“She’s right there’s been major surgery done on her face.” Reid said as he leaned over the body, examining it closely. “And she’s had breast implants.”
“We should do a DNA test,” J.J. Stated. “We need to be 100% sure, for Morgan’s sake.”
“Well I can do that for you myself. I’ll expedite it and you should have the results this time tomorrow.” The Coroner volunteered. “But I’ll need some of the ‘real’ Garcia’s DNA.”
“I can get that. I told Morgan that I’d return to help him finish packing Garcia’s belongings. “I'll try to sneak out her toothbrush.” Reid replied.
He hadn’t known where to begin. He had started in her closet but found that he couldn’t remove anything from the racks and shelves filled with clothes and shoes. So he started in the kitchen, boxing up the pots and pans, and cleaned out the cabinets and refrigerator. He then moved into the living room where he intended to pack up the large library of movies Garcia had collected over the years. After a few moments of packing his eyes fell upon a disc marked ‘New Years ‘07’. He took out the disc and quickly popped it into the player, and then pushed play. The TV suddenly displayed festive imagery and sounds. Morgan chuckled as the camera zoomed in on an uncomfortable looking Reid who wore a party hat.
“Come on Reid, give us a smile.” A melodic voice filled the room and Morgan’s heart clutched in his chest. “Aren’t you happy this year is about to be over in about 3 minutes?”
“Not really, and according to the first known calendar, New Year’s is actually…”
“Give that brain a rest, pretty boy.” Morgan watched himself onscreen teasing Reid. “Get yourself a drink and a fine honey to help you ring in the New Year.”
“A…a fine honey?” Reid repeated baffled, as Morgan smiled and shook his head.
“Here,” Morgan watched himself move closer to the camera, which began to shake about. “You take the camera,” He instructed as he shoved it at Reid. After a few seconds of a shaky picture the camera became steady and was fixed on Morgan and a giggling Garcia. “See I have my drink,” He then tapped his cup with the one Garcia held. “And a ‘very’ fine honey to help me ring in the New Year in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Happy New Years!” Everyone screamed in unison. “Happy New Years, baby girl.” Morgan said as he tugged Garcia closer and captured her lips in a gentle kiss.
“Hey I’m back.” Reid announced as he came through the front door of Garcia’s apartment. Morgan quickly stopped the movie and wiped at his wet face before he turned to address Reid.
“I told you I got this. You didn’t have to come back. “Morgan said as he sniffled a bit.
“I know,” Reid, replied as he moved towards the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He pulled out a plastic Ziploc bag and placed Garcia’s toothbrush in it. He then noticed her hairbrush on the vanity, and pulled out another bag and placed a few strands of Garcia’s hair inside the bag. He then exited the bathroom and found Morgan still seated on the couch where he was sorting through the mountain of DVDs. “Ah, well it looks like you’ve done most of it already so I guess you don’t need me after all. I should head back to headquarters and work on some leads, try to find the perps.” Reid said, stammering a bit a Morgan watched him curiously.
“Are there any new leads?” Morgan asked as he stood from the couch. Reid thought about telling him the truth about what he and J.J. had discovered, but then thought better of it. He knew J.J. was right when she said this would get Morgan’s hopes up. So they had to be 100% sure about Garcia before they told Morgan.
“No,” Reid lied. “But I’ll let you know as soon as we find anything.”
“Thanks man,” Morgan replied and Reid nodded and then left the apartment.
“You guys made it just in time, looks like our unsubs have made contact,” Prentiss said as J.J. and Reid entered the conference room.
“Yeah, they call themselves the Melting Pot of America Coalition.” Rossi spoke out. “They’re apparently some radical group who plans to delete the lives of all Americans, by erasing all their history. Erase their credit history; destroy birth certificates, social security numbers, which nearly every state now has computerized, in essence making it as if we never existed. They feel that by doing so we as a nation can all be equals, regardless of your sex, color, creed, or nationality.”
“All the news channels have been playing a tape that was sent into them by this group,” Hotchner added.
“Well, they say they have specially trained people who will hack into all the financial institutes and Social Security and wipe them clean. On the videotape the person speaking wore a ski mask, but in the background we saw one of the missing hackers the CIA had on their list. Then about an hour after the tape was leaked to the press, that same hacker was found floating in the Potomac River.” Prentiss stated.
“Why go through the trouble of kidnapping these hackers and then turn right around and kill them? Why kill Garcia, according to her files she’s the best hacker the FBI and CIA has ever come across. She had to be valuable to these guys right?” Rossi asked trying to wrap his head around why Garcia had been murdered. Both J.J. and Reid threw each other a look, they had decided they wouldn’t tell anyone about the body in the morgue until they were certain, but now they both wondered if that was the right thing to do.
“Maybe they got what they needed from her and didn’t want any witnesses.” Prentiss suggested.
“Or maybe Garcia refused to help them.” Hotchner added. “Was there anything else?” Hotchner asked as he tried to direct the conversation back to the still missing hackers.
“Yeah there was actually.” Prentiss said as she moved to the laptop on the table. “Simultaneous with the transmission of the news broadcast there were break-ins at five of the local area banks, all done through electronic hacking. So far about 20 million has been stolen.”
“And you think the two are related?” J.J asked.
“We think it’s a bit too coincidental. Right as everyone’s focus is on this news broadcast there’s not one but five bank robberies, over 10 million dollars electronically transferred to untraceable off shore accounts.” Rossi answered. “I think the news feed was just a distraction.”
“We just got another hit,” Mr. Wilcox said as he rushed into the room and moved to the laptop, and began typing on it. Within a few seconds the screen before them became covered with symbols and numbers, ones and zeros. “Someone hacked the systems and the First National bank of Arlington. These symbols and numbers attacked all their systems and by the time they got everything back online about 50 million was missing from their accounts.”
“Looks like our radicals are nothing more than common thieves.” Prentiss said.
“We were right.” Reid spoke as he moved closer to the large screen against the wall. “It’s her.”
“Right about what Reid, and whose ‘her’?” Rossi asked as all eyes fell to the young man standing before them, who turned and looked to J.J.
“J.J. and I found something wrong with Garcia’s body.”
“Like what and why didn’t you tell us the instant you found something?” Hotchner asked as he glared from Reid to J.J.
“Reid wanted to, but I asked him to wait until we were sure about what we found.” J.J. jumped in.
“And exactly what did you find?” Morgan’s voice spoke out from the doorway as he entered the room.
“The coroner mentioned that Garcia had recently had some plastic surgery done.” J.J. continued.
“I was called in to confirm, and there has been a lot of work done to her face as well as breast implants.” Reid added.
“What? That doesn’t’ make any sense we would have noticed something like that and as far as I can recall Garcia hasn’t taken any vacation time for as long as I’ve known her.” Prentiss said. “Surgery like you’re describing would have had her out for weeks if not months.”
“We thought the same thing,” J.J. replied.
“So why didn’t you say something?” Morgan asked growing angry.
“We wanted to be sure, so I got some of Garcia’s DNA from her toothbrush and some strands of her hair, so the coroner could get DNA testing.” Reid defended. “But I’m pretty sure the results are going to come back that that body in the morgue isn’t Garcia.”
“How can you be so sure?” Rossi asked.
“Because I think Garcia’s telling us she’s alive.” Reid stated and then turned back to the screen. “These ones and zeros are binary numbers and each block of eight numbers represents one letter in the alphabet. There are groups of binary numbers at the ends of each line. If you’re looking at it straight across in congruent with the symbols they wouldn’t make sense. But if you just focus on the end, on just the numbers you can see a word. The 01010000.01100101 translates to P.E. Next there’s 01101110.01100101, which is N.E. Then there’s 01101100.01101111, and that’s L.O. Finally we have 01110000.01100101, P.E. If you put them all together you get P.E.N.E.L.O.P.E. And it’s repeated over and over again. Add this with what we discovered on the body, I’d say Garcia’s alive but someone went through a lot of trouble to make us think she wasn’t.”
"That's my girl." Morgan said and he couldn’t help but to chuckle at the idea that his ‘baby girl’ had sent them a cyber bread crumb.
“That’s a good thing, that tells us that she’s very valuable to them, and that can keep her safe.” Rossi said. “Now we just have to find her.”
“Actually,” Reid spoke out again as he continued to study the symbols and numbers on the screen. “I think Garcia’s provided us with that as well. These numbers here, 38277854, they’re not binary but I think they might be the longitude and latitude of where Garcia is being held, 38° 27' N 78° 54'W.”
“Where is that?” Morgan asked.
“Uhm,” Reid rushed to the computer and quickly pulled up and map and inputting the information. “According to this, it’s in Harrisonburg, Virginia.”
“Hot damn, I’ll assemble my best team together. We’ll get in there and grab those bastards before they even know what hit them.” Mr. Wilcox said as he hurried from the room.
“We need to take lead on this one Hotch we can’t let FBI Swat in there.” Morgan said and Hotchner's face grew grim. "Come on Hotch you know how those fools roll. They’re gonna go in there with guns blazing. Their goal is to get the bad guys I just want to get Garcia out safe and sound. Please man.”
“Fine, I’ll talk to Wilcox.”
“Thanks Hotch,” Morgan said as he began to rush from the room to go suit up for the mission.
“Oh and Morgan,” Hotchner called out to him and Morgan stopped just at the door, where he turned back to face Hotchner. “If you could grab the other hostages while you’re getting Garcia that would be good too.” Morgan threw his boss a smile.
“Right,” Morgan replied and then rushed from the room with the rest of the team right behind him.
“Here you should eat something,” The man spoke softly as he set a tray of food that consisted of a sandwich, chips and a soda down on the table.
“I don’t have much of an appetite,” The woman seated at the table replied in a deflated tone. “Being kidnapped and held hostage tends to do that to me.”
“Look I’m sorry about all this really I am, but it’s for the greater good, society as we know is so screwed up. The rich keep getting richer the poor keep dying, and the middle-class take the tax brunt from both sides. Imagine if we all were the same, we all had the same amount of money, the same social class, and the best part no history whatsoever. Everyone could start over and on equal footing.” The man spoke excitedly as the woman simply stated at him dumbfound.
“You’re serious,” She threw finding it somewhat cute and reassuring that he did actually believe that’s what they were doing. “Look that’s not what we’re doing here, that may have been what you were told. But this is nothing but probably the biggest bank robbery ever.”
“No you’re wrong my brother and I have a mission. We’ve had nothing all of our lives, we watched our mom die because she didn’t have health insurance. Watched our dad put a bullet in his brain because when he asked the Government for help finding work all they gave him was a couple of vouchers for some food and clothes. We never asked for any handouts, we’ve always been willing to work for everything we got, but it wasn’t enough, it was never enough. This is freaking America, no one should go hungry, die because they're refused treatment, or be unemployed, and we’re going to make sure of it.”
“OK, if what you say is true then why are we only targeting banks? We’ve already stolen over 80 million dollars, why? What are you going to do with all that money? According to you in your new utopia we won’t need money.” She could tell by the way the younger man was looking at her perplexingly, he hadn’t been aware of what they were really doing. At that moment another man entered to room.
“Let’s go we have more work to do.” The man spoke from the doorway.
“Jake, we need to talk.” The younger man spoke.
“Not now Mikey, we have…”
“Yes, right now.” The younger man demanded as he rushed from the room. She could hear the two men arguing in the hallway, and she wondered if she should have just kept her mouth shut. It was obvious that the younger man was the weaker of the two, and he may not be able to handle his brother who was clearly running their operation, and where would that leave her.
“Morgan where are you?” She whispered.