Author's Note: You're in luck. Thanks to Daylight Savings, I woke up an hour EARLIER for my exam than I wanted to. I hate time shifts, they ALWAYS throw me off. Anyways, as I wait for class, cramming last minutes of studying in (which will, inevitably do me no good) I decided to update a few hours early today (in celebration of Daylight Savings). Additionaly, a few notes: 1) do not hate me. 2) do not think it's over. 3) don't hate me. 4) I've been doing heavy editing of the ending, so I HOPE to get it up tomorrow... we'll see. 5) the alternative ending will also be up tomorrow as a second "bonus" chapter. I may or may not also include a deleted Sandle and a deleted Nick-centric scene from my other story, Slither, since so many of you have read it. Probably not though, I think that's just TOO tacky. I may in fact, include those in Slither itself, if interested. Or I might forget. I removed them because they were both badly written and served no purpose in the greater scheme of things. I'm actually deliberating whether I should even tell you that or not. Whatever, I always babble in my author's notes.

6) Please do not hate me. At least, don't hate me YET. This story is NOT DONE.


It was all Catherine could do to prevent herself from smashing her head on the desk. She felt like she was dealing with five-year-olds. She was going on a triple shift now, since they were shorthanded, and there was no place she'd rather be than the hospital with Sara and Greg.

"No," Catherine said, pushing the file back at the rookie across the table. "I didn't ask for this, take it away."

The rookie nodded quickly and took the offending file away from Catherine's gaze. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. She contemplated her predicament a moment, and then decided she was going to tell Ecklie to stuff it and leave. She got to her feet and headed towards Grissom's office, with the hope of enlisting him in her army.

When she got there, though he was deep in conversation with an unknown caller. She held her angry tongue, but found it very difficult, and waited for him to hang up.

"Where are you?" Grissom was saying. "Why did you leave?"

Catherine did not hear the response, but her curiosity had been aroused. "Grissom—"

He held up a hand to stop her in her tracks. "Greg, don't hang up," Grissom said. "If you're going to hang up, what was the point in calling?"

The change in him was so subtle, Catherine wouldn't have noticed it if she didn't know Grissom so well. His stare was blank as he hung up the phone.

"What's wrong?" she asked him.

Grissom blinked in confusion. "I have no idea who I was just speaking with," he replied.

"What did he say?"

Grissom closed his eyes. "Goodbye."

"We should go over to that hospital," Catherine said. "And now."


While Nick and Warrick alerted hospital security of his escape, Greg thanked the optometrist for his help after he hung up on Grissom, and left the office before walking right back through the hospital front doors. He thought fleetingly how conveniently placed the optometrist's office was, and that blind people must get a kick out of it. Then he wondered why blind people would bother with an optometrist and laughed at some internal cruel joke.

He casually stepped into the elevator and hit a button. He noticed the marines beginning to launch into action and was only vaguely curious as to their presence. Maybe some old general had been shot somewhere. For some reason, he got a big thrill at that thought. He whistled as he waited for the elevator to open onto the third floor before he strolled out and made his way down the hall. He glanced into his room and saw nurses and doctors examining the window, through which he had faked his escape. In truth, he had snuck out the front door while Nick and Warrick had hauled Sara off to her bed.

It was Sara that he was interested in.

Turning his back on the doctors in his room, Greg walked into Sara's, which was across the hall and closed and locked the door.

She was sleeping so soundly, he was almost averse to wake her. He approached her and ran his hands across the scars on her arms with a blank stare. So soft and sweet, he thought, like frayed silk. Even battered and bruised, she looked like an angel, sleeping her exhaustion off quietly. He would always remember how she looked in that moment: peaceful, beautiful, and strikingly vulnerable. It was the last part that he was about to exploit.

He looked over at some cabinets on the far side of the room and approached them. He dug threw a few drawers before he found a packaged syringe and opened it. He took a piece of surgical rubber and tied it around his upper-arm as a tourniquet using his teeth as a second hand. Soon, the vein revealed itself and Greg bit his lip as he drew his own blood. He stared at it in the syringe and smiled before approaching Sara again.

She began to stir, but that didn't bother him. It would be over soon enough. He pulled up the chair next to her bed and sat down, taking her arm. He looked for an appropriate vein…

"What are you doing?" she said, groggily. She recognized him and her eyes snapped open as she pulled her arm away.

Greg sighed as he stared at the place where her arm used to be. "Don't be difficult, Sara, it'll only take a moment."

She noted the syringe in his hand. "Did you just take my blood?"

"No," said Greg, closing his eyes.

"Then what's in the syringe?" she asked.

Greg flicked the shaft of the syringe. "This would be my blood."

Sara's face was stoic. "You were going to infect me, weren't you?"

A slow grin spread across his face. "You kissed me back in there, Sara. It's when I realized it. I don't have to kill you. I have to make you better."

Sara sat up in her bed and tried to back away from him. "What do you mean better? You're…" she hesitated. "You're going to be dead from that disease in three hours."

"So the doctors say," Greg said. "I beg to differ."

"You can't argue with doctors, Greg," Sara said, then added, "If you are Greg."

"Of course I'm Greg," he replied. "Who else would I be?"

Sara sighed. "I don't want to lose you, Greg. Not now, not yet."

"You won't," Greg said, shrugging off the statement. "Please, Sara, do I look like someone who's about to die?"

"I can't tell anymore," Sara replied. "How do I know you're not already dead?"

He laughed a cold, cruel laugh. "Perceptive. But if I were dead, I'm sure you'd know it. I'd be lying on the ground with a cold gaze that you thought could maybe still see, still hear, as you screamed and shouted all the goodbyes you never got to say. Because you never meant them in life, but in death they all of a sudden seem so important somehow, and they need to be said. It's grief and the chance of a love lost that prompts those words. Nothing else."

"Stop it," Sara said, cringing at his words. "Stop talking like that."

Greg obliged as he looked at the syringe again with a wistful smile. "Have you ever wondered what kind of offspring two genetically superior specimens of the human species would produce?" Greg asked her, his eyebrows raised. "Because I have."

Sara began to feel a little nervous. She got out of the bed completely. "Greg," she said. "Stop this."

Greg smiled, and his blue eyes chilled her. He rose to his feet. "I told you, Sara," he said. "I don't want to hurt you. I want to fix you."

"I'm not broken," Sara said, making for the door.

He noticed. "You are," he said. "You just don't know it."

She was still facing him when her back made contact with the door and she fumbled behind her for the knob. It wouldn't open. Greg fished a key out of his pocket.

"It's amazing what you can find, when you look for it," he said.

Sara's eyes darted around the room until it rested on a scalpel, which was on a nearby table. She grabbed it. "I don't want to hurt you Greg, but I will. You're sick."

Greg laughed. "Everyone keeps saying that but I think they're just close-minded," Greg said.

Something tried to open the door from the other side. When they were unsuccessful, something banged against it. Greg seemed unusually calm as he approached Sara. She froze. He leaned in towards her, but his arms were pinned at his sides as he whispered in his ear.

"You would make one hell of a Missus," he said, before the door gave way, knocking them both over. Reflexively, her bad arm shot out in front of her to break the fall, sending a shot of pain through her shoulder and she cried out. She landed on top of Greg. He smiled up at her wickedly and she immediately rolled off of him.

"Hey there, Greggo!" Nick said, sounding irritated as he pulled Greg to his feet. "You look different, did you get a hair cut?"

Warrick kneeled down next to Sara. "You alright?" he asked her.

Sara stared up at Greg. Her eyes darted to the syringe, and she snatched it, hiding it in her sling as she put her bad arm back in it. "I'm fine," she said, getting to her feet.

Warrick chuckled. "Last time you said that, you fell down."

She glared at him. "Don't mock me," she said, then looked over at Greg who Nick was restraining him.

"Look at you," Warrick said to Greg. "Aren't you the perfect portrait of health now?"

Greg wouldn't stop smiling even as Nick pushed him into the arms of a security guard who cuffed him. "I am the peak of evolution, my friend."

"Come on, Mr. Sanders," the guard said. "I'm with hospital security, you're going to the closed ward now."

"Aw," said Greg. "But if I'm going to be dead in three hours, I would much rather spend it with my friends." He snickered while the other three CSIs shivered.

The security guard hauled him away, and Greg's friends were left alone. Sara felt suddenly cold and she rubbed her arms.

"Did he hurt you?" Nick said, concerned. "Because I love Greg, but I'm not too keen on the side of him that wants to kill you."

Sara slowly shook her head. "No," she said. "We just… talked."

"Are you sure?" Warrick asked. "He didn't do anything sketchy?"

The syringe pressed against the skin of Sara's arm in the sling. "He certainly gave me a Hannibal Lector feel but he didn't lay a finger on me."

"That doesn't fit with prognosis," Warrick said. "He's supposed to have fallen into an excessively violent state. But you say all he did was talk?" Sara nodded. " Maybe Dr. Utterson was right. Maybe this isn't the same virus."

"You think she engineered a different one?" Sara said, sounding skeptical. "All by herself?"

"I don't think she engineered a new one," Warrick said. "I think she observed the effects on Matthew and altered the existing strain."

At that second, Catherine and Grissom arrived.

"Hey," Nick said. "You missed all the fun."

"You found Greg," Grissom assumed, and the three of them nodded. "Great. Where is he now?"

"Closed ward," Warrick said. "Hospital security and our good friend the Colonel decided it would be better for everyone if he was kept under constant surveillance."

"Col. Carrew agreed to not intervene for twenty-four hours," Grissom said. "But he's still hanging around."

"I hate the military," Catherine muttered.

"I want to talk to Greg," Sara said suddenly. All eyes rested on her. She looked at them all in turn. "What? If he's not following the prognosis maybe he won't die in a few hours either. Maybe I can get through to that part of him that's still…"

"I'm not leaving you alone with him again," Grissom said.

"None of us are," Nick said. "Not even if those eyes are brown."

"Agreed," Sara said.


Before she went up to see him, she dressed back into her clothes and slipped the syringe in her jacket pocket. He wasn't at his bed. He sat at a table drawing on a piece of paper with his back to the door when she entered. He heard the door open and close but didn't look up. Sara held her breath. Grissom and the others were waiting outside, ready to respond to any sound of trouble.

"You'd think they'd get me some better accommodations," Greg said, not looking at her.

"Sorry about that," Sara said. "But you are carrying a virus that turns you into a killer."

"I get that. I'm sorry, Sara. For all the trouble I put you through."

Sara was still on her guard. "Yeah, I know. What are you drawing?"

"Doodles," he answered simply.

She wished he would turn around so she could see his eyes. "Greg, would you look at me?"

"I'd rather not, Sara sweetheart."

That in itself answered her question. "Alright. Why no violence?"

Sara watched Greg's back rise and fall as he laughed. "You think violence and deviance is embodied by a will to do severe bodily harm to others. You underestimate the taboo thoughts and emotions of the human race. We want to do far worse things to each other than simply maim and kill. The virus makes us act like the animals we are, but human beings are the most depraved animals extant today. Surely as a CSI, you've figured that out by now."

"You're talking like a sociopath," Sara noted.

"We are all sociopaths, Sara," Greg said. "Given the chance."

"I could never kill someone."

"That's a lie," Greg said casually. "You could. For plenty of justifiable, indeed even legally acceptable reasons. For instance, I bet you'd kill someone to protect someone you love. Or to protect yourself. Sane people kill each other every day. The only thing that differentiates them from the sociopaths is that the sociopaths don't see it as wrong. Does that make them worse people?"

"Can I talk to you?" Sara asked. "The you that's not a sociopath?"

Greg laughed again. "I'm flattered, Sara, but I'm not a sociopath. I'm just honest."

"Can I talk to the part of you that didn't try to kill me?"

"How many times do I have to apologize for that before you forgive me?" Greg said, shaking his head. "I want something completely different from you now."

"And what's that?" Sara asked.

Greg's back went rigid and he clutched the pencil hard before he dropped it. It rolled across the table and onto the floor. He collapsed over the table, his hands clutching at the edges and his knuckles turning white.

"Greg?" said Sara, taking a step closer to him.

"Agh!" Greg uttered. He straightened up and breathed hard. He caught sight of what he was drawing and pushed himself away from the table so fast, his chair fell over backwards. Groaning, he stared up at Sara with brown eyes and gave her a dopey smile. "Hi, Sara."

Sara smiled and squatted down, looking at him upside down. "Hey, Greg."

Greg rubbed his head. "What happened?"

"We were just having a conversation."

"Did you see what I drew?" he asked, rolling off the chair. "How come I'm not sick?"

"We don't know, honey," Sara said honestly, helping him up to his feet. "And no, I didn't. Why?"

Greg sighed and he dusted himself off. "I don't know. It scared the hell out of me."

Sara walked over to the table, expecting to see some horrific scene. Instead, she saw only a portrait of herself, smiling. "Why?"

"I can't draw worth shit," Greg said.

Sara smiled. "It's very good," she admitted.

"I know," Greg said. "I guess it's a latent talent."

"Must be," Sara said. She turned around to face Greg and put a hand on his cheek. "It's really you."

He nodded. "It's really me."

They embraced. She hugged him so tight with her one arm, she never wanted to let him go.

He felt the tears dripping on his shoulder. "Sara? Sara, don't cry."

"Stay you," she pleaded, her voice barely a whisper. "Please, just stay you, and I won't go anywhere."

"I don't know," he said. "You should stay away from me, Sara, I could turn at any second."

He tried to push her away from him but she balled her hand into a fist, catching the back of his hospital gown in her grasp. She screwed her eyes shut tight. "No, I won't let you go."

He stopped being reluctant and tightened his own embrace. "Sh," he said into her hair. "I'm here now." He pulled away just enough to see her face. "Why did you kiss me?" he asked her. "Back there, when I was still sick. Or did I imagine that?"

Sara laughed lightly. "You didn't imagine it," she said. "You looked like you needed it."

He leant his forehead against hers. "I really did," he said. His smile became playful. "In fact, I find myself suddenly in need of another one."

She obliged with a passion as she pressed herself against him. His hands rested firmly against her back. After a moment, Greg broke the kiss and pushed Sara away from him as he doubled over in pain.

"Greg?!" Sara cried out. "Greg!"

He buried his face in his hands and rubbed fervently at his eyes. Sara reached out at him and pulled his hands away from his face. She gasped. Both his eyes were red, but only one of them was brown. The other was bright blue.

He pulled away from her and hissed like a cat. He continued rubbing at his eyes. He was shivering uncontrollably and then, suddenly, he stopped. Still doubled over, he began to laugh again.

"Damn, Sara…" He straightened up and grinned at her with those haunting eyes. "You crack me up. You're one hell of a kisser, too, I must say. Spunky."

Sara grit her teeth. "Get out of him."

He rolled his hand in the overture of a deep and formal bow. "If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended: That you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear." He looked up at her from his low bow. "Did I ever tell you I played Puck in my high school play?" He straightened up. "I cannot get out of what I am, dear Sara. If you love Greg, then you must love me too." He approached her and seized her by the hips which made her yelp. "Aw, you set me on fire. And if I bother you, just close your eyes and imagine I am him. After all," he pushed her up against the wall, "I do taste just like him." Sara opened her mouth to scream but his hand flew up to stop her. "Sh," he whispered. "I promise I'll be gentle. I just want to talk."

"Let go of me," she ordered fiercely, but his hands merely slid around her waist as he pulled her closer to him.

"Even if I was Greg," he said. "Even if I was your knight in shining armor, come to whisk you away from the evil dragon, could you still love him? Knowing that the real dragon lived somewhere inside of him?"

Her face was stern and cold. "You are not him."

He laughed and shook his head, his eyes boring into hers. "You have no idea how much of him I really am, Sara."

"I would love him," Sara hissed, "even if you really were inside of him."

He kissed her hard and fiercely. She felt as though his tongue would suffocate her and she gagged, trying to push him away. Finally, he broke the kiss and stared at her. "You're on a beautiful bitch, Sara, I'll give you that. I'll give you that."

His hand traveled up her side, but Sara had had enough and she let out a loud scream. Nick and Warrick burst into the room and immediately grabbed Greg by his arms. He fought them and his grip tightened around Sara's forearm. "I told you I'd taste like him," he sneered as Nick and Warrick threw him back onto the bed.

Catherine and Grissom entered, followed by two doctors who strapped Greg into restraints on the bed. He pushed them off and broke the straps. A vein throbbed in his neck as he glared at the assembled with a mad glint to his blue eyes.

"Soon enough, you'll see," he threatened, "the Greg Sanders you know will be so far from here and all you'll be left with is me. The real Greg Sanders."

"You are not Greg Sanders," Nick hissed.

Greg's wild eyes flew to Nick and he dared him with a raise of his eyebrows. "What do you really know of the real Greg Sanders, Nick? You are not his friends. You are his colleagues. You know the lab rat, the uncertain CSI, the quirky screw-up. That person is no more Greg Sanders than I am. To truly know someone, you must know all of him and the only of you to succeed in that is Sara Sidle, and she loathes me for it. She has tasted the poison that runs in my veins. She knows my darkest thoughts and she is disgusted by it. I want Sara Sidle, not to love me, no, but to conquer." His gaze flew to Grissom. "I want to show Gil Grissom once and for all that with all those quotes he crams in his head he doesn't know as much about the real world as he pretends to. I want to knock him down and use his face as a stepping stone." He turned to Catherine. "I want to pull Catherine Willows down from her ice throne and treat her like the whore she is." His eyes rested on Warrick. "I want to hit Warrick Brown so hard across the face he breaks his neck and then see how he reacts." He looked at Nick. "And you! You! I want to hurt Nick Stokes so bad in his heart it makes him cry and then kick him when he's down."

His friends, if they could still be called his friends, were stunned into silence. He sat staring at them all, his breath shallow and shaking as he broke out into a cold sweat.

His next words were a quiet hiss, like that of a serpent with a vendetta against its prey. "You think I was created by a virus but I have been here all along. The virus did not birth me, it unbound me. I am your every unkind thought, I am your every unfulfilled fantasy, I am your darkest and most shameful nightmare, and I exist in all of you. I make you sick but believe me when I tell you that you and all the rules you follow disgust me even more."

No one knew what to say. But Grissom was used to being lost for words. It was in these instances that he borrowed them from other people. "All human beings are commingled out of good and evil."

The grin spread slow and wide across Greg's face. "That's quite good, Grissom, did you make that up?"

"Robert Louis Stevenson," Grissom replied.

"We never finished that in high school," Greg said.

"Then let me tell you what happens," Grissom told him. "Jekyll commits suicide to escape the curse of Edward Hyde."

"Tsk, tsk, Grissom. You're still thinking of it like a disease," Greg said, shaking his head. "It isn't something that needs to be escaped. It needs to be embraced. Besides. Greg's too much of a coward to kill himself. And I mean all of Greg."

"I'm glad," said Grissom. "Because the plan is not to let Greg die."

"Can't have one without the other, my friend," Greg said, shaking his head. His shivering was getting worse and his face was flushed. The beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. Suddenly, his chest arched forward and he threw his head back.

The doctors had snapped out of the trance that had fallen over the room and immediately went to Greg's aid as the CSIs were pushed back.

Sara bumped into Nick's shoulder. He felt her shuttering and put his arm around her, pulling her into his chest. Catherine was breathing deeply through her nose with pursed lips, her blue eyes not leaving Greg for an instant. Warrick's mouth kept opening and closing, as though searching for some elusive cure-all phrase.

Grissom's eyes were the only ones which were closed. He saw fireworks explode against his eyelids as he heard Greg's heavy breathing and the low drone of the EKG with the background noise of medical chatter. The pain began at the back of his skull and throbbed like far away thunder, threatening to bring a dark storm. Soon enough, the migraine would explode and envelope his entire skull, pounding in his ears like war drums.

Somehow, a small hand found his and the two of them interlaced fingers. He didn't open his eyes right away, but by the size and feel of the hand, he knew who it was. His lids lifted, but the fireworks continued. He looked to his right and saw Catherine standing stoic as she watched Greg. The only sign of her unbridled fear rested in the hand which was squeezing the life out of Grissom's own. Catherine was often as good at hiding her panic as he was.

Greg's scream tore through the air, and everyone wondered which part of him was screaming. Suddenly, Sara broke away from Nick's embrace and ran to Greg. The doctors protested but she paid them no heed as she ripped off her sling and seized his hand in both of hers. She spoke to him in frantic terms.

"No, Greg, do you hear me, no," she was saying to his darting dark eyes. "You are stronger than him! You have to beat this, do you hear me?"

"I… can't…" Greg's voice was strained against the pain.

"We'll find an answer," Sara insisted. "We will never desert you. I promise, Greg, you have to promise me that you will just hold on!"

All of a sudden Greg nipped at her like a cur, his eyes an icy cold blue. "Do you really think that I can be destroyed? You will never get away from me!"

Greg roared at the ceiling, his eyes filled with panic. "He's just… just a face in the mirror!"

His demeanor changed again as he thrashed around in the bed. "I'm what you face when you look in the mirror! You cannot control, me Greg, so don't even try!"

But Greg ripped away from him and turned to Sara, gripping her hand firmly. "Kill me," he said, his voice so full of anguished fear that Sara's own emotions began to get the better of her.

"Greg… Greg please…" she stuttered.

He smiled at her as he breathed hard. "Oh Sara…" he panted. "I really do love you so much."

"Dammit!" Sara exclaimed furiously as a tear trickled down her cheek. "You can't do that, that's not fair! You can't leave me like this, you son of a bitch!" She sniffed and bit her lip, holding his hand close to her. "In the car, when I said I loved you…"

"Sh…" Greg said. "I'm here now."

He was mimicking himself from when they'd kissed earlier, and it broke Sara's heart. She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't find the words. Greg's eyes rolled up into his head and the shrill drone of the EKG echoed in Sara's head.

She would not release his hand.

"No…" she said. "No, I didn't say it, I couldn't tell him—" A doctor began to pull her away, but she began to scream and cling to his hand until he pulled her off of him. "NO! Let me go! NO!"

She was hysterical as the doctor passed her off onto Warrick and Nick who restrained her as best they could while the doctors continued to try and resuscitate him. She continued to scream. The wound in her shoulder screamed back at her, but it wasn't the focal point of her pain and so she ignored it. Her stomach ripped its stitches and began to bleed through her shirt. She screamed at the top of her lungs. "I love you I love you I love you!"

Nick's face was contorted in grief as his own tears fell freely. Warrick was looking away from Greg, his grip digging deep into Sara's arm as she struggled against him. Grissom's glasses had long since been discarded as he buried his face in his hands.

Catherine remained unmoving in her stoic stance, though her hands were clenched into fists and her breathing was erratic. Her eyes glinted with a betrayal of her emotions as she swallowed incessantly, trying to open up her constricted throat. Slowly, she felt an arm around her shoulder and she leaned into Grissom, her stoicism dissolving as she crumbled in his friendly embrace.