A/N: Hey. So, again, vote for Alex Rider characters and send gadget ideas please!
In other news, I've officially written out all of Red White and Dead. After this chapter, there are four more and an epilogue left. Also, I've started writing the sequel to this, which I'm totally psyched to work on. I just have no idea how I'm gonna categorize it when I go to post it. Oh, well, I'll figure that out later.
Thirdly, this is a warning. After this week, I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post anything. I'm starting my second summer course next week, and it's 1) a longer class, 2) four days a week, and 3) chemistry, which I kinda just barely scrape by in. And I can't afford to do poorly in this class or I lose my scholarship. So, as such, I probably won't be on much for the next month. :( Sorry!
Last but not least, I apologize in advance for this cliffhanger.
Playlist for this chapter: Evanescence's "Whisper," Breaking Benjamin's "Into the Nothing," and Nickelback's "If Everyone Cared."
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The team stood around Valerie and Danielle after leading them to the indoor shooting range. Val had pulled one of those fancy silver guns—with red designs instead of green—and fiddled with it for a moment before it began humming. A slight glow came off the red designs, steadily increasing in brightness as the humming got louder and higher pitch.
Danielle grinned around at them. "This is the charging state for the ecto-guns. You can shoot during the charging, but the blast will be weaker. The best thing to do is space out your blasts so one of you is shooting at all times. That way, you're not a sitting duck while the gun charges."
Here, Val took over, raising her voice some to be heard over the whine. "These things can overheat, though, so you shouldn't have them charge too long. You'll feel the burn before it'll be in any danger of blowing, just try not to wear gloves using these. To fire a blast, you simply aim and pull the trigger—"
"Wait," Morgan interrupted just as Val was getting ready to fire, "you keep saying 'blast.' Don't you mean bullet?"
Danielle and Val smirked. "Nope."
Then Val fired, proving them right as a bright pink glob of energy was launched out of the barrel. It struck the paper cutout, incinerating it on contact. Val turned back to them, resting the muzzle of the gun on her shoulder. "Also, the blasts are made up of ectoplasm and heat energy."
Danielle's grin turned feral. "Your turn."
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"Danny?" The nurse's voice barely registered with him. He couldn't even feel his own body as the nurse moved his arms to rebandage them and his torso. He didn't notice her leave, either.
Instead, he merely lay there, unable to focus on anything but his racing thoughts. His head was full of images of his friends and family, dead and bloody, of the messages Vlad left on the walls and his body, of Sam's last words before she died.
He flinched, hands coming up to claw into his hair as the memory of that day reappeared. He watched as his mind replayed that day, Vlad bursting into life behind his closed eyelids.
Gone were the smells and sounds of the hospital. All he could hear were Vlad and Spectra's taunts. All he could smell was the blood that ran from the cuts, scrapes, wounds on Sam's body. All he could feel were the restraints that kept him, again, from saving her.
All he could see were those lifeless purple eyes, dead even before her last breath.
He shivered, feeling Spectra's fingers dancing along his arms once more as Vlad—
He winced, shaking his head to avoid those images. Now, instead he was being forced to dig his hand into Sam's wounds, feeling the warmth of blood and vital organs swarming around him. His hand pressed up against her stomach with a sickening, squelching sound as the blood sunk into his skin. He could practically feel the red ooze becoming permanently infused with his flesh—
He violently shook his head once more, banishing that memory and instead allowing another to take over.
Your own friends ran to me to stay away from you!
Danny whimpered, digging his nails into his scalp. "No…."
They came to me…. Yours friends didn't want you! Your family was the same.
He could feel the tears welling up in his eyes, but he bit them back, refusing to let Vlad win again. He shook his head, but this time the vision refused to change.
Vlad laughed at him. Your mother knew what you were, and she couldn't stand it! She asked me, begged me to stage their deaths so they wouldn't have to deal with you!
His whole body was convulsing from forcing back his sobs. The twitching pulled at the cuts across his back and chest. Pain wracked his body from the torn stitches, but he was too far gone in the memory to notice as the heart monitor beside him started beeping frantically.
They all left you, Daniel. They left you for me….. Maybe… maybe they'd want you if you were neutered….
Danny flinched back, reliving the pain of the knife flashing across his hips. He shook even as Vlad's last words to him echoed back.
Then again… it's too late to get them back, isn't it? After all, you've let them all die, over and over. You couldn't even save the one you loved! Face it, Daniel, you've failed them all, and I'm the one they turned to for help. They'll never take you back, so why even bother?
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"Alright, now how exactly do we find the Fentons, Manson, and Foley?" Hotch inquired of the two girls.
They shared a glance. "They'll all be in a rented-out warehouse with at least four rooms," Danielle replied succinctly, grabbing a blank page and sketching the layout as she explained. "There'll be three or four rooms surrounding the middle room. The doors leading into the warehouse will be left unguarded, but there will be ghosts—full ghosts—stationed in each of the outer rooms. Vlad will be staying in the middle room."
"Woah, woah, woah, wait!" Morgan exclaimed. He shared a quick look with the rest of his team, then lifted an eyebrow at the girls. "Masters is staying in some fancy hotel, not a warehouse!"
Val shook her head as Danielle sighed. "That's what he wants you to think," Val stated. "He's half-ghost. He makes sure he's seen going into his room at night and coming out in the morning, but once he's in the room, he flies off to the warehouse."
"How can he have a warehouse waiting for him if he doesn't know where Danny will end up?" Rossi asked.
"Besides the fact that Danny's been heading due east this whole time?" Danielle stated bluntly. "He's an international businessman. He has warehouses everywhere. The real question has always been 'how does Vlad move all of them?'"
"We finally figured it out a month or two back," Val continued. "It was actually stupidly simple once we remembered about all his businesses. After all, no one's gonna think anything of a huge truck travelling cross-country filled with some bigshot company's latest 'product.'"
The BAU team collectively blinked, then Rossi jabbed at the button to call Garcia.
"Duckies, I'm already on the phone," she cheekily declared. Rossi sputtered, and she giggled. "I'm searching for which company trucks have spent two years trekking the country."
"They'll be linked to either DALV Co, MastersCorp, or Axion Labs," Danielle added.
"Well, well, I certainly won't be buying MastersCorp's newest laptop now, will I?" Garcia huffed in annoyance. "It looked really awesome, too…."
"Garcia?" Hotch prodded. The two teen girls were chuckling at Garcia's whining.
"Sorry, sorry…." Some frantic typing met their ears, then, "The truck belongs to a small delivery company, CanShipQuick."
"Anything else?" Reid questioned quickly.
"Patience, Grasshopper." A few more taps at her keys, and Garcia was rattling off a license plate number.
JJ and Prentiss got up to let the local PD know about the truck.
"Thanks, baby girl," Morgan said, sighing in relief.
"Anytime, sugar. Also, I can't find a name for the driver of that truck."
"You won't," Val explained. "The driver will have been one of Vlad's ghost lackeys. He wouldn't trust a human not to rat him out."
Danielle nodded. "Most likely, he'd have one ghost driving and at least two in the back to keep the hostages (and clones) in check." She and Val shared a look. "We should plan to be facing six ghosts minimum, then Vlad…."
"No," Val argued. "He'd have the same three guarding in the truck and at the warehouse. Six workers is too many for him, unless they're mindless."
Danielle granted Val the point, then returned to explaining her crudely drawn layout. "He'll have the clones in with the originals to confuse any potential rescuers. Jack, Jazz, and Tucker will be in one room, Maddie in another, and Sam in the third. If there's a fourth outer room, he'll move Jack into it. Maddie will be the most heavily guarded, then Sam, then the last three." Danielle rolled her eyes. "Vlad continues to underestimate Jack, just out of habit, but he knows Maddie's a threat. Sam, Jazz, and Tucker can also be dangerous, but Jazz inherited Jack's aim and Tucker can be a klutz."
"Any idea what ghosts he'll have guarding the place?" Morgan asked, hoping for anything to help them prepare.
"Well… Skulker usually is Vlad's errand boy, and he'll call on Technus to help out," Val replied. "The third…. It might be Ember, the Fright Knight, or Walker, but I really have no idea." She shrugged. "Sorry."
Danielle bit her lip. "Fright Knight's sealed away, so it wouldn't be him. Walker hates half-ghosts, so I really can't see him going along with this, even to get back at Danny. Ember's too free-willed to listen to anyone…. Wait." Her eyes went wide, and she turned to Val. "Vlad's focusing on psychologically destroying Danny, right?"
"Yeah…?" Val answered, not catching on yet.
"Which ghost feeds on emotional turmoil?"
Now Val's eyes were wide. "Spectra! Of course! She's the third, so if there's a fourth—"
"It'll be her snarky little assistant." Danielle turned back to the BAU team. "We can tell you some about each of these ghosts and break down into groups of who'd do best against each."
Hotch nodded along with her logic. "One more thing. You said earlier that the hostages and clones will be held together."
"Yes?"
"How would we tell them apart, or will we have to check all their necks for the serial numbers?"
Danielle and Val refused to meet anyone's eyes. "…Th—There's ways," Danielle said quietly.
"How?"
"I told you earlier about the failed half-ghost clones. The reason the clones of the Fentons, Sam, and Tucker were successful is because they're simpler. The clones of Danny were supposed to be able to change between forms, look exactly the same, have life, and have sophisticated thoughts. The A.I. he put into me and my… siblings," she winced at the word, "would enable us to actually mentally function on a higher plane than Danny did at the time. Vlad also wanted us to look and feel alive and not like zombies or robots. He put a lot of effort into skin condition, hair sheen, and, most of all, the reflective quality of eyes. He wanted our eyes to have the same kind of light that is in all living beings."
She sighed. "He didn't care so much about capability of thought or looking happy and alive in these clones, so they were much simpler to make. Besides, it was, in a way, a tell that he is, very deep down, still human since he couldn't kill a clone that still had that light, that hope in their eyes."
"The only problem," Val continued, "is that we can't know for sure that the Fentons, Sam, and Tuck haven't given up on a rescue. If they have, or if they've lost the will to live, we may not be able to tell them apart."
Hotch sighed, leaning forward with his hands steepled. "And we have just over a day before Vlad's flight takes off…."
Danielle's head snapped up to stare at Hotch. "Wait, what? You never said we were working with a timeframe!"
"Yeah," Morgan stated, "Masters booked a flight back to Amity Park for tomorrow."
"Aw, crap…. Okay, here's what we'll do, then. We'll break you guys into three groups based on who will fight each ghost. We won't have as much time as I hoped, but Val and I can go over each ghost's weaknesses. We'll just have to hope that's enou—"
"Um, g—guys?"
All eight turned to the phone. "Yeah, Garcia?" Rossi asked, an eyebrow raised in wonder at the reason behind the call.
"W—We just got a message f—from the hospital. It's f—for Reid."
"What is it, baby girl?" Morgan prodded. Reid had paled dramatically, unable to speak.
"They were called in a little while ago for an emergency. D—Danny was having a—a heart attack." Her voice sped up, getting steadily higher in pitch. "They said it was due to complications from all the wounds, along with what looks like either a panic attack or seizure and they did all they could b—but they couldn't bring him back." The last few words were spoken at a whisper, as though Garcia could barely bring herself to admit it.
The group stared in shock at the phone. "Garcia," Hotch said quietly, "what are you saying?"
She burst into tears. "D—Danny died, just a few minutes ago!"
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A/N: …that chapter looked a lot longer in my notebook….
Anyways, sorry about that cliffhanger again, and please vote/send ideas! Here's to hoping I'll be able to post throughout July! Read and review, please!