Break's over. Please leave lots of reviews--they are much appreciated!

Please see disclaimers in Ch 1.

It was now past one in the morning. As the dark of night began to settle in, Steven Shaw landed the small plane near the tenth hangar at Andrews. He still had the last container of whatever-it-was that he'd been forced to drop on that building. Before he could retrieve it, though, a flood of bright lights swarmed near the aircraft and loud shouts startled him.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming!" he called out to the voices that demanded he exit the plane at once. "Don't shoot me, for God's sake!"

One of the agents actually climbed inside the plane, holding his weapon steady. "Easy, there," the man warned. "Put down the container and come out slowly…"

"Take it," Steven said. "Whatever's in there, it's what they had me drop all over that building in D.C. I don't know what's in it, but I'm sure it's not good…"

"Okay. Just set it down and I'll have hazmat look at it," the agent replied. Steven watched as the agent called back to someone through a radio poised on his shoulder. "Yeah, we have a sample. That woman remember what she used to make it?" A crackling squawk erupted from the device. "Uh huh. Okay."

Steven remained motionless, his hands in the air. "You can have it," he said. "Just, please, tell me—is Jason all right?"

"They're still trying to get him out."

Steven wasn't stupid. Something like that usually was code for 'we couldn't save him.' His face fell, and his heart plummeted into his stomach.

"It's all for nothing," he muttered as he was led out fo the craft and into a waiting SUV. "For nothing…"

In the stone dungeon, Kyle Parker was freaking out. His breathing was erratic, his heart was beating a mile a minute, and there was more dust and pebbles falling from the ceiling somewhere. Every pelt from the debris made him jump a little, and when a small stone hit him he was certain he'd cried out.

Kyle's hands moved a mile a minute. Some times he was pleading with some unseen person to help them, other times they were looking for the man who was trapped with him in this tiny hole—Jason, he'd said his name was. Right now Jason was standing near the door, but for what reason he didn't know.

--"What's going on?"— he cried out. –"Is someone there? Please, let us out!"—

Something brushed against him. It was something warm and soft. A hand. It clapped onto his shoulder and held on.

--"Is someone there?"— Kyle asked again. The pitch blackness made it impossible for him to read lips, and he knew Jason knew no sign.

The hand put Kyle's hand onto Jason's head, which was moving up-and-down quickly.

--"Thank God. Tell them to hurry!"—

Another nod.

Kyle reached out for the door, hoping to be able to tell if someone was trying to open it. He placed his hand flush with the thick metal, and to his surprise there was the tiniest bit of vibration near the right-hand side of the barrier. It was an erratic vibration, coming in starts and stops. A few minutes later, something hit the metal hard, and something else began pulling on it.

A few more minutes later, and the door wrenched free. Kyle's eyes worked to adjust to even the extremely dim light that still shone in the dark corridor, and the younger man heaved in great gulps of the fresh air that still lingered in the quickly crumbling space.

Another hand took his—it was not one Kyle recognized—and slowly the small party made its way through the collapsing hallway. About five seconds after the four reached the entranceway, the ceiling in the corridor collapsed, leaving only a pile of rubble where Kyle and Jason had once been trapped.

The light grew brighter, and Kyle allowed himself to be led out of that horrible place to give his eyes time to adjust. He felt like one of those deaf-blind people in a way—he couldn't hear the things around him, and his sight was so out of sorts he couldn't rely on it. Finally the small group reached the surface, and though night had set in, Kyle relished the cool breeze that blew over him.

"Thank you," he said, certain his rescuers couldn't speak sign.

--You're welcome,-- a pair of hands said. It was the ones that had pulled him out of that godawful hole.

--You sign?!—

--My mother was deaf. Learned it from her.—

--Thank God. Where's Chase?—

--Who?—

--"Chase Davis,"— Kyle said again, voicing it as well as signing. –My partner. Where is she?—

The look on the man's face said he really didn't want to tell him.

--It's okay,-- he signed. –I can take it.-- He held his breath, fearing the worst.

--She's in federal custody, at Quantico.—

The look on Kyle's face said it all. –What's she doing there?—he signed, his expression changing to one of deep confusion.

--We're trying to figure that out.—

The next thing Kyle knew, he was being led towards a large, open metal room. Inside of it was a small plane, with lots of official-looking people milling around it. A few of the faces he recognized, and there was a certain blonde woman he knew instantly.

"Garcia," he called out, hoping he could be heard. The woman didn't seem to notice him—she was staring hard at the concrete floor of the space, and her head never looked up. Another man Kyle recognized tapped her on the shoulder, and she picked her head up. Her eyes were red, and the look on her face was unmistakable.

Kyle rushed over, as did the man who'd pulled him out of the dungeon. –"What's wrong?"— he asked. –"It's Chase, isn't it? Something's happened…"—

Garcia shook her head. She then looked at the man with her—Kyle remembered his name was Morgan—and the two said something Kyle couldn't quite catch.

The man next to him paled. His face flashed from disbelief to anger to sorrow in less than a second. His feet took off flying, and he stopped a pair of medics pulling out a stretcher. The person laying on top of it had a white cloth draped over their entire frame, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what that meant.

Kyle watched as his savior looked to be arguing with the medic, then looking as though he'd been hit with a club in the stomach, then grabbing hold of the hand on the stretcher. The tears that rolled down the man's face were unmistakable. They were the same tears that Chase had cried, all those years ago, when her parents died. He'd seen them again when Ben was murdered. He'd even cried them himself when his mother died a couple of years ago.

He turned to Garcia, who was sitting alone. Morgan had gone to talk with and console the sobbing man. "Who was that?" he asked.

Garcia fingerspelled her reply. S-I-S-T-E-R.

In a small, dark room, Chase sat staring at an old wooden table. The deep cuts and grooves in it were the entire focus of her world at this point.

Kyle was dead. On this point she was absolutely certain. They'd murdered him, and most likely Garcia as well, because she'd had to follow her conscience instead of her 'orders.'

The brash, carefree, confident woman was gone. In her place sat a woman who simply wondered how long it would take to find the people responsible for their deaths, and to make them suffer.

In the end, it would not be her that would hand out that punishment. They had already taken care of that. With her luck, she'd be in Gitmo within a week.

Chase thought about the things she'd done over the course of the day. She'd attacked two Chinese nationals, one of them the ambassador to the United States. She'd had to put herself in the position of an assassin at the U.S. embassy, being only a hair's breadth away from killing even more innocent people at the cost of saving the one person she would even think of doing such a thing to protect.

And now that man had said those people had been gassed to death…

Chase stared at her hands. Her hands were capable of so many things. Talking. Laughing. Fixing problems. Finding things.

And now they had committed murder. Not sanctioned murder, or even murder to save a life. Just plain, cold-blooded murder.

At least Agent Hotchner is off the hook, she thought to herself. Too many people depend on him—I couldn't have that. No, I took that shot, and nearly killed my friends—all because in the end, I'm the one with nothing really to lose.

She thought about Kyle, a usually happy man who liked doing 'side work' with Chase. She'd been hesitant about letting him into that part of her world—he had family, after all—but in the end it had worked out better than she'd hoped. And a lot of people had been helped along the way…

She thought now about Kyle's funeral. Much of the school would be there. His dad and his brother would have to plan it. They would learn why he'd died, and probably curse her name with their last breaths. She thought of Beth Carrier, who'd just buried one love of her life and would now have to bury the man who'd been trying to repair that hole in her heart.

All this, because of me, Chase thought grimly. She stared at the one-way glass, her eyes switching between a blank stare and a taunting one.

Just get it over with, she thought. She didn't think her thoughts and emotions could decend any lower than they were at that point.

Just then the man reappeared, settling his large frame into the ridiculously tiny chair for his size.

"There ees more to thees story than you air telling us," he said, startling Chase out of her misery.