Captain: Alright, last revised chap for the time being. I apologize for spamming your inboxes for those of you with this story on alert. :) For any new readers, well, this is where the true nature of the Decepticons gets revealed so...it's gonna be juicy...literally.

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim, and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness. ~W.H. Auden

The cold evaporated Darcy's anger the moment she stepped out of the station. Guilt gnawed at her; she knew how much John hated lapdogs who blindly obeyed orders, how one had almost gotten him killed when he worked homicide in Chicago before coming out here. But her pride refused to let her go back in and apologize, not yet anyway. There was always tomorrow.

What there wasn't time for was to further allow the guilt to eat at her, as a black and white Dodge Charger pulling into the parking lot caught her attention. Leaning against the grill of her SUV, she watched the muscle car swung into the spot next to her and wondered what department it was from. POLICE was scrawled along the doors, but there was no town name under it and she didn't recognize the sigil on the side panel. Red and blocky, it somewhat resembled the face of a robot, or a cat. Whatever the logo was supposed to be of, she'd never seen it before and hadn't a clue who was driving until he stepped out. The man was undeniably bureau; crisp suit, clean shaven, serious expression, and a walk that was all business.

Despite the severity of his look, he was probably one of the most handsome men she'd ever seen in person; at least six foot and some change, short cropped brunette hair, chiseled jaw, very Karl Urban-esque, except for the piercing blue eyes that probably shouldn't even be possible.

"Detective Darcy Blake, I am Agent Peter Row, FBI," he offered no handshake, instead flashing his badge for just long enough for her to see the bureau stamp. "Shall we get started?"

"Actually, it's pretty crowded in there. If it's alright with you, we could work at my other office, I've got everything we could need and decent coffee." Home, other office, there really wasn't much of a difference these days and she couldn't find it within herself to care that she was being a coward and avoiding her old mentor this way.

"Lead the way," his tone was flat and he turned sharply on his heel to return to his car. Given the monotonous nature of his voice, she wondered if he perhaps missed the day regular emotions were handed out. Lightly shaking her head at herself, she decided she was not about to complain about getting an emotionless agent; she was already attached to these cases, perhaps less feeling was exactly what she needed.

The fact that the federal agent was driving a patrol car was odd, but that was a question for another time. Instead Darcy wondered if perhaps she should have offered him a ride. The muscle car would be great for speed no doubt, but there was no telling just how well it would handle on the icy roads to her house. It was too late now, though, he had already pulled out of the spot and sat waiting for her. Shrugging to herself, she fired up the SUV and led the way out, the Charger right behind.

Her worry was for naught, as the high-powered vehicle stayed right behind her, never lagging behind or skidding off track the whole way to her driveway. Throwing the SUV in park, she delayed getting out to listen to the weather forecast. Thick fog was inbound and supposed to stick around for the next several days, which was going to reduce visibility to almost zero; snow would be following it.

Silver lining, she mused, no hikers would dare tempt the mountains in fog.

Already she could see it blanketing the horizon, bringing with it freezing, stagnant air. It wouldn't be long before it was thick enough to cause another slew of accidents on the highways and backroads.

Darcy really didn't know what to say to the agent as they both climbed out of their vehicles and headed for the front door, so she settled with silence. It was almost awkward, especially when her old lock was frozen and she had to jimmy and shove to get it open; but Agent Row offered no conversation so the silence stayed until Darcy flipped on the lights and grabbed the box of files.

"This is everything I've got on all the connected cases, thirty-three people spanning nine months; same M.O.," she started as she dropped the box on the dining table that had never once operated for its intended purpose.

Agent Row nodded, still saying nothing as he took a seat and started pulling out files. A man of few words, alright, she could handle that.

"I'll get some coffee going." It was like talking to herself, all he granted her with was another acknowledging nod.

Moving towards the kitchen, she paused, distracted by the wall covered in a large map of the area, littered with colored pins that marked each of her missing victims. Sighing, she pulled open the drawer and grabbed another little red pin, adding it to the map and hoping it would be the last.

Glancing back towards the agent, she was surprised to see he was already separating the files into piles. Had he possibly discovered something already?

A cold draft made her shiver and brought her back to the task at hand. Coffee, the lifeblood of law enforcement. Getting the pot started, she started digging through her nearly bare cupboards,hoping the agent liked his caffeine black. There was no creamer, no sugar, and no milk apparently. When was the last time she'd gone grocery shopping anyway? She couldn't remember exactly.

"Impressive," Agent Row's voice came quite suddenly from behind her, making her jump and nearly drop the cups she was pulling down from the shelf. How had he gotten there so silently? No one had been able to sneak up on her like that in years!

He wasn't looking at her, he was focused on the decorated wall, taking in every pin and hand-scrawled details next to each.

"Um, thanks, that's the nice way of putting it." John had had no qualms about telling her the opposite, that she really needed to separate work and her personal life. There wasn't much of a personal life to separate from work anyway, so she had left it up.

"You have nothing on this pin," he stated, finger on the red dot she'd just added moments ago.

"That's Tom Felton's last known location. He's a ranger that's been missing at least a week, but I just got the case today. I haven't had the chance to go through all of his details yet." She still had to find his vehicle too, but that would have to wait until tomorrow, the sun was going down and the dark mixed with the incoming fog would make finding the right logging roads nearly impossible. If it had been sitting for a week, one more night wouldn't hurt whatever evidence might be there.

"Hmm." He continued to stare at the map, analyzing it as if he could scan every detail into his memory. Who knows, maybe he had that eidetic or photographic thing and could.

"Coffee?" Darcy offered after a long moment of silence, motioning to the pot that had sputtered out enough for a cup.

"No." Row turned and walked back to the dining table, diving back into the files he had yet to sort. Darcy blinked, unsure if she had actually heard him right. Did he really just refuse coffee? A law enforcement agent refused the black gold that was their fuel? How did he function without it? If this was a sci-fi movie, Darcy would swear he wasn't human.

But this was reality and as hard as it was to believe, apparently there really was a law enforcer who refused coffee. So Darcy poured the cup for herself and joined Row at the table, grabbing Tom's file. The two sat in silence, ruffling pages bringing about the only sound as the work absorbed them both.

Night rolled in, bringing with it the blinding fog and rapidly dropping temperatures, turning the roads into ice rinks and obscuring the view for any who attempted to see outside. The world outside quieted with every passing minute and one by one the people of the small town shut off their lights and went to bed. But like most nights, the lights in the house of Detective Blake stayed shining.

By the time the first jaw-cracking yawn hit Darcy, she had condensed the information in Tom's file to a single sticky-note of important cliff notes that she stuck up on the wall. A little white string tied to Tom's pin ran to the note on the side of the map to connect his information to the location. Row hadn't said a word the entire time except to decline coffee again when Darcy went for her second cup. Instead he sorted, stacked, and resorted the files again as he worked through whatever theories he could come up with.

When two yawns cracked her jaw within five minutes of each other and she moved for her third cup of fuel, Darcy was shocked to see the little clock on the microwave reading three a.m.. Had time really passed that quickly? She glanced back to Row to see if the exhaustion had hit him yet, but the agent appeared just as awake as when they had started; it was incredibly unfair.

As much as she appreciated the diligence, Darcy knew she would be good to no one if she didn't get some sleep soon. Thankfully, Agent Row seemed to have either read her mind or was finally feeling the effects of the hour as he set the files aside and stood. "You need rest and there is little else we can accomplish before light. I will be back at dawn."

It was so matter of fact and sudden that Darcy was left blinking at the empty chair as the agent's muscle car fired up and pulled out of the driveway. The hell just happened? Whatever it was, Darcy's muddled mind was too tired to figure it out, so she flipped off the lights and collapsed into bed fully clothed, hoping the morning would bring some results.

Dawn came entirely too quickly, as did the sharp knock on the front door. Grumbling to herself, Darcy quickly threw on a clean change of clothes and made her tangled dark hair at least somewhat presentable before pulling open the door for the agent.

"You weren't kidding when you said you'd be here at dawn," she yawned, praying there was still a cup's worth of coffee still in the pot.

"Days are too short to waste any light." Still with the monotone! She had hoped after the first day the agent would be inclined to put some inflection or expression in his voice, but no luck. He really was the perfect stereotype of a federal agent. And entirely too perfectly put together for this hour in the morning after a night with so few hours of sleep.

"Coffee? Muffin?" she offered as she dragged herself to the kitchen, grabbing a breakfast pastry for herself.

"No," again he refused. If he hadn't just picked up one of the files, Darcy would have sworn he wasn't real. But he was real; her imagination would never conjure up someone who refused the very things she lived off of.

Inhaling the food and caffeine, she quickly finished getting ready and returned to the main room where Agent Row was tracing the roads that would lead them to Tom's truck.

"I know how to get up there; Kallen said it was right off Old Junction on the Kentucky Curve," she stated, pulling on her thick coat. They'd be lucky if there wasn't snow up there already.

Row raised an eyebrow, finally a new expression! "None of these roads are labeled."

She nodded, idly wondering what big city he was from. "Old logging roads usually aren't, but they're popular with 4-wheelers and horses so they got local names. Easier to plan meetups with friends out there."

"I will drive," was his only response as he turned away from the map and started for the door. Darcy knew some people, especially really intelligent people, had little to no skills when it came to social interactions but damn. She hadn't known it was possible to be this bad at it.

"Are you sure?" She looked at the thick fog that greeted them as they opened the door, knowing that even being gravel, the old roads could be slick. She'd be more comfortable taking the SUV up the mountain than the car.

"Yes, I will get better traction than your vehicle will." It was all he offered as he stepped towards the Charger, leaving Darcy no choice but to follow.

She frowned at the cars. A thin layer of pure ice coated her hood, yet the Charger was completely dry and ice-free. Well, it was a souped-up muscle car, it was bound to run a little hot.

Unsurprisingly, it was a silent drive up the mountain, broken only by Darcy's occasional directions. The Charger didn't slip once, even over the wooden bridge where the SUV always did. This car had to have more power and weight to it than it appeared.

"So what's an FBI agent doing with a patrol car?" she finally asked, her curiosity getting the best of her. She could only enjoy the soft leather of the seat for so long.

"I am from a special undercover unit." He didn't shrug, look away from the road, or even blink. The man was the epitome of stoic.

She doubted he would be willing to elaborate, so she let it be for now.

The potholes jostled the Charger little as Row maneuvered it up the twisted, winding road with almost too much ease for someone who'd never been on it before. Old Junction was used often enough to be clear on both sides, but Kentucky Curve was long abandoned by all but horses and so brush encroached on both sides. Cars hadn't been on this particular path in over a decade, so why had Tom driven out here?

Through the thick fog, the green Ranger slowly came into view, barely visible even as the distance closed to twenty feet. Row pulled in behind the truck, what used to be a parking lot now barely large enough to turn around. The engine stayed running as Darcy climbed out. She was surprised he elected to stay in his seat, fiddling with the controls on his dash instead.

Leaving the agent to his own business, the detective approached the truck, placing the back of her hand lightly on the hood. Cold and icy, as expected. Judging by the thickness of the ice over the windshield, it had been many days since it had run. Snapping gloves on, she tried the door, satisfied that it was unlocked and that a few sharp tugs broke the icy resistance and swung it open. Inside, the truck was covered in a thin layer of dirt and dust that was common in ranger rigs. A duffel sat on the passenger seat and as Darcy reached across the cab to grab it, leaning across the driver's seat, she noticed the keys still dangling from the ignition. Well, that was different.

Unzipping the duffel, she found Tom's overnight bag, filled with changes of clothes and freeze-dried meals. A gallon of water sat on the floor, full and untouched. Besides a beat up baseball cap on the dash and a rolled sleeping bag, there wasn't much else in the truck. But it all pointed to one undeniable fact; Tom had been missing for longer than just seven days.

Sliding out of the truck, her pant leg caught on the side of the body, tearing a small hole in her jeans and scratching her leg. Wobbling on one foot, Darcy unhooked the material from the jagged edge and leaned closer to see just what she had scraped against. There, along at least two feet of the bottom edge of the truck, the metal was crunched, bunched, and broken, though in such a minor fashion that she would have missed it otherwise. The damage looked relatively new too. For once, the vehicle was fully worth the pains of processing further. She could have struck evidential gold, and Row, for all his oddities and who still sat in his Charger, just may be her new good luck charm.

Oh yes, he was definitely good luck, she mused as she pulled out her cell, surprised to find a full bar of service out this far and wasting no time to call the station to have the truck towed in.

Row still hadn't moved when she climbed back into his car. "How long?"

Darcy snapped the gloves off and shoved them in her pocket. "Sleeping bag rolled up, food and water untouched, key in the ignition, whatever happened to him happened as soon as he got out here."

It also meant Tom had been missing for a full two weeks and the chances of finding him alive were about as high as meeting an alien that spoke fluent English.

"The CSI's are on their way with the tow truck, I'm going to look around off the road. Whatever caught his attention might still be there." She moved to push the door back open, pausing as the handle gave locked resistance and Row spoke up.

"Don't bother, there is nothing to find. Felton did not leave from this point."

"How do you know that?" she raised a brow, trying the door again even as the agent threw the car into gear. What the hell? What kind of investigator was he?

"You left footprints, there are none leaving the vehicle."

"It's been two weeks…" Really now, the only reason the truck's tracks were still visible was because it was the only traffic coming in here. Footprints didn't last long out here.

"Has it rained?" he asked, his tone indicating he already knew the answer.

"No…"

"There you go," he cut off her protest, backing the Charger to turn around. It was only then that Darcy noticed the faintest impressions from her steps. How had Row even seen those?

Back on Old Junction, Row continued on for another eight miles to where Tom was supposed to start out from. He slowed but did not halt, turning instead onto the split off to Sawhorse Creek. Only Sawhorse Creek was a bike trail. It had never been wide enough for cars! But now it was, now the brush was beaten back and smashed enough that the Charger rolled through without issue. Tracks indicated they were far from the first car to come through this way.

The makeshift road did not go very far and it was here that Row finally stopped and stepped out.

"Hope your boots are made for hiking, Agent, this could be a long day," Darcy mused, zipping up her coat against the cold. The fog was impossibly thick, which meant a lot of trekking back and forth to cover everything. Row furrowed his brows at the fog as if he could peer hard enough to see through it. His pressed suit and shiny shoes wouldn't last for long even if the ground was frozen.

The ghost of a foul smell was in the air, reeking like a dead skunk but faint enough to leave only a sickly feel to every breath.

"This is where he disembarked from his vehicle," Row stated, pointing towards the ground in front of the Charger where tire impressions were still frozen into the dirt and brush. Squatting next to them, Darcy could make out the faint footprints heading away from tracks and into the brush.

"Looks like he followed a game trail," she stated, stepping onto the thin strip of well-worn dirt. The bike trail itself twisted in the opposite direction, much wider than the path Tom had taken.

Two weeks should have destroyed all traces of his prints with animal traffic, but there was only one set of prints that crossed over Tom's, a large buck going the opposite way, back towards the road at full speed.

The trees were tall, thin, and sparse, the undergrowth dominated by tall grass and brush. Combined with the fog, it made the possibility of spotting anything off trail nearly impossible. But for now Tom's tracks stayed on the game trail, so Darcy and Row did the same.

It took a hundred yards to really notice, but the smell was getting stronger. Step after step, the severity grew until it was threatening to activate Darcy's gag reflex. For his part, Agent Row seemed unfazed by the smell and equally unruffled by the increasing ground they covered. She was beginning to wonder if anything would affect the man.

Deeper into the valley the trail went, Tom's tracks sticking faithfully to it before finally veering off into what should be an open meadow. It was all obscured by the fog, but the compressed brush from his passing made following his path even easier, though the smell was quickly making up for it. The detective had smelled rank things before, had been down in the sewers in summer, digging through dumpsters and musty basements, but even with the cold dampening much of the stench's strength, she doubted she had ever smelled anything worse.

Traipsing through the grass was quickly wearing on the sleep-deprived brunette, and the cold creeping up from the tear in her pants sunk deep into the bone, almost numbing her leg. The result was a less than graceful walk and combined with the uneven terrain, well, little wonder Darcy didn't see the large dip in the path and tripped right into it.

It was only Agent Row's lightning reflexes that saved her from an unpleasant tête-à-tête with the ground, his hand wrapping around her arm, reeling her back upright, and releasing his hold the second she was stable. Darcy could feel the embarrassment tingeing her cheeks and sorely wished the earth wouldn't try to swallow her.

She glanced down to see what it was she had tripped over and immediately forgot about the embarrassment. The ground dipped down and was flattened at least two feet across and mashed into the frozen mud in the middle of it was a green jacket sleeve. Pulling the gloves back from her pocket, she used them to tug the fabric out of the ground. It crackled as she picked it up to look at the shredded seams at the shoulder. Glancing below the seam, she felt her hope crash and burn.

"This was Tom's," she sighed, holding up the sleeve so the agent could see the Ranger patch stitched into it. Frozen blood coated the inside and around the torn seam; too much blood for there to be any real chance of finding the man alive.

A southern wind wound down the valley, channeled by mountain tops on either side. It temporarily relieved the officers of the worst of the smell and stirred the fog, breaking up its stranglehold on the view.

"What the hell?" Darcy muttered, squinting into the fog as an odd shape became visible in the grass. The more she looked, the more it appeared to be a large area of completely flattened grass and brush.

Row was occupied analyzing the impression in the ground, so Darcy trekked forward on her own, mentally cursing as the gust died and the stench hit her full force again. She was thankful the only food in her belly was the muffin.

Every step was taken slowly and cautiously, lest she trample potential evidence. The flattened area came closer and closer, but still the fog was too thick to see anything of worth. So she kept going, keeping hyper aware of where she placed her foot. She could feel it in her gut, feel it slithering down her spine and raising the hairs on the back of her neck; there was something up ahead that was about to change this case. The smell gave her a sickening idea of what it could be, but she dared not dwell on that until the proof lay right before her eyes. She paused some fifteen feet from where the grass was flattened, the standing stalks still blocking her view of whatever may be on the ground. Looking back, she tried to spot Agent Row, but the fog and grass had swallowed him up. She could see or hear nothing of him. The detective was already out this far though, she wasn't about to turn around just because she could no longer pinpoint her partner. Taking a deep breath, Darcy tried to ignore the goosebumps prickling her arms and continued on.

Less than a pace away from the standing grass line, something stark white on the ground caught her attention. Too white to be anything but the one thing she didn't want to confirm it as. But as she breached the grassline and stepped into the unnatural clearing, she couldn't deny it, nor could she deny that this just changed her case entirely. Strewn about, the bones were a chilling contract to the trampled grass and frozen mud they lay on, or in some cases, were partially buried in. She couldn't even tell herself the remains were animal, the skull was unmistakably human. One of her missing had just turned into a homicide.

No. There were too many bones. This wasn't just one person.

The wind whistled through the valley again, shifting the fog and temporarily clearing Darcy's line of sight further into the clearing.

"Oh my god," she breathed, barely able to believe her own eyes. She had known whatever was going on was bigger than anything she'd dealt with before, but she had never guessed it was on a scale like this. Never had she imagined a scene like this and it would be a long time before she would be able to close her eyes and not see what lay before her.

As far as the tempered fog allowed her to see, at least a full acre of the valley floor had been turned into a pit of decaying gore. Hunks of flesh, bone, and muscle were strewn about, bits of shredded clothing still covered some while others had been reduced to nothing but chipped and broken bone. There was no order, no positioning of the bodies or attempts to cover or hide them. They were everywhere, tossed aside in pieces, new bodies dumped on old. Bone poked out from under and through rotted muscle, skin sloughing off and pooling around newer bodies. There were so many. So many that Darcy's knees shook and her breath was sucked out of her lungs. It was impossible to see just how far this pit went and equally impossible to even begin counting the number of victims out there.

Darcy squatted down as her legs threatened to give out on her, her eyes burning with the pure horror laid out before her. Her attention was caught by two bodies some feet away, slowly succumbing to the process, but appearing to be the most recent of those in her view. The backpacks still on their backs, dark hair, and familiar faces told them exactly who they were.

She had found Andrew's friends.