The coffee is terrible, but it's something and Emily has developed a strange soft spot for shitty police-station coffee. It's still caffeine, and that's the most important thing.
Mustang and Hughes still have their heads together, and every time she looks at them, she feels a combination of irritation and a tiny thrill of fear. She doesn't like it, doesn't like being afraid, doesn't like not understanding this strange power that Mustang has, still hates that he's involved with a member of her team at all, even though she hasn't had the time to develop the relationship with Ed that she has with the rest of the team. He's still her team , and that means he's hers , and Emily takes her responsibilities seriously.
Her phone goes off, and when Emily checks the screen, she eagerly picks up. "What do you have for us, Penelope?" she asks, putting the phone on speaker. Everyone sits up, paying attention.
"Well, you asked me to just look into everything around Tucker Maes, right?" Penelope's bubbly voice comes across the phone, though there's an undertone of stress that Emily knows is from the fact that part of their team is missing.
"What'd you find?" Rossi asks, exchanging a glance with Emily.
"Nothing really more, I'm afraid. Pretty much what we already knew," she says with obvious frustration. "He was a mediocre student, graduated from high school with no prospects. The only employment history I see for him are a series of part-time retail jobs. He never went to college, and, as far as I can see, it doesn't even really look like he applied. He has no social media presence at all, which needless to say, is strange for his age. He may just be really good at hiding his tracks, but I don't see anything to indicate he had the kind of knowledge necessary to hide from me."
"Did you look into Hugh Maes more?" Reid asks.
Mustang's brow furrows. "Why would you need to look into him further?" he asks.
"I did ," Penelope says, continuing as if Mustang hadn't interrupted. "So, Hugh Maes was definitely everyone's favorite. Every person I can find to speak to him has nothing but good things to say about him. The worst thing they've said is that he can be a little much, a little over exuberant. Intelligent, hardworking. It's pretty much universally agreed that his death was a loss. I also looked into the hitchhikers responsible for his death and… I found something kind of hinky."
"Hinky? How so?" Emily asks.
"Well, looking at what we know, I'm not sure the hitchhikers responsible for his death are actually both dead."
"What did you find?" Reid asks.
"Do you have a laptop you can open up? I'll remote in and show you what I found," she says.
"Got it." Emily opens her laptop and everyone gathers around as two pictures pop up on the screen—a beautiful dark-haired woman and a man with thin, sharp features and a cruel smile. Mustang and Hughes stand up, both looking alarmed. "Meet Jasmine Ardour and Kimberly Zolf. Kimberly is the gentleman, by the way. They hitchhiked their way through the Appalachians, murdering people who picked them up, stealing their cars, and then dumping them when they got bored."
The picture changes, showing a car down in a ravine. "It appears their luck ran out after murdering their final victim, Hugh Maes, because the car went over a guardrail. Jasmine Ardour's body—though body might be charitable—was found at the bottom of the ravine a couple weeks after the car was found, and retrieved."
"Kimblee—" Mustang demands, "Zolf—was his body found?"
"No, actually." Penelope's face pops up in a window on the screen. "His blood was found in the car and at the scene, but his body was never recovered. Given the, uh, state Ardour's body was found in, police assumed that it must have been carried off by wild animals."
"He's alive," Mustang says with grim certainty.
Emily stares at him. "How can you possibly know that?"
"He's alive and he killed his partner. He used the accident to cover it up." He turns from Emily to address Penelope. "Miss Garcia, find out anything you can possibly about that man."
Penelope looks confused. "I can do that, but… it's been almost ten years. Even if he did survive—"
"He'll have been around the area," Mustang insists.
Leaning over, Reid mutes the phone for a moment. "They're more reflections," he says. "More counterparts to people you knew in your world."
"I don't know the woman, other than she made a sincere effort to kill me," Hughes says. "But I do know Kimblee. He's… psychotic."
"He was ," Mustang corrects. He pauses as if thinking about it. "I don't want to influence what Miss Garcia finds. Once we are done with this call, I've listened to Ed break down criminals the way you do well enough to describe him." He nods to Reid to unmute, then tells Garica, "Look for signs of insubordination. He was probably in the military, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has a dishonorable discharge on his record."
"You should also crossreference Hugh Maes with Kimblee and see if their paths crossed anywhere. It's possible that it's a complete coincidence that he's involved in my counterpart's murder, but…" Hughes trails off.
Penelope looks startled, but she nods. "I can do that, see if their histories matched up at all."
"While you're at it, Miss Garcia, can you also pull all of their other victims? I want to see if there are any other individuals that I might recognize," Mustang asks.
"Of course I can, but can I ask what this has to do with our missing agents and the missing seniors?" she replies.
Mustang glances at Emily, and she appreciates him deferring to her judgment. They told Penelope that people were missing, but they haven't explained where Mustang and Ed were from, at least not yet. Emily doesn't really want to try to explain that over an open line. She isn't sure that she's ever going to be ready to have that conversation, but it will quickly become a moot point. She sighs. "It might be significant. Can you please do it, Penelope?"
"I can, you know I can, Emily. But JJ and Derek and Ed are missing and—" She cut herself off abruptly. "I'm sorry. I just—"
"We know you're worried. We are too. I swear, Penelope, I wouldn't ask you to do this if I didn't think it were important."
She presses her lips into a flat line but nods. "Of course," she says, though emotion still makes her voice tight. "I will dig into their victims and get those pictures over to you ASAP. I'll also dig into Hugh Maes's background and see if Kimberly Zolf and he ever crossed paths. Is there anything else I can do?"
This time Emily looks to Mustang and raises an eyebrow. "Not at the moment, I don't think. Thank you, Miss Garcia, for your help."
"Thank me by bringing our people home safely," she says, then hangs up.
"We aren't going to be able to keep her in the dark about this much longer," Rossi warns.
"I know," Emily says, sharper than she intended to, so she makes herself take a breath and repeats, "I know. I just don't know how to tell her this. We have seen this stuff up close and personal, and I am still having a hard time believing it."
"That's why Ed didn't tell you," Mustang says, surprisingly sympathetic. "We know how crazy it sounds, and you haven't even heard a fraction of it. We've been through things in our world that people there would find difficult to believe, never mind here."
Emily doesn't want to think better of Mustang at the moment. She's pretty happy to stay hating him, if she's honest, so she says, "What do you know about Zolf?"
"He was an alchemist in our world," Hughes volunteers. "He was jailed after a… civil conflict. Overzealous implementation of orders and insubordination. He's…" He scratches at the side of his face, obviously trying to find the words.
"A psychopath. He's completely incapable of empathy. He was obsessed with explosives—that was his alchemical specialty. Trust me when I tell you that if our military considered him too dangerous to be free, he was a problem."
Hughes has a curious look on his face. "Was?" he asks.
"In our world, Bradley released Kimblee to track down a… person of interest. He nearly killed Ed in the course of doing so." Hughes paled at the information. "He obviously didn't manage, though it was closer than I'd like. He was killed by his own side, collaborating with a conspiracy. At least, he was on their side in as much as he's ever on anyone's side."
"Bradley was your king?" Rossi asks in a tone that says he reconfirming.
"He was our fuhrer," Mustang says.
"Was?" Hughes asks again.
"Scar killed him. Grumman was fuhrer when Ed and I were last there."
Emily doesn't know what to make of the look on Hughes's face. "... Scar killed him?" he asks.
"Yes."
There is a lot more to that story than Mustang is saying, and Emily is beyond tired of the secrets and lies. "Who is Scar?"
"A serial killer with a grudge against State Alchemists."
"Was your fuhrer a State Alchemist?" she asks.
"No, but he was responsible for the genocide that launched Scar's career as a serial killer," Mustang says, looking intently at the information that Penelope had left on the screen. He pauses to glance over at Hughes meaningfully. "You were right, about the array."
"What array?" Reid asks.
"It doesn't matter," Mustang says. "We need to find Kimblee, or his counterpart. I think there's a chance that he has some memories from our world."
Reid frowns at him. "What would make you say that? Nothing Garcia told us about him would indicate that he has any knowledge of alchemy."
"Call it instinct. Kimblee… died strangely. I don't like that the timeline for Hugh Maes's death seems to line up with about the same time in our world that Kimblee was killed. I don't trust that it's a coincidence, and I really don't like that he was with her ," he says, glaring at the screen.
"You said she tried to kill Hughes, but you didn't say how," Rossi points out.
"She was closely allied with Bradley, part of his conspiracy. Maes figured out part of the conspiracy, and he was killed for it. But she —" Something in his voice is thick with hate, not merely dislike, it's sincere hate, and it makes Emily uneasy that she inspires such rage more than a decade later. "—she wasn't human. She was a homunculus. And she's the first homunculus that we've seen with a counterpart in this world."
"Was she allied with your Kimblee?" Emily asks, curious.
"Not directly. As far as I know, Kimblee mostly took orders from Bradley himself or from Pride."
"Pride?" Rossi asks. "Like the seven deadly sins?"
"That's actually a common misconception," Reid says. "They weren't originally 'sins' but vices, the most common sources of sin. They aren't in and of themselves sins according to traditional teachings—" He cuts himself off, realizing he might be getting off topic.
"We don't have Christianity in our world, but Ed and I did come across the coincidence," Mustang says. "Regardless, a reflection of a homunculus being involved with Kimblee makes me uneasy, even if, to the best of my knowledge, Lust never met Kimblee."
"She was called Lust?" Seaver asks, speaking up for the first time.
Mustang's eyes slide over to her. "She was." He thought for a moment. "We should look into if she had any siblings. The homunculi treated one another like a dysfunctional family. We may find other counterparts."
"Hold on," Reid says. "Even if we do, what difference does it make?"
Rossi leans back. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that even if there are other reflections or counterparts, does it matter? How do we know that these counterparts have done anything wrong? Why even assume that they are? Just because their counterparts in your world were awful people doesn't necessarily follow that they will be awful here. We have two examples, yes, but with the number of counterparts there could be, we can't just judge these people guilty based on the sins of other versions of themselves."
"He's right," Seaver says. "We can't just assume they're guilty by association."
Mustang sighs and looks at Hughes, who shrugs. "I don't like the precedent so far. Hughes and his reflection seem similar in temperament. Your version of Tucker makes me uneasy, and now Kimblee and Lust… though…" he trails off.
"Though what?" Emily prods after a moment.
"Maes, did you ever look into Shou Tucker's wife?" he asks.
Hughes frowns, then the frown turns into a grimace. "I did, but it didn't yield much information. I didn't find any family who we could inform."
"Yes, but what was her name? Do you remember?"
He thinks for a moment, then says, "Rochelle. Her name was Rochelle. Why?"
"Can we have Miss Garcia pull a picture for us?" Mustang asks Emily.
"Yes, but why?"
"Rachel Alderman—she might have changed her name when she married, but that should be her maiden name."
"Do you know how many Rachel Aldermans there could be?" Rossi asks.
"Never mind," Roy says, pulling out his phone. "I think I have—here it is," he says, then flips the phone around and hands it to Hughes. " Did you find a picture of her? Is that her?"
Hughes's eyebrows raise in surprise at the picture, but he nods. "Her hair is styled differently, but yeah, that looks like her. Why?"
"Because the little girl Ed is holding? That's her daughter Nina. The stuffed dog? It's named Alexander. That's her wife Evvie there."
Hughes looks up, looking stunned, and meets Mustang's eyes. "So it's not just a few."
"What are you talking about?" Emily asks.
Mustang takes the phone back and passes it to her without protest. Ed is in the center of the picture with two women and an infant in his arms. He points to the woman with thick brown hair in a mass of frizzy curls. "This is Rachel Alderman. I met her in DC last month when Ed and I went to the museums there and ran into one of my coworkers and her family. In our world, she was married to our version of Tucker Maes."
Emily didn't want to ask, but she knew she needed to know. "What happened to her?"
"Shou Tucker, in a desperate bid to become a State Alchemist and create a talking chimera, combined her with a pet dog. He said she left him. The chimera said only 'I want to die,' and starved itself to death, but it was still the first successful account of creating a chimera with human-like intelligence and the ability to speak. He was given his certification and called the Sewing-Life Alchemist. To the best of my knowledge, no one suspected what he had done."
Emily's mouth waters with the tang of bile, and she can't bring herself to ask about the little girl with big green eyes, who looks so happy in Ed's arms.
Rossi asks for her. "And Nina?" he asks.
"His daughter. Alexander was their pet dog. I sent Ed to stay with him, because he was the only certified State Alchemist I knew of who had done any kind of living transmutation." He swallows hard. "State Alchemists are recertified every year. For combat alchemists like myself and Ed, recertification is a formality, but a theoretical alchemist like Tucker? They have to show progress in their research. Tucker hadn't for more than two years."
"He used his daughter, didn't he?" Seaver says, grim but not surprised.
"Ed found Nina. She recognized him, and he knew right away what Tucker had done."
"This is Nina?" Emily asks, her hand shaking as she gives him the phone back.
"We believe so. I didn't know if Rachel could be it for sure, but the chances of another little girl being called Nina with a stuffed dog named Alexander… It seems like perhaps the universe has given them a better chance here."
"But Crawford isn't Gracia," Hughes says.
"She's not," Mustang agrees. "Maybe your counterpart would have married her. Maybe Elicia's counterpart would have been born to them? Maybe they would have divorced and he would have met his Gracia some other way. Maybe Elicia has completely different parents in this world. After all, you weren't related to Shou Tucker in ours."
The idea seems to physically pain Hughes. "I don't want to know," he says after a moment. "I just want to get home to my wife and daughter. If we need to track down other counterparts to do it, then that's what we need to do."
"Why do you think the other counterparts are so important?" Emily can't help but ask.
"Because I think Kimblee knows something about our world," he says, bending over the laptop and zooming in on one of the images Penelope sent. There, in chalk on the side of the guardrail, is what looks like half a circle and half a triangle. "Because this was part of his array. If he isn't Kimblee himself… I think there's a good chance he taught our Tucker what he knows. He was definitely exposed to human transmutation, and I won't even try to guess at what Truth may have poured into his head if he somehow crossed between worlds. Either way… I don't like how centralized all these counterparts are. It's too much of a coincidence that they're all within geographical reach of Ed and I. And teaching someone this kind of alchemy without taking the risk of performing it himself is definitely the kind of chaos that Kimblee would love. He's the type to throw gas on a fire to see the shape of the flame that comes from it."
"Great," Emily hears herself say faintly. "So we have a psychopath who may or may not have taught more than one person alchemy."
"And alchemy is working now," Mustang says. "If he taught anyone else…"
"We may have a lot more bodies to worry about," Rossi concludes, running a hand over his face.
Emily swallows back the bile by sheer will. "Seaver, please work with Mr. Hughes and go over the hitchhiker case with a fine-tooth comb. I want to know why they didn't hit the BAU's radar ten years ago anyway. Rossi, Reid, circle back with Crawford and any other locals. We need to know everything about Tucker Maes. Mustang, you're with me. I need you to tell me everything you know about Kimblee and Lust and how they operated. Everything ."