CHAPTER 1

Kate POV

I was extremely irritated. I knew Carl had something to do with it, and at the very least lied to the FBI, but we weren't pressing charges. State was getting pressure and because of that, our prime suspect was walking out. Now I had to go through the fun of explaining it to Daniel who would undoubtedly react as he always did when big brother was involved.

"Daniel. We had to let Carl go, State doesn't want to start a diplomatic incident." I called, seeing him in the hall away from his classroom.

"What? That's ridiculous. What happens to Shannon?" He asked as he started walking alongside me.

"I had to let her go too."

"She lied to a federal agent, that's a crime"

"Yeah but the AUSA doesn't want to prosecute a lovesick girl for protecting a boy who may very well be innocent himself."

At this Daniel rolled his eyes. "Carl's not innocent, he's just rich enough to afford immunity."

As we turned the corner I saw Michael walking towards us. I yelped and grabbed Daniel, dragging him around a corner so Michael wouldn't see me. Daniel was very confused and his expression showed it, "Why are you hiding from Professor Wonderful?"

I wasn't about to bring up the truth, so I only told part of it. "He's such a nice guy, and he's funny, and he's smart, and he cooks. I mean he's perfect, but, I just, I keep pushing him away and I don't know why." I couldn't look at Daniel, I'd probably blush. Looking at the ground I continued, "I mean, I just don't know really, how to handle it, you know." Looking back at him I saw something strange. He was looking to my left, and back, and back to my left. "I just can't seem to make up my mind is what I'm trying to say." Daniel looked overwhelmed. "I'm sorry I'm rambling, I just-"

"Stop!" He snapped out

I stopped, very surprised. "Sorry."

"No, don't say sorry I was-" He started, looking like he had really screwed things up.

"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable" I said, feeling a little bitter, I had never been able to completely get rid of my crush on him. Now that I'd moved back to Chicago and was seeing Daniel regularly, it was back in full force. I guess he just didn't return the feelings.

oo0oo

Daniel POV

"You didn't, I just meant-" I stopped. Kate had done a lot for me. Since coming back from DC she gave me real life puzzles to solve and provided a much needed social life, or so Haley told me. She deserved the truth, however much I hated it. Stepping a little closer I lowered my voice, "I had a visitor who was talking at the same time you were. Two conversations, I just had to stop it".

"You just had an," she looked around uncomfortably, "episode?"

Inside I groaned realizing now I had to explain how my hallucinations happened and this whole time DJ is just standing there staring at me accusingly. Supposedly Kate had 'feelings' for me and now my younger self was pissed at me not taking my opportunity. He didn't think about the fact that I couldn't have a real relationship. "My hallucinations have come a lot since you've returned, just individual people who aren't actually there." She looked like she felt terrible, so I rushed to correct any misunderstandings. "They aren't all bad; they just sometimes come at very inconvenient times."

She still looked a bit unsure. "If the cases are a problem I can stop bringing them to you, Max just said-"

My mind instantly snapped to attention. "What did Max say?"

"Just that he thought the cases were good for you because they gave you puzzles."

I relaxed; Lewicki had my back as always. "They do, and they are good for me. Whether I have the cases or not, I'll still get hallucinations. These just help me with doing some good." She now looked apprehensively curious and was about to start talking so I kept going to stop her from gaining the opportunity. "Enough about me, can we please talk about the case?"

"Doc." Lewicki called out, coming around the corner and looking excited, "I know who's been writing papers for money."

He always came at the most opportune times. I jumped at the opportunity to distract Kate. "Oh yeah? What are you, junior detective or something?"

"I emailed the paper writer and I told him I need a paper analyzing Visnevski's neurological anatomy of psycho pathology."

"That's a terrible idea, nobody would ever do a paper on Visnevski, his thinking is totally outdated. I'm surprised the book's even in print."

"It's not. It's not even online. That's the genius of it."

Kate took this opportunity to jump in, "You knew he'd have to go to the library to get it."

I was extremely impressed. Not just by the fact that Lewicki was participating in a case, which he never does. But also by the ingenious idea he had, and then carried out without informing anyone before he'd found the writer. "You sly dog Lewicki, you sly sly dog." He looked quite proud of himself and showed us the paper he was carrying.

"He walked right into my little trap. The dude's a PhD student in English Lit. His name's Andre Lustig."

Kate received a call on her government monitored cell phone and told us not to wait for her. Lewicki and I went to Haley's office and called the boy up. An extremely grubby young man with what looked like hippie chains around his neck walked in. Long hair and ungroomed, he looked extremely pompous. When Haley asked him why he was providing papers for money, Lustig had an excuse ready.

"I've been working on my PhD for six years. I'm seventy thousand dollars in debt, I have no idea how I'm going to pay that back, my specialization is in late medieval poetry. "

Haley just wanted this problem to go away. He didn't have the patience or indulgence to deal with a boy like this when one of his students was murdered. "Give me a list of every student you wrote a paper for and I'll allow you to withdraw from CMLU"

"But no other school will take me; I'll never finish my doctorate."

"You might be able to get a job at a prep school, now I want a list of your customers."

"I don't remember their names, I've had like a hundred clients this semester." Andre protested indignantly. That was impossible unless he plagiarized on the papers he was making for other students.

"How is that possible?" Haley questioned

"I churn out a couple papers a day." Lustig said with pride.

It was at that point I, or rather my younger self, decided to visit me a second time. "Bullshit, I was a great student before I turned into you and even I couldn't write two papers a day." If Lustig was telling the truth, he had to be ingesting some stimulatory chemical.

"The paper you wrote for Bryan Cahale was good. It's hard to believe you wrote that in a day."

"I don't sleep very much."

Ahh, that confirmed my suspicion. "What do you take? Coke? Speed?"

"Just a study aid. It helped keep me awake, and my brain razor sharp." He said condescendingly.

DJ chose this moment to jump back in with his own 'two cents' on the conversation. "Our chem department may not be as good as MIT's, but it turns out some high end product." And, just like that, I knew who made it. Leaving Haley's office at a fast walk, I ran into Kate who must have just finished with the business she got in the call.

"Daniel. Where are you going?"

"The boy in there, Andre Lustig, was taking a brain enhancing product from the chemistry department. He didn't know who the creator was, but I do. Billy Mitchel."

"The boy I found in the bathroom dumping his joint? I guess he isn't only linked to this through Christina." She said as we walked towards Florenceworth.

"He's the one"

We walked in silence for a moment. It was dusk and the sun was already behind the skyline in the east. There was a nice breeze and the crickets were chirping giving me an opportunity to just enjoy the weather and company before I heard her intake of breath. She looked nervous, unsure, and that sent alarm bells ringing. "Daniel, I know you said your," she looked very uncomfortable "hallucinations were helpful. But, how often do you get them?"

I looked away from her and focused on the road in front of me. "Do we have to talk about this now?"

She stopped, grabbing my arm and pulling me to a stop as well. "Well useful or not, I don't want to be the reason your..." another long awkward pause, "problem is getting worse." She looked up and into my eyes and we just stood there for a few moments, looking at each other, her hand still grasping my arm. I hoped she could see how uncomfortable I was with this.

One of my students walking with his girlfriend distracted us from this awkward but close moment. "Dr. Pierce!"

I turned in both relief and irritation. The boy rarely turned in papers, and never paid that close of attention to my lectures. The boy's shirt did not help my annoyance. "What is it Slogan Tee?"

The girl chuckled and the boy just grinned, putting his arm around her. "When is the paper on antisocial personality disorder do?"

I sighed, but couldn't really complain. College students never worked on their homework until they had to. I was the same way back in the days when I was in college, made me feel bad for my old professors. Even Kate, while really interested in my class, didn't do more homework than was necessary. There are just other things more important to you in that time of your life. "Next Tuesday, that gives you ten days from when I assigned it."

"There are only two days left!" Slogan Tee said, gesturing erratically with his left hand. I noticed that his right arm never came out from around the girl's shoulders while she chuckled at his distress.

"Well then you shouldn't have waited so long to get started on it. This is college kid, not high school." I responded before walking away, Kate following quickly. The 'perfect evening' that I was having walking with Kate was suddenly, not so perfect. I'd just left the one thing that would stop her from asking questions behind and Kate now had full opportunity to pick up where she'd left off. She seemed to respect my wish for silence though and didn't bring it back up. We reached Florencetown, a nice little part of campus that was all apartments. It was a little off the beaten trail but made up for that with its tranquility. We found our way to Billy's apartment/dorm and knocked on the door. It was opened almost immediately but not by Billy, by one of his roommates.

"Doctor Pierce," he said by way of greeting. "What are you doing here?"

We heard the sound of a movie coming from farther in, pizza was on the counter along with what looked like a freshly opened twelve pack of beer.

Kate stepped forward, "FBI, looking for Billy. We'd like to ask him a few follow up questions." she said while holding her badge in front of her. It sounded very official.

"Come on in," the boy started while turning and heading towards the back. Kate and I stepped just inside and waited, I was slightly in front due to being the one who made the connection between Andre and Billy.

"Are you really standing in one of your student's houses with Kate? How awkward can this get?" DJ asked, making another choice appearance. This is really what annoyed me about my problem. My hallucinations chose the worst possible times to come up and make comments, especially the ones I couldn't reply to. Kate was right there and would certainly notice if I did anything strange. "Oh come on, she knows about your schizophrenia, you just explained it today. Plus you can't use the argument 'there's a difference between knowing about it and seeing it' because you already hurt her feelings once today and she certainly experienced it then." He was standing there with his arms crossed, looking at me with pity.

"Just drop it." I muttered, quite peeved, but not able to do anything else.

"What was that?" She asked, looking at me like I'd flown in from mars.

Billy came in at the right time, distracting her from being able to question my random comments. "What do you want Doctor Pierce?"

I was a bit irritated by his tone, but I was standing in his apartment, so I could understand it. "A boy named Andre Lustig got a study aide from you; it allows him to write two papers a die with very little sleep."

"Yeah. It's just a study aide, what about it? The pills aren't illegal" He replied looking at his friend, who wore an 'Oh crap' look on his face.

Kate folded her arms and took an aggressive step forward. "Then why'd you run? Trust me Billy; you don't want to screw with me twice." Billy looked around uncomfortably and hesitated for a long moment before replying.

"Because I stole the pills. Professor Emmett was working on them for the DoD, and when they turned out to be a no go, told me to dispose of them."

I snorted and just had to reply to that. "Our government trying to create chemically enhanced super soldiers, why am I not surprised." Kate looked at me with a disbelieving expression.

"Daniel," she said, indulging me but a little exasperated.

I held my arms up in surrender. "I'm just saying what's fact. Hitler revolutionized the production of crystal meth, Japanese kamikaze pilots popped dextrogens so they could fly all the way to Pearl Harbor."

She looked at me with one eyebrow raised. "I think you're getting a little off topic here." Kate turned to Billy, "so rather than dispose of them like you were supposed to, you took them and sold them to line your pockets."

I stepped in, impatient as always, "We need to talk to Professor Emmett, these stimulants throw any suspicions out the window. Thanks Billy, Kate, we're done here right?" I felt a little bad for her with how irritated she looked. This was normal for our cases, both before and after she left for DC. We'd think we were finally to the bottom of it, and just one more case changing fact popped up. And it probably didn't help that I wouldn't act like an FBI consultant should.

"Yes, thank you Billy," she said. We walked to the door, me pulling it open for her, as she looked at her phone. We do need to talk to Emmett but it can wait till tomorrow. I'm worn out and need some dinner, at…" she looked at the time, let out a weary sigh, and finished, "eight o'clock. You want to join me for a quick dinner before we're done for the night?"

I kept walking, but mentally froze. I felt like a deer caught in headlights as she was looking at me with oh-so-innocent eyes. "Thank you, but I'll have to pass, I have a previous engagement." I could see it on her face even before I'd responded. She was resigned to, and expecting, me to turn it down.

"Ok, well, have a nice night Daniel." She said, looking a little bit down, it almost changed my mind. But, I just couldn't.

"You too, goodnight Kate," I ended the conversation there and hurried away before she could make me question my decision.

oo0oo

A/N: My first time writing fanfiction, let me know what you think. Reviews and constructive criticism are both greatly appreciated.

Geheim