‘Marshal, take a look at this and tell me what you think.’

The sound of his superior colleague’s voice made Marshal jump. He turned and took the hard copy sheets Captain Robert Graham was holding out. The captain pointed to a row of long chemical names and numbers.

‘High proteolipid and phospholipid count across the entire cranial sphere . . . hmm, not sure, never seen anything like it,’ Marshal said. ‘Could it be cross-contamination of the data?’

Graham shook his head. ‘Nope, I’ve checked several times and the count keeps coming back the same. I’ve never seen anything like it either, but I’ve got a theory. Crazy as it sounds, it looks like the myelin sheathing in his brain is undergoing some sort of restarted myelination process.’

‘Impossible!’ blurted Marshal.

The myelin sheathing in the brain stopped wrapping itself around the brain’s axons and neurons by the age of twenty. No one knew why it stopped then – most scientists theorised that the brain figured it could think fast enough by that age – but the one thing they did know was that it didn’t restart.

Graham folded his arms and looked at his younger colleague with raised eyebrows. ‘Well, from this data I’d say he’s undergoing remyelination. It could be what’s turbo-charging his ability to think and make decisions. The treatment certainly wasn’t meant to do this, and I can’t believe it’s the result of a significant penetration trauma.’

Marshal couldn’t help sounding excited as his mind worked through the implications of the physical changes. ‘Remyelination. Now that would be something – this guy walking around with a potential cure for MS and Alzheimer’s locked within him.’ He flipped another page on the printout and looked back at Graham. ‘Hey, do you think it could it also be responsible for his psychogenic disorder?’

Hunter’s improved mental abilities, amplified senses and staggering physical improvements were bordering on miraculous, but both scientists knew the man was paying a high price for them.

Marshal went to the electronics console to check on Hunter’s current readings. ‘I still don’t get it,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘These don’t even look like human brain waves anymore. There’s an encephalogical thunderstorm going on in there. His body should be responding with a massively elevated heart rate, increased oxygen consumption, or at least rapid eye movement signalling disturbance. But his blood pressure is still one-twenty over seventy, full resting normality for a man his size. We’ve had this guy in four times and we know even less now than when he left the first time.’ He looked at the senior officer. ‘Do you think we should halt treatment until we know more?’

Graham came and stood beside him, running his eyes over the chaotic lines displayed on the screen. He shook his head. ‘No, we continue. But I agree we need to know more. These EEGs are too imprecise. We really need to use MRI, but the magnetic field could cause the bullet to shift and bingo – we got one brain-dead HAWC. And I, for one, would want to be well out of the country when the Hammer took that call.’