I opened the door before he could respond, and bailed out in a heap. It wasn't hard, with the torn calf and the venom coursing through me. I felt generally pretty wretched.

The Mustang backed up in a shriek of tires, and the passenger-side door slammed shut as he braked, did a perfect sliding turn, and accelerated off down the road in a blur of dust and smoke. That was probably Whitney. David wouldn't have been as prompt in executing the hell-out-of-Dodge part of the plan.

The guards were shouting, and one of them ducked back into the shack. I heard alarms sounding, and thudding boots. Nobody touched me, so I slowly flipped myself over on my side. My head was pounding, I was too dizzy to sit up, and, with a sudden spasm, I threw up. Mostly the water that I'd been drinking, but disgustingly convincing that I wasn't faking anything. The swelling on my arm was bad, and getting worse.

They patted me down for explosives, yelled for medical assistance, and finally, one of them leaned down and barked, "Name!"

"Jo," I whispered. "Joanne Baldwin. Security clearance. Check--check with--military." I wasn't lying. Wardens had security clearances. Mine was as good as his, I'd be willing to bet. I hadn't endured all those questions and poking around in my personal life to fail to cash in my chips now. "Rattlesnake."

"I can see that," he said. Some of the ferocity left his voice. "Stay still. Help's on the way."

The other man, I was sure, would be running my name back through channels. That was fine. I was fairly sure that nobody would turn away the help of a Warden, even an injured one, at a sensitive installation--not in times like these. Hell, I was security.

I felt filthy, doing it, but they were making their own logical assumptions. I wasn't lying to them, not one bit. I lay there on the pavement, retching helplessly, feeling miserable and in severe pain, but David had done as I asked--I wasn't getting worse. Not yet, anyway.

There were conversations, hurried and clipped ones, with people who I assumed were higher up in the organization. Phones were used. Pictures were taken. A medical team arrived with a gurney, evaluated me, not surprisingly came up with a diagnosis of snakebite and some kind of animal attack, and loaded me up with a pile of hospital-approved blankets on top.

The gates parted, and I was wheeled inside the compound, past neatly lettered signs that warned of criminal prosecution to the fullest extent of the law for any violations of security protocols. More guards accompanied the medical team. I supposed I would have been handcuffed to the gurney, except for the snakebite, which made that impossible.

The first building we came to was obviously some kind of administration complex--big, blocky, heavily secure. Lots of locks, key cards, biometric scans just to get me into a hallway. A security officer was there, and he clipped a badge on my shirt, neon red, that proclaimed I was a supervised visitor. I didn't feel like a visitor. I felt like a prisoner. It probably had tracking devices built in, so I could be found and caught in seconds if I managed to totter up off the bed.

I didn't think I was going to bump the terror alert level any, given how I felt right now.

A doctor took over, clearly the Head Medical Cheese, and he did some unsympathetic probing of the snakebite wound. "It's genuine," he said to a guard standing next to him.

"Probably a stage four bite. She's very sick, and she needs antivenin urgently." He bent over to look into my pale, sweating face. "What's your name?"

"Joanne Baldwin."

"How'd you get here, Joanne?"

"I was walking," I said. "Snake bit me. Car picked me up but he dropped me here."

All completely true. The doctor frowned, clearly not thinking much of someone who'd dump me and drive away, but he shook it off. "Looks like a prairie rattler bite," he said. "Let's get some CroFab in her, stat."

In a gratifyingly short time--although every heartbeat felt like it lasted a year, thanks to the unbelievable and escalating pain--a nurse hustled back in with a vial and a hypodermic.

He checked the label--thorough, I liked that in a doctor--and filled the hypo with the straw-colored liquid. I hadn't really noticed, but someone had already put in a central line--and they must have been good at it, because I didn't like IVs, not at all. The doctor added the antivenin to the flow, then reached for another vial. There were six on the table. I wondered if that was some kind of a record.

"Okay, this is going to take about an hour to get into your system," the doctor said, after emptying the last vial. "If you start having trouble breathing, let us know immediately.

Anaphylaxis is a possibility with this antivenin, but it isn't common. You're not allergic to sheep, are you?"

I gave him a blank look. "Sheep? Really?"

"Really."

"How the hell would I know?"

"Good point," he said, and grinned. "Lie back and relax. Keep your heart rate down. I know it's miserable, but the antivenin will help, trust me. I'm going to take a look at the bite on your leg."

In the great scheme of things, I'd almost forgotten the coyote bite; truthfully, it hardly registered, on the scale of Ow That Hurts

right now. But when he started probing the wound, I found myself gasping and guarding, and he shook his head. "Let's irrigate, get some antibiotics on board, and I'll need to lay in some stitches. You are some lucky girl."

I'd have given him the finger if I'd felt up to it.

Someone arrived and handed him a packet of notes, which he speed-read, and as the nurse worked on cleaning the bite, he leaned casually on the gurney and flipped pages. I wasn't fooled.

"So," he said. "You're a Warden."

"Yes."

"Not an Earth Warden?"

This was the tricky part, because I was going to have to lie to answer, or explain more than I wanted. "Earth Wardens can't heal themselves," I said. "Not easily. It's a drawback."

He nodded. "So it is. Is it as bad out there as we've heard? Storms, fires, earthquakes?

Some people are calling it the end of the world."

"It's not," I said. "But it could be the end of us."

That sobered him up. He closed the file and tucked it under his arm, looking down at me.

Doctors always looked similar to me; there was some kind of posture they had, upright and ever so slightly arrogant, but with good reason. This particular doctor's name badge read REID, HOWARD. He didn't look like a Howard to me; he had thick dark hair, a long, thin nose, and smile lines around his mouth. An angular, mobile kind of face. Eyes of indeterminate color, maybe a dark blue. Not kind, though. Assessing and guarded.

"Is that your professional opinion?" he asked. "Since that's your job, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said.

"How serious is it?"

"I wouldn't go buying any long-term investments." I coughed, because talking was making me feel sick again. A nurse got me water and a sippy straw.

Dr. Reid stared at me for a few long seconds, and whatever calculations were going on, I couldn't follow them.

I shut my eyes as he got around to the stitches.

Dr. Reid wasn't the only person on the base who knew what a Warden was; I could tell from the steady stream of gawkers who found a reason to drop into the infirmary over the next hour. Among them was a tall man wearing casual clothes but with a straight-up military bearing. No rank visible on the badges, but I was willing to bet, from the way people gave him room, that this man was high up.

"Hello," he said to me immediately, with the assurance of somebody who doesn't often meet equals, much less superiors. "How are you feeling?"

I wasn't feeling well at all, and was starting to think that this snakebite ploy was a Very Bad Idea, but I forced a smile. "I'll live," I said, and cleared my throat. "Joanne Baldwin."

He nodded. "I had you checked out. Roland Miles. I'm the director of the plant. I had to give special authorization to get you inside the gates." By the look he gave me, I'd better humbly appreciate the sacrifice. Oh, and I did. Really. "I've given instructions that you're not to leave this bed for any reason, and that as soon as you're stable, you're going in an ambulance to a hospital."

"I'm a prisoner."

"If you were a prisoner, you'd be handcuffed to the rail," he pointed out pleasantly.

"We're just taking all necessary precautions for your health."

"Including not letting me out of bed. What if I have to go to the bathroom?"

"Bedpan," he said, and I didn't think he was kidding. "I take my responsibilities here extremely seriously, Miss Baldwin, and what I see about you in my classified files doesn't inspire confidence. You seem to have a running feud with the Wardens, and a shooting war going with authority. Now, why are you really here?"

He settled himself in a chair next to my bed, and that put our eyes level. I didn't like it. I didn't like the very perceptive aura I was reading off of the guy--he was just plain human, but he was nobody to underestimate, clearly. They wouldn't have put him in charge of what had to be a major terrorist target if he hadn't been utterly capable.

"Wait," I said, and gestured urgently to a nurse. She handed me a kidney-shaped bowl, and I retched up what little I still had in my stomach. It wasn't theater, it was truly that bad, and after I was done I fell back against the pillows, feeling shaky and still in sharp, cutting pain. "So just to be clear, you think I got myself snakebit as part of a clever plot?"

"Maybe," he said, unmoved by my clearly unhappy condition. "I'm not taking any chances with you in my facility. You do have security clearances sufficient to gain entry under normal circumstances, so I'll let you stay until Dr. Reid says you can be moved, but the second that happens, you are out of here. With my best wishes, of course."

"Of course," I said, and swallowed hard. "Water?"

He was kind enough to fetch the cup and sippy straw, and I drained it in a rush.

"I know what's happening out there," he said, once I was done. He refilled the glass, which was a considerate thing to do, and set it within easy reach. "I know how bad it is. And I can't think it's any accident somebody like you just happens to show up on our doorstep, snakebite or not. You want to level with me, Joanne?"

"Well, I'd like

to, but I don't think your security clearance is high enough," I said. "And I'm not in a share-y mood right now, what with all the venom and throwing up and you being a giant prick."

He laughed. It was a real laugh, genuinely amused. Nice to know I was entertaining, even now. "Now that's the Joanne Baldwin people told me about. You'd be a smart-ass to Death himself, wouldn't you?"

I had been before. But that probably wasn't something to share except on a need-to-know basis. "If you want to know what's going on, stick your head outside," I said. "Humanity's sitting on a bomb, and the timer's clicking down. That's what's happening. Forget global climate change; we won't be around to see the last of the polar bears drown. That's why I'm here, Roland. I'm on bailing duty on the Titanic."

He didn't like that answer, not at all, and it didn't spark any kind of laughter this time. He was a smart man; he could identify truth when he heard it. "And why come here?" he asked.

"I didn't! I was dumped out by the idiot who picked me up. I think he could have been running drugs." In this part of the country, that was an extremely plausible scenario. Carloads of Mexican Brown were caught all the time, zipping their way up through the Southwest. They weren't fighting a major drug war in Mexico for nothing.

That was my first real lie; only it was actually speculation. I hadn't stated it as a fact, only a perception. I waited, and watched Roland Miles's aura up on the aetheric. It was tougher to read regular people than Wardens, but there was no mistaking the troubled colors that surrounded him. The man was under a lot of stress, and he was wary. I didn't blame him.

He certainly had every right.

Wary he remained, but I didn't get the sense that he detected any hint of a lie in what I'd said. That was good. It wasn't that I couldn't tackle the defenses he could probably bring to bear, but it would be very, very messy. Lives would be lost, and there was a decent chance that I'd end up having to do what I'd planned without evacuating the plant first. I didn't want that on my conscience. Especially as the last act of my life.

Dr. Reid buzzed in the infirmary door, trailed by another nurse, this one carrying a tray full of the antivenin bottles. He nodded pleasantly to Director Miles, who stood up and moved his chair away from the bed to make room as Reid bent over me, taking my pulse, probing the badly swollen arm, and generally being a nuisance before he nodded. "Second round," he said, and began loading the antivenin into the IV drip. "I didn't figure that one dose would do you. That was a nasty bite. How's the pain?"

"Intense," I said.

"On a scale of--"

"Ten." And I wasn't kidding, it really was. As an Earth Warden I was all too aware of the damage the venom was wreaking on my tissues, and it scared me. There was definitely going to be scarring from this, if I survived the day. In a weird way, it was comforting to think that I didn't have much of a chance of that, anyway.

Six vials of antivenin later, Dr. Reid gave me some kind of additional shot. I didn't see him do it in time to countermand, but I knew I was in trouble the second the warm, weighty feeling of pain relief began to spread through my body. Oh crap. I couldn't fall asleep. That would ruin everything.