‘Everyone’s okay, Captain Hunter,’ Major Hammerson responded, before any of the medical staff could speak.

Alex rubbed his face hard and dragged in a long juddering breath. ‘My dream – it was Aimee again,’ he said softly to Hammerson. ‘Have you heard from her? Is she okay?’

Hammerson wasn’t surprised by the question. The dreams had been the same for months now. ‘Saw her just the other day,’ he said. ‘She’s fine and getting on with her life.’

‘Good. Okay, that’s good, I guess.’

Hammerson’s voice became stern again. ‘Captain Hunter, I’ve got some new team members for you. I’d like you to come up and take a look. Be here by 0800 tomorrow.’

‘O-eight hundred, confirmed, sir.’

Alex stood and stretched, rubbed his face and pushed both hands through his perspiration-slicked hair. As he headed towards the door, the injured orderlies backed up a step. He stopped in front of the man with the bulging black eye. ‘It’s Carl, isn’t it? I’m real sorry, Carl, it was an accident.’

The orderly flinched, but gave a crooked smile. ‘No problem, man. Just glad you’re on our side.’

Hammerson’s voice blared into the small room. ‘Good man, Carl – take some extra R&R on USSTRATCOM. Just remember, you got injured in the gym.’

Alex apologised again, then turned and pushed through the laboratory’s soundproof doors.

Captain Graham switched the intercom back to his phone, making the conversation private. ‘Jack, there’s something else. It’s Alex’s brain . . . it’s . . . different now. We can only hypothesise based on the EEG and echo pulse readings, but we believe there’s been an increase in neocortical matter. His brain isn’t any larger – we think the additional mass is accommodated through new brain folding, possibly on both sides of his interhemispheric fissures. But without an MRI we don’t know what that extra folding means. I’d love to get in there and have a look.’

Graham’s eyes went to the small electric bone saw in the cabinet of surgical equipment.

‘You think it’s the goddamn treatment causing it?’ Hammerson asked with an edge to his voice.

‘Maybe, maybe not. Maybe a combination of the treatment and his original injury. You ever hear of Phineas Gage, Jack? . . . Not surprised; he was a railway worker back in the 1800s. Had a metal spike punched into his head. He survived, but it changed him from a happy young man to one who became violent and eventually feared by the entire town. There are all sorts of conflicting stories about the feats of strength he supposedly performed after the accident. When he finally died and they opened him up, they found a brain that was very different from anyone else’s. Thing is, Jack, they believed his brain had continued to change long after the spike was removed. Of course, it might not be the same for Captain Hunter – the extra brain folding could be some form of physical response to the original trauma; or maybe the treatment initiated something else in there, something that’s ongoing. Well, you can see that I’m guessing – could be a hundred things. Bottom line is, we don’t know what the extra matter is for, or, more importantly, what it’ll eventually do to your man.’