Chapter One – The Black Parade:

Disclaimer: Same as before.

AN: Thank you to everyone who reviewed. I'm sorry this wasn't out sooner; it ended up being a little longer than I had anticipated.

AN2: A special thanks to Jenna for her encouragement and enthusiasm, a driving force for me get this part up and posted. Thanks!

New York City

Mac Taylor was generally a man who was in control. He liked being in control, making decisions that seemed best and acting accordingly. It wasn't that he had a problem listening to other people, he heeded Stella's advice more often then not, but he just couldn't understand how some people made the choices they did. To him, the world was a logical place, even if certain human beings tried very hard to mess it up. At least the world had been a logical place six months ago. Now Mac found his thoughts slipping back to that time on far more occasions than he'd like, back to the monstrous thing that had attacked him and the young woman, he couldn't bring himself to call her a girl, who had saved him. The little tiny woman who had rescued a highly trained Marine, from Mac's perspective that was seven different kinds of screwed up.

He had tried to repress the incident, hadn't wanted to find himself drowning in a new obsession or liquid oblivion, because if there was one thing that could drive him to distraction or drink, besides his wife's death, it was a gory mystery. Fortunately, his job was filled with those of the human kind. And God, he'd never thought there would be a day when he would have to clarify human. So, Mac had lost himself in his work, found himself in Peyton and Stella and the team that was his family. He'd generally gone as he always had, just a little more thankful, just a little more aware, just a little more willing to try. Still, when the sun set and the CSIs were out at night, Mac demanded no one be left alone and carefully scanned every shadow. For the first time since he was a child, Mac Taylor was afraid of the dark.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Friday – Seven Days Ago:

It seemed like every time Mac turned around there was a new case, a new dead body, a new criminal mastermind who wasn't happy making a few hundred grand a year on Wall Street and decided to make a few easy million by killing someone. That last one had been a real genius, leaving the murder weapon on display in his office. While he appreciated having open and shut cases, they were often more troublesome in the long run. Everybody was likely to forget the poor girl who had been shot two doors away from her apartment; no one forgot the man who had been decapitated in Central Park. Looking back, Mac still wasn't satisfied that there wasn't a more occult reason for the removal of the victim's head.

Mac reached into his suit jacket to insure his badge was still where it should be and picked up his trusty forensic kit from its usual spot near the door. His gun was firmly holstered at his hip, a comforting presence despite certain events. He looked through the clear glass walls of the lab before heading towards his prey.

Hawkes had his back turned to the door, his focus on the curly haired woman in front of him. It had always impressed Mac how calm Dr. Sheldon Hawkes was in a face of Stella's determination. Lesser men had been known to faint on sight, but there was Hawkes, letting Stella pace and rant about whatever was bothering her. A tilt in the angle of the doctor's head told Mac that he had asked a question. From the abrupt way Stella had turned and planted herself in front of the man, Mac guessed that whatever was said, she hadn't wanted to hear. Deciding to rescue his fellow man from what was sure to be a verbal lashing that would leave Hawkes unable to do anything besides curl up in a corner and cry, Mac entered the room.

"What are you talking about? The astronauts would so kick the cavemen's prehistoric as... asphyxia is a pretty common cause of death, right Sheldon?"

Catching the tale end of the conversation, Mac blinked in confusion. Apparently, Hawkes had no clue either and was humoring the woman.

"Yeah, you wouldn't believe the amount of death certificates where under 'Cause of Death' I've had to list autoerotic asphyxiation… Hey, Mac."

He had no other choice; he was going to pretend this never happened. The chances of a successful repression had to be pretty good, right?

"Stella, Hawkes, if you two are done, we've got a crime scene."

~*~*~*~*~

Traffic being what it is in New York, the trip to the scene took almost an hour. When he had gotten out the SUV, Hawkes took the opportunity to look around. It was a stereotypical Manhattan warehouse, decrepit and probably filled with asbestos. As his brain began to list the possible diseases and symptoms that were associated with exposure, he noticed Mac had lost his barely discernable smirk of superior amusement that his boss had worn the whole way here. Now the ex-Marine was glaring at the building in front of them like it had killed his puppy. Not that Mac had a puppy; he wasn't really puppy owner material, if the man had ever had a canine of any kind, Hawkes was willing to bet it had been a big, massive thing with lots of teeth and an attitude problem, like Fluffy. Yeah, he could see Mac telling a three-headed Cerberus to sit.

Having settled his imagination for awhile, Hawkes grabbed his kit and followed his co-workers inside the warehouse. Detective Don Flack had been waiting for them; he was already half-way into his information rundown. The officer and he had never been the best of friends and never would be; Flack thought he was creepy because he'd liked to cut open dead bodies and spend all his time secluded with them for a living. On Hawkes part, to him Flack had too much presence, all sharp edges and masking smiles. In spite, or maybe because of, those feelings, both men tried especially hard to reach the other, to maintain the peace of the symbiotic relationship that existed between the CSIs and the officer. They trusted each other. So, knowing that Flack would come over and tell him once he'd finished with Stella and Mac, Hawkes walked to the taped off area.

The place was clean. Too clean, indicating the perpetrator had taken time to prepare this place before bringing the victim here. The killer wouldn't have taken the time to clean up after and not dispose of the body. There was some kind of pattern on the concrete floor, interlocking circles and strange markings done in black. Being careful to not disturb the design or any trace, Hawkes ducked under the tape and began to photograph everything.

As he got closer and closer to the body, he realized that it was at the center of the drawing. That revelation sent a shiver of dread up Hawkes' spine. Someone just walked over my grave. Finally reaching the origin, he saw Mac and Stella starting at different points along the perimeter and do the same thing he had done. Flack was making his way towards him, just as vigilant as the scientists in avoiding contaminating the evidence.

Crouching down, the doctor studied the still form as Flack began to fill him in. By smell and sight, the victim had been dead several days which fit with the information the detective had. A Caucasian male in his late forties, there was no clothing on the body or anywhere on scene so far. Hawkes could see two shallow incisions under the man's eyes but no other visible trauma. Leaving the determination of exact cause of death for his former coworkers in the morgue, he listened to Flack's concise speech and the twang of his New York accent.

A teen, probably a runaway looking for somewhere to crash, had come inside and found the body; after calling 911, the kid disappeared with all the skill that usually came with being a runner. From there, the uniforms had checked the scene, deemed it legit, and called Homicide, where Detectives Flack and Taylor caught the short straw. Nothing too important, other than that there was no owner of record for the warehouse and there never had been one. Evidently, the warehouse had popped up and been built overnight with no one the wiser.

Done with his perusal of the area around the body, Hawkes had just started to rise when something caught his eye. Turning to his kit, he withdrew a small penlight and flashed it over one of the lines on the floor. There. By this time, his actions had drawn the other two CSIs gaze. He bent down and ran a Q-tip over the substance, confirming his suspicions as he stared at the cotton tip. As Hawkes continued his staring match with the swab, everyone else impatiently waited for the man to speak. Lifting his gaze upwards, Sheldon spoke.

"It's still wet. And Mac, the color isn't black. It's red."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Saturday – Six Days Ago:

It had taken the three CSIs over ten hours to collect the bare minimum of evidence they needed. By that time, the unis at the scene at been switched at shift change; Mac, Stella, and Hawkes were all clocking a good amount of overtime working from mid-afternoon Friday into the early hours of the next day. Given the amount of square feet inside the warehouse, the need to document every line on the concrete, both photographically and topographically, and to sweep every corner, crevice, and crack for evidence, not to mention collect samples and other trace before time further degraded the samples, it was no wonder the process was taking so long. The normal procedure for large crime scenes was for one of the CSIs to periodically take evidence to the lab to maintain the chain of custody, but in this instance, with the time restraints, any evidence each of them gathered was sealed, recorded, and put away until a mass exodus was possible when the three were done processing.

Saturday after lunch saw everyone, lab techs and CSIs alike, starting to run tests and samples on the multitude of evidence Mac, Stella, and Hawkes had collected during the night. When Adam had come in that morning and seen the amount of work they expected him to get through, he'd almost ripped a patch of hair off this head. The coroner's office, located in the sub-levels of the building, was hopping, trying to figure out cause of death, sending blood and tissue samples to Toxicology, and fingerprinting the victim.

As it turned out, Hawkes' ominous words of the previous day were not without credibility. The black paint on the floor turned out to be blood, over four quarts of it. None of the tests they had tried revealed why it appeared black when on the ground at the scene, yet after swabbing it, the sample would revert to the deep apple red color of fresh blood. Three different techs, of which Adam was one, and Mac had verified the results, they were now on a quest to find a drug compound with anti-coagulant properties that causes a physical color change when added.

The CSI crew wasn't the only one baffled; the M.E. had figured out cause of death quickly even if Sid couldn't understand how. Their victim bled to death, just not through his mouth, eyes, ears, or other bodily orifice; according to Hawkes, the cuts on the victim's face were too shallow to explain a severe type of blood loss. Sid had backed up that assertion. So, their victim's blood had drained from his body in some manner, currently unknown. The body hadn't been moved after death and his blood hadn't been found. If it weren't for the fact that everyone at the crime lab had seen weirder, they might have been getting a little anxious right about now.

While the scientists were having fun playing with microscopes and slides, Flack had been running down information on the victim. His prints had come up in AFIS because of some minor trouble when the man was twenty; the lab had kicked the I.D. his way after they'd processed his prints. Spending a few hours combing newspapers, old files, and making some calls had given Flack the highpoints. As he finished scrawling out the last bit of notes in his detective diary, Don Flack left his desk. He had a CSI to find.

The drive to the lab had put him in a good mood, Flack didn't know what the hell was the meaning behind what he'd found out about the vic, but his frustration was nothing what Mac was going to feel when he told the man. That thought put a little bounce in his step as he waited for the elevator doors to open onto the appropriate level. Spying Mac inside his office Flack went in; without waiting for an acknowledgement from the man leaning over the desk in front of him, he began to share his findings.

"The victim was a man named Val Boren, a minor league pro-baseball legend from the mid-eighties. Got the name off a collar for drunk and disorderly in '81. Boren came in and resigned from the team on the day he was going to make it to the majors. Never gave any explanation, just up and walked away from it all. Fell off the radar for a few years before returning to New York in '95 with a psych degree and started counseling people who survived traumatic events. From the people I talked to, they all say the same thing. He does great work, and they'll never be able to replace him, etcetera, etcetera. I got a current address if you wanna check that out."

That was more information than they usually had to start a tracing down leads, but Mac couldn't help but wonder why the man had given up his career, fame, and money for no apparent reason. He hadn't trying to figure people out sometimes; they were so confusing and messy. Regardless, he agreed with the detective, a visit to Boren's residence was in order, but it wasn't going to be tonight. There were too many unanswered questions and tests to run around the lab, all hands were on duty. So, for today, the only place Mac was going the 'dungeon' room, to perform a tool mark analysis on the cuts on the victim's cheeks.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sunday – Five Days Ago:

This was Danny and Lindsey's second day at this crime scene. Although the other three CSIs had gotten the original call, they were doing more exploration on the lab's findings. So, the duo had gone out on Sunday to look over the warehouse and take more samples. In between spending a few hours with his head in a series of Petri dishes and gravimetric analysis, Danny had gotten work from Mac to get down to the scene. Lindsey had received the same order, and they were on their way. So, almost more than fifty swabs, castings, and printings later, they return to the lab, not as conquering heroes but hated overlords bringing more work for the peasants.

Sunday found the pair standing in the same warehouse. Mac had ordered a final once over of the scene and dispatched Danny and Lindsey again. On their way, they had picked up Hawkes from the station where he had been delivering some information and reports to Flack. If Danny thought he was sick of looking at the scene, he couldn't imagine how the doc felt.

Splitting up, the trio divided the area into parts: Lindsey got the center of the room, the smallest share but most highly prolific, Danny had the outer walls and floor, and Hawkes was rechecking the building's perimeter. Thoroughly, each one studied their section, making a final once-over before the scene was released. With all their focus on the area in front of them, they had no idea that they were being watched.

~*~*~*~*~

This was it. He was the one. They could feel his power radiating from within his form; it was so pure, so tempting. The desire rose within them as they contemplated what would come next. Screaming and crying and black ruin, laughing and tearing, the beginnings of endings and the endings of all. They couldn't wait. Oh, yes, they would have him. For his beauty, for his strength. For their fun.

~*~*~*~*~

Val Boren's neighbors had been unhelpful. All they knew was that the man had moved in over ten years ago and never left. No, they didn't know if he had many visitors, was in any kind of trouble, had any family; they couldn't bring themselves to care. He was always coming and going, woke them up a dozen times too with his weird hours. Beyond that, it was a bust. Mac would have been surprised at the lack of apathy, but this was New York, it had a higher turnover rate than McDonald's.

After the super had let Detective Flack and him into the apartment, he noticed a large white-board on the far wall. Moving around the few pieces of furniture in the room, Mac stopped to read the writings on it. It was mostly lists, of people and places. There were maps of each of the five boroughs with colored pushpins at several locations. The final column on the board was labeled suspects; underneath the heading were several rows of letters and numbers that made little sense upon initial glance. Lifting his camera, Mac took several pictures of the board before returning to investigate the rest of the apartment.

Flack was already looking through the victim's room, knowing better than to touch anything, but still securing the place anyway. His bedroom was neat, a dresser against one wall, a TV stand on another; there was a closet full of clean clothes, a bathroom off to the side. In the kitchen was a fully stocked fridge, so Boren had obviously planned on returning. An old computer sat on one end of the table, dust free and well cared for; shelves of books lined the only window and door free wall in the living room. There were a few books about forensic science, medicine, and theology; the other books had no visible titles on their spins. When Mac had taken one off the shelf and opened it, the pages were blank. He turned to face the other man with him.

"This makes no sense. Why would Boren, who obviously has a reason for owning all these books, waste the room on empty books?"

"I dunno, Mac. Have you noticed anything else?"

Glancing around the apartment again, the CSI decided he had no clue what Flack was talking about.

"There's no baseball paraphernalia anywhere. I mean, the guy was something back in the day, so why aren't there any trophies or home videos or pictures? Not even a bat to knock burglars out with!"

"Maybe he didn't want to be reminded of something; we still don't know why he quit."

"Yeah, maybe, but man, there's not a sign here. That kind of thing isn't wanting to forget. It's running away."

~*~*~*~*~

Monday – Four Days Ago:

Mac was facing the circles. Someone had finally gotten around to compiling the photos from the crime scene into a 3-D hologram; it hadn't helped much. So, here he was staring at the seven circles drawn in blood as if they were the key to everything. Which, he admitted to himself, might be true; when killers left messages of any kind at a scene, it was time to sit up and take notice.

The three largest circles had a fifteen foot radius and parts of all three overlapped, like a Venn diagram; it was inside the one section that contained part of all three circles that the body was placed. Four smaller circles with three foot radii were all equidistant from the concentric origin. Inside the nonintersecting pieces of the three larger circles were triangles that connected side to tip. It was enough high school geometry to give anyone nightmares.

Then there were the marks, letters, glyphs, whatever you wanted to call them. Three of them were drawn in the overlapping sections between two of the larger circles. After the coroner's assistants had removed Mr. Boren's body, a fourth one revealed itself. No one knew what to make of it; the images were unclear, the smears of blood running together to make any sort of identification tricky.

That left Mac with the circles, seven of them. He had come back to them again and again, calculating angles, area, distances between points, and more; his math told the scientist that it would have taken at least four to seven hours for any one person to measure out the space and draw out the pattern. Which, when you added the time it takes for someone to abduct the victim and let him bleed to death meant that the killer had spent a long time in that warehouse. How had he been able to do all that and leave so little evidence behind?

Allowing himself a brief moment of respite, Mac stood up and stretched and listened as the bones in his neck cracked at the change in position. Not as young as I used to be. As he looked out the room, he saw Flack heading towards him. The mouth that so often jumped into a smirk or snarl was firmly held level; the way the skin under the New York native's blue eyes hung ever so slightly low told Mac that whatever it was, wasn't good. None of us are.

"We've got another body."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Every time Flack worked serial cases, he always expected the scenes to be different. A combination of jilted hope and cynical realism made the thought the same every time. Is this one different? If he had asked any of the CSIs, the answer would be 'yes'. Every time. But for Don Flack, every scene had the same feel: a disbelieving anger that this had happened-to-me, a heartfelt desire for just-one-more-day, and a despairing acceptance of the way the stones fell. It sunk into his clothes, his skin; for weeks after the case was over the feeling would be there.

Sometimes he wondered if they really were blind to the situation. It became a quest for one more piece of evidence, a search for the answers, and a passion for the truth. Every single time. They didn't stop, even for a moment, to think that somebody died here. Right under their feet was a portal between the living and where ever the dead go after. A person, a future of possibilities, was destroyed. Flack couldn't kid himself that he was any different because he was just as jaded as they were; only he hid it better.

Another call had come in from a homeless kid, this time in Brooklyn. Did the runaways have something to do with the case or was there killer just looking for abandoned building to use? It was a question that he could be canvassing the local shelters and alleys to find the answer to. Seven circles and three triangles surrounded the body, a female this time. The woman looked eighty, if a day. Serial killers normally kept to one victim type, but this guy wasn't doing anything by the books. There had been no owner for this building either, surprise, surprise.

Not wanting to step inside the bloody diagram, Flack watched from the edge as all five of his friends swarmed over the scene like bees to honey. Creepy. One of the reasons he and Hawkes didn't get along too well in the beginning; the man had spent practically his entire life with dead people. He could understand Sid, the older man was just nuts and a little too weird, even for New York sometimes, but why Hawkes had made that decision was one he couldn't figure out. They were good now; it had taken him one autopsy, observing unknown from the shadows near the entrance to see. Hawkes had a gentle soul: every incision had a purpose and every test had a reason; the man treated the bodies as if someone was still there, still watching and crying over what had become of them. After that moment, as far as Don Flack was concerned Hawkes was one of the good guys.

~*~*~*~*~

Soon. The time was soon. The one they wanted was almost ready, almost here. Soon enough. The day would see to it, promises made under bright flame and burning light. Soon.

~*~*~*~*~

Some hours later, Flack was back at his desk in Homicide when a fax was sent over from St. Anthony's Home for Noble Retiring; one of their guests was missing. The fax included a picture of Maude Grey, 82. He would have to call down to the morgue with the name; their victim was a resident and nurse's aid. She had no family to speak of, although several other guests were already planning a grand funeral for the old girl. She had few material possessions and a pension from the Archdiocese, the remainder of which would be paid to a charity that dealt with the survivors of traumatic events.

~*~*~*~*~

Tuesday – Three Days Ago:

~*~*~*~*~

Wednesday – Two Days Ago:

At approximately 2:18 a.m. Monday morning, a body was rushed through the emergency room doors of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. Unknown male, age indeterminate, was discovered by a bouncer outside one of the borough's many hotspots. Emergency services responded to the call and found the victim to be a man with no I.D. who appeared severely beaten. Upon his arrival at Mount Sinai, doctors worked hard to reset the bones of the left wrist and two ribs; during their initial evaluation a superficial cut was noted over the victim's heart. Although his blood pressure had spiked when he'd first been brought in, the man's heartbeat remained stable.

By 7:53 a.m. the John Doe was given a room in the hospital proper, and the battle was over. Looking through the window at the bed on which the man laid, one of the E.R. doctors stood motionless in his street clothes. The doctor's shift was over an hour ago, but he'd come down to take one last look at the victim that had come in earlier. The man had been covered in blood, dirt, and bruises; now that the nurses had cleaned him up, his dark complexion shown through. First rule of practicing medicine: don't work on people you know. Every person that came in those doors, the doctors in the E.R. tried hard not to see their faces while saving their lives; it was too much to bear that you might have your hand inside the chest of your daughter, spouse, parent, friend. That was the fear that haunted each of them.

And today, Dr. Jason Clay found himself living that nightmare.

~*~*~*~*~

Mac read through Sid's autopsy report for the fifth time. He knew all the facts but couldn't put the pieces together. Maude Grey had bled to death just like Val Boren; except her only external injury were two lacerations over the back of her hands, both shallow and small. The marking at the scene were done in blood, not her own and not Val Boren's; no hits had come from C.O.D.I.S. from the unknown human blood sample from either scene. Both were the same blood type O negative, the fourth rarest in the U.S., but had distinct donors. The same pattern was on the floor of each crime scene. He just wasn't seeing it.

While Mac gnawed on his report shaped bone, Stella was carefully examining the remains of a candy wrapper from Maude Grey's murder site. She had already collected several organic samples after smoothing out the crumpled ball, and analysis was pending. The sweet scent of sugar and artificial preservatives wafted into her nose as she bent down to read the name on the plastic package. The wrapper itself was one didn't recognize. It was blue with green writing on it, but the name had been obscured during the opening and crumpling. Whatever progress she had made was lost as she caught sight of Mac sprinting to the elevator.

~*~*~*~*~

Jason's phone was in his hand; the shiny bits of metal and plastic taunting him with his failure: his failure to recognize a close friend that he had made while doing a residency together at a hospital across the city. Sheldon Hawkes was the kind of doctor everyone loved, compassionate and empathetic. Except other doctors, they all knew the man's caring would make things worse for himself in the long run, and it had. None of them had been very surprised when after losing one patient too many, Dr. Hawkes had quit practicing medicine, on the living anyway. Seeing Sheldon walk out of the emergency room and into the morgue had been a shock for pretty much everyone. But that wasn't here or there or anywhere, really.

While Jason had been lost in the past, his body had taken on will of its own. The sound of ringing filled his ear and anchored him to the present. He didn't want to think of what he was going to say or how it would sound. All he wanted as for this night to have never happened. A voice on the other end of the line triggered the automatic response that all doctors developed over time.

"This Dr. Jason Clay from Mount Sinai Hospital, I am a friend a Dr. Sheldon Hawkes. I was also one of the attending physicians on duty when he came in last night."

~*~*~*~

Thursday – One Day Ago:

His chest felt funny, too tight and too bouncy; he could almost feel pieces shifting around in there. Indicative of broken ribs. The thought filtered through Hawkes' mind as he tried to remain as still as possible. Tightness and pressure could only mean someone had taped his ribs up, moving at the moment would be a rather silly idea. Judging by the cloudy haze that tingled over his body, he was also receiving some type of pain medication. He could only be in one place – the hospital.

"Why am I in the hospital?"

The frantic whining and bleating of a heart monitor were the only replies he got.

~*~*~*~*~

Mac Taylor sat next to the side of Hawkes' bed; the man had slept most of the day, waking only once and frightening another ten years off of him by having what the other doctors assured him was only a panic attack. That was ten years on top of the thirty he'd aged since getting Dr. Clay's call, informing him that one of his employees, one of his family, was injured and being treated for semi-serious wounds. Although his SUV had been the first to make it to Mount Sinai, it hadn't been the last. Stella, Flack, Lindsey, and Danny had each bullied, bribed, and threatened people into taking over for them before breaking very traffic law to get here themselves.

Everyone had been apprised of the situation. Hawkes had a broken wrist, one broken rib and two cracked ones, a minor concussion, a cut on his chest, and some bruising. No one knew what had happened, just the same facts the cops did. Flack and Danny were both itching to get their hands on the person that had done this, but their concern kept them rooted to the hospital room. None of them wanted to leave their friend alone while he was helpless and unaware in slumber.

At some point between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, they began to get calls from work, demanding their return. The world was not willing to provide time-outs for visiting family. Hawkes seemed to be content to sleep off his injuries, so one by one they each left, promising to come back and stay with him later. Now, it was only Mac sitting here. Some days, being the boss was worth the inevitable headaches.

Mac's new obsession was listening to the blips of the heart monitor; the rhythm fluctuated: high-high-low beat-beat, soft-thump-thump-thump. A song that was unique to this one man, a story of living and dying, a painting in draw in lines and colored in red, it was the thin, jagged edge that stood between the here and lost. His mind drifting into ever more fantastical musing, Mac snorted at how sappy he was becoming. The only thing that affected him like this was the threat of someone he cared for going away. Who would have thought that such a tiny sound could be so comforting and so deceiving? It was a reassurance of life, but it couldn't reflect the beast beneath the surface. There were no machines that drew the horrors and dark visions that plagued the people in these rooms; only the sound of a heart to promise that the person was willing to try.

As Thursday morning became afternoon, Mac grimaced as he pulled his body up from the plastic chair. The last 24 hours had permanently engraved his outline in its fake contours; although judging by the pain in his back, it wasn't the first time some had made that impression. He was sweaty and grimy and exhausted and relieved and bouncing back in forth between so many emotions was giving him whiplash. And a headache. After Hawkes' outburst earlier, the doctor had given him more pain medication; he wouldn't be waking up for the foreseeable future. Beneath the assurances that Hawkes was out for awhile, Stella was going to be at the hospital in less than an hour, and the uniform posted at the door, Mac felt he could slip out for a shower and caffeine before returning to watch over his injured duckling. He wouldn't be missed.

~*~*~*~*~

The room was empty; no one was there. Waking up had been no picnic the first time, and the second round hadn't proved much better, but he had to leave, had to get away.

There were so many papers to sign, so many questions to answer. Over and over they said the same damn things; he didn't care. He just wanted to run away. His answers had been simple, yet no one had understood. They kept asking and picking and trying to touch him. Why were they touching him? He wanted to go. He had to go. They couldn't stop him. He was going. The papers were signed, the instructions given not that he didn't know them already. He was going.

"I don't remember what happened. Write that in your damn report!"

With a final yell and tired sigh, Sheldon Hawkes bolted away from Mount Sinai Hospital with all the speed his bumps, bruises, and broken bones would let him muster.

~*~*~*~*~

Throughout his quick trip home, Mac Taylor couldn't help but worry. It was natural for a man like him; as a soldier then a CSI, he knew, intimately, the lengths that humans could and would go to damage each other. There was a sinister drive within men and women, something that made them crave pain and blood and anguish and death. And after they had satisfied their cravings, the victims were left to suffer for their attacker's sins. Thinking of Sheldon in that position, helpless and unable to anything more than endure, was enough to bring him to his knees before losing the little food he'd eaten in the trash can in his kitchen. So, Mac was worried, not just about catching the people that hurt Sheldon or his recovery or the apparent serial killer on the loose but about what the future held for all of them.

While at his apartment, Mac took the time to shower and shave away the three day growth that was making him look like a crazy person, or so Lindsey had informed him on the lunch break she had used to catch a glimpse of Sheldon before jetting back to lab. He shoved a few mouthfuls of some kind of food down his throat and called Flack to get an update on the murder investigation. The news was not reassuring; there was evidence to suggest that New York wasn't the only place their killer had been. According to Flack, who was sifting through a few dozen cases trying to pick out the relevant ones, he had found at least five others that were matches to their M.O., three on the west coast and two international. After ending the phone call with the detective, Mac was momentarily frozen by the implications of the information before shaking his intellectual daydream off and getting in his S.U.V. to return to his guarding of one Sheldon Hawkes.

~*~*~*~*~

Upon his arrival at the Hawkes' room at the hospital, Mac found his worry was not misplaced. Seeing Stella screaming at a quivering doctor in a mix of Greek and English was a big clue; she would never disturb Sheldon's rest like that. His inventory of the room, neatly made bed and folded blankets with no injured CSI in sight, brought his blood pressure up to unhealthy levels. Panic racing in his mind, Mac grabbed the officer that was standing to the side, hoping to avoid the crossfire.

"What happened here? How did someone get in? Where the hell is my CSI?"

Wanting to ease the man's anxiety and not get shot, the officer's response was quickly spit out.

"No one got in, and nothing happened. About an hour and a half ago, Dr. Hawkes woke up again and demanded to be released from the hospital."

At this point, Mac's sharp bark cut through Stella's tirade as well as the uniform's account. "What!"

Stella heard the-somebody-better-have-a-damn-good-explanation-or-fear-my-wrath tone in her friend's voice and waved away the now trembling duo of doctor and officer, taking over the story herself.

"Hawkes woke up and signed himself out A.M.A. Said he didn't need to stay any longer, he was a doctor and knew how to take care of himself. When they realized he was serious, the doctors had no choice but to do what he asked. They couldn't keep him if he didn't want to stay. By the time Hawkes had finished with all the paperwork, a detective had come down to take his statement. Which, by the way, amounts to 'I don't remember.' He doesn't know where he was taken from, where he was brought, what happened, or why he was let go."

The dry tone told Mac all he needed to know about what Stella was thinking, and he agreed. Hawkes was obviously hiding something and didn't want anyone prying into the matter. Whatever he was hiding was probably both dangerous and personal, the only reason either of the two could think of for Sheldon's behavior was that he was protecting something. They just didn't know why.

Although her words had been sarcastic, Mac could see the fear and concern in her blue eyes. He reached out and pulled her into a hug; they remained that way for several moments before breaking apart. After being friends for so many years, the spoken communication that passed between the two was largely unnecessary.

"I'll head back to the lab and tell everyone what's going on."

"And I'll track down our wayward doctor."

As he turned and made his way down the white hallways, he called back over his shoulder. "Make sure no one is burning down my lab while I'm not there to supervise."

Stella's light chuckle followed him all the way to the vehicle. It was a quickly fading ray of light in the tangle of apprehension, fear, and anger that was his mind.

~*~*~*~*~

'Five floors up and eight windows over,' Mac thought to himself as he took advantage of his status as a member of the NYPD and parked in front of the building. If he looked up he could see the windows to Sheldon's apartment from where he sat in his car. The dark curtains behind clear glass told no tales of its owner's whereabouts; they were shut, as always, and no light would be seen from behind them.

Leaving his musings behind, Mac charged up five flights of stairs and passed three doors on the right before coming to the fourth. He raised his fist and a heavy knock resounded from the door; shuffling noises reached his ears from behind the wooden barrier. Mac continued his bangs, interspersing the thumping with pleas and requests for Sheldon to let him in. After three minutes, finally fed up with his friend's refusal to let him in, he stopped knocking.

"Sheldon Hawkes, you have five seconds to open this door or I'm going to kick it down. You know I will. Five."

Before Mac reached two, the door that had denied him entry and taken several layers of skin from him opened to reveal Sheldon, a Sheldon Hawkes that, funnily enough, looked like he had just been severely beaten and left for dead in some anonymous street. Any irritation he had felt faded as he got a good look at the man. Despite his obvious pain and tiredness, Sheldon was pacing around the apartment, darting this way and that, pausing only to murmur to himself for a moment before shaking his head and off he went again. Mac stepped into the room and closed the door behind him; he did up the first and last locks of the row on the door, a precaution that gave him time to think.

Only one light was turned on; the sparse glow and twisting shadows taunted his imagination and covered Sheldon's face in madness. Slowly, he moved further into the other man's domain, cautious to keep from startling him.

"Why did you leave the hospital?"

The question jumped out from Mac's throat before he had a chance to stop it. Judging by the doctor's reaction, it hadn't been unanticipated. A sardonic and exhausted look met his eyes. Evidently deciding that answering would take to much energy, he returned to his manic pacing.

"Sheldon, you left the hospital A.M.A. - without telling anyone where you were going. You had just been the victim of a crime, which you claim to not remember. Why did you run away?"

The question caused a deviation in Sheldon's circuit. Instead of heading for one of the windows, the man in question retreated to the corner of the room and pressed is forehead into the wall, half-words and whispers emanating from him. They remained like that, the concerned and cornered for all of eternity that could be contained in twenty minutes.

"You wouldn't believe me."

The scratched and hurting voice that sounded nothing like the man he knew came from the figure as it slide down the wall and cradled its broken wrist. Mac had lost count of the amount of times he'd heard that statement, from victims, from the innocent, from the guilty. He always gave the trite and expected response, knowing that if the person really wanted his help, they would tell him what they could to save themselves. But never before had he heard it from someone he knew, someone that had knew him. Mac Taylor was a man of belief, maybe not always in God, but he believed in science, in justice, and in his family. It kind of hurt that Sheldon didn't have the same faith in him.

"How can you know that if you don't try?"

"You wouldn't believe me."

The flat and repetitive statement weighed down the space between them. Before he could speak, another reply unfurled to join the last.

"You wouldn't believe me. I don't believe me."

A tired humor and overwhelming terror laced the bitter words.

"I mean, it's impossible, right? I go over and over it in my head and it's impossible. Things like this aren't real. They don't exist. Fairytales and horror stories are for books and movies not reality. The Boogeyman doesn't live under the bed and in the closet; it's a figment inside the heads' the demented and the tormented, a deathly and deadly monster of human making and creation. But I've seen It, so that means I must be crazy. Did I see him because I'm crazy or am I crazy because I saw him? Tell me, Mac, did I make him or did he make me? What's real: It or me?"

As Sheldon descended into whimpers and jumbled words, Mac was nearly flattened by what he'd said. Something, something had gotten to the younger man. Was it the trauma of what happened distorting his mind or had he run into one of those things? Lowering himself to the floor next to his friend, Mac grabbed the unbroken hand that was fluttering about and gently squeezed, drawing the connected body's attention.

"Tell me."

There was a promise in those two words that only a few could understand. It had nothing to do with friendship or love; it was a jaded pact between survivors, a holy transaction between the burdened and the confessor. It was nothing more than a promise to find out the truth, come what may, good or bad, no matter the consequences.

And Sheldon did.

~*~*~*~*~

The fatigue that he had been fighting caught up with the injured one after bleeding himself of the shades that had been plaguing his mind. Mac had given the doctor some his medicines and put him into bed. Now, staring out the slightly parted curtains at the slowly setting sun, he watched as the dying day filtered through the red curtain and painted the room in warm, crimson blood. All the world was blood; he was drowning in it, a sadness and memory that claimed even as it killed.

A worn card was in lying on his palm, innocent and pristine in this place of desecration and determination. He wasn't considering his choices; he had already made it. It was just a question of when. Something had held him back from immediately dialing the number, so here he was, waiting for some sign or omen to tell him that it was okay to call. A stern kick from the scientific part of his brain shattered whatever spell he'd been under. Mac knew that time was important in any type of investigation, evidence degraded, attackers moved on, witnesses' memories faded.

Mac's phone was pressed into his ear before he had the chance to ponder anything more.

"I need to get a message to Buffy. This Mac Taylor from New York, we met under, um, strange circumstances almost six months ago. I need her help."

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Please REVIEW! I need at least one before I post the next part.