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sink me in the river at dawn

Chapter Text

It's inevitable.

One day, after they're done bantering and she's finished with the coffee she likes to steal from him, she'll react just a split second too slow. Forget to load her gun and not be able to talk her way out of it. One day, her 'bull in a china shop' approach won't work and he won't be there to clean up the fractured pieces.

It's the kind of thing that wakes him up at night.

That first time, not the shaking kid in his orange shirt with his wavering handgun, because she wasn't even his rookie then, was just the dumbass kid who busted him and ruined six months of not showering on a daily basis. Not the time that's his fault, the one with Em's cut lip and bruised cheek.

No, he's talking about that actual first time, with her slutty green top, her missing gun. Going undercover takes some time getting used to for everybody, and it still sort of irks him that he didn't realize pulling her out would only push her harder, make her a little more desperate to prove herself.

He hears the whole story later; reads the report and fills in the blanks, remembers the sliver of bruised skin above her jean skirt and gets a little light-headed. She and Dov were stupid, were careless with Sadie's life, so he chastises them like school children. And later, he catches up to her in the parking lot and reminds her that it's his job.

It still screws with his sleeping patterns, though.

The thing is if it was just that one time, he probably wouldn't have this problem. He probably wouldn't wake up at three a.m. wondering if her blood will be hard to get out of the creases around his fingernails. Wondering if he'll actually feel her heart stop beating beneath his palms or if he'll be stuck in a waiting room, lukewarm coffee clutched in his hand.

Mostly, though, he wonders how long it'll take for that guilt to gnaw at him enough that he just up and quits and moves to fucking Colorado.

He figures it's sort of her fault.

She takes risks.

Does stupid things that paints a target on her forehead, and he vaguely understands that most of the time it's just to get the attention off of someone else. But fuck if she doesn't fucking give hand-written invitions to trouble. It's not only her, though. Epstein gets his rocks off stepping on IEDs, and Diaz apparently enjoys getting himself stabbed and locked into closets.

(And seriously, rookies are generally safety challenged, but this group takes the cake.)

The thing is they all have their moments, but his fucking rookie actually goes looking for trouble. It'd be cute, if it didn't make him feel like throwing up.

And then suddenly it stops.

No more guns to her head, no more hands around her throat. It's like a switch was thrown after her run in with Nixon. Three entire weeks, and it goes against every single instinct he has as a cop, as her training officer, but he lets his guard down. Stops watching her out of the corner of his eye incase she decides to wander into an empty building with a serial killer or something. For three weeks he can actually breathe.

It's why it stings just that tiny bit more, when, after a routine traffic stop, she crosses the street to grab a coffee and gets shot in the chest.

(By the way, her blood is damn near impossible to get out from under his nails.)

Chapter Text

The funny thing is, for two complete heartbeats, he thinks she tripped.

It's still slick from last night's rain, and she has always been slightly clumsy, and no one just crumbles like that. So, he's half-way to laughing when the shot echoes.

He's half-way to laughing, and then it's not funny at all because it was in those two heartbeats that McNally manages to spill what looks like a third of her blood out onto the street.

And then he's running.

Which isn't right, which is completely wrong, because the street's empty, was empty when they pulled over Ms. Dana Lawrence when she blew that stoplight right in front of them. The street's empty, and there was a two heartbeat delay between the bullet and the sound of the bullet, which only means that the shot originated from somewhere high. It only means that he should be scrambling for cover behind the engine of their cruiser, he should be waiting for backup. But should sort of flies out the window when it comes to Andy fucking McNally, so he does none of those things.

Her blood's warm beneath his knees, when he reaches her, and it's suddenly ridiculously hard not to empty his stomach contents onto the pavement next to him.

So you know, the thing about chest wounds is: they stun you.

Head shots usually knock you right out, if they don't kill you, and most other places hurt just enough that you don't pass out, that instead you're wide awake, and aching and watching your heart pump the blood out of your body.

But chest shots stun you, and he knows this because undercover work is dangerous, is practically suicidal and taking a bullet is usually not the worst that can happen. He knows this because, once, years ago, he was young and stupid and distracted. Because, once, years ago, a bullet was the tamest of his injuries.

She gasps when he presses his hand to her, and fuck if it isn't the best damn sound he's ever heard when there's blood under his nails.

And then she's moving; the heels of her boots scraping against gravel. The adrenaline is kicking in, but she's panicking and her cells bubble between his fingers. She's not focused, eyes rolling, glazed and dilated.

"Damn it. McNally, stop. Stop." He presses slightly harder to grab her attention. It takes a minute, takes enough time that he glances up, checks the darkened street again because he's been expecting a bullet in the back for awhile now. When he drops his head back down, she's focused.

"Hey, okay. You have to stop moving, okay. I know, just breathe, you have to breathe. I have to call it in, and then we have to move, and just keep breathing. okay. Don't fucking pass out on me."

His thumb slips twice when he grabs his radio, and there's blood on his chin from holding it so close.

"I got an officer down. West Crawford and the corner of Sullivan. I repeat, officer down. Suspect – I don't fucking know where he is. Approach with caution." And yeah, he lost his shit sort of, there at the end, but McNally's already struggling, and he can't breathe, and isn't that ironic. Or something.

It seems like longer than the minute or so that it takes to move her, but he's exhaling a string of curses that would definitely disappoint his mother, and when he finally manages to settle, he realizes he lost his hearing somewhere in there. It's all rushing blood, like he placed seashells next to his ears, and when it returns, there's an ambulance twenty feet from him, and Oliver's voice on his radio.

"Swarek. Swarek. Fucking hell, he's not answering. Whose blood is that? He's covered in it, that can't all be from McNally, right? Fucking shit hell, mother-fucker. Sam."

Oliver's an echo. Far enough that he apparently thinks he needs a radio to communicate, but close enough that he really doesn't. There's a split second delay in everything, and Sam answers the later.

"Oliver, there's- she took it in the chest. I didn't even see anything. The street was empty. He's up, somewhere."

Sam watches him nod, tries really hard not to focus on the blood he can feel on his neck.

"Alright. Okay, are you good? That's not your blood?" And he sounds sort of hesitant, like he's hoping that at least some of it is Swarek's. Sam kind of wishes that, too.

"No – it's – I'm fine. Look, it's been awhile since the shot, and I was out there for a long time," Sam tosses his head in the general direction of the red puddle to his right. "She's not looking good." Actually, she's out, had been for about thirteen seconds, but fuck if he was about to yell that, and watch Nash pass out.

Apparently, because they're all fucking rule breakers, and Noelle looks about two seconds away from pulling her gun, that's enough for Oliver to give the paramedics the go ahead.

The entire corner bursts into activity, and no one really notices when an alley door swings shut.

000

The rest of the rookies are at the hospital when he emerges from the bathroom. Actually, the waiting room is full of uniforms, but the rookies are easy to spot. They're seated together, smack dab in the middle of the room, their knees bouncing in a way that shows they're inexperienced at waiting in emergency rooms.

It took far too long to give his statement, and after, as he was standing, Best grabbed his elbow and told him to go change first. Someone, Noelle probably, had the foresight to grab his bag from the trunk. He washed his hands and changed without looking in the mirror, a minor headache forming from the glare of the lights off the walls.

It was a mistake, evidently, because Epstein turns sort of green when he glances up at him as he passes, and Peck stutters through an explanation about the mark he missed on his neck.

He scrubs at it with the pad of this thumb, and approaches Best, who looks about ten seconds from making a nurse cry.

"Look I don't care about protocol, this is my officer, and I have the right to know exactly what's going on."

Best has this really creepy way of saying intimidating things in a natural voice. Swarek's seen it dissolve even the most hardened criminals into weeping babies. This nurse, who probably volunteers at homeless shelters, looks about two seconds away quitting her job.

Fortunately, a doctor bangs through a double set of doors marked restricted and everyone's attention swivels to him. In unison, the group in the middle stand, looking for all the world like this doctor, who has yet to say a word, just diagnosed their own mothers with cancer.

Sam finds he kind of feels like that, too. Frozen to the floor and wondering who said breathing was automatic, because that person was a fucking liar.

The doctor, his coat reads Johnson, sighs through his nose like he's used to this, and puts both palms up before the questions start.

"Officer McNally, is in surgery. As far as I could tell, from my first assessment, the bullet bypassed anything vital. She did lose a lot of blood. I'll be able to tell more when I can get in there and see. We'll try to update you as frequently as possible."

His voice drops two octaves, and three decibals before he adds, "Try not to make my nurses quit."

Yeah, Sam wouldn't promise that.

There was a collective sigh from the majority of the room's occupants. Officers experienced enough to know that a command to wait was better than a lot of what they had heard before. Peck was the first one of the rookies to move, with the others slowly following.

Sam chose to collapse into the nearest chair.

There's a certain bustle in ER waiting rooms, a dull murmur of voices that was only slightly helping his headache, just enough that he let his eyes close. They felt gritty from being up thirty plus hours, from rubbing them too much.

He's still buzzed from adrenaline, his leg twitching beneath his sweatpants. Under the fabric, his knees are still slightly red, despite him scrubbing them, and the visual makes his stomach turn.

Behind him, Diaz says he's going to grab another coffee, did any of them want one, and got no reply.

Sam assumes they gave him some sort of non-verbal response, though, because Sam can hear him leave. A rustle of his uniform and the squeak of shoes that he shines like it's his job.

Swarek's knowledge of them is limited. He knows their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to work only because it keeps him alive. Knows that Peck is a legacy and despises it enough to duck phone calls and visits from her mother. Epstein is a little off kilter, but his instincts are strong. Nash is a mystery, despite her status as his rookie's best friend. Which is weird, but it's not like he volunteers information about Oliver, either. Diaz is an over-achiever, has a stab wound in his lower abdomen, and is allergic to peanuts. The first he found out from Best, the second from another hospital call, and the third because once, in the middle of the bull pen, Jerry dropped a folder on his desk, and Diaz's throat closed like a trap door.

There was an Epi-Pen involved, and the whole thing was sort of unintentionally hilarious. But, they are professionals, so everyone quit brining peanuts into the station.

Anyway, all any of this means, is that when Chris comes back and promptly drops to his hands and knees in front Sam, everyone is a little more than startled. The kid's gasping, like he just got the butt of a gun slammed into his throat, and the sound's familiar enough, that while people crowd around asking questions, and nurses struggle to get through the mayhem, Sam grabs the coffee cup from the floor.

It smells like peanuts, and everyone sort of loses their shit from then on in.

Chapter Text

Epstein spends the first twenty minutes of Chris' tracheostomy throwing up in a bathroom on the third floor. Sometime between actually throwing up and dry heaving, Peck's boots appear under the stall door. (If he waits a couple extra minutes to get up, well he's certainly not going to verbally admit she's always only slightly bordering on the thin line bitch and badass.)

When he finally does slide the latch aside, he's got a throbbing around his temples and a slight paranoia stemming from the fact that his friends keep getting taken down. He manages to slide past her, hoping that she'll let him rinse his mouth out in peace.

"Oh, good, Traci thought you had passed out and bashed your head against the toilet, but I kept telling her that your little baby bird tummy just couldn't handle all that excitement."

His knuckles are white on the basin when he glances up to catch her reflection in the mirror.

"While your clear concern for my safety is greatly appreciated, I'm really not in the mood to pretend like we're friends today, thanks though." It's maybe not his best moment, but she's always been able to project his weaknesses like they're under a microscope, and it's really just too much today.

It takes him that split second longer to notice the red around her eyes, the speck of blood on the pale underside of her wrist that is probably from when she was trying to wipe the remainder of Andy's cells from Swarek's face.

She stares at him like she's waiting for him to break, like she's testing to see if he can handle the next thing out of her mouth. He stares right back, because even if he can't, he'll damn sure pretend he can.

"He's breathing. They want to keep him for observation for a while, though. McNally's still in surgery, but that means she's not dead, so everybody's a little more relieved than we probably should be."

And it's something they're all doing, he notices. Swarek, and Best, and himself, subconsciously, they're referring to the fallen by their last names, like putting three inches of distance between them will make any of this easier.

"We should get back out there," she says, twisting her right knee to angle towards the door.

"You can, um-" and of course his swallow would be audible, because nothing can ever be easy, "I'll be there in a second."

There's an exact moment when he knows she's pissed, that's she's disappointed. Unfortunately, it's a second too late and she's already grabbing his shoulder to spin him around.

"It's Chris and Andy, Dov. I'm pretty sure staring at your reflection and hyperventilating won't help them."

Anger within their little group has always been as contagious as the colds they passed around when they spent twelve hour days together at the academy.

"That's pretty rich coming from you, Peck, because last time I checked neither of them had exactly made your top ten people I give a crap about list."

"And last time I checked Chris was your best friend."

"He is."

"Then act like it. Because you're best friends are lying in hospital beds and something isn't right."

It makes him sick again, makes him dry heave into the sink for a few seconds, because his best friends are dropping like flies and he can't even do anything. She's right, it's too much of a coincidence and it makes him want to shoot something. And he doesn't even want to figure out how much time it will take to figure this out, to go through case files and incident reports, to see who exactly would have a grudge against the most earnest of the group.

When he's done, and his breathing is close to normal, he glances back up at the blonde, because she wouldn't still be here if she didn't have something else to say. Gail views throwing up the same way she views crying: as a weakness.

"C.S.U found traces of peanut oil on the stack of cups, and on the cup he was drinking from after his refill, but not on any of ours."

She waits for a reaction, and when he doesn't offer one she sighs, makes her point a little more obvious.

"Which implies, to us police officers and detectives, that someone who knew Chris-" he flinches back at the name, but she doesn't seem to notice, "was allergic to peanuts waited until everyone had a cup, waited until they heard he was going back for another one, and then laced them with peanut oil."

The realization makes his breath catch, the jumbled pieces connecting to make a blurry picture of something slightly more disturbing than the bullet wound in Andy's chest and the tube in Chris' throat. He forces his eyes up, looks her straight in the eye.

"They were here, right in front of us."

She doesn't answer, instead just turns again, and says, "We should go now."

The reluctance is, improbably, even more defined now. An insistence down to his bones that he doesn't move, that he stays right there.

Gail has always sighed like it's the end of the world, like it's breaking her somehow. It's no different this time. "Look, I know that after everything things have been a little strained, but, Dov, you and I both know that when it comes to Chris, not having him isn't an option."

She spins on her heel, then, lets the door swing shut behind her.

She's right and Dov kind of wishes they had never gotten out of bed this morning.

00099000

As respiratory attacks go, this isn't the worst Chris' had, but it isn't exactly a picnic.

He wakes up slowly, feeling like he got hit by a truck that decided to reverse before running back over him. The tube isn't immediately obvious, but his ability to inhale is severely compromised and he's a detective so it doesn't take him long. When he finally does peel his eyes open, Traci's standing so close to him that it really does take a massive amount of effort not to flinch back.

"Hey, Chris? Epstein, can you hear me? Chris? Oh jeez, can allergic reactions make you deaf? How can he be a cop if he's deaf, he'll never know if he's being shot at. Oh shit, that was really insensitive-"

He's pretty sure she'll run out of breath sooner or later, but he'd really rather it be sooner because almost suffocating apparently produces a headache that makes him nauseous. Fortunately, Oliver appears miraculously from a chair in the corner to tell her as much.

"He's fine, Nash, but I'm pretty sure his squinting can be interpreted as 'please, please shut the hell up and stop mothering me before I off myself'." He smirks, but there's something soft around the edges of it, and Traci inhales, breathes out a: "Little too soon there, jeez, Oliver."

He laughs, something relaxing around his mouth, and says, "Seriously though, kid, don't move. I'm going to go get a nurse or something."

There's a word for this, he knows, when the squeak of Oliver's shoes on the tile triggers a memory. It's hazy and distorted, a nametag and a flash of brunette curls, but the feeling low in his gut proves there's a reason for it.

But the edges of his vision begin to fade black again, and Traci's sitting in the seat Oliver was in reading a magazine, and the morphine is really, really good, so he figures it can wait.

00099000

Swarek's in an empty waiting room on the second floor, nursing a bottle of water and a bruised ego about getting kicked out of the surgical hallway. Peck's sitting across from him on a couch, next to a detective he vaguely recognizes from the bullpen. And yeah, so Dov's a coward, but he'd rather sit down here then upstairs where he'd have to talk and apologize and stop himself from gagging on stomach acid.

The water bottle is unopened, which yeah makes sense considering there's someone out there poisoning open drinks, but Sam is twisting his palm against the top like he keeps forgetting he doesn't want to open it.

Dov falls into the chair to the left of Sam, closer to Gail.

The floor to ceiling windows to his right give a picture perfect view of the sunrise, and he considers watching that instead of listening to Sam repeat what happened on Crawford, but the glare threatens to bring back his headache full force. So he turns his attention back, and watches the way Peck's shoulders keep tensing under her white jacket.

00099000

The second time he wakes up Traci is still in the corner, but she's on the phone.

She turns sharply on her heel, a palm coming up to scrub at her forehead, until she catches his gaze and hangs up with a quick: 'I'll call you later.' She looks slightly relieved, though, so he calls it a win and gestures her over.

"Hey, sorry for the slight freak-out, I guess I'm just on edge, ya know. None of this seems to be an accident. Swarek tried to literally fight his way to the door of Andy's operating room, which by the way didn't work. And I needed an ID to even enter your room. It's crazy. I mean they seriously don't prepare you for stuff like this in the Academy."

And really, that's all it takes.

She's moving to click the call button on the side of his bed, satisfied with her rant, when it hits him, when the image seared into the back of his eyelids clears up enough to be distinguishable and she's forced to jump back when he flings his arm out for the pad of paper on the nightstand hard enough to knock over an entire jug of water.

00099000

"Sam I'm telling you, there's a connection there has to be, I mean what are the chances that two cops have to be hospitalized."

This has been going on for a solid fifteen minutes, and it's obvious to everyone but Gail, apparently, that Swarek really isn't even listening to her, is just responding to the anger in her voice.

"Peck, look, I get it okay, and we're going to get the bastard, or bastards, whatever, but right now my rookie's in surgery and-"

As is the apparent running trend of today, Dov catches the flash a second too late, and only does so because he's growing bored of this recycled argument neither side seems to be paying attention to. His first instinct, because Chris isn't here and isn't that screwed up, is to reach for Gail. To wrap his hand around her wrist, and just pull.

But he doesn't get the chance because it's already too late, and because she's not the target anyway. The bullet leaves a nice circular hole in the forehead of the detective next to her, and enough brain on the floor for him to start to dry heave again.

The first instant no one moves, no one breathes or talks or closes their open mouths. Gail's phone rings, and because no one's moving or breathing or saying anything, she flips it open, says hello like she's expecting it to be Best.

Then she leans over the arm of her chair and throws up all over a potted plant.

Chapter Text

I take credit for the great bastardization of hospital protocol, police work, and the random appearance of characters I see as both Zoe Saldana and Sean Faris, respectively, in my head.

I don't own, otherwise it'd be mysterious and romance interspersed with violent vendettas all the time.

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So, here's the thing:

She has every right to hate them, to want them dead and buried six feet underground. To play like Achilles' and drag their corpses around the city for days on end.

She shot the hell out of Andy, and sabotaged a coffee cup with freaking peanut oil, but really, who can blame her?

After all, they did ruin her life.

-o-

In reality she was already halfway to revisiting her breakfast after detective what'shername loses most of the grey matter in her head, but she barely has time to get through oh sh- before the phone is ringing.

It's not the voice that tips her off, not the actualwords anyway, but instead the certain tilt of her speech. The soft roll around her vowels, a part of the country girl she couldn't ever completely abolish. The slight tip of her tone used to annoy the hell out of Peck. (Not that everything about the girl hadn't made Gail want to strangle her with a pair of socks, but in hindsight that had probably somehow contributed to them ending up here, in afreaking second floor waiting room with two-fifths of them in hospital beds and another cop's brains on the floor.

It's beginning to be a touchy subject.)

It doesn't happen when she says 'sup Peck', or when she asks 'remember me?', and even though she probably should, it doesn't even occur to Peck to do anything but clench her jaw when she clicks her tongue and says 'really now Gail, I figured you would have solved this riddle by now. Has someone lost her touch?'

Gail doesn't even consider throwing up through any of it. It's nothing, a bitch with a grudge and a sniper rifle. She's taken down more with less before, and then a breathy chuckle filters through the line, followed by a slightly fuzzy 'Oh, and Peck, sweetheart, didn't I call dibs on Chris? You're just a traitorous bitch all around then, huh?' It's sing song, like a joke no one else knows the punch line for.

The line clicks dead and then, and only then, does Gail bend in half and try to focus solely on not getting anything on Dov's shoes.

-o-

Gail has blood on her sweater.

Gail has blood all over her crisp white sweater and her face; her palm is still sticky-wet from when she placed it flat on the table before she'd started gagging.

Gail has blood on her sweater when she looks Dov straight in the eye and says over the blaring of the lock-down warning, 'Traci is going to have a field day telling us she told us so.'

-o-

Traci at least waits until the nurse yanks the tube out of his throat to respond to the hastily scribbled note he passed her. She's been standing in the same spot for five minutes, and she doesn't even glance up when the nurse tells him that his throat will be sore; that he should try not to talk for a while still. She waits until ten minutes after the door closes, and then promptly loses her shit.

"I told you. I told all of you that this wouldn't end well, but you guys said 'oh no, Trac, don't worry everything will work out, okay? We just have to get our story straight, and I'm sure the crazy bitch will find somewhere else to use her crazy eyes-"

It's here that Chris tries to scrawl that he's pretty sure Peck was the one who said that last part, and he had kind of been stupid in love with her back then so he can't be blamed for his actions, okay, but Traci's on a roll and she's already pulling the pad of paper out of his hand. An alarm blares, something about a lock down, and Chris makes a gesture, as if to say well, she is crazy, but aborts it halfway through, because he really does like his fingers.

(They should probably be panicking more than this, but they're all adrenaline junkies. It makes them shitty rookies on paper, but it allows them to have normal conversations in the midst of complete chaos.)

She's still got the other sheet crumpled in her palm, damp with the water they have yet to clean off the floor, and the inks running, staining her fingers blue where they're not red from how tight her fists are clenched.

"No, I know what you're going to say, and I don't care. We're in a lock-down Chris. Hospitals don't take those lightly, which means that something is really, really wrong. Andy's in the OR, and you had to have a tube shoved down your throat, and I'm only asking because I like to have some sort of plan before the shit hits the fan, but are you sure it's her?"

He knows all of this already, and he realizes that it's common sense to air on the side of caution with someone's memory after they've been poisoned, but he's sure. He's abso-fucking-lutely positive, and he's just reaching out for the notepad to write that down when Traci's phone rings.

She picks it up without flinching, and that's more than Chris can say for himself, so he ignores the fact that she's still glaring at him.

"Gail, please tell me that Swarek punched a doctor and that the lock down is just a precaution."

There's a long awful moment where Chris can hear her talking on the other line, and Traci's jaw clenches like it did that time she punched Dov.

Peck has horrible phone skills. She always talks too loud and too fast, and Traci hits speakerphone, and turns to pace.

"-but seriously, she sounds pissed, Trac."

Chris shifts half out of bed to pull his pants on because this seems like a situation he should be properly dressed for, and Traci tracks the movement with her eyes before glancing back to the phone in her hand.

"Are you sure it's her?"

Gail takes a deep breath, and then Dov's talking, loud like he only does when he's panicking.

"It's her, guys, who the hell else could it be? We ruined her life. It's not like we didn't hear the stories. Job, family, friends; that's a lot to lose for something she didn't exactly do. Did we really all think she'd let it go?"

Everything shifts sharply into focus, because yeah, she lost her life because of them, for them, and it's not like she wasn't batshit crazy to begin with.

An eye for an eye and just for a second, Chris is blind.

-o-

Swarek's not paying attention.

Swarek's watching a doctor press his hand to Detective Walsh's neck, and Dov and Gail whisper secretively in a corner while she tries to wipe blood from her hands onto a wad of napkins. Swarek can see some nurse try to scope brains off the floor with a rag and bucket. And he's listening to his radio crackle shots fired like he would be expected to be anywhere else but right there.

He is listening, and watching, and making snide observations, but he's not paying attention because Andy's in an OR during a lock-down, and something is just not right. (In a couple days, when this is all over, he'll have to look Walsh's husband or mother or sister in the eye and tell them he did everything he could to save her life. It's kind of sick if you stop to think about it, which he won't because he's not paying attention to anything but the thump of his own pulse and the speck of blood on his third knuckle.)

Suddenly, out of nowhere like he's been prone to do, Best appears at his elbow.

"What the hell happened up here, Sam?"

"I don't know, really. There's a bullet hole in that window over there, though."

Best's boots squeak as he moves to inspect the bullet sized opening in the glass pane. Swarek turns away from him, realizing Oliver and Noelle are wandering their way through other officers until they reach him. They're silent, shell-shocked, but something is off. He can feel it. "I mean one second I'm sitting there", and he nods his head in the direction of chairs, "listening to Peck bitch about some conspiracy theory, and the next, bam. I didn't even see it coming."

He squints, pauses and Jerry, who's on the other side of the small table across from them, trying to look like he isn't relieved it wasn't Traci's dead body on the floor, looks up, attention caught by the question in Sam's voice.

"Epstein, though, he saw it, almost like he was expecting it. And then after, with Peck and that phone call? I thought it was one of you, or maybe Chris, but I mean she isn't Epstein, something huge would have had to happen to make her respond like that." He's thinking out loud now, not making sense to anyone but himself.

And that's it, the missing piece, so he stands up trying to find the blonde head of their rookie. He takes a step forward, though, when his search turns up empty because he thought he just heard-

He side-steps a couple uniforms, and hears a shuffle behind him. He knows them, knows they probably think he's crazy because he's witnessed two seemingly random attacks, but they're not random, none of them were.

"-and Sherry calls me, says she's stuck in some room with that cop that got poisoned or something. And apparently, there's this knock on the door, and they just open it. And then they just up and leave with the people who knocked. I mean, really, I've seen this episode on Grey's Anatomy, and that's how people die."

It's two nurses, their backs turned to him, but that's all he really needs, and everything just clicks. So he turns back around, and everyone's staring at him like he's lost his mind. Which, yeah, emotional stability isn't high on his list when Andy's got a bullet in her chest, but this is different.

"Sam, buddy, what's going on?" Oliver has put his hands at waist level, palms up, like he's trying to calm a jumper, and seriously Swarek is not that bad.

"Peck and Epstein. Nash and Diaz. They're all up to something. I think Peck was trying to tell me something, and then after," he gestures vaguely to the chaos in the waiting room, "someone calls her, and they just disappear. Nash and Diaz are gone, too. I feel like something big is going down. I think all of this is about them."

None of them really look impressed with his theory, and Best says as much. "Look, our rookies don't exactly have the nicest track record, but all of this is a little extreme, don't ya think? I mean, you're saying you think someone is trying to kill them off? Swarek, no one is that stupid."

And, yeah, he could be exaggerating. He could be trying to rationalize all this craziness away, but then someone to his right clears his throat.

He's another rookie from another precinct, Swarek thinks. Recognizes him from a bust a couple months back when jurisdiction had been a bitch. His name's Levitt. Corey Levitt.

"Hey, I don't mean to interrupt, but I couldn't help but overhear, and I think there's something you guys should know."

Levitt looks like he would be smirking if he wasn't so intimidated, and everyone stays silent, lets him continue from curiosity or courtesy.

"I was in training camp with them, all six of them, for a couple weeks." He doesn't even get the chance to say anything before Jerry is raising his eyebrow.

"There's five not six, so if you'd excuse us, we have some actual-"

This time Levitt truly does smirk, and Swarek's going be really pissed if he has to spend time prying Jerry's hands from around the kids throat in the near future. A couple other rookies shift behind Levitt, like they're thinking the same thing, and wildly, Swarek wonders if it wasn't just the ones at his precinct, if maybe all the kids in that class came out crazy.

"Before, though, there were six. Laura Hitchens. She was kicked out with, like, two and half weeks left. There were some rumors that she'd been set-up, just whispers. But that, bitch-" And he's not laughing anymore, looks so serious that even Best is listening.

"Now, that bitch is crazyenough to kill us all, and probably get away with it."