Echo of Hope

Disclaimer: I don't own the show Lie To Me*, the characters who appear in the show, or much of anything else really.

Summary: S04E06. The Lightman Group investigates unusual activity on a military mission, while Cal helps a friend and learns something along the way.

A/N: I'm not an expert on anything written here. This is fanfiction, based on a fictional show. I've done the most basic of research, and adapted for the purpose of plot/entertainment.

This one took waaaaay longer to write than I thought it would. I have lost my writing mojo. I always had the basic plot of this one and the next few outlined in my head. Actually writing it down into a full episode/story was soooo much effort. Reading over it for continuity and proof reading was almost more effort. I hope it reads ok. Thanks for all the support. Sorry for the wait. As always, feedback, writing tips, thoughts, views, concerns, encouragement is welcome.

Chapter 1

"Echo six, please respond… Captain Perez, do you read?"

"Base, the Captain is in the medical bay, he's unwell. This is Commander Jacobs, I'm acting Captain until he's able to resume his duties."

"Jacobs, please advise as to status. What the hell is going on out there?"

Commander Jacobs angled his body away from the telemetry system for a moment and covered the radio microphone with his hand as he looked nervously towards the other occupants of the room for direction and support.

The men hovering in the background whispered arguments amongst themselves briefly while Jacobs was engaged with his commanders, but once he directed his attention towards them they stopped stared him down.

"We need to stop them from sending a rescue in here!", whispered the man nearest to the submarine's XO. The tension in the space was palpable, and both men looked gravely towards the others.

"Well what do you expect me to do!?", Jacobs returned the whisper testily.

"Radio them back and tell them there's a radiation leak."

"Nobody is going to believe that. This isn't even close to the protocol for that."

The two men continued to stare at one another for a moment until Brent Jacobs sighed fearful resignation and returned to the desk and uncovered the microphone.

Cal Lightman stormed through the corridors of the offices that bore his name with a determined but always slouching parade march. He could see Gillian at her desk typing and writing with her typical focus, embedded in her work with the world around her faded into a blur.

He barged through the door and her head shot up. She replaced her pen on the desk and saved her work upon seeing him, then leaned back in her chair.

"How was the Pentagon?"

He thumped his body down into the chair in front of her desk and dropped his briefcase on the floor, dumping a brown paper bag on the desk before she had a chance to move anything that might have been underneath.

"It was fine, but you should have been doing that one."

"They specifically asked for you."

"Well, they should have been specifically asking for you. Training seminar for 'deception leakages in radio communications for marine and submarine settings'. Vocal stresses, pitch analysis, linguistic nuances. That's all you."

"Well, your name is on the door and your books are in the stores. The name 'Lightman' drives a higher fee than the name 'Foster'. If the U.S. Navy wants 'Dr Lightman' to deliver a lecture on vocal stresses and language, that's who they get."

He barely thought the words before he said them, "Well, there's an easy fix for that one."

"Ha. Think they'd catch on as soon as I show up," she demurred.

"The other option would be for you to write a book so that they start to recognise they need you delivering their lectures on that stuff, and me for the faces."

"Yes, well, again, nobody's asking for my book."

He stared at her for a moment with that thoughtful gaze he had that told her he was about to say something he had been seriously considering for all of about five seconds and already decided that his word was gospel.

"I'm serious, Gillian. You have all this research and knowledge and understanding. I get it, but I learned that part from you. I do the faces... You should write a book," he finished with a determined nod as if in agreement with himself.

She thought for a few seconds before allowing him in on her long-standing secret.

"I did."

He sat up straight for once. "You what?"

"I wrote a textbook when we hired Torres. Well, started it then. Turner has been using it to help him learn the science since he started here. After he read your books, of course."

He was stunned into momentary silence before he found his voice again. "Have you spoken to our publishers?", he asked.

"No."

"Why haven't you had it published?"

"Because, Cal. Nobody wants my book. It's your science and you never suggested wanting to publish a textbook. Publishing a textbook implies allowing colleges everywhere to teach a module on the subject, again not something you want to do. Before even considering it, I would want your input and I think you should be a co-author if publication were ever even considered. And also, nobody wants a book on the psychology of deception that isn't written by Cal Lightman."

"I think you're wrong. Don't let Rader's sales numbers fool you on that one. Can I have a look at it?"

"If you want to."

He really did. He had no idea this was something she had done. The work it must have taken was phenomenal. They could generate all sorts of opportunities from something like this, and what baffled him was that she was normally the pioneer of such opportunities in their partnership.

"Why didn't you ever say anything?"

"I only really finished about eight months ago, and it's under constant revision. Besides, you write the books around here, I balance them. It was only ever meant to help with the staff and grad students we take on. Sort of like a staff training manual."

He took in her face and her self-deprecating posture and decided to leave it there for the moment. He changed the topic back to how the lecture went and they chatted about how good it was to have freelance government training contracts coming up again.

Then something caught her attention.

"What's in the bag?" she asked looking at the brown paper bag on her desk.

"My lunch."

"Did you bring me some?"

"No," he returned in confusion. She looked like she'd just seen him kick a puppy.

"Why not?"

"You didn't ask for anything."

"You didn't say you were picking anything up."

He looked down into the now open bag in front of him and back up to her. He was sure he was supposed to feel bad about this. But he was hungry, and she was eyeing up his lunch.

"Sorry," he said quickly as he picked up the bag and headed for the door.

"Cal! Give me some of that!"

He continued toward the door and she started to chase after him and then his phone rang, his business VIP ringtone, and he had no choice but to pause and allow her to catch up and dig her nose into his lunch bag while he checked who was calling.

She had her hand buried in the bag when he answered the phone, casually and playfully fighting her off.

He stopped fighting and she retrieved some fries from the bag. She was about to take a bite when she saw that his face had shifted from playful devilment to all business.

"Yes. Right. I understand, I'll have a team with you within the hour."

He disconnected the call and she tilted her head in a silent question.

"Arlington. They want us back over there ASAP. My lecture caught some attention, and they think we can help them out with something. Urgent, apparently."

"You have a visit with the Vice President's office later this afternoon."

"Yeah, that won't take long. I've time to head to the Pentagon with you and still make that. Should be a quick meeting."

He took advantage of her concerned distraction to lean in then and eat the French fry that she had been trying to steal from him.

"Thank you for coming back, Dr Lightman. And for bringing your team with you. I've been an advocate of your deception programme here for a long time, but your lecture this morning caught the attention of a Lt. Commander who's been concerned about something for a few days now."

"Happy to help, but I don't have long. I've to be at the White House shortly, but I'll be back after that. This is Dr Foster, she's the expert on voice analysis, and Eli Loker, our resident expert on the tech analysis side of it. Torres and Turner, mostly deal with faces, like me, but every little helps, right?" Lightman introduced his team one by one and the Admiral, Ryan Jimenez, offered a friendly but reserved welcome to each in turn.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance," he said to the group once introductions were complete.

"What's the issue?" asked Gillian.

"Two days ago we lost contact with one of our submarine vessels. This is highly confidential, you understand. Top secret. We located the vessel yesterday evening. We attempted contact, and after repeated attempts we received a message from the XO to say that the captain had taken ill and there was a concern of a radiation leak on the vessel. When asked why they had gone silent instead of reporting in and requesting rescue or return, he said that they believed there were enemy vessels in the region and they didn't want to risk discovery. We offered rescue and he refused. We requested to speak with the head of engineering and the chief medical officer on board to provide information on the potential leak and the wellbeing of the crew, he said they were indisposed. Nothing about it adds up, but we've got a rogue sub out there and we need to figure out what to do with it."

"You want us to talk to him and tell you what he's lying about?" Cal asked.

"We have recordings of the initial conversations. We'd like your views on those. At this point, we're finding it tough to get them on comms, and we don't want to escalate whatever is going on out there either. We have several vessels headed out to the last known location of the vessel, but before they engage we need to know what they're heading in to. The vessel is in a classified location, but suffice it to say we don't want to send a cavalry in there if it's not absolutely necessary, and we don't want to leave it if there's a risk of it being discovered or defected."

The group of five from the Lightman Group shared concerned glances before Gillian and Cal shared a look and Cal declared, "Let's get to work."

Admiral Jimenez escorted the group to a secure room and introduced them to Lt. Commander Wyatt Andrews.

Andrews greeted Cal enthusiastically, who in turn introduced him to Gillian and Loker, in the same manner as he had done with the Admiral. He respectfully shook their hands and then deferred to Cal once again. Loker seemed a little put out by the snub, but Gillian directed him to begin setting up what they would need and took the prepared file from Cal's hand and sat at the nearest available space to begin to disseminate the available case information.

Once she was done reading the file, Gillian passed it to Mark Turner who was standing closest to her and returned to stand with Cal and Lt Commander Andrews.

"Could we get those recordings, please?"

Andrews looked to Cal for assurance that this was what he wanted. Andrews was a military man through and through and defaulted to the perceived hierarchy despite being previously told whose expertise he was relying upon. Cal was beginning to lose his patience with the man.

"Oh, for the love of… yes! Please. Could we just do what Dr Foster asks? Would save us all a lot of time."

Andrews shoulders tensed, but left the room to fulfil the request regardless.

"Wish that was your motto in all situations," she joked. "You could have made that clear without yelling at him," Gillian said with barely concealed humour.

"I did not yell at him. And he needs to get his head out of his arse."

She shook her head fondly at him and returned to Eli to make sure that they had everything that they would need for the initial analysis.

Moments later Andrews returned with a junior officer.

"This is Lt. Rivers, he'll pull up the recordings and whatever other information you may need. I don't need to remind any of you that disclosure of any information you become privy to would result in some serious charges," Andrews nodded and left them with the young naval officer.

"We could really use any recordings you have from before the suspicious activity, and if you have anything at all of the XO from before they set out for us to use as a baseline? Any interviews or just recordings of him in casual settings would really help us to establish what's going on."

Rivers gave a nod of confirmation but said, "that could take a little more time."

"We don't have time to waste on this," Andrews dismissed.

"Anything you can dig up at short notice. If there's so much at stake here, you really want to make sure we have everything we can have. Setting a baseline could prove really important here. "

Gillian and Eli got to work on listening to and analysing the data from the calls they had been requested to review. Eli set about capturing anything that automatically triggered their analysis programs while Gillian sat slightly away from the group, headphones on and eyes closed, listening for everything that stood out and anything that didn't but probably should.

After a while, she removed her headset and turned to her colleagues. They had each been using headsets, just as she had, and when she turned to face them each removed their own and sat up to give their attention to their boss.

"What do you guys think?"

Ria Torres, always confident in her opinion, volunteered her thoughts first. "I think he's lying about the radiation. I think he's lying about the Captain too."

Gillian nodded mild agreement and then gave a subtle shake of the head. "Yeah, I agree, but he's telling the truth about some things. He seems to genuinely believe there's a risk to the submarine and the crew. Not just enemies in the region, there's genuine fear in his tone when he talks about the radiation leak. And he's telling the truth about the engineer and medical officer not being available… and there's something different in the noise in the background from the recordings from the previous communications too. I can't quite pinpoint what, but it's not what I'd expect if there were an emergency like he's describing on board. There's a different pitch and tone to it."

"Maybe the crew are in on it? Whatever it is?"

"I don't know. Maybe, but I think it's more than that."

Gillian turned to Cal then, awaiting his thoughts.

"What would be standard procedure in this kind of circumstance?" he asked the young Lieutenant assigned to them.

"Well, in ordinary operations, they should have issued a mayday. But I guess if they're in enemy territory or disputed territory, or just any kind of covert op, they may not have wanted to give up their position. In that case, they should have tried to get out of the location and into friendly water so they could issue their distress call."

"What reasons might cause them to do what they did?"

"I have no idea. I can't think of a reason. If the captain took sick, the first thing they should have done was get clear and report in. If there was a radiation leak after that or that caused that? They have no business still being out there without getting a rescue and decontamination team in ASAP. And Commander Jacobs story is all screwed up. I gotta wonder if we're into some kind of defection or something here, you know? But that really doesn't add up. Aside from that, maybe too many bogeys in the region and they don't want to risk capture."

"Foster? You think our submarine is defecting to an enemy?" asked Cal.

"I'm not sure. If he believed in what he was doing, wouldn't he put faith into the lie? Aside from the fact that Jacob's story is all over the place, he's completely unconvinced of what he's saying. He's lying when he says the Captain is ill. But his tone suggests that there is something going on with the Captain, and that the lie is convincing. But he has no faith in the story he's telling about the leak. Not even as a lie. Eli…"

Loker jumped in with a segment of the recording where Commander Jacobs is reporting on the ship status. "Here, you can see that the pitch of his voice is considerably more monotone than when he was talking about the Captain."

Gillian continued, "That suggests that while he thinks they're going to buy the story about the Captain being ill, maybe there is something wrong with him even if it wasn't caused by illness, he has no faith that the radiation leak story is believeable."

Cal checked his watch then and began to move, patting Gillian lightly on the shoulder before he did, towards the door. "Well, I've got to make tracks. I'll be back later but I've got to see a man about a dog."

"Behave," she called after him lightly, the smile on her lips returned by his own.

Lt. Rivers looked uncomfortable to be losing Lightman but having spent the last hour watching the others take charge with confidence, he wasn't going to object to the change.

As Cal made it to the door, Rivers continued the discussion with Foster and Loker.

"So why would he go with that? Why not come up with something he thinks is going to be believed?"

"I don't think it's his story. He thinks we'll believe the lie that Captain Perez is unwell and that's why he's in charge now. That's because he made it up himself. We typically put more emphasis into lies that we make up ourselves. But if you're told to repeat a story, if someone else makes up a lie for you to tell others, if you don't think it's a good lie, or if you don't think it's completely necessary, you're not going to sell it. I think his pitch changes when he tells the lies that he didn't come up with himself."

"You think someone else is making him do this?"

"I don't know. It could be that it's not just him that's in on whatever is going on. He's only claiming the Captain is ill. There may be other senior officers, the engineer and the doctor for example, who aren't in on it, but you can definitely hear evidence that he's not the only person in the vicinity of the radio. They're doing their best to stay quiet, but you can hear them."

"I can't hear them," said Rivers.

Loker brought up another analysis program to highlight background soundwaves while Loker said, "You don't have Dr Fosters ear."

"Do you know Commander Jacobs or any of the crew?" Gillian continued.

"A little. A know a few of the guys, not well though. I met Jacobs a few times, but I wouldn't say I know him."

"Are you surprised by what you're hearing?"

"Are you kidding? Yeah, I'm surprised. This type of thing doesn't happen. I can't believe any of those men on that boat would do something to jeopardize the safety of this country. We joined up to serve our country, not betray it."

Admiral Jiminez and Lt Commander Andrews had left them to work their magic without interference. Once they had gotten the initial read out of the way, and had questioned Rivers as much as they could, the young man left to feed back the report from Dr Foster.

The scientists had persisted in their request for further recordings of the crew, but the military men were keen to push forward and act. Rivers returned a short time after he left with his superior officers hot on his heels.

"So it's a mutiny?" asked Admiral Jiminez as soon as he burst through the door.

"We don't know that," replied Gillian Foster.

"What do you know?"

"We know that he's lying about the reason the Captain isn't present. We know that he's lying about the radiation leak, but that he does believe that there's a good reason to tell the lie. We don't know if that's for his benefit or for yours."

"So, now what?", asked the exasperated Admiral.

"We need to get to know Brent Jacobs, Admiral," she stated calmly.