Stay with me

Chapter 4

Upon arriving at the hospital, they were informed that the final two victims from the first attack- which at this point seemed like a lifetime ago, had died and they'd now filled the glass isolation room with the nine newly infected victims, and had the rest of the law firm staff in a separate, temporary testing area- it was manic. They needed to keep everyone who had been exposed separated from the rest of the population, which meant lots of doctors in hazmat suits and lots of crying families in the waiting area.

Meanwhile at the law firm, the rest of the team was finally being cleared to go into the building. Nothing was really out of the ordinary bar a few overturned trashcans, you'd never know that a deadly attack had taken place there only hours ago. 

"Do you know what the source was?" Rossi asked one of the men in hazmat suits.

"We found high levels of the BZ gas that your agent identified in the air vents," he answered, pointing to the taped up vents, "we've sealed them off so you should be safe."

Alex pulled out the photos that the crime scene tech's had taken earlier and held them up infront of her, finding her perspective. "It looks like the people who were infected were seated closest to the air vents, so that theory fits."

"You'd think he'd want the gas to affect everyone in the room, he altered it to be stronger, so why only release it to affect one side?" questioned Emily.

"Convenience?" Derek suggested, "there's no air vents on the other side of the room, so he wouldn't have been able to release it in the same way, so maybe he just didn't bother- he'd be able already infect half of the room anyway."

"But if that's the case, why use air vents at all? There's easier ways to release gas into a building that don't involve you having to crawl through ducts in the floor boards. He could've just planted a canister with the gas in and set a timer for it to go off. It would've been quicker and less risky." Replied Emily.

"You're right- also, we said he wanted to cause more damage this time to attract the attention of the media and the public, so if he wanted to create more chaos, he would've waited until more people had got into the office before releasing the gas." Stated Alex.

They each looked from one another having an unspoken realisation, they were all thinking the same thing- the attack this morning was a diversion.

Their group telepathy was cut short when a faint hissing sound invaded their minds. They all spun round to face the other side of the room. The noise was emanating from one of the upside-down trashcans, Prentiss went over to inspect. "Emily," Rossi warned, she shot him a look as to tell him to shut up and used the toe of her boot to carefully tip it over. They all froze and took in a sharp breath. Emily cautiously stepped back towards the team, "we are far too good at our jobs."

A silver metal canister was sat amongst the rubbish, spraying out the toxic gas they knew to be life threatening, in the exact same manner they had just described.

"We are so fucked."

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The blaring sound of police sirens could be heard getting louder and louder before coming to a halt outside the Alden Law firm. Hotch, Reid and JJ jumped out of their SUV and ran towards the building only to be stopped by a man in a pristine white hazmat suit.

"FBI, my team is inside there I need to get in," Hotch declared, presenting his credentials somewhat aggressively. 

"I'm sorry sir, the building is under quarantine until we have tested the agents inside and have successfully removed the source."

Hotch turned and walked away from the man and pulled out his phone, pressing speed dial 2 and put it on speaker for JJ and Reid to listen in.

"Hey Hotch," answered Derek.

"Morgan, what the hell happened?"

"We think the attack this morning was just a way to get us here,"

"What are you talking about?"

"We realised that the unsub didn't plan out his attack to hurt the most people like we profiled he would, so we were thinking it may have been a diversion for a bigger attack somewhere else. But then a canister started spraying out gas from under a trashcan and that's when we realised we were the real targets," Morgan explained.

"What? Why would he want to target us?" asked JJ.

They could hear some scuffling and swearing in the background, "Emily, stop arguing with the doctors, they're trying to help" they heard Rossi say.

"I don't know JJ, look I've got to go stop Emily from beating up a paramedic, I guess we'll be seeing you at the hospital," Morgan ended with a frustrated sigh.

Reid called Garcia and asked her to start looking at surveillance videos from the few days leading up to the attack, hopefully they'd get lucky and see the unsub planting the canisters.

"If the last canister was under a trashcan like Derek said, that means the unsub must have been in the building while all the commotion was happening to be able to plant it." JJ said.

"We need to start interviewing the employees from today, they might have seen something and not realised," Hotch declared. So they got into their SUV and headed back to the hospital, taking a last look at the building where their friends were, wishing and praying for them to be okay.