The only thing that's worse than a kid who's a picky eater is an adult who's one. I know that bad eating habits start when you are a child, but one would think, just possibly entertain the thought for a moment, that perhaps, in some small moment of clarity, that proper nutrition was good for you. Well, let me tell you, buddy, the joke would be on you. They don't care, not for a second.
As you might guess, I'm a nutritionist. I studied hard, applied myself and was recruited straight out of college by UNCLE, but you didn't hear me say that... read me typing that... whatever. It's a top secret organization that nearly everyone knows about. We move through society, trying to make it a better place and are surprisingly successful given the absolutely rotten eating habits of our employees.
I will admit that the worst violators of healthy eating are the agents. The higher-ups argue that we need to cut them some slack and that the agents go out that door, not knowing if they are coming back alive. I say we owe it to them to make them as healthy as we can so that they stand a fighting chance out there.
I look at what's served in the canteen and just shake my head. Who the hell wants to listen to the nutritionist when you can graze upon sauce-heavy pastas, carbohydrate-laden platters of steak and mashed potatoes, starchy salads, no vegetables, and not a healthy drink in sight? Coffee, tea, more coffee, more tea... we are fueling our agents towards high blood pressure and early heart attacks. But again, who wants to listen to me.
Our agents generally fall into one of four categories.
There's the, "I'm gonna die early, so I'm gonna stuff my face silly with the worst foods imaginable" guys. Trouble is, they don't die in the field, they get pulled and three months later, their waists are the size of Lake Michigan and they are unable to walk up the stairs.
Then we have the, "I'm too busy saving the world to eat." These guys pretty much exist on coffee, cigarettes and adrenaline. When they eat, the choices are always bad and they too end up in the emergency room in the throes of a hypertensive crisis.
Then there are the, "I have a tough job, so I am going to live life to its fullest" agents. They tend to do okay on assignment, but coming off, they head for the fancy restaurants, steak grilled to charcoal, good for your teeth, not so much the rest of you, potatoes swimming in butter and sour cream, wine, heavy dessert, more alcohol. Mostly to reward themselves for still being alive.
Finally, you have the, "Are you talking to me?" group. These are probably the worst because they defy the odds. They eat like horses, although they are usually picky about their choices, and are insanely thin and healthy. Until they hit about fifty and then they get a wake-up call in the form of extra poundage and they lament, "But I used to be able to eat everything and not gain a pound!"
Still, I was hired to be a nutritionist and that's what I am. I read reports and medical findings, I make suggestions to the purchasing agent, and the canteen supervisor and I work hand in hand to provide healthy choices. It's the best I can do. I can't make them healthy; I can just make it easy for them to make better choices.
My days have a sort of sameness to them. I come to work, get a cup of green tea, read through my mail, mostly magazines and articles that my fellow nutritionists have found and thought might be helpful - it's like having a thousand mother-in-laws. I fill out some reports, these vary depending upon the day and then it's time for lunch. If I'm feeling brave I actually eat in the canteen and ignore what the agents are eating... or not eating. If I'm too depressed, I stay in my office and listen to some music. The afternoon brings more reports and then I go home - what a wild life I lead, but it's mine and that's okay. I don't need excitement or glamour; I just need to know I've done my best.
Nobody ever comes to see me, not really. I'm called to see other people, usually the Section Ones who want to know why Section Twos have such health issues after the field. Gee, I wonder why... but me bitter? Not a chance.
When my door slid open, I assumed it was the mail clerk bringing me something he'd misdelivered. Instead it was UNCLE's golden boys, Solo and Kuryakin.
It's weird, as neither of them are very large, just regular guys you wouldn't look twice at on the street... well, you might look twice. Solo has a very nice ass and Kuryakin is no slouch either, but they don't look like much. Yet they seemed to fill my office to the point of bursting. Neither of them are wearing jackets and their shoulder holsters are stark black against their white shirts.
"How can I help you, gentleman?" I hoped my voice sounded more confident than it felt. Agents have a way of unnerving me. I mean I criticize how they eat, but they are the ones carrying the guns.
"You are a nutritionist," Kuryakin says without preamble.
"That's what it says on my door." Point one to me for being cocky.
"Exactly what does a nutritionist do?"
"You want the textbook definition? We study the use of food in the human body. I was hired to try and keep UNCLE's employees healthy. I usually restrict my input to helping Ms. Donovan plan healthier menus and provide guidance for food purchases." I looked from one to the other as they exchanged glances. Neither of them spoke, but I suspect a lot was being said.
"You know about food makeup."
"That's what I just said - and how the human body uses it." I leaned back in my chair and tried to look cool, even though a trickle of sweat was wandering down my spine, its icy fingers making me want to shudder. These two just exuded an air of anxiety "So are you going to tell me what you want or do I describe my job again to you using smaller words?"
That brought a hint of a smile to Kuryakin's lip and Solo grimaced. "Sorry we didn't mean to sound cryptic or anything."
"You haven't yet."
"We need some help. Would you come with us?"
Again, they are armed. What sane person would refuse them and honestly, going with them, much more interesting than reading the latest issue of the New England Medical Journal.
They took me to an observation room over an operating room. Instead of a mess of white coated men and women huddled over a body, there was just one person in the room. Well, I say person, but walking skeleton was more like it. The bones on this guy literally stood out, jutting against his skin in a way that looked almost painful. And he was sitting and eating, really eating. Eating in a fashion that would make most people get sick. He was shoveling food into his body as fast as he could. Not that it seemed to be doing any good. And all the time he ate, he whimpered. In pain, in sadness, I wasn't sure which.
"What am I looking at?" I placed my hands against the glass and stared. It was like a traffic accident with sheet covered bodies strewn about. You didn't want to look, but you couldn't stop.
"A few months ago, we were able to stop a THRUSH scheme that, in short, changed the handedness of food molecules from right to left. That change prevents the body from being able to absorb any nutrients from the food. We are assuming that this is the next stage in that research, which we'd thought we'd stopped. Agent Halloway was captured and then released a few days ago. During that time, something happened which apparently changed the handedness of his digestive tract, and we are assuming everything else. He won't stop eating long enough for us to examine him." Napoleon paused and sighed. "He stopped for less than five minutes and lost nearly four pounds. As you can see, there's not much left of him to work with. In a few more hours, his body will simply collapse in on itself."
Kuryakin picked up when Solo paused. "Jean Baptisa Biot was a French chemist in the early 1800's and one of the first to work with optically active and inactive molecules. He spent most of his career trying to figure out why some molecules refracted light to one end of the spectrum and others to the opposite end. His puzzle was solved by Louis Pasteur in 1874. The human body is only capable of ingesting right molecules; the lefts pass through as inert material. Pasteur found that nearly every racemic solution is made up of 50% right and 50% left. THRUSH has taken one more step and converted everything to left."
"He's eating himself to death," I said softly, trying hard to imagine the twisted mind who thought this up. Now I knew why he was crying. His body was literally eating itself from the inside out.
"Sadly, we can't save him, but we hoped you could provide some insight as to how to protect humanity from suffering the same fate. If THRUSH has perfected this, we will all be at their mercy. And there's something else." Napoleon stopped and looked away from the sight below us.
"What?" I mean really how bad could it get from here?
"I was captured along with Halloway," Kuryakin's voice was barely audible as he watched through the glass. "And I'm fine."
"How? I mean, why?" Finally I had to pull away from the glass and I wrapped my arms around myself, ineffective protection, but it made me feel better. "Why aren't you presenting the same symptoms?"
"No idea. We ate the same food at the same time, weren't separated that I know about. So why is he... like that? It doesn't make sense to expose him and not me..." He shook his head and flexed his hand into a fist. At first I thought he was going to pound the glass, but he didn't. "No one can explain it."
"Then what can I do?"
Both men looked at me, then back at their fellow agent. "Look at it differently. Look for another angle, one that we've overlooked," Solo said softly. "Tell us how to stop this."
"But how? Haven't the scientist s been working on this? Haven't they tested your blood?"
"Until my veins collapsed. They've been trying to solve the chemical part of the puzzle. We need someone to look at it differently with fresh eyes." Kuryakin's voice suddenly sounded so tired, so despondent, as if all that he'd trusted to keep him safe was gone.
Suddenly, I felt a presence behind me and a moment later, Solo's arms slipped around my waist and turned me back to the observation window. "Help us. Tell me this isn't going to happen to my partner," he whispered softly in my ear. I shuddered partially because of the sight before me and partially due to the leather holster that bit into my back, a reminder of how dangerous, yet how fragile, these men are.
"I'll do what I can," I murmured in a voice that sounded like someone else's. "Do you have the reports?" Solo let me go and walked to the door, opening it, allowing me to escape away from the horribleness, but I shook my head. "Bring them to me."
I knew if I walked out of that room, I'd force myself to forget what I'd seen. I'd pretend it was all okay, that we weren't fighting monsters who were trying to strip away everything we had. I needed to stay constantly reminded.
I sipped the last of the coffee and sighed. I'd been through the reports a dozen times, compared his blood to that of other agents. I glanced over at the bank of windows. Kuryakin was standing there staring down. They'd taken Halloway out an hour earlier, a victim of a massive cardiac arrest. Finally he was at peace.
Halloway had been a healthy 235 when he'd gone out into the field and wasted away to 63 pounds. What hope would someone like Kuryakin, who just barely managed to make the minimum field weight at times, have? He'd be gone in a matter of a few hours.
"Agent Kuryakin?"
"Yes, Miss Kelesha?"
"How much do you weigh?"
"About one fifty."
"That's with a wet towel around your neck and holding a ten pound weight, I would imagine..."
He smiled, a faint, almost-not-there smile. "One thirty five."
"Why? I've seen you eat. Rumor has it that people run in fear when you enter a restaurant."
He shrugged his shoulders. "The doctors say I have a high metabolism and an active lifestyle."
"So basically you have the same problem as Halloway did."
"Pardon?"
"And what happens if you don't eat every few hours?"
"I lose weight."
"A lot of it?"
"That's a matter of interpretation."
"When did you eat last?"
He glanced at the watch on his wrist. "About six hours ago, why?"
"Go eat something."
"I'm not very hungry to be honest."
"Not the question. You said they took blood samples."
"Yes."
"After you'd been fasting?"
"Not intentionally, but yes."
"I want to see what's different between your blood after you've eaten and Halloway's. That has to be the key, Agent Kuryakin. Go eat something, make sure there's starch and sugar involved." He nodded and started to turn away. "And protein, lots of protein."
"That is never a problem." And he was gone. I had never pegged Kuryakin as a big meat eater, but I knew as much about him as I did the inside of my vacuum cleaner.
In the end, I got blood samples from both Solo and Kuryakin, along with their medical files. After a lot of study, I hit on it, without even really looking for it. In both Solo's and Kuryakin's blood samples, their nucleosides were all messed up. For most of us our nucleosides create a base by attaching themselves to a sugar ribose. These bases contain nitrogen and that aids in the way we digest food. It sort of acts as a road map for our metabolism and gives it an idea of what our body needs to function. The thing is these nucleosides are part of the DNA and RNA structure. They wrap around and protect them.
Solo and Kuryakin were messed with on a genetic level? I looked over at their medical files and winced. Well, why not, they've been messed with in just about every other way... So, I started reading. Believe me, there is stuff in there you don't want to accidentally stumble across. I couldn't believe people actually did this to other people or that others actually tolerated it. These two guys should have been dead a dozen times over. No wonder the rumors swirled around them whenever they moved through the corridors.
The answer, if it was the answer, was that both Solo and Kuryakin had been bombarded with a mutated sort of radiation. Solo had been exposed to it, Kuryakin had been fed it. And I was willing to bet my license that that was the answer. He'd actually ingested radioactive isotopes. That was a start; we couldn't shovel radiation down our agents' throats, but there had to be a happy medium, for both Solo and Kuryakin lived through it with little effect other than a lower than normal sperm count.
A start, that's what they'd wanted. I looked around the observation room, but I was alone. Nothing surprising in that though, for when I start to work, I work. Solo and Kuryakin probably finally gave up on me and left. I found a phone and dialed reception.
"Reception."
"Can you tell me if Agents Solo and Kuryakin are still in the building?"
"They are."
"Any idea where?"
There was a laugh. "As efficient as it would be to have tracking devices on them, no, but I would try their office first and then Waverly's."
"Thanks." I stretched and grabbed my notepad. Walking through the corridors at night is a very different experience than during the day. There always seems to be a bustle during the day, agents hurrying in or out on assignment, scientists going back and forth, secretaries, file clerks, the place never seems to stop. Then night falls.
I wandered through the empty corridor and shuddered. I know there is no one to fear here. Heck, this is probably one of the safest buildings in the country. Still, it was eerily quiet and for a moment, it was easy to believe all those dead agents wandered the hallways, looking for a peace denied them in life.
The stop at their offices turned up nothing, although it will be a long time before I forget the god awful painting Solo has on his wall. Had to be a gift from a superior, I decided. There was no other explanation.
I headed up to Waverly's office and stopped. His secretary was gone and it didn't seem right to just barge in. The door then slid open and I nearly pissed my pants. I'd hit the automatic eye without realizing it. Sighing and shaking my head, I walked in and looked around.
At first I didn't see them. They were stretched out, side-by-side, on the most uncomfortable looking couch I'd ever seen. Both Solo and Kuryakin were dead to the world, so I don't imagine it mattered. Solo had an arm draped over Kuryakin's waist, simply because I don't think there was any other place to put it.
I thought about the other rumors that followed just about every senior agent and his partner. It was as if two men couldn't be that connected without there being something else there. The female agents didn't seem to have as much of a problem with closeness as the guys did. They could live inside each other's pocket and never cause a raised eyebrow. Guys, their hands linger a moment during a handshake and people have them our selecting a china pattern and buying drapes,
For a minute, I just stood there, waiting to see if either of them would wake up enough to talk to me, but when that didn't happen, I just backed slowly from the room. My results could wait for morning. The fact that Kuryakin was resting comfortably told me he was at no risk for whatever new hell THRUSH had devised.
It would be something if THRUSH shot themselves in the foot with this, served them right. I walked back to my office, put my findings in an interoffice envelope and left it for pick up by the night mail guy. Gathering up my things, I headed for the Employees Exit.
Solo was there, but for the life of me, I don't know how. I swear to God he was asleep when I left.
"Where are you going?" His voice was gravely and just a little scary.
"Home," I said, unpinning my badge.
"What about Illya... our agents?"
I didn't hide my smile, I'd figured out pretty fast that Solo wasn't as worried about the other agents as he was about his partner.
"He's okay. I've turned my findings into the labs and tomorrow they can start manufacturing a patch."
"But what... you are certain he's okay?"
"As okay as any of your agents ever get." He looked so relieved that for a minute, I thought he was going to tear up. He didn't, but it was nice to entertain the possibility for a minute. "Go get some sleep, Mr. Solo. I imagine that tomorrow you'll may well have a world to save."
He hugged me - which I wasn't expecting. "Thank you," he whispered into my ear. I knew it was much more than just a nicety and I hugged back.
"It's what I do. You could repay me by putting more fruits and vegetables into your diet."
He let go of me and grinned. "And ruin a perfect track record?"
Then he was gone and I'm sure he ate five doughnuts for breakfast, washed down with too-strong coffee. It somehow didn't matter anymore. I sort of understood the agents a little more now. It didn't mean I wasn't going to still nag them about eating right, or proper nutrition, but I was prepared to cut them a little slack. I mean, there are much worse things in the world than being a picky eater.
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