ould go look at it," Jyslin suggested. "It might have broken down. Rann didn't build them with any kind of remote access, we can't check it from here. All it can do is transmit, not receive."

"Hmm, guess we can. We can take care of that with tonight's run. We're gonna start putting out the mines again, now that Trillane is starting to scale back the kneejerk searches."

"We'll have to be careful, because of the time difference," Jyslin noted.

"I set the sensor, love, I know," he said. "I just kept going east when I planted them, staying in the night. I flew around the world," he chuckled.

"I do think that Molly has something," Symone said, looking at another scrapbook. "Maybe we should plant more sensors around English."

"England," Molly corrected.

"Whatever."

"How, er, how did it go today?" Molly asked Jyslin. "Was there any, progress?"

"Not yet," she answered. "Don't worry, dear, I told you I'm not going to hurt him, and I'm also not rooting through his mind. I'm being very discrete. I know how teenagers are, full of secrets. So far, his talent is still dormant. I haven't quite figured out yet how to urge it to wake up."

"What did you do to Jason?"

"It was already more or less awake when I realized it was there. As to me bringing it all the way out, that's something I'm not doing with your son," she said with a slight smile, giving Molly a direct stare.

Molly blushed. "I think not."

"That's how I woke up Tim-Tim too," Symone giggled.

"Ah _wish_ that's how mine got woke up," Temika grunted.

"Temika's experience wasn't very pleasant," Jason explained when Molly gave her a curious look. "Her talent was awakened when a mindbender interrogated her."

Temika shuddered, hugging herself with her arms.

"What is a mindbender, dear? It sounds unpleasant."

"They are," Jyslin grunted. "They're Faey specifically trained for telepathic interrogation and other rather unpleasant things. They're very strong telepaths, and it takes a certain amount of, ruthlessness, to do the job. They made me take mindbender training, but I managed to get out of it," she said, closing her eyes. "It's a very ugly business. I didn't like doing it. I don't have the temperament for it. I washed out, and they put me in the Marines."

"I didn't know that," Tim said in surprise.

"I don't like to talk about it, Tim, for obvious reasons," she told him, looking at Temika. "I learned what they had to teach, but I _never_ like using it. It's just not me."

"So, you were strong enough to be one of these mindbenders?" Molly asked.

"Honey, you're probably looking at the strongest telepath on this planet," Symone told her simply. "Jys is in the top ten percent. She walked through Trelle's hair before she was born."

"That means I was lucky," Jyslin explained to Molly's blank look. "And I'm not the strongest. I think that honor goes to Yari, one of the girls from my squad. Her power is _awesome_ in talent, well beyond mine, but like me, she just didn't have the right personality to be a mindbender. Anyway, I'm going to try something different tomorrow. We'll have to see how it goes."

"I'll need a goodly crew for tonight, we have a lot of stuff to deploy. Ground mines, space mines, drones, a new conduit breaker, and the new toy. We'll swing by England tomorrow and check that sensor after we're done. I think we've gone long enough without any action, and we can't let them think that the attack on the station was our last action, and we can't let them think that this buildup is going to dissuade us."

"I still can't think about that without laughing," Tim said. "You should have _seen_ it!"

"We did, goof!" Temika told him. "Kate showed us all the video of it."

"Well, it's going to cost Trillane _millions_ to fix everything, and we can't let them think that there's a upward cap on how much it's going to cost to stay here," Jason told them. "So, tonight, we start going after Sticks again. And it's about time for number five. They need something new to think about, and we have to start throwing tons of crap at that Black Ops engineer to keep her from focusing on any one thing long enough to work up a fix for it."

"When are we conducting the raid?"

"Right now, never," Jason grunted. "At least not on this continent. They have way too many soldiers in North America now. It's almost like they're expecting it, and they've tripled all the Faey soldiers in every installation. Trying to raid any of them would be suicide. If we raid any Trillane positions, they'll have to be somewhere else. Europe maybe."

"I'll have Kate start snooping," Tim told them. "She can locate some likely targets."

Jason sneezed, and wiped his nose with a tissue that Molly offered. "Well, let me get down to the shop and help them set it up. This one's gonna require some careful assembly, or it'll blow up when we turn it on."

Jyslin laughed. "I wish I could see the looks on their faces."

"They won't be very happy," Jason said evenly.

                                        * * *

The night's activities were busy, and for Jason, they weren't very pleasant. His sneeze developed into a sore throat, and after planting the night's toys and descending towards London to get that done before dawn in Europe, he had a fever.

This was no time to get a cold!

He developed a headache, and had trouble focusing on watching Tim fly, basically trusting that Temika and Jyslin were going to keep him honest. He had six trainees, Meya, and Myra with him that night, and they were flying Vultech-1, for they needed the cargo space. Meya and Myra used their armor as space suits to help deploy the space toys, while the rest of them waited in the pressurized cockpit after they evacuated the air in the cargo bay and opened the doors to space.

_Jason love, are you alright? You're sweating,_ Jyslin asked in concern as Tim brought them over the English coastline, on a course to take them to London.

_I'm not feeling all that well,_ he answered, leaning back in his seat and putting his hands on his face. Jyslin put her hand on his forehead, and hissed.

_You're burning up! Tim, turn us around, we have to get him back to the mountain!_ She commanded, looking to him.

_No, Jason countermanded. It won't take you and Meya long to get to the unit and check it, so let's do what we came to do, then we can go._

_We're not fucking around then, Jyslin sent in concern, looking back to Meya. Let's get this done and get him the hell out of here._

In the forty minutes it took the two of them to use their flight systems to descend to the city from the hovering dropship, find the unit, realize that it wasn't functioning, and then replace it with a new one Rann built that they could access remotely, Jason's headache became so bad that he had to take a painkiller, which for him was a serious deal. Jason never took medicine unless he had no other choice, for his experience with his father's cancer showed him that a person could build up a tolerance or resistance to _any_ drug, even aspirin, which would make it less effective when it was really needed. So, he only took medicine when he really needed it. Jyslin and Meya did their job very quickly, and were back in the dropship after forty minutes. Jyslin sat right by him and kept checking his forehead with her hand as Tim flew them home, with Meya observing to make sure he did everything right. Jason's headache got so bad that every time anyone sent it made him wince, so they switched to speaking in the cockpit.

"Watch your speed!" Meya barked. "With all the new sensors up, we can't go much over 300 _kathra_ an hour or they'll pick up our air wake on sensors!"

"I'm only doing 260," he protested. "I'm keeping an eye on the speed gauge, woman, so put a sock in it."

"I think we should push 300," Jyslin said in concern, putting her hand on Jason's forehead again. "Are you alright, love?"

"I'll be fine after a night's rest," he told her. "I must have caught the flu, that's all."

"Think we can do 300?" Jyslin asked.

"If we're gonna push it, give over," Meya ordered, taking the controls in her hands. "I'm not letting you fly if we're gonna be doing something risky."

"Alright, switching over," Tim said with an unhappy grunt, flipping the master switch to the copilot's chair.

"Jeez, no reason for all this concern," Jason said with a weak chuckle.

"Yes there is," Jyslin declared. "My _husband_ doesn't feel well, so I'm taking him home so he can rest."

Under Meya's steady and practiced hand, they flew back to Colorado at the maximum speed Meya felt safe without their air turbulence giving them away. Jyslin dragged Jason out of the dropship the instant the ramp was down and took him straight to their apartment. There, she helped him take a cool bath, made sure he had a hearty meal, and put him straight to bed. "Now you just rest and get some sleep. If you don't feel any better by morning, I'll have one of the Docs over to check you."

"Wait, where are you going?" Jason asked.

"I want you to sleep, and you'll do that if I'm not here to distract you," she told him. "I'm gonna go work on something in the shop. I'll be in earshot if you need me, I promise," she told him, leaning down and kissing him on the forehead.

"Worrier," he chuckled weakly, for his head really hurt, and he felt tired.

"I'm your _wife_, silly boy. It's my job to worry about you," she told him with a loving grin.

Jason gave her a cross look, then he sighed and closed his eyes, almost immediately falling asleep.

Jyslin patted him on the cheek and went into the shop that was across the hall from the bedroom. She kept both doors open and sat at the bench so she could look over and see him, but to her, Jason seemed to be resting peacefully, asleep and his breathing normal.

But four hours later, as Jyslin was reassembling a piece of equipment she repaired, she realized that something was wrong. The usual light sense of him that was always present in the back of her mind seemed to waver, and then it faded away, and this she noticed immediately. She switched from passively trying to sense him to actively trying to touch him, and found nothing but darkness. She stood up and looked at him, saw that he was resting on his back, his features calm though it looked like he was sweating a little from the sheen on his skin, but that wasn't unusual when someone had a fever. His chest was moving up and down rhythmically, which seemed a good sign to her. He wasn't coughing or sneezing, and his breathing didn't sound labored at all, though he was breathing through his mouth due to a congested nose. But there was no sense of him.

"Jason?" she called uncertainly as she walked towards the door. There was nothing there. It was like he was actively trying to hide from her, using that trick to make his mind invisible. "Jason, don't play like that, it makes me nervous," she told him sternly.

There was nothing.

Her eyes widened when she realized he wasn't playing. Jason wasn't sleeping, he was unconscious!

_"Jason!" she cried out in a strangled tone, rushing over to him. His hair was almost dripping wet from sweat, his skin had an oddly pale quality to it, like a pall, and he was burning hot to the touch! RANN! she sent with such power that it nearly knocked every telepath in the mountain over, but a power unleashed at a short range, so she wouldn't be heard outside of the mountain. Such was the awesome skill in telepathy that Jyslin commanded. Rann, come to our apartment! Jason's unconscious! she sent in a frenzy. He's really sick! I can't find his mind at all!_

_We're on our way right now! Rann answered immediately._

They rushed him to the sickbay quickly, rolling him down on a gurney, and the word spread quickly through the mountain that Jason, their leader, was so sick they had to wheel him into the infirmary. People started gathering near the doors to the infirmary as Rann, Songa, and Yohne worked as an efficient team while Jyslin looked on, examining him with their hands, with their little handheld devices, and even with their own telepathic abilities. Yohne drew blood and started analyzing it as Rann grilled Jyslin about his symptoms. "He had a fever and a sore throat," she told him. "And a headache. He told me it was the flu. What's wrong with him, Doc?" she asked fearfully. "Why is he comatose? That's not a symptom of the flu!"

"We'll find out soon enough, Jyslin. Now have a seat and keep quiet, please."

They gave him a thorough analysis, but found no bacteria or viruses in his system to explain his illness. Jason's panel was brought in so they could access CivNet, and Songa researched CivNet while Rann and Yohne swept an analyzer over his body, giving them a detailed internal image of his body and its systems at work.

"This makes no sense at all," Yohne said in grim confusion, shaking her head.

"What? What's wrong with him?" Jyslin demanded in an urgent hiss.

"His immune system has gone insane, that's the only way to explain it," she told him.

"His immune system is attacking his own body," Rann told her, glancing back at her. She had pulled her chair up to Jason's bed and was holding his hand. "We can see no reason _why_ it would be doing this. There are no microbial agents in him, no nanomachines, no parasites or unusual energy signatures. Songa,"

"I'm not finding anything," she answered. "We'd better isolate him."

"Prep him for surgery," Yohne ordered.

"_Surgery_!" Jyslin gasped. "What are you going to do!?"

"We have to stop his immune system before it destroys him from within," she told Jyslin sharply. "We'll have to install biofilters in him to filter out all of his white blood cells, T-cells, and antibodies to keep them out of his brain. If those cells destroy his brain cells, he'll suffer permanent brain damage! Now get out of the way and let us do our jobs!"

_The procedure took about an hour. Jyslin could only watch on the far side of a security force field that isolated those within from any outside contamination, as Yohne performed the procedure. She installed several devices directly into Jason's carotid artery, aorta, into six different major lymphatic junctions, and into every major vein leading from the large concentrations of bone marrow, which would be carrying the greatest concentration of antibodies. Once they were done, Songa and Rann set up a bed for him surrounded by a sterilizing field and security force field, eradicating all biological agents within its perimeter. Yohne pulled her red mask down after coming out of the surgery room, and gave Jyslin a steady look. The filters are in place, she sent. What they're going to do is completely filter out his entire immune system, and we're going to put him on a drug regimen that will suppress his body from producing any antibodies or white blood cells. While he's under this treatment, it is absolutely imperative that he remains completely sterile. He can't afford a single virus or bacteria invading him right now, because he has absolutely no defense. He has to stay in that sterile field until we can find out what the hell is going on._

_Was there any, any brain damage? Jyslin sent fearfully._

_No, thank Trelle, Yohne sighed in relief. His immune system was busy attacking the closest cells it could find, mainly his red blood cells. His immune system was even attacking itself, she sent with a dark frown. I've never seen this before. I've never read anything about it before either. Jyslin, that field we have set up is a hard shield, she warned. Don't even get any ideas about going in there. Until we find out what's wrong and find a way to treat it, he has to stay inside, and he can't have contact with anyone. Not even you._

_Is he going to wake up?_

_In time, she answered. We're going to keep him unconscious for at least twenty hours, so his brain has time to recover without any distractions. He went comatose because of a lack of oxygen to his brain to sustain cognitive function. It was enough to knock him out, but not enough to do any permanent damage. His brain protected itself by shutting down everything but the autonomic systems. Just thank the Trinity you checked him when you did, Jyslin. If he'd gone another thirty minutes, he'd have died._

_Died? Jyslin sent with an audible gasp._

_Yohne nodded. This is very serious, honey, she sent grimly. I've never seen anything like this before, and this condition is potentially fatal. But don't you worry. We understand what's going on, even if we can't figure out why yet, and we can prevent any further damage. We have to keep him under close observation, but we can keep him stable. Until we can find the cause of this and cure it, he'll be just fine as long as we're careful and we pay attention to his needs._

_Oh, thank Trelle, Jyslin sent sincerely. Her hands started to tremble, and tears welled up in her eyes. Symone was called in by Songa, and the blond took Jyslin's hand and pulled her into a gentle embrace. Jyslin burst into tears, holding her friend tight, and Symone just held her and let her cry herself out._

                                        * * *

Everything else was basically either forgotten or ignored in the wake of Jason's sudden illness. The success of the new, redesigned mines was overlooked, for both types of mines worked perfectly, and every one of them succeeded in hitting a Stick in the first day after they were deployed. The new circuit breaker struck a Faey destroyer, and it was just as effective as the first one had been against the orbital station, shattering conduit through nearly a third of the ship before it disengaged and self destructed.

The new toy was an annoyer, not a weapon, and it was _damn_ effective. The device was deployed into the Potomac River, and it drifted downstream at a gentle, lazy pace, updating its location via GPS, until it discovered that it was where it was supposed to be, just off Roosevelt Island in Washington D.C. When it reached its desired location, it surfaced and then deployed a ten meter long antenna into the air. It was noticed by a pair of human joggers on the shore, but before they could phone in the potential hazard, the device fired.

It emitted a harmonic interthreaded tetryon pulse. That pulse was absolutely harmless to everyone, but the pulse had a specific purpose. The device was the trigger for the hair melter concept that Jason had intended to use against the Marines, just built on a much larger scale. The pulse swept out from the river and went nearly ten miles in every direction.

Nearly every Faey within that radius, and quite a few humans, were affected by the pulse. The pulse caused a chemical reaction with a certain compound in their hair, a compound that came from a fish that Faey liked to eat, a fish not native to Earth. The compound underwent a chemical alteration that turned it into an acidic compound that reacted energetically with the organic makeup of a hair strand, but was harmless to everything else.

All over Washington, every Faey stopped when they felt a strange tingling. Those looking in mirrors saw little wisps of smoke start to emanate from their thick, fine hair, and then there was a strange sizzling sound. Then, to their horror, their hair began to _melt_. Smoking fragments of hair fell from their heads like snow, littering the ground around them, as their hair fell out of their heads in ragged chunks, then continued to sizzle and smolder on the ground as the solid hair was consumed by the acidic compound, leaving a gritty, sticky residue behind, like half-dried glue.

It only took about two minutes. After that two minutes, every single Faey and human who had eaten that particular fish found that every single hair on their entire bodies had melted away, leaving them absolutely hairless.

It was harmless as things went, but the horrified wails and shouts that erupted all over the city made it sound like an atomic bomb had gone off instead. The Faey, a very image-conscious race who valued personal appearance highly, had just had their image and their prides savaged. Hair that many Faey spent hours preening and preparing every morning was now a sticky film on their bathroom floors, or sticking to the pillows and sheets of their beds, or laying out on the streets. Horrified Faeyand quite a few humanslooked at themselves in mirrors and found _all_ of it gone. Hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, _everything_. They were as hairless as a Deborian mole, light blue skin that was normally covered under a blanket of thick hair glazed over in the detritus of their former manes, looking like a festering scabrous wound. The residue continued to react with the dead skin cells on the outer layer of the skin, continuing to smolder slightly, and when the film was hastily cleaned off, it displayed a shining bald head, shimmering with the removal of the dull dead skin cells and shining in the light like a polished globe.

Horror!

In the river, the device reeled in its antenna and slipped back under the water. About fifteen seconds later, a column of water and a loud _BOOM_ heralded the device's last act, as it self-destructed.

                                        * * *

The night's successes meant little to the rebels, however, for they were all taking turns visiting the infirmary over the next day to see if there was any change. Jason was kept in a medically-induced comatose state for the entire day and half the night, doing to him what they had done to Kumi, to give his brain a chance to recover, and then he was allowed to pass into a natural sleep. He slept on his own for nearly six more hours, and then the EEG readings from the sensors they'd placed on him before putting him in the sterilized field showed brain activity common in a sleeping mind preparing to wake.

Jason had felt better. He felt very weak, exhausted, he was hungry and thirsty, and it was hard to focus his mind on any single thought, like he was trying to think with a wool blanket put over his brain. He opened his eyes and found himself staring up into a soft white light hanging over the bed, a light that wasn't in his room. He pieced together quickly that he must have gotten sick enough for Jyslin to take him to the infirmary, and that he'd been sick enough not to know it until now.

"Jyslin?" he whispered.

_She's on her way, came a sent response, from Yohne. Jason struggled to sit up and found he couldn't, so he consigned himself to scooting just a bit up so his head wasn't flat, and then looking around. He was in a small room, one of the rooms in the infirmary, and a shimmering energy field completely encapsulated his bed. It was barely noticeable, allowing him to see through it easily, but it was clear that it was there. She went down to get something to eat. I had to throw her out._

_What happened?_

_You nearly died, that's what happened, she answered evenly. We still don't entirely understand what's wrong, but we have you stable, and you should be until we find out what's wrong, and then find a cure for it. It's just going to require a few precautions, that's all._

_That's not much of an explanation._

_The details are that you fell comatose while sleeping, and Jyslin rushed you down here. We realized that your immune system has gone completely haywire, and your immune system was attacking your own body. That's why you collapsed. Your antibodies and white blood cells were attacking your own cells, and they destroyed enough red blood cells trying to reach your brain to send you into a coma. We couldn't find a cause, but we can treat that symptom, Jason. We have you in an absolutely sterile environment, and we've dealt with your immune system by more or less removing it from you for now. We have you on a drug regimen that's suppressing your immune system, and we had to surgically implant some filters to remove the cells that are made despite that treatment. Until we can determine what happened and treat it, you have to stay in there._

_I guess I can live with that. Think I can get something to eat?_

_No, you can't, she told him sternly. You'll be on an IV until we can cure this condition. No food, no water. I can give you something to make the hunger go away, but I can't let you eat anything. I'm sorry._

_Great, he growled._

_Jyslin rushed into the main infirmary room, and her eyes widened when she saw him awake. Jason! Oh, Jason, are you feeling alright? Are you okay?_

_Yohne was filling me in on what happened to me, he told her. I feel weak, and it's a little hard to think right now, but I'm alright outside of that._

_I'm so glad, she sent, a tear forming in her eye. I was so worried. I almost lost you, my love!_

_Really?_

_Really, Yohne nodded. Jyslin got you down here in time, but if you'd have gone untreated, your immune system would have killed you from the inside._

_Huh, Jason sent in surprise. I didn't feel that bad before I went to sleep._

_Sometimes these things can come out of nowhere, Jason, Yohne told him._

_Any idea of what's wrong with me yet?_

_Nothing concrete. Songa is researching right now. This condition is completely new to us, so they're going through the archives at the Faey Medical Service and the Terran's medical association database to see if there's any historical information about this. It's really bizarre, Jason. There's no foreign agent causing it. It's like your immune system got a mind of its own and decided to try to kill you. Rann's doing a detailed DNA and molecular-genetic analysis of your immune cells, looking for anything we missed with our initial scans._

_I found it! Rann sent jubilantly. I found the agent!_

_Jason couldn't see, but he and Jyslin joined their minds enough so he could literally look through her eyes, as the three doctors and Jyslin looked at the holographic image Rann brought up, of a single white blood cell. The image plunged into the cell, through the cytoplasm, and into the nucleus. It then zoomed in to the chromosomes and DNA. It's right here, he said, pointing at the end of the DNA string. It's a complex amino molecule that has attached to Jason's DNA, causing the cell to malfunction. It can't tell cells from invaders, so it's attacking everything. I scanned the rest of his blood sample, and that amino string is all over his body. What's worse, the string is self-replicating faster than we could hope to clear it out of him. It's combining water out of his blood with several types of common hormones in his blood to form the molecule, creating a long chain which then breaks up, almost like a virus. We didn't find it before because this is an agent built from his own DNA, so it slipped through our scans. He looked at Yohne. This is not natural. Look at the agent's edge, and compare it to this. Jason saw through Jyslin's eyes a close-up of two molecule chains, highlighting several key atoms. It matches perfectly to the end of Jason's helix. This agent just screams bio-engineering._

_I'm inclined to agree, Yohne nodded. What's our best course of action?_

_Research, Rann answered. This is clearly the work of a geneticist. We'd better make damn sure we know what we're doing when we try to reverse this. Until then, we keep Jason stable and in his containment._

_I'd have to agree. We can't rush into a fix, this agent isn't natural. There's no telling how it will react to any treatment, and we'd better be sure of it._

_Well, it looks like Trillane decided to do something about you, Jason, Rann sent grimly. This agent is literally tailor made to work only on you. This agent will only attach to your DNA. It would have no effect on any of the rest of us. I bet they pulled your DNA profile from your school exam records and had a geneticist build this to kill you. Instead of trying to burn you out, they tried to kill you with this. I'll bet we'll find this agent saturating the air all over North America._

_I'm not surprised, Jason sent in reply. Yohne, whatever it was you said you could do to not make me hungry, can you, like, do it? I'm starving here._

_It's a medicine that suppresses your hunger reflex, and I'll make some up right now, she sent with an audible chuckle, which Jason heard through Jyslin's ears._

Jason's hunger eased with the introduction of the medicine through the tube attached to his arm, fed through the security field and triple-screened to make sure it was sterile. He really didn't have much to do, so he made the doctors sterilize a panel for him and send it in, so he could at least have something to do. Songa had his panel, so he was forced to link it to his own in order to get out onto CivNet, using it as a host. He checked the London sensor, and to his surprised delight, there were _four_ pictures there. Four! Two men, a woman, and what looked like a teenage girl.

If he weren't in here, he'd kiss Molly Fletcher! She was _right_!

It was ancestry! All the telepaths had an _English_ ancestor! And from the looks of it, given three known telepaths were Americans with established roots in America, that ancestor had to be centuries back in time. Well, ancestors. According to the docs, Jason's lineage was different from Tim's, so that meant that there had to be more than one initial ancestor that had the telepathic footprint.

But, were both of them from England? Jason could very well have picked up _his_ telepathic traits from his French ancestors, from his mother's side of the family. But what was clear here was the simple fact that Tim and Temika's common ancestor, and Ian's, and maybe even Jason's, originated from somewhere in England. And, given that there was a much better chance of finding descendents of that ancestor in England itself, which was a much smaller country, they'd gotten immediate results once they fixed the sensor and got it going.

So, the question here was, was that the answer to the question? Miaari told him that he had to know the _why_ of why humans had telepathy. He now had an answer. Outside of Jason, it was a shared ancestor from England, and it could very well be Jason's case as well. This ancestor was pretty far back in their family lines, hundreds of years.

Jason pondered on it for a while as he surfed several tech message boards, looking for info, and also checking INN to see if there was any news of the rebellion there. The hair melter certainly made the headlines, because they had no idea how he'd pulled it off, but INN approached the story from a humorous point of view rather than