15
Reid: "Sparta must be regarded as the first völkisch state. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more human than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject." – Adolf Hitler
Toxic
June 14th 2013
It felt like a bug bite, Adam had no idea what he, and others like him, were about to experience. He had no idea that what he'd passed off as a mosquito or an over active nerve on the back of his neck, had actually been a needle prick. And he was certainly unaware of the fatal poison it carried. No, he just jogged pleasantly down the dusky streets of DC, back toward the Metro Police Headquarters, a large bag of Indian takeout food in hand. As he walked across the final crosswalk before his destination, he looked back for a split second and he could have sworn he saw his father. The old man was shorter than his son, and over twice as wide, he stood only 5'4 to Adam's 5'9. His olive-toned skin was weathered by a youth, now long past, spent in hard manual labor, and his once raven black hair was now turning gray and receding.
"What's he doing here?" he thought absently, but he didn't consider his father's presence to be particularly unusual, just an annoyance that came with the territory when you were a detective and the son of a corrupt defense attorney. He shook his head and went inside.
At the BAU, the team had gathered once again in the round table conference room. As they sat down they all exchanged looks of worry and confusion as to why they'd been called back in.
Garcia grabbed the remote.
"Bad things are afoot misname… We have been called back because in the last 36 hours, 8 people have been poisoned and delivered to the ER at Mendel University Medical Center, each was in the middle of a grand-mal seizure."
"Do we know what they were poisoned with?" Hotch asked.
"Negatory…Sir… the lab has found the exact same chemical compound in all their bloodstreams, one that shouldn't be there, however, they're still trying to identify it and we also don't know how they're being dosed."
"Then what has the doctors thinking foul play?" Morgan asked.
"They're suspicious because natural exposure is, at this point, looking exceedingly unlikely because the victims don't work or socialize in any of the same places or with any of the same people…" she replied.
"Is there any other connection between them Garcia?" JJ asked.
"Yes. There is. There's this weird genetic thing that all the victims have in common. A Dr. Gross, really hoping that name was meant to refer to the bird and not the adjective, attempted to explain it to me and he made me realize that I should have paid much more attention in biology; that aside, what I did manage to glean from that conversation was that whatever this toxin is, has taken the medical issues associated with the gene mutation and forced them to an extreme that shouldn't even be medically possible."
"Is there any chance that they're being injected? Have they found any needle marks?" Blake asked.
"It hasn't been ruled out… they'd have to be small because no one at the hospital has noticed any, but apparently the symptoms the victims experience in the hours after the seizure make a thorough physical exam impossible… they're still waiting for the first couple of victims to reach a point where they can take a closer look without putting them through more hell then they've already been put through." Garcia told her.
"The doctors are right, someone is orchestrating this. We need to find out who, how, and why, and we need to do it fast. We'll start at the hospital, interview the victims if we can and learn exactly how this works so that we can figure out the Unsub's MO. Let's go." Hotch said, then he stood and they all followed him out.
Maeve was running on auto-pilot as she stormed down the hall toward the front lobby of the hospital. She had to, to save herself from a breakdown so that she could keep doing her job. This was an absolute nightmare… not only were eight people in her team's care who had come in on death's door, but the man she loved was unknowingly in danger of joining them and so far she didn't know if or how she could protect him. She knew that he, and his team, were on their way there to try and find out who was doing this, how, and why. Maeve also knew that as of yet, the team had no knowledge of Spencer's condition and that he didn't want them to know. She hoped desperately that being there would keep him safe and not be the reason that he too, was poisoned.
"Hey…Maeve, I got Elliot stabilized…" she heard a familiar voice say.
She looked up to see her teammate, Ethan, standing there. He was nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his jet black afro bouncing as he did so. His large, dark eyes begged her not to snap at him, unfortunately, on this particular night, his puppy-dog look had the opposite to its intended effect.
Maeve glared back at him with a look that said: yeah…so? What do you want? A medal or something?
"Do we know what poisoned them yet?" she asked sharply.
"Uh…no… Curtis is still working on that…trying to identify the substance that came up on all the blood work." he replied tentatively, obviously acutely aware that Maeve was in a bad mood and wondering how much of it was his fault.
"And you're still standing here…why exactly? Ethan we're kind of in the middle of a crisis here! Needing all hands on deck is putting it mildly, like describing a tiger, who's already tasted human blood, as a fluffy little kitten; two heads are better than one… Go help him. Now!" She ordered.
He frowned and took off running toward the lab.
Maeve sighed. She knew that she was being too harsh with him, she just… didn't have a lot of patience right now.
When the BAU arrived at Mendel, Maeve was there to greet them.
"Hi guys!" she said. She stole a worried look at Spencer as covertly as possible. He returned her look of concern with one of reassurance.
"Hi." They replied collectively.
"So what can you tell us?" Hotch asked.
"Right now we have 8 victims who were all poisoned with the same chemical compound, that's still yet to be identified, but as of right now everyone who's been effected so far has been stabilized." she told them.
"We've also been informed that there is a genetic connection between all the victims."
"Yes, there is… I can explain exactly how that work in more detail, come to my office." She invited them.
They followed her to a 10X10 foot room with white walls, brown carpet, a couch against the wall to the right of the door, and an extremely cluttered desk on the opposite side of the room with a dry erase board hanging behind it.
"Wow…" Morgan exclaimed, as he stood in the door way and took a glance around the room.
Reid glared at him and elbowed him in the side.
"Yes Morgan, I'm not a neat freak… I need some clutter in order to think straight." She told him matter-of-factly.
Morgan looked from her to Reid and back, clearly wondering how she got along with the neat freak and mild germophobe and vice versa.
A woman in her late forties with shoulder length red hair, wearing red scrubs and a white lab coat stood behind Maeve's desk watching the exchange, waiting.
Maeve turned to face her and took a step further into the room.
"Guys, this is my friend and colleague, Dr. Megan Hunt, Megan is a neurologist by specialty so I've asked her to join us and help me explain. Megan these are Agents Hotchner, Morgan, Jareau, Blake, Rossi, and Reid."
"Hello" Megan said.
"Ok, getting to the matter at hand, all the victims suffer from CH. It stands for Cobalt-Thyonate Hypoplasia. It's a rare, inherited medical condition that effects the central nervous system, the brain itself, in particular." Maeve explained.
"As Maeve said, CH is inherited, but it only begins to manifest itself after a person hits a point we call onset. Onset of CH tends to happen in one's late twenties to early thirties. Cobalt-thyonate is a naturally occurring chemical produced and stored in two glands just below the skull on either side of the spinal cord. It serves as a crucial control mechanism against inflammation and swelling of brain tissue. When you get hit on the head, don't get enough sleep… basically anything that could cause a headache, cobalt-thyonate is released and travels along specialized veins that carry it across the blood-brain barrier to where it's needed. The hypothalamus sends out signals to these glands, one that tells them to produce it and another that tells them when and how much of it to release into the brain. In people with CH, at the time of onset the neuro-pathway that carries the production signal is destroyed but the path for the release signal is left intact."
"So they keep using it but stop making it, what happens when the supply runs out?" Morgan asked.
"Well… it takes a couple of weeks after the person develops the condition for the symptoms to appear as their levels start to get dangerously low. Once that happens the person starts to experience headaches much more frequently and persistently than normal. This is what we call level one, throughout levels two and three the pain intensifies, usually also causing insomnia which only serves to exacerbate the situation, eventually the headaches become full-fledged migraines with sensitivity to light and sound, this only gets worse until we move to level four, this is where the seizures happen. The brain is so swollen and starved for cobalt-thyonate that in a desperate, and fruitless attempt to push the signal through, it over-stimulates itself and thus… a seizure, once they reach this point it can take as little as an hour for them to start to stroke." She paused to let them absorb the information, watching as they exchanged looks of horror.
"Is this treatable?" JJ asked.
"Yes it is…up until eight years ago we didn't understand the genetic and chemical nature of the beast, but now that we do, there is a synthetic form of cobalt-thyonate which serves to replace what their bodies no-longer make naturally, this is completely safe, with no side effects, and has proven extremely effective. As long as the patients take it continuously and they're getting the right dosage, they shouldn't even feel any symptoms. All the victims were on the medication, that's why we know this didn't just happen naturally. Even if they had all stopped taking the meds, it would still take a minimum of 18 months for things to progress this far."
"Just how common is this condition?" Hotch asked.
"It's a recessive trait…" Maeve chimed in. "You have to have two copies of the gene to be effected but if you do have two copies, it's completely penetrant, you will develop the disorder."
"In the DC area there are ten known cases, at least twice as many undiagnosed, either because they don't understand what's happening to them or because they're still too young to have hit onset, and there are at least four times as many people who are carriers." Megan told them.
"If this unsub is deliberately poisoning these victims he'd need some way to get information on their medical histories which means he's going after known cases." Blake said.
"Do we even know who they are?" JJ asked.
"Yes we do… once diagnosed, all CH patients have to be followed by a neurologist, from whom they get their medication, usually in three-month supplies. The dosage for this is dependent not just on height and weight but also on several environmental factors that vary from person to person and are in constant flux. As a result each patient sees their neurologist every six months to ensure that the dose they're getting is still accurate and make adjustments if need be." Maeve replied. "Now the trick is finding a neurologist that actually treats this, and because it's so rare, that's easier said than done, there is only one in the area."
"Who's that?" Rossi asked.
"You're looking at her." Megan said.
"Have the remaining two been warned about what's going on?" Hotch asked.
"One has…" Megan began, avoiding pointing out that the person in question was standing less than eight feet away from where she stood. She had been avoiding making eye contact with Reid since he'd arrived. The doctor in her, and the friend of Maeve's, wanted to examine him with her eyes, searching for even the slightest sign that his levels were dropping faster than normal. Obviously she'd intervene if that actually happened, she'd have to… but on Maeve's request, which Megan had the distinct impression was actually his request, she'd help him keep his team in the dark, not even giving the slightest clue that they'd ever met before tonight. They'd cross that bridge if and when they came to it. "I'm still trying to get ahold of the last one though…"
"We realize this is sensitive information… but we could help you track him down if we knew who he was…" Rossi pointed out.
"His name is Adam Costello, he's a 28 year old detective with Metro PD… he was diagnosed a year ago after his partner, who happens to be a personal friend of mine, noticed something was wrong, confronted him about it and made him come see me. His cellphone is apparently turned off, I was about to try his extension at the police station."
Adam couldn't take it anymore, the pain was, at this point, almost unbearable. It was almost eleven o'clock at night and yet he'd resorted to putting his sun glasses back on in an effort to shield himself from the florescent lights above and the glow of his computer screen without having to bother anyone. They helped with the light, but not the noise, or the pain in his head. On one level, it was a persistent, throbbing ache which, at first, he'd chalked up to his body not being very happy with him for working this long while at the same time trying to cut back on the espresso. But then there was the more pointed, stinging pain, like someone was driving a chisel into four points on his skull.
He rummaged desperately through his desk, searching for his medication, he had no idea why it was happening or how, but he knew that this pain could only be caused by one thing. Only, there was a new symptom now, which he had never felt before, he was hotter than hot, everywhere the lights, or even the chair in which he sat, touched his skin or rubbed up against his body, hurt like he'd been sunburned there, badly, which only further confused him because…he didn't burn… he was ninety-eight percent Greek, the other two percent was Italian, his skin didn't burn, he just got darker.
Oh great… now I'm not even thinking straight… come on…. Focus…
His instincts told him that the cool night air would help, so he stood up, and walked outside.
Megan dialed the number from Maeve's office phone…
"Hi you've reached Detective Costello's desk… I'm not here right now. Leave me a detailed message and I'll hit you back just as soon as I can."
"Damn…" Megan said. "Voicemail… he might be out on a call, or patrol… either way he's going to be harder than I thought to get ahold of."
A few minutes later, Megan's cellphone started to ring. She picked it up and answered it.
"Dr. Hunt…"
"Megan, hey… thank goodness…"
"Tommy? What are you doing calling me right now? I thought you were on tonight…"
"I am… but listen…"
"Tommy, where's Adam…?"
"That's what I'm trying to tell you. He's with me, we're right outside the station but Megan… something's wrong…. He keeps saying "my head, my head…" and he was tearing his desk drawer apart looking for those pills you gave him, in the wrong drawer mind you…"
"That's not good…he might not even be able to see straight."
"I'm calling because my guess is you know why…"
"Yeah… I do…"
"Listen Megan, something's up with his eyes… his pupils are so huge I can barely see any white and he's blinking a mile a minute…"
"Then he's about to seize… Tommy listen to me, you have to get him over here, now… don't bother calling an ambulance… that'll just waste time… just get him in here…" She ordered, then she hung up on him.
"We've got another one… Adam didn't pick up because he was too far gone to notice I was calling him."
"When he gets here we'll have to stabilize him quickly…" Maeve said.
"Maeve go get the Cobalt-Thyrosine, twenty CC's in a syringe, we're going to have to do this by injection…" Megan said.
Maeve nodded and left the room.
Ten minutes later, Adam came into the ER, being carried over his partner's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He was just beginning to convulse. Tommy set him down on a gurney he found against the wall. Megan held him down while Maeve injected the medicine into his neck. A few minutes later, he began to stabilize as it took effect.
Once he stopped convulsing they moved him to a specialized section of the ICU where all the others were. Then they pulled Tommy into Maeve's office where the BAU was waiting.
"Is everything ok?" Hotch asked.
"We managed to get him stabilized… he'll be alright in a few days…"
"We'd like to speak with him if possible." Blake requested.
"That's a bad idea right now, he's too out of it to give you much and he's still too sensitive to light and sound. Right now he's lying in intensive care, and we're keeping it as quiet and dark in there as possible." Megan said.
"Understood…" Blake replied.
"But this is his partner at Metro, Detective Tommy Sullivan, he was with Adam up until he got here…"
"So what can you tell us Detective?"
"Adam has been my partner for over two years now… He's a smart kid, but about eight months after we started working together, I started to notice that something was wrong. He tried to hide it, but I could tell he was in pain, and he wasn't as sharp as he usually was. When I would ask him what was wrong he'd usually chalk it up to too many hours and not enough coffee, then finally he slipped and wondered out loud whether or not this was how his brother had felt in the months leading up to his death. When I sat there staring at him with my jaw dropped he told me that his brother had died of a stroke when he was barely thirty, that's when I pretty much made him come see Megan. Then tonight he brought us Indian takeout food from a restaurant called Kwiki and since then, it was like a replay of everything I'd noticed before just happening over the course of two hours instead of a year."
"Who else was aware that Adam had this?" Hotch asked.
"Just the people in this room, and Adam's father… those too don't exactly see eye to eye, the old man is a local defense attorney and a corrupt one at that but they aren't exactly enemies either… aside from the people we put away, all of whom are still in prison, Adam doesn't have any enemies."
Morgan turned to Maeve. "Is it possible that this guy's brother really did die of this thing?"
"Yes, there's a one in four chance that he had it, and because that all happened before we figured out how to treat it, yes it's possible that it was allowed to progress and kill him." She answered.
"Ok, well that still doesn't give us any viable suspects… I mean why would the father who had already lost one son to this disease, use it to poison his other son along with eight other people?" Hotch pointed out.
Maeve and Reid exchanged horrified glances…
"I hate to say it, but we could be looking at a eugenicist…" Maeve told them.
"A what?" Morgan asked.
"Eugenicists believe that the advances made by modern medicine actually weaken mankind and that those who carry or suffer from genetic abnormalities that threaten either their health or that of their children shouldn't be permitted to reproduce and in extreme cases think they should even be killed off. This was the mindset behind the Holocaust and several other incidents of ethnic and genetic cleansing." Reid explained.
"I think Maeve's right." Blake said.
"So the question is, how do we find this loser when we don't know who they are or how they're doing this?" Morgan asked.
"Those questions just got some answers." Ethan said, standing in the doorway. "Curtis and I finally managed to identify the poison, it's endocrine-oxide, it's supposed to have been banned for years but in the old days they used to put it in a lot of house-hold cleaners, the kind we now know you shouldn't have around small children or pets."
"Endocrine-oxide wouldn't cause something this severe though…" Reid pointed out.
"Not normally, no. But with the high levels found in the victims coupled with the fact that they'd be more vulnerable to its effects anyway, it actually could and based on the tests, did." Ethan told him.
"How exactly are they more vulnerable to it?" JJ asked.
"Endocrine-oxide is mildly toxic because it causes cobalt-thyonate to be released in abnormally large amounts and the brain only needs so much and can only hold so much, it essentially depletes the supply by wasting some of it. Normally this is only a problem if it's in an extremely high dose, but imagine if someone with CH was exposed by some means where instead of inhaling it, the usual means of exposure, it was somehow delivered directly into their bloodstreams…" Megan explained.
"That's gotta be a disaster waiting to happen…" Morgan said.
"Exactly." She replied.
"Ok so we know what the Unsub is using to poison these victims but…" Blake was cut off by Ethan.
"We also know now, how they're being dosed. Cassidy, the first victim, is finally well enough to be of some help, and I found a needle mark on the back of her neck…" he told them.
"If it's by injection then this Unsub has to get fairly close to the victims…" Blake said.
"That only helps if they can identify them afterward though, and given what they end up going through, that's a long shot…" Rossi reminded them.
"So where does that leave us? How do we find this Unsub?" Hotch asked.
"We can start by finding out who had access to the chemical the Unsub used to poison them and cross-reference that with anyone who knew any of the victims well enough to know about this or who had access to their medical records." Morgan suggested.
They called Garcia…
"Finally, I was starting to think you would never call…"
"Well we need your help now Babygirl…" Morgan told her. "The Unsub is using a banned chemical called endocrine-oxide to poison the victims so we need to know who would have access to it and cross check that with anyone closely connected to the victims or anyone who had access to their medical records."
"Sorry guys, no dice, I got a few people who still supply the stuff to labs who study its effects but none of them have any connection to the victims that I can find, tell ya what though, I'm going to run their phone records and see if there's a less direct connection, back in a few." And with that she hung up.
She called back five minutes later.
"I'm a girl-genius… there is exactly one common denominator between any of our victims and that list of suppliers I found earlier and his name is Jerry Costello, he's a local defense attorney, the father of Adam Costello, victim number nine and… drum roll please… he's called a endocrine-oxide supplier by the name of Toby Miller eighteen times in the last week. I also went through his bank records and he's deposited almost a thousand dollars in cash to Toby's savings account. I just sent you the addresses of this guy's home and law firm."
"Penelope you are a mad genius... thank you." Moran replied.
"You are most welcome…"
Two hours later they had raided his home and his office but Jerry Costello hadn't been at either location. But they did find out how he'd identified and located his victims, he'd hacked in to Mendel University's electronic record system. Now they were back at the hospital.
"This guy is in the wind because he's not stopping until he's poisoned all ten of his targets… he's looking for the last one and my guess is that when he finds out all the others have survived so far that's only going to enrage him. We need to find this guy and fast. The question is how." Morgan said.
"We need a plan B…" JJ said.
"Maybe we could somehow draw the Unsub out…" Rossi suggested.
"How would we do that? There's only ten people that this guy is after and he's already gotten to nine of them…" Blake pointed out.
"Here's what we do… we get Dr. Hunt to tell us who number ten is… then we put them in discrete protective custody, surveillance basically. The second Costello makes his move on them, we make ours on him…" Morgan suggested.
"That might work… but she's not going to tell us… and even if she did, we can't ask that…" Hotch said.
"Do we have another option?" Reid asked defiantly, speaking up for the first time in hours.
So they went back to Maeve's office where they found her and Megan going over all the victim's charts again.
"Dr. Hunt, we need you to tell us who number ten is…" Hotch said.
"I can't do that…" she replied.
"Please Dr. Hunt… whoever they are they're in danger until we catch this guy… as are the other victims because he will circle back once he finds out they all survived. If you tell us who they are we can protect them and bring Costello to justice at the same time…"
Having suddenly realized what Hotch was suggesting, Maeve unconsciously shot an alarmed look from Reid to Megan and back.
"I won't tell you… if he wants to tell you, if he wants to do this that's fine… but I'll let him tell you…" Megan said, meeting Reid's gaze directly for the first time. She gave him a look that said, Are you sure you want to do this?
He answered with a small abrupt nod in the affirmative.
"I don't have a choice…" He said out loud.
The others turned to face him, exchanging shocked glances at each other.
"Spence…?" JJ said. What she really meant was: It's you? Why didn't you ever tell us?
"Yes… It's me… I didn't tell you because… because I didn't want you all to worry about me… it's been going on for roughly three years now… and a year and eight months ago I reached out to Maeve, hoping she could tell me what we really going on… no one else I'd reached out to had been able to give me any answers. She ran the DNA test… it came back positive for CH, and when it did she put me in contact with Dr. Hunt… but the more we talked… the more we got to know each other, the more Maeve and I realized we had in common…" He confessed.
"Reid… you don't have to do this… you could be killed…"
"Actually Hotch, I do have to do this…" He replied.
"No!" Maeve exclaimed. "No! Absolutely not… Spencer… please don't go through with this…"
"Maeve I have to…"
"But what if he gets to you before they take him down? You could die… do you realize that?"
"I know… but I'm already in his crosshairs… I can't just go home and wait for him to come after me at my apartment when the others aren't around. It's time to take the fight to him."
"I can't argue with you there…but still…"
"Actually… if I can cut in here… there is a way to protect you from the effects of the poison." Megan said.
"How?" they all asked at once.
"Remember how Tommy said Adam was looking for his medication? In his case it was already a bit late for that, but he had the right idea. If we get a high dose into you before he has the chance to get at you, it'll act as a buffer. You might still feel level one or two…but it will protect you from level four…"
"Ok… I don't have it here right now but…"
"You don't need yours… we're injecting it right into your neck… it's more potent that way because you don't metabolize some of it in transit…" She replied.
"Oh…" he said, taking a hard gulp.
"Reid… it's either this, or we call off the plan." Hotch ordered.
He nodded.
"Ok then… let's get this over with… you…me… my office…" Megan said.
Reid followed her down the hall.
Once they were there, she pulled a sterile syringe and a bottle of cobalt-Thyrosine out of the cabinet. She twisted off the hard lid and stuck the point of syringe through the bottle's rubber seal. He watched as she drew out the red liquid to the mark labeled two-hundred milliliters. He took a seat in her desk chair.
"That's a lot, isn't it?" He asked.
"Not really… the maximum the average adult is capable of holding at one time is about 150 milliliters… and each of us uses between 80 and 140 a day… this is 200… it's a little more than what you normally take… but not all that much more… left your hair please." She ordered.
He obeyed.
She put a roll-on numbing agent where the needle was about to go in.
"This is going to go in pretty deep so if it hurts, let me apologize in advance…" She said, then she stuck the needle in deep enough and when its tip hit what she was looking for, she put her thumb to the back end of the syringe and drove its contents into his body.
Reid sat there, staring blankly ahead while she did so. He hadn't felt anything until the needle went deeper into the muscle, but he was determined to act as if this too, didn't hurt.
She pulled the needle out a moment later. "There… we're done…"
"Th-That wasn't so bad…" He said as convincingly as he could.
"Yeah right Tough Guy, you just keep telling yourself that and remember it would be a lot worse if you were poisoned without this…"
He nodded and they rejoined the others.
"He's ready…" She said.
Within the hour he was home, with Maeve… As they waited for Jerry Costello to make his move. It was quiet in the apartment, neither said a word to the other, they just sat there, snuggled on the sofa while the minutes ticked by.
Finally… at four in the morning… Someone picked the lock and a dark figure entered the apartment. He stepped softly into the pitch black living room and stuck a small needle into the exact spot on Reid's neck where Dr. Hunt had injected the very thing that would counter the poison just an hour beforehand. As it had with all the others, the endocrine-oxide forced the cobalt-thyonate to flood out into his system as his brain swelled and sent out an amplified release signal, but unlike the others, he had enough in him that it only hurt him for a moment, just long enough to wake him. He pushed the signal pen that Hotch had given him, which told all the others that it had happened. Morgan, who'd been lying in wait just down the hall, snuck up on the Unsub and arrested him.
A week later, Spencer went to the park, only to find that his usual reading bench was occupied by Adam Costello.
"Do you mind if I sit here?" He asked.
"No, not at all…" Adam replied.
Reid sat down next to him.
"I saw you at the hospital last week…" Adam said.
"I'm sorry about your dad…"
"Don't be… things were never right between me and him anyway… and he kinda lost it when my brother died… I always knew he'd do something crazy… I just never knew what or when… Thought I have to admit… this was the furthest thing from my mind… I thought… after we found out that Andrew most likely died of CH before it was treatable… if anything he'd use his influence to help us… not go on a rampage trying to kill off everyone who has it to try and eliminate it from the gene pool…"
"Sometimes grief warps the mind, and love can make people do crazy things…"
"Love…that's a laugh… he tried to kill me… the only son he had left… I don't know who that man was…but he's not the father who raised me…" He paused, then he turned to face Reid and asked: "What was your name again?"
"Dr. Reid… but you can call me Spencer…"
"Ok Spencer, mind taking a walk with me? I want to show you something…"
"Lead the way…" he answered. Both men stood and they walked until they came to a cemetery about a block away, then Adam led them to a particular gravestone that read:
Andrew Costello
1974-2004
Hero, Brother, Friend
They stood there for a moment in silence until Adam spoke.
"Our real father died with him…"
Reid thought about that, and for awhile he didn't know what to say. Eventually he just asked: "So what now?"
"Now? Now I try to get on with my life… speaking of which… do you play chess by any chance?"
"I love chess…"
"Then I challenge you to a match…"
"You're on…"
Reid: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin