Precisely ten minutes had passed before the jolt of wheels against rough ground was felt. The jolt passed through each spine and jangled everyone's already shaken nerves. Everyone unfastened their seatbelts and sat up on edge. Morgan stood up and tensed his muscles in such a way as to suggest he was on the verge of attacking someone, but with no visible target, he just looked comically alarmed and aimless.

Hotch stood to join him and took on the responsibility of command. "I think we can safely assume they are armed if they've managed to hijack the jet. There's no chance any of you have your handguns with you?"

"Hotch, they're stored in the safety hold," JJ replied, "as per usual. They'll be locked away. I'm not even sure I know where they stash them while we're in flight. 9/11, you know? Security's taken a lot more-"

"We should get out of here," Garcia exclaimed stiffly. She stood up and was now pacing in tiny circles, her eyes wide and magnified behind her rosy-coloured glasses. "We should get out of here now."

"They're armed; there are at least two of them. We need whatever weapons, whatever tools we can find," Blake explained calmly.

"What we need to do is get out of here before they get impatient." Rossi started rummaging through closets and cupboards, looking for anything that could be of help. "Where's the damn first-aim box?"

Reid stood and made a bee-line path to the front of the cabin, to the little cupboard built into the jet. It was locked but the small metal key was sticking out of the door, which opened easily enough. "It's not here. But it's always here."

"First-aid box? Why do we need a first-aid box? We need to get out of here!" Garcia exclaimed.

"Why isn't the first-aid box there?"

"That first voice we heard, the low, mono-syllabic, bored-sounding voice. I think he might be the dominant partner," Blake explained. "He was the first to speak, he sounded more in control and authoritative."

"Whereas the other voice was excessively excited. He can't wait to get this – whatever this is – started," Rossi mused.

"We really don't have enough to go on here. Nothing we've heard so far give any indication of how many are in on this, what they're aims are… we don't even know which partner is the more dangerous one."

"What we do know is we have to get away from them."

"Baby doll, take a deep breath. Take your laptop with you, and anything else that could be useful. Damn – there's no phone signal. Where the hell are we?"

"Derek, there are crazy people on the jet, we're in the middle of nowhere, they have guns, we don't even have phones. We need to get out of here. Now." She was whispering in a frantic tone of voice through an expression of shear panic.

"Maybe we can ambush them. What do you think? They won't expect it. If we can just jump them the moment they open the door to leave the jet, they won't know what hit them. It's seven of us against, what? Two? Three-?"

"Damn it, Morgan. You have never been SHOT. You don't know what it feels like to have a bullet tear through your flesh and rattle around inside of you." Garcia had interrupted him to stand an inch in front and stare him down as if she was the taller of the stopped dead in his tracks, his violent glare instantly disarmed by her own likewise vicious look. Her glossy lips tightened and she thrust forward an accusatory finger at his chest. "You don't know." Her own expression became sombre just as quickly. "But you've seen your friends shot. And I know you don't want to see that again." Her finger crumpled into her fist which fell to rest against his chest, just over his heart. "I don't want to see you get shot," she whispered. Their worried glances met and they found themselves sharing an unexpectedly tender moment in the middle of the panic and uncertainty. Garcia visibly shook herself out of the trance and again began to spout panic. "So we should really get out of here before these hijackers – whoever they are – decide to come out and introduce themselves. And their guns. And their motives. Whatever they are…"

"I'm with her on this; we can't stick around here and wait for an explanation." Hotch, collected as always, was grabbing hold of his bag and moving towards the door. Everyone had looked away, occupied themselves with their own business to give the two most emotionally off-balanced members a moment to calm themselves and extinguish their heated thoughts against one another's. They were about ready to leave, bags hoisted over shoulders and senses weary of the slightest change.

"Well, there's nothing in the jet but coffee grounds and biscuits. Who stocks these damn things? Not a round of ammo in sight."

"This isn't a game, Rossi."

"It is a game. 'We'll give you, say, half an hour. A head start.'"

"Reid?"

"'A head start', as if it's a race. A game. It's a skewed, arbitrary advantage given to the weaker party."

"We're being toyed with."

"So what, they open the doors, we run out and they use us as target practice? Is that what we're theorising?"

"What else? They've hijacked the plane and rerouted us just to show us these magnificent pine trees? Give us a head start bird watching?" Rossi was still rummaging around in the cupboards, picking out this and that and then throwing it back. "There's nothing here. We should go."

"I think I should stay."

Everyone stopped they're frantic searching and collecting to look at her.

"Blake?"

"I think I should stay, hide somewhere, wait until they leave to do whatever it is they're planning, then make a break for the control room, send a message out. If that doesn't work, I'll try to find the guns." She stood there with her bag thrown over her shoulder and the fiercest determination written across her face. There was an air of intimidation about her that startled her colleagues into silence for a moment.

"No."

"Garcia, look. We need to keep our options open here. Anything that could give us the slightest advantage-"

"No. Blake, you should get out of here. They need you, to… analyse speech, language, syntax… you need to build a profile. It's our best weapon right now. Even when we have guns, it's still the deadliest thing we have."

"If I can get to the controls, just send out a message…"

"I'll do it. I'll stay."

"Babydoll?"

"That's my special skill. It's what I always do, my doves: hide away in some secret place only to appear, wave my technomagical wand and save the day at the perfect moment. I can do it. I can." Everyone stood frozen, their expressions frosted over with varying levels of indecision and fear.

Reid glanced at his watch. "Twelve minutes, forty-eight seconds. We have just over seventeen minutes left of our… head start." The tableau melted back into life, into action.


Rossi slammed open a bottom cupboard he was standing beside and dragged out a pile of tins and supplies. "If we're going to do this, we'll have to do it quick. Here." He directed Garcia into the dark empty crawlspace, and when she had tucked herself away as best as she could, he covered her over with food goods and boxes until they deemed it passably convincible.

"Twelve minutes, seven seconds."

"Let's get out of here."

"Can you hear me?"

"My lord?"

"Princess, good luck. Be careful."

The pile of biscuits shifted slightly and whispered, "You too."