Ok, its been a while. Please don't shoot me. This chapter was REALLY hard to right, theres a bit at the end where two characters in particular may seem out of character, but all with be explained in chapter eight, I promise. Well, all to do with that anyway! Please enjoy and review, hope i still have some readers and hope its worth the wait!
Chapter Seven
"So that's how I met them all."
Aiden smiled to herself.
"Um, um, um, mommy...mommy..." Danni began, mumbling into Aiden's chest. "Does Jess know dadeem as well?"
Jess frowned. "Dadeem?"
Aiden grinned. "The team. I've told them about all of them...to try and keep them entertained...tell them about cases without going into details of autopsy-obviously I don't tell them about murders, but I try to make it like a mystery book...even back when Maxi was able to talk, neither of them could ever pronounce it. The team. Dadeem."
"Mommy?" Danni pressed without whining. "Does she?"
Jess smiled at the child, who was chewing on her hair, a solemn expression contrasting with the child's typically childlike behaviour. "Yes. I knew dadeem." The word sounded strange-almost foreign- as it bubbled over her lips, but Jess liked it. It sounded sweet, affectionate and innocent.
"Who is Li-nah-see?"
"She does your mommy's job, she's very nice."
Maxi pulled on her sleeve. Her hands fluttered rapidly, and Danni was quick to translate.
"So do you know the others, like Danny and Mac?"
Jess smiled, and it hit her again why Aiden had given her daughters the names she had. "Yes, I do. When I... Left...Danny and Lindsay were pretty much newlyweds, just starting their family."
"So they have a kid?" Aiden asked, bittersweet feelings she didn't understand swelling round her head, and Jess nodded.
"She would be about...three and a half now..."
"Oh..." Aiden paused. When she spoke again her voice was much quieter. "What's her name?"
"Lucy. Lucy Aiden Messer."
The deathly silence that had smothered the morgue remained in the air until Hawkes cleared his throat.
"Sid, by the Jehovah effect, you don't mean...?"
"Actually Sheldon, yes I do. The urban legend that no doctor, coroner or in fact any sane person would possibly believe, but the only possible explanation for what I see before me now.
"Several years ago, there were a group of four scientists, doctors. They were supposedly looking for a way to beat death. All of them were well known geniuses, all with extraordinarily high IQs. Their leader, Mickel Jevriukoff was a brilliant man, but he was also devoted to his wife, who was dying of an inoperable tumour on her brain.
These four men spent most of their time in their lab, until finally they supposedly created a pair of drugs- deoxyributathonoical acid and haemotoxirabutathonal, which they used in tandem. The first was hypothetically injected or ingested, then the second. When taken together they cause major activity in the heart and lungs, which would kill someone immediately, unless their hearts weren't beating properly in the first place. Together, even on a dead body, it forces the heart to fibrillate violently and the pulmonary system to take in oxygen. The deoxyributathonoical acid also has preserving agents that last up to six to seven days after death.
The scientists found that if they administered the deoxyributathonoical acid a little while pre-mortem then suffocated a small animal, such as a mouse and then injected the haemotoxirabutathonal up to the six or seven days later, the mouse would breathe again. They tried it on the Jevriukoff's wife when she collapsed in the street, but she then killed herself a day later, when the pain was too much to bear. Jevriukoff was devastated, and three days later, he and his friends turned up dead, decapitated, as a matter of fact. The legend goes that it was stolen by a terrorist organisation called Diablos. They apparently created their own drug by accident, influencing extraordinary healing using stem cells. That drug, if used with the other two would allow people to effectively murder someone, and then raise them again."
"What happened to these victims?" Mac presumed.
Sid shook his head and took off his glasses. "I don't know, but that's my current explanation. Nothing else makes sense; they were all, bar the youngest two, alive a few nights ago, dead before that and dead now."
The tension was suffocating Nick. He needed to breathe, to get some air, but he felt like there was nowhere to go. He sucked in a massive breath of air, but it didn't reach his lungs.
Damn it. He thought as he recognised the symptoms of a panic attack. He hadn't had one for years – they had started after he was buried in that coffin. He'd been in an elevator, leaving the hospital, when all of a sudden intense pain assaulted his chest and Nick couldn't breathe. As he started trembling and choking, he must have hit the panic button twenty times. The last time Nick had had a panic attack was nearly 7 years ago. With another painful twang, he realised that it was halfway through the McBride's case. He remembered it clearly – after they'd interrogated the boy, Mark. They'd been about to go to the lake to look for the bodies, when Nick had felt the call of nature and rushed to the men's room. Once he'd got in there, he'd started freaking out. The only thing that stopped the panic attack from consuming Nick completely was the desperate yearning in him to find the McBride's little girl, Cassie and bring her home. Now, that wasn't even there.
Aw, dammit between me and Greg they're gonna think we're a bunch of pussies, part of Nick's brain moaned. However, the rest of his mind was focusing on breathing in and out. As his breaths began to get caught in his throat, Nick's eyes met Sara's, and an understanding passed between them.
"Hey, um guys, I can't find my cell phone, I think left it in the lab... Nick, will you come help me find it? Please?" She smiled sweetly, and Nick nodded tightly.
"Sure," was all he could manage to say. The two of them made their way into the elevator, and it was there when they were alone that Nick leaned against the side of the elevator and sucked in the biggest breaths he could muster. Sara, recognising the signs herself after the Natalie Davis incident began to rub Nick's arm comfortingly.
"It's okay. It's gonna be alright Nicky."
He smiled his trademark smile at her through his tears as they came, uncontrollably attacking his eyes. The sobs wrenched in his throat, but it made Sara smile a bittersweet smile as he tried to make her feel better.
"You...o...okay?" he stuttered, and she put her arms around his neck and pulled his head onto her shoulder.
"I'm fine, Nicky. And you're gonna be too. We're gonna catch this guy. I promise."
DB strode angrily through the Las Vegas crime lab, and no one stood in his way. This was not normal behaviour for DB, but he had reached the end of the road. Little under a week ago, he had lost three of the best CSIs he had ever seen. Sure, the people who replaced them were good at the job, but they lacked something that DB had always admired in Nick, Greg and Sara, and even Catherine before she moved to the FBI. It hadn't taken DB long to realise that what the new CSIs lacked was the distinct, individual personalities the others had had, and when the new CSIs clashed, they argued. Nick and Greg would bicker good naturedly over the music they listened to in the car, but it never got serious unless something was very wrong. The new CSIs just didn't gel as a team, and none of them were interested in opening up personally to the others.
DB was also worried about Morgan. Ever since the dreaded news about the transfers, she had been constantly arguing with Ecklie. The first time it was a lab spectacle. Now, the people in the lab almost expected it- and it had only been five days since the news came in, four since they were gone. Already things were changing.
Just to top it all off, his boy had been suspended from school again, and Julie Finlay was off with the flu.
He sighed as he heard raised voices once again coming from Ecklie and his daughter.
"For god's sakes, why can't you just let it go, Morgan? I had no choice!"
"This one should be good!" DB gritted his teeth at the voice of Marty Jones, one of the new CSIs. It was another thing DB despised about the newcomers. They loved watching the fights.
Morgan rolled her eyes, tears brimming around the edges. "You've said that a lot. A lot of those times there were other choices. Better choices."
"I always did what I thought was best."
"Oh, really? Best for who?"
"Well, first, you and your mother. Then, the lab."
"Oh, well see, there is your problem- right there!"
"What?" Ecklie scrunched up his eyebrows.
"You don't see people! You see things. Like..." Morgan thought for a second before dragging an unsuspecting Henry into the middle by his shirt collar. "Here. You don't see Henry Andrews, the human being with needs and dreams. You see a lab technician, replaceable and under your control."
DB began to step forward to stop Morgan as he saw the tremendous shade of purple Ecklie turned. But of all things he expected, DB was shocked at Conrad Ecklie's next move.
Archie was watching in nervous amusement at the door of the A/V lab, but his eyes widened at Morgan's lurch at Henry. The poor guy looked ready to wet himself. Ecklie was standing two feet in front of Archie, and as Henry desperately tried to avoid eye contact with Ecklie, his eyes met Archie's. Archie motioned helplessly with his hands as Henry began to try squirming free whilst Morgan's grip loosened. The next thing Archie knew, Conrad Ecklie had a firm hold on the back of his neck and Archie was dragged straight to the front.
"Conrad!" DB shouted, appalled.
But Ecklie was past negotiations. "So what your saying is that I should poke my nose into the personal lives of my colleagues and fix all their problems."
"Look, you're hurting him!" Morgan screamed, tightening her grip on Henry who winced.
"You didn't answer me!"
"Suspend her!" Marty's friend, Sandy crooned.
"Yeah," Marty agreed. "Put her in place!"
They both shut up at the livid look on DB's face.
Archie swallowed. "Um, sir, please let, ow, ow, ow!" he squirmed as Ecklie's grip tightened.
"Ecklie! Brody!" DB shouted. "What the hell is going on?"
"My mom is dead! There was a car crash, but if he had done as he had promised and picked her up, she never would have been in the taxi!" Morgan shrieked in anguish, shocking the lab to silence. Well, almost silence
"Please, Morgan." Henry gasped quietly as he tried to get some air.
"Don't blame your mother's death on me! I said I had no choice!" Ecklie yelled.
"Stop!" A new voice shouted.
Everyone froze as a furious Mandy stormed out of her lab. She strode straight to Ecklie, yanking an aching Archie out from his grasp, and dragging Archie's arm, firmly but gently, over to Morgan, all the while staring daggers at Ecklie. Then she extracted Henry from Morgan's grip, hooking her arms through one of each of the two shaken techs arms.
"I'm sorry about your Mom." She said sincerely. "But you crossed a line." She turned to look at Ecklie. "Both of you. I really, truly feel for both of you. I really do. But that does not give you a n excuse to terrorize us. Like you said Morgan, we're people. Not things. We may 'just be lab rats' in your minds, but actually, you couldn't do your jobs without us. And we stick together. We're a team. I thought the whole lab was supposed to be part of that team too. My mistake."
The steely cold of Mandy's enraged voice penetrated everyone as she led Henry and Archie away, sending a dirty look at the people behind her. After a few seconds, Bobby Dawson took one look at Ecklie and followed. Hodges followed him, and one by one, the loyal lab techs walked out of the Las Vegas Crime Lab.
