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Chapter 2
Hotch decided that blending in would be the best way to avoid standing out and that meant trying to find a place where a man in a suit wouldn't stand out. He opted for one of the local coffee shops located around his apartment block. He settled down with a cup of the local blend and called Garcia back.
"Sir!" She gasped, relief colouring her tone. She lowered her voice. "Are you safe?"
"Yes, Garcia." He replied, trying not to smile. "Did you find who was tracking your search?"
"No, I didn't catch him. I kept him from snooping around, but I didn't catch him. She took a deep breath. "He probably figured out that I work for FBI, and maybe saw a few files, but nothing too major. I could've tracked him further, but then I had to go and pull a few more files for an investigation into your death that apparently hasn't happened yet or unless I'm speaking to a ghost." Pause. "Are you a ghost, sir?"
"Possibly, but my coffee seems to be staying inside my body for the moment, so I think I'm alive."
There was another long pause on the other end. "You... you just made a joke. Okay... well, I can tell you that were dealing with an elegant hacker and from the code that I'm seeing here, he could've continued through my firewalls and lead me on a merry chase, but he didn't so either he figured he'd met his match or he already got what he wanted from my system."
"This might still help us later." Hotch said thoughtfully. "We should also assume that Foyet is watching the news and waiting to hear if I've been found dead inside my apartment. I've been thinking that we should give him what he wants."
"What are you saying exactly?" Garcia asked.
"Go ahead a write up a report based on everything you and I know so far. Let the police file their report, and the team too. The more people that put in an official report the better."
"You want people to think you're dead?" Garcia asked. "Doesn't that go against... well... everything? Wait.. am I going to have to lie to the rest of the team?"
"Garcia, if people think I'm dead and that Foyet did something with my body, then no one will be looking for me. Foyet will assume that the FBI is keeping my body under wraps and I'll be free to investigate exactly what the hell is going on here."
"Yes and yes! I get that." Garcia replied, the perky tone to her voice back in place for the moment. "Okay, I am sending you everything that I have on this hacker guy, who goes by the username rog5000 by the way; totally original. And I will try to keep the fact that I am helping a currently dead agent under wraps for the moment."
"Thank you." He told her. "Has anyone heard anything from Haley?"
"They're bringing them into the building now, sir. But considering the threat against you, and what happened at your apartment, I'd imagine they're going straight into witness protection." Garcia's voice was quiet, sympathetic.
Hotch took a deep breath. This was not how he envisioned the rest of this week going. Instead of a few days off and a visit with Jack, it had turned into his family's biggest nightmare. He wouldn't even get to see them before they'd be gone from him forever. He took another deep breath and forced himself to think clearly, to dig deep to the place of stillness.
"Okay. See if you can make sure that Marshall Hendricks is the one to pick them up. I know him, and I'd been hesitant to think he has anything to do with this."
"Alright, I'll contact him as soon as I'm done with you."
"Thanks, Garcia. I'll call you later when I know more." He ended the phone call and turned his attention to the digital file in front of him. The list was short, it was an address to a local internet cafe on one of the local university campuses. There were thousands of possible people ranging from professors to students to friends and family of students; even campus employees such as security or cafeteria, but it was a place to start.
He picked up his coffee and left the coffee shop. It was time to do some profiling. He stepped out onto the sidewalk, reflexively reaching for his keys. He realized that there was no way he was going to able to drive his own vehicle. He let go of his keys and pulled his hand out of his pocket. He was going to have to find another way to get to the university campus.
A cab caught his eye a few blocks up and he walked towards it. The cabbie was taking fares and quickly urged Hotch inside before starting the engine and driving down the street. Hotch gave him the address to the university and they took off into traffic.
He idly picked up the paperback that was sitting in the backseat of the cab. It was some pop psychology book along with a thick psychology textbook. The cabbie glanced back and noticed that he was looking at the books. "You want them?" He asked.
"No. I..." Hotch started but the cabbie interrupted him.
"Some student left it in the backseat like a week ago and never came back to get it. They're yours if you want them."
Hotch realized that he was going to need something to help him blend in at the university. "Thanks." He said, placing the book on his lap. He glanced at the paperback's title once more. Who Wants to Live Forever? Seizing the Here and Now. He smirked. It seemed fate was teasing him again.
He exited the cab and paid the driver with what little cash he carried with him. He realized that if he was going to keep living like this, he was going to need to make a stop at an ATM. It would have to be quick though to avoid being picked up by any law enforcement as Garcia was sure to be monitoring his accounts and she would need to alert the team to any movement on his finances.
He stepped onto the university grounds, located the coffee shop, and settled down with his books to watch.
After wasting most of the day, Hotch was read to call the stakeout a bust. There was no one that seemed to fit the profile of elegant underground government hacker. Just students and teachers working on projects. It was taking a chance to think that the hacker would come back here, but students tended to be thrifty and resourceful when it came to finding free internet. It was possible, but not very likely that he or she would return.
He had stalked several students and teachers who were furiously typing on computers, but they had all been working on papers and not coding on the dark web. Hotch decided that he would be better off trying to find a place to spend the night. He left the coffeeshop, books in hand and headed through the campus park.
It was getting dark by this time, and the number of students in the park was limited, though earlier in the day, it had been filled with students hanging out, studying, and making out amongst other things.
Hotch felt something creep on the edges of his awareness. It was almost like a sixth sense. A sixth sense that got louder and start to feel more like a headache.
His first thought was drugs, that he was having an adverse reaction to something that had been slipped to him. He put a hand on his head to try and stop the pounding and the buzzing, but just as quickly as it had come, it left.
Hotch was still trying to clear his head when a man stepped in front of him. Hotch moved to go around him, but the man stepped right into his path again.
"Excuse me." Hotch muttered. He looked up into the face of the bearded man. He was young, maybe a student, but his eyes were bright with adrenaline. He looked eager for a fight.
"I am Erik Schmidt. Are you here to challenge me?" The man asked. He yanked out a sword from somewhere and stepped back a few feet, swishing it around in the air in front of him. "I am ready to meet your challenge, Immortal!"
Not overly concerned at the gesture – Hotch had been to college before and knew that most of the crazy things that happened were basically harmless enough when it came down to it. The sword even looked a little plastic. The student's use of the world immortal though, did give him pause, but he ignored it and reached into his pocket.
"FBI." Hotch identified himself. But the badge didn't seem to do anything.
"I don't care what ruse you use in the mortal world. Draw your sword!"
"I don't have a sword, but if you come any closer, I will be using my gun." Hotch told him calmly. The man advanced and Hotch drew his weapon, dropping the books in his hands; they hit the ground with a thud.
The man in front of him raised his sword higher with a grin. "If you're here for my head, you'll have to do better then a mortal weapon. There can only be one!"
He launched himself at Hotch with a move that he could've sworn he'd seen in a martial arts movie only. Hotch fired his weapon, but nothing happened; the man advanced. The man landed a few feet from Hotch and swiped at him with his sword. Hotch ducked, just barely making it under the blade.
He turned and saw the blade headed right for his head. He grasped something hard and smooth; he raised it above his head just in time for the sword to bit into the book. Luckily, it was a thick book and it slowed the sword down enough for Hotch to get out of the way before it was completely sliced in half.
Hotch rolled away from the man, one half of the book still clutched in his hands. There was no doubt in his mind that the sword was very real and that he was in danger. With no team, and no backup he could call on, this delusional student could kill him here and no one would be able to do anything to help him.
He flung the book at the man's face, hitting him square in the nose. With the distraction, he was able to grab his back-up weapon in his ankle holster, and fire at the man's knees. The man dropped to the ground, shouting with pain. He swiped at Hotch with the sword, knocking the gun from his hand.
Hotch caught his arm on the backswing, grasping a pressure point on the other man's wrist and bending it. He wrenched the sword from the man's hand. The man looked surprised. Obviously, he hadn't been expected that Hotch was going to fight dirty. Well, that was his loss.
"Who are you?" Hotch asked, pressing the blade against the man's throat.
"You've won." The man gasped. "Just do it already, or the next time you won't be so lucky, cheater!"
"I'm not going to kill you." Hotch told him.
"I will not be apart of your sick experiments." The man spat, suddenly sounding desperate. He shoved himself forward, falling on the blade. It sliced clean through his neck and both body and head fell the ground at Hotch's feet. Hotch stumbled back from the corpse, tripped over the planter box and landed on his butt, sword in hand. He sat there for a moment, trying to process what had just happened.
The black metal of his firearm gleamed in the grass and he picked it up, placing it back into the holster.
A crackle in the sky made him look up, half expecting to see the lightening. But the sky was clear, stars shone in the blue/black sky. He looked back down and saw that the body was glowing. This day was only getting stranger. Lightening flickered and danced along the body and then it jumped to him. He had no time to prepare himself before the lightening hit him in the chest. And oh, the feeling of power that flooded him! It was over as suddenly as it begun and left him shaky, dizzy and even more confused then ever.
He panted, pushing himself to his feet with the sword. If this is what is felt like to get struck by lightening then it was no wonder that people chased storms. Slowly, someone sighed from behind him and he spun around, sword raised, to see a man in a black overcoat standing a few feet away by the park bench.
There was no weapon pointed at him, no reason to think that this man was a threat, but Hotch knew instinctively that this was a dangerous man. Possibly even apart of the same group whose member he'd just beheaded.
"I was just here to pick up a book." The man admitted in a long suffering British accent. "I swear that's all it was. One ancient and very useful book. But then I just have to walk past you almost getting yourself beheaded by some jackass who apparently takes the Game way more seriously then even McLeod does. I'm still half tempted to walk away and leave you here."
"I'm sorry?" Hotch was still trying to get his bearings after the menace with the sword had come after him. What the hell had been with the lightening? He didn't feel burned, his clothes weren't charred, he felt normal. But he knew with a strike like that, his team should've been picking him up in a body bag.
The long black coat, the manner in which he was being treated by the man in front of him was leading Hotch to believe that he was involved in some sort of occultist practice. How else could he explain the sword wielding, and the ancient manner of speaking?
"But I have to say that an immortal FBI agent; that is shaping up to be interesting, almost worth sticking around for. We've had people in law enforcement change before, but it's a little more complicated when it's an FBI agent without a teacher."
The man in front of him smiled and Hotch realized that he was amused at the whole situation. Not only that at the fact that he'd almost been killed by a sword, but at the fact that he held all the cards and Hotch knew nothing. He had two choices; play along or tell him go away.
"We?" He asked. "Did I somehow stumble upon a pledge ritual?" Damn, there was that wry humour breaking through again. Before yesterday, he never wouldn't allowed his personal feelings to enter into an encounter with a subject.
"If you want to call it that, then yes; you did." The man responded.
He was young, Hotch realized as he took a better look. Possibly a student at the university, but the manner in which he treated people was with contempt. Almost like he was better then they were; narcissistic. Obviously thought that he was a part of some group with a mission. What the mission was though was up for speculation. But his eyes were old, really old. Hotch had seen young people with old eyes before, usually because of something traumatic in their past, but this look was beyond old; ancient was a better way to describe it.
"Be glad that I've elected to talk to you instead of trying to kill you like this young whelp." The man in black nodded to the headless body lying in the grass. "I usually succeed."
"Does your group usually progress to killings before conversation?" Hotch asked. He touched the reassuring weight of the sidearm at his side. "As you said before, I'm an FBI agent. Who are you?"
"You can call me Adam." The man said walking closer. He held out his hand towards Hotch, motioning to the gun with his eyes. "And you won't need that. If you're going to kill me, you're going to have to try a whole lot harder then that."
"You mean with this?" Hotch lifted the sword.
To his credit, the man in front of him didn't even flinch. He dropped his hand, shoving it deep into his pocket. "It's called a Quickening. The lightening show that you experienced." He clarified as the confused look at Hotch's face. "It happens when you behead another Immortal. That is the Game."
"Immortal?" Hotch asked. It wasn't the first time he'd heard someone use that term today. He wondered at it's meaning.
"It's what you are." Adam told him. "It's how you survived nine stab wounds from that serial killer you were hunting. I believe the newspapers call him the Boston Reaper. He killed you in your apartment late last night."
Hotch raised the sword. "What do you know about the Boston Reaper?" He asked, his voice had gone low and cold. He pointed it at the man's chest. Despite his non-nonchalant attitude, Hotch could tell that the presence of the sword really did bother him.
"Much less then you do actually. Mortal serial killers really aren't my area of expertise." Adam responded. He waved at the sword. "You mind putting that thing away before campus security comes by and sees you with it?"
Hotch didn't lower the sword. "Why? Do this bother you?" He stepped closer and let the point of the sword poke Adam in the chest. "You know a hell of a lot about immortality then anyone else I've met, so I'm betting that you are also immortal which means that this isn't going to kill you, at least not until I raise it a few more inches."
Even as he said it, Hotch wondered what was happening to him. He hadn't been this... well... arrogant in a long time. Not since he'd gotten knocked down a few pegs during his first profiling case.
Adam managed not to look a little intimidated as he stared back at Hotch. "Here's a piece of advice because I know that look in your eyes. That arrogance you're experiencing right now? It because you just beat fate. That pride will fade after a few hundred years and it'll be replaced by a cold and calculating weight. Whatever happened between you and the Reaper; that doesn't matter now. What matters is that if you want to survive, you'll play the Game." He told him in a low, dangerous tone, punctuating the last few words.
"So what then? I just leave my old life behind and pick a sword to run around beheading people?" Hotch asked sharply. "I've dedicated my life to putting away murderers like you, I'm not about to become one of them."
"I'm not a murderer." Adam responded with a wry grin. "Not by your mortal standards anyways. Beheadings have now become a matter of life and death for you, Aaron. And if your FBI personnel file is anything to go by, I know that you have it in you to play this deadly game."
"You're rog5000." Hotch said in understanding. "You were the one who was trying to find out who was doing those searches on spontaneous resurrections. That's how you know about the Reaper, and how to know who I am."
"Guilty as charged." Adam replied with a grin. "I knew you FBI boys were quick. Though I didn't manage to get any further then a few names and case-files before I was so rudely kicked out by some computer genius. It didn't take long with a little investigative work to figure out who'd changed after that. Not showing up for work was the first clue, but all that blood in your apartment was really the clincher."
"You've been watching me? Why? For how long?" Hotch took a step forward.
Adam took a step backwards to avoid the point of the sword. Another sword appeared from thin air and Adam knocked the sword out of his hands with a few deft moves. Now Hotch was the one standing at the sword's pointed end. Adam pressed hard enough to draw blood.
"I think it's time we turned this conversation around again." He said quietly. "You see, you've entered a very dangerous Game. You can see how easily I disarmed you. There are others more experienced at swordplay, who've had more training and more practice then you ever did in your college fencing class. I'm more experienced. Do you understand me?"
Hotch nodded. The sword point making it hard to speak.
Feeling in over his head again, he reached for that untouchable stillness that most law enforcement professionals learned to develop when dealing with unknown subjects. One of the first killers to get under his skin was when he'd worked that old case in Seattle. But then he'd been young and green, now he was more experienced. Or so he'd thought. For the first time since that case, that place of stillness was a little harder to access. Maybe it had something to do with what had happened to him.
Adam released the pressure he was putting on Hotch's throat and sword disappeared again. "Good. Now you have two choices; you can go back to your team and tell them it was all a big mistake or you can disappear and live a new life."
"And if I refuse to choose?" Hotch asked feeling drops of blood run down his neck.
Adam shrugged. "That's not up to me. Just know that if you expose yourself to the rest of the world, there's a whole lot of us who'll make it our place to make sure that you're the only one being exposed. We've existed for centuries among mortals and we're not about to let ourselves be put into the public eye by one FBI agent who refuses to follow the rules."
"You haven't even told me what those rules are yet." Hotch reminded him.
"Oh for..." Adam looked throughly vexed. He searched his pockets for a moment and then shoved a piece of paper at Hotch. "Here. Don't loose that. And get yourself a teacher. You're going to need one. Well, I don't think you'll need help in the offensive area, your rather thick head will get you into trouble."
"Hey!' A shout interrupted them and Hotch turned to see campus security headed towards them. He turned back to Adam who had vanished without a trace.
"What's going on here?" The guard asked coming up to Hotch. "The park's closed, sir." Then he caught sight of the headless body in the grass. "Holy mother of..." He grabbed for his gun.
Hotch held up his identification, holding his finger over the name just in case. "FBI. I just about to call it in."
"Yeah, okay..." The guard look a little green. "Is that really a...?"
"Headless body, yeah." Hotch replied. "Why don't you wait over there while I call it in." He motioned towards the park bench a few feet away.
"Sounds good." The guard said. "I'll alert campus security too."
"You do that." Hotch told him, already walking away from the body. He brushed blood from his neck, but didn't feel any cuts; odd.
He glanced back, but the security guard wasn't watching him as he spoke into the portable radio. Hotch kept walking until he was out of the park. Under the light from a streetlight, he looked down at the paper in his hand.
Don't involve mortals in challenges of other Immortals. Great, his first day as an immortal FBI agent and he'd already broken one of the rules. He shook his head at how crazy that sounded and continued down the street. He was going to have to find another cab and some place to sleep tonight.