Kate woke up before the sun made its appearance. From the bed in which she was lying, she could tell that it was still early and the window was on the wrong side of the room. Ever since she became a cop she woke up before the alarm went off. Just as she's about to get out of bed an arm wraps around her naked body and pulls her closer. Then she remembers the night before and why the window is in the wrong spot.
"Stay in bed Kate it's still early," Rick says to her and she relents.
Her body aches from muscles that haven't been used in a while. But they ache in a good way. She was thoroughly satisfied by the man laying right next to her. After dinner last night the food must have been like a drug because the second she got done eating she became extremely tired. So tired that she lacked the energy to make it back to her own apartment and ended up with Rick at his place. One thing led to another and before they knew it they both were naked and enjoying each other's bodies.
The phone rings and Rick reluctantly lets go of Kate's midsection. She pulls herself up on one elbow and disconnects the phone from the charger.
"Beckett," she answers.
"Detective this is central dispatch and your presence is required at the 12 Precinct conference room in an hour. There's been a murder that you and your team are going to need to respond to. And believe me when I tell you it's right up your alley because it's one of the weird ones."
Kate acknowledges the message and says goodbye.
Knowing that he wants to be her partner she is going to tease him just a little bit. She pulls the sheet off of her body and stands at his side of the bed. She can tell he fell asleep during her short phone call because he is snoring lightly. Now he will understand what it is to be a homicide detective. She raises her hand and smacks his ass through the sheets making him yelp as he wakes up.
"Kate? What's going on why did you just smack my ass?
"Rick, you wanted to be my partner right? So now this is what you're going to be subject to everything I go through. And now you will go through it too so get your ass out of bed and hit the showers mister because we're leaving here in twenty minutes."
Kate takes off running to the shower knowing that Rick is going to chase her but if she can get into the bathroom and lock the door before he gets out of bed, well she'll regret it, but at least she'll be clean when she arrives at work.
Xx
By the time they get to the 12th precinct, Rick has a newfound respect for what Kate needs to do to do her job. They will call her out any time of the day or night and she must respond within thirty minutes. He knows this because they pulled up to the precinct twenty-seven minutes after she was informed of the new case. They enter the lobby and take the elevator to the fourth floor. Once they get off they step into what seems to be utter chaos. Usually, the homicide floor is relatively quiet. Cops just go about gathering the facts for the case and putting bad guys behind bars once they have enough information to do so. But somehow the atmosphere feels different for some reason. Before she can get to her desk her captain summons her to his office.
Captain Gates had explained to Captain Ben Rhodes that Castle was a man who should not be working at the 12th Precinct even if he was a friend of the mayor. But detective Beckett had convinced her that he is an investigator who can put together the clues that complete a case. Once that's finished he can narrow down the list of people who could be responsible for the murder they were trying to solve.
Captain Rhodes takes a seat behind his desk and has detective first class Beckett and her partner Mister Castle sit opposite him. He will keep an open mind regarding Mr. Castle.
"Detective Beckett my reason for calling you into my office is not to reprimand you it's quite the opposite. Your name has been thrown into the fray of people who can bring me results. The murder we recently had at the hospital was not an act of negligence. Let it be known that this was the result of hackers disabling the operating theatre's power supply, among other things. The whole hospital experienced the same issue."
"Sir I was under the impression that this was accidental. What's changed?"
"Kate, may I call you that?" The captain asks.
Kate simply nods her head permitting him to use her first name.
"Kate, it seems that there was an intrusion into the servers at the hospital. The hackers were very selective in what they did and in the process while not exactly their fault they caused the death of a patient. It was their fault. The power was cut because the servers were overloaded with phony requests for information and the system became overloaded and everything went into shutdown mode."
Rick who has some knowledge of what he's talking about asks him this.
"If that was the problem why didn't they just reroute all the phony information requests to a second set of servers?"
"Mr. Castle is it? First off let me say that I am glad to have you on board. From what I've heard your extensive research abilities go above and beyond. To answer your question the hospital was in the process of adding a second and third set of servers just so they could have a dedicated server system for surgeries and other informational purposes such as reading CAT scans, MRIs, and x-rays. The second set of servers would have simply been just handling informational requests. I am not one to deny anyone a chance to help the NYPD. And since you have been a driving force in solving other murders in the past I'm going to give you a little leeway here so you can continue working with Detective Beckett."
"But now that I have met you you are going to have to meet with the woman who you will be directly reporting to."
Captain Rhodes rises from his chair and motions Rick and Kate to do the same. They take a short walk to the conference room where the activity has been increased since the arrival of the Cyber Unit.
"Kate, Rick, may I introduce you to Lieutenant Hanna Baker. From this point on you will be reporting directly to her. This will be a joint operation between the Cyber Unit due to the intrusion into the hospital servers and your unit that consists of yourself, Detective Ryan, Detective Esposito, and of course Mr. Castle concerning the murder aspect."
"Yes sir."
"You will be coordinating your every move with her and she will be coordinating her every move with you. There will be times when you might think that she is withholding information from you but I am here to guarantee that that is not the case. You will have complete access to whatever you need from her. I want this case solved yesterday!"
Kate watches as Hannah walks towards her extending her hand in a warm welcome. Then she also shakes Rick's hand. Before long they are both discussing what they are going to do about the case. Rick simply sits back and watches as Kate explains her strategy for the investigation on her end. When she is done it's Hannah's turn. To Rick, it seems that Hannah is a good pick for the position that she's in. He can tell that she is not that much of a people person and being in the cyber division gives her the advantage to do her job without interacting that much with people. She doesn't necessarily need to interview people and he can tell that she would not fare well if she did have to.
"I see that you have things under control here and I will leave you to do what you need to do. I do have a request that you report to me what you find at the end of every shift so I can collate all the information. Ladies, I need a swift end to this case. With Captain Gates at a week-long training seminar in Chicago, I would like to have made some great strides in getting the basic actors identified before she returns. Maybe even solved?"
Both women turn to the Captain and say,
"We'll do our best sir."
With that, Captain Rhodes does an about-face and heads back to his office.
Xx
Piter is beyond livid! The Germans have been giving him order after order and he can't enforce them. Well, not just yet he can't. It seems that the hospital that had been issued the ransom demands and had their system disabled was in the middle of negotiations to pay the requested cash to have their servers released back to them. And just like that negotiations that they had started simply ended. They refused to pay the ransom.
When Germans found out that the money wasn't deposited into the account that was set up to receive said ransom by the deadline his phone never stopped ringing. Every time it rang he cringed. Because he knew that when it did ring for the last time his life would be over. Sometimes he wonders why he was ever put into this position.
Rodolfo and his assistant Kim had noticed there were small intrusions into their system. But it seems that they guaranteed these intrusions would not jeopardize their operation. He doesn't brush it off but he doesn't give it much credit either. He tells them to make sure that there is a way that they can track these intrusions to see where they're coming from and then maybe he can save himself by giving this information to the Germans. He knows that no system is one hundred percent safe from intrusions and if he plays his cards right he can live for another day or two.
Xx
Hannah knows that whoever is perpetrating these intrusions into the hospital and its servers will strike again. And when they do it is going to be a lot worse than just a couple of servers being affected. She needs to step up her game. First, she has to determine how they got in and that will bring her to the next step. If they did cause Mr. Simpson to die by holding the servers hostage then they will be held responsible for the man's homicide.
She likes the detective who is investigating the homicide at the hospital with them. But she sees something between her and her partner. Something that looks like love but she'll keep her thoughts to herself.
She knows that any information she will find will be used to build a rock solid case against these people. She just has to keep the information flowing.
Her team consists of herself and at present four IT techs. She's the only sworn officer but if she had the power to make her team sworn officers she would. They are super smart and they hit the ground running the second the threat was discovered.
Xx
There is always an agency watching what happens in every major city. This agency in question keeps tabs on who is causing problems and revealing their identity. It will come out later but right now they are sitting back and making sure that nothing gets too far involved.
Their agency looks for patterns and oddities at best. They also monitor most phone calls and what they find is something that surprises even them. Certain keywords are rooted out of phone calls, emails, and text messages and are dumped into a file that holds these words for forty-eight hours until they are reviewed for threats. What they have found recently is that from an untraceable number orders are being given to cripple the country's infrastructure. Not knowing the end game is never a good thing but the analysts, that work for them have been quick to put together certain cities that would be hit first. The analysts were not wrong. For now, they would sit back and wait but they would be ready to strike when the opportunity presented itself.
Xx
Kate who now had a new partner to work with decided to teach him the basics in a murder investigation. She knew she had, Hannah, to have her back on the technical aspect of this case but it was down to the basics for her to complete this investigation. And she wanted Rick to know what she went through during an investigation so he could have some starting point so to say. Both of them are standing outside the operating theater doors at the hospital. They both know that a man's life had ended in the room they were about to enter and respect would be given.
"Okay, Rick when I take charge of a crime scene everything is locked down until I give the okay for the room to be released. During that time frame, the room is mine no one else enters until I say so."
He gives a simple nod to her knowing that he understands.
"Now I need you to put on your nitrile gloves so we can examine the crime scene."
"Is it important that everything is left as it is? Or can I touch anything as long as I'm wearing my gloves?"
"Well for your first case I will be taking you through what I do. This way you'll have some idea about what you can and cannot touch. But each crime scene is different. What might be important to one case, might not be important for another."
With instructions given Rick watches Kate take a knife and cut the yellow tape across the doors. Swinging the left door open they both enter the operating room. At first, Rick has a feeling that many deaths have occurred in this room. And then without warning, he just stops moving.
Everything is a blur around him and he is seeing doctor Garcia operating as he would normally be. There is no urgency in his actions and everything is proceeding the way it should for a heart operation. Right around the fifty-three-second mark in his vision, everything changes. The lights in the operating room go completely dark. Usually, in a hospital this size or any commercial building the emergency lights come to life. But that's not the case here. The room after thirty seconds is still pitch-black. The nurse being one step ahead of the situation pulls out an LED headband light and puts it on her head. He then hears the doctor relay to the anesthesiologist to bag the patient so he can still breathe. While that is being done the nurse is adjusting to light so the surgeon can see what is going on in the man's chest cavity. Then everything falls apart. He can tell from the apprehension in the doctor's voice that something has gone terribly wrong. The nurse who was providing light to continue the operation now moves to the left side of the doctor and is massaging the man's heart. Frantically the doctor is trying to stop a massive blood loss from a man's heart. They work relentlessly for over twenty minutes and the result is the man's death at 0924.
Rick comes back to awareness and sees that his partner is waiting patiently for what he has seen in his vision.
"Rick?" Kate asks as she looks at him.
It takes a minute for him to get reacclimated with his surroundings but when he does he tells Kate everything.
"Kate what I witnessed what happened in this room I now have a newfound respect for anyone who becomes a doctor."
"What do you mean by what happened in here? Since when can you see what happened in the past?" Kate asks him.
"I couldn't until now. It's weird, but I never had a vision like that before. It was like I was in the O.R. with everyone. I saw what they were doing to try to save their patient. Sadly it was all for nothing."
"Can you see anything going forward?"
"After they pronounced him dead, all I was able to see was him lying on the table after they stopped their life-saving measures. Then there was nothing."
"Oh okay. We need to try and find something that we can use to nail these bastards."
Rick nodded and got to work with her looking into all the medical equipment and other items. They were just about to leave when Rick had placed his hand on the portable computer that was assigned to the OR they were in. Once he did he went silent once again.
It was like he was being sucked through a straw. He was moving through time but he could only hear voices around him. He couldn't see anything. The boy says he heard were not clear. Well, they were clear for him to hear but they sounded muffled as if they were stuck in quicksand. You could tell there was an accent being spoken but for the life of him he couldn't figure out which one it was. After what sounded like orders to be given the vision ended and Rick was sucked back through the straw ending up in the operating room once again.
"Kate, something is going on here. Something that was ordered to be done."
"What do you mean something that was ordered to be done?"
"The second I touched the computer it's like I was being drawn through the cables and I could hear two men speaking. Then they got combative with each other. One of the men was speaking with an accent. I have no clue as to which accent it was but it was a heavy one I can tell you that."
"This is good Rick. There are just a couple more things I would like to check out and then we'll go back to the precinct. From there I'll show you what happens next."
Xx
Piter had taken the last phone call from the Germans an hour ago. They were not happy with today's results. The good news was that he still had his life to live any way he saw fit. The bad news is that they are going to order a second attack. Someone was going to be selected, and when they were, he can imagine that it was going to be a lot worse for whoever was on the receiving end of what they were planning.