---------------------------

Shorter chapter than average because I needed a tidy cliffhanger chapter ending. DEAL WITH IT.
---------------------------


Black Jack burst into the hall with the lantern in hand while Kiriko hung back to grab his things. He felt for the keyring he'd stashed in his pajama pocket. Good. He could have his bag if whatever Kiriko brought wasn't enough.

“How long has he been asleep?” Black Jack asked, his voice level despite the unusual strain hurrying put on his lungs.

“Ten. Since ten.” The woman stopped abruptly at the black rectangle of an open door. Wet weeping sounds, cut with heavy breath, slipped out of the darkness and into the hall.

Black Jack set his jaw and stepped into the room first. “How about before he went to sleep? Did he have any vision problems?” Toby was already curled over on one side, his arms and knees tucked up close to his chest like he was trying to make himself small and hide. Black Jack crouched by him.

“Having a light on made him agitated,” she said. She hovered behind him. “I thought it might be the headache from being sick earlier.”

“More likely he was hallucinating,” Black Jack said, mostly to himself. He planted a hand on Toby's shoulder and eased it up for his neck to check his pulse, unwilling to spook him by prying his wrist away. Pulse slow, breath shallow, skin almost cool to the touch even over the artery.

“Hallucinating?” She crowded in closer. “Do you think someone gave him drugs?”

Black Jack nudged her away. “I can't say for sure.”

“I can say with some confidence that someone did.” Another light sprang up in the doorway behind them. Kiriko's steps into the room fell very heavy. “Move, Black Jack.”

His first instinct, which he followed without an instant's thought, was to whip his head around and glower in defense of his patient.

“Please,” Kiriko added, his own expression placidly wearied. “Ma'am, how much does your son weigh?”

She worried the edge of the worn t-shirt she'd slept in. “Forty eight pounds. Why?”

Kiriko tucked his flashlight under one arm and reached into his pocket for a familiar black case. “I'm going to give him some medicine to wake him up.” Black Jack watched him prepare to do just that, and while he knew the same treatment had saved him he couldn't stow his distrust. Kiriko noticed him watching. “You know that it works, Black Jack. Don't worry. Even if I overshoot the dose a little he'll be fine.”

Empirically, it was true. And it was necessary. Already, Toby's breathing had become so depressed that he hardly made a sound when he reacted to whatever dream the drug had dropped him into. His chin dropped, Black Jack moved to one side. Kiriko eagerly filled the gap.

“It'll really work?” Toby's mother asked, crowding in again. Kiriko didn't shoo her.

“I promise it will.” Kiriko pulled Toby's right arm free and turned his palm up. “He's going to be cold and disoriented after, but he'll be all right. Hold the light, please, Black Jack.”

He did. Without the kid awake to spook at the sight of the needle, the injection only took a moment. In a wordless agreement, he and Kiriko both moved to the side so Toby's mother could crouch by the bed and 'wake' her son. He kicked and whined himself out of sleep, head rocking from side to side until he got his eyes open.

To Black Jack's relief, he hardly looked panicked at all. Was the dream already fading for him?

“Hey, baby,” his mother said, tipping his chin over to look at her. “How do you feel?”

“Gross.”

Kiriko stashed the little black case again. “He might be nauseous for the next hour or so, so keep him upright.”

“Thank you.” She pulled Toby into her arms. “You're a lifesaver.”

A dry laugh made it halfway up Black Jack's throat. If only she knew.

“Don't hesitate to come get me again if he becomes unresponsive again.” Kiriko took his flashlight from Black Jack and headed out. “Keep him warm and put him to bed in an hour. At any rate, good night for now.”

In the hallway, Black Jack split off from him without a word and returned to his room. He found, curiously, that his bag and suitcase had gone untouched.

Well.

Mostly.

“What in the world is this supposed to accomplish?” he asked the empty room, lifting from his bag the second set of keys to his room. He panned the beam of his own little flashlight across the suite's dark corners, but found no intruder. Just what was the endgame of breaking into his room to plant the spare set of keys?

No matter. At least, not a matter he wanted to worry over at the moment. He snapped his bag shut keys and all and changed into proper clothes. Pulling his coat onto his shoulders helped him feel more anchored in the present moment, focused him. There was just something about feeling the weight, sometimes.

He sat on the edge of the bed to lace up the boots he should have been wearing the whole time. Pinoko would fuss at him if she knew he was tromping through knee-deep snow in the same shoes he wore anywhere else.

Finally settled back into himself, Black Jack's mind was free to start performing triage. His patient was, in all likelihood, fast asleep in her room. Whoever had attacked him, either they weren't present or they hadn't noticed his return. He was fine, himself, if drowsy in a way he just couldn't shake. That left everyone else. More specifically, it left the many guests poisoned by whatever agent permeated the lodge.

Luckily, he had ready access to a cooperative patient for testing and observation. He sat still, eyes closed, and listened to his body. His hands and feet felt like heavy weights at the ends of his limbs, and he was drowsy in a way a lack of sleep couldn't adequately explain. If the substance acted on the body in ways similar to GHB, these were sensations to expect.

The nausea was negligible by this time.

Heart rate a little below his normal.

Blood pressure in a safe range.

His chest felt sticky and heavy, like he was fighting a cold. He laid a hand over it and breathed, felt and heard the faint rattle there. That was certainly a change from that morning.

And everyone who'd been cough and retching when he went looking for Eleanor had gone quiet. He hadn't noticed the quiet before that moment.

Suddenly bolt upright, he listened. In the lulls between wind blasts, the silence was almost total. A bunch of college students and young families suddenly without power on their winter vacation wouldn't be so quiet. There should have been chatter, or music buzzing from the speaker of a phone. There should at least have been footsteps.

Instead, there was only the wind and the rasp in his chest, which now seemed far too loud. He took his light and went to the door, hand dropping to his side, and started down the hall, rapping on doors as he went. When no one answered after three doors, he started yanking and shoving on the knobs. The sixth opened inward and stopped short, caught on the legs of a man who'd fallen prone just inside the room. Black Jack dropped down to check his pulse and breathing, found both present but depressed, and shot back up.

“Kiriko!”

Blue light poured out of Kiriko's open door in a wide arc at the far end of the hall, and Kiriko peered out. “So it was you making all that racket,” he hollered back.

“Get that medicine ready and get out here,” Black Jack called. He stooped to pull the man into a sitting position against the wall. “We need to get all the occupied rooms open, too.”

To his relief, Kiriko didn't argue. He appeared with his own bag and lantern. “So it's progressed to this stage in everyone affected, hm?” The dry curiosity in his voice made Black Jack want to slap him.

“You didn't notice how quiet it was?” Black Jack snapped. He stood and took a hissing breath to calm himself. “We can get the rooms open with the spare keys downstairs. Prioritize the children so you can revive more of them with whatever little of that you have left.”

“As good a plan as any,” Kiriko conceded. He didn't move away, however, and instead held his lantern to the level of Black Jack's face and frowned. “Allow me.”

Black Jack sucked in a breath when Kiriko reached his free hand out and put the backs of his fingers to the side of his neck. He was suddenly very aware of the flutter of his pulse there. Just as he was readying to bat Kiriko's hand away, Kiriko withdrew.

“You've got a fever, doctor.”

“I know.” Black Jack pulled the collar of his coat around his neck and started for the stairs. “But I'm fine. We need to focus on everybody else, first. I can't know if the respiratory depression will worsen to the point where they start to suffocate, and we can't risk waiting to find out.”

“Don't push yourself too hard,” Kiriko called to Black Jack's back, a sharp smile evident in the tone of his voice. “Your face is already bright red, and I don't need to be nursing you on top of everything else.”

Black Jack hunched up his shoulders and pretended not to hear as he hurried down the stairs. Keys, he needed the keys. He swooped behind the reception desk and started taking stock of all the single sets of keys. Double sets meant the room was unoccupied and thus of no concern.

His chest rattled and his face burned. Whatever Kiriko had given him, it was far from a total antidote. He had to pause in his frantic pocketing of the keys to hack into his handkerchief and try to clear his chest. By the time he could actually bring something up, he'd coughed so hard his ears were starting to ring. He had to brace himself on the lip of the counter and catch his breath, but he felt better. Something half-remembered nagged at him. He tried to pull on that thread while he grabbed the last of the keys and started back up the stairs. Kiriko was waiting for him up top.

“Give me the keys and go back to your room,” Kiriko said, holding out a hand. “You sounded like you were dying down there.”

“I am.” Black Jack's voice was ragged. He emptied the keys into Kiriko's hands and pushed past him. “Got work to do. You take care of this.”

Kiriko's steps followed him, but only briefly. He didn't say anything, but a certain tension hung in the air until the thump of Black Jack's door closing dispelled it. Black Jack leaned on the door for a few moments, breathing and thinking. Pulling at that slippery thread in the back of his brain.

'Do you think this place has black mold or something?'

Yes. That was it, wasn't it?

He pushed off the door, took something for his fever for the sake of concentrating, and got out his microscope. It would be a terribly swift onset of symptoms, but GHB didn't sit heavy in the lungs and cause bloody coughing fits.

But then, black mold didn't put you to sleep.

No matter. He had a sputum sample and, as long as Kiriko did his job, time.

He opened up his laptop for extra light and got to work.

---

A fungal infection of the lungs. There was no mistaking it. He couldn't name the spores specifically, but they were present in startling quantity. It explained the fever, it explained the coughing, it could even explain the nausea.

The psychoactive and sedative effects, though, were another matter. He got up to pace the room. It was possible these were two separate problems. The prospect of two dozen healthy people contracting lung infections and getting dosed with something like GHB in the same night was no comfort.

He looked out at the storm. It was quiet again, which allowed him to hear the steps pounding up to his door. The door burst inward and clattered, caught on the chain. Black Jack whirled around and flashed his light straight into Henry's frantic face.

“Doctor!” Henry's pale face and bright white hair stood out even when Black Jack dropped the beam of his light. “My girl's gone out in the snow. There's blood in her bed and I don't know what's wrong. I'm going out to look for her. You gotta come.”

Sickness bloomed in Black Jack's stomach. Even if Eleanor was an impostor, it wouldn't grant her any special immunity from whatever toxin had sprung up in the lodge. A toxin that he knew firsthand could send one into an amnesiac fugue, cause erratic and irresponsible behavior. That could very well lead someone to walk out into the snow on a whim, or wake up bleeding and run out in a confused panic. A toxin that could, one way or another, be killing the fetus he'd agreed to save.

He threw his coat back on and grabbed his bag. “Get that snowmobile ready. Do you know where she'd go? Someplace she knows well?”

“I got it out front already and I can follow where she's been good enough.” He tapped the bridge of his nose, between his eyes. “Good mountain man senses. But I need you, doc.”

Black Jack nodded. “I understand. Was she acting strangely or complaining of headaches or dizziness earlier?”

Henry fidgeted and moved aside so Black Jack could step into the hall. “She got real withdrawn all of a sudden, so I figured she wasn't feeling right. But you know how carrying a baby wears on somebody. I figured it was that.”

“Get downstairs. I'll meet you there. I've got another fire to put out first.”

He didn't hear Henry take off for a long moment, but the old man was plodding down the stairs by the time he rounded a corner and found Kiriko.

“You're looking better,” Kiriko said, stepping back a bit to avoid walking into him.

Black Jack waved the words away. “Enough about me,” he said. “Anyone who's coughing or running a fever here is probably carrying some kind of fungal infection in the lungs. You'll need to watch them, too.”

Kiriko raised his eyebrows. “Like a mold? Black Jack, you're sick and you only just got here.”

“My equipment is still set up in my room, and you're free to get samples and look for yourself if you're that damned skeptical. Whatever it is, it multiplies fast enough that it's affecting people very suddenly.”

“Maybe it's just you. You do live in that dingy house,” Kiriko pointed out, smirking at the face Black Jack made.

“Just do it. I have paid work to worry about.” Black Jack turned his back on him and went back to the stairs.

“I will, I will. Of course, I don't have any reason to carry around itraconazole or anything like that.” He followed Black Jack to the head of the stairs and watched him go. “Oh, and Black Jack.”

“What now?”

“Exercise some caution with that client of yours.” With that, Kiriko and the light of his lantern dipped back into the blackness of the hallway.

Henry met him on the porch, and they waded through the narrow ruts in the snow to reach Henry's snowmobile. The sky was clear again, though the wind hadn't let up. There was an unmistakeable trail through the snow and into the trees. A trail of footprints and blood spatters.

They climbed on, Black Jack clutching his bag. Henry took a few short, steadying breaths before he turned the engine over.

“Sure you don't wanna tie that down?” Henry asked.

“Positive,” Black Jack said. He buttoned his coat around it. “I'd rather know I have a hold on it than trust it's behind me.”

“You really should.”

Black Jack glowered at the back of the old man's head. “Are you more concerned for my bag, or for your daughter? Get going.”

The snowmobile jerked into motion and Black Jack dug his fingers into the crumbly foam underneath him. They left the moonlight behind once they broke into the forest, the floor covered over almost entirely in globby shadows cast by the snow-covered branches. Henry kept close to the clear trail Eleanor's feet had cut through the snow, putting no more than a couple yards between the snowmobile's skis and the edge of the trail at all times. Until, suddenly, he swerved away.

“Where are you going?” Black Jack snapped, the panic of nearly pitching off the thing showing through in his voice.

“If she came this way, I know where she's gone,” Henry called over the motor. “This way's faster.”

Anger pulled at the corners of Black Jack's mouth. “What if she didn't make it? What if she's passed out in the woods?”

“She made it,” Henry said. “She's a tough, willful girl. I know just where she is.”

Black Jack grit his teeth and resisted the urge to push the old man over the side. The snowmobile bore downhill for a while, cutting through thinner and sparser trees along the edge of a shallow stream churning with ice. Shortly, a squat slate building with no windows came into view. It wasn't much more than a hump in the snow with a door out front.

The bloody trail came to an end at its door.

Henry brought the snowmobile to a snow-spitting halt and killed the engine. “She's bound to be inside, hurry.”

Black Jack jumped off and into the snow. The battered wooden door resisted so that he had to brace his foot on the door frame to pull it open. As predicted, the moonlight from the open door revealed a crumpled form dressed in white at the other end of the building's single room.

Henry crunched up behind him. “Sorry about this, doc.”

This time, the blow from behind did put him out.