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“His memory is incomplete,” the professor said. “Given time, he'll remember the details.”

“You told me he would remember by now.”

“Look,” Jason offered. “Maybe there's been some kind of mistake.”

Lachlan ignored him, speaking to Stegmeyer as he said, “Even without the spacecraft, we still have him. Jason carries the proof of his origin in his body.”

Jason was horrified by what he heard. He leaned back in the chair, pushing himself into the cushion. Lily must have felt his muscles stiffen. She rested her hand on his knee, and whispered, “It's going to be all right.”

Lachlan crouched down beside Stegmeyer, looking Jason in the eye.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” he said. “But your body is remarkable. You're a miracle of biology.”

“Me?” Jason replied. “But I have Cander’s Syndrome. A genetic defect that causes blood anemia.”

“There's no such thing,” Lachlan said smiling. “They made that up as an excuse to keep you under close medical supervision. Your medication is nothing more than sugar pills. Oh, occasionally they'll slip something in there to make you feel sick and get you back in for MRI and blood tests, but it's all just a cover.”

“It's true,” Lily added. “They even faked the PubMed papers on Cander's, faked the research results and peer reviews, all so they could get a credible entry in Wikipedia in case you ever looked it up.”

“But why?” Jason asked.

Lachlan opened his folder and tossed a couple of scan results on the table.

“Your heart is the size of a newborn infant's, and yet it pumps almost four thousand gallons a day, well over a million gallons a year. That's twice the volume of an olympic sprinter.”

“No,” Jason said, shaking his head, looking at a chest scan showing a tiny heart. “I have a weak heart. I have annual ECG scans.”

“You see the results they want you to see,” Lachlan continued. “The average lung capacity of an adult male is just under two gallons, yours is over three. Your kidneys, liver and spleen are all enlarged. They're roughly the same size as someone that's twice your weight. What's more, your elastic muscle strength and peak force strength are off the charts. Your muscle tissue is denser and heavier than anything we've ever observed.”

Jason laughed, saying, “This is absurd! Next you're going to tell me, Jor-El's my father and I've got to steer clear of Kryptonite.”

“Not quite,” Lachlan replied, smiling. “But close.”

“Perhaps a demonstration would help.” Lachlan turned to the FBI agent, saying, “Agent Bellum, you look buff. How much can you bench press?”

“I'll warm up with two hundred pounds and work up to three fifty, maybe four hundred on a good day.”

“Would you mind demonstrating your strength by arm wrestling Jason?”

“What?” Jason asked, watching as Agent Bellum removed his jacket. He was a huge man with a barrel chest and muscles like an ox. Agent Bellum grinned, rolling up his sleeve and revealing the thick muscles of his forearm. His biceps were hidden by his business shirt, but only just. There wasn't a lot of extra room in those sleeves.

Jason looked to Lachlan for an explanation.

“Did you ever wonder why you were discouraged from sports? You were a natural. The problem was, you were too natural. You'd outrun your classmates and wonder why they were out of breath when they caught up to you, right?”

“I was never any good at sports,” Jason replied. “Sports made me sick.”

“Not quite,” Lachlan said. “Your meds made you sick. Your handlers would see you starting to assert yourself physically and they would switch your meds to make it unpleasant for you. Think about it. All those times you felt sick, it was never on the same day. It was always the next day, wasn't it?”

Jason nodded as Lachlan continued.

“You'd kick a football half the length of a field without really trying. The people assigned to you did all they could to steer you away from anything physical, but they couldn't stop you from throwing a basketball the length of a court in the fourth grade for an impossible three-pointer!”

Jason smiled at that. He remembered that day well. He remembered the awe and amazement he got from the other kids in the gym, and he remembered being sick for almost a week afterwards. Had he been punished? Was that it? Could anyone be that cruel to a child?

Agent Bellum knelt down, resting his elbow on the coffee table. He flexed his fingers, smiling at Jason.

“Go on,” Lily said, encouraging him.

Jason felt stupid.

He wasn't going to roll up his sleeve. His arms were embarrassingly thin compared to Bellum's.

Agent Bellum had to be in his late twenties, early thirties. He was in his physical prime. His arm was massive compared to Jason's. There was a compression bandage just visible beneath Jason's shirt. His fingers touched at the bandage beneath the cotton.

“It won't matter,” Lachlan said confidently, observing Jason's reluctance. “You won't break a sweat.”

Getting down on one knee, Jason offered his hand. He rested his elbow on the table across from Bellum.

The FBI Agent grinned. He'd clearly done this before. From the way he positioned his hand, arching his wrist over Jason's, it was obvious he knew what he was doing. He was relishing this.

Jason felt his hand swallowed up by Bellum's paw.

“OK,” Lachlan said. “Ready?”

Jason felt the big man beginning to apply pressure, trying to force Jason's hand backwards onto the table.

“Go!” Lachlan cried.

Bellum surged, applying a massive wave of strength that took Jason by surprise, bending his hand back to within an inch or so of the stained wooden veneer.

Bellum leaned over the coffee table. The veins in his neck bulged and his face started turning red. Jason's forearm was trembling under the strain, but he found he could hold onto those last few inches. The bigger man shifted his weight, trying to get more leverage, but to Jason's surprise, the added pressure didn't bother him. He had plenty of strength in reserve. It was quite fascinating to observe, he thought, mentally detaching himself from the action. Across from him was this huge man on the verge of pinning his arm to the table, but only if Jason let him. Here was an FBI agent struggling with someone half his size.

Jason looked over at Lachlan and Stegmeyer. Lachlan looked relaxed, as though he had no doubts about what would happen next, whereas Stegmeyer looked nervous. She didn't want Jason to lose, much to his surprise. The contrast in their visages was stark. Stegmeyer never expected him to win.

With a little upward pressure, Jason straightened his arm, easily bringing Bellum back to their starting point.

Bellum's face flushed. Veins appeared on his forehead. His right arm trembled under the strain.

“Finish him,” Lachlan said. Stegmeyer may have doubted Jason, but Lachlan didn't. Jason took pride in the confidence of his mentor.

In one fluid motion, Jason rolled Bellum's arm backwards, watching the big man fight with all his might not to lose. Rather than slamming Bellum's hand into the table, Jason touched it gently against the veneer, and Bellum released his grip, gasping for breath.

“Damn!” Bellum cried, shaking his fingers. Jason hadn't even thought about how hard he'd been holding Bellum's hand, but Bellum flexed his fingers, apparently trying to get some feeling back into them.

“Did you catch that?” Stegmeyer said to her cameraman.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Amazing,” the Washington Post reporter said. “So, he's an alien?”

“No,” Lachlan said swiftly, cutting her off. From the tone of his voice, it was clear the professor was defending Jason, and Jason appreciated that. With everything that had happened, Jason felt almost a sense of vertigo. He wasn't physically dizzy, but mentally he was struggling to come to terms with the pace of events unfolding around him. To have Lachlan staunchly defending him was reassuring.

“He's unique,” Lachlan added.

“Look at him,” Bellum protested, getting up and sitting in his seat. “There's no way he's human.”

“I've heard the rumors,” Stegmeyer said. “Either he's an alien or he's some alien hybrid experiment.”

Lachlan was visibly annoyed with both Stegmeyer and Bellum. Jason could see him going red in the face, but somehow he retained his composure and spoke with deliberation.

“You have no idea what we're dealing with here. Wild and fanciful guesses will not help.”

“So what is he?” Stegmeyer asked. She was abrupt, and Jason got the feeling he was seeing the real April Stegmeyer, the cold, calculating reporter behind the warm smile.

“Human,” Lachlan said, with a note of triumph as though that one word required no more explanation.

“Nah,” Bellum replied. “Not with strength like that!”

“You don't understand,” Lachlan continued. “You've heard the old mantra so many times you've come to believe it, that all men are created equal. They're not. No two men are physically alike. This is something Charles Darwin understood, but lately we seem to have forgotten it.

“Not only is your fingerprint unique among over seven billion of us walking around on this planet, so too is your nervous system, the attenuation of your muscle shape, size and tendons, your skeletal structure, and your cardiovascular and lymphatic system. They're similar and yet distinctly different.”

“But he's too different,” Stegmeyer stated bluntly.

“Is he?” Lachlan asked. “Usain Bolt can run a hundred meters in less than ten seconds. Does that make him an alien? Or does it make him exceptional in both his physical capabilities and discipline?”

Jason was fascinated by the professor's perspective, and somewhat relieved to know he was counted in the ranks of humanity.

“But ... But there's no discipline here,” Bellum countered, gesturing with his hands toward Jason.

“No, there's not,” the professor replied. “But Jason is human. I assure you, the scientists at DARPA are wrong in their assessment of his physical origins.”

“How can you know that?” Stegmeyer demanded.

“Because science is founded on the principle that you don't jump to conclusions. Honestly, what's more likely? That Jason's an alien? Or that Jason has exceptional physical characteristics for some entirely valid reason we've yet to discover?”

“And that's enough for you?” Stegmeyer asked. Jason noticed she didn't answer Lachlan's question.

“It is,” Lachlan replied. Jason's admiration for the professor grew in that instant. Lachlan wasn't going to abandon him. Jason might only just now be grasping at the threads of all that was happening, but he was confident he was in the right place, with the right people, with Lachlan and Lily by his side.

Lee peered through the bars of his sunken cage.

After hearing that these narrow, low confines were used to house animals during winter, he couldn’t think of his confinement as a jail. They’d imprisoned him in a stock holding pen, a stall.

The moon fought to break through the low clouds. The bars covering the window of his cage were level with the ground, allowing him to see out across the courtyard. In the darkness, he could make out the main gate roughly two hundred yards away. A dim light hung from a high pole, illuminating the barrier by the guardhouse. There must have been fences stretching to either side, but in the dark of night he couldn’t see them.

Somewhere to his right, a yellow light bulb flickered slowly above a door, stuttering as it struggled to produce light from the irregular surges of electricity. Every now and then, the clouds would part and allow the full moon to shine through, highlighting the feeble effort of the artificial lights.

Lee cradled his wounded hand, trying not to feel sorry for himself. With spasms of pain shooting up his arm from time to time, he struggled not to let the weight of hopelessness bear down upon him.

“I’m going to make it,” he muttered to himself, reminding himself of the note, trying to convince himself this wasn’t the end.

Lee felt useless. It was an irrational feeling, he knew that, but knowing didn’t help. An impending sense of dread swept over him.

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself,” he whispered, trying to buoy his spirits. “Don’t go there, you dumb son of a bitch! You’re alive, that’s all that matters. Now, get yourself the hell out of here!”

Lee steeled himself, trying to remain grounded in the present.

A series of huts lined three sides of the yard outside his low cage, with the road to the main gate passing where the fourth side of the square should have been. What he’d thought of as a courtyard was little more than a muddy parade ground surrounded by a gravel road that ran past each of the old wooden buildings. A truck was parked to one side, but in the dark he couldn’t make out what kind of truck it was, only that it looked old, like something from the Korean War in the 1950s. Surely, they couldn’t have nursed their aging technology that long, he thought. Perhaps it was just that they had no need for new models and considered the old style trucks perfectly adequate.

There was a car on the far side of the truck, but all Lee could make out was the hood and the front wheel guard. Small flags were proudly displayed on either side of the curved hood. He hadn’t noticed the car before, but then he hadn’t noticed much of anything before now. Only now was his mind starting to think tactically, trying to glean any information that might help with his bid for freedom.

Who was helping him?

Had one of the Navy SEALs somehow escaped?

Or perhaps the SEALs had evaded capture in the first place?

Why would they come for him?

How did they know where he’d been taken?

Why would they risk exposing themselves by sneaking into a military base to free him?

He didn't know the answers to these questions, but he was glad they had.

Lee could see the hut where he had been tortured directly opposite his sunken cage, on the far side of the yard. It didn’t look that different from any of the other old wooden huts, with their warped weatherboards and peeling paint. Lee could pick out that building only by remembering what direction he’d been dragged in as he staggered across the gravel road.

Even back then, through the haze of pain, he'd fought to retain at least a vague notion of distance and direction. His mind was all he had left. Physically, they had taken away his freedom. He had to fight to ensure they didn't win the mental battle.

His hand still throbbed but the tablets had taken the edge off the pain.

Trying to think objectively about where he was distracted him from the physical torment of his injuries. Focusing his mind brought relief, restoring his confidence.

Lee watched the guards, observing their routines, noting how they switched routes over by a darkened building he assumed was used for administration. They would retrace each other’s steps to the barracks where he was located before marching past. The camp must have extended further to his right, as they marched out of sight for roughly ten minutes. He knew his helper had come from that direction with the painkillers, creeping up silently behind the guards as they marched on, and that seemed to validate that this wasn't another ruse by the North Koreans. Whoever it was that brought the painkillers, they had to be watching the camp, observing the same routine, and that thought gave Lee hope. He reasoned that it couldn’t just be one person. It might have been a single person who came in and made the drop, but there had to be several people working together. Lee was buoyed by that thought.

There was another window at the back of his cell, but it was boarded up. Perhaps that would show where the sentries went, he thought, and with some difficulty, he crawled to the far end of his basement cage, protecting his right hand by holding his arm across his chest, keeping his wrist to his sternum.

There were cracks in between the boards nailed over the outside of the window.

One of the bars was missing and another had come loose.

Lee could feel the crumbling concrete crunching in the window frame as he wriggled the bar around. He lifted the loose bar a little and got a feel for how shallowly it had been set into the concrete. With a bit of work, he could probably pull it out, and that brought a smile to his face, his first smile in days. Knowing why the soldiers had boarded up the window made him feel as though he was gaining some small advantage over them. They’d been lazy. Laziness was easily exploited.

Lee worked at twisting and tugging at the iron bar until it came free, knowing he could use the bar as a club. Having a weapon lifted his spirits, even if it was a poor match for a gun or a knife. Being armed felt good. Slowly, he was reclaiming the confidence that had been stripped from him.

Lee sat there for a few minutes, feeling the weight of the rusted iron bar in his left hand, thinking about how he'd have to swing it as a southpaw. He got used to the feel of it, of the leverage it would give, imagining how he could wield the bar in a fight. A blow to a raised forearm would break the ulna and possibly the radius as well if he could muster enough force. He pictured a blow to the windpipe of an assailant, incapacitating and silencing his attacker at the same time. Sitting there in the darkness, he paced himself slowly through the motion. The inbound swing would be at the windpipe, while the backlash would be directed at the temples.

“Nice,” he whispered to himself. It wasn't the thought of violence he relished, rather the ability to defend himself, to wrest back the power stripped from him.

He pushed on the wooden boards, testing the nails that held them fast. There was a little flex, but he’d need some leverage to pry them away from the outer frame. The bar he'd pulled free was too thick to wedge between the boards as a crowbar, but he could use it against the other bars, jamming it between the bars and the planks of wood. Quietly, he forced one of the boards loose. It felt good to be taking the initiative. Lee peered through the crack he'd made between the boards, squeezing the bar through to stress the wood and nails, further widening the gap.

The rear of the camp was some kind of motor pool. Rows of cars and trucks obscured his view, but he caught the distinct edge of a helicopter rotor sagging under its own weight. Moonlight gleamed off the canopy of the helicopter, barely visible between the rows of vehicles. It wasn’t one of the old Soviet Hinds. This helicopter was smaller than the ones he'd seen by the coast. It was closer to the bubble shaped Bell helicopters he’d done his flight training in.

Suddenly, the ambient light in his cage dropped, and Lee felt his heart race. He turned and saw something leaning up against the bars behind him, blocking the moonlight. He scurried over to the window and pulled a pair of boots and a heavy overcoat through the bars and into his cell as boots crunched on the gravel outside, walking away from him.

“Now you're talking,” he whispered, allowing himself the luxury of excitement.

The coat was army issue and had an insignia on the shoulder, but the moon was behind the clouds so he couldn’t make it out in any detail. He put on the boots but was unable to tie the laces. Just the thought of using his right hand caused pain to surge from the bloody stumps.

Lee pulled at the laces with one hand, working them tight and looping them around before tucking them into the top of the boots. That would have to do, he thought. If he had to run, he’d make it maybe fifty yards before the laces worked loose and then he’d flounder like a goose and probably have to kick them off.

Lee sat waiting with his back against the low wall. He didn’t put the coat on, as much as he wanted to ward off the cold. He realized it was important not to get mud and dirt on the coat. If someone looked at him while he was wearing it, he had to pass for a guard or a soldier, and that wasn’t going to happen if he looked like he’d been crawling around in a pigsty.

With his left hand, he ran his fingers continually through his hair, trying to pat down the loose strands.

Dew had begun forming on the grass beyond the bars.

Lee reached out and rubbed his left hand on the wet grass and then rubbed his fingers over his face, desperately trying to clean up his appearance. He had no mirror, but he felt he needed to look as normal as possible during the escape so he worked fastidiously, somewhat manically rubbing at his face, his neck and hair. A wave of paranoia swept over him at the realization that his bid for freedom could come undone because he looked like a hobo.

“Got to get dolled up for the ball,” he muttered to himself, methodically rubbing his damp fingers on his forehead, trying to clean every inch of his unseen face.

“A mirror would have been nice,” he mumbled.

Lee rubbed softly at his cheeks, licking his hand in the hope of tasting dirt to get an idea of how clean or otherwise he appeared, but he couldn't make out any difference. He was careful not to rub so hard as to be abrasive, gently cleaning under his eyes, across his chin and around his nose. He could only guess what he looked like. After a few minutes, he decided he must look semi-presentable, but he probably wouldn’t win a beauty pageant. In the low light he hoped he could fool a guard.

Lee ran his fingers through his hair again and again, using what little dew there was to stick down his hair, slicking it back so hopefully it looked natural. Preparation is good, he thought to himself, preparation gives purpose.

He was ready.

No one came.

Minutes seemed like hours.

Lee got worried.

What if something had gone wrong? What if they changed their plans?

As nearly as he could tell, the painkillers had been kicked in his cage almost two hours ago. The jacket and boots had come over an hour later. What was the delay? He just wanted to get moving, to get out of his squalid, cramped prison. He was bouncing between emotional extremes, feeling a high when he pried the bar free, and a low when time dragged. Like a pendulum swinging back and forth, his emotions swung between extremes.

Lee had no way of knowing the time, and he began to get nervous. He couldn't see the moon from where he was as it had moved high in the sky, casting short shadows. At the point it reached its zenith, it would be midnight. If only he could see the moon. That one, small consolation of being able to tell the time, even if only as an approximate, would have lifted his spirits, but there was no such mercy. From where he was, it was impossible to estimate shadow lengths. It could be barely 11pm or already after midnight for all he could tell.

Rats scurried along the far wall, keeping to the shadows. Oh, how he envied those creatures, able to pass through the bars with ease, eking out an existence regardless of ideology. Life was simple, uncomplicated. They could forage or flee, mocking him with their freedom, sniffing as they crept through his cage. They could smell the blood, his blood. The thought of his fingers lying severed and cold in some garbage can, discarded like offal, caused him to gag.

“Get out of here,” he yelled, not so much as to rid himself of the rats as to distract himself from his anguish. With his left hand, he threw a handful of dirt and straw. The tiny flecks scattered across the floor. One of the rats darted away while the other turned and stared, its beady eyes locked with his, its whiskers twitching in the moonlight.

“Leave me alone,” he cried again, kicking at the loose straw with his feet and flinging another handful of debris at the rat.

Lee kept his wounded hand close to his chest. The muscles in his forearm spasmed as he sought in vain to protect his bloodied hand. His actions were a pathetic attempt at keeping the wound clean and he knew it. He could no more protect his hand than he could demand that the sun rise. Regardless of whether it was Eun-Yong or the revolutions of the planet beneath him, the cruelty of his captors or the rhythms of Earth, Lee came to realize he had no control over his own life, and that realization hurt. For a captain, someone that was in charge of a flight crew and a multi-million dollar helicopter, this was a sobering thought, bringing tears to his eyes. His heart sank in despair. This ache was a pain no other could ever inflict on him: it came from his own realization of helplessness.

“Please,” Lee said, pleading with the rat.

As a pilot, he had exquisitely tuned control over his world with just the slightest twist of his wrist. Rocking to the left as he sat there in the cockpit of his Sea King helicopter would cause reality to obey his slightest whim. Eight tons of steel would sway gently through the air in response to his touch, following his fleeting thoughts as though the craft were an extension of his body. Just the lightest of touches on the pedals would cause corrections, minute or sweeping, allowing him to perform aerial ballet. He’d been a god in the sky. Here in this prison, he had been cast down out of heaven, a mere mortal, naked and bleeding.