3800 A.D., Siberia

A glittering, razor-sharp sword started to sever Richie Ryan's neck.

Methos, already struggling in the grip of the guards who held him, felt something slam through his senses like the presence of a hundred thousand Immortals. The most massive earthquake he'd ever felt - and in seven thousand years he'd felt his fair share - yanked the hangar floor out from under his feet. The woman wielding the sword cutting Richie's neck disappeared, taking her weapon with her. Valery Constantine, the man responsible for so many centuries of horror, screamed as if his blood had turned to acid in his body. Although Methos couldn't see the sun he swore it blacked out somehow, plunging the planet into darkness, sending the earth spinning wildly off its axis as awesome gravitational forces ran amuck.

Time.

More time.

He slipped like a small, boneless fish through a deep and soundless sea of pure black. Currents tugged at him gently, moving him this way and that, pulling him through warm saltiness for a distance immeasurable. Languid, liquid, without obstacles, without barrier or thought, he moved effortlessly, gracefully, steadily. No nightmares or fears dragged at him, and no worries about the dissolution of the world as he knew it disturbed his limited awareness.

The blackness grew lighter, shading into a lovely royal blue filtered by golden light from an unseen sun. He tried to look at himself but found he had no body, which was only vaguely surprising. The fathomless silence transformed into a series of deep, sonorous calls rolling like thunder over distant undersea mountains. Royal blue and gold turned to dazzling emerald green, lifting him up on shafts of radiance. He resisted at first, unsure, unwilling, but he was carried inexorably towards a crashing, boiling whiteness that sucked him up, over himself, onto his side, and slammed him into rock, into sand, onto a beach beneath a cliff of jagged rock and the full blast of unforgiving sunlight. The roar of waves rose in his ears, dissolving the last mournful cries of the whales -

Methos bolted upright in a summer field of long green grass. Blue sky, rolling clouds, the ocean stretching out beyond the edge of a cliff just a hundred feet away - he sat absolutely still for several minutes as his heartbeat slowed to a normal rhythm and he oriented himself to sea, land, sky. The salty breeze stirred in his head a beautiful dream of swimming in the sea, but the images were already dissolving.

Other images - a horrific underground bunker, a sacrifice offered, hundreds of squealing rats scurrying over his body and ripping at his flesh - returned to Methos' mind, making his breath quicken and his palms turn clammy. He pushed them out of his mind as best he could by examining himself. He was wearing his battered old jeans and favorite green jersey, both items having been tossed in the trash at least a thousand years previous. Although days of internment in the prison of Valery Constantine's rat-infested dungeons had left him starved, filthy and bedraggled, his chin was now smooth beneath his touch and he didn't feel the least bit hungry or dirty. He climbed to his feet and scanned the grass for his best friend. He couldn't feel the buzz of any local Immortals, and the thought of being alone in the middle of nowhere almost panicked him.

"Richie!" he yelled. Only the stir of the wind in the elm trees bordering the field and the hum of summer insects answered him. He started searching the long grass, working in increasingly wider circles, and after several minutes found Richie Ryan lying by the edge of the cliff, sleeping peacefully beneath the summer sun. His skin was warm, his pulse steady, but try as he might Methos could not make him wake up.

He didn't know it, but Richie was conscious in a fashion. Like Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, Richie Ryan had gotten unstuck in time.

***

Tessa knocked on Richie's door just after the six o'clock news started on the television in the living room. Rain and gloom outside had made Sunday a quiet day for all of them. Duncan worked on kata in his small studio above the store. Tessa curled up on the sofa with hot tea and thumbed through her monthly mailings of newspapers and magazines from France. Richie claimed to be doing some long overdue cleaning, but after bringing only one bag to the dumpster he'd shut his bedroom door and become suspiciously quiet. She bent her ear close to the wood, but couldn't even hear his stereo.

"Richie?" she asked. "Are you hungry? We're thinking about ordering Chinese food."

A muffled answer came through the door. She edged it open and slipped inside. Richie had drawn the curtains and was lying on his bed, a pillow over his head. Damp chill air from outside came through the open window, making the room dark and cold.

"Are you sick?" Tessa sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. She turned on the bedside light, and he groaned. "What's the matter?" she asked.

Richie rolled onto his side, away from the light. "Nothing," he mumbled from beneath the pillow. "Just a headache."

"Let me feel you for a fever," she said. He moved the pillow slightly. His arms were awash with goosebumps, but the skin on his forehead warmed her hand. Without comment she unfolded the afghan thrown across the foot of his bed and spread it over him. She went to his bathroom, didn't find what she was looking for, and instead retrieved aspirin from her own medicine cabinet. She also drew a glass of water from the kitchen sink. Richie sat up in bed and swallowed them down for her with no complaint, his face haggard and complexion pale. He crawled back beneath the afghan, and she tucked it around his thin shoulders.

"Do you want some soup?" she asked. "Sweet and sour, from the Chinese place?"

"Nope," he answered miserably, drowsily. "I just want to sleep."

"Okay," Tessa said. She sent Duncan in an hour later to check on Richie, and he returned shrugging off the teenager's illness to the flu.

"He'll be fine," Duncan said.

He was wrong.

***

She stood in the rain, letting it plaster her hair to her skull, her summer dress to her body. They'd had a fight over something inconsequential and trivial, and a few hours after he stormed out of their flat Felicia went looking for Richie. She found him in the courtyard of Darius' long-forgotten church, on the low wall that bordered the Seine. He rose at her approach, even more thoroughly wet than she was, his face as gray as the rainy day and the thick, sluggish river.

"They say into every life a little rain must fall," she said, hoping to lure him back with humor. "This is a lot of rain, don't you think? Acidic, too."

He came to her and they stood, side by side, of equal height and slender build, wet, so very wet, his expression more somber than she could ever remember.

"I love you," he said, and pulled her to his chest. "I always will."

They stood entwined, awash in the waters of the world.

***

The crash of ocean, not far away. The smell of grass and salt. Richie opened his eyes and saw Methos hovering beside him, fully illuminated in the dark night by ribbons of silver starlight. Cool fresh air washed over him, soothing the fever Tessa was trying to quell. Methos looked tired and relieved.

"You're awake," he said. "It's about time. How do you feel?"

"Mmm." The first few seconds of consciousness weren't too bad but the next few brought with them the awareness of pain scraping back and forth across his optic nerve like a razor being sharpened against a leather strap. Mammoth pressure against every inch of his skull made him certain half his brains had squeezed out his ears, and the pulse of blood through his head turned every heartbeat into the slam of a sledgehammer.

"Richie?"

He struggled against the agony to form a question. "Are we here?"

"Of course we're here." Methos sounded puzzled by the question. "What's wrong?"

"Is Felicia okay?"

Methos' expression tightened in concern. "Richie, try to think clearly for me. Felicia's not here. She's been dead for over a thousand years."

Dead? She had looked so beautiful, standing in the rain. Richie struggled to focus on Methos' face. "You have seaweed in your hair," he said, each word an effort.

Methos reached up and snagged a strip of dead brown weed. He examined it curiously, then flung it away.

Richie reached for Felicia in the rain but grasped only starlight, and descended back into the darkness as an escape against the pain.

***

Methos explored during the day, venturing across the field to the trees, always careful to keep Richie's location within sight. He found a curving, dipping road beyond the trees, a poly-asphalt two lane highway equipped with electronic sensors for guidance control computers on transports. He waited for hours but no traffic appeared to disturb the peacefulness of the afternoon. He finally gave up and went looking for water or edible plants, but found neither. Richie hadn't moved an inch by the time Methos returned to his side. He woke well after dark, obviously disoriented, obviously in pain. He muttered something about Felicia and then sank back into his comatose state, so deep Methos couldn't wake him.

The night brought colder temperatures and an increasing gnaw in Methos' stomach. He tried chewing on grass, but winced at the bitter flavor. Instead of eating it he began pulling it out by the handfuls. He gathered enough to lay across Richie and himself, and pressed against the younger Immortal's side to share body warmth. Richie stirred twice during the night, in mumbled conversation with people Methos couldn't identify, but both times he settled back to oblivion without waking.

When morning came Methos woke from his own restless sleep and sucked the dew off the grasses. Not enough to soothe his dry throat, but a start. He tried waking Richie without any success. He had no way of telling when or if Richie would come out of his current state, and with regret decided to temporarily abandon his friend.

"I have to find us some help," he said. "Don't go away, you understand?"

No answer.

Methos set off down the road in what he hoped was the direction of the nearest town. After two hours of no traffic and not the slightest sign of animal life, including birds, he began to suspect something was awry with the world. Since his last conscious memory before awakening in the field had been one of standing in Valery's underground bunker, watching a sword arc down toward Richie's head, he had no doubt something unfathomable had happened. Exactly what, he couldn't say. He suspected Richie had used his unusual powers to somehow carry them to safety, but how far had they traveled? Where was everyone?

Only after the sun had reached its zenith did he chance upon a white, well-kept farmhouse set several hundred feet back from the road. Methos called out from the edge of the lawn but heard no answer. A rocking chair on the porch moved slightly in the breeze, and a wind chime tinkled out a wistful greeting. Methos approached the house carefully, scanning the first and second floor windows for signs of life, but all he saw was a blue and white checkered curtain stirring in the open window of an upstairs room.

He knocked. No answer. He walked around back, and saw the second good news of the day - a decent-looking late model transport, hooked to its charger. Methos knocked on the kitchen door and waited for an answer before trying the knob. Locked. With a sigh of regret he smashed in the pane of glass above the handle, hooked his arm inside and pulled the latch clear.

He called out again once inside the house, but the rooms only echoed his words. Methos took his time going through the small, tidy kitchen. A calendar written in New French on the wall marked the date as June 18, 3801. He checked the power to the house computer and appliance converters and found the solenoid batteries fully charged.

"House on," he ordered in New French. In Esperanto. He was tempted to try English, but that was a dead and forgotten language. In any case the house didn't answer him. Maybe it had shifted to security mode and had already made contact with the police to report a break-in. If that was the case, though, he would have expected a laser stun when he crossed the threshold. Home protection laws in this millennium were very liberal.

He checked the vids and found them dead. Curious. The house's main terminals came to life beneath his touch and he called up the main screen to check for a security breach report. The security system had crashed after failing to connect to the outside ethernet. Shoddy programming on someone's part, Methos decided. He couldn't detect anything more than white noise on the microwave I- net. The solenoid generator seemed fully operational, capable of powering the house for several months. The only useful thing he learned from the computer was the house's address, outside the city of Rudejoue in the French province of Germaise.

Rudejoue.

Ancient Seacouver.

Methos tapped his fingers lightly on the computer desk, lost in thought for a moment, and then searched the rest of the house.

Upstairs he found a master bedroom for a man and woman whose holograms on the dressers revealed a rather attractive couple in their forties. A young lady's room in cream and pink stood right next to the master bedroom. To judge by the old-fashioned chemical kit spread across a neat work bench, she was a budding scientist. He paused in the bathroom to examine his reflection, and found the same face he'd had for seven thousand years looking back at him. Back downstairs he found a young boy's bedroom off the kitchen, decorated with posters of French sports heroes and framed pictures of ballet dancers. A book about the necessity of religious strictness lay half-open on the coffee table in the family room with a tall glass of water beside it.

He shrugged off the distinct impression of hovering ghosts and went in the transport to retrieve Richie.

Richie beat his opponent into a retreat down the nave of the ruins of Notre Dame Cathedral. Garbage and broken wood clung to his ankles, trying to tear at his balance. He'd never even practiced with the unfamiliar sword in his hands, but with each blow he felt a surge of calm, cool confidence. He would win this battle. He would gut Darien MacLeod, Duncan's adopted son, and take his Quickening. Only then would he allow himself the flooding, devastating grief that came with the knowledge Sanctuary had been destroyed, and most of his loved ones with it. Only then would he stop to consider if there was anything in the world that still mattered to him.

Darien had different ideas over who should win this fight, and lulled Richie into a false sense of security as their swords clanged against the shattered stones of the ancient, fallen cathedral. Snow swirled down through the broken roof, illuminated by shafts of late afternoon light Steel met steel dozens of time a minute - both of them breathing hard, both of their hands slick with sweat - Darien bided his time. He would prove once and for all that he was not just his father's shadow. He would kill the man he'd once thought of as his uncle, and gladly take his place in the dark heart of the world.

With a flourish Darien spied a tiny flaw in Richie's defense and lunged to score a cut that ripped him from sternum to hip. Richie compensated far more quickly than Darien thought he would and landed a solid thrust that tore a good size chunk out of the side of Darien's neck.

They circled warily, each pouring out blood.

"Gloves off now?" Richie grinned maliciously.

"Gloves off!" Darien growled. He didn't care if he lost his head. He'd never cared. Richie ably defended his next blow, but for some reason the older Immortal slid abruptly to his knees with a look of pure astonishment on his face.

Darien took a reflexive step backward, fearing some trick, and looked down to make sure Richie hadn't run him through with his blade and he just hadn't noticed yet. But Richie was the one mortally wounded. A tip of steel protruded from his chest, right through his heart.

"Oh," was what Richie said. He fixed on Darien a lost, bewildered look and pitched to the floor, dead.

Only then did Darien see the three foot red spear that had pierced Richie through the back.

Red spear.

The blood-scavengers of Paris had come to claim prizes of their own. Darien looked up to the only place the spear could have come from, the choir lofts, just in time to see the spear that barreled into his chest like a missile and killed him too.

***

"You're sure he'll be all right?" Tessa asked as Duncan came out of Richie's room and shrugged into his raincoat.

"Yes." The Highlander placed a kiss on her forehead. "It's just the flu."

Richie had only come to live with them a few months earlier, and Tessa felt uncomfortable dealing with his illness. She herself hardly ever fell sick, and Duncan had only caught two colds in the twelve years they'd been lovers.

"You're sure you have to go out?"

"I'll be back in an hour or two. Lunchtime at the latest," he promised. "Richie will be fine. He knows it. He's had the flu before. Liquids, aspirin, rest. That's all that will help."

Tessa didn't quite believe Duncan and unhappily watched him drive away to his appointment at an auction house. She visited Richie several minutes later to see if he needed anything. She didn't want to pester him, but she didn't want him to suffer by himself either He winced at the light from the hallway and muttered a protest. Tessa closed the door behind her. He lay in a T-shirt and shorts beneath a mound of blankets, a bowl on the floor. He'd thrown up twice during the night, and he definitely had a fever.

"It's just the flu," he protested when she took his temperature. One hundred two. Tessa shook the mercury back down and coaxed him into drinking some water. Richie sagged back to the pillow and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Do you still have a headache?" she asked sympathetically.

"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "Everything hurts. My hands are freezing."

She pulled them out from beneath the blankets. They did feel cool to the touch. She rubbed them gently for a few minutes, and he opened his eyes to give her a slightly crooked smile.

"You make a good nurse."

"I do my best," she smiled. She traced a rash on his forearm, a cluster of tiny blood spots that looked like someone had poked him with needles. "How long have you had this?"

"I don't know. I'm going to sleep now, okay?" "Yes," she said, and impulsively kissed his forehead the way Duncan had kissed hers. "Sleep. You'll feel better when you wake up."

He did sleep, grateful for slipping away from the world, but a man's voice broke into his repose. "Richie, wake up," the man said, several times.

He protested. He didn't want to wake. He didn't want to face the wash of pain that would come with awareness. Against his will he grew aware of the firmness of a bed beneath his body and a soft down comforter above it. Reluctantly he opened his eyes, but only because Methos sounded so worried. A dark bedroom surrounded him. The fluid, shifting shapes of furniture hovered at the edges of his vision. Methos was pressing cool cloths against his forehead, and a trickle of water down the back of Richie's neck tickled uncomfortably.

"Where are we?" he asked. Despite the blazing warmth of the room - why didn't Methos turn on the air conditioner? - he started shivering, caught in a fierce grip of cold.

"Doesn't matter. I'll worry about that. Just concentrate on getting better. Here, drink this."

Richie didn't ask what it was. Methos helped him lift his head - all the muscles in his neck felt like rusting steel rods, incapable of flexibility - and swallowed the slightly bitter fluid. Methos didn't tell him he'd taken the transport to town and raided a local hospital pharmacy for the painkiller. He didn't tell him the hospital, like the rest of Rudejoue, had been abandoned. With the exception of Richie, Methos hadn't seen a living soul in four days.

Richie lay in the bed, more awake than he wanted to be, trying to make sense of the images fighting for preeminence in his mind. He wasn't sure they really were memories - how could he know Tessa's thoughts as Mac drove away from the store, how could he remember Darien's self hatred or dying agony - but at the same time he wasn't up to the mental gymnastics of believing the images could be more than dreams, more than illusions.

"Kill me," he said to Methos. "Maybe that will do the trick."

Methos shook his head. "I can't."

"Why not?" Every word was an effort, a precise manipulation of breath and sluggish muscles.

"I'll explain later. Are you hungry?"

"No."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Methos asked.

"Itches."

"What itches?"

"Septi-something. Rash. Comes with meningitis."

"Richie, you don't have meningitis."

"Had it. Tessa got worried." Like two films playing against the same movie screen he could see her sitting by his hospital bed, her golden hair framing anxious features, and at the same time he could see Methos in a remarkably similar pose.

"Richie, what year is it?"

"2076," he murmured. He was the one leaning over the hospital bed now. His partner, Baxter Bushwell, had crashed out of a second story window while grappling with a street punk they'd been trying to arrest in Hell's Kitchen. Baxter had a broken collarbone, which would be healed by tomorrow, and a slight concussion, which Richie maintained he'd always had.

"Shut up, Aron," Baxter growled from his bedside. "What do you know? You're just a rookie. Smart-aleck kid."

"Yes, sir," Richie said easily. Baxter was thirty five years old. Richie had just passed one hundred and two. They'd been working together as police detectives for over eighteen months, and Richie had managed to keep his Immortal nature from everyone he knew in Manhattan. Well, not quite everyone. Connor MacLeod taught about ancient weapons and battles at Columbia, and Rabbi David Grossman had adopted a new temple in mid-town.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Baxter asked, jerking the television from one station to the next with an aggravated push on the remote. He was hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. The building's air conditioning had broken weeks earlier. All of New York was crumbling into disrepair. But his partner, Aron Adams, always looked cool despite the heat. The advantage of youth, Baxter thought in irritation. "You're supposed to have a date tonight."

"Millary's running a little late," Richie confessed. The thought struck him that his girlfriend's name was Andrea, not Millary. Did he know an Andrea? Yes, of course. He'd loved her and lost her. Joe Dawson's daughter. He spun back in time to a hole-in-the-wall bar in New Orleans and leaned against the creaking wood of the counter. It had been a very long night of music and women. He and Joe had come two thousand miles for this, Joe Dawson's Last Fling. By tomorrow night he'd be back in the nursing home, content to lead out his last days on earth raising hell with the staff and little old ladies.

Richie downed a shot of tequila. It seared down his throat to join the rest of the large quantity of alcohol pooling in his stomach. He had passed drunk some time ago, without collecting his two hundred dollars. He giggled at the thought. Joe hit him on the arm with his cane.

"It's not funny," the old mortal grunted as he fixed a morose stare on the mirror behind the bar.

Richie struggled to remember what it was they were talking about. "What's not funny?"

Joe downed his own drink. "I don't know," he admitted. "But it's not funny."

Richie took the proclamation with great sadness. He wanted things to be funny. He wanted to have fun. Thanks to hard work, sound business planning and a heap of good fortune, he was a millionaire. But he wasn't a *joyous* millionaire. He swallowed another shot of tequila, lost in the dismal news that something wasn't funny.

Joe burped. "It's *hilarious,*" he announced, and started laughing so hard at his own joke that he fell into the chasm between the stools -

"Don't jump!" Baxter yelled. "It's too far!"

But Richie didn't listen. They had been pursuing this murder suspect for three months. The punk had just vaulted off the roof of the tenement building to the factory beside it. Richie followed, confident he could scrape a success from the suicidal distance like their quarry just had.

Big mistake.

He plunged twelve stories to his first public death in New York and jerked back to life in Baxter's arms. Baxter had been crying and calling his name. After five years of being partners, they were closer than brothers. But the terror he saw in Baxter's eyes as the mortal scrambled away almost severed that tie.

"What the hell are you?" Baxter asked.

Unstuck in time, Richie wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come.

Methos settled into the house quite comfortably. He no longer feared the Bujolais family, the former residents, would come back from a trip to the supermarket or a picnic in the park. Two weeks had passed since he'd hauled Richie from the field to the downstairs bedroom, and Methos had not seen a single person. When he was not nursing Richie he fiddled with the house computer and determined the reason the house couldn't connect to the I-net was because it didn't exist anymore. Trips through the ghostly city of Rudejoue and its abandoned houses verified his hypothesis. Something had wiped out the communications net of the world with a vengeance. Even manual radios and televisions were incapable of picking up a working frequency. Methos remembered the world's Cold War era in the 1950's, and knew that an atomic bomb could disrupt electromagnetic communications. So could sunspots. But neither atomic bombs or unusual sun activity could explain where all the people had gone.

Some had vanished in the middle of meals. Others had left their doors and windows wide open to the summer day. Home computers had turned off any cooking food, shut off pulsing shower valves, and taken proper care of their tiny kingdoms before retiring into standby mode. Street lights flickered to life each night exactly on schedule, to light the way for absolutely no one at all. The entire setting was too eerie for Methos to contemplate, and when nightfall came he was certain to be back in the comfort and safety of the Bujolais house.

Caught in the grip of what had to be the fiercest migraine on the planet, Richie rarely moved from the bedroom. He could get himself back and forth to the bathroom without help, but since he was barely eating or drinking anything the need didn't arise more than once or twice a day. Methos threatened to stick needles into his arms and feeding tubes down his throat but it was like arguing with a ghost. Richie existed mostly on some inner plain, where the past was as real as the present. He talked in his sleep often, and Methos would sit by the bed listening to the past replay like an old movie.

One night, around midnight, Methos woke in the upstairs bedroom to the sound of Richie conversing with someone in the back yard. He had never sleepwalked before. Methos pulled on a pair of shorts and padded down the stairs to join Richie in the wet grass. The summer storm that had swept in earlier with rain and thunder had cleared to streaks of clouds around the moon and the fresh smell of wet earth.

Richie was speaking in Spanish to his children.

"No, Diego, you can't play with Uncle Adam's sword. You'll poke your eyes out. Manual - don't you dare throw your sister in the fountain. Has anyone seen Tonio? Why is he always the one who gets lost?"

Methos smiled at the words. Richie and his mortal wife Cecie had gained custody of five rambunctious Costa Rican orphans before Cecie tragically died. Richie had raised the kids on his own for a number of years before Methos waded into the family fray. Methos considered them his kids too. They were all dead, of course, remembered only by two lonely Immortals.

"Come back to bed," he said in Spanish to Richie, and led him as if he were a child back into the house.

During those first two weeks Richie slept eighteen or twenty hours a day, and gladly accepted painkillers when he was awake. During the third week he began to stay awake for several hours at a time and refused, more often than not, to submit to drugs. He claimed they just made his trips into the past more vivid and frequent. The bedroom stayed dark, the air conditioner and blankets ready for the chills or fever that sometimes rolled in like unpredictable tides. He grew irritated if Methos was oversolicitous, and Methos made a point to busy himself with his own tasks during the day.

He read for hours, glad someone in the Bujolais family had a fondness for good old-fashioned hardcover books. He hiked for miles, working up hearty sweats and sleeping soundly at night. One memorable afternoon he did a spectacular job of mangling the lawn instead of letting the house computer send out a robot. The result looked like a crazy quilt. Methos eyed the results with a sigh, then traipsed back into the living room wiping his grass- stained hands on his pants.

"When you were a kid," Richie asked, "you didn't mow the neighbor's lawns, did you?"

As far as Methos knew, it was the first time Richie had ventured out of the bedroom in daylight. He sat on the sofa, wrapped in a robe too small for him, squinting slightly. He had lost a drastic amount of weight, and pain lines around his eyes indicated his head still hurt. But he was up, and coherent, and Methos gave silent thanks for that.

"When I was a kid," he returned gamely, "the neighbors didn't have lawns. They had continents."

"I see," Richie said, leaning back against the Bujolais' sofa. Above his head a George Seurat reproduction showed nineteenth century Parisians swimming in a river and lounging on a grassy bank.

Methos wanted to ask him if he was thirsty or hungry but didn't want to pester him. Instead he leaned back in the rocking chair by the door and they sat in silence, listening to the sounds of insects in the hot afternoon.

"No dogs or cats or birds, huh?" Richie remarked.

"Not here."

"What about people?"

Methos shook his head. "Do you . . . sense anything?"

Richie closed his eyes wearily. "No. Not a thing. Not Valery, not anyone. It's all been . . . burned away."

"You asked me to kill you before, do you remember?"

"Vaguely." "I refused because I wasn't sure if you were still Immortal. You didn't give off a buzz. I thought for a time maybe I was the one who wasn't Immortal anymore, and it took me a week before I worked up the courage to cut myself."

Richie opened his eyes. "And?"

"And I healed." Methos couldn't keep the gratitude out of his voice.

"But maybe I won't." Richie looked at his hands as if contemplating a slice of his own, but dropped them into his lap with no decision made. "I'm tired of living in the past," he complained softly. "They're all here with me. Tessa and Mac. Baxter. Cecie and the kids. Felicia. Gregor. Dari . . . I don't know how to make it stop."

"Is it getting any better?"

"Maybe a little."

"Maybe you need to regain your strength first," Methos offered carefully.

Richie offered a crooked smile, made only more poignant by the obvious effort it took. "You're not going to be happy until you make some chicken soup, are you?"

"I won't be happy until you're recovered, but chicken soup is a beginning step," Methos admitted.

After swallowing half a bowl of chicken soup Richie began to fall asleep at the kitchen table, and Methos gently guided him back to the bedroom. As he helped him take off the robe he noted, not for the first time, the rock-hard tenseness in Richie's shoulders and neck. "Maybe a little massage would help."

"If you're willing to try," Richie said, although he didn't sound very optimistic.

Methos made him lay on his stomach with his head face down, supported by a rolled up towel. With baby oil produced from the upstairs bathroom Methos began a slow, methodical massage of Richie's back and neck. The constricted muscles felt like petrified stone. Methos' fingers began aching from the strain of trying to loosen them. After a half hour Richie was slightly more relaxed, but when he complained of feeling light-headed Methos stopped. He helped him roll back under the sheets and Richie looked up at him gratefully.

"Why are you doing this all for me?"

"Why not?" Methos said. "You're my friend. Perhaps my only one." "But we just met," Richie yawned. "You killed Kristen."

Methos left him to the clutches of the past.

***

Dr. Francisco's nurse practitioner, Lydia, took Tessa's call. Tessa could tell it was a busy day at the office by the sound of crying babies and ringing phones in the background. As always, though, Lydia sounded friendly and cheerful. "Tell me his symptoms," she said, and Tessa rattled off the list she'd made.

"His temperature's gone from 102 to 104 in the last hour. He has an awful headache, says his whole body hurts, threw up during the night, and has a rash all over his arm."

"Okay. Hold on for a minute." She put Tessa on hold and then came back to ask, "Tell me more about the rash. What's it look like?"

She described it as best she could. Lydia put her on hold again, and Dr. Francisco got on the phone.

"Hi, Tessa. So Richie's feeling a little sick, huh?"

"More than a little."

"Any seizures or convulsions?"

"No." Tessa straightened in her chair. "Should there be? It's only the flu, right?"

"Well, it sounds like the flu, but I don't like that rash. Why don't you and Duncan bring him over to the general hospital. I'll have someone meet you there."

"Duncan's not here. He'll be back in a few hours, though."

The physician hesitated. "Then I'll have an ambulance come over. We might be dealing with meningitis, and that's not something that should wait."

Richie was asleep when the ambulance crew arrived, and he was startled awake by the feel of unfamiliar hands on him. He struggled, caught in an old nightmare, and voices rose in disjointed chaos around him. Only one voice broke through his fever. "Richie, you must be still," Tessa pleaded. "We're going to the hospital."

He didn't want to go to the hospital. He wanted to burrow into someplace cool and dark, where his joints wouldn't ache and his headache would ease. He lay face-down on the plastic mat of his cell, shivering and clammy and sick at heart. He tried to blot out the harsh lights overhead but they seared past his eyelids and into the base of his brain no matter how hard he squeezed his eyes shut. He'd been badly used. The SIDI scientists had embarked on a series of experiments designed to gauge his healing time, and had grown angry that it never seemed to be the same for any particular injury. That afternoon his legs had been broken repeatedly and flesh cut from his body like the merchant's price in Shakespeare's play.

He hardly knew who he was anymore, or remembered a time outside their sadistic clutches. He hadn't seen Felicia in a long time, weeks maybe, and feared she was dead. Would they go as far as to kill her and unleash a Quickening? Would they do the same to him? Death held the promise of release, and release was all he wanted.

A door clicked open and shut somewhere. "Richie?" he heard Felicia's voice ask in disbelief. He tried not to listen. She was a trick, a hallucination, the last breakdown of his sanity. But she called his name again. He forced himself to open his eyes and focus on the plastic wall that divided the cell. She wore no clothes, like himself. Her hair had grown out stringy and dark past her shoulders. Her lovely face looked gaunt and broken. But her voice was strong, and it carried through the grill set high in the plastic barrier.

Richie wanted to fling himself at the division between them, to rip it to shreds with his bare hands, to crush her to his chest and never let her go again. But all he could do was lift his shaking, trembling hand and set it against the plastic.

She matched it, palm to palm, fingers to fingers, tears on her face.

Rain, ever falling.

He wanted to cry. The pain in his leg was very, very bad. He supposed that was normal for a gunshot wound, but somehow years of senseless writing on television cop shows had made him think it wouldn't be so bad. Richie thumped his head gently against the glass window of the Greyhound bus, trying to distract himself, and settled for watching the lights of cars on the highway blur into indistinct streams in the rain. In a few hours he'd be in Seacouver, away from the clutches of the white supremacists who had wounded him and killed his friend. What should have been a nice visit in the countryside to visit a friend from the orphanage had turned into a nightmare journey that wouldn't be over until he found Tessa and Mac.

He felt hot, so very hot. "It's rare," he heard the doctor say. "Viral meningitis is much more common, but bacterial strikes maybe six or seven thousand Americans a year. At least half of those are meningococcal meningitis like Richie's got. The septicemia is blood poisoning. Luckily we can treat it with antibiotics. If you'd waited much longer to bring him in we would be in worse trouble."

He tried to speak, to lift his head, but all the muscles in his neck and jaw seemed paralyzed.

"But he'll be okay?" another voice asked, one he knew.

"We can only hope for the best, Angie."

Angie. He and the others tossed handfuls of birdseed at her, eliciting a squeal as she and her new husband left the church where they'd just been married. She was twenty eight when she married and became a mother at thirty. He'd lost touch with her, afraid of risking her suspicion at his unchanging looks, but through his corporation he kept tabs on her, her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren. . . .

"You can't have children?" Baxter asked. They sat on the beach at Coney Island, drinking beers out of paper bags. It wouldn't do to set a bad example for the public, even if the public wasn't much in evidence at midnight on a Monday night. Their legs dangled over the pier's edge and swung above the swirling tide. "Man, that sucks."

Richie shrugged. "Can't have natural children. I don't think I'm ready to be a dad anyway. Maybe I'll adopt or something in a few decades."

"You say that so flippantly."

"Sometimes you've got to be flippant."

"Live forever," Baxter said, shaking his head in wonder. "I knew you looked young, but I got used to that. Okay, you sprained your shoulder at the department softball championships and said you were fine the next day, but I thought you were just being macho. That time in the Bronx - you said the shooter missed - did you really got shot, and keep it from me?"

"Yes," Richie confirmed, taking another swig of his beer. "But it was mostly a flesh wound. It was either keep it from you or tell you the truth. Now you know the truth."

"I liked being ignorant better."

"I never said you still weren't ignorant," Richie returned.

Baxter scowled at him. "A hundred years old and you still got an attitude, huh?"

"One hundred and five, pal," Richie said. He shot his partner a sidelong glance. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm not going to kill you today," Darien said.

Richie didn't have an answer for that. For three weeks he and Darien had been fleeing the blood-scavengers of Paris. From their first dual waking in a fire-lit camp, about to be hacked into bits and pieces for barbecue and stew, they'd been forced to band together for survival. Richie still hated Darien - he could never forgive him for his role in murdering the Immortals of Sanctuary - but he had to admit to a horrible respect for the younger Immortal's strength, speed, agility and utter ruthlessness.

Richie turned his gaze to the hazy dawn that marked their last day in France. "I'm not going to kill you today either."

"Next time," Darien promised.

Richie nodded. "Next time we meet."

But the next time they met, Valery had already captured Darien and mentally broken him into shattered bits and pieces. The man Richie hauled out of a pit in Oregon bore no resemblance at all to the enemy he'd battled with in the ruins of Notre Dame. After a year of recovery at Richie's Irish castle, Darien was able to speak in sentences. After three years he was able to sleep through the night. After five he seemed like any other slightly psychotic man Richie knew, and he woke one unguarded moment in the spring to find Dari kneeling by the side of his bed and with a massive butcher knife against the soft flesh of Richie's neck.

"We're not enemies anymore, are we?" Darien asked.

Richie was careful to breathe very, very shallowly. "I don't think we are. What's your opinion?"

Darien grinned and lifted the knife. "I'll die for you someday. I owe you that."

A terrible promise to make. A terrible promise to keep.

Richie had never made that promise to Gregor Powers, who had cared for him after the horrors of SIDI. As his body lay in a bedroom in Rudejoue, Richie's mind spiraled back through the long, long nights Gregor had held him and soothed him, defended him against the demons in his mind. SIDI had left him so horribly broken that he'd had to take refuge in another personality. The last he'd seen of Gregor had been of the brave Immortal standing in the shattered ruins of the Gethsemani monastery, determined to help his brothers rebuild. Richie had never seen him again. He hoped for the best, but anticipated the worst.

Story of his life.

Over the next several days Methos thoroughly massaged the horribly cramped muscles in Richie's back and neck, easing his migraine to a certain degree. On the morning Methos showed up in his bedroom brandishing acupuncture needles located in town, Richie told him he was crazy. But the acupuncture did what nothing else had been able to accomplish - clear his head for a few blessed hours, leaving his scalp tingling pleasantly and his body temporarily refreshed. The migraine was back within hours but Methos repeated the acupuncture the next morning, and the morning after that, and finally Richie spent a whole day from dusk to dawn free of the awful gripping pain.

The past receded like an ocean pulling away from shore. He was no longer an eighteen year old kid in the grips of meningitis and septicemia, pumped full of antibiotics while Tessa and Duncan prayed for his recovery. He wasn't a prisoner in Versailles, a victim of merciless scientists bent on his destruction. No blood- scavengers chased him through the streets and sewers of demilitarized Paris. He and Baxter Bushwell had remained partners for five more years after Bax found out about his Immortality. Richie would always remember his children and past wives, no matter how long they'd been dead, and although Dari had died for him he'd done it as a choice and sacrifice, just as Richie would have died to save Methos from the horrors of Valery's dungeon.

He cut himself shaving one morning and found that he was in fact still Immortal. Methos, who hadn't left the immediate vicinity in days, went down the road and came back to test their sensing of each other. They both emitted the familiar song of their kind. Richie began eating better and better, putting on weight, and started a very modest exercise program to get back in shape. Richie slept soundly most nights, but it was in the middle of their fifth week in the house that he was jerked awake at two a.m. by screams.

Not his own screams, which was a relief. But Methos sounded like he was being murdered. Richie took the stairs as quickly as he dared, trying not to wake the pounding pulse in his head, and found Methos frantically shaking out the bedsheets.

"Rats!" he cried out. "They're everywhere! Don't you see them?"

Richie caught Methos' wrists. "They're gone," he soothed. "All gone. You got rid of them."

"I did?" Methos looked bewildered at the idea.

"Yes. Every single one." In the fall of light from the adjacent bathroom, Richie made a show of inspecting the sheets and light summer blanket. "All gone. Here, why don't you lie down again?"

Methos settled down reluctantly. The distance back to his own room seemed impossibly far and Richie wearily retired to the bedside rocker with a pillow filched from the bed. He woke in the morning with sunlight on his knees and Methos wide awake, regarding him from the pillows.

"Don't you wreck all my hard work, sleeping like that," Methos warned lightly.

Richie stretched. He felt sore, but his head was clear and he would never take that for granted again. "How long have you been having the nightmares?" he asked.

Methos' left shoulder hitched up and back down again.

"You should have told me," Richie scolded.

"You have your own worries."

"You put yours aside to care for me."

Methos' face hardened. He sat up and swung his feet to the hardwood floor. "I don't need caring for."

Listening to the water run in the bathroom, Richie wondered what words or gestures could break Methos' shell. It occurred to him that something had been missing from Methos during the last month. Most of the time he'd been too disoriented to notice, but the telltale signs were there.

"You're mad at me, aren't you?" Richie asked.

"Don't be ridiculous." Methos came back into the room and pulled clothes from untidy heap on the floor.

Richie injected a note of wonder into his voice. "Imagine being stuck with me, having to take care of me all these weeks. I'd be really mad."

"I'm not mad, and I didn't take care of you."

"Being chained to this house, listening to me ramble on about people who've been dead for centuries - you must be furious."

"I am not furious. I am leaving. When you get hungry, come down and make your own breakfast for a change."

That hurt, but only mildly. Richie remained in his chair while Methos stomped downstairs. Sounds and smells of breakfast drifted up a few minutes later, accompanied by the less than subtle banging of pans. Richie sat quietly for a few minutes, then pulled a case off one of the pillows, filled it with dozens of shoes, and pitched it down the stairs. Methos ran out of the kitchen, aghast at the idea he'd fallen down the stairs.

"I'm fine," Richie said from where he sat on the top step.

"Asshole!" Methos yelled at him. He kicked the pillow case of shoes and stormed back into the kitchen. Richie reconsidered his strategy and decided it might have been in error. He followed, apologizing, but Methos had already flung himself out the back door and was halfway across the yard, bound for parts unknown with a spatula waving wildly in his hand.

"Don't you dare do that to me again!" Methos yelled, turning around to level him with a look of pure hatred.

"I'm sorry!" Richie spread his arms out.

"I've looked after you for the last four weeks," Methos growled, advancing a few steps. "I've done everything I could. I never asked you to do what you did, and I never expected you to - "

"Whoa," Richie held up his hand. "Asked me to do what?"

"It doesn't matter now."

"It sure as hell does. What are you talking about?" Then, in a flash, the truth hit him like a baseball between the eyes. "This is about Valery? This about what happened in the hangar?"

"Don't you ever sacrifice yourself for me again!"

Maybe he *had* been hit by a baseball, because the backyard began to spin beneath Richie's weakening knees. He groped for support but found nothing.

"You can't fool me twice," Methos said coldly.

"Okay," Richie heard himself answer. "I won't." He sagged to the ground and tried to lay down on it, but Methos' chest appeared as a support and he found himself propped up by the ancient Immortal.

"Put your head between your knees." Methos no longer sounded angry. He helped Richie arrange his loose, weak limbs into position. "Breathe deeply."

Richie lifted his head to insist, "I couldn't let you wind up like me. Like Darien. Can't you see that?"

"Down," Methos ordered, his hand firmly on the back of Richie's head. Richie blinked at the grass beneath his thighs and concentrated on slow, steady breaths. He felt Methos' left arm go around his shoulders and give him a tight squeeze. Methos rarely permitted himself physical signs of affection and Richie knew it.

"I know why you did it," Methos said. "I just . . . "

Richie lifted his head. "What?"

"I just wish it had been different."

"Me too."

"Where are the people?" Methos asked. "What happened to them? What happened to the world? What did we do?"

A shiver worked its way down Richie's spine. "You mean what *I* did."

Methos gripped his hand hard enough to pop his knuckles. "What *we* did."

"I don't know," Richie admitted. The possibility that everyone, every single human being on the planet, had been wiped out by whatever force ripped them from Siberia was one he'd been trying hard not to contemplate. Had he somehow slaughtered the world? He wiped with his free hand at his stinging eyes. "I really don't know."

Methos took on a new confidence, a brash brightness. "We'll have to find out. It doesn't matter how long it takes, or where we have to go, but we'll find out. Together."

"Even though I'm an asshole?" Richie asked.

Methos gave him another reassuring squeeze and then let him go. "Even though."

Richie wiped his eyes again and let Methos help him back to his feet. They walked back to the house slowly, surrounded by the lush grass and stirring trees. The sky, flawless only a few minutes previous, had begun to cloud in the east.

Richie stopped in the doorway. "It's going to rain soon," he observed.

"Into every life . . . " Methos started, and stepped up into the kitchen. The screen door banged shut behind him. Richie studied the clouds, fought down a small cold feeling of dread, and went inside to make breakfast.

THE END