PART ONE.

For Rainbow Miller the next week passed disappointingly.

Far from the Historical Figure think tank she’d anticipated, the three men seemed to be avoiding both her, and each other.

Richard spent most of his time physically out of the house, and for some reason, Ava seemed to have become fascinated with him. The dog had started to follow him everywhere. Rain figured that at least with this, if Richard tried to do a runner, she would be able to track Ava to find him if nothing else.

She had rarely seen Robespierre, who was staying to his room, claiming illness. It occurred to Rain that she hadn’t properly inoculated any of the men. It retrospect, this seemed like a problem, since now Robespierre was refusing to even leave his claimed sanctuary and if he had something like smallpox, she would be responsible for bring back one of the most infectious diseases of all time.

The upside was that, upon doing some hasty research, it seemed Robespierre had regular bouts of illness, most of them brought on by exhaustion, and possibly psychosomatic. In the end Rain finally concluded that leaving Robespierre to his own devices was the safest rout she could take, and when he was out of his self-imposed exile, she would burn everything that could carry an infection and make all three men have their shots.

Rain was most disappointed in Leonardo. He seemed to seek distance from her, deliberately avoiding her invitations to go down to her lab and spending all of his time absorbed in the tablet Rain had given him. When Rain teased him, “What are to so entranced in? Already have a crush Leonardo?” He simply smiled enigmatically and shook his head.

Rain hated to admit failure, but so far she had to admit living with the dead was not nearly as exciting as she had hoped.

It was a week that they had relocated back to Colorado that there was a knock on the door.

Robespierre had finally rejoined them, and too his credit, Rain did think he looked as if he’d been ill lately. His pallor was grey and it almost appeared that someone had punched him in the eyes, so dark and blue were the circles under them.

“After breakfast we’re doing inoculations for you all, and that’s final!” She declared.

“Inno-que-what?” Richard asked.

“Prevention against illness,” Leonardo mumbled tonelessly, staring into the tablet as usual.

“How-” Richard started but was cut off by a sharp knock at the door.

Rain froze.

She was not expecting anyone, and other than Kamala no one knew that the men were here. Kam knew better than to come here unexpectedly, especially after her temper tantrum back at the lab.

Most likely it was someone from the Federation, coming to bother her about some problem or wanting her for a mission or a lecture or other nonsense. She swallowed hard.

Rain waved a finger at the three men, all of them staring, transfixed at her. “Stay. Right. Here. I’ll get rid of them.”