Chapter 21: Live to fight another day

Hotch unlocked Reid's handcuffs and both agents ran to the woods where Rossi was suppose to be hiding. They found him unconscious, a bump on his head and his hands cuffed.

"I didn't see his face. The bastard hit me from behind." Rossi explained after he came around.

"We have to find Prentiss." Hotch yelled over his shoulder at Rossi and Reid, heading back to the car.

Hotch drove with Rossi and Reid to Prentiss' look out position, only to find that she too had been blind sided, handcuffed, and her mouth duct taped. Hotch yanked the driver's side door open while Reid grabbed the keys to the handcuffs, which had been thrown to the ground outside the passenger's door. Prentiss moaned urgently at them as they rushed to free her.

"He took Moni," she said as soon as they removed the tape.

"We know. Any idea of the direction they went?"

"No, but they left the cemetery in a hurry."

Hotch grabbed his phone from his suit jacket and immediately called the police department, informing them of what had happened.

"Patterson says Carlton has clamped up. But he did mentioned something about some kids." Hotch informed the team after he hung up the phone.

"Kids?" Reid was promptly at attention.

"Does that mean something to you, Reid?"

"Yes, oh my God, Moni mentioned them too."

"When?"

"Ah, when she kissed me the last time- before he took her. She said -no, actually, she begged me- to save the children. That I had to save the children."

"She said that we would need you to finish this. That she wouldn't tell us what was on the pendrive because they would kill us for it, but we would need you to finish this."

"We need to find her. If there are kids involved in this, we don't have time to waste"

Hotch's phone rang again as they all loaded into Prentiss' SUV. He took the driver's seat, answering his phone with one hand while the other shoved the keys into the ignition. Then he froze.

"Are you sure?" He exhaled heavily, wondering if it were possible for this day to get any worse.

"When did it happen?"

"We're on our way."

He ended the call and took another deep breath before turning to Reid in the back seat.

Reid didn't like the sympathetic looks everyone in the car was giving him at the moment. He didn't like that they all knew something important and he didn't. Most of all, he didn't like the tendrils of panic that were beginning to wrap around his chest.

"What's happened?"

"Reid, you have to stay calm."

"Hotch, what's happened."

"Reid, please-"

"NO! Tell me. What. Happened."

Hotch sighed.

"There's been an accident."

CM CM CM CM CM CM

The streets surrounding the accident were already blocked off by police cruisers, allowing only emergency personnel through. Hotch flashed his badge to one of the positioned officers and followed a wailing ambulance towards the scene.

The team look on with horrified faces at the car- or what was left of it- that they had just seen Moni drive away in not fifteen minutes before.

There were firefighters and EMTs struggling to cut through the mangled metal on what looked to be the driver's side; the hissing of the jaws of life drowned out all other noises.

The agents jump out of the SUV and rush toward the working firefighters. Glass and shards of metal crunched under the feet. The ground became more littered with the evidence of the horrible scene the closer they got to the car. The air smelled of burnt rubber and smoke.

A firefighter, noticing the distressed look on the agents' faces, stopped them before they could make it to Moni's car.

"Sorry, sir, only paramedics authorized from here on."

"But we know her." Hotch explained.

"MONI!" Reid tried to get a glimpse of the activity near the car, but the sheer number of paramedics hid her from his view.

"You know her?" The firefighter turned to Reid.

"Yes."

"Crazy woman. She's lucky the death toll wasn't higher. It's a miracle she didn't hit any other cars during her stunt."

Although Rossi noticed Reid flinch at the firefighter's words, he asked anyway.

"Death toll?"

"Yeah, the passenger was thrown out of the car- died on impact. The driver has been stabilized, but we're working on getting her out of the car."

After some insistence and showing of badges, the agents rushed to the mangled steel and rubber right when the workers were taking Moni out of the car. Her face was bruised from the impact of the airbag, her neck was immobilized, and still there were too many bruises and too much blood to give them a positive assessment of her condition.

Reid reached her side just as the paramedics started guiding the stretcher towards the ambulance. He almost cried when he saw the amount of blood covering her.

At least she's unconscious, Reid thought offhandedly. If she saw that much blood, she would get sick, for sure. His overwhelming happiness over her being okay made him slap happy. He probably would have laughed if Moni hadn't frowned and opened her big caramel eyes at that very moment.

"Moni."

"Spence, is he dead?"

Prentiss looked over to where the doctors were zipping up Dresdner's body in a body bag a few yards away.

"Yes, he's dead." she answered for Reid, who was holding Moni's scratched hand carefully in his.

They were both surprised at the satisfied Moni smile that broke across Moni's face.

"Good." She closed her eyes then moaned in pain as one of the paramedics examined her bruised legs.

"You'll be fine, you'll see."

"The children, save the children," she said in a low voice, pain lacing each word.

"What children, Moni? Where are they?"

She started crying, "you promised, Reid."

Hotch, sensing Reid's duress, approached Moni, "Moni"

"Hotch, you gotta show him."

"Moni, where's the pendrive?"

"Car keys."

"What?"

"The pendrive." she hissed, batting the paramedics hand away, "your car keys. It's in there."

"We have to move her." The paramedics had already opened the doors of the ambulance and they were just waiting for the FBI agents to move out of their way.

"My car keys? The pendrive is in my car keys?"

She giggled lightly though blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, making her cough.

"Cool, isn't it? You had it this whole time."

The FBI agents took a step back as the paramedics move her into the ambulance. Though Reid doesn't voice his request, his glance towards the ambulance is desperate enough for Hotch to understand the message.

"Go with them. We'll keep you posted."

"Thanks Hotch." He hopped in the ambulance, immediately sitting where he can hold Moni's hand and not be in the EMT's way.

The doors closed and the ambulance sped away into the night.

Hotch waited only a moment before he turned and ran towards his own SUV. He flung the door open and grabbed the keys from the ignition. He sighed aloud as he turned to the other two agents, and held up the keychain.

Indeed, right beside the electric key of the SUV, was a tiny pendrive.

"It was with us this whole time." Rossi shook his head at the simplicity and utter intelligence of it all.

"She must have slipped it onto your keychain sometime today," says Prentiss.

"When I asked her where the pendrive was, she told me it was somewhere safe. I just never imagined that she meant with me." Hotch said, toying with the tiny pendrive in his fingers.

"We have to go to the precinct to check its contents," Prentiss said at the exact moment Hotch's phone rang.

"Hotch, listen to me. We have a problem." Garcia spoke, almost hysterical, on the phone.

"Talk to me, Garcia."

"I swear I didn't know. When I saw Moni's e-mail, I thought it was some kind of message she wanted delivered to you, so I clicked it. I didn't know it was a virus."

Rossi - noticing Hotch's expression - silently asked him what was going on. Hotch put Garcia on speakerphone so Rossi and Prentiss could hear.

"A what?"

"A virus, Hotch. And that's not the only thing." Garcia turned to her plasma screens, all showing a slide show of several pictures.

"Once I clicked on it, it automatically froze not only my terminals, but all other terminals connected to mine."

"Garcia, what are talking about?" Rossi asked, although he was sure it was bad. Really bad.

"The whole bureau has been infected by it. There was an embedded link on it; once clicked, it started the slide show. It's been displayed for the last five minutes in all the stations here in Quantico and, as far as I was informed, at the Hoover as well."

"Can't you stop it?" Prentiss asked.

"There's a team of computer experts trying to stop it, but it's an insidious program- much beyond anything I expected to see done by her. Its programming reminds me a little of Drake's coding. But that's not the problem. They are not going to stop the virus. They are going to let it run its course."

"Why not?"

"The pictures, Hotch, all the pictures that were on the pendrive were used by Moni to create a slide show. Apparently, she figured out she wouldn't be able to give it back to you, so she created a virus to make sure that every single FBI agent on the East Coast could see it and take action."

Garcia tried to control her voice, despite her tears, as she stared at her plasma screens.

"They are children, Hotch, they are only children. And they took pictures of them being raped over and over again, and Moni identified every single adult in those images."