Author's Note:

Hi everyone. I'm sorry for the delay, I hope you're still with me! We are starting to get some answers now and exciting things will be coming soon. Thank you so much for the reviews and follows, they really mean a lot.

Chapter 7

The team was still waiting for Thorne to tell them the story of what exactly was going on with Emily. He seemed to keep delaying, or being delayed. He had gotten a phone call a moment ago and was taking it in another language. It sounded like it might be Arabic or Farsi; whatever language it was wasn't spoken by any remaining member of the team. Thorne was looking agitated though. That couldn't be a good sign. In the meantime, Reid and Kate decided to take this time to fill everyone else in on what they had been thinking, with respect to the four theories on Emily (covert op, rogue op, crazy, terrorist). They all agreed that option 3, that she had had some type of mental break, was not likely. Emily, as an agent and as a person, had a healthy ability to compartmentalize; she was legendary there. She had been hurt and tortured before. Granted, they didn't know how bad it was this time, but she'd been through something at least similar several times before. Her trauma, no matter how bad it was, wasn't likely to result in a break. None of them could get on board with option 4: terrorist. It just didn't, in any way shape or form, measure up to the woman they all knew. Reid just hoped they weren't being naïve. They all agreed that Prentiss had to be on either a covert operation or a rogue operation. They really couldn't be sure. Garcia had offered to do a little of her 'special' investigating, but Rossi put a stop to that thought. You don't hack into intelligence agencies, without higher authorization, in this day and age without expecting some serious Gitmo-sized consequences. They didn't need any more of that right now.

Thorne hung up his phone and turned back to the group, "where was I?" he asked.

"At the beginning," Rossi answered him, shortly. This guy was trying his patience. "Get on with it already."

"Right." Thorne looked at Rossi, then around at everyone else. He saw six nearly identical expressions. Frustration, annoyance, and desperation. He'd stalled long enough. He had hoped to tell this story only once, but Hotchner had been arrested before he arrived. Thorne couldn't retrieve him until he knew for certain who was holding the Unit Chief, and that information hadn't come in yet. The remaining team members didn't seem too keen on waiting any longer.

"Okay. Keep in mind, that I'm sure I don't know the whole story. You can be damn sure that Emily hasn't told me everything there is to know. She plays it close to the vest, that one." Thorne hedged. There were parts to this story he knew but didn't want to tell them. And parts to this story that he knew Emily didn't want them to know. He was also certain that he hadn't been lying; there were probably parts of this story that he simply did not know.

"Actually first," JJ cut in as Thorne was about to begin, "what was that phone call about?" she asked him. JJ had her feelers up. Something was off. Okay, everything was off. But something about that call, and Thorne seeming like he was finally going to give them some real news, was, well, off-off.

Thorne eyed JJ suspiciously. Well, he decided, if he was going to brief them, he might as well brief them. "It was an update from a source. I need to keep tabs on several key players. They're mobile, and some of them are getting squirrelly."

"You didn't have to speak in code," Morgan tossed out petulantly. He did not like this guy. This guy who Emily trusted more than she trusted Morgan. Again. Apparently.

"It wasn't code, Agent Morgan. It was Arabic. Are you so xenophobic that you assume everyone on the planet speaks English? I assure you, that little apocalypse hasn't happened yet." Ignorant Americans. Thorne was really getting tired of Morgan's childish pouting. Emily had undersold it.

"So Prentiss is definitely outside London then?" Reid began. He was about to go on a roll. "Because, while I don't speak the language myself, I have heard it spoken. The dialect you were speaking had a particular cadence to it. That could be a personal affectation or pronunciation problem on your part, but it sounded like a North African cadence. If I had to guess, I'd say Morocco, Algeria, or Tunisia." Reid finished and looked to Thorne for corroboration. When Thorne didn't immediately respond, Reid added, "Right?"

"Yes, Dr. Reid," Thorne said, tight-lipped. None of these people would let him finish. If they didn't mean so much to Emily, Thorne swore he'd walk out and leave them all to their questions and speculations. "While I will NOT tell you exactly where she is, yes, Dr. Reid. Emily is no longer in London. The UK was toxic for her. Europe was too close. Interpol, as I'm sure you know, is primarily a European entity; and I couldn't exactly bring her here. North Africa is dangerous, but relatively easy to get lost in. We both have contacts there."

"And why couldn't you bring her here?" Rossi wanted answers and he wanted them now. He didn't much care what order they came in. "We can protect her."

Thorne exhaled. "No you can't." He looked around the room, stopping at each member of the BAU. "Or maybe it's more accurate to say you won't."

"Like hell, we won't," Morgan grumbled.

"I meant," Thorne continued testily, "You can't protect her right now. Not from where you sit. You are all sworn agents of the American government."

"So?" JJ asked.

"So. Em's about to be put on the No-Fly List; as in the Terrorist Watch List." Thorne let that bomb drop. He didn't have to wait long.

"No way!" exclaimed Reid. "That list is coordinated by several branches of government. It's not a fast process. You could have moved her into the country. There has to be another reason. What is it?"

Thorne sighed. "There are several reasons Em is better off out of the country right now. The No-Fly is one, her mother is another—"

"What does her mother have to do with this?" Reid interrupted.

Thorne gave him a knowing look, "Ambassador Prentiss is very obviously in a tight spot right now. The woman's professional career has largely been in the Middle East and Europe, both areas where her daughter is a person of interest in international terror activities at the moment. It's safe to say, the Ambassador is under surveillance. It is not safe to say, that the Ambassador would harbor said daughter in this situation. She's a little bit of a wild card."

"Agent Prentiss's mother would turn her over?" Kate asked. She hadn't been here that long and didn't know the Prentiss's or their history.

"Maybe," Thorne answered. Kate looked to the team, most of them nodded in agreement.

"Not to mention," Thorne continued, "that said daughter is an international operative, having worked with various global intelligence organizations across her long and storied career. Including the American FBI. You'll soon be under orders to bring her in on sight. Terrorist label and all. Everyone is looking for her. I thought it best to park here where there were few operatives doing the looking." Thorne was disgusted and made no attempt to cover his disgust. How unbelievably short-sighted the politicians were being. "The States aren't safe for her. She's safest where she is right now."

"Untill?" Rossi prodded.

"What are you getting at?" Morgan asked him.

"On that first phone call, he was talking to his partner about Prentiss's recovery training." Rossi reminded Morgan. Then he looked to Thorne, figuring something out. "You're gearing her up for something."

Alastair Thorne stared down the weathered man. The way Emily spoke of David Rossi, Thorne had expected him to be some sort of snarky amalgamation of Tony Stark, George Clooney, and everybody's favorite big brother. But all Thorne saw now was a man who was deeply concerned about a loved one and trying to cover it with swagger. Thorne smiled at Rossi. A real smile, not the overconfident smirk he's been sporting with the team. He knew Rossi, in particular, was very close to Emily.

"Yes," Thorne said simply. "I am gearing her up, as you put it. We need her at a fighting weight and she's not there yet. My team is re-conditioning her; re-awakening her training and instincts. They are currently at one of our dark bases." Then looking at Reid, "In North Africa."

"Dark bases?" Garcia asked without looking up from her laptop. What she was doing was more important than eye contact.

It was Reid who answered her, "Covert bases. Secret bases in undisclosed locations. Intelligence organizations have them hidden away all over the world."

"Right," Thorne confirmed.

"Fighting weight? You need her at a fighting weight?" Morgan sneered. "She's not a weapon."

"That's where you're wrong, Agent Morgan, that is exactly what she is." Thorne and Morgan stared each other down, neither one budging.

JJ cleared her throat; they didn't need this kind of posturing right now. It wasn't useful. "Explain yourself," she demanded.

Thorne kept his eyes on Morgan, but he did start talking. "She absolutely is a weapon. Think about it, what is the definition of a weapon?"

Reid answered, of course, by rote, "any instrument or device for use in attack or defense in combat, fighting, or war. Anything used against an opponent, adversary, or victim. Any part or organ serving for attack or defense, as claws, horns, teeth, or stings."

Everyone looked to Reid, as per usual. Some looks were patronizing, some were exasperated, and some were kind.

"Thanks Webster," retorted Rossi. "Keep talking."

"What I mean is," Thorne continued, "She is off the grid right now; I took her off the board, I had to. She needs the time to recover and regroup. We are gathering intel and figuring out this damn conspiracy. We're not sure who all the players are just yet. We need that intel before we make our next move." The team was listening to Thorne with rapt attention. Even Garcia had looked up from her laptop, stopping her typing. Thorne continued, "But we also can't have anyone thinking she's slinking off into the shadows to disappear. I had my boys start a little disinformation campaign. Rumors and whispers of where she is, what she's doing, and who she's going after. Emily is a weapon right now, the scariest kind of weapon. She's a ghost. She's a cipher and she'll remain in the shadows until we're ready to strike for real."

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Kate, who had been mostly silent, asked a question. "What did you mean, conspiracy?"

Thorne sighed. "Okay. This all started with an Interpol mission. It was a surveillance op on a Turkish splinter cell of some fly-by-night jihadist group. They're a dime a dozen in that part of the world. The op was nothing special. Except. The surveillance turned up something hinky."

"Hinky?" asked Rossi.

"Hinky. As in, the cell wasn't acting like normal jihadists. They didn't seem to be interested in nationalist targets. They weren't martyrs. Their religious rhetoric was entirely canned. Something just felt off. So the easy surveillance op turned into an undercover op."

"Emily went in," JJ surmised.

"She did," Thorne confirmed. "She's got the skills. And the languages. Well, it paid off, she was under for only two days maybe before she confirmed that the cell was not on a jihad. They were traffickers. Women, drugs, guns. You name it, they probably had a hand in it. The Jihad was just a front. Interpol recrafted the mission and gave Em a new protocol. Part of this included a strategy for if she was discovered."

"Isn't that standard procedure?" JJ asked. While she was with the DOD, and during her time in Afghanistan, she was involved with several intelligence ops.

"It is. But, this particular strategy is rarely used when an operative is undercover alone. It's dangerous and has the potential for catastrophe." Thorne was starting to get upset. This part of the story still made him particularly angry.

"What was it?" Rossi was starting to draw some conclusions of his own.

"A little tactic called 'Reverse Interrogation.' " Thorne said with disgust.

"What's that?" Reid asked. "In her undercover role, Prentiss gets the cell members to talk to her?"

Thorne looked at Reid in disbelief and shook his head. He released a breath he hadn't realized he was still holding.

"No Spencer," Rossi said quietly. "Reverse Interrogation is where an undercover lets themselves be…interrogated…in order to pick up any clues or tells from the interrogator that might give that undercover an idea of what's being planned."

Thorne picked up the thread when Rossi didn't continue. The older man was looking into a far off place right now. "It can be very useful," Thorne offered, "but it can also be dangerous. And as I said, it's almost never employed by someone working alone. But Interpol gambled. Emily is at the top of her game as an operative. She's done this kind of work before. And lest we forget, Emily Prentiss is quite the gifted profiler." Thorne shook his head, as if he were trying to shake out the reminder.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Morgan asked, defensively.

"Think about it," Thorne said, incredulously. How did Morgan not see the connection? "A trained operative can learn a lot from Reverse Interrogation. But a trained operative who's also a profiler? Forget it. She'd be able to pick up so much more."

"By 'interrogator' you mean 'torturer,' right?" JJ asked quietly but clearly, her own trauma still fresh in her mind.

"Yes." The answer was obvious, but still needed to be said.

Rossi cleared his throat. "Please continue."

Thorne looked at him, searching for resolve. He didn't have to search long before he found it.
"Okay. Well, after Em's report on the true nature of the cell, something happened. Emily was found out. We didn't know how, but after a few days of no contact from her at all, we were sent the first video." Thorne shifted his weight. He was getting angry again. "The powers that be at Interpol decided not to go in and get her."

It was quiet for a brief moment, then it was Penelope who asked the obvious question, "why not?"

"Why do you think?" Thorne asked back.

"The new protocol." Rossi stated quietly.

"Yes," Thorne confirmed.

"Interpol wanted to give the Reverse Interrogation some time to play out." Rossi was disgusted. He had had a little bit of experience with this tactic, back in the military. It was not something he'd ever recommend.

"They did," Thorne stated simply. "And then everything went to Hell."

No one spoke. Everyone had drifted into their own lanes with this new knowledge. Rossi was trying to stop himself from imagining Emily's 'interrogation.' He was failing miserably. Kate was thinking of the ways in which Emily's undercover ruse could have been discovered. JJ and Reid were each trying to keep their minds off of their own experiences with torture. Morgan was fuming. He was beyond pissed that Interpol had left her in. It would have been to his surprise, had he known, that Alastair Thorne was feeling the same thing in that moment. The room was quiet for almost a full five minutes before the silence was broken.

"I found it!" Garcia exclaimed.

"What babygirl?" Morgan asked.

Garcia had pushed her chair back from the table, away from her laptop, to which she was now pointing. "I found it. The video clip." "Of Emily," she added when no one spoke immediately.

"I told you NOT to look for that." Rossi was mad. The last thing they needed was anything else to go wrong, or anyone else to be taken from them.

"I didn't hack the government, I promise," she assured them. "I hacked the Ambassador. Agent Thorne said the clip was also sent to Ambassador Prentiss. I thought that would be easier. It was."

Everyone was staring at Garcia as if she were radioactive. They were all torn. Except for Morgan, who was staring at the open computer screen. It was a still, frozen image. Emily was hanging by her arms from the ceiling. Her clothing was torn, there were visible bruises on most of the open skin he could see, and her left eye was swollen shut. If he squinted, he thought he saw a blood puddle on the ground underneath her. Slowly, his finger reached toward the laptop, towards the play button.

TBC