Disclaimer: see chapter 1

Chapter 11: What a Difference a Day Makes

Just like the day before, Colby's nervousness peaked when he opened the door, and he expected that, just like yesterday, the weirdly placating image of his partner lying in his hospital bed hurt, but relatively alright, would calm him down. Today, however, the bed was empty, and for a moment, Colby thought that his heart had stopped beating.

"David?" he called into the room, as though he was hoping that his partner was hiding behind the curtains or under the bed. He felt his mouth go dry. Surely, if complications had come up, they would have called him, right? They had promised him to do so. On the other hand, Colby knew the kind of hectic bustle that was usually going on in a hospital, it was possible that less urging matters slipped their minds, like informing a federal agent that his partner had passed away over night. Or they might have called Linda instead, now that they could choose family over friends.

Whatever the reason for the empty room though, Colby felt that his head was hot, and he felt like sitting down. At the same time, he knew he needed to get to the bottom of this, he needed to know.

"Oh, hello," he was greeted by a nurse he almost ran over while trying to make his way to the reception desk. "You're looking for Mr. Sinclair, right? They just moved him to the regular station."

For a moment, Colby just stared at the woman, assailed by the urge to hug her. In the end, when he'd regained his wits, he just said, "Thanks," and was on his way.

It didn't take him too long to learn David's new room number and now that he was approaching it, he told his feet to slow down their pace. If they'd moved David to a regular room, things couldn't be too bad, right?

He knocked, but opened the door without waiting for an answer, figuring that it was too thick anyway to let through sound. He was looking into a room with two beds and immediately had the sensation that someone up there had to be hating him, for both beds were empty.

"What the –" he started, when suddenly, a face peered around the corner.

"Colby, hey," David greeted him with an easiness as though he'd just arrived at the office.

When his state of shock fell off and allowed him to step inside fully, he could see that David was apparently in the process of putting some clothes in the wall closet, which had blocked him from Colby's view from the door.

"You're back on your feet," Colby stated what could hardly be considered a masterstroke of detective work.

"And back to kicking you in the pants in no time, trust me," David retorted before he grew more sober again. "Seriously though, thanks for stopping by to check on me."

Colby felt that the heat was about to shoot back to his head, this time with embarrassment, so before that could happen, he quickly said, "To check on you? Nah, I was just trying to chat up your sister."

"She's married," David reminded him with both an eye-brow and a corner of his moth raised in mocking.

"Right." Colby nodded slowly, acting as though he was going to accept David's objection and let this go, only to continue the game. "Happily?"

"Shut up, or I will kick your ass."

"The one over there should be it, right?" Megan asked, pointing towards a door a couple of yards ahead.

Don shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine," he said, but silently agreed with her while he continued taking in his surroundings. If they were in the right corridor, and if the directions they'd been given were correct, then Megan had to be right, for this was the third door on the right.

And indeed, the plate next to the door read Prof. Charles E. Eppes, so Don lifted his hand and knocked.

They couldn't hear an answer from within, but since Don assumed that this was more due to the noise the students were making in the hallway than anything else, he opened the door anyway, then stopped abruptly.

"Oh, please excuse us," Megan said, apparently assuming that they'd made a mistake, for one thing was certain: this was definitely not Charlie. "We were looking for Professor Eppes –"

"Then you have come to the right place."

Don suppressed a grin when he saw a frown form on Megan's forehead. "Yet, you are not him," she said slowly.

"That is no doubt correct."

"But," Megan continued, still slowly, still trying to decide what to make of this quirky little man, "he told us to meet him here," she glanced at her watch, "five minutes ago."

"Then I suppose that you have not yet come to realize that while Charles has many fine qualities, punctuality isn't one of them."

"Oh, I know that, believe me," Don inserted himself into the conversation, deciding that Megan had made enough of Larry's acquaintance for the time being. "It's good to see you," he greeted Charlie's friend. "This is my colleague, Special Agent Megan Reeves. Megan, this is Lawrence Fleinhardt, a close friend of Charlie's."

Just as they were shaking hands, Charlie, his cheeks flushed, rushed in behind them. He seemed a little stressed, but, as Don noticed with some satisfaction, the nervousness and reservedness that he'd been showing towards his big brother up until last night were gone, so Don, too, decided to relax. He allowed himself a small sigh of relief, not even realizing how tense he'd been before setting eyes on his brother, and felt the remains of the fears that had still been taking roots in his guts dissolving into thin air. It was indeed good now. They'd become reconciled, both with each other and with themselves. It was true, the path they'd taken to get to this point had been rough. Their worlds had collided, and there had been some pretty nasty fallout, but they'd managed to create a new world out of the debris, one that was strong and fit to encompass them both.

"Don, Megan, hey," Charlie greeted them a little breathlessly, "I'm sorry, I was held up by some students, they're getting a little nervous about mid-terms next week."

"No problem," Don said and came down to business. "You said you were done with your network analysis?"

"Right, yes," Charlie said and put down two thick folders that were probably containing his lecture notes on the desk that was already overloaded with paper. "I know I have it somewhere in here," he mumbled as he was going through his bag, while Don hastened to stop the sliding movement of his folders and put them on Charlie's chair instead.

"Here it is," Charlie said and held out a flash-drive towards them. "Everything you need is on there. If you want, I can quickly show you how it works, then you can go through the analysis yourselves."

"Yeah, I think showing us would be a good idea," Don said, remembering that Charlie sometimes didn't realize that normal people had a much poorer understanding of mathematics than he seemed to think.

"Okay, let's see," Charlie said and inserted the flash-drive in his laptop, which he'd set rather precariously on another pile of folders on his desk. "So you see here, this is the network as a whole," he explained the diagram. "The bigger the name is written, the higher the person's position in the group. I also color-coded it, so as you can see here, red means that they have connections to terrorist activities or terrorists, black means you haven't found conclusive proof yet, and green means that you've already cleared them. Now if you click on one of these names, you get their connections to the other members of the group, the thicker the line, the closer the connection."

"Alright," Don mumbled and tried to gain a quick overview of the network. So far, he hadn't seen anything surprising, but still, this network might prove rather useful during the interrogations, when it was always good to know which people their suspect was close to.

"Thanks, buddy, we really appreciate it," he said and was about to leave to finally get some work done when he noticed Charlie's reluctance to hand over the flash-drive, which was accompanied by the pinched expression on his face, and he frowned. "Something wrong?" he asked.

Charlie was pressing his lips together, hesitating.

"I still think you should tell them," Larry threw in, and Charlie sighed.

"I don't think you're going to like this, so just hear me out, okay?" he premised whatever this was, and Don frowned harder. Even though the issue with their mother's death had finally been settled, he was aware that his little brother still had a number of qualities and habits that tended to make him rave, but in light of their newly rekindled relationship, he told himself to just stay calm, whatever his brother was about to say.

"Okay," he agreed, "I'm listening."

"Something doesn't add up," Charlie immediately came to the point, and Don was about to sigh with exasperation, expecting another unfounded defense of this group, when he was reminded just in time of his resolution. He needed to hear him out.

"I can't really pinpoint it, but I can feel that something's not right with this network."

Don's frown became harder still. "You can feel it," he repeated, refraining from telling his linguistically challenged little brother that the word wasn't very fitting in this situation, when they were talking about a theoretical construct like a network.

"Yes," Charlie insisted, now mirroring the expression on Don's face. "Why is it so hard for you to believe that I have a bad feeling about this?"

"It's not that I don't believe you," Don hastened to say, not wanting for this to end in another fight. "I just can't see how one can have an intuition about this sort of thing. I mean, it's math, it's either right or wrong, isn't it?"

"Actually," Larry came to his friend's rescue, "throughout history, scientists have often been led by feelings and intuition on their way to the great discoveries. It makes sense, too. What we call intuition or a feeling can often be explained by our knowledge of the world, by vast numbers of items containing data that we have accumulated in our mind while engaging in a certain occupation, items rooted so deeply that we're not even conscious of their existence. But the mere fact that we cannot fully explain what train of reasoning led us to our belief doesn't make our intuition wrong, or less credible. Charles is an expert on mathematics, so when he's looking at a mathematical problem, he does that with the background of thousands of hours of experience and thus with an amount of data for comparison that enables him to tell whether a mathematical construct is likely to be faulty or not, just like the two of you are experts on interrogations, for example, and can usually tell whether or not a suspect is hiding something."

Don thought for a second. Actually, that made sense, and that even though it came from the quirky cosmologist. "So what is it that doesn't add up?" he asked, now more intrigued than annoyed.

"That's the thing, I can't put my finger on it," Charlie admitted. "I mean, I went through all the data you gave me, and I know that it doesn't include everything you gathered in the meanwhile, but still, I was diligent enough with that, I know that the analysis is sound per se, and I also couldn't find any errors in my reasoning, but… I don't know, it just doesn't add up."

Don regarded the network. It seemed pretty solid to him. Sure, he didn't want to just discard Charlie's doubts, but as long as he couldn't say what was wrong with the network, what was the harm in going with it? Chances were that it would still give them faster and more accurate results than just going through their suspects randomly. And if they ever came to think that Charlie's network went completely against their intuitions as agents, they could still deviate from it then.

"You know that I would gladly go over it once more and include further data you gathered," Charlie continued then, "but it's just that… well, um..."

When Charlie didn't go on, but instead showed clear signs of embarrassment, Don decided he needed to give him a small friendly push. "Out with it, buddy."

"Well," Charlie said and cleared his throat, "ever since I started working on this case, I've fallen a bit behind schedule with regard to my responsibilities for CalSci, and you know, with mid-terms next week –"

"I understand," Don cut him off, only now realizing how much they'd implicitly expected from his brother. "It's fine, don't worry about it, you've done more than enough in this case. Go back to your teaching, we'll handle this from now on. So for the record, you're not happy with this analysis, but I still say we just try and see where it gets us."

Since Charlie had no better proposal, Don and Megan left with the feeling of having a chance to finally make some progress in this case.

Marcy was quickening her steps further when she could see the house rising up high before her. She was starting to get stitches in the side and told herself to pace herself, to not attract attention, but it was easier said than done. Besides, she figured nobody would pay much attention to her anyway, not in this neighborhood.

She pushed open the door with force, knowing that it was usually stuck. Then she hurried up the stairs, trying not to step on the litter that was covering them. She could hear a child cry through a closed apartment door, and somehow, the sound made her quicken her steps further.

Then, finally, she had made it to the right door and knocked, their secret knock, with a pause between the first and second and between the third and forth knock. She could hear voices from inside, but nobody opened, so she knocked again, louder than before, and with growing impatience.

Ali opened, one of Pete's friends, and she pushed her way inside before even greeting him, not minding the men talking rather heatedly in the living-room and not letting herself be stopped to reach her destination.

"How is he?" she asked instead as she hurried to his room and poured out the contents of her bag on the floor. The medication packages were tumbling out on the carpet while she impatiently pulled the scarf from her head. It had been getting hot under there, but it had been a necessary disguise now that they had to fear that there were people out there looking for them.

"Everything's gonna be okay now, Pete," she told him when Ali didn't answer her question and just remained standing there in the doorway in silence. "I've got everything you'll need, you'll see, you're gonna feel better in no time."

There was no reaction from Pete, which made her haste in her efforts to open the packages. Pete's state had been steadily deteriorating ever since two days ago, when that agent had shot him. The bullet had hit him in his abdomen, and it was still inside him. They hadn't dared removing it so far, but they hadn't dared taking him to a hospital either, not with the charges they were all facing. Instead, he'd been treated here, by a friend of theirs who was a doctor and who'd told them which prescriptions to give him and how to continue the treatment.

"Marcy," Ali said in so strange a tone that it made her look up at him. What she saw made the bad feeling increase, it made her stomach feel as though someone had just put a bunch of crawling insects in there.

"What?" she asked and was unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

"It's too late," Ali said, his face somber.

Marcy was shaking her head. Ali didn't know what he was talking about, he was no doctor –

"He's dead," he said, making her heart stop beating.

"What?" she asked, but even as a whisper, the word hardly got out.

"He just stopped breathing shortly after you'd left. We tried, but there was nothing we could do."

Marcy was staring at Ali, struggling to find a way to make sense of what was happening. Her head jerked around and her eyes landed on Pete, on his immobile form lying there on the ground.

She edged closer, on her knees, stretching out a trembling hand towards him, but telling herself that it was going to be alright, that Ali had to be mistaken.

"Pete?" she whispered with her voice breaking. "Wake up, Pete, just open your eyes for me, please."

There was no reaction, and she could feel hot tears burning in the corners of her eyes, then running down her cheeks. At the same time, the pain started. It was an unbearable, tearing sensation, as though someone was cutting her in two, though not really cutting, they'd just scratched the surface, maybe perforated her, and now, they were tearing, pulling and jerking and making it impossible for her to remain whole, to remain sane.

"No," she cried, weeping, when she realized that there was no other explanation for that bluish face, for the unmoving features, for the lack of warmth and breathing. The body before her was starting to get cold and stiff, it was starting to become what it now was, a thing, a lifeless thing that had nothing to do with the man that she'd cared about so much.

She'd loved him. She'd been in love with him, she only realized that now, and the wish to let him know, to tell him, became all the stronger the deeper the realization became rooted in her mind that she would never be able to do that, that it was over between them, that their time together was over before it had even begun.

"Pete," she whispered again, her voice hardly audible through the tears, taking his hand into hers, feeling his lifeless fingers. They didn't feel like his, that wasn't the warm hand she could still feel on her arm and in her back, it was nothing but the lifeless shell, and when she realized that, an inhuman cry emerged from the depths of her guts, filling the small room with a sound that seemed to be coming from another world.

She was sobbing, fighting to catch her breath. She could feel Ali behind her, a hand in her back, a hand that was so much harder, so much less gentle than the hand that belonged there, that would always belong there.

"They're gonna pay," the words came out of her mouth then, originating from that same ancient source as her unanswered outcry. "They're gonna pay for this."