Sorry this has taken a while but college has been crazy. I have an hour commute each morning and evening and then 42 and a half hours of college a week which is taking a bit of getting used to. Oh and since I know a lot of you are American when I say college I don't mean Uni which is what you mean when you say college, I mean what you do before that.

Anyway, I hope you like this and it looks like it's going to be a few more chapters yet.

Kate headed over to where she had seen Rick and the others head. As she walked she steeled herself for what she knew was coming, she knew that Rick was going to get a lot worse than just a few lapses in time and she knew that even if they got to antidote immediately it would take time to actually administer it and in that time Rick would get gradually worse. All she could hope was that he would remember what she had said the night before and keep his heart rate low because that would give them the longest amount of time to find the suspects, get the antidote from them and then use it.

She walked into the room where they had all gathered and were obviously waiting for her to join them before starting. Kate stopped and stood beside Rick. She was aware that McCord was watching her closely and she gave her partner what she hoped would pass as a strong smile, although she knew that it looked forced and insincere. It obviously satisfied McCord though because she nodded and then turned her attention to the screen. Kate followed suit, seeing that Rick and Henderson were already looking that way.

One of the techs, Kate felt bad for not knowing his name but she had been busy since she had gotten here so hadn't really had a chance to get to know a lot of the people she worked with, pushed some buttons on his keyboard and what was on his screen appeard on the big screen so they could all see it.

"After giving us what you did yesterday," McCord started, "We looked into both Valkyrie and Dreamworld, and as I said earlier we discovered that Valkyrie is a whom rather than a what."

Kate nodded before she looked at the tech who was obviously the one helping on this case and asked, "Agent McCord said earlier that you hadn't managed to get through the red tape to see how Bronson was involved when she came to pick us up this morning. Have you had any luck since?"

The tech shook his head. "The report we received was heavily redacted so we can't tell if the name Valkyrie is even mentioned at all or whether that name was taken out of the report entirely to give a better opportunity for plausible deniability."

"Can you bring the report up?" Rick asked quietly.

The tech nodded and after a few seconds the screen showed the report for the incident in question, which was mostly black lines with only a few words visible. "See," the tech commented, "About all we get from this was that there was an op run from an un named base in the Gulf and that the operation was successful."

"Have you done a word search for Valkyrie?" Kate asked, even though she already knew the answer.

The tech nodded but Kate could tell that what he really wanted to do was roll his eyes in response to her question. Rick then spoke again, "What about searching for a blocked out bit of text that is the same length as the words Valkyrie and Dreamworld?"

"They won't be the only words in the report that are eight and ten letters long," McCord disagreed, "So what would be the point?"

Rick shook his head. "Each letter takes up a different amount of space on a page," he explained, "A lower case I for example takes up the least space of all the letters. If you ran a search to look for the length of the combination of the letters that make up the words we're looking for then we should be able to at least see how often they crop up and maybe get a little information from what little text is actually visible."

Kate gave the man beside her a smile, even though he wasn't looking at her, his words had proved that while the toxin was affecting him he was still the Richard Castle she knew, the man who knew his typing. Kate then caught McCord looking at her and gave her a much more sincere smile than she had managed earlier.

"This might take a minute," the tech stated as he typed away at his keyboard, working out the lengths of the words.

McCord nodded. "In that case we can go on to what we learnt about Dreamworld and Bronson's connection. It is indeed a ghost base in the Gulf and that's all the information we've managed to get about it other than that Bronson and the mysterious Valkyrie were working from there while they were taking part in ops against Al Qaeda."

Kate sighed lightly to herself, keeping it quite so that Rick woldn't hear it and realise that she was really beginning to doubt that they would be able to find the antidote in time. So far all they had was a bunch of dead ends and possibilities, they weren't any closer to getting Rick healed than they had been when they'd left yesterday.

She however had failed to think about how well Rick actually knew her because he reached out and gently touched her shoulder, giving it a squeeze, telling her silently that they would fix this.

"Come on Kate," Henderson suddenly stated, breaking the almost silence that had fallen over the room, "Let's go and make everyone some coffee."

Kate nodded slowly before she gave Rick's hand a squeeze. Once she let it drop away she stood from where she was leaning against the desk and walked over to where Henderson was now waiting for her at the door.

Once they had left the room Rick started towards where McCord was standing, watching over the techs shoulder as he typed. Rick tapped her on the shoulder and quietly asked, "Can I talk to you for a moment please Agent McCord?"

McCord turned towards him and nodded before she lead the way over to an area of the office where no one would disturb them, sensing that Rick wanted to talk to her about something private and probably to do with Kate. "What can I help you with Mr Castle?" she asked.

Rick just studied her for a moment before he opened his jacket and pulled out the letters he had written for Kate, Alexis and the others. He had picked them up on their way out of the house that morning on a spur of a moment decision and now he knew why. "I wrote these," he started hesitantly, "Because I can't say goodbye over the phone and keep it together. So Kate suggested I do what I do best and write."

He stopped talking, looking at the letters in his hand. When he stayed silent for a few seconds McCord spoke. "What's that got to do with me Mr Castle?"

Her voice brought Rick back to the present and he looked away from the letters and up at her before saying, "Can you look after them for me? See that they get to the right people if everything goes wrong and I don't make it?"

She nodded slowly before taking the offered letters. "You're going to be fine," she insisted as she stashed them, "You can't talk like that, it sounds like you're giving up."

"I'm not giving up," Rick insisted, "I just know that my time is running out and that we're not really all that much closer to finding the suspects and the antidote."

McCord went to say more but stopped herself when she saw that Kate and Henderson were back in the room, carrying a tray of mugs. She watched as Rick moved away, going towards where Kate was putting the tray down.

"Here you go Rick," she said as she handed him a mug.

"Thank you Meredith," he replied as he took the mug from her and took a drink. "Ah just right."

McCord saw Kate visibly flinch when Rick called her by the wrong name and she couldn't help but wonder who Meredith actually was. Kate took a moment before she replied, "I'm not Meredith Castle, I'm Kate, Meredith hasn't been fully in the picture since she left when Alexis was a baby remember."

McCord saw as Rick became aware of what he had said and his face dropped. "Sorry," he apologised quickly .

"It's ok Rick," Kate reassured him, "It's a symptom of the toxin. Besides, it could have been worse, you could have called me Gina."

Rick smiled at her before adding, "Or Janice."

Kate shuddered a little at that and it was obviously complelty unbidden and as a reaction to the name. Rick however didn't notice because he had already turned his attention back to the screen. "Can we get on with this," he requested, "Before I say something I really regret."

The tech nodded. "We're just about done, the results should be coming up in a few seconds."

A few seconds later the documents that they had been given appeared on the screen and they were covered in highlighted areas. "Well we're definitely on the right track," McCord commented.

Kate nodded wordlessly before she looked at the tech and said, "We need to go through and see if we can make sense of any of this."