Chapter 16: THE PHARMACIST
The coordinates led to an abandoned greenhouse complex on the outskirts of Baltimore County. I arrived behind the tactical convoy, parking my car among the collection of FBI vehicles that had transformed the rural road into a staging ground for controlled violence.
Jack Crawford stood at the command vehicle, radio in hand, directing teams with the precision of a general preparing for battle. The greenhouse structures rose behind him—glass and metal frames gone green with neglect, the kind of place that had once grown flowers and now grew something else entirely.
"Mikaelson." Jack acknowledged my arrival with a curt nod. "Forensic support only. You stay behind the line until tactical clears."
"Understood." I found a position near Beverly's evidence van, watching the teams move into position around the largest greenhouse. "What's the situation?"
"Stammets is inside. Has a victim—female, still alive based on thermal imaging. He's been preparing another burial site." Jack's jaw tightened. "We got here in time. Barely."
The coffee with Beverly felt like days ago, though only hours had passed. The Stammets case had accelerated faster than I'd expected—my presence creating ripples I couldn't fully track. In the show, this confrontation had played out differently. Abigail Hobbs had been Stammets's target. Here, the butterfly effects had shifted something.
Will Graham emerged from one of the tactical SUVs, moving with the careful steps of someone approaching their own execution. His face was blank, prepared for the psychological violence to come. Jack had called him in to talk Stammets down—use that remarkable empathy as a weapon, as always.
"Graham's going in?" I asked Beverly, who had appeared at my elbow.
"Jack's idea. Stammets is a true believer—thinks he's doing something beautiful. Will's supposed to make him feel understood." Her voice carried a note of something between admiration and concern. "It usually works."
"And when it doesn't?"
"Then tactical handles it the other way."
We watched Will approach the greenhouse entrance, unarmed, unarmored, carrying nothing but the ability to become someone else's nightmare. The tactical teams held position, weapons ready, waiting for either surrender or disaster.
My Danger Awareness hummed at low frequency—not the screaming alarm of Hannibal's presence, but a persistent awareness of violence coiled and waiting. Stammets was dangerous, but not in the way Hannibal was dangerous. He was a true believer, as Beverly said. Someone who thought death could be transformed into connection, burial into rebirth.
Will disappeared inside the greenhouse. Radio silence stretched into minutes.
I found myself counting heartbeats, a habit I'd developed since transmigration. Grounding myself in physical reality when psychological pressure threatened to overwhelm. One hundred twelve beats before the radio crackled to life.
"He's surrendering." Jack's voice, controlled but relieved. "Victim is alive. Paramedics, move in."
The next hour was controlled chaos. Paramedics extracted a woman in her thirties—dehydrated, terrified, but breathing—from the burial site Stammets had prepared for her. FBI agents led the pharmacist himself out in handcuffs, his expression not defeated but satisfied. He'd been understood. Someone had seen his work and recognized its meaning.
That someone was Will Graham, who stood at the edge of the scene looking like he'd been hollowed out from the inside.
I approached carefully, giving him space, stopping at a distance that wouldn't trigger his defensive instincts. The greenhouse behind us was being processed now, evidence teams documenting the prepared graves, the fungal cultures, the patient architecture of a madman's garden.
"You saved her," I said quietly.
Will's voice came flat, empty. "I let him in my head. He's still there."
"That's how it works. You connect with them to understand them."
"I don't just connect." He turned slightly, not quite looking at me but acknowledging my presence. "I become them. For the time it takes to understand, I am them. And then they never fully leave."
I thought about the warehouse in Locust Point, the murder I'd witnessed through Scene Reading, the victim's terror that still surfaced sometimes in nightmares. I understood—not perfectly, but enough.
"We don't have to carry them alone," I said.
Will's laugh was bitter, brief. "That's a lie we tell ourselves. Everyone carries alone. The difference is whether you know you're doing it."
He walked away before I could respond, heading toward his car with the hunched shoulders of someone bearing invisible weight. I watched him go, filing the conversation away with all the other data points I was accumulating about Will Graham's psychological state.
He was worse than I'd expected. The empathy that made him valuable to Jack Crawford was actively destroying him, and he knew it, and he couldn't stop. Hannibal Lecter would find those cracks and work them wider, turning a damaged man into a weapon against himself.
Unless I found a way to be the genuine support Hannibal would only pretend to offer.
Beverly appeared at my side. "He always like that after?"
"I think so. Does anyone check on him?"
"Jack gives him space. Alana Bloom tries to help. Nothing seems to stick." She shook her head. "Some people can't be reached."
"Everyone can be reached. Just takes finding the right door."
She studied me for a moment—that assessing gaze I was learning to recognize as Beverly processing new information. "You sound like you've thought about this."
"I think about a lot of things."
"Including Will Graham specifically?"
I considered the question. Honesty seemed like the right approach, within limits. "He reminds me of people I knew before. Talented people who burned out because no one helped them manage the cost of their gifts."
"The accident changed your perspective on that?"
"The accident changed a lot of things."
We stood in silence while the scene was processed around us. The evening had turned cold, October air carrying the promise of winter. I hadn't noticed the temperature drop while the confrontation was happening—adrenaline and focus narrowing the world to immediate concerns.
Now, with Stammets in custody and the victim on her way to the hospital, the cold seeped in. I pulled my jacket tighter, watching my breath mist in the darkness.
"The stars are different out here," Beverly said unexpectedly.
I looked up. Away from Baltimore's light pollution, the Maryland sky showed constellations I hadn't really noticed since transmigrating. Same patterns. Different context. The same stars I'd grown up learning in my old life, now witnessed through borrowed eyes in a borrowed world.
"They're exactly the same," I said. "That's the strange part."
Beverly gave me an odd look but didn't push for explanation. "Come on. Jack wants preliminary forensics before we break for the night. You can stare at the sky after the paperwork's done."
I followed her toward the evidence van, leaving the stars behind but carrying the observation with me. Some things stayed constant across impossible transitions. The sky. The fundamental nature of violence. The way damaged people needed help they couldn't ask for.
The question was whether I could use those constants to change what should have stayed the same.
Will's car was already gone when I finally finished the preliminary reports. He'd driven away without saying goodbye—not rudeness, just the exhausted isolation of someone who'd spent too much of himself on strangers' darkness.
I drove home through empty Maryland roads, thinking about pharmacists who dreamed of gardens and profilers who couldn't escape the minds they visited. Different forms of the same problem: consciousness trapped in places it was never meant to go.
The Ripper was still out there, wearing Hannibal's face, building plans that would consume everyone I was learning to care about. Will Graham would be his primary target. Beverly would die investigating him. Jack Crawford would lose everything chasing him.
And I was the only one who knew. The only one who could see the trap before it closed.
Somewhere ahead, Hannibal Lecter was probably preparing dinner, selecting ingredients from his special freezer, composing the next movement of his symphony of death. Our dinner together had established mutual recognition—we were both players now, watching each other across a board no one else could see.
I'd survived the first test. More would follow.
The apartment welcomed me with familiar shadows and the lingering smell of morning coffee. I made more—it was going to be a long night of documentation and planning—and sat at my desk with the Stammets case files and my private notebook.
Tomorrow would bring new cases, new opportunities to build connections and gather intelligence. But tonight, I let myself feel the weight of what I was trying to do.
Change the future. Save the people who mattered. Catch a monster who had never been caught this early in the timeline.
No pressure at all.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them . No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1