Jennifer Jareau, JJ, was sleeping peacefully in her bedroom when she was woken up by a text notification from Penelope Garcia. "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE," the text read. JJ might have laughed if it wasn't 2:31 am and she was exhausted. But the job called. She pushed herself up and off her bed, trudging to her closet and getting dressed. She shuffled down to her kitchen, not bothering to be quiet, as her son was with his father. The divorce hadn't been ugly, just ended calmly from lack of attraction on both sides, but was amicable due to Henry. They remained friends as well as was possible in this situation.
She groaned as she looked in the fridge. All the food was old, as she had just gotten back from a week-long case yesterday and hadn't had time to grocery shop. She decided on getting a granola bar and getting coffee at the office, as she also hadn't made coffee yet.
She got her keys from the front table and got in her car, before driving to the FBI at Quantico. She rode the elevator up to her floor, and took a couple minutes to pour a cup of coffee before making her way to the conference room to hear Garcia present the case. THESE ARE ALL FAKE PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW ANY ACTUAL FOREIGN DIGNITARIES.
"These are Suraj Woodley, 42, Brent Copeland, 53, Hallam North, 38, Kristopher Conley, 36, Katerina Albescu, 30, Tracey Stamp, 50, and Roxanne Gates, 46, all foreign and domestic dignitaries, all poisoned in their homes."
"What was used as the method of poisoning?" JJ asked.
"They used a poison called Botulinum toxin," Garcia answered.
"Botulinum toxin was declared the deadliest toxin on the planet, and agreed consensus between next to all scientists. At most one nanogram an kill a human. Type A is the most potent. These are polypeptides, consisting of over 1,000 amino acid molecules joined together. They cause muscle paralysis by preventing the release of the signalling molecule acetylcholine. It causes the disease botulism, a rare but serious illness that attacks the body's nerves. If they poisoned with Botulinum toxin, they most likely contaminated the food or drink the person was consuming," Reid stated, facts pouring out of his mouth like a waterfall.
"We believe this is not the first of these attacks, nor will they be the last. With an international criminal, they will be that much harder to catch. Wheels up in 30."
* * *
Emily Prentiss was sitting on her window seat overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. She was in one of the townhouses right at the border of the water, and she could see the Sun reflecting off the water for miles. She took a sip of her tea and focused her attention back on her book. She heard a near-silent squeak of a floorboard, and, without turning her gaze from her book, said, "Hello Tsia."
"Hello Emily. Or is it something else?" Emily Prentiss, the ambassador's perfect daughter, or some made-up name, likely stolen from a random person, a cover up for an international criminal.
"I just got here. I'll decide when something interesting happens," she said with a grin. When Tsia was silent for a couple of seconds, Emily turned her head and asked, "Was that all, or was there something else?"
"A team from the BAU has begun to start investigating the deaths of the dignitaries." Emily rolled her eyes. Those annoying pests.
"Which team?"
"Aaron Hotchner's." Aaron Hotchner. The name was familiar.
"Picture?"
Tsia handed her a picture of the team gathered at the round table, and from the pictures on the screen in the background, presenting her case. Emily still couldn't believe they hadn't found the cameras she installed in pretty much every government building in the United States, along with all the other countries she's lived in. "Oh, yes. I recognize them. They're good." She put the picture down on the table, took another sip of tea, and started reading her book again.
Tsia stood there shuffling her feet, and asked, "Should we be worried? Take some precautions?"
Emily sighed and looked up at her friend. "Tsia, I took precautions for all of us years ago, and left as little trace as I would if the FBI had known I was killing them at that moment and right on my tails. They will find nothing. Well, nothing I don't want them to find."
"Who did you frame this time?" Tsia asked, not judgement in her voice. There shouldn't be. She had been in this life with Emily for years.
"Some ambassador from the United States. I left his fingerprints on one of the glasses I tainted with Botulinum."
"How did you get it in the glass? I would think the house was heavily guarded."
"It was. But luckily for me I look quite a bit like his maid Abelie Faugno. He didn't look close enough to notice if we had been on opposite sides of the physical spectrum in all aspects. Typical powerful man. Let me tell you something, Tsia. When plotting to kill an important and wealthy man, pose as someone they would never remember. Or someone they would never forget, and hence never suspect." That was how she killed that fifty-year-old men marrying a sixteen-year-old girl who's parents had sold her into marriage. Manon Deschamps was now living in a mansion on a cliffside overlooking the ocean in southern France.
Surprisingly, the beautiful seductress he met and laughed with (and sexualized) the entire evening, at the same event at which he was stabbed to death, was never questioned. Typical misogyny, all the suspects were men. As much as she hated it, that helped Emily immensely in her illicit affairs. And Manon inherited the man's house in southern France, and it was now in her name. Emily checked up on her every couple years. Last she saw, she was getting married this June. Emily might try to get a seat, make sure the guy was suitable.
Tsia was still standing there, despite it having been multiple minutes. Emily looked back over to her, and asked, "Do you want to sit down, or leave, because I won't have you standing there like a shy and powerless girl." She needed Tsia to understand not to diminish herself, yet she still shrunk down as to not bump a man's shoulders in the hallway. Tsia sat down at the window seat across from Emily, and looked jittery. Emily's brow furrowed, now worried for her friend. "Is there something wrong, Tsia? Do you need help with anything?" For all her bravado, she truly cared about the people around her.
"Why did you do it? I mean, with all the other people, you killed them separately, and for a clear reason, but you killed all those people all at once for no reason." No reason. Hardly, but Tsia didn't know that.
"Don't worry, Tsia, my morality is intact. There was a reason." Tsia raised her eyebrows. She would need more from Emily than just 'a reason' for this. Emily sighed, and said "The seven of them were planning a terrorist attack on Washington DC. They were going to put Botulinum in the water systems and mass poison the citizens as a political message." Tsia's eyes were wide, akin to Emily's face when she found out.
"That's why you used Botulinum. As an ironic revenge," Tsia said, giggling a little as she did. She then shook her head in disbelief, "I have no idea how you find out about this stuff."
"Well, there are some secrets I won't tell even you." That was true. Emily was hiding so much from everyone, to the point the stress was crushing her from the inside out.
"How about me?" Clyde asked, strolling in, taking a big bite of an apple.
"Oh, I hide everything from you, Clyde." Everyone laughed, but it was next to true. No one really knew her. Clyde and Tsia and Jeremy and Sean knew her work mentality, who she was on the outside. Her past lovers knew next to nothing personally, sometimes not even her name, but knew everything physically. She had had to shut up a few of them who started asking to many questions about her scars. That was something no one knew. Not even her mother, though, to be honest, her mother knew nothing. To her mother, she was the picture-perfect daughter, worried and listening to the horrible tragedies she had struck upon countries the nigh before at the breakfast table.
Oh, how her mother would react if she found out all that Emily had done. All who Emily had done. She had had male lovers in the past, but only for a night in an act of desperation and loneliness. The ones that lasted days, sometimes even up to a year, were all women. Emily thought back and believed the longest one started New Year's Eve and ended October 12, Emily's birthday, when she wanted to have a big celebration and planned it against Emily's wishes. Because of that she got a cake each year from her friends. Maybe not such a bad thing, but the celebration reminded her of her horrendous childhood parties, all fancy and full of her mother's colleagues, really just a way for her mother to have a social gathering. Not the most scarring thing to happen, but enough bad memories to make her hate the date.
Clyde sat down in an armchair in the corner of the room, placed a hand over his eyes, and proceeded to fall fast asleep. That was Emily's goal when she first came in here, but she wasn't tired anymore. Though she used to be as tired as he was, as they had both been two of the seven people dosing out poison. The others had been Tsia, Jeremy, and Sean. The other two had been killed. They couldn't be trusted not to blab to the police. Or worse, crack under the pressure of the FBI investigating, kill themselves, or expose Emily. No, that wouldn't do. Because Emily was too good at what she did to have some idiot ruin it all. And why do it? Because the people deserved it, and let's be honest. It was a thrill, one Emily planned on enjoying as ling as she could. She took another sip of her tea, placed it on the table, and went back to reading her book, her mind planning the next thing to do. She was getting rather bored.