Thank you, as always, for the delightful reviews. There will be one more chapter after this that will round out the story and set up the next fic. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

"We're almost there. Call Walter."

Toby nodded to the agent and tapped the icon on his phone, broadcasting the call through the car's sound system. Each ring seemed excessively loud and shrill in the shrink's exhausted mind until Walter picked up, his voice urgent. "Are you inside?"

"Close. Start filling us in and I'll tell you when we get there."

"Fine." Walter sounded irritated, but cleared his throat and said, "The book. It belonged to Collins when he was part of Scorpion. I recognized the wear on the cover. I knew I'd seen it before. It wasn't there when I set Ralph's desk up, so it must have been put in place intentionally."

Toby furrowed his eyebrows, clutching the phone tighter in his hand even though he was speaking through the Bluetooth. "If it was in the garage, couldn't one of us have put it there accidentally? And how does this help Paige?"

"Because it wasn't in the garage. Or at least, not in a place any of you would have stumbled across it."

Cabe jerked the car to a stop in front of the building and they scrambled out. The agent pressed the entry code into the keypad and threw open the front door as Toby turned on his speakerphone to carry the conversation into the Scorpion headquarters. "We're here, genius, tell us what we're looking for."

"Behind the broken computer equipment. The stuff Happy keeps saying she's going to fix. Check the wall."

Cabe jogged over to the designated area, pushing aside a rickety metal shelving unit full of busted keyboards and modems. He looked surprised as his fingers traced a section of the water-damaged gray wall. "This has been plastered over. It's smoother than the rest."

"Tear it up, Cabe. We need to see what's inside," Walter's voice rang clearly over the phone. "Do it now!"

The agent took a quick inventory of the items around him, landing on the larger tools that Happy kept on a display she designed. He grabbed her sledgehammer and swung it at the wall, shielding his eyes from the crumbling debris and dust.

Cabe and Toby yanked the rest of the jagged plaster off with their hands, stopping when they revealed a square metal box. They lifted it by the handles and dragged it to Happy's workstation, grunting from the substantial weight. "What the hell is this?"

"Collins hid things in that wall. I was the only one who knew about it, but I never looked. I'd forgotten about it until I saw the book—it's the only thing I knew for sure he kept in there." Walter exhaled deeply, as if the discovery was stirring up difficult memories for him—and perhaps it was. When it came to Collins, every memory was tinged with pain. Mark thrived on that. "Is there a lock?"

"Yeah." Cabe crouched down to inspect the seemingly simple six-digit combination lock. He peered into Happy's toolbox for a hammer. "I can break it. I just need—."

"No, don't!" Walter said anxiously, stopping the agent in his tracks. "Don't break it, and don't guess. If Collins has put defense mechanisms in place, the contents of that box could be destroyed before we get into it. I think this is what some of the equations are for."

Toby glanced uncertainly at Cabe, who shrugged, now out of his depth. "Some of them?"

He heard Walter mumble to another person in the background before returning to the line. "We were studying the photos you sent of the formulas in the book. I noticed that certain page numbers corresponded with significant dates in my relationship with Collins. After arranging those dates in chronological order and solving the equations, Sylvester came up with a six-digit code."

Sylvester. Of course. That explained that we. "And if it's not the right one?" Toby asked, his mind suddenly filled with images of triggering a catastrophic explosion or perhaps being overrun by venomous spiders. Collins was a fan of elaborate traps, after all.

"Just enter it, Toby," Walter snapped. "Zero, nine, two, seven, one, zero."

The psychologist didn't have Walter and Sylvester's perfect recall of dates, but he knew why Walter was confident that he'd correctly deduced the code. September 27, 2010. The day Collins joined Scorpion. The day Walter had given him a purpose.

Toby rotated the final number into place and the lock slid open easily. He held his breath and squeezed one eye shut, preparing for the worst, but several seconds passed without incident and Cabe assisted him in lifting the heavy lid.

"Well, I'll be damned," Agent Gallo drawled as they inspected the contents. There was a plastic tray—cold to the touch, Toby noted, controlled by some kind of temperature regulator—that housed rows of skinny glass ampoules, each filled with crystal clear liquid.

"There are fifty vials in here, Walter," Toby explained with a hint of disbelief. "We can test them all to figure out which one's the antidote, but it'll take forever."

"Actually, I don't think we can," Cabe grumbled, drawing his attention to a loaded spring in the upper corner.

Toby certainly wasn't a mechanic, but he'd learned enough over the years from watching Happy to trace the connecting wires and make an educated guess about their purpose. "Cabe's right. There's an alarm in here. Once we move a vial, it sounds and the rest of them shatter. It'll be impossible to find the antidote when that happens."

"Then make sure it doesn't happen," Walter bit out in a tone that made it pretty clear Toby wouldn't be forgiven if he failed. He wouldn't expect forgiveness. He wouldn't be likely to forgive himself. "Sylvester solved the other seven equations, but I don't know what the results mean. Even if the vials are numbered, we're only looking for one."

Collins was giving them all the clues they needed. September 27. Fifty vials. Seven numbers.

They were missing something. The last piece of the puzzle.

"That smug bastard," Toby muttered before yanking the phone up to his mouth. "Walter, think about the day you met Collins. How did you know he was a genius?"

Walter hesitated for a second, rewinding to his stored memories of that fateful day. "Uh, he was working on calculations. An equation he created for more efficient space travel. We finished it together."

Toby nodded, a pointless gesture since Walter couldn't see him. "The first project you worked on together. Collins bragged about it all the time, and he can't resist bringing it up now. Run the equation with those seven numbers."

"Already on it," Sylvester said breathlessly. The silence between the four men grew more and more deafening until he announced, "Thirty-seven. It's thirty-seven. I really hope you're right about this."

"So do I." Toby inhaled to steady his nerves, pausing just before fingers reached the top of the vial in the third row. "And Walter, if I'm wrong…" He swallowed hard. It was their only chance to save Paige. He couldn't be wrong. "Then I'm really, really sorry."

In one swift motion, the shrink grasped the container and stumbled backward with it just as a piercing sound struck his ears and echoed off hundreds of colliding glass shards. Cabe pushed him down with one arm around his back, shielding him. And then as quickly as it had started, the alarm faded out, and Toby straightened, cringing. "Ow. My cochlea."


"Cabe said you were pretty badass today," Happy noted as she settled into the chair next to Toby. She dusted a speck of glass off his shirt, catching it in her palm so it wouldn't land on the hospital floor.

"I'm only badass if it works."

"Hey," the mechanic said calmly, resting her hand on his upper arm and rubbing it reassuringly. "It'll work."

The laboratory had run tests on the liquid in the vial to ensure that it wasn't another toxin—or, for that matter, sugar water—but there was still no guarantee it was what Paige needed. Her organs were on the verge of shutting down, and if what he retrieved was anything other than the antidote, nothing short of a miracle would be able to save her.

Doctors were understandably skittish about administering an unknown substance to a patient until Walter and Cabe signed about seventy forms absolving the hospital of any liability. Toby wished there was a form he could sign, an agreement that would protect him from the consequences if all this went sideways. Walter would never trust him again. But the shrink figured he could accept that, knowing that he'd done what he could to help save Paige. At the very least, it would give Walter someone to blame other than himself.


She blinked her eyes open, pain searing through her skull. Paige shifted in her bed, thrown off by the texture of the sheets under her bare legs. They felt rougher than usual. Gradually, her ears adjusted to the steady beeping of the heart monitor, and she held one hand up to shield her face from the blinding white light.

Everything came flooding back, fragmented and hazy. She was in the hospital and Ralph—Ralph.

"I'm right here," Paige imagined him saying, but his small hand squeezed hers and it felt so real. As her vision adjusted to the brightness of the room, she realized that it was real, he was real, sitting in a chair next to her and looking solemn but otherwise fine. She tried to sit up, but her muscles weren't cooperating. Ralph laid his other hand on her shoulder, pushing her back down. "Don't try to move. I'm fine, mom. And so are you. It's over."

After hours of fighting, of pain and uncertainty and fear, those words—it's over—struck her deeply, and suddenly Paige was crying so hard that she had to gasp for breath. Ralph climbed onto her bed, still moving a little slowly, and curled up next to her on the mattress, resting his head against her shoulder. As best as she could, Paige wrapped her arms around him, kissing the top of his head.

She thought she'd never get to do this again.

There was a flash of movement in the corner of her eye, and when she looked up, Walter was standing in the doorway, looking like he hadn't slept in days. Paige weakly motioned for him to join them, and he circled around the opposite side of the bed from Ralph and sat down on the edge, tentatively reaching out to trail his fingers along her cheek.

"The doctors are coming to check on you," Walter said, a subtle tremor in his voice. "But they said your vitals are stable."

"Walter…"

"They want to keep you overnight," he rambled on, purposefully ignoring her. "For observation. But you can go home as soon as they've—."

"Walter," Paige interrupted as firmly as she could manage, wrapping her hand around his and holding it still. He fell quiet, alternating his gaze between her and the floor. "What happened? Is the team okay?"

The genius nodded.

"Good." Her grip tightened on Ralph, who was listening to their conversation silently, as if she was trying to protect him from the name itself. "Collins?"

Walter opened his mouth and shut it several times before exhaling shakily. "He gave Ralph the antidote and then disappeared. We're no closer to him than we were before."

"I doubt that."

He offered her a hollow smile, which quickly faded as she squeezed his palm. Walter's gaze traveled between her and her son, the two people he couldn't live without and yet had come so close to losing. The thought inspired a wave of nausea in his stomach. "You…really scared me today."

"And yet here we are," Paige said, her lips twisting into a light grin. "Scorpion never fails."

Even after facing death, her faith in the team was unwavering. Walter wondered how she did it. How she could be so calm when he was still reeling and felt like there hadn't been any oxygen in his lungs since Ralph first collapsed.

But he didn't say anything. He just held on to Paige tightly—maybe too tightly—recognizing a second chance when he saw one.


"Hell of a day." Toby meant it humorously, but his voice was worn too thin to sell the joke. He banged the side of his fist against the vending machine, sighing in frustration as the soda he'd chosen rattled around uselessly inside.

"Here." Walter motioned for him to step aside and pressed down on the selection button before entering a series of numbers into the keypad. The can dropped neatly into the deposit bay. "Override code."

Toby glanced at Walter out of the corner of his eye. "You could have done that before I paid."

"That's stealing."

Toby geared up a response but decided against it, cracking open the tab on his soda and allowing the foam to die down. A little silence wasn't the absolute worst thing he could face, it turned out.

"What you did today…I, uh, I should thank you." Walter stared down at his feet, one hand reaching up to rub the muscles in his shoulders and neck. Toby didn't answer, allowing him time to collect his thoughts. It was a wonder either of them could still think—or stand—after being awake for so long. "I don't know if I'd have been able to make that decision. Paige wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for you."

Toby managed a clumsy smirk as he brought the can to his lips. "You helped too."

"I guess it was naïve to expect a 'you're welcome,' huh?" But Walter was smiling too, and before long they were both chuckling, due as much to delirium as anything else.

"You're welcome." The psychologist knew he should leave it at that, but a singular thought had been nagging at him since he'd left the garage hours ago. Despite calculating a moderate risk of setting Walter off again, Toby let his curiosity win out. "Why did Collins even have the antidote? If he wanted Paige gone, he wouldn't have led us straight to the cure. I don't understand what his endgame is."

Walter didn't look surprised by the question. He'd likely been asking it himself all day. "I think Collins benefits either way." The genius stretched out his hands, the cracking of his knuckles punctuating the silence. "If…if we didn't decipher the clues in time, he would have made sure I knew that the answer was right under my nose. That I had the cure in my hands and I missed it. He knows I'd never forgive myself for that."

Damn, Toby was glad they didn't have to face that reality. "But we did. What does Collins get out of this?"

"He gets us." Walter knitted his brows intently, glancing up until he met Toby's eyes. "Scorpion. He told me he wanted revenge, but his actions offer evidence to the contrary. He can't return to the team, so he's doing the next best thing. As long as these games continue, we have to acknowledge him. He's still a part of our lives."

"That does sound like him," Toby muttered. "But he keeps coming after Paige and Ralph. It's not fair. We were the ones that turned against him."

"No. We didn't. I did." Walter blew a deep breath out through his nose. "They're in danger because of my decisions. And one day Collins is going to decide that the games aren't working anymore. He won't give us a way out. And we won't win."

Toby wanted to assure him that he was wrong. But he wasn't. "What are you gonna do?"

Walter looked at Toby squarely, a hint of pain coloring his expression. And Toby understood. "The right thing."