Hawaii Five-0 fic: "Sympathy for the werewolf" (3/10)
Title: 'Sympathy for the werewolf' - part 3/10.
Genres: supernatural AU. Danny/Steve pre-slash.
Rating / Warnings: R for descriptions of violence and physical injury, and a brief mention of suicide.
Spoilers: up to 1x09, 'Po'ipu', then goes AU during that episode.
Word count: 3,600 words for this chapter; 10,000 words for the story so far.
Summary: an ex-SEAL tries to kill Steve using silver weapons, leaving Steve with wounds that give off acrid black smoke and leaving Danny with more questions than answers.
Author's notes: Thanks to everyone who's commented on the previous chapters - your feedback has been really encouraging! Thanks most of all to cactus_cat, for beta services and hand-holding.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
***
CHAPTER THREE: 'Somebody like you and me'
By Monday morning, Steve's mostly okay again. He's still pale, and he looks worn out despite sleeping the weekend away. But his fever is gone.
After showering, Steve comes to Danny to have his bandages changed. He's shirtless, and Danny allows himself a brief moment to covertly admire Steve's tattoos - still intact, thankfully, as both the knife and bullet had just missed them. As always, he wants to run his fingertips across the colorful designs. As always, he holds himself back.
When Danny removes the old dressings, he sees that Steve's wounds are practically healed. The blackened layer has flaked off, leaving new pink skin underneath. He thinks about demanding answers from Steve: how can he possibly have recovered so soon? Did he always heal fast, or has it developed more recently? Does the bottle of pills hidden under his mattress have something to do with it?
But Steve's mental and verbal capabilities seem to be back to normal, with all his defenses re-established. Danny knows better than to expect anything now besides evasion, or even straight-out lies. He'll have to go looking for answers on his own.
"These are healing up nicely," is all Danny says, and Steve nods silently.
Over breakfast, they argue about whether Steve is fit to return to duty.
"I'm not contagious, Danny. It's not like the flu or whatever."
"I bet you'd show up to work even if you had stomach flu, or something else really nasty," Danny counters.
Steve shrugs. "I wouldn't know; I really don't get sick all that often."
Danny figures that Steve's about to extol the virtues of a vigorous daily swim, and maybe the regular consumption of spinach smoothies or something. So he just says, "Okay, fine; let's go. But if you fall asleep over the mountain of paperwork on your desk, I reserve the right to drag your ass back here."
Steve sighs, which is as close as Danny's gonna get to acquiescence. And it's not that he wishes his partner was still sick; of course not. But damn, Danny kind of misses the way he was over the weekend. That version of Steve was much more biddable, for one thing.
More importantly, he let down some of his barriers and let Danny look after him. It wasn't all that Danny wanted, not even close, but it was something. Now they'll revert to being colleagues who maybe slap each other on the back once in a while.
As they're driving to HQ, Danny tells Steve about the wound infection story he gave Chin on Sunday. "It just seemed like the most plausible explanation for you being laid low after the fight with Taylor," he claims. "Also, I kind of figured you didn't want your silver allergy becoming widely known. It's a bit of a liability."
Steve nods, looking relieved. "Yeah, you're right - thanks. I don't like misleading my team, but I can live with it in this case."
So when they get to work, Steve's ready to face Chin and Kono with a grin and some reassuring words. Looking at him now, you'd never guess how sick he was at the weekend. Since the others never saw the wounds up close, Danny's cautiously optimistic that the cover story will hold.
Monday turns out to be a quiet day, spent catching up with the ongoing investigations they'd set aside to deal with Agent Atwater's murder. Danny makes Steve stay put most of the time, bringing him lunch and ensuring he drinks enough water. "Do some of the admin stuff you've been neglecting, or play a hundred games of Solitaire...I really don't care. Just take it easy, okay?"
Danny volunteers to liaise with HPD over the General Pak mess. It's partly to save Steve any added stress, but mostly because he wants to be the one who receives CSU's report.
He gets the call late that afternoon, and closes his office door behind him before taking it. It's the senior forensics analyst on the phone, Kumiko Watanabe, and she briefly outlines the test results. As Danny had thought, Taylor's knife is pure silver. And just like Steve had suggested, the bullet that grazed him is made of silver too.
Danny's dealt with Kumiko quite a bit since he first joined HPD, and he has a lot of respect for her. Despite delivering the lab's findings in a straightforward way, she sounds super curious - and who wouldn't be? Silver weapons do seem like a seriously strange choice for an experienced ex-SEAL to bring to a firefight.
He knows that telling her it's all classified will only fuel the flames of speculation. So Danny spins some bullshit about Taylor being mentally disturbed, and convinced that God wanted him to kill the General and his protective detail. He'd come armed with silver in the belief that Pak and the Five-0 team were aliens, who would dissolve when struck with the metal.
"Really? Wow, what a nutbar," Kumiko says with a laugh. Danny's sure some version of that story will soon be bouncing around the department. Ma always told him never to speak ill of the dead, but he thinks she'd excuse him for maligning Taylor under these circumstances.
If there's something on those weapons that would explain Steve's symptoms, Danny wants to know ASAP. So he asks Kumiko to conduct some further tests.
"Commander McGarrett has developed an infection from his knife wound," Danny explains. She makes a small sound of worry that sounds more personal than professional, and Danny files that away for later.
"So please make this a top priority, Kumiko," Danny goes on. "We've got to find out if there was something nasty on that blade - any harmful substances, or anything else that doesn't belong there. Same with the bullet, too, just to cover all the bases. We already know it's Steve's blood on there, so there's no need to do a DNA test or anything. Just a straight tox screen on the silver itself, as soon as you can."
"Yes, of course," she says. "I'll handle it myself."
***
Danny drops Steve at his house, insisting that he skip his usual evening work-out and get some rest. Then he goes back to his apartment, sticks a frozen pizza in the oven, and boots up his laptop. He didn't want to risk doing anything on his desktop at HQ, so this is the first opportunity he's had to investigate what the hell is going on with Steve.
Danny knows how to enable private browsing, a first line of defense against anyone wanting to snoop around in his internet history. But he's well aware that there's other ways for online searching to be monitored.
So he calls Toast.
The hacker sounds stoned, as usual, but sufficiently lucid for Danny's purposes. After agreeing that yeah, man, tonight's sunset looks amazing, Danny gets down to business.
"Listen, I wanted to get your advice about online security," Danny says. "I'm looking into something potentially big, and I want to do the research on my home computer. Thing is, I'll probably need to check out some super nasty and highly illegal sites, but I don't want to raise any red flags. So can you suggest a way of covering my tracks? I can manage private browsing; beyond that, I'm lost."
"Can't you just do it at work, instead? You Five-0 guys can get away with pretty much anything," Toast says, his tone skeptical. It's a fair point, but Danny already has an answer planned.
"Yeah, no, not this time. I suspect that some pretty important figures are involved, including guys in law enforcement and the state government. I need to keep this totally off the radar 'til I get more evidence, okay?"
"No problem, Jersey, I gotcha covered," Toast says. Then he proceeds to explain how to shield his internet activity from prying eyes. Danny kind of understands terms like 'proxy' and 'anonymizer', but gives up once 'onion routing' gets mentioned.
"Hey, can you just dumb it down for me, man?" Danny asks. Toast sighs, but gives him the name of a free program that'll do the trick, spells out the URL where he can download it, and patiently walks Danny through the installation process.
Danny thanks Toast for his help, promising to swing by with a load of his favorite candy sometime soon, and hangs up. He goes to the kitchen to fill a plate with pizza, bypasses the beer in favor of soda - he wants a clear head for this - and then gets to work.
The obvious place to start is the pill bottle he'd found under Steve's mattress. Danny had memorized the label, but he brings up the picture on his phone for reference.
The prescription is made out to 'Subject 06/AF/88'. Danny searches for that and gets zilch. The drug name, 'Formula 2912', only brings up a dozen results: a bunch of useless sites, plus a forum for military families. The relevant post's been deleted, but the cached version's still available.
The post was made six months ago, by the wife of an Army Ranger who'd killed himself soon after returning home from Afghanistan. She went through her husband's kit, a few days later, and found a bottle of white tablets labeled 'Formula 2912'. Asking his former comrades and commanding officers about it got her nowhere, so she'd turned to the forum members for help.
The only reply to the widow's post came from a woman whose son, a captain in the Marines, was on the same mysterious formula. He'd told his mother that the pills were to treat a chronic condition he'd picked up in Afghanistan, but that he was forbidden to talk about it.
Huh, Danny thinks. That's in keeping with Steve's secretive behavior, but it doesn't explain what the drug is for.
Danny's next move is to google the only actual name on the prescription. There are plenty of American doctors with the surname Alexander, but not too many employed by the armed forces (and the one Danny's after must be military, if servicemen from three different branches were taking the same pills). That will narrow it down, at least.
It turns out there's a Dr. Joan Alexander working at Walter Reed, the main army hospital in D.C. She isn't the usual kind of physician, though; instead, she's a lead biomedical researcher in the Experimental Therapeutics Division. Well, that certainly fits with Danny's hypothesis about a top-secret drug trial. But she could also be developing a treatment for some disease or syndrome that Steve and those other guys have.
***
Danny seems to have reached a dead end with the prescription. So he changes tack, and focuses instead on Steve's physical symptoms.
Steve got shot in the arm, by Hesse, on the team's first job together; he suffered a nasty burn to his lower leg on their second job together, after those gas canisters blew the building and rained fiery debris down on them. And Danny's seen him injured in many ways since then.
His partner should get frequent flyer points at the ER, seriously - and Danny should get access to a VIP waiting room, where there's decent coffee. If Hawaii is the only state that grows coffee, then how come the vending machines at Honolulu's main hospital serve instant that's worse than what Danny would get back in Jersey?
Danny's brain is clearly in need of caffeine now; he gulps down his soda, and opens another. Chewing on a slice of lukewarm pizza, he thinks back to Steve's previous wounds. Even if Steve got some of them in pretty improbable ways, none ever reacted like the ones from Friday night.
But Steve heals rapidly - much faster than Danny himself does, as proven beyond doubt a few weeks ago. They'd been sheltering behind a parked car one sunny afternoon, exchanging fire with crystal meth manufacturers who'd strenuously objected to Five-0 shutting down their lab. The passenger window had shattered above them, leaving both Danny and Steve with multiple minor cuts.
Two days later, Danny's scratches had scabbed over but Steve's were gone. When Danny pointed this out, Steve had said something about fast healing being linked to having a fast metabolism. Then he'd launched into this long, detailed spiel about the benefits of SEAL-style physical training for improving your metabolic rate.
Danny had eventually interrupted and changed the subject, pretty much forgetting about his original question. Looking back, it seems likely that Steve had deliberately tried to distract him.
Now that Danny thinks about it, that nasty cut on Steve's forehead - obtained when their SUV crashed during last Friday's motorcade - was only a couple of hours older than the bullet graze and knife gash. But it had healed almost entirely by Saturday morning, whereas the other wounds had taken a couple of days to reach that point.
So it must be the silver that made the difference.
Danny starts his new line of enquiry by typing in 'silver allergy', and soon discovers that it's a real thing...kind of. The contact dermatitis some people get is actually due to the presence of nickel in silver jewelry. It also looks like ingested silver can build up in the body, resulting in bluish-gray skin or even internal organ damage if taken in excessive amounts.
But none of the medical sites mention symptoms like blackened skin, a bitter smell, and a high fever. So Steve's reaction to the metal is abnormal, to say the least - and maybe scientifically inexplicable, unless Kumiko's tests show the presence of some other toxin.
What about a non-scientific explanation, then? Danny had promised himself that he'd consider every option. It can't hurt to do a little reading on the supernatural side of things.
So he types 'werewolf' and 'silver' into Google, bites his lip, and presses search.
The results pretty much tell Danny what he already knew from horror movies and popular culture. Silver has long been believed to be effective against werewolves; some cultures hold that a silver knife or bullet through the heart is the only way to kill one.
The sites seem divided as to whether a werewolf in its human form can be murdered in normal ways, or if silver weapons are the only option. Since General Pak's visit was scheduled for a moonless night, Taylor must have believed that silver would work on Steve regardless.
Danny digs into some of the more sane-looking mythology sites - the ones without spelling errors or flashing multicolored text - and reads about werewolf lore. The concept of humans transforming into animals is an ancient one, and exists pretty much everywhere. Interestingly, though, the belief in werewolves is particularly strong in Central Asia. So Steve and Taylor could have come across the stories (if not the creatures themselves) while stationed in Afghanistan.
Searching for 'Afghanistan' and 'werewolves' brings up more specific discussion of local mythology. It also produces some results in Russian, piquing Danny's curiosity. Running a few pages through auto-translate gives Danny a garbled approximation of English, but it's enough to make him sit up and pay attention.
The sites claim that the Soviet Union, which occupied Afghanistan for most of the 1980s, found out about the country's werewolf problem the hard way. A bunch of Russian soldiers were found dead, horribly mutilated, on nights when the moon was full. At first it was assumed that Afghan rebels were responsible, or - given the teeth and claw marks visible on some victims - wild animals.
But then some Russians survived an attack, describing the creature responsible as a huge wolf. A month later, the bitten men transformed into wolves themselves and started to savage their comrades. None of the usual weapons could kill them, and the werewolves escaped.
For years afterwards, there were ongoing sightings of white men living wild in the mountains of Afghanistan and roaming around in packs. Russian troops fired upon them, when ordered; though some of the deserters were certainly hit, their bodies were never found.
Apparently something changed in the late 80s, a couple of years before the USSR pulled out of Afghanistan. Although Russian soldiers continued to be bitten on moonlit nights, the number of new werewolves stopped going up. The websites speculate as to why: did the Soviets figure out a cure, or did they start brutally executing all survivors of werewolf attacks?
Danny's aware that the authors of these accounts could be crackpots, the Russian equivalent of those freaks who wear tinfoil hats to protect them against aliens. He has absolutely no way of verifying the claims. Still, it all makes for fascinating reading.
He does more looking around, but can't find any equivalent info about American servicemen being bitten in Afghanistan. Not surprising, really; the Pentagon probably has a basement full of nerds who are paid to scour the web, looking for sites that might compromise secrecy.
Danny slumps down in his chair, flexing his wrists, and realizes with a start that it's 2am. He takes a swig of now-flat soda, trying to process everything.
Afghanistan is the only common link, so far, between the American personnel taking 'Formula 2912'; it's also where those Russian soldiers supposedly got bitten by werewolves.
He looks again at the code from the pill bottle. If 'AF' stands for the name of the country, then maybe '06' is short for 2006. Steve was probably in Afghanistan, that year. Danny has no idea about '88', though. Could it mean that Steve was the 88th serviceman to develop some terrible disease while stationed there?
Or - Danny lets himself think it - the 88th to get bitten? If so: fuck, there's a lot of werewolves in the US military.
If the patient name means something, maybe the drug name '2912' does too. On a hunch, Danny looks up the lunar cycle. There it is, right at the top of the results page: 1 lunar cycle = 29.53059 days. And as every school kid knows, the moon rotates around the Earth 12 times per year.
Jesus Christ. Steve really might be a werewolf.
***
Kumiko calls on Tuesday, just before noon, to say she has the test results. Luckily for Danny, Steve's in a budget meeting with the governor. It's not so lucky for Steve himself, who's probably never had to justify his exorbitant expenditure on ammo to any higher authority.
So Danny tells Chin and Kono he's heading out for lunch, and drives over to the CSU lab.
"I examined both items for various substances," Kumiko says, "and found nothing dangerous. The silver bullet has blood on it, and plaster and paint residue that can be explained by it being retrieved from a wall. There's sand and blood on the knife, but no toxins."
It's what Danny had expected, though part of him was hoping that science would come through with a rational answer. "Okay, thanks," he says. "I guess Steve just has a standard bacterial infection, even if he thinks it's beneath him to suffer something so ordinary."
"How's Commander McGarrett doing?" There's genuine concern in her voice, plus a telltale softening around her eyes. Like Danny had thought, Kumiko has a thing for Steve. She's smart, kind, beautiful, and has a great body from what he's glimpsed under the lab coat. The depressing thing is, she probably has more chance with Steve than Danny does.
Forcing himself to focus, Danny says, "He had a pretty miserable weekend, but he's fine now."
She smiles, and he goes on. "Listen, there's a reason I came over in person today, but you won't be too happy about it."
Danny steels himself: he likes Kumiko, and hates lying to her face. But he's willing to do this, and a lot worse, for Steve's sake. If he has an outer limit, a point where he'd let Steve get hurt for the sake of his scruples, then Danny's yet to find it.
"I need to get this knife and bullet from you, right now, because a federal agency is taking over the whole Taylor mess. They want the physical evidence, your reports, and any computer files relating to the case. I'm supposed to make sure that absolutely nothing remains on your computers or servers."
Kumiko looks confused. "Wait, the FBI want all our records? They usually just demand copies."
"It's not the Feds, actually. I wish it was; God, they'd be a cakewalk compared to these guys." Danny shrugs and puts an apologetic expression on his face. "I can't tell you which agency we're dealing with here, Kumiko. But they do not mess around, and we can't risk pissing them off. These jerks never got the memo about interagency co-operation, and they seem to think information-sharing only flows one way."
"Damn," Kumiko says. "You're the meat in a jurisdictional sandwich, huh?" She doesn't sound too surprised, though. Danny guesses that Hawaiians are used to mainlanders in suits showing up and taking over, with arrogant disregard for local procedures and ways.
He has the sudden, uncomfortable thought that his own behavior since moving here could be described in similar terms. Shit. Danny puts that aside to deal with later.
Kumiko hands over the knife and bullet, her printed reports, and a USB stick containing all the forensic findings and crime scene photos. While Danny waits, she deletes the files from CSU's system and asks the IT department to wipe them from the server back-up as well.
It might not be the perfect cover-up, but it's the best Danny can manage. He thanks Kumiko, apologizes again for the hassle, and walks out with the evidence.
***
Chapter 4.
Genres: supernatural AU. Danny/Steve pre-slash.
Rating / Warnings: R for descriptions of violence and physical injury, and a brief mention of suicide.
Spoilers: up to 1x09, 'Po'ipu', then goes AU during that episode.
Word count: 3,600 words for this chapter; 10,000 words for the story so far.
Summary: an ex-SEAL tries to kill Steve using silver weapons, leaving Steve with wounds that give off acrid black smoke and leaving Danny with more questions than answers.
Author's notes: Thanks to everyone who's commented on the previous chapters - your feedback has been really encouraging! Thanks most of all to cactus_cat, for beta services and hand-holding.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
***
CHAPTER THREE: 'Somebody like you and me'
By Monday morning, Steve's mostly okay again. He's still pale, and he looks worn out despite sleeping the weekend away. But his fever is gone.
After showering, Steve comes to Danny to have his bandages changed. He's shirtless, and Danny allows himself a brief moment to covertly admire Steve's tattoos - still intact, thankfully, as both the knife and bullet had just missed them. As always, he wants to run his fingertips across the colorful designs. As always, he holds himself back.
When Danny removes the old dressings, he sees that Steve's wounds are practically healed. The blackened layer has flaked off, leaving new pink skin underneath. He thinks about demanding answers from Steve: how can he possibly have recovered so soon? Did he always heal fast, or has it developed more recently? Does the bottle of pills hidden under his mattress have something to do with it?
But Steve's mental and verbal capabilities seem to be back to normal, with all his defenses re-established. Danny knows better than to expect anything now besides evasion, or even straight-out lies. He'll have to go looking for answers on his own.
"These are healing up nicely," is all Danny says, and Steve nods silently.
Over breakfast, they argue about whether Steve is fit to return to duty.
"I'm not contagious, Danny. It's not like the flu or whatever."
"I bet you'd show up to work even if you had stomach flu, or something else really nasty," Danny counters.
Steve shrugs. "I wouldn't know; I really don't get sick all that often."
Danny figures that Steve's about to extol the virtues of a vigorous daily swim, and maybe the regular consumption of spinach smoothies or something. So he just says, "Okay, fine; let's go. But if you fall asleep over the mountain of paperwork on your desk, I reserve the right to drag your ass back here."
Steve sighs, which is as close as Danny's gonna get to acquiescence. And it's not that he wishes his partner was still sick; of course not. But damn, Danny kind of misses the way he was over the weekend. That version of Steve was much more biddable, for one thing.
More importantly, he let down some of his barriers and let Danny look after him. It wasn't all that Danny wanted, not even close, but it was something. Now they'll revert to being colleagues who maybe slap each other on the back once in a while.
As they're driving to HQ, Danny tells Steve about the wound infection story he gave Chin on Sunday. "It just seemed like the most plausible explanation for you being laid low after the fight with Taylor," he claims. "Also, I kind of figured you didn't want your silver allergy becoming widely known. It's a bit of a liability."
Steve nods, looking relieved. "Yeah, you're right - thanks. I don't like misleading my team, but I can live with it in this case."
So when they get to work, Steve's ready to face Chin and Kono with a grin and some reassuring words. Looking at him now, you'd never guess how sick he was at the weekend. Since the others never saw the wounds up close, Danny's cautiously optimistic that the cover story will hold.
Monday turns out to be a quiet day, spent catching up with the ongoing investigations they'd set aside to deal with Agent Atwater's murder. Danny makes Steve stay put most of the time, bringing him lunch and ensuring he drinks enough water. "Do some of the admin stuff you've been neglecting, or play a hundred games of Solitaire...I really don't care. Just take it easy, okay?"
Danny volunteers to liaise with HPD over the General Pak mess. It's partly to save Steve any added stress, but mostly because he wants to be the one who receives CSU's report.
He gets the call late that afternoon, and closes his office door behind him before taking it. It's the senior forensics analyst on the phone, Kumiko Watanabe, and she briefly outlines the test results. As Danny had thought, Taylor's knife is pure silver. And just like Steve had suggested, the bullet that grazed him is made of silver too.
Danny's dealt with Kumiko quite a bit since he first joined HPD, and he has a lot of respect for her. Despite delivering the lab's findings in a straightforward way, she sounds super curious - and who wouldn't be? Silver weapons do seem like a seriously strange choice for an experienced ex-SEAL to bring to a firefight.
He knows that telling her it's all classified will only fuel the flames of speculation. So Danny spins some bullshit about Taylor being mentally disturbed, and convinced that God wanted him to kill the General and his protective detail. He'd come armed with silver in the belief that Pak and the Five-0 team were aliens, who would dissolve when struck with the metal.
"Really? Wow, what a nutbar," Kumiko says with a laugh. Danny's sure some version of that story will soon be bouncing around the department. Ma always told him never to speak ill of the dead, but he thinks she'd excuse him for maligning Taylor under these circumstances.
If there's something on those weapons that would explain Steve's symptoms, Danny wants to know ASAP. So he asks Kumiko to conduct some further tests.
"Commander McGarrett has developed an infection from his knife wound," Danny explains. She makes a small sound of worry that sounds more personal than professional, and Danny files that away for later.
"So please make this a top priority, Kumiko," Danny goes on. "We've got to find out if there was something nasty on that blade - any harmful substances, or anything else that doesn't belong there. Same with the bullet, too, just to cover all the bases. We already know it's Steve's blood on there, so there's no need to do a DNA test or anything. Just a straight tox screen on the silver itself, as soon as you can."
"Yes, of course," she says. "I'll handle it myself."
***
Danny drops Steve at his house, insisting that he skip his usual evening work-out and get some rest. Then he goes back to his apartment, sticks a frozen pizza in the oven, and boots up his laptop. He didn't want to risk doing anything on his desktop at HQ, so this is the first opportunity he's had to investigate what the hell is going on with Steve.
Danny knows how to enable private browsing, a first line of defense against anyone wanting to snoop around in his internet history. But he's well aware that there's other ways for online searching to be monitored.
So he calls Toast.
The hacker sounds stoned, as usual, but sufficiently lucid for Danny's purposes. After agreeing that yeah, man, tonight's sunset looks amazing, Danny gets down to business.
"Listen, I wanted to get your advice about online security," Danny says. "I'm looking into something potentially big, and I want to do the research on my home computer. Thing is, I'll probably need to check out some super nasty and highly illegal sites, but I don't want to raise any red flags. So can you suggest a way of covering my tracks? I can manage private browsing; beyond that, I'm lost."
"Can't you just do it at work, instead? You Five-0 guys can get away with pretty much anything," Toast says, his tone skeptical. It's a fair point, but Danny already has an answer planned.
"Yeah, no, not this time. I suspect that some pretty important figures are involved, including guys in law enforcement and the state government. I need to keep this totally off the radar 'til I get more evidence, okay?"
"No problem, Jersey, I gotcha covered," Toast says. Then he proceeds to explain how to shield his internet activity from prying eyes. Danny kind of understands terms like 'proxy' and 'anonymizer', but gives up once 'onion routing' gets mentioned.
"Hey, can you just dumb it down for me, man?" Danny asks. Toast sighs, but gives him the name of a free program that'll do the trick, spells out the URL where he can download it, and patiently walks Danny through the installation process.
Danny thanks Toast for his help, promising to swing by with a load of his favorite candy sometime soon, and hangs up. He goes to the kitchen to fill a plate with pizza, bypasses the beer in favor of soda - he wants a clear head for this - and then gets to work.
The obvious place to start is the pill bottle he'd found under Steve's mattress. Danny had memorized the label, but he brings up the picture on his phone for reference.
The prescription is made out to 'Subject 06/AF/88'. Danny searches for that and gets zilch. The drug name, 'Formula 2912', only brings up a dozen results: a bunch of useless sites, plus a forum for military families. The relevant post's been deleted, but the cached version's still available.
The post was made six months ago, by the wife of an Army Ranger who'd killed himself soon after returning home from Afghanistan. She went through her husband's kit, a few days later, and found a bottle of white tablets labeled 'Formula 2912'. Asking his former comrades and commanding officers about it got her nowhere, so she'd turned to the forum members for help.
The only reply to the widow's post came from a woman whose son, a captain in the Marines, was on the same mysterious formula. He'd told his mother that the pills were to treat a chronic condition he'd picked up in Afghanistan, but that he was forbidden to talk about it.
Huh, Danny thinks. That's in keeping with Steve's secretive behavior, but it doesn't explain what the drug is for.
Danny's next move is to google the only actual name on the prescription. There are plenty of American doctors with the surname Alexander, but not too many employed by the armed forces (and the one Danny's after must be military, if servicemen from three different branches were taking the same pills). That will narrow it down, at least.
It turns out there's a Dr. Joan Alexander working at Walter Reed, the main army hospital in D.C. She isn't the usual kind of physician, though; instead, she's a lead biomedical researcher in the Experimental Therapeutics Division. Well, that certainly fits with Danny's hypothesis about a top-secret drug trial. But she could also be developing a treatment for some disease or syndrome that Steve and those other guys have.
***
Danny seems to have reached a dead end with the prescription. So he changes tack, and focuses instead on Steve's physical symptoms.
Steve got shot in the arm, by Hesse, on the team's first job together; he suffered a nasty burn to his lower leg on their second job together, after those gas canisters blew the building and rained fiery debris down on them. And Danny's seen him injured in many ways since then.
His partner should get frequent flyer points at the ER, seriously - and Danny should get access to a VIP waiting room, where there's decent coffee. If Hawaii is the only state that grows coffee, then how come the vending machines at Honolulu's main hospital serve instant that's worse than what Danny would get back in Jersey?
Danny's brain is clearly in need of caffeine now; he gulps down his soda, and opens another. Chewing on a slice of lukewarm pizza, he thinks back to Steve's previous wounds. Even if Steve got some of them in pretty improbable ways, none ever reacted like the ones from Friday night.
But Steve heals rapidly - much faster than Danny himself does, as proven beyond doubt a few weeks ago. They'd been sheltering behind a parked car one sunny afternoon, exchanging fire with crystal meth manufacturers who'd strenuously objected to Five-0 shutting down their lab. The passenger window had shattered above them, leaving both Danny and Steve with multiple minor cuts.
Two days later, Danny's scratches had scabbed over but Steve's were gone. When Danny pointed this out, Steve had said something about fast healing being linked to having a fast metabolism. Then he'd launched into this long, detailed spiel about the benefits of SEAL-style physical training for improving your metabolic rate.
Danny had eventually interrupted and changed the subject, pretty much forgetting about his original question. Looking back, it seems likely that Steve had deliberately tried to distract him.
Now that Danny thinks about it, that nasty cut on Steve's forehead - obtained when their SUV crashed during last Friday's motorcade - was only a couple of hours older than the bullet graze and knife gash. But it had healed almost entirely by Saturday morning, whereas the other wounds had taken a couple of days to reach that point.
So it must be the silver that made the difference.
Danny starts his new line of enquiry by typing in 'silver allergy', and soon discovers that it's a real thing...kind of. The contact dermatitis some people get is actually due to the presence of nickel in silver jewelry. It also looks like ingested silver can build up in the body, resulting in bluish-gray skin or even internal organ damage if taken in excessive amounts.
But none of the medical sites mention symptoms like blackened skin, a bitter smell, and a high fever. So Steve's reaction to the metal is abnormal, to say the least - and maybe scientifically inexplicable, unless Kumiko's tests show the presence of some other toxin.
What about a non-scientific explanation, then? Danny had promised himself that he'd consider every option. It can't hurt to do a little reading on the supernatural side of things.
So he types 'werewolf' and 'silver' into Google, bites his lip, and presses search.
The results pretty much tell Danny what he already knew from horror movies and popular culture. Silver has long been believed to be effective against werewolves; some cultures hold that a silver knife or bullet through the heart is the only way to kill one.
The sites seem divided as to whether a werewolf in its human form can be murdered in normal ways, or if silver weapons are the only option. Since General Pak's visit was scheduled for a moonless night, Taylor must have believed that silver would work on Steve regardless.
Danny digs into some of the more sane-looking mythology sites - the ones without spelling errors or flashing multicolored text - and reads about werewolf lore. The concept of humans transforming into animals is an ancient one, and exists pretty much everywhere. Interestingly, though, the belief in werewolves is particularly strong in Central Asia. So Steve and Taylor could have come across the stories (if not the creatures themselves) while stationed in Afghanistan.
Searching for 'Afghanistan' and 'werewolves' brings up more specific discussion of local mythology. It also produces some results in Russian, piquing Danny's curiosity. Running a few pages through auto-translate gives Danny a garbled approximation of English, but it's enough to make him sit up and pay attention.
The sites claim that the Soviet Union, which occupied Afghanistan for most of the 1980s, found out about the country's werewolf problem the hard way. A bunch of Russian soldiers were found dead, horribly mutilated, on nights when the moon was full. At first it was assumed that Afghan rebels were responsible, or - given the teeth and claw marks visible on some victims - wild animals.
But then some Russians survived an attack, describing the creature responsible as a huge wolf. A month later, the bitten men transformed into wolves themselves and started to savage their comrades. None of the usual weapons could kill them, and the werewolves escaped.
For years afterwards, there were ongoing sightings of white men living wild in the mountains of Afghanistan and roaming around in packs. Russian troops fired upon them, when ordered; though some of the deserters were certainly hit, their bodies were never found.
Apparently something changed in the late 80s, a couple of years before the USSR pulled out of Afghanistan. Although Russian soldiers continued to be bitten on moonlit nights, the number of new werewolves stopped going up. The websites speculate as to why: did the Soviets figure out a cure, or did they start brutally executing all survivors of werewolf attacks?
Danny's aware that the authors of these accounts could be crackpots, the Russian equivalent of those freaks who wear tinfoil hats to protect them against aliens. He has absolutely no way of verifying the claims. Still, it all makes for fascinating reading.
He does more looking around, but can't find any equivalent info about American servicemen being bitten in Afghanistan. Not surprising, really; the Pentagon probably has a basement full of nerds who are paid to scour the web, looking for sites that might compromise secrecy.
Danny slumps down in his chair, flexing his wrists, and realizes with a start that it's 2am. He takes a swig of now-flat soda, trying to process everything.
Afghanistan is the only common link, so far, between the American personnel taking 'Formula 2912'; it's also where those Russian soldiers supposedly got bitten by werewolves.
He looks again at the code from the pill bottle. If 'AF' stands for the name of the country, then maybe '06' is short for 2006. Steve was probably in Afghanistan, that year. Danny has no idea about '88', though. Could it mean that Steve was the 88th serviceman to develop some terrible disease while stationed there?
Or - Danny lets himself think it - the 88th to get bitten? If so: fuck, there's a lot of werewolves in the US military.
If the patient name means something, maybe the drug name '2912' does too. On a hunch, Danny looks up the lunar cycle. There it is, right at the top of the results page: 1 lunar cycle = 29.53059 days. And as every school kid knows, the moon rotates around the Earth 12 times per year.
Jesus Christ. Steve really might be a werewolf.
***
Kumiko calls on Tuesday, just before noon, to say she has the test results. Luckily for Danny, Steve's in a budget meeting with the governor. It's not so lucky for Steve himself, who's probably never had to justify his exorbitant expenditure on ammo to any higher authority.
So Danny tells Chin and Kono he's heading out for lunch, and drives over to the CSU lab.
"I examined both items for various substances," Kumiko says, "and found nothing dangerous. The silver bullet has blood on it, and plaster and paint residue that can be explained by it being retrieved from a wall. There's sand and blood on the knife, but no toxins."
It's what Danny had expected, though part of him was hoping that science would come through with a rational answer. "Okay, thanks," he says. "I guess Steve just has a standard bacterial infection, even if he thinks it's beneath him to suffer something so ordinary."
"How's Commander McGarrett doing?" There's genuine concern in her voice, plus a telltale softening around her eyes. Like Danny had thought, Kumiko has a thing for Steve. She's smart, kind, beautiful, and has a great body from what he's glimpsed under the lab coat. The depressing thing is, she probably has more chance with Steve than Danny does.
Forcing himself to focus, Danny says, "He had a pretty miserable weekend, but he's fine now."
She smiles, and he goes on. "Listen, there's a reason I came over in person today, but you won't be too happy about it."
Danny steels himself: he likes Kumiko, and hates lying to her face. But he's willing to do this, and a lot worse, for Steve's sake. If he has an outer limit, a point where he'd let Steve get hurt for the sake of his scruples, then Danny's yet to find it.
"I need to get this knife and bullet from you, right now, because a federal agency is taking over the whole Taylor mess. They want the physical evidence, your reports, and any computer files relating to the case. I'm supposed to make sure that absolutely nothing remains on your computers or servers."
Kumiko looks confused. "Wait, the FBI want all our records? They usually just demand copies."
"It's not the Feds, actually. I wish it was; God, they'd be a cakewalk compared to these guys." Danny shrugs and puts an apologetic expression on his face. "I can't tell you which agency we're dealing with here, Kumiko. But they do not mess around, and we can't risk pissing them off. These jerks never got the memo about interagency co-operation, and they seem to think information-sharing only flows one way."
"Damn," Kumiko says. "You're the meat in a jurisdictional sandwich, huh?" She doesn't sound too surprised, though. Danny guesses that Hawaiians are used to mainlanders in suits showing up and taking over, with arrogant disregard for local procedures and ways.
He has the sudden, uncomfortable thought that his own behavior since moving here could be described in similar terms. Shit. Danny puts that aside to deal with later.
Kumiko hands over the knife and bullet, her printed reports, and a USB stick containing all the forensic findings and crime scene photos. While Danny waits, she deletes the files from CSU's system and asks the IT department to wipe them from the server back-up as well.
It might not be the perfect cover-up, but it's the best Danny can manage. He thanks Kumiko, apologizes again for the hassle, and walks out with the evidence.
***
Chapter 4.