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Spencer’s screams echoed through the tinny speakers as Hankel beat him again and again. His deep voice demanding Spencer choose someone to die.
Garcia can feel the tears dripping down her face, even as her fingers fly across her laptop in a desperate and futile effort to track where Hankel is streaming from.
Hankel’s home computer system is rigged from numerous other cannibalised machines and yet, even with the most overclocked laptop, government issued, and customised software for backtracking signals, Garcia can’t find him. She can’t find Reid.
JJ’s soft whispering of prayers hiss through her teeth as she stares blankly at the floor. She grasps the medal around her neck and clenches it desperately in her numb hand. The only hitch in the rhythm of her prayers comes when Spencer lets out a particularly pained cry.
Emily is staring at the live stream, her eyes raking over the scene in a futile attempt to find any clue that can help them find Spencer’s location. Emily’s face is impassive, her compartmentalisation working at full tilt in the face of the horrors before her.
Hotch is on his phone calling in every federal, state and local police officer he can find in order to search for Reid.
Gideon’s soothing voice murmurs to an angry Morgan who has been spitting vitriol and threats of murder for the last hour. Garcia’s chocolate thunder hates feeling powerless and he can’t cope with hearing the pretty boy’s cries of pain.
*THUD*
Garcia flinches at the noise and swivels to see Gideon hovering over Morgan as he drops bonelessly to his knees. Morgan’s shoulders curl inwards and he cups his bleeding knuckles from where he has struck the wall.
His dark eyes are filled with pain and unshed tears.
Garcia feels her breath catch. She has never seen Morgan cry.
“Please baby-girl, please, you have to find him, please!” Morgan whispers desperately as though he is praying to Garcia, his goddess of knowledge. Garcia feels her heart stutter in pain, she is failing Morgan, she is failing Spencer.
Garcia spins back to her computer and stares blankly at it for a moment. She glances down at her oversized handbag.
With a hesitant nod she grabs her bag and pulls it to herself.
Emily’s head snaps to her, sensing a change in Garcia, “What are you doing? Why have you stopped doing the tappity-tap thing? You can’t stop trying to track the signal!”
Garcia swallows around a dry throat, “The signal reroutes too quickly. I can’t find him, but I might know someone who can.”
JJ’s prayers cut off as she watches Emily and Garcia.
Admitting she can’t find Reid makes acid burn in the back of Garcia’s throat. She can’t do it, but maybe, just maybe there is someone who can.
Garcia wrenches the lining of her handbag. The tearing material draws everyone’s attention.
Garcia reaches into the torn lining and withdraws a tiny black USB stick labelled with a skull and crossbones.
“Anyone who want’s plausible deniability for the dozen Federal Laws I am about to break needs to leave the room now,” Garcia croaks in a shaky voice.
Garcia brandishes the USB like a sword. It is her salvation but also, most likely, the end of her career with the FBI. Plugging it into an FBI system guarantees that some evidence will be left behind and she has used up all the Federal government’s good will with the Colby incident.
Nodding resolutely Garcia plugs in the USB and the Dark Web browser and underground chat software automatically opens. Just having this software is a Federal offence.
The chat box opens and Garcia sends an alert to the contact she needs, the only one who can possibly help.
@TheBlackQueen: @Skynet 911!
Garcia waits with bated breath. Skynet has been off the grid for almost two years. There were whispers they had been pinched by one of the governments they had crossed or had maybe moved to the private sector and gone whitehat. Garcia just hopes that Skynet still has alerts set up on her handle and the chatroom.
The minutes tick by.
Maybe Skynet is AFK or maybe they are in jail.
“What are you doing Garcia?” Emily asks.
Garcia refuses to answer, she stares at her computer screen, willing it to answer her cry for help.
“Babygirl…” Morgan begins but is cut off when a chime sounds from Garcia’s computer.
“Shh!” Garcia snaps as she jumps forward to read the message and type back at speed.
@Skynet: What’s the sitch @BlackQueen I thought you had gone whitehat?
@TheBlackQueen: I am whitehat. Working 4 Feds. BAU. One of my team has been kidnapped. Blackhat loon going by handle Hankel is streaming his torture direct to his personal rig. I can’t track it. ISPN reroutes every 30s. Name your price, anything! Just help me find Spencer.
@Skynet: R you wired into his system?
@BlackQueen: Yes.
@Skynet: Give me remote access. I’ll see what I can do
Garcia opens the remote access software, pastes the links into the chat and then sits back with a gust of breath as her computer begins to race into motion under the control of distant, ghostly hands.
Code flies across the screen, new software downloads and begins running new programs which are doing something to the ISPN signal and its rerouting path.
Garcia is flabbergasted. She always knew Skynet was good, scary good, but this is inhuman.
Garcia is easily one of the top twenty-five hackers in the United States of America, and she only understands about half of the code that she sees flying across the screen.
Minutes tick by and just as everyone begins to shuffle anxiously the chat box pops back the fore of the screen,
@Skynet: Got it. Co-ordinates 32.3182° N, 86.9023° W
Garcia screeches in joy, “We have him! We have his co-ordinates!”
The team crowds the laptop and Hotch is already barking orders down his phone, relaying the co-ordinates to teams of cops.
@TheBlackQueen: I don’t know what to say. Thank you. I am in your debt.
In the confusion of the team co-ordinating a rescue plan and trying to rein Morgan in from jumping into the SUV to race off blindly they have stopped paying attention to the live feed where Hankel is talking quietly to a whimpering Reid.
@Skynet: Is that a gun?
Garcia looks at the new message in confusion before her eyes dart back to the live feed and she sucks in a breath as she sees Hankel pointing a gun at Reid.
“Oh god,” Garcia whispers brokenly. The team spins back to the feed and freeze in horror.
Another ping of a message draws the horrified teams gazes back to the chat screen.
@Skynet: No time for your peeps to get there. I have some unique assets on hand. Hold tight.
@BlackQueen: What?!
No reply comes.
Hotch spins Garcia to face him, “Who is Skynet Garcia? What ‘assets’ could they have in the area? If they spook Hankel he may panic and kill Spencer. Spencer seems to be keeping him talking but an unknown element could make this situation go from bad to worse. Call them off.”
Garcia nods desperately and spins back to start typing to Skynet, to tell them to back off. Her fingers don’t even make it to the keys when the impossible happens.
On the live stream a soft pop echoes as a man and a woman in black appear in the dirty room behind Spencer’s bound form.
The man wears a black mask with no features or eyeholes, while the woman wears a black scarf pulled across her face. She is slight and almost a foot shorter than the man. Her hair is dark and pulled into a messy ponytail like she had been in a rush.
Hankel freezes and blinks in shock at the new arrivals. Spencer struggles to twist in his seat to see behind himself at what has drawn his torturers attention.
“Is this a private party or can anyone join?” The bouncy voice of the woman asks as though she has walked into a college party rather than the lair of a psychotic killer.
Hankel jerks as though he was slapped. He jolts to turn his gun from Reid towards the intruders and as soon as the gun rises above Spencer the woman’s hand snaps out and the air shimmers as a wall of force races towards him.
Hankel barely manages a grunt as he is sent flying across the room.
A loud crash sounds as Hankel is tossed backwards into the wall off screen.
The BAU gape.
Spencer blinks as though he is unsure whether he is hallucinating or not.
The woman drops her hand and shrugs like she is trying to shake off some unseen stiffness in her shoulders. She shakes her hands as though trying to dispel pins and needles and then sighs as though deeply bored.
She twists to her companion, “Well that was anti-climactic. Tie up tall dark and psychotic over there.”
The man nods and glides forward off screen.
The woman circles Spencer who blinks and tries to speak around his throbbing jaw, “What? Who? How?...”
The woman’s eyes sparkle. “You have Garcia to thank. She must really care about you to call in a favour like the one she did. My ‘employer’ doesn’t usually get involved in mundane issues IRL.”
Spencer’s face twists in further confusion, “What?!”
Even beneath the mask Spencer can tell the woman smiles, “Don’t worry about it. Here, I trust you can cut yourself free.”
So saying, the woman passes Spencer a small tactical knife that seems to have appeared in her hands as if by magic.
The woman turns her back on Spencer and leaves him sputtering as he tries to make sense of what has just happened.
The woman walks towards Hankel’s camera and hunkers down before it.
“Hey there Penelope Garcia. Yes, Skynet knows your muggle name. They send their regards and say that you should count this as a freebie, its nice to get to play the white knight IRL sometimes.”
The BAU team blinks in shock and Garcia makes a choking noise.
As though able to see and hear the BAU’s reaction through the camera the woman laughs, loud and freely, “You’re boy will be here for you to pick up. It was fun playing with you all.”
The masked man walks back into frame and at some unseen signal he reaches forward to hug his companion before disappearing in the blink of an eye.
“What the fuck just happened?” Morgan yells.
Garcia yelps as her computer starts smoking and with the whine of distressed fans it crashes. Garcia blinks mutely at the blank screen, her mind whirling as she tries to comprehend how Skynet managed to send superheroes for Reid and seemingly destroy her laptop (and any possible evidence of their involvement) simultaneously.
Hotch clears his throat, his face impassive and tone bored, as though the impossible hasn’t just happened, “We can investigate everything that happened here once we have Reid. The SUVs are outside, let’s go get Spencer.”
The team snaps into motion to follow Hotch.
Garcia sits dumbly, blinking at her ruined laptop and at the livestream of an equally confused Spencer Reid who is now sitting unbound in his chair, nursing his ribs and looking desperately befuddled.
All Garcia can think is: Who…what the hell are you Skynet?