ABLOCATE ▇▇▇▇ VOLUME ONE
━━ ❛ 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏, 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒐𝒃𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒆 ❜
chapter no. 013!
❝ DANTE'S HELL. ❞
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
"YOU'RE GOING TO TRACK DOWN THE RED SCORPIONS," HOTCH STATED THE MOMENT I'D SAT DOWN. Blinking, I stared up blankly at the man as he placed a laptop in front of me. "You know everything there is to know. It's time to put that knowledge to good use." Raising my brows, my eyes darted between him and Rossi as I resisted the urge to yawn. Judging by their facial expressions, they needed me to do this. There were no leads in the case except for me; I was the keeper of keys and secrets.
The Red Scorpions had the power to destroy my very being with just a snap of their fingers. A simple command from one of the three leaders is all it would take. They had the power to break me down in a way that no one would be able to do, especially since they had my father.
It was still unclear whether my father was back on their side, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that there were people that needed my help, and the voice in the back of my head that tried to get me to do the right thing every now and then was urging me to listen.
Merely nodding, I pressed my lips together and looked down at the computer screen. Through hell or high water, I was going to help them. Even though that meant there would be an even larger target on my back.
"No, no, no! Derek, I am not working with a bad guy!" A voice that was foreign to me entered the adjoining room and approached where I sat at the desk.
"Babygirl, calm down. She isn't that much of a bad guy. She's just done some... bad things." Morgan replied, and I held myself back from rolling my eyes.
"I don't care! I am not working with Ms. Evil McGangster—" the babbling blonde shut her mouth quickly as Morgan placed the iPad on the desk, the camera facing him and I. Raising my brows at her nickname for me, I watched as she squirmed in her seat uncomfortably. The room she sat in was decorated with colorful toys and decorations, which correlated well with the multicolored dress that she was wearing. A white, flowery headband lay on her head and I blinked.
"You must be Penelope Garcia," I finally said, trying my best not to sound too emotionless while breaking the awkward silence, and she nodded weakly. "I uh, I'm sorry about yesterday, you know... with what happened to your system and all." Apologizing was something that rested in unknown territory for me. With the job I had, there was no such thing as apologizing.
At my words, she took stared at me momentarily before looking elsewhere; not daring to look anywhere in my general direction. "Uh, thanks." A string of guilt pulled at my heart and I frowned lightly. By the avoidance of eye contact and nervous shuffling through papers she had more than likely already been through, I could tell that she feared me. I was partially to blame for her system being hacked and she knew what I was a part of— that alone would make most people at least unnerved by my presence.
Clearing my throat, I sat up in the chair. Turn on the charm, Cara. Just smile and be nice. "Would you like me to call you Garcia or Penelope? I don't know if you have a preference or..." I trailed off, hoping that by talking a little more, she wouldn't remain as uncomfortable or frightened.
"You can call me either one, I don't mind," Penelope answered; her shoulders dropping an inch. I nodded and gave her a small, forced smile, to which she returned hesitantly.
"Cara is going to be helping you track down the Red Scorpions, Garcia," Rossi said, leaning over my shoulder, and the technical analyst nodded.
"My software is already on the laptop in front of you, Cara. That way, we can both work at the same time while being able to see what the other is doing in the background." I merely nodded and eyed the laptop. "Have you ever done any hacking or tracking? Anything similar to those?"
I nodded again and glanced back at the iPad. "I did most of the hacking and computer work for the Red Scorpions. I've primarily worked with Nmap, Kismet, Wireshark, the Metasploit Project, and Haxe though," I concluded, listing off all the hacking software I'd ever used.
A look of shock and admiration registered on Penelope's face as a smile broke across her lips. "Girl, the Metasploit was my bitch! I used that sucker for everything!"
For the first time in weeks, I laughed and nodded in agreement. "I did too! Do you remember the jump function it had when it first came out?"
Penelope gasped dramatically. "Do I?! That was my favorite part of the software! It was absolutely brilliant!" she said in a posh British accent and I snorted, a genuine small smile spreading across my lips. The Cara Valentine that I was displaying right now was the woman who existed when I was a child and whenever I was alone. Yet, here I was, being a little bit of myself with a bubbly stranger who'd somehow gotten under my skin more than anyone else truly had in a long time.
From out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Morgan smirked at Spencer, who sat beside me at the desk. The doctor's cheeks were pink and he was giving the dark-skinned man a harsh glare. "Hold up, the Metasploit came out in 2003... How old are you?" Penelope asked curiously, her eyes widening, and I shifted in my chair.
"I'm twenty-nine," I said, clearing my throat as my age was revealed for the first time.
"Oh my gosh! You're a youngin' just like Spencer!" she squealed, and I looked over at the man on my left. Noticing my gaze, the glare dropped off his face and he gave me a smile that caused my stomach to churn. Hotch cleared his throat, grabbing the analyst's attention. "Right! Tracking down bad guys! Let's do this, crime fighters!" Penelope sang excitedly, and I couldn't help but smirk at her enthusiasm.
A black tab popped up on the screen and I started typing, watching as other tabs began appearing and codes were being run on the left side of the screen. Nothing could be heard in the hotel room, but the violent beating of fingers against a keyboard and the increasingly unbearable spin of the CPU cooler fan.
────
SIX HOURS, TWENTY-ONE MINUTES, AND THIRTEEN SECONDS HAD PASSED SINCE WE BEGAN THE ENDEAVORING SEARCH FOR THE RED SCORPIONS, AND SO FAR, WE HAD NOTHING. Not a single scrap of evidence and the scent of their trail had gone dead the moment we started. The process of trying different algorithms and compacting codes together was getting tedious and resulting in absolutely nothing.
"Cara, didn't you tell the team that the Scorpions moved to Arizona?" Penelope asked as my eyes combed the screen in search of a ping, moving from side to side rapidly like the eyes of a dreaming person, but wide open.
"Yeah," I murmured, only half-listening to the blonde. My mind was too preoccupied as my eyes were scanning for unregistered waves of technology and unusual energy use in and around the areas of Flagstaff, Safford, Yuma, and Yucca.
"Somewhere between Flagstaff, Safford, Yuma, and Yucca, right?" she asked, and I nodded, beginning to lose myself in thought.
Wait—Owen once said that his mother's side of the family lived in Fairbank... There was a reason why I wasn't going to find out where we were relocating to until I was rescued from the police station; that's where they were. "Shit shit shit..." I cursed, my fingers typing at lightning speed as I bit down on my lower lip.
"Valentine, what is it?" Hotch asked, and in the background, I could faintly hear Penelope stop typing. Several sets of eyes bore into the side of my head as my eyes scanned the screen frantically. Multiple tabs were closed and a dozen new ones were opened.
"That motherfucking, lying, asshole," I grumbled, not bothering to pardon my language or answer the Unit Chief.
"Valentine," Hotch repeated but I ignored him. According to Google, Fairbank, Arizona, had been a ghost town for decades. Nobody had lived there for over a century and the land was solely used for tourist attractions. There's another lie I can add to all the other ones he's told me.
If they're in Fairbank, that means Owen was the one who picked the new location, and if he was the one that picked it, then he was also the one who was in charge of the technological part of setting up the new headquarters. Farell and computers never got along, and Arthur was only semi-good at hacking. Owen was the only one out of the three who knew how to cover his tracks. I was the one who taught him. But where would they hide in Fairbank?
"Valentine!" the Unit Chief snapped and I shook my head, closing my eyes.
"Give me a second, Timmy Turner. I'm trying to think." I responded back almost instantaneously, and someone snorted from behind me.
"If I didn't know any better, I would think you're more obsessed with the story of Paradise Lost than I am." I joked, plopping down on the couch next to Owen as he was reading my copy of the poem.
He briefly glanced in my direction and his lips curled slightly. "What can I say? You've rubbed off on me." Rolling my eyes, I leaned my head on his shoulder as his eyes continued to sweep over the inked words.
"Sometimes I wish Dante's Hell was real," Owen mumbled and I furrowed my brows.
"Why?"
Shrugging, he turned the page and continued to read as he spoke, "The way Milton describes it is ethereal. Imagine Hell being on Earth... I don't know why but the idea of that fascinates me." I removed my head from his shoulder and kissed his neck, running my hands through his hair. "Also, how you get to the gates of Hell seems pretty cool too. When you die and get there, you arrive in the dark woods in front of this gate made of sticks, but between you and the gate, there's a river that you must drink from before you can cross over. Once you cross over, you essentially find out that there are two circles of Hell: Limbo and then Hell. The whole process is so ritualistic. It kind of reminds me of the Surrey Six killings."
My dark-blue eyes flashed open as my mind went on overload with the memories rushing back to the forefront of my mind. "Owen wanted Dante's Hell to be real— the two circles— we're in Limbo— ritualistic killings— Surrey Six— Checkmate, Sin— the river dividing the two worlds— Fairbank is right next to the San Pedro River!"
Blake got up from the bed she and Agent Jareau were sitting on and made her way over. "Cara, what're you talking about?" she asked, but I had already started typing at rapid speed, shutting down all the tabs and bringing up completely different ones.
"Penelope! I need access to the satellite for a second." I said, glancing at the iPad and she nodded. "Where were we? Ross is away nearly ticking time until Cara's sleeping sweet, count on me." I whispered as I typed the hyperlink into a small text box, crosschecking the URL with unregistered Internet use in Fairbank while I re-programmed the satellite to scan for rays of radiation.
"Why are you searching for rays of 400 to 800 THz of electromagnetic radiation?" Penelope asked; pure confusion laced in her tone.
Without turning to look at her, I responded, "That's the amount of electromagnetic radiation that computers give off when they're being used; it's the visible light that's given off by the computer's screen that makes it possible for you to see what the computer is displaying. Fairbank, Arizona has been a ghost town for decades. No one lives there." Two pings popped up and I closed my mouth as I clicked on them. One in Fairbank, across from the San Pedro River, and the other ten miles away from the hotel we were at in an apartment complex. "Until now."
────
𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗥𝗗 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡 𝗣𝗢𝗩
STEPPING INSIDE THE ABANDONED SHOE FACTORY WAS LIKE STEPPING INTO ANOTHER DIMENSION. The building seemed to shudder in the wind and sway as the rain attacked it, and he pulled down his hood. Everything around them was empty, other than the couple dozen obsolete bodies that were painted in a scarlet-red liquid that glimmered brightly in the dimly lit space.
Just as it had looked outside, the inside mirrored something out of a dystopian movie; the corrugated walls were as rusted and useless as the old equipment they housed. Beams stretched high overhead, and rain dripped down through cracks in the ceiling. The chalky paint fell in fragments, leaving the splintered door a bare tarp. It whined on its amber hinges as Arthur's palm pressed gingerly against its moist frame. Ivy gnarled its way through the broken windows, tangling its leathery shape throughout the wistful abode. The undefinable source of darkness draped over the walls like a tapestry as he took a confident step over someone's arm.
"Phase One." Joseph Arthur spoke calmly, "Cara Valentine gets arrested, we fake the deaths of the leaders, frame Ross Valentine for their murders, capture and hold Ross Valentine, and lastly, have all charges against his daughter dropped." The leader spoke as he stopped pacing, his lips curling upwards as he admired the art around him.
Harshly kicking the bloodied arm of a dead member and peeping through a broken window, Kirk Farell smirked as he watched the trailer they'd been stowing away in, sink to the bottom of the river. "Phase Two," Farell spoke up, turning his head. "Send Sánchez back to British Columbia to talk to Leone and get him to agree to come out of hiding. Next, have Sánchez set up the other wireless router while we hide the other signal enough to where it takes her a little while to find it. Then, kill the youngest and most skeptical followers, or the ones that have not proven themselves to us. And finally, hand Ross over to my father and wait for the FBI to come to collect their precious drug traffickers."
Fragments of thought, splinters of words, and droplets of silence spun into a kaleidoscopic jumble and shifted infinitesimally; falling into a stillness among the men. All who stood were all that was left, and the leaders wouldn't have it any other way.
"Now, we wait."