Tolerance Book II

Chapter Seventy-Three: Pendulum of Doom

Voight Residence

A glance at the small electric clock on the bedside table made Jay sigh.  It was only twenty after two.  He had not been able to get any sleep since going to bed and realized he  probably wouldn't for the remainder of the early morning hours.  Too many thoughts vied for his attention, the main one being King.  Although Mouse had in fact been carrying out intermittent sweeps of the house for unwanted listening devices clearly they had been lax in their precautions.  The young man didn't doubt for a moment that the house had been bugged.  The thought that King had been in the very room he had come  to regard as his temporary sanctuary made him feel uneasy.  The man seemed to have almost supernatural powers and the proof of that was evidenced in the length of time he had evaded capture.  The investigation was ofter turning into one of the longest the Unit had ever been engaged in.   Months long investigations took their toll and Jay had seen the burgeoning signs of exhaustion amongst his friends and colleagues.  Constantly coming up short in their task did not sit well with anyone.  It tended to erode their confidence.  That however would never deter the Unit from pursuing their quarry and that in itself was a source of comfort.  The knowledge that King had somehow latched onto him as his primary focus still irked the young Detective.  He wondered, yet again, why he seemed to bring out the worst in some people.  He knew that even when they caught King, and he was certain they would, he was unlikely to provide a reasonable basis for such focus.  The inner workings of a Killers' mind were never fully deciphered and unanswered questions were part and parcel of the job but it was infinitely harder to accept no answers would be forthcoming when it was personal.  There was something else niggling at him however but Jay couldn't identify it.  He sensed something was very wrong.  His gut was telling him so.  Sighing in defeat he tossed the bedclothes aside and eased himself onto his feet, inwardly cursing the length of time it was taking his injuries to heal.  They would hinder him for some time to come.

Chicago Med

Will and Conor had expected to find the drunk man on the floor for they assumed he had fallen off the gutney. Will knew he had put up the guardrails before leaving the cubicle but it would not be the first time a patient, especially an inebriated one, had put the rails down.   Pulling back the curtains however revealed two things.  Firstly the patient wasn't on the floor and secondly he had pulled the offending fork out of his leg.   The second realization brought frowns to both medical professionals.  There was no resulting blood loss from the extraction.  Given where the fork had penetrated that didn't make sense.   The Surgeon shared a look with the redhead,  there was something very wrong here.   Will was trying to figure out what was going on.   He hadn't removed the mans' trousers for a closer examination of the wound as he was waiting for an x-ray to determine what was effected by the foreign object before deciding the best way to remove same.   The lack of blood when there should have been a profuse amount due to the forks' proximity to the femoral artery concerned him.  Clearly something else was going on here and even as he looked at Conor it dawned on him .......

Voight Residence

After a quick shower Jay dressed and headed slowly downstairs surprised to find the kitchen lit up.

"Coffee or hot chocolate? a fully dressed Voight greeted the young man.
"Coffee."
"Couldn't sleep either?" the Sergeant asked unnecessarily, keenly aware they couldn't talk openly.
"Nope."
"Going to check the fence out back after this.    Most of my repairs get done when I can't sleep," the older man noted as he prepared their usual mugs.
"Need some help?" Jay knew they would be free to talk out in the open.
"Never refuse an extra pair of hands," the Sergeant accepted the offer as he poured the boiling water into the waiting mugs before delivering one to his guest after adding the requisite amount of milk.