Chapter 17
4am Sunday

Spencer slowly swam back toward consciousness. Sarah he thought, as soon as he took control of his mind again.

I'm here. He felt/saw her then, in that special place they shared. You should wake up and talk to Morgan. We have time.

All right.

He slowly opened his eyes and blinked as an emergency room ceiling stubbornly refused to come into focus. After a moment a familiar head moved into his line of vision. "Morning sleepyhead." Morgan said. He turned toward the door. "He's awake."

"What happened?" Spencer asked. His head felt stuffed with cotton, and like it was deciding to have a headache.

"Your blood glucose dropped." Blake said as she came in the room. "As you well know the average human brain uses between 300 and 500 calories every twenty-four hours. The average Quadrainian brain uses between 400 and 600. However a Noble can require anywhere from double to quadruple that depending on the work being done. We can only assume that the same would apply to Earth "nobles" as well. Couple a lot of work with not having eaten in the past twelve hours and you knocked yourself into a hypoglycemic blackout. Did you have any indication that it was coming on?"

Spencer flopped back into the bed. He'd been shaking, he recalled, felt cold and nervous and anxious and confused. Tired and kind of queasy. "Now that I think about it. But I wasn't really paying attention. At the time." He'd been too busy trying to keep the atoms that made up air packed tightly enough to repel bullets. Kind of a non-trivial problem.

Blake nodded. "One of the chief duties of a Companion is to remind a Noble that they need to check in with their bodies and take care of themselves because then tend to get wrapped up in things and stop paying attention." She gave Morgan a pointed look.

"You're serious?" Morgan asked.

"At least when you're both in the field. Davis and Hotch are discussing it right now. Would you rather we assign someone new just to look after him?"

Morgan sighed noisily. "No. I'll do it. Heck, I do it anyway."

"Work with Eva to find out what to watch for."

"I know."

"How is everyone?" Spencer asked. He tried to sit up but the world dipped and spun.

Morgan gently pushed him back to the bed. "Stay until these bags empty." He nodded to where fluid, probably spiked with sugars, was dripping directly into Spencer's veins. "Everyone made it out."

"Sarah is just across the hall." Blake told him. "Dr. Marshall flew out from Ft. Detrick to look after her. She's in about the same boat, but they expect you both to make a full recovery and be out of here by noon. Morgan, Hotch and Eva have already been cleared."

"What about JJ, Will and Beth?" Spencer asked.

"Will is better off than they expected." Morgan said. "He took a good beating and is going to need to see the dentist, but it, uhhh, could have been a lot worse."

Spencer sighed. At least one of his friends had avoided that fate. "But JJ and Beth?"

"They'll recover." Blake said. "Well JJ will, she's strong. Beth is going to take more time."

"How did this happen?"

Blake shook her head. "I hate to speak ill of the dead but back when you guys first went up against this gang Erin was…well, there's no nice way to say it. She was drinking. And she didn't follow through."

"We were hunting Doyle." Morgan said. "Trying to cope without JJ, recovering from Emily, and that was right when Seaver left, so we were shorthanded to boot."

"Add it all up, and we dropped the ball." Blake said. "The Bureau thought they cleaned up the entire gang but they only cleared up the DC/Baltimore branch. They regrouped and came back wanting revenge."

"And we have not been keeping up on security, dotting all the eyes and crossing all the T's." Morgan said. "That's going to change. Hotch is already going on that warpath."

"Good." Spencer lay back and smiled as he realized he was starting to feel a bit better. "So now everyone on the team has been read into the Protocol?"

"Yep." Morgan said. "Garcia said that spending the week-end at the cabin with a hot alien princess makes you the king of all nerds." Blake swatted him. "Ow."

"Everyone's okay with them?" Spencer asked.

"If you mean has Rossi invited them over for one of his famous pasta feeds to tell their real story, then yes." Blake said. "If you mean is Sarah going to be irritated with Hotch calling her 'Ambassador' all the time? Probably."

"Blake, you've been studying their language." Morgan said. "What does the term gahana mean?"

Blake considered this for a moment. "The closest translation would be 'spoil-of-war', but the usage has a richer meaning. It refers to a moment of sweetness, a pure joy found during a time of travail that could only be found by going through the greater experience."

"And if it was used to refer to a person?"

"I'd say it meant love."

Spencer lay back and smiled. Gahana? He thought

You are. She replied.

Sometime later

Reid really didn't need a Companion, Morgan thought. Hell, he'd been taking care of not only himself but also his Mom since he was about ten. Even though he was nominally responsible now, thanks to Davis, he didn't really have to do anything 99% of the time. Most of the time this whole Special Gifts thing didn't even matter, Reid practiced in Sarah and Eva's living room, or in the building out at Goddard where Sarah and Eva worked, but he very rarely used any of his new skills. He was still their genius profiler, just as he had always been.

But every once and a while it came in handy. Like now when a team of Unsubs had been taking young women and there was one missing who happened to be pregnant to boot and if they didn't find her soon her chances were slim. They were chasing a member of the team, literally chasing on foot, and if he got away…

Morgan and the local LEO's were as hot on his tail as he could get but this kid was stupid fast. By the time he got around the corner the kid had already jumped in the back of a pick-up that was starting to drive away. "Stop!" Morgan yelled, pointing his gun at the back of the truck, but it was no use. They were going to…

The truck didn't drive away. Something grabbed it somehow, holding it in place as the back wheels spun rubber into the pavement. Morgan ran down and pointed his gun at the driver who was frantically trying to shift. "Hands where I can see them!" Morgan yelled. As soon as the Unsubs were well covered he reached in and turned the engine off.

A few minutes later, while the locals got the Unsubs into the cars he snagged a bottle of water from someone's trunk and turned to Reid, who had caught up with them. The younger officer was bent over, using a handkerchief to pinch off his nose. "Another one?"

"I need to learn to relax when I concentrate." Spencer replied. "It's not as bad as it used to be."

"Good." Morgan had taken to wearing black military style pants in the field, same kind he used to wear back in his cop days, for the large cargo pockets. Now he pulled out this ridiculously healthy protein barn. "Eat this."

Spencer shook his head. "No, I'm good. Actually I'm kind of…"

"…queasy?" They hadn't eaten since breakfast, hours ago, and holding the truck back against that much force was not exactly light. Being queasy was the first symptom Reid started to show when his blood sugar dropped. Morgan held out the bar and water again. "Eat."

Spencer checked his nose, sighed, and started in on the snack.

While his friend refueled his brain Morgan went to talk to the cops. They were standing around, staring mystified at the dug in streaks of rubber on the pavement. "Good thing his brakes locked up." Morgan commented, knowing that the brakes on the truck would be broke momentarily. "We got lucky there."

"Yeah." One of the cops said, clearly grateful at a simple explanation. "We did."

Good. Morgan looked over at Reid and nodded. They were not all back together, not by a longshot. But for now this was good.

.

And so ends part 1 of this story. Part 2, in which our heroes heal and have to deal with an even greater threat, will be written at some point in the future, but I am even now working on a completely different story which is coming along swimmingly. I hope you all will come along for that ride.

Once again much thanks to my magnificent Beta Readers REIDFANATIC, who puts up with Science Fiction for me and BlindTiger who puts up with fan fiction for me. I could not do this without them both.

Thank you all very much for reading. I promise Sarah and Eva will return for more.