A/N: A short chapter, but another is coming right up!
"Steve, it was Riley," Charlie said, grabbing Steve's shirt. "Riley shot me."
#*#*#*#*#
Steve stared at Charlie in disbelief.
"Riley?" he asked, shaking his head in confusion. "I don't - Charlie, what the hell are you saying?"
"Steve, listen," Charlie said urgently. "She was fine; working in the cubicle she'd requested. She went over the hospital security cam footage dozens of times; I suggested she go upstairs to rest, but she said she wanted to go over those pet store invoices again. I went back to check on her a while later, and she was backed into the corner of her cubicle, holding her head."
Charlie groaned as the lab techs pressed more firmly on his wound to slow the bleeding.
"Charlie," Steve said helplessly. None of this made sense.
"I asked her what was wrong, and she looked at me . . . Steve, she was . . . in agony. I don't know how else to explain it. She fired a shot into the floor, and then . . . she just - she grabbed her head - it scared me to death, I thought she was going to . . . I thought she was pointing the gun at herself. She looked at me again, and she said, 'Charlie, you have to be dead. No matter what, you need to be dead, and stay dead, until it's safe.' Do you have any idea what she meant?"
"No, but Charlie, where is she? Where is Riley?" Steve asked, desperate.
"She's not - she didn't come upstairs?" Charlie asked.
"No, she didn't," Steve said. He looked to the lab technicians who shook their heads.
"By the time we got out here, the hallway was empty," one of them said.
"Go," Charlie urged. "Find her. Something's wrong, Steve."
Steve ran his hands through his hair, his eyes frantic. Something was nagging at him, something important.
"Charlie, what did she say to you?" Steve asked again.
"She said that I had to be dead and stay dead," Charlie repeated.
Steve and Danny looked at each other.
"Let me look at that wound," Steve said, nodding to the technicians, who moved over to give him room. He bent over Charlie again, gently removing the towel that had been wadded against his shoulder. "Look at this, Danny - that's as clean of a shot as you can ask for. Didn't hit the bone."
"She's a damn good shot, Steve . . ." Danny said, starting to catch up to Steve's thinking.
"Good enough to make a shot with as little damage as possible. She definitely didn't want him dead," Steve said. "But someone else does. Charlie, I think she shot you to try to save your life, and she was trying to say that we need to let someone think you're dead. Would you be willing to let Max treat this? Stay here, until we can figure out what's going on?"
"Yeah, as long as Max has morphine," Charlie said. "Go, go find Riley."
#*#*#*#*#
Steve scanned the parking lot footage. "There -" he said, pointing at the screen. "She hotwired my truck, Danny. North, she's headed north."
"Do we try to pick her up on traffic cams or what?" Danny said, pulling on a Kevlar vest.
"North . . . north . . . Danny, what's north? Nothing is north. Not my house, not the hospital, not Jerry's," Steve said.
"The overlook," Danny said quietly. "Steve, the overlook is north."
They raced to the parking lot and jumped into the Camaro, peeling out onto the street with a squeal of tires.
"Chin, you and Kono cover Malia," Danny said urgently into the phone. "I'll explain later . . . Charlie's been shot. Riley shot Charlie . . . no, it doesn't make sense. We think she was under some sort of duress. We are playing the angle that Charlie is dead; Max is going to take care of him, and we're going to keep him under protection at headquarters. Steve and I are going after Riley."
#*#*#*#*#
Riley tried desperately to focus on the road as her vision blurred and fractured.
The sense that she was being watched had become unbearable. She remembered that much; remembered wanting to go upstairs and ask Steve. Ask him what was going on; he would figure it out. Fix it.
Then the voice had started. Voices? No. Not voices. Ideas . . . impressions.
Charlie. Charlie needed to be dead.
"Oh, God," Riley sobbed, wiping her eyes and trying to focus on the road. Had she shot Charlie? She had. She'd tried shooting the floor instead but the pain had been unbearable. Take the clean shot, the good shot. Make the pain stop.
Charlie. Charlie needs to be alive but dead. Charlie can't die but he had to be dead.
Finally, Riley was at the overlook. She threw the truck into park and stumbled out of it. The itching, crawling sensation in her arm had become unbearable. That had to be the explanation. In the mid afternoon sun, she imagined she could see it, there under the skin.
Fracture. There was a fracture in her mind. Charlie can't die but he had to be dead.
"No," Riley shouted. "No, I won't do it." The pain, again, became unbearable, but she closed her eyes and searched for it. There. From her head . . . down . . . yes. There. Just above her wrist.
She gritted her teeth against the overwhelming sensations and with shaking hands, opened the large utility box on the back of Steve's truck. There. The diving knife. She pulled it out and sat down on the running board. She had to get it out, the watching. The pain. She had to get it out, or Charlie would be really dead, really dead, instead of being dead.
The knife was sharp. Navy SEAL sharp. She didn't even feel it, just pulled it carefully, in a neat line from her wrist toward her elbow, hoping that the tip would catch on the edge of the watching and the pain so that she could get it out. And then, she would give it to Steve. He would know what to do. But first, she was going to have to close her eyes for just a minute. Rest, for just a minute.
#*#*#*#*#
Director Garrison was frantic. He paced in the data lab, the smell of desperation rolling off him in unappealing waves. The impeccable suit and tie were rumpled; his manicured nails chewed and broken.
Agent Fielding watched in resigned amusement. This was going south so quickly he wondered if any of them would be left standing at the end of the day.
"There was supposed to be an endorphin trigger when the control was transmitted," Garrison yelled.
"There was, sir," the hapless technician tried to explain. "The subject somehow overrode it. That, and the cortisol levels were much too high."
"What about the pain feedback," Garrison demanded.
"The subject overrode that, too," the technician said. Fielding was sure there was a thread of admiration in the voice. "But only after the objective was accomplished. HPD report states that Charlie Fong's body is being held in the morgue pending an investigation and autopsy."
"So, ultimately, the control worked," Garrison said, pausing his pacing. "We just need to get a team to the location to pick her up; get her into the lab."
"It's hard to say, sir," the technician said, stammering. "The subject's biologics are erratic and we can't seem to get a fix on the location. The GPS indicates that the subject is in the middle of the northbound highway, but there's no reason for that. We're double checking the coordinates."
Another technician stood, hesitantly, from their workstation. "Sirs? We just lost biologics on the subject."
#*#*#*#*#
"There, there's your truck," Danny yelled, as they skidded around the sharp turn just before the overlook.
"I see it, Danny," Steve said, slamming the brakes as he made the turn, slinging the Camaro into place to the left of his truck. By the time he jumped out of the driver's seat and came around the front of the car, Danny was already on his knees.
"Danny, where's -" Steve broke off, horrified, as he looked down.
His mind refused to process at first: Riley, still and pale and . . . gray. On the ground, next to his knife. He couldn't grab the pieces and make them fit, until he saw the blood, seeping through Danny's hands, wrapped tightly around Riley's arm.
"Shit, Danny," he said. He didn't recognize the broken sound that came out of his mouth, reaching over Danny, grabbing the heavy red bag out of his utility box, lifting it like it was nothing, falling to his knees next to Danny. He willed his hands not to shake as he pulled out packets of QuikClot gauze, wrenching them open and Danny, bless him, Danny could always read his mind, he never had to use words with Danny, Danny grabbed the gauze with one hand and slid it under the other hand and pressed, and pressed.
"More, Steve," Danny said, teeth gritted, and took more gauze from Steve and pressed, hard.
And Steve thought maybe it was his imagination but maybe, when Danny pressed hard that last time, Riley flinched. He raised his hand to her neck, and he couldn't will away the shaking but he was steady enough to feel for a pulse.
"Steve?" Danny said, and his voice was pleading, his eyes were pleading. And Steve didn't know it, but Danny was going through every prayer that he could remember from his Sunday school days and pleading, pleading . . . not this. Not now. Not again.
"I think . . . yeah, she's got a pulse. Barely, Danny," Steve said. He slid two more gauze pads under Danny's hand, Danny lifting his hand minutely, barely, just a millimeter and then pressing down again as he watched Steve pull out a pressure bandage. The writing on the package wasn't even in English and Danny thought, fleetingly, of too many different places and too many different times Steve had done this. It was too much; too much for one person, Danny thought, and he would never again call Steve an emotionless robot.
The pressure bandage was in place and Danny finally moved his hands, wiping them absently on his pants. Steve's eyes followed, just for a moment, the movement of Danny's hands, covered in his sister's blood, and then he was shaking his head to clear it, checking her pulse again, bending his head over her face to make sure she was breathing.
Danny fumbled with his cell phone, his hands still slippery with Riley's blood. "I'm calling a bus," he said.
"No," Steve said quickly. He turned to the open door of the Camaro, reached under the passenger seat, grabbed the lever and the seat rocketed back. "We're taking her to Tripler."
Danny pocketed his phone, caught the keys mid-air that Steve threw at him. He started to move toward the driver seat, then paused, grabbed a plastic bag out of the medic kit, and wrapped it around the knife.
Steve gathered Riley in his arms and collapsed into the passenger seat, holding her against him. Her arm was cold where his hand rested against it; her cheek cold where it rested against his neck.
"Danny," he said, and it came out as a sob. He tried again. "Danny, grab the blanket off the back seat. She's cold."
Danny swallowed hard against a sudden rush of nausea and grabbed the worn blanket off the back seat of the Silverado. He spared a brief few seconds to tuck it around her, brush a shaking hand across her hair and kiss her cheek. Steve didn't chide, didn't tell him to hurry, didn't yell at him to move, dammit, and Danny decided that terrified him more than anything, that Steve was giving him those seconds. Just in case he wouldn't get them later.
And then the passenger door slammed, and then the driver door, and then Danny was driving, flying, lights and sirens, to Tripler. It was closer, yes, and it was military. Malia was at Queens, and they always went to Queens, unless it was bad. Really bad.
"Riley, honey, hold on," Steve whispered. "I've got you, Riley. Just hold on."
#*#*#*#*#
"What do you mean, she wasn't at the scene?" Garrison shrieked into the speaker phone.
Fielding smirked. Desperate was really not a good look on the director.
"They somehow got to her first, sir. The truck is there. Given the volume of blood at the scene . . . it's highly unlikely that the subject survived. Biologics are off-line. Tracking is gone. We've got nothing."