A/N: I'm writing this for Ro's 1,000 word February Fireplace Alliance self-insert challenge. A story in four parts.

Part One – The Dark Man

Michele opened the door. A man wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with a lab coat over top sat staring into a microscope. "Excuse me," she said. "Is this the virus diagnostic lab?"

"It is," the man replied. He didn't look up, and his voice was heavy with an odd accent.

When the man finally lifted his head and looked her way Michele blinked in surprise. Lab-guy might have been quite handsome, if not for the long scar bisecting his right eye, overshadowing the rest of his features. It wasn't ghastly, but it definitely stood out.

"Sorry," he said, "I was in the middle of something. How can I help you?"

Michele pulled a form from her pocket and handed it over. "I have some samples to pick up for the McDonald lab."

"I remember this one," he replied, "tomato spotted wilt. Follow me. They're in the negative eighty."

Michele followed him through the lab and out the back into an interior corridor. "Do you run this lab?" she asked.

The man laughed. "Slave labor," he replied, "the only legal form in the world. I'm a grad student, name's Kolvan – Donald – but people call me Kolvan."

"Michele," she replied, a bit surprised Kolvan was a student. Not that he was too old to be. He couldn't be much older than thirty-five and she knew plenty of born-again students his age. "So, you work on plant viruses, then?" He'd recognized the spotted wilt, after all.

Kolvan shook his head. "No. Human diseases. Filoviridae is my specialty."

Michele stared at him blankly. "Families of insects I know," she said. "Families of viruses … not so much."

"Oh? Don't you work with viruses?"

"I'm just the delivery woman today. Not a big fan of microbes. I prefer to work with things I can see with my own two eyes."

Kolvan opened the door at the end of the hall. It led to a stairwell. "Filoviridae is the hemorrhagic fevers," he explained, "Ebola – that sort of thing."

"They let you play with that stuff around here?" Michele asked as she followed him down the stairs. She wasn't sure she liked the idea.

Kolvan appeared amused by her tone. "We have a quarantine facility – in another building."

Michele was more than a bit relieved. "Good," she replied. "No offense, but I didn't haul my ass over here to die of mad cow."

"Mad cow isn't a virus…" Kolvan began, his scarred brow arching slightly at the point.

"I know, I know," Michele said, cutting him off, "prions."

"Very good," he said, impressed. He opened the basement door.

"One of the few things I remember from bio 101." Michele replied. She was often amused by the random factoids that floated around in her head. "So, what got you interested in studying Ebola?"

"Oh, I've always found plagues to be fascinating," Kolvan replied. "From the first time I learned that invisible specks of dust could wipe out civilizations, I've wanted to know more."

"Planning on taking over the world?" Michele asked.

Kolvan stopped in his tracks causing Michele to collide with his back. He turned and looked down at her with what Michele considered to be a well-acted expression of bafflement. "How did you know?"

"Wild guess," she said, laughing. "Some friends and I had that conversation not too long ago. We decided we'd genetically engineer prions into wheat, rice and corn so the whole world would get mad cow."

Kolvan's jaw opened slightly, closed, and then opened again. "An ingenious plan," he said.

Michele nodded, smiling. "Needs testing."

He looked at her strangely for a moment before whispering, "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."

Michele recognized the line. "T.S. Eliot?" she asked as they arrived at the freezer.

Kolvan shrugged. "Stephen King." He pulled open the freezer door.

"The Stand?" She laughed. "I loved that movie."

"So did I." Kolvan picked through the samples in the freezer.

"The Dark Man …," she said and looked Kolvan over – black hair, icy blue eyes, scarred face, handsome in that villainous movie bad-guy kinda way. "I think you could pull it off. All you need is a pair of cowboy boots."

Kolvan closed the freezer. "And a bit of magic," he added, and led Michele back to the stairs.

"Don't forget immortality." She remembered something about The Dark Man living forever.

Kolvan smirked. "I'll have to work on that."

"Eh." Michele dismissed the idea. "Who'd want to live forever if everyone else is dead? Pretty boring if you ask me."

"Plagues never kill everyone," Kolvan replied. "Some will survive."

"And then we go back to the days of warlords and sheep? Sounds miserable."

"Only for the sheep," Kolvan said, grinning.

"Touché." Michele conceded the point.

Kolvan led Michele to the front foyer and there he handed over the samples. They were still very cold, and Michele wondered how he'd managed to carry them this whole time without his fingers falling off.

"Well, thanks for these," she said.

"Of course," he replied with a small nod.

Michele made to turn for the door but Kolvan's hand on her arm stopped her.

"I'd like to continue our conversation sometime," he said, "over dinner, perhaps?"

Michele was caught off guard. "Is that a friendly invitation to hang out or are you asking me on a date?"

Kolvan seemed to weigh his answer before he gave one, "I'm leaning towards date, but I'd be pleased either way."

Michele considered Kolvan for a moment. He was kind of attractive … and amusing, and he'd be a doctor, too, someday soon. She reached into her purse. "Here. My number's on the bottom."

He took the card and his eyes widened a bit when he read it. "Doctor Michele?" He spoke her title with a hint of amusement.

"Bugs," she said, "not people. I hate people."

Kolvan laughed and his lips curled before he replied, "So do I."