This chapter takes place in the middle of 4x04 Gaia.
Ressler walks slowly into his office and drops to his chair, swivels around and exhales as Liz looks up at him from across their desks. She's not technically an agent and has no jurisdiction, yet no one argued, least of all him, when she sat back at her old desk.
"You look like I feel," Liz tells him, looking over her laptop screen between them.
"Yeah. Geez, Liz. A nuclear power plant is in the firing line. This is a whole new ball game from our usual suspects," he says, shaking his head as he tries to process it all. Everyone within a 50-mile radius will be wiped from the face of the earth if they don't stop this guy. Millions of lives will be lost.
His mind fills with images of Chernobyl and its invisible cloud of radioactive death to all who breathe it, and a mushroom cloud vaporizing one of the most powerful cities in the world. And yet still he doesn't picture his own probable demise. Only others. The children and families dying apart, never getting to hold each other tight in their final moments. Lifting his eyes, he sees the same in Liz. The fear not for herself but for her daughter.
"We'll stop him, right?" she asks, voice quivering, but he can't answer that. He can only pray for the sake of the state of New York that they do. But still he nods, more to help her feel a little better than to effectively answer the question.
"What are you working on?" he asks, leaning forward in his chair and needing to focus on the job at hand. And as she hesitates, reaching for the laptop lid to close it, he asks again.
"What is it?" He knows she's trying to hide what she's looking at. Her eyes are bluer than normal, picking up the light from the laptop as she looks up at him again from over the screen.
And just as he decides to drop it and let it go, she speaks softly. "Come and see."
Rising from his chair in one motion, he's at her side as she turns the laptop for him to see the screen. And what's on the screen is the last thing he expects.
"Is that-"
"Agnes, yes."
He leans forward, taking in the black and white video feed of the tiny child on the screen. "How?" he asks, glancing sideways at Liz as she likewise leans forward to view her daughter. "Where is she?"
"I don't know… But Kirk sent me this today so that I could log in and look at her any time of the day or night," she tells him, her tone hushed as if afraid to disturb her sleeping child. Delicately touching the screen, her fingers trace the outline of Agnes.
Leaning back, Ressler steps to his desk, grabs his chair and rolls it to her desk. Scooting over a little so he has room, he moves his chair by hers, sits down and gazes at the tiny girl who is almost lost in the basinet she's laying in. They have a city to save, he knows that. But right now this one small child might just signify all the lost children out there who may never come home tonight. He can spend a few minutes with this baby girl and her mother.
"We're gonna get her back, Liz," he tells her and almost as if Agnes hears his voice she stirs, raises her tiny fists to her eyes, rubs them and slowly opens them. Kicking her little legs and dislodging the blanket, she gazes around her basinet.
"Aaaww, baby girl," Liz coos to her, and Ressler smiles. And his resolve to find Agnes and bring her home deepens as his eyes slide across to Liz. The tears in her eyes threaten to spill over as she talks softly to her child on the screen. She cannot hold her, and Ressler wants to give her that. More than anything else. Agnes begins to cry and as Liz's finger traces her on the screen a hand comes into view, holding a small bottle that the baby immediately begins to suck on.
"Is that Kirk?" Ressler asks, leaning further forward.
"Yes." She points to the screen. "See, on his right wrist, the bruising from his blood transfusions. Instinctively she rubs her own scar on her right wrist. Ressler sees the motion, noting the odd familiarity between the pale wrist on the screen and the pink and scarred one near him. And Liz is so calm. This man is holding her child from her, and yet again, Ressler hears something akin to understanding behind her words.
"I may not be able to stand that he has her, but I can see she's being taken care of," she whispers, her fingers tracing Agnes's tiny face.
Aram peers in the office behind Ressler's desk and knocks lightly on the door, obviously not wanting to disturb his coworkers sitting together. "Um, Agent Ressler, we got something."
Ressler nods, takes one last look at Agnes on the screen and follows Aram to the war room, leaving Liz to be alone with her baby girl.
###
Some 15 minutes later Ressler walks back into their office with two coffees in hand and deposits one on Liz's desk.
"Thanks," she replies and takes a sip. "What did Aram have?"
"He spoke to the engineer at Stone Park. They can't just shut the plant down in a few hours. It takes days for the core to cool." He sits down, his chair still at her end of the office. "And as we know, the river is going to be at low tide in a few hours. It's bad, Liz."
Her screen is filled with tidal charts and information on the Hudson River and the area surrounding the nuclear plant. "I have a call in to a Doctor Thornton at the University. He knows more about the river than what's on these charts."
Sipping on his coffee, Ressler studies her over the rim of his cup. She's tired. The drawn features tell him she's not sleeping. Being apart from her child is eating away at her. "You still got the link open to her?" he asks softly, and is answered by her sad smile.
With a click, the tidal charts disappear and the basinet and baby girl is back up. "My princess," she whispers.
"And you can't trace this feed or he will just take her away and disappear long before we could get there," he says, more to himself than to anything she has said.
"Exactly. See, YOU get that," she sighs, picking up her coffee cup again, "Unlike others."
He doesn't need to ask who she is referring to. And part of him just wants to sit here with her, but there is work to be done. "Duty calls," he tells her spying Cooper coming down the metal stairs from his office. "Let us know when you hear from that Doctor," he says, rising and pushing his chair back to his side of the office. And stepping back out into the war room he walks toward Cooper, sparing a glance off to his left at Liz and the baby girl he knows is on her screen, unseen to anyone outside their office.
And outside in the war room, Ressler is at Aram's desk, looking at the overhead monitors as more information comes in. And he's torn. Concentrating on their case, with millions of lives at stake, yet his heart lies with the one woman in his office and the life of her baby girl. And it's while he's got one eye on her and one on Cooper and Aram that he sees the moment something goes very wrong in his office.
As she's breaking down, hand to her mouth he doesn't hear what Aram is saying as he excuses himself. "Be right back," he tells them and doesn't wait for the reply, striding into their office and coming in behind Liz. And it's as he feared. The screen is black. The baby monitor feed has been cut and Liz words resound in the small space.
"I'm begging you! Bring her back!" she cries, futilely looking at the blank screen.
He's at her side as his hand finds her shoulder. "What happened?" he asks, almost dreading the answer.
"I trusted him!" she cries, pressing keys on the keyboard in an attempt to regain the feed.
"Liz, we can't trust what Kirk says," he tells her gently, leaning down to her as her breath hitches in his ears.
"No! I trusted Tom and he just walked in there!" she cries, waving her hand to the screen. "Kirk shut down the feed at Tom's incursion, and now she's gone!"
And now he realizes what's happened. Damn the man. "Shit. I'm sorry, Liz."
"I need some air," she says and he doesn't hesitate and walks with her to the elevator, ignoring the concerned looks from Aram and Cooper.
Punching the button on the elevator he rides up with her as her tears flow. "I told him! Damn it, I told him not to do anything!" Her sobs overtake her words for a moment as the elevator comes to a stop in the parking lot. And as always happens when they come up from the windowless Post Office, it's always somewhat of a surprise to find daylight above.
His hand finds her waist as he guides her away from the two guards at the door, walking with her toward the street level as the light increases. There are less vehicles over here and they are relatively alone. Hands wiping her cheeks, she's shaking her head. "Now I can't see her! I don't know where Kirk will take her!"
"Why the hell did he go in there?" he asks, but kicks himself. She doesn't know that any more than he does. And as Liz sobs in front of him, he'd like to give Tom Keen a piece of his mind. Or a fist. Whichever gets the point across.
"I trusted him! I literally spoke to him minutes before and I thought he understood we weren't tracing the feed!" She cries, pacing near him and rubbing her arms. "I had a plan too!"
She stops suddenly, standing there helplessly. "I can't take much more of this, Ress. I really…" Face crumpling, she sobs fresh tears as she seeks him out with her bloodshot eyes.
And his arms are around her, finding her back with his hands, holding her close against him as she shakes. Wrapping her hands around his waist, she clings to him. "Ssshh," he whispers, slipping right back into comforting mode as he's done before. "I know. I'm right here…"
Her arms grip him tighter as he rocks her gently. And he can't even allow himself to think of what Tom Keen has done to her as he offers her a shoulder to cry on. A place to let it all out.
"We'll find her, I promise," he tells her softly, his mouth close to her ear. "We will, Liz." And not even the prospect of the nuclear annihilation of New York is going to stop him.
"I believe you," she sobs, her tears wetting his shirt collar as he holds her tight.
As she shakes against him, he talks softly in her ear. "She's beautiful," he whispers, "Your baby girl. Your little princess…we're gonna find her, Liz." And he's not even sure what he says as he pictures the baby on the monitor earlier, sound asleep in her basinet and then taking her bottle. But his words have the desired affect and slowly she calms and her shakes subside. She draws back from him a little, and slipping from around his waist her hands come up and cup both of his cheeks.
"Thank you, Ress," she says through her tearstained face. "I don't know what I'd do without you. I really don't…"
His hands find her wrists and he has to stop himself from turning and kissing her palm as he holds her hands. She's close against him, and all he wants to do is protect her. Find her child and place Agnes back in her arms. And he'll do it. That's a promise he makes to himself as her hands move down to his chest, slipping out from under his own hands.
"Thank you," she repeats, patting his chest.
Wiping her eyes, she exhales heavily. "Okay, I think I can go back in now," she tells him, still resting one hand on his chest. He feels it with each rise and fall of his chest with every breath he takes.
He slips his arm around her waist again as she stands beside him and tips her head into him.
He doesn't want to head back down, but they need to. "Let's go save the world, shall we?" she says and he is rewarded by a soft smile behind her red rimmed eyes as she looks up at him.
He nods to her, nudging her toward the elevator. First he'll save the world and then he'll save one small infant, he promises himself.