Thanks for the reviews, guys. It's nice to see people getting into the action!

Sorry, Claudette, if the plot isn't complicated enough yet, 'yet' being the key word in that sentence.

Read and be happy! :-)

9.1. One Step Forward…

"If the radiance of a thousand suns / were to burst into the sky / that would be like / the splendor of the Mighty One and I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." – J. Robert Oppenheimer

Sitting in the cramped lobby of Noodle King, Don surveyed the entirety of Lincoln Park plaza. Less than fifteen minutes ago, it had been filled with people, a picture-perfect, bustling metropolis. The FBI's evacuation plan had cleared people as effectively from the scene as the capacitor, sitting in a handbag on the fountain's edge, might have. Pulling a walkie-talkie from his belt, he checked the area one last time.

"This is Eppes; I'm all clear. David, you got anything?"

The words echoed through the abandoned square, bouncing back to him as distorted reflections before another voice broke the silence.

"Nothing here, Don."

"Colby?"

"Nothing, Don."

The words should have comforted him, but the mangled echoes only served to add to the adrenaline in his veins. They had evacuated not only the blast radius, but also the area in which Charlie had calculated that the activation mechanism would have to be located. With that area clear, there would be no way for the capacitor to go off, Charlie hand reasoned.

"All right," he radioed. "Let's move in, guys, but be careful."

He watched armored figures in bomb squad gear slip out of several otherwise lifeless buildings, stalking across the plaza from cover point to cover point. Charlie had grudgingly postulated as to the paths the wires might be laid down in, and it was to these areas the team darted, searching for a means of disarming the capacitor, and yet…

"They're not here," came the frustrated report, crackling through the walkie-talkie's speaker.

Don's brow wrinkled. "What?"

"The capacitor isn't hooked up to anything, Agent Eppes."

Squinting to make out the details, Don watched as one of the technicians knelt down in front of the device, plucking something off the surface. A look of embarrassed confirmation crossed his face, the kind of look you might adopt when you're told the answer to a question that was amazingly obvious, despite the fact you'd puzzled over it for hours.

"You'd better take a look at this, agents."

Don grabbed his crutches and scrambled up, arriving at the fountain, huffing and puffing, a minute later. Sighing, the bomb technician held out to him a note, which he took hesitantly. In bright red sharpie was scrawled one word.

BOOM

Handing back the note, Don shook his head in disbelief.

"This was all a setup."

9.2. …Two Steps Back

"He would make a lovely corpse." – Charles Dickens

The return to the office was not a triumphant one, nor was the elevator they shared filled with happy FBI agents, least of all Don. In the corner he sulked, still sour from his haphazard, botched explanation to the angry shop owners of Lincoln Park plaza as to why the FBI had shut down a major commercial center for no apparent reason.

"I don't get it," said David, pressing the button for the 23rd floor. "Why would they waste their only other weapon?"

"Because it's probably not their only other weapon," answered Don, following the light as it climbed up the list of floor numbers: three… four… five…

"Maybe they were testing us, to see how much we knew," suggested Megan.

"In that case, we just lost the element of surprise," admitted Colby.

Seven… eight… nine…

Don sighed in frustration. "Yeah, well, I just want to see how this figures into Charlie's 'distraction tactics' explanation."

The ring of a cell phone interrupted their conversation, and Don dug it out of his pocket. A quick glance at caller ID afforded him a name, and he answered it angrily, glad to have someone to properly vent on.

"Charlie, if you're calling to tell me you just figured out Lincoln Park was a dud, you're too late, buddy. Mind explaining to me how that works?"

There was a long pause, and then a strange voice with a Russian accent answered.

"I'm sorry, Charles is unavailable at the moment. Can I help you?"

A knot of fear settled in his stomach, and his team looked to him at the tone in which he replied. "Who is this?"

"My name is Anton Sidorov. I am a friend of Yuri Koverchenko."

Don rubbed at his eyes. This couldn't be happening. "What do you want from me?"

There came a little laugh from the other end. "Oh, you overestimate your value, Agent Eppes. No, it is Charles's talents we need at the moment. But I suppose after we are done with him, you can have him back… for a price."

"Name it."

"You will release Yuri Koverchenko from custody and drop all charges against him. You will also raise 5 million dollars and deliver it –alone— at an address we will provide you with in time. I would advise you not to involve the authorities, but that would be somewhat impossible, now wouldn't it, Agent Eppes? And, as I'm sure you'll discover, the government might not be the best of allies in this case, yes?"

"Hold on," started Don, "what—"

"You have twenty-four hours, agent."

"Let me talk to him, at least," Don pleaded.

"Certainly… when Koverchenko is released."

The call was terminated. Frowning at the phone, Don barely noticed the 23 light up on the floor list. The elevator doors opened with their usual ring, and Don poised his crutches to exit the elevator, but was stopped dead in his tracks by what he saw.

The office lay in ruins, pieces of cubicles and shards of glass crunching underfoot at he managed to exit the elevator. A breeze through the window might have been pleasant, if it hadn't been sneaking in through a line of neat bullet holes in the window, toying listlessly with the blood-spattered paper-stack innards of overturned filing cabinets. Here and there, smashed computers sparked in mechanical death throes. Buried beneath the wreckage were several inert forms, one of which Colby checked.

"Dead," he said simply; it was all he could manage.

"What the hell is going on?" Megan asked.

Picking his way across the rubble, Don ignored the question, coming to a halt in front of the wrecked conference room, observing the three clean bullet holes in the glass and the pool of blood with a sinking feeling that threatened to take his legs from underneath him. Somewhere in the building a distant alarm began to sound.

"They have him," said Don, covering his eyes, and falling back against the wall. "They have Charlie."