Hello hello.

CookieSprinkles: I always try to think about as many details as possible, inevitably something sips through. I am not a professional writer nor an expert in police procedures (or crime, LOL) so things like motion sensors didn't come to mind. I guess in general I prefer when the readers know less than the characters, not more: in my opinion, it makes for a better story. And I thought Warton has been mean enough so far LOL!

I am not sure what you mean with '3- letters action figure'? I did explain in the previous chapter why they focused on one building, and as for the rest it's a matter of taste and styles. Of course there are always many ways to tell the story…I guess for the rest you should read the chapter below…

So, we had the FBI making a move, Warton trying to escape with Cal and Gillian tried to stop him: what else could be happening now?!

They went in with the advantage of darkness, which he liked: but they also went in mostly blind, which was something he wasn't comfortable with.

Once they got inside the office building the group went silent, quite the feat to be accomplished by nearly two dozens of heavily armed men, but they had no choice. Assuming that Warton hadn't some kind of surveillance on the premises or hadn't heard them coming, they still had to get to him before he could detect them. If he did, there was no telling what he could have done, except that whatever it was he was likely going to take it out on Cal.

The main door of the building creaked slightly when he pushed but it opened, sparing them the hassle to break it down. Once inside they spread out, trying to cover as much ground as possible. According to the building plans there were three rooms in the ground floor building, the main office, a breakroom for the staff with a bathroom attached and a storage room. Reynolds had made sure they'd have enough men to cover all of them at the same time, not wanting to leave any room to escape to Warton.

The designated groups were gathering around the doors of the assigned rooms, ready to burst in at Reynolds' signal, when a voice spoke to him breaking the deep silence. He wasn't having auditory hallucinations, nothing of the sorts; it was just the earpiece he had agreed to wear as Loker had suggested, so that he could let me know if anything else came through at the office. When Reynolds heard Loker's voice he immediately raised his hand to stop everybody and hold the action.

"He's back on," Loker said, knowing Reynolds was likely not in the position to talk about. "It looks like the same place still. I can see Lightman tied to a chair, he's awake. No signs of Warton." Loker stopped for a little, then the agent heard him curse. "He's there with LIghtman now! I- Oh God, he's got battery cables!"

Reynolds didn't need to hear anything else, he got the attention of the other agents and gave the signal. There was a series of nearly unison bangs of doors battered open, then men yelling and barking in every direction. Then the first 'clear' came, called out by the team in the office, followed in rapid succession by more of the same.

Reynolds stood there surrounded by an army, his gun still drawn and ready to shoot, but there was nothing and nobody to shoot at. It didn't make sense, how could all the rooms be empty? Did they have the wrong place? Had they gotten there too late and Warton had moved somewhere, taking Cal with him or killing him to get rid of the inconvenient baggage?

Then, through all the noises and voices around him, Loker's ones came on in his ear again, yelling and shouting like a maniac.

"He's making a run for it! Warton, he looked up as if he heard something and he's getting out of there!"

"From- Everybody, shut up!" Reynolds' voice boomed, getting everybody to stay quiet. "From where? We're here and there's nobody."

"I don't know, he just… It looked like a back exit. The camera is still there and running but they're gone."

"He took Lightman with him?"

"Yes, the chair he was on was a wheelchair. Warton was about to do something but then he looked up and stopped." Loker didn't know how good of a job he was doing in relaying that information, he was too eager and panicky to notice. "I think he injected Lightman with something then he started pushing the chair away. Ben, you have to find them-"

"Hold on Loker, you said Warton looked up?"

"Yes, like something got his attention and then-"

He kept talking but Reynolds didn't hear, his voice overcome by the noise of the cogs moving in his mind. Warton had reacted to something, and judging by the timing it couldn't be a coincidence. Maybe they were in the right place but the wrong building? Maybe he should have reached out to the B-team still at the main factory and told them to be on the lookout… But then he decided to take a note out Foster's book and focused on something that Loker had said, amongst all else.

He looked up. Warton had looked up.

"Basement," the agent mumbled, then yelled out loud to no one in particular. "Does anybody remember if this place has a basement?" Nobody answered, either because they didn't know or because nobody wanted to take responsibility for an inaccurate response. "Look for hatches, stairs going down, anything. Loker saw Warton react to something and leave, they must be around here. Now!"

There was no time to explain further, and instead he made sure that everybody was on the case and scouting the ground for something. It took only a couple of minutes for someone to yell 'here!', and when Reynolds got there a hatch had already been opened. Now that there was no more reason to be stealth about it, Reynolds pulled out a flashlight and shone the light inside the hole. it was big enough to fit a couple of people at the time, it looked like it had been dug a while ago and there were some supports on the side. He barked at two of the team to go outside and go round the back, instructing to inform the agents left behind at the factory, then he jumped in. He didn't wait for others to join, he knew they would follow, and once he realised the tunnel he had landed in only went one way he started running in that direction. It was against all protocols and training, but he could see that with Warton on the run with Cal there was no space for any of that.

He saw a deem light ahead and kept running with his gun drawn, and after a few seconds he was in a room he immediately recognised. It would have been impossible not to, he had seen parts of that damn room more times then what he cared to remember, and any doubt he might have had was wiped away when he saw what else was there. He saw the stretcher, the bench, the tank of water now empty, the camera set up and more equipment, all things that had been kept out of their sight. Then he heard Loker yelling in his ear once again, to let him know that he could see them, right there on his own screen, and directing them to where he had seen Warton leaving. Reynolds followed the instructions and went for the corner at his left, finding a wood panel hoisted up against the wall. Except that it wasn't a wall, because when he removed the panel he found himself facing another opening, another tunnel leading God knows where.

They moved along, quickly, Reynolds trying to establish how much of a headstart Warton could have on them. It wasn't much, but then again it was clear that Warton had planned for something like that at least in some way and there was no telling what his exit strategy was. They kept going down the tunnel, something that clearly had been there a long time and probably explained why Warton had chosen that place, while someone behind him on the radio was trying to speak with the rest of the teams and see if they got anything. After a minute or so Reynolds started to feel cold air in front of him and knew they were about to get outside, so he slowed down knowing they had to be careful if they were about to get out in the open.

But before they could reach the end of the tunnel gunshots went off somewhere, not too far from where they were.

All hell broke loose then.

Reynolds was the first one out of the tunnel, gun ready and flashlight looking for something relevant to land on. He saw nothing, not close by, but he did hear noises and voices coming from somewhere on their left. They spread out once again, moving much easier now that they were using lights, and when Reynolds saw the shape of what looked like a shed he cursed himself wondering if they hadn't missed something when checking out the plans of the place. He advanced carefully, noticing a faint light behind the shed and shadows projected on the ground, although he couldn't make out what was casting them. Then the voices became stronger, as it usually happens when people scream, and he immediately recognised what it was.

Gillian's voice screaming Cal's name.

All care tossed aside, Reynolds ran towards the sound and turned the corner of the shed, stopping on track when he saw the scene awaiting him. There was a van with the backdoor open, a wheelchair flipped on the ground next to it. Warton was down, immobile, drowning in a pool of his own blood if it wasn't for the fact that he was clearly very much already dead. As more agents arrived, and with them more lights, he noticed a knife tossed somewhere, he saw the blood spatters and a gun abandoned on the ground.

And then he saw Gillian, knelt by Cal's seemingly unconscious body and desperately calling his name.

They did get a chopper this time, not that Cal was in the conditions to appreciate the effort. They had ambulances on scene but after the first assessment it became clear that Cal needed a much speedier way to get to a hospital.

Gillian stood as close as she could while the paramedics worked on him, fighting the desire to jump in and hold his hand knowing she would have been in their way. She couldn't take her eyes off of him, it was on his battered body that all her attention was. She didn't hear Reynolds or others asking if she was ok, nor one of the paramedics offering to check if she had any injury. She vaguely heard the paramedics working to assess Cal's conditions, listing all the things, many things, that were wrong with him and needed to be fixed. But when they were ready to load him up on the helicopter and take him to the hospital she made sure nobody questioned her decision to go with him.

Once inside the helicopter, Gillian immediately asked if she could hold his hand and was glad they gave her the green light. She needed that contact, even though Cal was unconscious and would hardly notice she liked to think that he could feel it. Not to mention, the fact that they let her do it meant that they were probably satisfied with his conditions. She watched the two paramedics in the helicopter with her before take off, applying all her knowledge in reading their expression and body language. Gone was the frantic calling out of actions and procedures of before, they were more relaxed now and not in a way that suggested they had given up or thought there was nothing they could do anymore. They had done what they had to, he was stable and everything else was going to be taken care of at the hospital.

As the helicopter started to climb, Gillian looked outside the window behind her. The scene that had been so dark and hard to read before was now lit at near daylight levels by powerful lamps, crowded with agents and vehicles going through whatever had to be done in situations like that. Of all of that, Gillian really noticed only one thing: the yellow tarp that had been tossed over Warton's dead body. The sight elicited no emotional reactions from her, she just kept looking at the inanimate object with a blank stare until it was out of sight.

At the hospital, the stretcher carrying Cal was immediately swallowed by a sea of doctors and nurses, wheeled into the emergency room. This time someone did tell her to stop and wait there, and Gillian decided not to put up a fight about it. She wanted to know how he was doing and if he was going to be ok, more than anything else in the world, but in all honesty she didn't think she could take watching him being tossed around and exposed to whatever they were going to do.

It was ironic, to say the least: she had watched hours of Cal getting tortured and she couldn't watch him being saved. There wasn't much in her knowledge as a psychologist that could help her understand that contradiction, and frankly she didn't want to address it. As strange as it was, for the first time in hours, she was content with just waiting. For how long however, she didn't know.

After an unspecified amount of time, Loker arrived. He looked terrible, probably as much as she did, and he offered to go get her something to drink. As ridiculous as it might sound, when he came back with a choice of coffee or water, Gillian was extremely disappointed there was no alcoholic option. Loker didn't say much, nothing at all really, and she could understand: she could see all over his face that he still felt guilty for having let Cal slip away and anything else that had stemmed from that, and she wanted to let him know it was no time for that. But she couldn't push herself to say it, not because he didn't deserve to hear it, especially after all the amazing effort he had put in for days, but simply because after days she didn't have enough emotional strength to care about others anymore. All she wanted was for someone to come and talk to her, tell her that Cal was going to be ok so that they could start getting back to their lives.

Later, Reynolds joined them too. He immediately asked if there was any news, and once told that nobody had come to say anything yet he proceeded to share his own information. Warton was dead, killed nearly instantly by three gunshots, and his body had been taken to the FBI for a thorough autopsy. The agent could see Gillian's face harden as he spoke, betting she desperately wanted to ask if he was sure the man was indeed dead, so he took the embarrassing question away from her and casually stated that he had checked himself, twice, as well as making sure he was there when the coroner pronounced him on the scene.

"Good riddance!" Loker grumbled, not even remotely ashamed when Reynolds shot him a glare.

But then he noticed the agent's look, quickly going from him to Gillian who was looking down at the untouched cup of coffee in her hands, and took the hint. He stood up from the chair in the waiting room and absently stated he was going to call Torres, and once he was gone Reynolds sat next to Foster.

"Just ask, Ben," she said then, not looking at him but still knowing exactly what was behind his prolonged silence. "You'll have to anyway, sooner or later."

"It can be later," he mumbled.

"It's not going to make things any easier, nor worse," she shrugged.

"Ok." He sighed and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "What happened?"

Gillian knew that what he really meant was something along the lines of 'how did it go down', but she was ok with the wording provided. Then she sighed and leaned back on the chair, closing her eyes as if to recall the memories but mostly because she was getting too tired to keep them open. Then she told Reynolds, about how she had heard the noises, followed them to the shed and spotted Warton with Cal. She told him about what she had decided to do and stepped in to stop him, about how Warton had attacked while she was trying to free Cal. When Warton had jumped them she had just about managed to cut the rope around Cal's left wrist, even though she hadn't realised it until he had grabbed Warton off of her. The two men had fought, and the three of them had all tried to reach for the gun. She told Reynolds she had gotten to it first, but Cal had taken it off of her hands before pointing at Warton and shoot.

Reynolds listened in silence, his trained mind matching her words to the scene they had been analysing. Then he looked at her and nodded, gently placing a hand on hers and thinking of something to say.

"Thank you, Ben," she caught him off guard instead, speaking softly and honestly. "For everything you've done."

"I could have done more," he confessed, much like Loker burdened by a long list of things he felt responsible for. "And if there is anything else I can do I want you to tell me."

"There is something, actually," Gillian said, strangely unable to look at him as she went on, ashamed about the request she was about to share.

"Sure, anything you need."

She looked up at him with a sad smile, silently asking forgiveness for what she was about to say while also showing, in her exhausted and defeated demeanour, why she couldn't take on that task on her own, before asking him to call Zoe.

Well...thoughts?