Amber leaned against the wall, haughtily watching as House listed the patient's symptoms while Cuddy breathed down his neck, making sure that he did her bidding. "Creepy-crawlies are consistent with paraneoplastic syndrome," Wilson pointed out.

"Not immediately after administering IVIG," Amber said.

"Infection," House said.

"They'd have thought of that," Amber said, rolling her eyes, "Why are we even here? This is the biggest waste of time, they can handle this without us."

"Fine." Cuddy glared at her and heaved a sigh. "You all need to be here because..." she hesitated, knowing that this would be paramount to scandal; House especially would lose it, knowing that she had intentionally undermined him and placed moles in his group of fellows. "Because none of the people that are on that ward are doctors..."

******

"What made you page Dr. House?" Hotch asked one of the nurses at the nurses' station, "Was the patient in some kind of distress?"

The young woman was flustered and highly anxious, she hardly looked a year out of nursing school. "Umm... no," she stammered, "She was actually doing really well, seemed better than she had been doing since being admitted. That's why it seemed so weird..."

"What seemed weird?" Hotch pressed.

"He came to the nurses' desk and told us to page Dr. House, tell him his patient was in distress. When we said she was fine and that we could probably handle it without House, he got really angry and said that we should do what we're told."

"Who?"

"I didn't think he still worked here, but he was wearing hospital-issue scrubs and he had hospital I.D. I figured he knew what was best, he is a doctor after all..."

"Who?"

******

"None of them are doctors?" House repeated incredulously. The rest of the doctors remained frozen, varying degrees of disbelief on their faces, some completely shocked, others almost as if they had suspected. Morgan, for his part, sheepishly avoided eye contact and sincerely hoped that the others were close to figuring out who the unsub is because their cover had just been blown to shards.

"Then who are they?" asked Wilson.

Cuddy looked to Morgan who almost imperceptibly nodded, they may as well know the truth now. "FBI agents with the BAU gone undercover," she told them, leaving out why.

Foreman looked absolutely astonished to learn that Emily wasn't who he thought she was or at least, not completely. Morgan could see from his expression that he was devastated to learn that she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him the truth. And as terrible as it sounded, he couldn't help but be pleased that she hadn't confided in her 'boyfriend'.

It took him a few moments to realize that, while he had been revelling in his schadenfreude, everyone in the room had turned to look at him. And suddenly, he felt inexplicably angry and, now that he didn't have a cover to protect, he finally said what was on his mind. "I sure hope you can figure this out," he said to House, "Because otherwise, their blood will be on your hands."

******

"She most likely has some kind of infection," Reid told the others his rough differential, "But seeing as the labs almost exclusively rule out all bacteria, viruses, and parasites..."

"Almost," Rossi noted, "So there's a chance it still might be?"

"If it is, it isn't in her blood or a common one."

"We should have seen this," Hotch muttered to himself, rejoining the others.

"What is it?" Emily asked.

"We were right there with him for weeks, how did we miss it?"

"Miss what?" Emily asked. It wasn't very often that something managed to throw Hotch for a loop like this, so they knew that what ever it was they had missed, it was something major.

He started to answer, but stopped and looked at Reid questioningly. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah... I'm fine. Why?" he asked, an eyebrow raised.

"You just look really flushed... Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm..." he started to say, but stopped, bringing a hand to his head and started to wobble. He would have fallen to the ground if Emily's quick thinking hadn't immediately produced a wheel chair at his side.

Sitting him down, she used the back of her hand as a rough gauge of temperature. "Oh my God," she breathed, "You're burning up!" She looked up to Hotch and Rossi ominously and said, "I do believe we have our first patient..."