Sorry for the lateness; school starting was death.

Warnings:Some language, dubious medical knowledge on the part of the writer, sudden scene changes, and Ed making fun of football (the American kind)

There were things that Ed wasn't sure about in new and weird time period that Las Vegas and the rest of the physics world were operating in. He didn't mind a lot of the technical advances; the cars were definitely much faster and apparently cleaner, and all of the machines in Greg's (now admittedly destroyed) lab were fascinating. Even the television in his hospital room was a novelty; even though he didn't understand (or, more to the point, want to understand) most of what was happening with the actors on screen, it was a way to pass the time when Al was sleeping and Ed was not. Since Al had issued a blanket ban on too much reading, with a capped time limit and everything—"You're still healing and if you spend all your time curled up around a book your ribs are never gonna fix themselves. And you can't hold a book on your own, don't even start."—Ed had had to resort to more desperate methods of entertaining himself whenever he wasn't sleeping. The exhaustion was definitely something he could do without, but at least it made time go by, and when it didn't he could at least watch television.

But he could say with absolute certainty that he wasn't a fan of this aspect of new technology.

"And why do I have to drink the weird and probably poisonous liquid?" He glared at the off-colour liquid that sloshed in the little glass he'd been handed.

"It's for the test," Dr. Speighn explained patiently. "It will help to illuminate certain parts of your organs that we want to focus on."

Ed grimaced, but slugged it back anyway. The taste was horrible, but not nearly as bad as other liquids he could name.

"Now just lie back, and we'll take care of your automail port."

Ed wouldn't admit it, but the gentle hand on his back helped ease the ache in his ribs immensely as he settled back on the cool metal slab. Dr. Speighn made sure he was properly positioned before turning away for a moment. "There isn't really a precedent for this," he mentioned as he turned back with a heavy black sheet in his hands, "but we're going to do our best to cover your automail. We can't be sure what it will do to the test, especially given its proximity to your core. This is a lead shield, and it should stop most interference."

Ed waved his good hand flippantly. "Just do what you have to do so I can get this over with."

As the lead settled surprisingly heavily on his automail port, he couldn't help a stirring of apprehension. The machine he was laying on was like nothing he had ever seen in Amestris, and he wasn't sure what to expect.

"Now, don't worry about anything but keeping still, Edward," the doctor said as he stepped toward the door. "The technician is very good, and it should only take a few minutes. Just remember not to move!" With that, Speighn left the room.

Ed took a deep breath as the machine began to whir, a thick ring spinning slowly around his head before tracking its way down. Resigned to general discomfort for the time being, he closed his eyes.

The test was actually just as quick as the doctor had predicted, but the technician asked for a second pass after adjusting the lead shield, for a more accurate test. Ed just wanted to go back to his room.

By the time he was rolled in a wheelchair back to his bed ("I'm not an invalid! I can walk!" "It's a precaution, Edward. You're exhausted."), he was more than ready to sleep. Al greeted him somewhat anxiously, but Ed waved him off and let himself drift off to the sound of his brother's voice reading to him.

"So can you show me any of this stuff?" Greg asked suddenly when they were going through one of the older books that seemed to have much less wrong with it than a lot of the other ones.

"I can't do it without my other arm," Ed said quickly, shrugging the shoulder that anchored the automail port in demonstration. "Circles don't work here, so I have to use my usual alchemy."

"And you're not allowed to use alchemy anyway," Al cut in gruffly.

"Why not?" Greg asked curiously as Ed turned an interesting shade of pink that looked more like irritation than embarrassment.

"Because he'll kill himself if he keeps doing it," Al continued with a glare at his brother. "And he knows it, even though he pretends he doesn't."

Ed scowled impressively. "I'm not an idiot, Al. I'm not gonna use it for no reason."

"Funny, you could have fooled me."

Greg looked between the brothers. "I feel like I'm missing something here."

Al turned to Greg while Ed sighed in an almost comically resigned way. "There's a problem with alchemy in this world. We already figured out that physics takes the energy that alchemy uses in our world, right?" At Greg's nod, Al continued. "Well, we basically figured out where the energy comes from that powers Ed's alchemy when he's using it without a circle."

Greg frowned and looked over at Ed, who was looking away with his scowl still firmly on his face. If he'd had both of his arms, they would have undoubtedly been crossed. "Does it... come from himself?"

"Essentially."

"I thought alchemy already drew on some of the body's resources?" he asked, referring to several of the texts on alchemical theory that they'd perused over the past several days.

"For some things, like the mental capacity used to focus on the formulae and the body's basic energy," Al explained. "Doing a lot of transmutations will tire you out, but that's basically the same as if you were doing physical activity or something like that. With Ed's alchemy here, it can't draw on any of the ambient energy, so it has to pull all of it from his body. And since he's so used to regulating the amount that is pulled from his basic functional energy, the transmutation has to use something else. And that something is his life force."

Greg blinked. That had suddenly gotten a lot more science fiction-ish than he'd expected. "Wait, that's a thing?"

Ed scoffed and rolled his eyes from the bed. "Of course it is. Maybe not in the fancy 'everyone has a soul that lives on past its body's limitations,' but there's definitely an energy that powers your life."

Al continued when Ed seemed unwilling to do so himself. "We're assuming that using it can result in a shorter life span; we've got evidence that it definitely causes a huge amount of stress on the body." He gestured at his sullen brother. "They're keeping Ed in here for observation because they can't figure out why his heart and most of his internal organs have been working overtime. We know it's because of alchemy, but we can't really tell them that. He did too many transmutations in a short period of time, and his body just didn't have any time in which to recover."

"So doing alchemy really can kill him," Greg breathed, looking at Ed in a new light. "And you've been doing it this whole time? You used it in my lab, and then who knows how many times at Copwell's hideouts!" They'd had quite the job trying to explain away the oddly broken and half-melted metal cuffs they'd found at the scene, and the door with a distinct ragged hole apparently blown out of the middle of it. After figuring out alchemy, it had been a piece of cake, but before that they'd been scratching their heads. And afterward it was a problem of investigating while trying not to reveal that they knew.

Ed's reluctance to tell them about alchemy was really not entirely incomprehensible, and Grissom had decided to leave it as one of Greg's supposedly outlandish theories when talking to anyone else. It's not like anyone would even believe him, anyway.

"I didn't know that it was doing that," Ed grumbled. "I didn't figure it out until just before the last one!"

"And yet you still did it," Al returned sharply. When Ed opened his mouth to retort, Al cut him off. "I know that you needed to, but anything other than that is unnecessary. You shouldn't be doing alchemy at all anymore."

Ed's eye twitched. "I'm not stupid, Al. I know when something's bad for me!"

Al snorted, but apparently decided not to comment and instead turned back to Greg. "So yeah. No alchemy for him." He eyed his brother. "And I'll be watching to make sure."

Ed's eye roll was the epitome of exasperation.

Greg smiled slightly. "Well, I guess I owe you a bit more of a thank you for what you did, then." At Al's curious look, he expanded. "When the lab accident happened, he basically tackled me to the ground and made a big floor shield to stop me from being impaled by all of my equipment. So it was pretty awesome, and if the fact that it hurt you is true," he turned back to Ed, "I think it's a reason to be grateful even more."

Ed flapped his hand in front of him dismissively. "It was automatic. And I didn't want to you die on my watch. Grissom would probably kill me."

"Sara would probably get there first," Greg mused. "I think she likes my wit and charm."

"More like she likes to watch you make a fool of yourself." Ed paused, as if thinking hard. "And sometimes you're useful. So there's that."

"Hey now, I'm always useful."

Ed raised an eyebrow. "Even when you're listening to your 'rock' music and dancing across the lab with a graduated cylinder?"

Greg pointed at him dramatically. "You promised you would never talk about that!"

"Oops. Must have forgotten. So sorry."

Al looked between them. "Now I have to hear this story."

Ed smirked evilly, and Greg felt his stomach sink. "I was on lunch with Nick a few weeks ago, and when we came back, Greg had this god-awful music playing, and he—"

Greg put his head in his hands with a groan.

"How'd you figure out the alchemy stuff, anyway?"

The question was actually one that Greg had expected Ed to ask sometime in the first day, so he was prepared for it. "I did a lot of research on the internet, looking up sites and stuff. There's a lot of cult things hanging around, but a few of them actually had good information."

All he received was twin blank looks.

"Please tell me you guys have the internet."

Ed shook his head, and Al just looked confused. "I'm assuming it's something to do with computers because you talked about it before," Ed noted. "We don't even have those in Amestris."

Greg put a hand to his face. "Oh god, your lives must be so sad."

Ed looked offended, so Al cut in. "You can explain it later. I'm assuming it has something to do with finding information."

"Among other things," Greg allowed. He wasn't about to expand on some of those other things, but Al's definition would work for now. "So I checked there, and a read a whole bunch of books. It was mostly just theory until I found this paper written by this old German guy living in London about a society called Thule and their belief in a place called Shamballa, and the gate that connects it to our world. He called it Amestris, though, and I recognized that from the first time we had Ed at the station. So I called him up and got a bit of information about it before he clammed up. I drew some conclusions from there."

Ed and Al shared a look. "Who was this guy in London?" Ed asked, a very careful tone in his voice.

Greg drew his eyebrows together, a foreboding feeling in his gut. "Are you gonna hunt him down and kill him for his secrets or something?"

"We don't kill people," Al assured him seriously, at the same time that Ed said "Well, it depends on what he knows."

It didn't give Greg much confidence. But, his mind supplied, what could they do to a man across the ocean when neither of them even had a passport? And he liked to think that Ed was just joking. At least fifty percent joking.

He sighed. "It was this old like hundred year old guy named Van Hohenheim."

Greg expected some kind of anger, or no real reaction at all. He didn't expect the gut-busting laughter that Ed burst into in the next moment, or the clear and sharp intake of breath from Al.

"That sly bastard's still alive!" Ed chortled as he tried to catch a full breath, still laughing. "Of course he is, too stubborn to actually croak!"

Al looked at his brother. "Is it really—"

Ed hummed an affirmative, and Al grinned. Greg was very confused.

"You guys... know him?"

For some reason this sent Ed into another (but smaller) fit of laughter, and Al chuckled a bit as well. Finally, Ed calmed enough to respond. "Well, of course we know him. He's our damn father!"

Greg was speechless for all of ten seconds before the questions started rolling out of him mouth. Of course, that led to a story that he found incredibly hard to believe, and only raised more questions—which led to more stories that left him wide-eyed and gape-mouthed. Clearly they weren't telling him everything, but... Holy shit.

It was nearly sunset by the time Greg finally made it out of the hospital, and he had never been so glad that that evening was his night off.

"So how much of it do you actually remember, Ed?"

The teenager sighed explosively and rubbed his face. "Honestly? Not much. It gets a bit better as all the crap in my system goes, but it's kind of like being drunk. It's not really easy to pick out details." He made a frustrated sound. "My memory's usually better than this."

"Just give us what you can," Grissom assured him. Ed had finally been cleared by the doctor for having all of the drugs flushed from his system, so they had figured now—several days before the hospital was willing to let him out, and thus a place that they could use as a neutral setting that Ed wouldn't be able to run away from—was the best time to get his statement.

Ed sighed again. "You guys saw the house. That was basically where he kept me, though if there was another place I can't remember because I was drugged up." He scowled. "I do remember him cutting off my goddamn hair. I'll never be able to look at anaesthetic the same way again."

Al snorted, sitting beside the bed in the same spot he'd been occupying for the past two weeks (minus bathroom breaks and to sleep on the cot against one wall that the hospital had supplied after a particularly spectacular fit when they'd tried to remove him on the third day). "Well hopefully you won't get into any more situations where anything like that will be needed."

Ed gave a short laugh, clearly agreeing on the implausibility of that.

Brass, looking impatient from his place standing at the end of the bed, cleared his throat and tapped the clipboard in his hands. The tape recorder was standing on the little end table by his hip.

"Yeah, I'm getting there," Ed groused. "So I was in a room alone, and decided to kick a hole through the door. I would have gotten out then if it hadn't been for Ashley calling me from one of the rooms. She was chained to the wall, and I couldn't get it loose before that psycho showed up again. Then I ended up getting drugged again after my first actual period of being fully aware. And then I was hanging from the ceiling by my arm. That was fun." His face told them exactly how fun it really was. The doctor had only removed the tight bandaging around his shoulder—to stabilize the strained ligaments—the previous day, according to Dr. Speighn, and Ed was still wearing a splint on his thumb and wrist. "So I used my automail arm to rip it from the ceiling, finally got Ashley's chains off, and sent her out the basement window. I couldn't really get out myself," he shrugged his conspicuously limb-free shoulder, "so I decided to find an exit upstairs. Unfortunately I have really bad timing and fate hates me, so of course that's when the psycho—Copwell, whatever his name is—got home and decided I would make a really great knife block. And then you guys showed up, shot him full of lead, I'm assuming, and I decided the sidewalk would be a nice place to nap. Oh, and I think I heard Al breaking something."

Grissom looked over at the younger Elric, and Al flushed. "Sorry about that," he mumbled.

The lead CSI waved a hand. "It's alright. It'll be fixed eventually." Actually, he had no idea when it would get fixed; with his schedule there just wasn't enough time to get it into the shop and replace the back driver's side window. For now the plastic he had over it would work just fine—it wasn't as though there was a lot of inclement weather that would make it a bad life choice. (He wasn't about to tell Al that, though. The kid looked guilty enough as it was.)

"It was his own fault," Ed said without a trace of remorse. "You can't hold an Elric back."

"That much has made itself abundantly clear," Grissom said dryly.

Brass was looking impatient again; clearly he felt he had somewhere else to be. (And maybe he did; he was nearing the end of his shift and it was always a bad time to get on the detective's nerves—which Ed seemed to have a particular knack for.) "Was there anything else you remember?"

Ed shrugged. "Nothing much. You guys found the place, so that can probably tell you more than I can. I don't..." his face took on a pinched look. "I don't know where he... did anything to any of the girls or if he had other hideouts, but..." He ran a hand through his shorn hair, which they hadn't gotten anyone to even out yet. "I'm just glad I managed to save one person."

Grissom couldn't help but agree. He knew that feeling.

"Well, thanks for all your help, kid," Brass said brusquely, stopping the tape recorder and slipping it into his pocket. Ed's entire face twitched, but a valiant effort kept him in place on the bed. It was more restraint than he'd shown around the detective in the past. "Anything else you remember, just call us."

"Sure. It's been a pleasure." The smile looked forced, but no one was going to call him on it.

"We'll be around in a few days to get you," Grissom added. They were still technically the boys' acting guardians until such a time as they either found a contact or Social Services got on their backs. And that was the last thing Grissom wanted, especially given their true origin.

Ed flapped his hand tiredly. He was clearly reaching the end of his energy; the doctor had said that he still had very sudden sleeping spells. "Yeah, yeah. If we're still here by then."

Al scowled at him. "You're staying here until the doctors let you go."

"But Al—"

"See you later," Brass cut in with a wave over his shoulder, already halfway out the door. Grissom smiled apologetically at Al and turned to follow his companion.

Grissom breathed deeply as he stepped into the elevator with Brass. Dr. Speighn waved to them from the other side of the nurse's station, where he was already starting to go through a file. Grissom gave a small wave back, and Brass grunted a greeting. They had just spent the past half hour with him, discussing the next few days and the logistics of getting Ed out of the hospital. There was an incredible amount of paperwork and an entire cadre of medication he would expected to take, and Grissom wasn't particularly looking forward to Ed's reaction to that.

The elevator ride down was quiet. When it dinged and opened its doors on the main floor, Grissom blinked.

Ashley Zenner stood on the other side, a bouquet of yellow roses in her arms.

"Oh! Mr. Grissom, Detective Brass," she greeted. The two men stepped out to let a different group of passengers in, and the doors closed without Ashley on board.

"How are you, Ashley?" Grissom asked carefully. The woman looked down, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

"I'm alright," she said finally, looking up again with a small smile on her face. "It's... different, you know? After everything."

Grissom couldn't help but nod. He'd experienced it second-hand often enough, and he could imagine how strange it would be to return to her fiancé as though nothing had happened, with little to show for her trial but a scar on her arm and memories she was likely never to forget.

"Well, if you need anything, don't hesitate to call."

Her smile widened just a bit. "I'll keep that in mind. But for now..." She glanced down at the roses in her hands.

"For Ed?" Grissom asked knowingly. Ashley nodded, unembarrassed.

"He saved my life. I have to thank him somehow."

He smiled as he imagined the confounded and embarrassed what-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-do look on Ed's face when Ashley arrived. It was almost worth going back up to see it... But he didn't want to ruin her honest gratitude. Al would have to tell him about it later.

"Well, don't let me keep you waiting," he said instead, pushing the elevator call button for her. "He'll be glad to see you, one way or another."

Ashley smiled again. "Thanks. I hope to see you around." The elevator arrived, and she stepped inside with a wave. Grissom waved back before turning to Brass and gesturing out the front door.

"Ed getting flowers," Brass muttered in amusement. "Next it'll be dresses."

Grissom snorted and was about to reply when his phone went off. He pulled it out of his pocket with a small frown before spotting Catherine's number on the screen.

"Grissom," he greeted.

"Hey Gris, got your kit? We got a call about a body out Billman Avenue. Sara's at home, Greg's in the lab, and Nick and Warrick are out by Sunrise Manor looking into that home invasion, so you wanna hit it up with me?"

HE thought for only a second before deciding. "Yeah. Just leaving the hospital after getting Ed's statement; Brass and I can swing by."

"Sounds good. I'll meet you down on the south side and we can talk to the informant."

"See you there." The line went dead a moment later, and he hung up the phone and slid it back into his pocket.

"What we got?" Brass asked.

"There's a body. Cath's asking for us to come out and help."

Brass snorted. "Well, not like I've got anything better to do right now. Lead on." He gestured imperiously out the door, and Grissom snorted.

Ed breathed as deeply as he could for a moment before opening his eyes. The hospital ceiling hadn't changed much in the time he'd been here, but at least this one was slightly more colourful than the last. The slightly beige tone was both easier on the eyes and less likely to remind him jarringly of exactly where he was every time he opened them. Even if it was only in the long-term rooms, he couldn't help but be a little grateful.

A turn of his head showed Al sitting awkwardly in the chair in the corner, his head tossed back over the chair in a way that said he'd have a vicious kink in it when he woke up. He must have conked out just a minute or two after Grissom and Brass had left, because Ed knew he'd only closed his eyes for a moment. The TV in the corner was on and quietly playing the tail end of some sport that Ed didn't understand but seemed to involve tossing around an oblong ball between players dressed in so much gear that he was sure they were compensating for something. He was almost tempted to turn it off, but it was the only small bit of entertainment he had in this place. He couldn't really lift a book because of the wrecked state of his automail and the partial cast forcing his left thumb into alignment. (And oh, how he'd glared a hole through the nurse who'd taken his books after he tried. He hadn't seen her since, so maybe she'd run screaming back home and learned not to try and take his stuff away. The rule was still enforced, though.) Al needed his sleep, so Ed was loathe to wake him just to chat. They'd been doing more than enough of that in the past two weeks. And anyone else would be more annoying than enlightening to talk to, and there were apparently rules about how many glasses he could break in irritation before they relegated him to plastic. (The limit was two.)

He spent a few minutes musing about what to do with the revelation that Hohenheim was still alive and kicking. Honestly, Ed had expected him to have croaked by now, especially with all the body-breaking-down-due-to-soul-transfer thing that the man had been dealing with way back when. He and Al had discussed maybe trying to go over and see the old bastard before going back to Amestris, but Greg had said something about passports and what-have-you and the whole thing had started to sound way too much like trying to get across the border to Drachma. So that idea was pretty much scrapped.

"Not like he'd even remember us. Probably gone senile by now," Ed muttered without any actual heat.

He sighed and looked at the TV again, trying to make sense of the large puddle of bodies on the field that was apparently the end of a 'play'. He knew there was a reason he never got into sports in Amestris; it looked like far too much touching for far too little benefit for his liking.

The knock on the door was so welcome that he almost would have been happy if it was another nurse come to knock him out with the good drugs.

Of course, he certainly wasn't expecting the person who came through instead.

"Ashley?" he asked, dumbfounded, as the woman peeked around the doorframe, what was clearly a bundle of flowers in her hands.

"Hey Ed," she said quietly, eyes flicking over to Al. "I hope I didn't come at a bad time..."

He waved his hand in dismissal. "Hell no, I'm bored out of my tree. If you leave I might throw myself out the window for something to do."

That got a smile out of her. "I came to see how you were doing," she said as she advanced into the room. Al didn't stir, thankfully, and she settled into the chair on the opposite side of the bed. "I heard how you got out, and... and the diagnosis, and I didn't want to come by when you were still out of it. I wanted to thank you."

Ed smiled, though he could tell that it was a bit awkward. He really hoped she didn't want to talk about feelings and all that. "Yeah, you know, no problem!" he said quickly. "Anyone would've helped, I was just a bit better equipped to do so." He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, trying and failing to ignore the weirdness of both the situation and feeling the short, ragged strands of hair on the back of his head.

Ashley snorted. "A bit? I'd say. I'd probably be dead without you there."

He sighed. "You can't think of what-ifs. That's something I've learned over the years. You'll drive yourself crazy. Yeah, you got out. We both did. And that's really all that counts."

Her head was tilted down, so he couldn't get a good look at her face, but her shoulders were trembling just a bit. Ed bit his lip, wondering what he was supposed to do with a crying girl in a situation like this, but he was spared the decision. Ashley raised her head a moment later, her eyes dry and her face composed.

"I still have to thank you," she said. "It's the right thing to do. I can't just leave it hanging out there. I had to see how you were doing, too." She looked down again, and then picked up the flowers in her lap. "I, uh... I got these for you. They're not romantic or anything, but the shop owner said they were the colour of gratefulness. And I'm grateful."

Ed couldn't help but flush at the gesture. "Uh... yeah, sure, you... That's great. I mean, a girl's never given me flowers before, but I'm sure they've got something around here..." He fumbled at the small table beside him before unceremoniously draining the last of his apple juice out of a (regrettably plastic) glass and refilling it with the pitcher of water. "We can just... put them in here, right? They won't die or anything?"

Ashley laughed. Out of the corner of his eye, Ed could see Al shift slightly, but he didn't wake up. Clearly he was completely out of it. "I think that will do just fine." She unwrapped the outside plastic and bundled the flowers into the glass, turning a few of them so that it was balanced less precariously and putting it on the small set of drawers against the wall behind her. "That way they won't be in the way," she explained when he frowned. Well, seemed reasonable.

There was an awkward moment of silence before Ashley shifted on her feet and looked around the room.

"Well, I should probably go," she said finally, and Ed could feel his shoulders relax slightly. He didn't mind her being there, per se, but the fact that he'd saved her life and they didn't really know how to talk about it or what to say otherwise made it difficult to actually do anything without it being awkward.

"Watch out for yourself, yeah?" he said finally. "I might not see you again but... Yeah."

Ashley snorted softly. "Great exit. You should put that on a card."

Ed raised an eyebrow. "Maybe I will!"

"I'd buy it." She waved a hand as she opened the door, and cast a last look over her shoulder as she closed it. "You take of yourself too, pipsqueak."

The door closed before the second plastic cup on the bedside table connected with it, but the satisfying thump it made and the giggle on the other side of the door was still worth it.

Al jerked awake at the sound, his eyes casting this way and that for what he probably perceived as a threat. "Wazzat?"

Ed grinned. "Just getting rid of a pest, Al. Good beauty nap?"

Al scowled at him, rubbing the back of his neck in a way that said it clearly pained him. "I hope you didn't scare off one of the nurses again," he muttered darkly, that look in his eyes that promised pain if Ed had been rude again.

"Nah," Ed waved it off, lying back on the bed. When he didn't expand, Al glared suspiciously, but Ed put on his most innocent face and turned his gaze back to the TV, where another strange sport had started (though the only way he could tell was the different coloured uniforms).

After a moment, his brother sighed. "Are you even watching that?"

"Obviously!" He gestured at the TV imperiously. "What else would I be doing while looking straight at it?"

Al snorted. "Come on, turn it off. I'll read to you again."

"Oh thank goodness," Ed breathed, punching the remote to shut off the game and turning hopefully to his sibling. "Jesus Chirst, that was boring!"

Al blinked at him. "What?"

Ed smirked. "I don't even know. But it's fun to say."

The amused snort before Al opened one of his borrowed books was totally worth it.

The site was surprisingly crowded when they arrived. Grissom sighed when he saw the police tape and the dozen or so spectators that leaned over the edge of it in an attempt to see as much as possible of what was going on. There were two officers patrolling the line, and he could see Catherine standing just inside the tape, her kit at her side and a grim look on her face.

Grissom jogged up to her, Brass trailing behind to veer off and help clear the crowd. "What do we got?" he asked.

"Not sure," she replied, glancing over to the shadowed area where two buildings met, where an indistinct figure was lying. "The call came in from a taxi driver. All he'd say is he found a body, and I haven't had a chance to take a look yet. Was waiting for you."

"After you, then."

The body was bundled in a light jacket and cargo pants, and the hood was pulled over its head. They snapped several pictures and surveyed the ground around it, but couldn't find anything besides some stirred dirt and an ineffectively partial boot print. Finally, Grissom reach forward and turned the body over.

Blonde hair spilled out of the hood into the dirt, and the front of the girl's shirt was a mess of blood and torn fabric, so there was no mystery in how she died.

But Grissom's eyes were fixed on her face, his heart stopping and leaving a churning, impossible silence in its wake.

Ashley Zenner's wide, vacant green eyes stared up at the sky from a ghostly pale face.

And the only question that went through his mind in that moment was who the hell is at the hospital?

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-Akita