Mind Games

Summary: What do you get when you cross a depressed emotionally ill-equipped genius with a logical acidic solution?

Disclaimer: This is a fan-fiction story of the TV Series: Scorpion, and is in no way affiliated with the actual story/series in any of the aforementioned media. All characters and other materials related to the show that are used are not intended to infringe on any Copyrights. Elemental-Zer0 takes sole responsibility for any mistakes or offence that may be taken but truly not meant. However, any characters that are not related to any copyrights are copyrighted to Elemental-Zer0, as are any adaptions/variations to the plot set out in the original author's story/plot.

Authors Note: Chapter twenty… So close yet so far away…

No flames please. If you have any criticism to make please do it politely otherwise, I shall ignore your words. (It's happened before, I'm sorry to say, and I hadn't even posted any real chapters…)

Chapter Twenty: The Schrodinger Theorem Part 4

The disbelief was palpable. For a moment, no one moved. No one knew what to do. The water was supposed to be draining… but it wasn't. What had the lever done?

As frustrated as they were, they didn't have time for emotions to take control here. Abigail was still trapped, and the water was still rising.

"Can't we smash the glass?" The Commander asked as he watched the scene with a calculated soldier's view. He'd gestured with his gun but hadn't aimed at the glass. It was clear he'd wanted to shoot the glass to release the trapped woman inside.

"Ordinarily yes, but with Collins we never know if there's a trap inside a trap." Sylvester answered as he stood off to one side, keeping tabs on how much longer the poor girl had left before the fast approaching outcome.

"The glass is reinforced. I checked." Happy added, her anger only barely under control. But then, as she looked up to glare at the Commander, something seemed to have caught her eye on his person and an idea flashed into existence. "But…" She began, and the whole room was instantly her captive audience. However, she was unaware of their undivided attention while she approached the Commander and before he could stop her, she pulled a block of C4 that she'd spied, from his flak jacket.

"Hey!" The Commander predictably called out and tried to take the explosive putty back but Happy quickly sidestepped his attempts to regain the stolen property.

"C4 will have just the right concussive power in the correct quantity, and if we place it at a certain angle…" Happy began explaining. Paige stepped in front of the Commander as Happy lost herself to angles and predicted explosions.

"You promised to listen." Paige reminded the man, and when he went to protest, she added, "Remember what I said outside? 'Don't disregard anything we say no matter how outlandish or risk worthy it sounds' that still applies." She said, her voice strong and stance stern. Though she doubted she could do much if he decided to get physical with his retrieval efforts. Instead, he looked her in the eye, his own seriousness hit her hard, but she held her ground.

"I'm liable for everyone's death on this operation. I'm only sanctioned for one." He growled. The admission on its own sent a chill down Paige's spine. She didn't need to be a genius to know who that 'sanctioned death' was for, and while the crazy genius had done some nasty things, she wasn't entirely sure that his actions completely warranted such a sanction. Life in prison maybe… but death? "Excuse me for being concerned when one of your brains puts all of that in jeopardy." The commander continued, bringing Paige back to herself rapidly, but he'd turned his watchful eyes back to the C4 in Happy's hands. Paige wasn't done with this conversation just yet though.

"I told you to trust us. Happy is a mechanical genius. She knows more about that C4 and its attributes than you will ever know in a life time of hands on experience. I'm pretty sure that between them all, they could easily make their own C4." She said firmly, though there was no ice in her tone any more, instead she felt like she was admonishing a reckless child. "Yours was just easier to get to and in case you hadn't noticed, we don't exactly have time to start a cooking class right now." She added. The Commander found he could not argue with that logic, so he just kept his mouth shut and watched like hawk.

"Going by the thickness of the glass and the compacted reinforcement pattern, I'd say you need an inch-thick ring around the base of the tank." Sylvester calculated as Happy rolled the putty into a rough inch thick rope before placing it in a precise, unending loop at base of the tank.

"Wait, why the base?" The Commander asked, "Surely the explosion would send the shards inside the tank. You'll shred her to pieces." He added worriedly.

"The water is at its densest at the bottom. Abigail will be shielded from the heat and pressure because of that. There's not much room for movement inside the tank either. Any shards will be forced outward due to the surface tension of the water being greater in the pressurised area." Happy lectured as she worked, and the Commander was again reminded of how insignificant his own brain was to the mission. He was only here because he had a license to carry a gun and get away with the consequences of using it with lethal force.

Paige watched, ignoring the stinging sensation on her cheek from the laser burn in her own exercise of Collins' plans for them all. She quickly pushed all her fears of what trap lay ahead with Amberle; the thought didn't bear thinking about.

And she daren't imagine Walter's predicament. If this first trap was as bad as this…

'Don't go there Dineen.' She told herself.

"Stand clear!" Happy called out and waited for everyone to get as far away as they could from the tank. Paige gave the woman a quick look of consolidated reassurance. Abigail gave her a quick nod, showing Paige she'd understood her concern and was more than ready to trust the team to free her. What other choice did she have at this point?

Paige took cover then too, and several seconds passed by. Then, for the second time in as many days, she was rocked by the sound of an explosive going off. The familiar sound of glass shattering was over run quickly by the sound of water flowing and a muted thump as Abigail fell from the tank to the floor. Toby was moving before the others had truly recognised it was safe to do so.

Paige looked up and saw that Abigail had landed in a heap on top of several shards of glass. Water ran, as Happy had predicted, to the middle of the room where the loose panel had been located. The sharp tang of ozone fizzed in the air as water met electric circuit boards. And there was a tang of something else too. The sharp metallic tang of copper stung her nose the closer she got to the downed woman and Toby. She saw it before she recognised what she was smelling. The smears of red swirling in the left-over water puddles could only be one thing.

Blood.

"She's bleeding from the left femoral artery. She needs surgery now!" Toby reported as two of the Homeland Security Agents moved in. Toby stood up as he continued his field report, his hands were still engulfed in plastic gloves which he was cleaning on a towel. "It's a small wound, but arterial bleeds can and will bleed out fast. Keep pressure on the gauze." He ordered in his 'doctor' voice which had a very different tone to his usual play of words. When in 'doctor mode,' Toby seemed to have this tone that one just didn't ignore or disobey. In that moment, he becomes a very reliable and trustworthy persona, as opposed to his carefree, prankster persona that he usually dons. It was always breathtaking to watch from a stand-by point of view. It was one of the things that just made Toby as remarkable as he was. Walter had chosen him well when he'd considered him for Scorpion. It was clear in moments like these, what Walter had seen in the man. In all of them really, Paige thought. They all had their defining qualities, but Toby's rarely came into play unless a medical emergency took priority.

As she watched the action play out, the two agents began to quickly unload something from one of their packs, and as they rolled out the large cloth material Paige could eventually see that it was a travel stretcher. One of the agents held the gauze Toby had placed into the wound while Happy moved forward to pick the locks on the cuffs and the other agent rapidly put the fold-away poles into place on the stretcher. Toby had already summed up the medical jargon to the Commander who was relaying to the radio. The agents would take Abigail to the Homeland base across the road to be relocated to a secure hospital where Florence would later meet with them after this rescue mission had been completed.

In an anticlimactic fashion, the ordeal that a few seconds ago had been severely overwhelming and almost impossible to overcome, was now just a woman being lifted on a stretcher to a medical team and a nonfunctional room with only a shattered tank and a few pink puddles to hint at what had happened. Paige shivered at the thought. It showed that whatever Collins threw at them would haunt them from inside their minds with very little left in the physical world to confirm and corroborate their memories of these events. If not for the glass and the puddles, it would have been as though nothing sinister had taken place here at all.

"So, what now?" The Commander asked as his two men carried Abigail out of the building for what was possibly the first time for her in months. Happy, Toby, Sylvester and the two remaining agents gathered to a new focal point in the room to discuss the next steps. Paige turned her attention away from the disappearing figure of the agents and Abigail, and faced the group stood just behind her.

"Now we find the others." She replied and gave her friends a quick once over to be sure they were all ok. They seemed tense but otherwise unhurt. The Homeland guys seemed ok too.

"And how do we do that?" One of the two remaining agents asked, clearly having seen enough to know who to trust to take the lead on this rescue mission.

"My team have the parameter surrounded. The building is a lot bigger than this room, how do we access the rest of the building without setting off other traps?" The Commander asked. His earlier misery with the C4 now down to just a simmering unease as he took in the effective result it had had in helping the civilian. The brains had said 'No matter how outlandish or risk worthy it sounds…' he just hadn't been prepared for that level of audacity when dealing with them or that their crazy idea would work.

"Collins would want us to follow a set path. Every other entry point will be rigged with a trap that will take us away from the main goal here. Keep your men on standby, do not allow them to engage any possible entry points. We don't have time to focus on freeing them from anything Collins' traps them in." Toby replied as he cast his gaze around the empty room.

"There has to be a clue here somewhere, something not obvious but enough to keep us busy for a moment." Happy muttered out loud as she too searched for something 'off' within the room. Paige cast her own gaze around, unsure of what would constitute as suspicious but was sure she'd know it when she saw it. As one, the group started to spread out; eyes dancing over every speck of dust looking for the next step in Collins' plans for them.

It wasn't a comforting feeling and Paige felt herself grow cold at the thought of this taking too long. Walter was here; in this building; breathing the same air as she was…

She was so close… and still not close enough.

"Hey!" Sylvester's voice called out from next to the tank base. "I… I think I've got something…"

And never had those words felt like such an answered prayer.