Essential Listening: Control, by Halsey
Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck!
The fire alarm screamed all around them, along with the sounds of a hotel full of people beginning to stir, but mostly what Penelope could hear was her own breathing. Reid was keeping himself behind them, ready to raise his gun if necessary, but for the moment they were just flat out running down the emergency stairs. Grace was marginally ahead of her, dragging her along by her arm with a grim expression on her face.
Penelope wasn't a field agent, but from the few training exercises she had watched and the hundred times she had been on the far end of the radio when the shit hit the fan, she knew absolutely that neither Reid nor Grace were strictly adhering to protocol. She didn't know why, and she hadn't really got the time to think about it, but they were both usually shit hot on the rules – which meant there was a reason that right now, they weren't following them.
And that scared the hell out of her.
Above them, a door slammed back against the wall with an awful crack that made her stumble. She felt Reid's hand on her shoulder pushing her urgently forward as their pursuer roared with anger.
Penelope yelped, ducking instinctively as something smacked against the wall behind them. Something and not a bullet, because although it sent up a spray of plaster dust, it didn't sound like a gunshot, and somehow – somehow – it felt bigger.
"Go!" Reid hissed, and then the pressure of his hand was gone.
A moment later, the thunder of an actual gunshot in close quarters gave her an extra burst of speed. It was so loud!
Ahead, Grace whirled around, shoving Penelope behind her, but Reid was already running to catch up. He had taken a shot, Penelope realised, simply to give them a few extra moments of cover.
Together, they rounded the corner of the penultimate flight of stairs and she caught sight of the damage to the wall above: definitely not a bullet hole. Careening down the last few steps, she wracked her brains for anything that might have made a concrete surface crack like that and came up distressingly empty.
I get why they don't want back up, she thought suddenly, around the deafening sound of her own heartbeat. They know back up can't handle this. Which means we can't handle this. Oh fuck, oh fuck oh, fuck! Which means – which means – we've got to get this guy away from the people in the hotel. The people in – who should be pouring out of the – out of the –
"Why – isn't – anyone – out – here?" she wheezed, as they reached the bottom. "The – alarms –"
Reid shot Grace an indecipherable glance, but otherwise, neither of them answered.
"He – did – something – to the – doors?" Penelope guessed, heart in her mouth.
"No," said Grace.
But that would mean –
For a horrible moment, she thought the door they were making for would be locked, and that he was driving them into a trap, but mercifully, it wasn't. The acrid orange of the streetlights in the parking lot spilled inside.
Had the door ahead already been open? Was this how he'd got in?
She was sure she could hear other people banging on the emergency doors on the landings above them – but there wasn't time to worry about it because her friends were bodily dragging her through the door to the parking lot.
They ran outside, then Grace's presence vanished and she fell behind. Reid didn't let go of Penelope's arm, pulling her forward until they reached the relative cover of someone's minivan.
Penelope turned just in time to see Grace slamming the emergency door shut behind them, then sprinting to catch up.
"Which – way?" Reid panted, gun up to provide covering fire in case Blaize got through it.
When he got through it, Penelope thought desperately. That's not going to hold him for long. Oh God! Oh Fuck! What the hell do we do?
She wished Derek was with them – and then fervently wished he didn't show up and get himself mixed up in it, too.
Penelope looked wildly around, but Grace was already reviewing their options with an operational calm that right now she would have paid someone to be able to feel. Further along the street, the other patrons of the hotel were spilling out onto the street, looking confused and disoriented, but otherwise unhurt.
"Not that way," said Grace, and Penelope privately agreed.
As much as she desperately wanted to go hide in a crowd right now, she had seen what this unsub was prepared to do when he was angry, and she didn't think a handful of innocent bystanders would stop him doing whatever it was the son of a bitch had come here to do.
To me. He targeted my room. And now Reid and Grace are in the middle of this with me. This is all my goddamn fault!
"Here," Grace shouted, and one of them – Penelope had no idea which – grabbed her arm and yanked her in the other direction.
Her lungs were burning with each fresh gulp of air and her legs were beginning to slow down of their own accord. The painful realisation that she would not be able to run much further, no matter how close their pursuer was, was beginning to steal over her. Penelope blinked hard, trying to get rid of the panicked tears that were filling her eyes.
I have got to get in better shape, she thought. If I live through this, I promise I'll go to the gym! I'll cut down my calories! I'll go to Pilates with JJ! I'll go running with Derek! I'll book salsa lessons with Emily! I'll eat less ice-cream! I'll take Jake and Henry swimming! I'll do anything!
They were a few hundred metres up the street when something gave a brief metallic scream and a crash.
If I get out of here, I am never leaving my fucking tech lair ever again.
"He's through the door," panted Grace, and dodged to the right, through the broken gate of what looked like an abandoned warehouse.
"What – did – he – do – to – it?" Penelope hissed, and then she remembered the crime scene photos she had not managed to avoid seeing earlier.
She glanced behind and caught a wild glimpse of the door sticking out of the side of a car.
What the hell?!
"Quick," Reid huffed, yanking the door of the warehouse open. The padlock and chain that had been wrapped around the handles mustn't have been secured at all, because it slid to the ground without even a token resistance.
Her mind screamed, HE EXPLODED TWO PEOPLE AND A DOG! as her friends propelled her inside. Has he got explosives? Or chemicals? What the hell is this guy doing? Oh FUCK.
The building was pitch dark and filthy, full of looming shadows that she presumed were disused machinery and equipment, in various stages of looting and disrepair. Penelope gulped. They were going to have to move slower in here, or they would take themselves out – which was a relief as far as her lungs were concerned, but not very helpful given that a deranged serial killer with some kind of chemical weapon was close on their heels.
With any luck, he wouldn't realise they were inside the warehouse. But then, she reflected, as Reid fell headlong over what might once have been a shelving unit, luck was in short supply tonight. His gun skittered across the floor.
"Fuck!" he yelped in pain and surprise, and that part of Penelope's brain that was functioning despite the manifold terror, registered that she had never heard him curse before. If anything, it just made her more frightened, but she had the weird urge to laugh, all the same.
Squashing it, she ran forward and pulled him to his feet as Grace retrieved his gun and pressed it into his hands.
"We need to hide," she said urgently.
Reid pointed to a staircase at the back. "There."
"No! People – always – go – upstairs – in movies," Penelope managed. "And we always – yell at them for it – because they get – trapped!"
"She's right," Grace whispered. "Basement's out, too, same reason."
"I can't see a damn thing!" Penelope complained.
"We can't use a light," said Reid, and for some reason he seemed to be saying this to Grace more than to Penelope. "He'll see exactly – where we are." He grimaced and clutched his shin. "That really hurt."
"Can you run?" Grace asked, catching his elbow.
Although it was very dark and her friends' faces were essentially slightly blacker shadows in the gloom, she could tell a lot of rather urgent and painful information was passing between them.
"No," he admitted, at last, sounding angry, but calm. "I'll stay here and cover you."
"No!" Penelope gasped, as Grace spat, "The hell you will!"
"I can't move fast," he hissed. "I can't put much weight on my ankle. And he is coming! And he won't stop, until –"
Both agents looked at Penelope and she felt something fundamental shift inside her chest. She was still shaking, and a lot of it was still terror, but she found she had passed through it and come out the other side.
No one hurts my babies, she thought, and moved closer to Reid, intending to pilot him to safety, but Grace got there first, tucking her shoulders under his arm in a way that left him no room to argue – though he still tried.
"I'll help you," Grace informed him, waving him into silence. "Garcia, head for the office – we'll be right behind you."
"I am not leaving you," said Penelope, in a voice that was a good deal less frightened and a good deal angrier, even to her. "He came after me, and –"
"And he's not getting you," Reid interrupted, with a steeliness to his tone that Penelope didn't often hear.
"I won't let this son of a bitch hurt you instead of me!" she cried, and they both shushed her frantically.
"You're not leaving us behind, Penelope, you're going ahead," Grace whispered briskly. "You're going to get to the office, take cover and call Hotch – because we won't be able to keep him occupied forever. And me and Reid will be right behind you."
"Garcia, go," Reid hissed. "Go – get us back up."
"But –"
"Go!" they cried in unison.
She swore, turned and scrambled across the machinery strewn room. They were right: they needed help – even if that help seemed like it would be woefully inadequate, right now. At the very least, SWAT might be able to shoot the vicious son of a bitch. She jogged to a halt inside the grubby office and nearly toppled over a fallen filing cabinet. Strewn papers shifted and slid beneath her feet, and she wobbled violently before jamming the mop against the far wall and steadying herself. She hadn't even realised she still had it. Clutching it close to her chest (and somehow feeling better for that), she ducked beneath a desk, momentarily glad that whoever had kitted out the office had asked for a metal one.
Then she remembered the emergency door at the hotel.
Fingers clumsy with terror, she fumbled with her phone, and almost called her friend Holly instead of Hotch. It wouldn't have been particularly helpful, since Holly was a nail technician in Halifax, Virginia, and was probably asleep, as it was.
He answered halfway through the first ring.
"Are you alright?"
"No!" she squeaked. "We got – out of – the hotel!"
God I'm out of breath, she thought, willing herself to be able to speak clearly.
"Where are you?" he asked, and Penelope recognised the 'don't fuck with me, we're in trouble' tone from a hundred desperate phone calls. "Is Reid with you? Is Pearce?"
"Yes, they – they're just behind me. Reid hurt his leg – Grace is helping –"
"Garcia, where are you?"
"W-w-warehouse," she stuttered. Now she was still, the horror of the situation was really beginning to catch up with her. She shook her head, trying to get a hold of herself. "Half a block from the h-h-hotel."
In the background, she could hear the voices of the rest of her team, tersely calling out the usual operational nonsense to one another.
"Stay calm, we're coming."
"Hang in there, Mama!" Derek yelled, and Penelope had a sudden, sickening vision of the crime scenes, but with her friends' faces superimposed over the half-stripped flesh.
Panic gripped her heart. "Hotch – no – don't send anyone, he blew a whole door open and I have no idea how, but it flew across the street and hit a car – a-a-and the wall at the hotel cracked wide open – and whatever he's got, if you guys – if you guys get in the way of that –"
"Garcia, I need you to listen to me," said Hotch, and Penelope forced herself to calm down a notch, aware that whatever he was about to say would be important. "Keep in cover. Stay close to Pearce. Do whatever she tells you."
"Reid's not hurt that b-b-badly," she began, confused, but he cut her off.
"Do you understand? I need a 'yes', Penelope."
"Yes, sir!" she cried, terrified and confused.
"Good. We're twenty minutes out. Try to keep out of sight."
Oh, God!
She heard him bark at someone that they needed tactical assistance, and then Emily begin relaying terse instructions – presumably to the local Field Office.
"Garcia, are the others with you yet?"
That was Rossi; she supposed they had her on speaker phone.
"I don't know…" She took a gulp of air, steeled herself for the worst and risked a swift glance over the top of the desk.
To her immense relief, Grace and Reid were only a few feet away, slowly navigating the treacherous dark of the warehouse floor. Too slowly.
"They're – yeah – they're here –" She cleared a path on the floor with the mop, as best as she could, to save them slipping.
"He's inside," Reid panted, as he dropped low beside her. "Keep your head down."
Penelope moaned in dread as he clumsily shifted into a more defensive position.
Grace crouched on Penelope's other side. "Try to stay still and quiet," she whispered. "Have you got Hotch?"
"Yes," Penelope breathed, and then realised that her other team members had gone quiet, too – presumably having heard Reid.
"How long?"
"Twenty minutes," Penelope replied, squeezing her eyes shut. "Well, eighteen, now."
Distantly, they heard the sound of someone moving through the warehouse. Penelope's heart leapt back into her mouth. She felt Grace's fingers lace with her own; Reid pressed himself closer to her other side. They were shielding her, she realised, and whimpered. She tried as hard as she could to breathe quietly, convinced that Blaize would be able to hear both that and her pulse, given how loud it was echoing in her skull.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he called, and Garcia startled badly.
He was still pretty far, based on the sound of his voice, but that wasn't a huge comfort. Grace's other hand landed on her back, steadying her.
'You're not alone here', it seemed to say.
She felt her friend's breath on her neck. "Hold fast," she murmured.
"I know you're in here, Penelope – you and your little friends!"
Swallowing hard, she tried to make herself even smaller.
This is all my fault!
"I know all about you, Penelope. That was a dirty trick with my servers. I was almost impressed."
It was agony, huddled together in the dark, waiting for one of two equally appalling outcomes: Blaize found them and did what he had done to the other victims; or the others arrived and he did it to them, instead. She kept her cell phone pressed to her ear, the sounds of the rest of the team keeping her from falling entirely apart.
This time, when he called out, he was a good deal closer. "You FBI agents think you're so clever, but you're no match for me. Let me see, it must have been Spencer Reid who shot at me – sorry, Doctor Reid."
Penelope felt Reid shift marginally nearer to her. "You're a very poor shot, by the way, for a genius. Can't have been Grace Pearce, because you've only just been cleared to recertify for your weapons license. You're not even armed."
He can't know that! Penelope realised. Unless –
"Tell me, Agent Pearce, what did it feel like to have that shotgun at the back of your head? A thrill like no other, I should imagine."
Penelope opened her eyes to look at Grace, who looked remarkably impassive, in the gloom. She squeezed her hand and Grace's eyes met hers.
"He must have back-hacked me," Penelope murmured urgently into her cell. "He can't know about medical clearance any other way."
"That must be how he knew where you were," JJ whispered, from somewhere distant.
"Twelve minutes, Garcia," said Hotch tersely.
"Trust me, when I'm done with you, it'll pale into comparison." Blaize sounded like he was about twenty feet away, now. "And you have Penelope to thank for it!"
Slowly, carefully, Reid shifted so he could see them both. He met Grace's gaze, and something passed between them. Penelope wasn't sure what they were saying to one another, but it seemed to be important. Oddly, and for no reason she could think of, the office betting pool came to mind.
"He's right outside," Reid mouthed.
Penelope closed her eyes again. Whatever happened next, she didn't want to see.
"I'll peel your friends apart like oranges, Penelope, for what you did," Blaize continued, voice silky with rage. "And I'll make you watch."
She gave a sort of silent sob of terror, and then her eyes flew open because Grace had let go of her hand and made to stand up.
"No, don't!" hissed Reid, and grabbed her hand, wide-eyed. He shook his head, but Grace disentangled his fingers. "The others –"
"Exactly. No choice, now. Stay low."
"Grace!"
But with that, she stepped lightly out of the office and into the warehouse beyond, as sure-footed as if she were walking across the bullpen, and for a horrible moment, Penelope thought she might simply faint from shock.
"Ah, there you are, Agent Pearce," Blaize cried, triumphantly. "Somehow, I thought it would be Doctor Reid – I mean, you're not even armed. But then, perhaps your recent brush with death has made you reckless."
Reid moved into a higher crouch, still using the desk and office wall as cover, but levelling his gun at Blaize's head.
"Ah, there you are Doctor," he said, sounding smug. "And I assume little Penelope is with you there, also."
"Stay down," Reid hissed, but Penelope couldn't have moved if she tried.
"Garcia, what's going on?" Hotch asked quietly.
"I think Grace's going to try to keep him talking," she whispered. "Reid's covering her, but –"
"I must admit, this deviance from my schedule is rather irritating," said Blaize, and it sounded like he was sidestepping to keep Grace between him and Reid's gun.
It appeared to be working, because her friend gave a hiss of frustration. "Dammit, Grace!"
"But I am really rather enjoying this. Do you know why, Agent Pearce?"
"Because you're an arrogant wanker who thinks everyone is beneath him," said Grace, in the characteristic ringing tone that she had heard her friend use when men in clubs were getting a little handsy.
Unable to help herself, Penelope rose up on her knees and peeked above the table. Grace was standing about ten feet from them – and about the same distance behind her was the short man with a bad goatee and long, black coat she remembered from the CCTV footage Rossi had turned up. He was presently turning puce, looking utterly apoplectic.
"What the hell is she doing?" Emily demanded in an urgent whisper.
"She's keeping him busy," Hotch snapped. "So we can liaise with Tactical. How far out are they?"
Penelope watched in helpless horror as Blaize pointed the tip of his walking cane at Grace.
"You shut your mouth!"
"You think there's no one quite like you," Grace informed him, with no indication she had even heard him speak. "But let me tell you who you are, 'Draven Blaize'. You picked a stupid name to make yourself feel better about your dull, boring life. You dress like an extra from The Prestige because you know otherwise no one will notice you. You shop at Rosetti's for the most dangerous and exciting things you can think of because you're dying to be interesting. You rely on props to get you through, but they stop working because you don't pay attention to the details. You make big plans, but they always fall apart. Everything goes wrong for you, and you tell yourself it's all someone else's fault, but the truth is, Draven, you just aren't clever enough or talented enough to make things work properly. You are mediocre. A bore."
"I bet those men don't think I'm dull or boring!" he shouted. "Or their families! And I got your attention! You're here! You'll see! You'll see when I'm done!"
Grace laughed, and it was a curiously unsettling sound – like someone else was laughing with their friend's mouth.
"You think murder makes you special?" she scoffed. "Take it from me, there are thousands of disappointing, pathetic little men just like you, who kill for no reason other than to ameliorate their own insignificance."
Was it Garcia's imagination, or could she smell gunpowder? Her ears popped, as though there had been a marked drop in pressure.
"I'm going to be the most powerful warlock in Wichita!" he screamed, livid. "And none of you pitiful FBI fucks are going to stop me! I'll have the world at my feet! I will bind them to me, and not even the Dark Lord will be able to challenge me!"
Something dripped on the back of Penelope's neck and she looked up.
Rain? But there were clear skies when we left the hotel…
High above them, the unmistakeable rumble of thunder rolled across the heavens. It made for a peculiarly dramatic backdrop to Blaize's ramblings. For a long moment, Penelope considered the possibility that he was doing it himself, to underline his point. But that would be insane.
"Eight minutes, Garcia."
"You don't even kn0w what that word means," said Grace, almost softly.
"The Dark Lord! The Holly King! The Lord of Ice!" Blaize shouted. "You insignificant insect! You are nothing compared to me."
"No," she said calmly. "Not that one."
A fork of lightning lit up the world outside the warehouse, superimposing the negative imprints of the window frames over everything. The phone in Penelope's hand went dead.
"Hotch?" she whispered. "Hotch! No, no, no!"
"What is it?" Reid hissed.
"The phone cut out – it – there's no signal – I don't understand."
"You think you're so much cleverer than me, you little bitch," Blaize snarled. But he was unable to resist adding, "Which word?"
Grace laughed again. It was a cold laugh, and so very unlike her usual one. A shiver of something akin to horror travelled down Penelope's spine. "You're all the same. Petty little infants with a God complex. 'Warlock'."
There was a sudden quiet in the warehouse, as if the building itself was holding its breath. Blaize, it seemed, hadn't noticed.
"It means powerful sorcerer! Mage! It's an epithet – a term of respect, you imbecile! That's what I –"
"No, you vapid, hollow excuse for an illusionist." Grace said, an icy kind of hatred in her voice. She squared her shoulders. "It means 'traitor'."
After, Penelope couldn't have said what happened first: the burst of violent green light that shot out of Blaize's cane like fire, or the crack of pure, white energy that seemed to split it in two and pass straight through it, right at him.
Ravenous, emerald flames rushed towards them, and suddenly Reid was throwing her behind him, trying to shield her with his body. Penelope clutched him to her, trying to get him as far back as possible, away from the impossible fire. The windows and wall of the little office cracked, splintered and collapsed.
Someone was screaming; Penelope realised it was her.
Well, this is a fucking weird way to die, she thought, then: Holy shit, he's a real life wizard! Then: Oh fuck, a real life wizard is going to peel our face off!
Penelope buried her face in the back of Reid's shirt, convinced that the very next thing she would see would be her parents' worried expressions – but the inevitable scorching heat she had expected didn't come.
She could hear Reid taking ragged breaths – they were pressed so close together she could even feel his heart racing in his chest. They were alive – and, on the basis of what she thought she had just seen – probably hallucinating. One of Reid's hands was still pinning her firmly behind him; in the other, his gun hung limply by his side. There was a strange smell – like gunpowder, but also the scent of rain on a hot night.
Screwing up her courage, she peered around his shoulder. Her mouth fell open.
A couple of feet in front of them, just beyond where the windows of the office had been, there was a curved, concave bowl of pale blue light, shifting slightly, like a sort of bubble of smoke. Beyond it, patches of green fire blazed like pools of liquid flame, dripping sparks of something that looked a lot like electricity onto the ground. Great coils of violet smoke swirled around two figures, locked in what Penelope could only describe as a scene from a Sunday afternoon SyFy special.
One of them hurled a ball of silver light at the other, who knocked it away with a flick of their fingers, driving their opponent back with something unseen. The first wizard – because Penelope really couldn't think of a better word to describe them – swung a long stick in the other's direction, and an arc of bronze light rent the air, slicing through one of the long, warehouse tables like butter.
The cane, Penelope realised. Which made that one Draven Blaize. But where had the other come from – and where the hell was Grace?
The nearer figure raised their hands and seemed to snatch the arc of energy out of the air, ripping it apart with an audible snap. The energy dissipated, with a series of cracks and bangs as it struck various pieces of discarded machinery and the warehouse walls. In each place it did, metal twisted or crumpled under percussive shock, glass shattered, masonry cracked – thick black vapour rushed upwards in a great billow, and then vanished.
Reid gasped and Penelope gave a little shriek of alarm as it struck the bubble of smoke, which seemed to ripple for a moment, and then glow all the brighter.
"It must have – it must have absorbed the energy!" Reid exclaimed.
He was shaking, she realised, as her fingers tightened around his bicep in fear, every bit as afraid as she was. There was nothing in their FBI training that could have prepared them for this – and as far as she knew, Grace was on the far side of the bubble, somewhere, while two legit magic users hurled spells at one another.
Then the nearer figure pulled something that looked like lightning out of the air, and the atmosphere around her lit up like a Christmas tree, casting her silhouette against the far wall. It looked like whatever it was, was heavy, because it seemed to take a lot of effort to throw it at Blaize, who grunted and staggered backwards a few paces.
He countered with more green fire – though this time it caught the nearer figure off-guard. They barely had time to raise their hands in defence before it struck them in the middle and propelled them backwards. They stumbled, crashing to the floor in a wave of emerald fire.
"Grace!" shouted Reid, taking a step forward, and Penelope looked wildly around, thinking he must have spotted her elsewhere in the warehouse.
But then the nearer figure picked herself up, amongst flames that didn't seem to be touching her anymore, and Penelope got a good look at her face.
"That's – that's –" she spluttered.
Reid nodded, and then flinched as something loud and glowing crashed into the protective bubble Grace – because the other wizard – the witch, in fact – could only be Grace – stretched out her hands towards the lurid flames. They surged greedily towards her, coiling almost lovingly about her arms. Then she lifted one hand, raising her first two forefingers, and slid them through the air from one side to another.
Penelope gasped.
Where there had been one weirdly familiar witch, wreathed in blazing jade, now there were two. One strafed left and the other strafed right; the first condensed the flames around her hands into a brightly glowing orb, while the other drew her hands apart and made the green fire roar up.
Now Blaize had two witches to worry about. He sent spell after spell at them, but they side stepped out of their way each time, the ground behind them a mess of broken and melting machine parts.
Trying to keep them both in sight at once, Blaize tripped, stumbling a few steps. One of the Graces cast the fanned up flames in his direction, while the other hurled the compact green orb at him. Caught in the middle, he hastily threw up his cane, then whirled it around, sending violet spikes of something that might have been ice through the air in every direction. They buried themselves in the walls and shattered against the bubble of smoke that was protecting them. One of them struck one of the Graces in the abdomen, and both Penelope and Reid cried out.
She merely shrugged, however, and faded out of existence. The other Grace – the real one – had been busy wrapping magic around her hands, weaving intricate twists and turns into it with her fingers, until she was ready to cast it towards Blaize, which she did with vicious accuracy. A sort of net of light flew towards him, and this time he only just got his cane up in time, and yelled obscenities at her as she made another complicated sort of movement with her hands.
It seemed to Penelope, in that part of her mind that was able to separate itself from the horror and shock of recent and continuing events, that Blaize was vastly outclassed. Where he was flustered and furious, Grace was focused and calm, working and thinking several steps ahead of him, almost too fast for him to keep up. The spells he was using were bright and flashy, but all a bit like fireworks: pretty to look at, but almost all the same. Grace, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking on her feet, using every kind of trick Penelope had ever imagined – not that she had imagined any of this outside the pages of her favourite comics. She wasn't wasting a thing.
For a moment, she recalled Grace's peculiar profile, and her derisive description of the unsub. Somewhere amongst the terror, hope began to blossom.
The air around Blaize shimmered and rippled and he cried out, ducking and throwing something that looked suspiciously like a fireball at Grace's head. For a fraction of a second, Penelope was convinced it would hit her. She wasn't moving out of the way: instead, she appeared to be staring it down. It seemed to move almost in slow motion through the air, but that could have been the adrenaline talking. Then, just when she and Reid were clutching each other and screaming, her friend wrenched it out of the air an inch before her face, span on the spot and sent it howling back at him. It struck home and he gave a shout of pain.
His returning volley was more substance than form – it was hard to see what he had been intending, but the end result was a lot of force with no real design. Grace raised her hands defensively, and it seemed to strike her with incredible force, her feet slipping backwards on the filthy floor until she was pressed right against the barrier protecting the office.
To Penelope's terror, it flickered once, twice, then winked out – and suddenly Grace was on top of them, grunting with the effort of preventing whatever it was from reaching the three of them.
Without apparent thought, Reid put both hands on her back, and Penelope did the same on his, trying to keep Grace upright and steady; trying to keep her doing whatever she was doing. The force of whatever it was slammed into them and Penelope nearly stumbled. Somehow, she kept her feet. There was a tremendous amount of noise, and a sort of electric feeling in the air, as if a vast quantity of energy was rushing past them on either side. Penelope screwed her eyes shut, feeling the tiny hairs on her bare arms standing up. All three of them were shouting, giving everything they had to defend against the onslaught of sound and light and power. Everything seemed to tingle with static for a moment, and then it just stopped.
The force pressing them against the office wall subsided abruptly, and she and Reid stumbled forward. Grace, however, appeared to have being expecting it.
Penelope peeked out from behind a trembling Reid to see Blaize raise his cane once more. This time, however, the red burst of lightning shooting across the warehouse seemed to get stuck in mid-air, part way between them and the unsub. There was a tremendous clap of thunder from outside, as if the storm was right above them.
"What –" he shouted, stunned, and then cried out as the energy whizzed back in the opposite direction and almost smacked him in the face; he raised his cane.
Grace hadn't moved, keeping her hands up in a fighting stance – Blaize, too, seemed frozen. He had his cane up, pointing right at her, but it didn't seem to be doing anything.
"Stop it!" he shouted. "Stop! No! You can't!"
Whatever Grace was doing seemed to be holding Blaize in place. The cane was shaking, as if he was resisting with all his might. Then something gave a sickening crack and Blaize screamed. He fell back, clutching his arm, as the cane flew through the air towards Grace. She caught it deftly in two hands, then shoved it through the air towards him. Blaize was knocked clean off his feet, toppling over a bench.
Penelope punched the air in triumph. There was a moment of genuine, delighted relief – and then the floor started to shake.
Across the room, Blaize staggered to his feet and ran away from them. Grace started after them, but the floor gave a particularly sickening lurch. All around them, the walls started shaking; a series of deafening thuds suggested the upper floors of the building were not doing too well.
Reid, whose leg was still giving him some trouble, immediately over-balanced, and Penelope was reaching to help him up when Grace skidded to a halt beside them, the unsub's cane still in hand. She slammed it point down into the floor of the little office, and everything seemed to crystallise and slow. The unmistakeable cacophony of an entire building collapsing around them continued unabated, but around the three agents, the world seemed entirely still and quiet. Even the plaster dust swirling through the air appeared to be drifting past almost lazily.
And then, with one final, world-shaking crash, it was over. The cane gave a shriek of material stress and split in two, and Grace dropped to her knees. When she raised her head, she seemed otherworldly, somehow – eyes and hair a little wild beneath the streaks of dirt and plaster, as if all that power was still crackling away, just beneath her skin.
"Are you okay?" she asked, moving to help Penelope up from where she had fallen, but she flinched away. She couldn't help it. The mop was still in her hand, and she found herself threatening Grace with it.
Quick as a flash, Reid was upright, putting himself in Grace's path – protecting Penelope. He still had his gun in his hand, and he half raised it, instinctually.
Grace backed up at once, as if she had been slapped. Then the hurt that bruised across her features vanished behind her professional mask and she looked back over the mass of twisted rubble.
"I'll find us a way out," she said shortly, and gave a purposeful wave of her hand.
Some of the rubble organised itself out of her path, and, pausing to collect the remains of Draven Blaize's cane, she walked away.
