Title: Transhuman
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Garcia-centric, team - gen
Genre: Science-fiction/Drama
Summary: In a dystopian future, hacker Penelope Garcia finds herself being hunted by a corrupt organization. Fearing for her life, she must search for help in the strangest of places.

Chapter Twenty-One

It was pitch dark when Garcia awoke. She wasn't surprised to have woken; for a long time, she'd been a light sleeper. It paid to keep one eye open when there were people after you. Grateful that she had ended up on the edge of the bed, rather than in the middle, she slid out, letting her feet touch the ground silently. Silence was another thing that was useful when you were on the run.

Emily and JJ were both still fast asleep. So were the occupants of the other bed, as far as she could tell, but she wasn't inclined to go poking around to find out.

She stepped into the other room to find Kevin keeping watch, to her eternal surprise. It wasn't that she didn't trust him to keep an eye on things; he had been on the run as long as she had, after all. It was mostly the fact that she would have sworn that both Morgan and Hotch would have jumped off a cliff before willingly handed control over to someone else.

'I told Morgan that he wouldn't be so macho in the morning if he was falling asleep on the spot,' Kevin explained, a somewhat proud look on his face. The gun seemed awkward in his grip, as though he didn't really want to be using it. If it came down to it, though, he would. She'd been with him long enough to know that much.

She sat down at the small table while he paced. 'What are we going to do when this is all over?'

Kevin didn't answer straight away. 'We're never going to be living the high life, P. It's never going to be penthouse apartments, and expensive champagne. I'm not just talking about practicality; it might be nice for a while, but I know after a few days of that, I'd be itching for my rundown, one-bedroom craphole, and sitting in my underpants coding until 3am. Maybe that's all we can really hope for.'

'And what if we don't win?'

'Then I guess it's all a pipe dream, anyway, Batgirl. All we can ask for is enough bacon donuts to last until our untimely deaths.'

Garcia wrinkled her brow. 'You can keep your ungodly concoctions, Nightwing. I think I'll stick with the weevil-infested sugar.'

'You can't just eat sugar. At least bacon donuts have at least two of the food groups…I think.'

'You are underestimating the amount of protein found in weevils, ma chérie.' There was a long silence, but it wasn't an awkward one. Kevin was her best friend, and they'd been running together for two years. They didn't always need words to communicate. Sometimes, it was just nice to be close to someone; she respected Derek a lot, but they'd only known each other for a few days. Maybe one day, they'd have that kind of friendship.

If they didn't get themselves killed first.

Knowing that Kevin didn't need any more distractions, she excused herself to the bathroom – the reason she had woken in the first place. It wasn't the most appealing of facilities, but then, they weren't planning on sticking around for too long anyway. Both the toilet and the shower looked as though they hadn't been cleaned properly in several decades. It was an older building, so everything was manual, but it did what it was supposed to do.

She examined her face in the cracked mirror, noting the days old makeup, and the bags under her eyes. Maybe one day it would be possible to settle down, live in a place for more than a week at a time, fall in love, raise a family, all that clichéd crap that seemed so important north of the river. That was what she kept telling herself to make it less appealing, anyway. It wasn't as though they had a monopoly on happiness on the other side. Garcia had seen a lot of happiness in the slums; you didn't need a gold-plated refrigerator to make your kids happy.

On both sides, there was only really one persistent problem, and that was the problem they were working to fix. Toss out the bad apple. Or at least, cut off the rotten bits. There were still good people in the Corp, it was just the fact that some of them were naïve, or powerless to fight back.

Maybe one day that would change. Maybe they would be the ones to change it. Maybe they'd all die horribly instead. The thought kept replaying itself in her mind, over and over again, like a broken record. She'd never even seen a broken record before, so maybe the analogy was a little outdated.

According to her watch, it was almost five a.m. It was getting closer and closer to winter every day; sunrise wouldn't be for a while yet. In any case, Garcia was unsurprised when the rest of the group started to stir.

There wasn't much in the way of food, so for breakfast it was black coffee again, but this time they had dry, stale cereal as well. Compared to some of the things that Garcia had been forced to eat over the years, it was a breakfast of royalty.

In spite of the sleep they'd gotten, everyone still looked worn out; Emily's skin was pale and clammy, and JJ excused herself to the bathroom midway through a spoonful of dry oatmeal. They heard the sound of her retching over the deadly silence.

'So,' Morgan said finally, and Garcia watched his eyes travel around the table. 'What now?'