ABLOCATE ▇▇▇▇ VOLUME ONE
━━ ❛ 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏, 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒐𝒃𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒆 ❜

chapter no. 013!

❝ DANTE'S HELL. ❞
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    "YOU'RE GOING TO TRACK DOWN THE RED SCORPIONS," HOTCH STATED THE INSTANT CARA SAT DOWN. Blinking, she stared blankly at the man as he placed a laptop in front of her. "You know everything there is to know. It's time to put that knowledge to good use." Raising her brows, her eyes darted from him to Rossi. Judging by their facial expressions, they needed her to do this. There were no other leads.

     Cara Valentine was the keeper of keys and secrets in this case.

     The Red Scorpions had the power to destroy her very being with 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 her in a way that no one would be able to, especially since they had her father.

     It was still unclear whether Ross Valentine was back on their side, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that there were people who needed Cara's help, and the voice in the back of Cara's head that tried to get her to do the right thing every now and then was urging her to listen.

     Merely nodding, Cara pressed her lips together and looked at the computer screen. Through hell or high water, she was going to help them. Even if that meant there would be an even bigger target on her back.

     "No, no, no! Derek, I am not working with a bad guy!" A voice foreign to Cara entered the adjoining room and approached where she sat at a desk.

     "Baby girl, calm down. She isn't that much of a bad guy. She's just done some... bad things." Morgan replied, and she held back from rolling her eyes.

     "I don't care! I am not working with Ms. Evil McGangster—" a babbling blonde quickly shut her mouth when Morgan placed the iPad on the desk, the camera facing him and Cara. Tilting her head at the nickname, Cara observed the woman squirm 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 Cara blinked.

     "You must be Penelope Garcia," she finally said, trying her best not to sound too emotionless while breaking the awkward silence. Penelope 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 Cara. With the job she had, there was no such thing as apologizing.

     At the apology, Penelope shortly stared at Cara before looking elsewhere, not daring to look anywhere in the other blonde's general direction. "Uh, thanks." A thin string of guilt pulled at Cara's heart, and she almost frowned. By the avoidance of eye contact and nervous shuffling through papers she had more than likely already been through, Cara knew she feared her. Cara was partially to blame for her system being hacked and she knew what she was a part of—that alone would make most people at least unnerved by Cara's presence.

     Clearing her throat, Cara sat up. 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..." she trailed off, hoping that by talking a little more, she wouldn't remain as uncomfortable or frightened.

     "You can call me either, I don't mind," Penelope answered, her shoulders dropping an inch. Cara 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 announced, leaning over Cara's 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." Cara didn't nod, but she eyed the laptop. "Have you ever done any hacking or tracking? Anything similar to those?"

     Cara 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," she concluded, listing off all the hacking software she'd ever used.

     A look of shock and admiration registered on Penelope's face. A smile broke across her lips. "Girl, the Metasploit was my bitch! I used that sucker for everything!"

     For the first time in weeks, Cara 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 Cara snorted. The Cara Valentine she was displaying right now was the woman who existed when she was a child and whenever she was alone. Yet, here she was, being a little bit of herself with a bubbly stranger who'd somehow gotten under her skin more than anyone else had in years.

     Out of the corner of her eye, Cara noticed Morgan smirking at Spencer, who sat beside her at the desk. Spencer's cheeks were pink and he was giving Morgan a harsh glare.

     "Hold up, the Metasploit came out in 2003... How old are you?" Penelope asked curiously, eyes widening.

     "I'm twenty-nine," Cara answered, clearing her throat as her age was revealed for the first time.

     "Oh, my gosh! You're a youngin' just like Spencer!" she squealed, and Cara looked at the man on her left. Noticing her gaze, the glare dropped, and Spencer gave her a smile that made her stomach churn. Hotch cleared his throat, grabbing the analyst's attention. "Right. Tracking down bad guys. Let's do this, crime fighters!"

     A black tab popped up on the screen, and Cara started typing. More tabs began appearing and codes ran 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.

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     SIX HOURS, TWENTY-ONE MINUTES, AND THIRTEEN SECONDS HAD PASSED SINCE THE ENDEAVORING SEARCH FOR THE RED SCORPIONS BEGAN AND SO FAR, THEY HAD NOTHING. Not a single scrap of evidence and the scent of their trail had gone dead the moment Cara and Penelope started. The process of trying different algorithms, compacting codes together, and searching the dark web was getting tedious, resulting in absolutely nothing.

     "Cara, didn't you tell the team that the Scorpions moved to Arizona?" Penelope asked while Cara combed her screen in search of a ping, moving from side to side rapidly like the eyes of a dreaming person, but wide open.

     "Yes," she murmured, only half-listening. Her mind was too preoccupied as her eyes searched 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?"

     Cara nodded, beginning to lose herself in thought.

     Wait... Owen once shared that his mother's side of the family lived in Fairbank, Arizona... There was a reason why Cara wasn't going to find out where the gang was relocating to until she was rescued from the police station—that's where the Red Scorpions were. "Shit shit shit..." she cursed, fingers typing at lightning speed and she bit her lower lip.

     "Valentine, what is it?" Hotch asked, and in the background, she faintly heard Penelope stop typing. Several sets of eyes bore into the side of her head as her eyes skimmed the screen frantically. Multiple tabs were closed and a dozen new ones opened.

     "That motherfucking, lying, asshole," she grumbled, not bothering to answer the Unit Chief.

     "Valentine," Hotch repeated, but she deliberately 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 the Red Scorpions are in Fairbank, that means Owen was the one who picked the location, and if he was the one who picked it, then he was also the one in charge of the technological component for setting up the new headquarters. Farell and technology 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. After all, she was the one who taught him. But where would they hide in Fairbank?

     "Valentine!" Hotch snapped, and she shook her head, closing her eyes.

     "Give me a second, Timmy Turner. I'm trying to think," Cara responded almost instantaneously, and someone snorted from behind her.

     "If I didn't know any better, I would think you're more obsessed with the story of Paradise Lost than I am," Cara joked, plopping down on the couch next to Owen as he read her copy of the epic poem.

     He briefly glanced in her direction, and his lips curled slightly. "What can I say? You've rubbed off on me." Rolling her eyes, Cara leaned her head on his shoulder while he continued to savor the inked words.

     "Sometimes I wish Dante's Hell was real," he mumbled, and she furrowed her 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." Cara removed her head from his shoulder and kissed his neck, running her 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."

     Her deep blue eyes flashed open as her mind was on overload with the memories rushing back. "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 Cara was already 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," she said, merely glancing at the iPad. Penelope nodded. "Where were we? Ross is away nearly ticking time until Cara's sleeping sweet, count on me," she whispered, entering the hyperlink into a small text box and crosschecking the URL with unregistered Internet use in Fairbank. Then, she 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, Cara 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 she closed her mouth as she clicked on them. One in Fairbank, across from the San Pedro River, and the other ten miles away from the hotel they were at in an apartment complex. "Until now."

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     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. He pulled his hood down. Everything around them was empty, other than the couple dozen obsolete bodies that were painted in a crimson-red liquid that glimmered 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, and he took a confident step over someone's arm.

     "Phase One," Joseph Arthur said 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." He stopped pacing and his lips curled while he admired the art surrounding him.

     Harshly kicking the bloodied arm of a dead member and peering through a broken window, Kirk Farell smirked. He watched the trailer they'd been using sink to the bottom of the nearby river. "Phase Two," Farell picked up, turning his head. "Send Sánchez back to BC 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. Finally, hand Ross over to my father and wait for the F.B.I. to come 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."