I’m really grateful that he came, when I managed to find someone who could call him for me. He gave me the medical care I needed right then, and helped me get back where I needed to be. The hospital is lucky to have him on staff.”To John’s ear, it sounded like Romano turned his scoff into a cough right then. “Huh. Well, I wouldn’t have guessed Peter in a million years, but I’ll take your word for it, John. And, uh – thanks again.”“You’re welcome. Thanks for coming, and Happy Thanksgiving.” With that, John waved as his friend’s boss headed for the front door, where Agent Gregg was waiting to shake everyone’s hands again.“What was that about?”John turned, to see Abby, Kovac, and Deb all staring at him. “What?”“It’s just-- we never knew you and Romano were close enough that you’d want to go talk to him in private,” said Deb.“Oh, we’re not,” said John, stepping closer to his friends. “But since I did just sort of save his life, I’m hoping he’ll feel obliged to do something I want, in return.”‘“Sort of saved his life’?” Abby’s eyebrows rose. When he just shook his head, she scoffed. “Come on, Carter, you can’t just leave us with that.”“Nope, sorry. I’m honor-bound to keep the details of any visions I See about anyone private, just between me and them,” he said, smirking at the shock on all three of their faces.“So you Saw a vision about Romano?” Kovac scratched the side of his face. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then shrugged. “I suppose your Bureau is supposed to serve everyone, aren’t they?”“That’s right. Just like County. Nobody gets turned away.”“Uh huh.” Kovac glanced at Abby and Deb. “Very admirable.”“Hey, as long as it wasn’t something that’ll put Romano into a worse mood than usual, so that he feels like he needs to take his irritation out on the rest of us, I’m all for altruism,” said Deb, although her eyes were still wide.“On the contrary,” John said. He was sure his satisfaction was still obvious on his face. Then he considered. There was a chance, he supposed, that a vague warning like he’d just given would have some unintended consequences for Romano’s state of mind. “I mean, I supposed it could make him a little worried, but hopefully nothing beyond that.” He didn’t want the man to obsess over it or anything. That wasn’t healthy for anyone. Including any of Romano’s patients.“All your vague hints might just leave us a little frustrated, you know,” Abby pointed out.Shrugging, John held out his hands. “Sorry. On my end, I have to keep it confidential. But you can always ask Romano about it, if you’re that curious. He’s free to talk about it with anyone he wants.”Luka snorted. “Right. I’m sure he’s just dying to have a chat with any of us.”There were more amused reactions, as they all tried and – Carter guessed – failed to imagine that. “Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat, “do you guys really want to spend our last few Thanksgiving minutes discussing Robert Romano? There’s got to be some other hospital gossip you could tell me about before we all go our separate ways.”Thankfully, the conversation did turn to gentle mocking of Luka’s new, flashy sports car that he’d bought recently. John didn’t join in; it wasn’t like he had room to talk about ostentatious wealth. Instead, he just stood with his friends, enjoying this time they had together.~~