Twenty-four hours earlier...

“Put it down,” Elliot said, his voice firm and steady as it broke the silence, his eyes somehow making out the large figure opposing him. Taking a deep breath, he signalled to Olivia with a slight nod, praying silently, desperately–as he always did in situations like this–that they would both go home after this, safe and sound.

The gun in front of him shook as the man holding it burst into a sadistic howl of laughter. “Nice try, asshole,” came the low, gruff voice. “But she ain’t gonna do nothin.”

“I wouldn’t count on that, Martin.” His voice was still calm as Olivia inched into place, her shadow moving against the wall. She slid in expertly across from Elliot, effectively cornering their perp against the far wall of the large office.

There was a click.

“I’ve got you, El,” Olivia whispered, her voice as calm and as steady as his. With her gun pointed and readied, she took a few seconds to scan the rest of the office. Work station after work station loomed under bright lights, and Olivia briefly wondered how they had managed to get all of the office’s employees out so quickly when there were so many obstructions in the way.

Scattered chairs.

Broken desks.

Shattered glass.

Everywhere.

Mark Martin had been as fierce and as destructive as a tornado during his rampage to find his latest victim–twenty year old Talia Watts–who interned in the now destroyed office. Talia was the first in a line of victims who were in the same age range as Kathleen and Maureen Stabler, and both Elliott and Olivia had been following his trail for months.

Months.

And they couldn’t find him.

And the one other girl who had lived through her attack had been too altered to give them any descriptions.

So he continued to hunt his prey.

But Talia–blonde, intelligent, and ambitious–had stepped up. Two hours earlier, she’d identified Mark Martin through pictures. Then she’d gone straight to work while Elliot and Olivia–relieved to have a new path to follow in their search–began the hunt for their perp.

But Mark Martin–in what was likely an effort to silence Talia– had gotten to her...and to them...first.

Talia’s panic-filled words echoed clearly in Olivia’s mind, just as if the girl was making her frantic phone call all over again.

“He-he’s he-here, Olivia. Oh my God...I-I see him. He’s in the office! Olivia! Please help me. He’s here!”

And he was still there.

Standing with fire and fury in his cold eyes.

Olivia’s gun never wavered; she’d seen the eyes of a killer so many times now that she could read them, and Martin’s eyes told her that he wasn’t entirely satisfied. Talia could still be alive, she told herself silently. She might have left the building before he got here. She might have slipped out when we evacuated.

Wishful thinking.

In this job, it usually was.

Martin took a step closer to Olivia, causing Elliot to close in. “We’ve got back up in the hall, Martin. You’re not getting out of here. Drop the gun!”

“You think I’m that damn stupid?” Martin shook his head, his sadistic smile growing.

Elliot shook his head quickly, fiercely. “No! No, I think you’re smart. You’ve been fooling a whole lot of people for months, so I think you’re smart enough to realize that it’s over.”

Martin laughed again–a hard, satisfied cackle–shaking his head. To Elliot and Olivia’s surprise, he slowly moved the gun, pointing it at himself. The barrel pressed into his chest before wandering spastically to the side of his head.

“I’m smart, huh?” He cackled again, and Olivia felt her stomach flip. Something felt very wrong, all of a sudden–if anything could be any more wrong than the situation they were already in.

“Drop it, Martin! You don’t want to do this!” Olivia commanded. She took a step closer.

“You think I’m smart?” Martin went on, pressing the gun harder into his temple. “Well whoever went and told ya that wasn’t shittin’ you. And I got news for you...I thought you were smart. Smart enough to go and work yer little asses off to find out just a little bit more ‘bout me.”

Before Elliot or Olivia could respond, Martin pulled the trigger.

---

Elliot pressed the elevator call button, his eyes glued to the floor. Beside him, Olivia stood in silence, her lips pressed together in thought. Behind him, uniformed officers and the coroner worked to clean up the messy scene, where only five minutes earlier, Elliot and Olivia had been facing a gun. Now they were facing the reality of what had just happened.

“He just...killed himself,” Olivia finally muttered, as the elevator arrived. “He just... pulled the trigger like it wasn’t a big deal at all. It was his plan all along, wasn’t it?”

Elliot rubbed his temples. “I don’t know, Liv.”

She continued to process the events, knowing deep down that something was off and wanting desperately to find out what that ‘something’ was. Martin’s last words were especially troubling to her as they bounced furiously through her brain.

“What the hell was that supposed to mean?” she said, knowing that Elliot was on the same page. “He didn’t say that just to piss us off, El; he said that for a reason.”

“I know,” Elliot sighed. “And I’m sure that’s why Cragen wants us outside, right now.”

Olivia nodded as they slipped into the elevator. “We need to find Talia.”

Elliot pressed the button for the ground floor. “The uniforms think she’s safe. One said they saw her in the stairwell as they evacuated.”

“But we don’t know if she left the building.”

“Well as long as she was on her way downstairs, then I think we’re okay. We know where Martin was during the evacuation, and Talia wasn’t there. He didn’t get to her first. We would have seen it in his eyes.”

“I want to make sure,” Olivia breathed.

“I know, and we will.” His hand came to rest on her shoulder, squeezing it gently. “Let’s just go outside, debrief, and...take a second to breathe. Chances are good she’s out there waiting for us.”

“Yeah...”

The elevator doors opened and Elliot and Olivia found themselves in the small lobby, where about a dozen people were hard at work.

“They only evacuated the one office,” Olivia said, not as a question, but as a realization. Her voice held an element of uncertainty, of uneasiness.

Elliot shrugged. “Martin knew where he was going and we knew where he was. Guess no one thought it was necessary. Liv...you okay?”

She shook her head hard, as if to force the strange, icy feeling out of her body. “Yeah, I uh, I’m fine. I just...”

“Feel like you need the rest of the story?” he finished for her.

“Exactly. The sooner the better.”

He was about to assure her that they would get it, but their radios came to life, Munch’s voice piercing the odd quiet of the small building. As Elliot reached for his radio, Olivia looked up, noticing that the glass atrium reached up to the top of the eight story building, letting the sun shine through and play across the shiny tiled floor of the lobby. Briefly, she wondered why she felt thankful that they were in what had to be one of the smallest office buildings on the outskirts of New York City, before realizing that Munch was urgently spewing words through the radio:

“Olivia, Elliot. Just visited Martin’s humble abode...and it’s not so humble. Let’s put it this way really quickly: our guy’s not only a rapist; he knows how to make bombs. Big ones. Get out of there!”

Whatever colour was left in Olivia’s cheeks drained before she could take her next breath.

Everything clicked.

Martin’s plan involved a hell of a lot more than silencing Talia.

The psycho was going to silence all of the people looking for him.

“Oh God, that’s it,” she whispered, as Elliot grabbed her arm with one hand and dragged her over to the fire alarm. “We’ve gotta get everybody out,” she said, forcing herself to stay calm.

But Elliot was already on it. With one hand he pulled the alarm and with the other, he led her over to the staircase, dodging the uniformed officers who were now dashing through the lobby to complete the same mission.

Olivia broke away from her partner as a surge of adrenaline pushed her into action. With Elliot on her heels, she ran up the stairs to the mezzanine and began shouting to anyone in her path.

“You need to leave the building!” she heard herself call out, confidence in her tone, in her movements–but not in her heart. “Leave! Now!”

Elliot was doing the same, and Olivia found it frighteningly odd that the faster they dashed around the second floor, their hearts thumping wildly, the slower it all seemed to happen.

They were running down the north hall, when the first blast shook the floor.

It came from above...from roughly the sixth floor...where they’d cornered Martin.

Debris rained down, pelting the floor unforgivingly.

Screams and smoke filled the air.

The sound of frantic people running thundered from the lobby below.

Olivia felt sick to her stomach but she pushed herself forward, forcing her feet into action.

“Stay next to me!” Elliot yelled to her, as he pushed her towards the closest emergency exit.

Stay next to me!

Stay next to me!

She did as his echoing voice asked, staying close to his side as she ran, but she shook her head adamantly.

“No! We can’t leave!” she shouted, leading him past the stairs and towards a group of people at the end of the hall. “Move it! Get out!” she called to them, waving her arms. The group of people–frozen in fear–did nothing but call back to her for help.

“Dammit, El, let’s get these people out of here!”

Elliot nodded, sweat now pouring down his face, his eyes blinking rapidly in the thickening smoke.

But as they moved to run down the hall, another blast–closer, more powerful–knocked them off their feet.

Olivia was thrown against the wall, her head impacting violently.

And then there was blackness.

A thick, powerful fog.

She wasn’t sure if it was a brief moment of unconsciousness or the billowing smoke–or a mixture of both–but she was very aware of Elliot’s arms reaching to grab her, to pull her to her feet.

“Liv! Liv!” He sounded distraught, like he had that day in the subway, when the blood had been flowing from her throat, seeping through her fingers...

“I’m okay,” she whispered, “I’m...okay.” Breathlessly, she took a few wobbly steps and then burst into a run, Elliot at her side.

But at the end of the hall there was nothing. Where the group of people had been standing, there was a pile of debris–one that was getting bigger by the second.

They stopped, panting, hearts racing, minds reeling.

“Dammit,” Olivia muttered, letting Elliot immediately pull her back the other way. She tried to suck in a breath, but the smoke was too thick and she coughed, gasping for air.

“Stairs–stairs sh–should be just ahead,” Elliot said through his own gasps. “We have–have to get out.”

She didn’t argue.

“I can’t see anything,” she said, feeling his hand on hers. She grasped it, holding it tightly, feeling the comfort of his presence in the dark.

“Just hold on,” he said to her, as they turned a corner.

They were met with less smoke, but with more debris.

Raining debris.

Wood.

Plaster.

Glass.

Water.

Rain of all sorts.

Everything was falling.

Surrounding them.

Olivia swallowed back the lump of fear in her throat. “Which way?”

He squeezed her hand as they both realized that the way they had come was now blocked.

The building was falling apart around them.

“There were two bombs, El,” Olivia whispered. “There could be more.”

He didn’t reply to that. Instead, he took a moment to steady himself and said: “There’s got to be another stairwell down the west hall. Let’s go.”

But again, they met wreckage.

“Shit!” Elliot’s curse was followed immediately by a cough.

Olivia closed her eyes against the stinging smoke and then re-opened them, a new feeling of determination filling every part of her.

“We’re running out of time,” she said, as if she were calmly thinking out the situation in her head. “Where are the damn stairs?”

She paused, looking around, just as Elliot was doing.

“El...I don’t know which way to go.”

Slowly, she turned to meet his gaze.

And as soon as she did, everything started to slip away.

The world became quiet and still.

Her stomach dropped to her toes.

And then everything exploded.

---

Long minutes passed.

Five and then ten.

The fallen building shuddered.

The silence broke as his shallow breaths filled the dark, tight space.

Raspy, desperate.

Even as Elliot cracked open one eye, he knew his world was different.

“Liv?”

The hoarse, broken sound of his voice scared him.

“Liv...talk to me!”

He sat up, his pain masked by his fear and the silence.

He heard nothing but the pounding in his ears and his quick, harsh breaths.

“Liv. Answer me. Olivia? Liv? Come on, Liv! Where are you?”

Blinking, he searched the darkness with wet eyes, and gasping, he forced his limbs to move under the beam that covered them. His scraped hands moved to force the beam away, his bloody fingers leaving trails on the wood.

“Please,” he begged. “Please, Liv. Be here. Be okay...”

He pushed the beam away, crying out in pain as his right leg moved.

“God...” He winced, trembling all over, cursing himself for thinking of his own pain when he had no idea where his partner was.

Olivia. Where are you? Talk to me. Come on, Liv.

He silently spoke to her as he dragged himself a few feet to the right. It was the only place he could go–the rest of the world had vanished into darkness, into beams, into wreckage.

He couldn’t look around him, as he was too afraid of what he would or would not find. He kept his eyes–slowly adjusting to the darkness–on the ground, searching desperately.

“Liv?”

His bloody fingers found her before his eyes could focus on her still form.

“Oh my God, Olivia...”

Frantically, he felt for her head, his hands coming to rest on her cheeks.

Her skin was cold, lifeless.

“Olivia, please...”

He found her neck, two fingers searching for a pulse.

He held his breath.

And searched.

And searched.

Nothing.

He moved his fingers and pressed harder.

He tried again.

And again.

But nothing.

He looked up, tears spilling from his eyes, his heart slowing to what felt like a stop.

And he begged.

And he prayed.

And just when he was ready to break down completely, his fingers felt something.

A beat.

And then another.

And then his own heart started beating again.

TBC

Author’s Note: Thank-you to everyone who reviewed the first chapter! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it! I would love to know what you think about the second chapter, and I will reply to any questions or feedback you might have!

Thanks!

Jazz