"Matt? Matt?"

Casey blinked and realized Dr. Charles was talking to him.

"Sorry," he said, "what was it?"

"I said how did you feel when you found the bodies in the bedroom?"

It had been a slow shift, so Dr. Charles had been able to psychoanalyze everybody one by one, now it was Casey's turn. He didn't know how long they'd been talking, he just wanted it over.

"How do you think?" Casey replied.

"Well, not being able to save everyone is unfortunately a part of the job, you know that better than I do," Daniel said, "but it's not usually like this, is it?"

"It's never like this," Casey answered. He shifted gears and asked, "Has that girl said anything yet?"

"Right now we're focusing on you," Daniel said.

"Has she said anything?"

"No," Dr. Charles shook his head.

"Let me ask you something," Casey said.

"Okay, sure."

"What would possess somebody to douse themselves in oil, set themselves on fire, and then deny they did it?"

Daniel took his glasses off. "This is about that woman they brought in 3 days ago?"

Casey nodded. "What about drinking a bottle of dish detergent? What about cutting your face open with a razor?"

"Well, as far as suicide attempts go, there are more effective and overall less gruesome ways to go about it," Dr. Charles said, "however there are some people that get it in their head that the more outlandish something is, the more graphic it is, the better it is because people will remember them...not entirely different from copycat shooters, they see all this attention the media pays to the original gunman, and the way their mind works, this is their chance for 15 minutes of fame, and if they can make it somehow more memorable than the previous shooting, they interpret that as a good thing for them, it's their key to notoriety."

"You really think all these people just wanted to kill themselves and wanted it to be as horrible as possible for posterity?" Casey asked.

"I didn't say that," Dr. Charles told him, "as far as I know, all the victims are still alive, now it's my experience that there are 3 reasons for botched suicide attempts: one, they weren't serious attempts to begin with, two, somebody discovered them prematurely and called for help, three, once they actually start experiencing the pain, they change their mind and their immediate focus is ending the pain, their own plans immediately halted."

"None of these people seem to have any memory of what they did to themselves," Casey said. "You really think they're all attempted suicides they regretted?"

"That would be a very big coincidence," Dr. Charles commented.

"Otis thinks it's some kind of mass hypnotism."

"Well, that would be slightly less unnerving than the idea all these people just randomly decided to maim themselves in some of the most frightening ways possible," Dr. Charles said. "When people try to rationalize something that can't be explained, the idea of it being an evil conspiracy tends to somehow be more comforting than the idea of spontaneous individual actions."

"But what do you think?" Casey asked.

"I wouldn't be able to form any real opinion on that until I could actually speak to them, unfortunately right now most of them aren't able to," the psychiatrist told him.

"If we don't know what's causing it, we have no way of stopping it from happening again, which means any time those bells go off...we'll be walking into it all over again."

"I wish I had a better answer for you," Dr. Charles said somberly. "Unfortunately right now it's still wait and see."


They didn't have to wait for long. Shortly after Dr. Charles had left 51 to return to Med, the bells went off again and a call came through about a house fire. When they arrived they saw flames shooting out of the upstairs windows, a neighbor in the yard told them that the family was still inside. They went in and found three children between the ages of 8 and 15 passed out in various parts of the house from smoke inhalation, but the mother was dead on the bathroom floor, reeking of lighter fluid and with a plastic bag tied over her head. She had an old button-up shirt on over her clothes and disposable gloves on her hands, which told Casey that this woman had been under the fatal delusion she was dyeing her hair.

The fire on the second floor hadn't spread to the rest of the house and after a while they were able to get it put out. There was extensive damage upstairs but the house wasn't totaled, sometime after everything stopped smoldering, the arson squad could be brought in and see if it could be determined what started the fire, but for now everybody was figuring it was unconnected to the dead woman on the first floor, and a mere coincidence the two events happening at the same time. Police were trying to contact the father and any other immediate family, and uniform officers were heading towards Med to speak with the children when they regained consciousness to see if they knew anything about the fire or about what happened to their mom.

"I hate to admit it, but Otis's hypnotism idea is starting to sound more and more credible," Casey told Severide once they returned to 51.

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, people suffocate themselves with plastic bags all the time, sometimes even deliberately, but why would anybody who's going to do that wash their hair with lighter fluid first? These people must genuinely believe they're doing something normal, the question is why don't they realize right away what they've done? You'd be choking on the fumes, and there's no way you could mistake that for hair dye."

Kelly had to admit the whole thing didn't make any sense, but none of them had any idea what the answer was, or even if there was one.


The sight of Antonio Dawson entering 51 was a welcomed one because everybody hoped it meant they'd find out what was behind everything that had been going on. But the Intelligence detective wasn't so optimistic.

"We don't have any answers yet," was the first thing he told the firefighters, "but we may be getting closer. Of everybody that's been taken to Med the last few days, it's been confirmed none of them have any documented history of depression or mental illness or any previous suicide attempts."

"Well that doesn't help much," Otis said.

Antonio continued, "Lena Bryant, the girl that came here, her tox screen came back positive for trace amounts of heroin and sleeping pills, and by trace I mean if she did have a full dose originally, it's impossible it was on Halloween, so either she took the drugs earlier in the week, or somebody tried to slip her something and she only got a partial dose. Heroin already slows the body's functions after the initial high, mental function is slowed down, drowsiness sets in, they feel like time stands still, they're in a fog, heart rate and breathing slow down making coma or brain damage likely outcomes, couple that with sleeping pills, it sounds like somebody didn't want this kid getting up and walking away."

"And we can all guess what for," Otis said.

"Yeah well, about that other thing, we might be getting closer on that too," Antonio said, "once the crew from the M.E.'s office came out to collect the bodies at the cemetery, they found a homemade Freddy Krueger glove under one of the boys."

"So she was with them," Cruz said.

"At some point during the night, it seems so, how she got away from the others to the first cemetery then, and what happened in between the two points, is still anybody's guess," Antonio said. "The dead kids who weren't completely burnt up by the fire all had tox screens done to see if they all took the same drugs. A few tested positive for heroin but all of them had high levels of sleeping pills in their system."

Kelly shook his head trying to take it all in. "They all OD'd in the cemetery and somebody set them on fire afterwards?"

"No," Antonio said, "none of them overdosed, what killed them was exposure."

"What?" Otis asked.

"Apparently they all had enough sedatives in their system that they just passed out, then being out in the elements all night was enough to finish them off."

"Sounds like some kind of suicide pact," Casey said.

"Or human sacrifice," Herrmann added.

"It's definitely symbolic, the graveyard, laying them all out, the fire, the problem is we don't have any idea what it means," Antonio said, "so right now the families and friends of every kid that could be ID'd is being questioned to figure out if there's a pattern that connects the victims. And now we're on the next piece of the puzzle, the victims at Med. Tox screens were done on them too and all of them came back positive for heroin and anti-depressants, three different kinds of anti-depressants. None of these people have any prescriptions for anti-depressants, none of them have any police record for drugs, so we don't know where they got it, what we do know is anti-depressants already carry a side effect of depression and suicidal thoughts, you put somebody on three different kinds, it becomes a surer bet."

"Wait, wait, wait," Herrmann said, "so, double that with the heroin, these people might actually be trying to kill themselves?"

"It's a working theory anyway," Antonio said, "with the heroin slowing down the thinking process and blocking the pain sensors, that could explain why they are not reacting until most of the damage is already done."

"If even then," Casey replied, remembering the last call they answered.

"So now what?" Kelly asked.

Antonio shook his head, "I wish I knew...the only people we can actively look for anymore occurrences from are the people with drug charges on their sheets, but since none of the victims so far qualified...we're flying blind into this, we have no way of knowing who'll be next, or when."


The next night off shift, Casey tossed and turned in his bed and fluffed the pillow, then punched it down, but he still lay there for over half an hour wide awake and knowing he wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon. The room was dark, the house was quiet, but he couldn't sleep, and finally he gave up trying. He pushed the covers back, got up, and making his way in the dark, padded over to the door, opened it and headed out into the hall, and promptly bumped into someone else. The surprise drew a shocked gasp out of both him and the other person, feeling around in the dark, he found the light switch and flipped it.

"Oh it's you," he said as he saw Kelly, who also looked like he'd just stumbled out of bed.

"You can't sleep either?" he asked.

Casey shook his head. "Guess it's gonna be another long night."

Severide nodded and the two of them headed down the stairs and parked themselves on the couch again and passed the next couple hours watching whatever was on TV, not talking about what was going on, trying not to think about what was going on but not able to think of anything else.

When Casey started to wake up the next morning, he could feel somebody's head pressed against his, and instinctively he knew it was Severide, this time he didn't mind it. In truth, he was grateful for the presence of another person, knowing he wasn't alone made everything going on outside his home seem a little less threatening. He opened his eyes and saw Severide had leaned over towards him in his sleep, and he also was just starting to come around.

"You know if this keeps up, I'm going to start taking it personally," Casey said cynically, not wanting to let on to what was really going through his mind.

"Well it wouldn't if you'd learn how to pick up someone at a bar," Severide responded. He looked over and saw Casey looked a little pale and distant, "You okay?"

"Just wondering how many more there were yesterday, last night," Casey told him. "How many of them didn't make it to the hospital in time?"

Kelly looked at him with concern. "If you need to take next shift off, I'm sure Herrmann would be happy to fill in."

Casey shook his head. "That's not it, we have some idea how this is happening but we still don't know why or what the connection is between everyone."

"Or even if it is," Severide said.

"Antonio said none of the victims had any priors for drugs, so where're they all getting this stuff all of a sudden?"

Kelly looked at him, "You going back to talk to that girl again?"

"Think it'd do any good?"

"No, but I know that won't stop you," Severide answered. After a pause, he added, "If you want me to go with you..."

Casey thought about it for a minute and finally nodded, "Who knows? Maybe the sight of you will scare her into cooperating."

Severide reached over and playfully elbowed Casey in the ribs.


"Wow," Kelly said as they left Lena Bryant's hospital room, "Did the mob get to this kid or something?"

"I'm starting to wonder," Casey said. "You'd think we were after military secrets instead of trying to find out what her connection is to the dead kids, and you know that's not just a kid not wanting to get busted for doing drugs."

"Somebody or something definitely got to her. Is Antonio keeping tabs on her?"

"I hope so, she's being discharged later today," Casey said.

"Think anybody else is up for talking?" Kelly asked.

"Like who?" Casey cynically asked, "the woman who burnt up her esophagus drinking bleach or the guy who flayed open his whole face with a knife?"

"Point taken," Severide responded, "still, there's got to be somebody somewhere we can talk to, there has to be someone that knows something."

Casey stopped and Kelly almost walked into him.

"Did Antonio say anything about stomach contents?"

"No, why?"

"You know all those stories about psychos that put drugs in Halloween candy," Casey said, "all this started on Halloween night...maybe there's a connection, it would explain how they got the stuff if they weren't previous users."

Kelly shrugged his shoulders, "I guess it's worth looking into."


"Sorry, Casey," Antonio shook his head, "It's a nice theory but the problem is we already checked on it. Only half of the teenagers had any candy in their system, none of the adults did so we ruled out that possibility."

"So what else could it be?" Kelly asked.

"That's what we're trying to find out," Antonio replied. "Narcotics is looking into each case to see if they can establish a pattern with any other drug-related crimes in the city, so far coming up empty."

"However it's being done, we're in agreement that somebody is deliberately drugging these people, right?" Casey asked.

"If not, this is the weirdest ass coincidence I've ever seen," Antonio said.

"So what kind of person would actually want to do this to another person?" Casey asked.

"Either somebody who actually knows all these people and it's personal," Dawson answered, "Or some nutjob targeting random people, like the Tylenol murders."

"But still the question how are they getting the drugs?" Severide asked.

"And no immediate answer in sight," Antonio remarked.

"So we just wait for more bodies to drop," Casey said.

"Unfortunately we don't have a lot of options, until we can establish a common factor, we can't warn the public what to look out for," Antonio pointed out.

"Antonio, this is ridiculous."

"Tell me something I don't know, I'm sorry, Casey, right now I don't know much more than you, and short of a heavy miracle I don't see us getting much further anytime soon."


Casey heard the faint beeping of a pass alarm, it sounded like it was a million miles away. Everything was dark, he didn't know where he was, he almost felt like he was in a dream. After a while the alarm stopped, and everything was quiet. He breathed, the air felt heavy, and he felt himself drifting away.

"Casey, can you hear me?"

He knew that voice. It took a while to place it, it was Severide, he sounded strange. Somewhere in the back of Casey's mind he realized it was because he had his mask on. But where was Severide? He felt something shaking him, and his eyes opened. He realized he was on the floor of a burning house, and Kelly was standing over him trying to pull him out of the room.

"Severide?" he weakly asked.

"You okay, buddy?" Severide looked both relieved and worried to see him.

Casey raised a hand to touch his head, then realized he also still had his mask on. He looked around and tried to remember what he'd been doing, but it wasn't coming to him.

"Severide?" he asked, hoping that something would jog his memory.

Severide reached for his radio, and told somebody, "I got him! We're coming out!"

"What happened?" Casey asked as Kelly pulled him to his feet.

"Just follow me, don't look back!" Severide told him.

That was the first time he'd ever heard that one, and it didn't help him remember anything whatsoever. But he nodded and followed Severide out of the room that was filling with black smoke. If they were coming out, then whatever had to be done must've been done...but if Severide was here, where were the people Rescue Squad had pulled out?

As they reached the door, Casey turned back for a look, and now he knew why Severide had said not to. He couldn't make out how many charred bodies were in the middle of the room, at least five, possibly more, all of them beyond any identification.

"Casey!" Severide grabbed him and pushed him out the door.

Above they heard the rafters groaning and they knew they didn't have much time, they ran across the hall and one by one jumped out of the window and onto the aerial. Once they got on the ground, and got their masks off, Severide was hollering over to the paramedics, "He lost consciousness! Check him out!"

Casey turned to him and sniped, "I'm fine, Kelly." Even though he really didn't have any memory of passing out, but he knew Severide wouldn't lie about it.

Kelly shook his head, "Not taking any chances, come on, they'll get you looked at."

Casey argued with him all the way to the ambulance, but he finally agreed to let the paramedics check him over, truth be told he was feeling a little lightheaded. He tried to focus on what the paramedics were asking him to do, but he saw Kelly go over to Boden and the two of them were talking, he couldn't hear what they were saying, but every so often one of them would look over in his direction, and he knew they were talking about him.

Severide's comment from the other day came back to him.

"If you need to take next shift off, I'm sure Herrmann would be happy to fill in."

Then in the house.

"Just follow me, don't look back!"

So that's what it was, they didn't think he could do his job, they thought he was letting the most recent cases get to him and interfere with his ability to do his work.

He hopped off the back of the ambulance and told the EMTs, "Thanks but I'm fine," and went over to the others.

"How're you feeling, Casey?" Boden asked.

"Fine, Chief," he said, trying his damnedest to actually sound nonchalant about it.

Boden turned back towards the burning house and said, "Medical examiner won't be able to collect the bodies until the secondary search, nobody's going back in there."

Casey looked at the house that was slowly falling to pieces as it continued to burn. He thought about the family lying dead in there, and his first reaction was to kick himself for not being able to get to them faster. But in reality, he knew it wouldn't have made any difference. Their bodies had already been charred by the time he reached the bedroom, that had been when he passed out. It just now dawned on him that that's what happened, that's why he'd been on the floor when Severide came in. The alarm that had been screaming...it'd been his alarm. Once again everybody had been laid out in a circle like somebody had positioned them, there was no way to tell how the fire started, and probably even the arson squad wouldn't be able to figure it out. He didn't remember anything past finding the bodies...the last thing he was ever going to do was admit Severide was right...but if this was suddenly going to be the new norm of the calls they answered, he honestly didn't know if he could deal with it.


The next night off shift, Severide lay in his bed in the guest room at Casey's, trying to sleep but not getting anywhere with it. He alternated between looking at the red glowing digits on the clock, and staring up at the ceiling. Sure, he could go see if Casey was up, and if he was then the two of them could go downstairs and watch TV until they fell asleep again, but he was hoping he could just fall asleep tonight. He'd already been trying for over half an hour, but he figured sooner or later something had to give. Besides, Casey had been distant since the house fire they'd responded to yesterday, Severide wasn't sure he'd enjoy the company.

They'd had Casey's equipment checked out, nothing wrong with his mask, nothing wrong with the air cylinder, nobody could figure out then what had caused him to pass out during the fire. Kelly had his own suspicions but he wasn't too keen on telling the others. The calls they'd been responding to lately had everybody on edge, but nobody it seemed, more than Casey. Stumbling upon yet another family carnage, it had simply been too much for him, and his brain had responded to the horror of it all by shutting down and causing him to faint. If only Casey wouldn't have turned around at the last minute, maybe he wouldn't have to remember what he saw. But Severide suspected that was too much to hope for, sooner or later the memory of it would've come flooding back and hit Casey like a train.

They'd all talked to Chaplain Orlovsky, and they'd all talked to Dr. Charles, none of which seemed to actually do much good, and as long as similar calls kept coming in, Severide figured it wouldn't be too long before the department ran out of people for them to talk to.

Kelly had just closed his eyes and started to feel himself falling asleep when he heard somebody screaming. He felt his blood run cold and he shot up in bed as he listened, and realized that it was Casey screaming. Kelly threw back the covers, ran out of his room, and started running down the hall to Casey's room when he realized the screams were coming from the other end of the hall. He turned and saw the bathroom light shining through the crack under the door. He ran back the way he came and flung the door open and was met by a thick curtain of steam. He choked as he made his way over to the shower where it was all emanating from, and grabbed the shower curtain and threw it back, then the only sound Severide was aware of was his own screaming.


Present-

Severide felt like he had to keep moving or he'd lose his mind. He paced around the waiting room while Otis and Cruz sat in a couple of chairs, trying to make some sense of what had happened that night. Kelly had called the others as soon as the doctors took Matt away, but so far nobody else had shown up. He paced around a couple more times, and saw Antonio heading their way.

"I came as soon as I heard, man, how is he?"

Severide just shook his head. Right now words were beyond his capability.

"What happened?" Antonio asked.

He shook his head again, and this time tried to talk, he was surprised at himself to hear the words actually come out.

"I don't know...he...scalded himself, in the shower."

"Did he say anything earlier tonight?" Antonio asked, "Anything that might've tipped you off something wasn't right?"

Kelly started to shake his head, then stopped and looked at Antonio with an almost blank look in his eyes. Then he asked, "Are you saying he did this on purpose?"

"No, I'm not saying that, but we both know how upset he was over what was happening," Antonio said.

That felt even more like a slap in the face, "You're saying Casey lost his mind and went insane?"

"I'm just asking if..."

Severide got in the cop's face and started screaming at him, "Are you saying Casey was trying to kill himself?"

Hank Voight came up to them, his hands in his pockets, his usual unreadable expression on his face, and told Severide, "Nobody's accusing anyone of anything, but if we're going to get to the bottom of what happened, we have to ask these questions. Now first thing's first, how is Matt?"

Kelly looked at the Intelligence sergeant with a completely lost look on his face, he shook his head cluelessly as he explained as best he could, "He scalded half of his body...his skin fell off!"

Voight tried to remain his typical stone faced self, but for a split second Severide could see the older cop squeeze his eyes shut, as if he was trying to push that mental image away from him.

"Kelly, did you ever see Casey work on the water heater at his house?" Antonio asked.

Severide looked at him strangely, "No, what's that got to do with anything?"

"It's just that the law mandates water heaters only go to 120 degrees so people can't get scalded, now it's not foolproof, but have you ever seen the water heater?"

Kelly shook his head, "No, there was never any reason to."

"And you didn't hear anything?" Voight asked.

"No, I was still awake, I didn't hear anything until he started screaming," Severide answered.

"Somebody's gonna go to the house and check it out, just make sure nobody tampered with it," Voight said, "how long do you figure he had to be in the shower?"

"Uh..." Severide tried to push back the memory of finding Casey in the shower, his deafening screams, that horrible sight of his flesh blistered beyond recognition. "The doctors figured he had to be standing there at least a minute...now come on, you know as soon as you burn yourself you either turn the water down or get the hell out of the way, wa-wh-why would he just stand there and let his skin burn off?"

"That's what we're going to try and find out," Antonio responded.

Kelly felt like reality was slipping away from him. "He didn't do this to himself, he wasn't crazy and he wasn't suicidal."

"Right, but you were worried about his state of mind with all the calls you'd been responding to, right?" Voight asked.

"How'd you know about that?"

"The walls have ears," Voight answered nonchalantly.

He didn't even know what that was supposed to mean, and he didn't really care.

"I told him if he needed to, to sit out the next shift...then we responded to a house fire, a family of 5 all burnt beyond recognition...we lost him on the radio, so I went in to find him...his alarm was ringing...he was on the floor, he'd passed out."

"Guessing that doesn't usually happen," Voight said.

"Not if you still have air, which he did," Kelly answered.

"Paramedics checked him out?"

"Yeah, he was fine."

"Then what happened?" Antonio asked.

"I...don't know," Kelly admitted.

"Do you know if the doctors were able to take blood?" Voight asked.

"Uh...yeah, I think so...I think..."

"Then we should be able to find out if he had the same drugs in his system the others did," Antonio said.

Even though that was the only logical conclusion, it didn't set well with Kelly. "He doesn't take drugs."

"I know," Voight responded, "it'd be a bit different if we were talking about you. Least of all of the prescription variety."

Kelly shot him a death glare, but let it pass and told them, "He hasn't been around any, it wouldn't have been possible for him to get any in his system."

"I know you want to believe that, Kelly..."

"I know it, we got off shift, we went home, he never left, that's all," Kelly insisted.

"Did you hear him leave his room and go into the bathroom?" Voight asked.

Severide stopped. "No."

"Did you hear the water start?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Then it's possible he was exposed and you didn't know it either," Voight pointed out.

Kelly looked at the two cops and felt like the whole world just quit making sense.