This is a Fic To Order as requested by Mega07ghost. (Prompts at the end.)

Season 4 team fic. Story is complete. There are five chapters. Postings will be every weekday until complete. No posts on Saturday or Sunday.

Special thanks to ancientmaverick for beta reading! Thank you very much! All remaining mistakes are my own.

The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.

Lost At Sea

CHAPTER ONE

4,320,446 Model A's

3,427 miles shoreline

2 friends

1 dinghy

"Come here, or he dies!"

Larry remained frozen, trapped between his desire to help Colby and Colby's order to run away.

Two men blocked his path to his car, but the way back to CalSci was still open.

"Come here."

The dark-haired man repeated his order. He shook his gun in emphasis. His blonde friend held Colby in a strong grip with a knife against his throat. Colby's right arm was trapped in a sling. He had hurt his shoulder by tackling a running suspect in his last case. At least Megan hadn't been hurt in the raid. But Colby's injury made him an easy target.

Larry glanced back to the safety of the building behind him.

"Doc run!" Colby forced the words from his lips despite the knife threatening his life. The sharp blade had already started to draw blood. They wouldn't hesitate to kill him.

Larry pressed his lips together. With a last look around for help he took a tiny step forward. "Don't hurt him."

"Come here!"

Behind his beautiful Ford Model A, an old and ugly dark gray van was waiting. The man with dark hair pointed with his gun to the back door. "In there!"

Larry opened the door and climbed in. He only had time to half turn around as Colby was shoved forward and collided with him.

With a thump, he crashed to the dirty floor, Agent Granger on top of him.

They both groaned in pain as the door was shut behind them.

Colby knew that he needed to act now and forced his hurt body to sit up. But before he could do something, the side door opened and the blonde guy entered. He had taken the gun and pointed at Colby.

"Don't try anything. I cannot miss in this distance."

The agent sat back down, pressing his lips together in pain while Larry slowly sat up.

"What do you want?" Colby growled hiding his pain and using it as threat.

It worked. The blonde man visibly flinched. But then he put back on a brave face. "Don't worry. You will see soon enough."

Charlie was busy grading papers. He should be impressed by his students' ability to always guess wrongly, but he would have loved if they at least tried to use math.

Rubbing at his forehead, he lamented the need for a new approach for the next generation of students.

Megan knocked against the door-frame, a welcome interruption. "Hello Charlie, have you seen Larry?"

"Larry? No, I haven't seen him." He looked around as if Larry could be hidden in his office. It wouldn't the first time, Larry had used his office to hide from his love life. "Do you need anything?"

Shaking her head, Megan explained: "No, I'd hoped he would be here. We had a date."

He smiled and gave a little shrug. "It's Larry. He was probably distracted. He'll remember."

Megan returned the smile and sauntered in the room. "I hope so."

She was dressed in a dark blue dress. They clearly had a special date. Too bad that Larry was easily confused about time and space despite being an astrophysicist.

"You haven't seen Colby by any chance, have you?" Megan added. "Your brother is looking for him."

"Colby is missing, too?" This was new. Neither Don nor the team had called.

She grimaced. Apparently Don was annoyed again and not hiding it.

"Colby is on medical leave but couldn't stay away from our case." Megan traced the corner of his desk with her fingertips. "So he wanted to help, and Don gave in and sent him some files to look through. But now we can't find him. David had wanted to bring Colby his new cell phone because his last one had been destroyed in the raid, but he wasn't home. Without a cell, we can't trace him."

Charlie could image how Don would take this. "Good luck then."

"For whom?"

"Hmm," Charlie took a moment to think. "Colby."

Megan laughed. "You're right. He is going to need it." Then she turned serious again while striking her long hair back behind her ear. "If you see-"

"I'll send Larry your way. Or Colby." She nodded and went to the door as Charlie called her back: "And Megan? Larry is fine. Don't worry."

Colby tried to follow the route the van was taking, but after the sixteenth left turn he had to give up. He had lost his points of reference, and through the tinted windows he couldn't see any landmarks. He wasn't even sure their kidnappers were aware where they were going.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"It doesn't concern you," the blonde guy snarled back.

"Oh, I think it does."

"No-"

Before the argumentation could get out of hand, Larry intervened. "The van's current destination is the harbor. We're still traveling east and therefore to the sea."

Colby stared at the professor. "You don't remember where you leave your clothes, but you know this?" He shook his head.

"Yes. There is a well-established procedure for calculating -"

"Shut up!" the driver barked. "Marc, we need to think what to do with him. He wasn't part of the plan."

"I am thinking," his blonde friend growled back.

Larry looked to Colby, who shrugged.

"I kinda messed up their little kidnapping scheme. They had been hiding in your car, and I interrupted them." He touched his bloody throat. "They didn't like my intervention."

"You messed up everything!" the blonde, apparently named Marc, complained. "It would have worked perfectly."

Larry stared around with big eyes. He was pale. Whispering he said to Colby: "I guess I need to thank you then for destroying their plan."

"You could have thanked me by running away," Colby answered and started to pull on his sling. "Help me out of this thing!"

"Don't," Marc countered. "I really don't want to deal with both of his arms." He fingered an area around his eyes. Going by the proud smile, Colby was responsible for the developing black eye.

"Marc, we need to do something." The driver kept shooting looks to the back instead of the street.

Colby almost hoped he would crash or break a law so a LAPD unit could pull him over.

"Do you still have your pills?"

"What? You want to get high now? We are in trouble-"

"Not for me, for them. Then we can deal with them."

Larry couldn't follow the back and forth. He only knew that he been abducted and that an unstable young man held a gun on him and his friend. He wished himself back to the International Space Station. The world was certainly more peaceful in Outer Space.

Colby, meanwhile, had no problem following these two amateurs. Without his hurt shoulder and the pain medication he had taken, they wouldn't have stood a chance. But between his bruises, the pain, and the painkillers, his reflexes had slowed.

He cursed his sense of responsibility that had forced him to leave his gun locked at home. If he had carried it, they wouldn't have been taken. Granted, he probably would be in deep trouble for operating a gun under the influence of painkillers, but still. He thoughts turned darker and darker. He didn't have any good memories of harbors or the sea.

The car stopped.

Their driver grabbed something from the front seat and climbed into the back.

Colby sighed wearily. They had obviously come to a consensus. And he knew he wouldn't like it.

"Okay, this is what we are going to do. You are going to take these pills, and then we go back to our plan."

"What pills?" Larry asked.

But Colby flatly refused on principle. "No."

"Look, we don't want to hurt you, but if you refuse, we have to."

"You're going to open the door, and we are going to walk away. This is your only good choice."

The blonde, Marc, laughed. "Funny. You're a funny guy."

Without warning, the driver lunged toward Larry, but Colby threw himself between them. Marc added his weight to the brawl and effectively ended it by shoving Colby hard.

Colby hit the side of the van with his bad shoulder. The pain stole his breath, and he blacked out for a moment.

As he came back, he realized he was lying on the ground seeing stars he had never seen in the night sky.

Precious minutes went by until he had recovered enough to sit back up. Rotating around until he could lean against the back door left him breathless.

Larry lay on the floor with closed eyes. Colby swallowed hard as he stared at his chest until he could see it rising again. He hadn't wanted to endanger Larry.

His eyes searched the interior for their attacker. They still sat behind the front seat and at the side door.

"What have you done to him?" He could only whisper, his shoulder still shooting arrows of pain through his whole body. He started to shake in pain.

They looked at each other as if they really didn't know what to do. Colby confirmed his first assessment. They were amateurs who got lucky.

"He is just sleeping," the dark-haired man answered after a moment hesitation. Despite the poor lighting, Colby already knew that he would be able to identify both of them easily. He only needed a phone or a LAPD unit and they would be history and his night would be nothing more than a bad dream.

"Sleeping?"

"Yeah," Marc affirmed. "Take this."

He threw a bottle of pills at him.

It hit his chest and then fell down as Colby let it roll off him. "No." There was no way he would take anything they gave him.

"Do it," the blonde started to smile while pulling out his knife again. He wiped off the blood with his shirt, Colby's blood. Then he put the blade against Larry's undefended throat. "Or he dies."

Colby bit his lip, thinking. The little cut on his own neck smarted, but compared to his shoulder it hadn't even registered in his brain. Even if these amateurs didn't know how to cut a throat the right way, they still could hurt or kill Larry. On the other hand, he didn't know what he was supposed to take and how it would counteract with his own prescription.

He grabbed the bottle and glanced at the label. In the darkness of the van he couldn't read it.

"Now!"

Glancing again to Larry, Colby decided to risk it rather than watching Larry dying now. "Okay." He took the directed amount of pills and put them in his mouth.

"We will know if you don't swallow them. Then we still can kill him."

Colby growled. For amateurs they knew how to pretend to be smart or they've watched enough TV. He swallowed one and hid the other beneath his tongue.

Then he watched them waiting. Suddenly they started to blur. Colby blinked trying to sharpen his focus, but his eyes closed on their own.

He slumped forward.

"Don't fight the lullaby," was the last thing he heard.

Megan walked casually over the empty campus always hoping to run into Larry. But the only one she ran into was her boss.

"Don? Are you here for Charlie?" She pointed with her finger over her shoulder. "He is still in his office."

"No," Don shook his head and gave her a tired sigh. "Colby called a taxi. And they drove him here."

"Here? To CalSci?" Megan had expected Colby anywhere except the campus.

"Yes. According to the driver, he had some files in his hand."

Apparently, Don had passed annoyed and gone to worried, or he wouldn't be here himself looking for Colby. They all were still shaken from the shout of pain that had alerted them to Colby's position on their last raid.

"He wanted to help. Maybe he had found something for Charlie." It was the most logical conclusion.

"Hmmm," Don looked at his watch.

"But Charlie hasn't seen him," Megan said as an after thought.

Don nodded. He had probably called Charlie after she had left him. "Did you find Larry?"

"Not yet. Why?"

"There's his car." Don pointed to the entrance.

With a smile, Megan pivoted on her heels and marched to her target. "Let's go."

The car was unlocked. It should worry Megan, but it wasn't uncommon for Larry to forget to lock his car. It was either a blessing or a curse that he couldn't lock his car with a button on his key.

She bent down to look into the classic 1931 Ford hoping for a clue where her wayward boyfriend could be.

Don walked around the car to the driver side. Suddenly he slowed down.

Megan straightened. "Did you find something?"

Giving her a short glance, Don bent down and picked some papers from the ground.

"Probably something a student has lost?" Megan guessed, but as she saw his face, she had the sinking feeling that it wasn't a missing term paper.

Circling around the car, Megan looked over Don's shoulder to study the papers. "This is from our case."

"It's the files we gave Colby," Don agreed.

"This isn't good."

Both looked around trying to find a sincere and harmless explanation for Colby to leave important papers on the ground.

But there was nothing. In case of an accident, Colby would have made sure that somebody called them. Failing this, his ID would have warranted a call to the FBI field office.

After a complete sweep of the surrounding area, Megan and Don's eyes locked.

They were both now officially worried.

"I am going to call it in," Don announced as he pulled out his cell.

Megan bit her lip, trying to come up with a good explanation as to why Colby's files were next to Larry's car and neither of them anywhere near.

There wasn't any.

"Do you think they were after Colby and Larry was just at the wrong place, wrong time?"

"We don't even know for sure that Larry or Colby were here," Don warned, "We have to check the video tapes." The files underlined the assumption that Colby was the target. Hopefully Larry only missed time and space and hadn't been around. Their job was dangerous enough without worrying about endangering their friends.

Megan nodded. But deep down she knew that Larry and Colby were in trouble.

Colby shivered in his sleep and yearned for his blanket. He didn't remember going to bed, but he was sleeping.

He frowned. How could he sleep and be thinking? There was something important. He hadn't gone to bed. He had been on his way to CalSci.

Colby jerked upright.

Everything wobbled. He closed his eyes again as his last meal threatened to return. Taking deep breaths, he waited until the world stilled again.

He remembered.

"Larry? Professor?"

A cool breeze made him shiver. The wind brought a distinct smell. He knew that smell. But this couldn't be, he couldn't smell the ocean.

Carefully, he opened his eyes again and looked around. It was dark, and he rubbed his eyes to verify that he could still see.

His right arm was still in his sling, and he cursed again fleeing suspects and ER doctors who'd restricted his movements.

As his eyes had adapted to the darkness, he could see stars above him, a lot of stars. The pitch in his stomach grew.

"What?"

The boat swayed with sudden movement.

Boat? For the first time Colby looked down, cataloging his direct environment. He was definitive on a little boat. More specific, it was a dinghy.

"Ow, ow, my head."

As Larry complained about his headache, Colby realized that he still could taste the pills beneath his tongue. He spat them out in his left hand.

They were dissolved but not complete. Maybe that was the reason he was spared the headache.

"Are you okay, Larry?"

"Where are we?"

"We're in a dinghy," Colby remarked.

Larry rubbed at his head. "Why?"

"Beats me."

The professor lowered his hand and looked around astonished. "We were kidnapped."

Colby snorted and boat echoed his movement. "Yes, I remember. Thank you very much." It shouldn't be a surprise. He had made enough enemies, but Colby couldn't imagine who could be behind it.

They were alone in their little dinghy.

Colby swept his gaze across the horizon in a slow 360° circle. As far as he could see, there was only water.

The painful realization settled in his stomach.

They were alone in the middle of the ocean.

TBC