[for reid, dated 3/17]

[triskehale]

This can't be happening again. It was so stupid to think that Barry would be safe with Derek, that old patterns wouldn't repeat themselves. How could he have been so foolish as to think that he could open his heart up to someone like that again, and they wouldn't get hurt?

He rushes through a darkened alley, eyes red and fangs extended, and remembers what it was like to fight that copy of himself in that other Darrow. Your love is a curse, Derek.

The scent of Barry's blood stings his nostrils, and Derek thinks about finding it smeared across brick. All he found was that and Barry's scent, thick with anxiety and pain. Fear. Derek followed the trail until it ended, vanished into thin air.

It's horrible, so horrible to think, but at least the blood told him that Barry is most likely still here somewhere in the city. He may be somewhere that Derek can still reach him. Maybe he can fix this.

He needs Luke, and he needs Oliver. He needs anyone who could help, but first on his list is someone with a nose nearly as good as his. He's on his way to Luke's when he runs right past Reid, who smells like anger and grief, and Derek skids to a stop. Whirling around to face him, fangs and claws extended with eyes glowing red in the darkness, Derek feels his heart drop into his stomach. Reid looks awful, like he just lost his whole world.

"Reid," he rasps out around his fangs. "I was just going to get-- is Luke gone too?"

Comments

[triskehale]

Derek follows Reid into the apartment and can't even spare a smile for the dumb sweaters on the cats, as plagued with panic as he is. He frowns thoughtfully at Reid's question about Barry, wondering just how much he should say, when he's distracted by another bombshell. "Magnus too? Jesus. So they're taking supers."

But Reid does make a good point. There's definitely something of a pattern here, and Derek winces slightly when Reid asks him if he knows of anyone else that's been taken. He doesn't, and he feels the urge to shift and run out the door to check on the rest of his pack, but he forces himself to stay put. If it is supers that are being taken, most of his pack will be safe. Most of them are human.

"Uh, no. I've been a little distracted, I guess," Derek admits, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. He's been wrapped up in his new relationship, and hasn't been paying as much attention to what's going on around him. He feels the familiar swarm of guilt wrap around his insides, like he could have prevented this somehow.

"So, supers are being taken," Derek says out loud. That means he could also potentially be a target, but that doesn't matter to him right now. They can come for him all they want. "My first instinct is to say that it's the city's doing. Or something the city brought here. It has to be someone or something incredibly powerful to have taken Luke and Barry. And Magnus, for fuck's sake."

[youfeelluckypunk]

Supers.

That's the first time Reid has heard that phrase, but he supposes it's as good a term as any, whether the people being taken are superpowered or supernatural or one and the same. Ultimately, the most sickening thing is that if these supers are being collected for what they can do, one has to wonder what the ultimate goal is in the whole operation. To build an army? To find a genetic answer for how their powers work? To discover some way to replicate those powers in humans?

The thought of Luke being experimented on, being tortured in any way, brings him dangerously close to the now-familiar bout of nausea he's experienced so many times since he'd realized his boyfriend was gone. At the very least, though, once he's passed that initial point of thinking he might be sick, Reid frowns as something clicks within his mind.

"A couple weeks ago, there was a blackout, do you remember that? Had to do with these people who supposedly broke into the power plant, someone trying to-- to steal energy but caused himself to self-implode instead. Burned himself to a crisp, along with a few others, all of them missing IDs. A friend at the morgue told me they managed to figure out who most of them were, though, and they all worked at the same place." Pacing now, with Mister Purrkins following him back and forth while Russell merely stares at him with unbridled curiosity, Reid abandons the idea of coffee to track this sudden thread. "Same day, a member of the Seo syndicate was taken to the hospital, burns all over his body, like-- like maybe he was trying to take on whatever power that victim obviously had."

He has no idea whether Derek is understanding any of this, though he's talking aloud more for his own benefit than anything else as he attempts to piece together this puzzle, but Reid stops suddenly and looks at Derek with wide eyes.

"It had to be connected. All of it. Luke, Barry, Magnus, they were taken because someone wants to replicate their gifts. That has to be it."

[triskehale]

"I remember the blackout," Derek says, eyes shining for a moment before he squeezes them shut. "That was-- it was a good night for me."

It was actually one of the best nights that he's ever had. It was Barry's first time staying over for the night, and Derek's throat constricts at the memory. They had been so wrapped up in each other, and Derek convinced himself that it was just a fluke.

Of course they're connected. But to this day, Derek still turns away from any news about fire-related deaths. He doesn't want to hear about charred remains and unidentifiable corpses. He doesn't want to hear about what his family looked like after the fire.

"I heard about it," is all Derek says after Reid's done talking. Derek just stands there for a long moment, awash in grief and guilt all these all too familiar emotions that Barry overshadowed. He thinks of Barry's bright smile, his easy laugh, and feels sick to his stomach.

You're a curse, Derek.

"Sounds like a plot from a comic book," Derek says in a hollow voice. "But I'm pretty sure my boyfriend is actually from a comic book, so that isn't so strange."

He looks down at the cat and then up at Reid, doing his best to think through the thick haze of negative emotions trying to drag him down. "You said the victims all worked at the same place. Do you know what place it was?"

[youfeelluckypunk]

Reid wants to think more about good night. He wishes he could focus on that instead, nights like the one before Luke had been taken, when they'd read out of a book of poetry together before locking eyes and bring to life the words they'd been reciting to one another. Love is a place, cummings had written, and Reid has known for a long time where that place is for him. It's at Luke's side, it has been from the start, and without his boyfriend next to him, Reid is lost. He's drifting. Nothing feels right, and nothing will be until Luke is found.

"The KIRIN facility," Reid answers, pushing those thoughts from his mind. If he thinks about it, about how much he misses Luke, how much his heart aches for the man he loves, he knows he won't be able to focus the way he should. He hadn't been able to function properly when Maeve had gone missing but this is different. There's no BAU team to rely on, and Reid has never felt more alone.

"'Knowledge and Inspiration Reducing Inequality in our Nation,' are you familiar with it? They're very meticulous with their record-keeping, we've been trying to find any holes that might give us a reason to go in with a warrant but..." But they haven't found anything, and Reid wonders how it is that they've made such an enormous misstep now. "It makes sense that they'd be responsible for the disappearances, they're interested in people with powers from outside of Darrow but up until now, they've never given anyone a reason to suspect they'd take their research to this level."

[triskehale]

"I've never heard of it," Derek says with a shake of his head. Reid seems to be wanting to do things by the book, which Derek supposes makes sense in his line of work, but Derek doesn't have the patience for that. "Do you know where this place is? If, say, someone who doesn't necessarily need a warrant wanted to go check it out?"

[youfeelluckypunk]

Reid blinks at him, momentarily unable to comprehend the question because the answer seems so obvious, but then he lets out a short, humorless laugh. "Well, that's the thing. Derek, there is no getting a warrant, not for this group. Whatever they're doing, they're covering up their tracks, and they're doing it well. Someone has to stop them, and it has to happen before anyone else gets taken." Or worse, he thinks, but he's not going to put a voice to that thought. He can't.

Squaring his shoulders, he nods toward his desk, the one Luke had brought in to make Reid his own little corner of the apartment where he can do his work. "I have a few possible locations. If we work together, we can figure it out."