Criminal Minds 1. The Beginning

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Criminal Minds. If I did, Reid would be the main character of each and every episode, and "angst" would be the word of the day--- every day.

**Author Note:** My first fic. I'm proud of this, and I am just learning the ropes of this site, so be patient with me. Reviews would be greatly appreciated! 

The case began as most of them did: the team sitting around in the conference room, in varying states of composure and attitude.

Morgan, possibly one of the best cops on the team and an infinite Casanova in his off-time, was lounging in a chair on the far end of the polished table, one foot forward and one back, seeming to be the most relaxed of all of them. His dark amber eyes, however, told a different story. Intent, driven, and the wheels behind them already clicking, he listened carefully to Hotch's story.

The Hotch in question, the team's lead agent and supervisor, cut the same figure as ever: commanding, strong, ever professional. His body was younger than his eyes, and his mind was sharp enough to guarantee both an increasing rank in the Bureau and the lasting respect of those who worked under him. He spoke quickly, but with no undue emotion.

"We've got a case. Double homicide, a tenured college professor and his live-in girlfriend, also a student in one of his philosophy classes. Dr. Sean Green and Amanda Synthia."

"Cradle robber?" This question was posed half as a joke, half as a serious question, with one thin, angular eyebrow raised, by the beautiful brunette across from Morgan. With a name like Elle and a beauty worthy of the cover of Vogue, she didn't physically appear to be the FBI agent she had become. With a background in sex crimes and a talent for the hidden (and for Spanish), she was fast accumulating a reputation of her own.

"No. The professor has two pH. D's, but is quite young."

"How young?"

Hotch paused as what seemed to be a wry smile crossed his face. "Twenty-nine."

"Really?" This last query, delivered with just enough inflection to articulate both surprise and curiosity, came from the youngest in the group--- twenty-four year old Dr. Spencer Reid.

Reid seemed less like an agent and more like an undergrad, and had been told so by countless people since his beginning at the BAU. His smooth, pale skin and large, dark eyes proved his youth. And when coupled with the constant presence of his satchel of files, his uncanny ability to flip pens and palm coins, and his power to recite the entire contents of every book in every bookshelf in his apartment, he had become well-known in the Bureau as "that quiet genius kid". Indeed, upon reading a map, his eidetic memory (and I.Q. of 182) would immediately file every road, field, city, and town in his mind for further use, and compound the visual with statistics on every aspect thereof.

Everyone in the room understood his curiosity. After finishing elementary school at ten, graduating high school at twelve, and accumulating bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and three pH. D.'s at sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-two respectively, he would obviously have a marked interest in a professor of roughly the same path.

"Really," Hotch responded. "Synthia was twenty-eight, and prior to their relationship, Green worked as her thesis advisor."

He clicked a projector. Immediately, images they had all been trained to read and understand flashed upon the screen. But reading and understanding didn't equate to emotionlessness, and they all fought a very brief inner battle for a moment, as blood, urine, and two corpses filled the screen.

One agent in particular felt bile fill his throat. He'd been doing this for longer than Reid had been alive, and some visuals still held the power to surprise and pain him. The oldest of the team, and gifted with an almost inexplicable talent to feel and understand Evil, his name was Jason Gideon, and his eyes were the darkest of them all, shadowed with the sights and sounds of many years' casework.

After less than a second, he swallowed smoothly and spoke. His voice could still surprise those unacquainted with him, due to its softness. Were it not for his chosen career path, his gentle voice suggested he could have been someone's father, husband, uncle, lover. As it was, he was their hardest, most talented, and most respected leader. And as the colorful tech-assistant Garcia sometimes put it, "their Obi-Wan".

"Synthia left a message with college administration," he said, "relaying that he was sick and in the hospital, and would not be coming to work for at least a week. When the week was up, some students became concerned, and attempted to visit him in the hospital, where they were told no such patient had been admitted. Upon a visit to his apartment, they discovered the bodies."

"The method appears to have been torture," added Hotch. "At least for Green. The girlfriend was killed near the phone, and killed early. TOD is at least a week prior, which suggests that she called the college and was killed shortly thereafter. Voluntarily or under persuasion is up for debate. A tox screen came back negative."

"Probably forced," said Reid.

"Yeah," Morgan agreed. "Check out Green--- what was he, bound?"

"Yes. Steel chains restrained his hands, waist, chest, and feet into a steel chair. The unsub undoubtedly brought both the chains and chair with them, as nothing of the sort was found in his apartment. He was tortured over the course of the week in a variety of methods."

"Practically, or not?" Elle asked. The question was an important one--- they had learned in an earlier case about the difference between practical (unemotional) torture, and _un_practical (emotional).

"Practically. There are marks from the injection of hypodermic needles, which indicates administration of serums or poisons. His fingernails were removed with pliers, his hands burned, his eyes punctured--- all one at a time, I should note." Hotch clicked another button, flipping through said images, until arriving at a head shot. "However, none of the injuries were fatal, and would only cause lasting pain instead. Actual cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. Smooth, fast, and painless."

Another button, and a prelim police report appeared.

"Locals are stumped. It's a small college town in upstate New York, and Green was their pride and joy, both for the college students and staff as well as the community at large. The department is short-staffed and under funded, and they simply haven't got the resources for this kind of crime. Suspectless is bad enough, but a torturous unsub with a military background, as indicated by his methods, is well beyond their talents."

"Well, I guess we have a plane ride to catch," Morgan said, getting to his feet. "Let's go."

**More chapters to come. What will happen next?**


	2. The Profile

Their arrival in the small-town police department's headquarters seemed like something to be envied.

The jet landed, an SUV waited, doors opened, and sunglasses went from faces to pockets almost as quickly as six minds went from zero to sixty.

While Hotch and Gideon introduced the team and began the process of updating the local department, Reid, Morgan, Elle, and the sixth member of the team (blonde, petite PR advisor Special Agent Jennifer Jareau) began the task of setting up a small, but powerful, headquarters of their own.

The room they'd been given was roughly the size of a coffin and smelled like stale coffee, but it would do. A whiteboard filled the north wall, a counter the east, and a closed window filtered in the west-setting sun. The coffeemaker and sink were heavily used, but clean. There were plenty of dry-erase markers below the board, and the floor had just been vacuumed. A handful of desks, chairs, and laptops were obviously new recruits.

"This is nice," Derek said, genuinely impressed. Often, local departments reacted with fear and hostility upon the arrival of the FBI, and barely gave them more than two desks and a bathroom. The amenities they could see looked like the best this department had to offer.

Two rooms and a hundred decibels away, Hotch and Gideon spoke to the commander of the department in voices that had long since learned the art of being both urgent and calming.

"While my team is getting set up in the conference room, I'd like to get the homicide's files and evidence documentation in there as well," said Hotch.

"Understood. We're in over our heads here, Agent Hotchner. We appreciate you guys coming down. The extent of our crime here rarely gets beyond domestic assaults, bar fights, and kids flipping their cars and killing themselves." Commander Mitchell ran about fifty, with steel-gray hair (buzzed short and practical), and blue eyes. Their weariness told of a desperate fight against the tide.

"What's your staff like?" Gideon asked.

"Eight on-duty cops, five of whom operate on a rotating schedule. The other three are day-shift admin. Also, we've got a jail administrator, and a dispatcher."

Gideon felt his jaw wanting to drop. He didn't let it. Nor did he let his disappointment show. "That's it?"

"Yes."

"A city of several thousand people and a county the size of Montana, and that's all you get with our state's budget," said another officer. He stepped towards them and offered his hand. "Officer Keenan," he said. Keenan had the dark hair and eyes of a Hollywood celebrity, but his strong build and experienced demeanor informed the agents of just how many hours he had undoubtedly spent chasing down runners, flipping drunks, and working out in a small, cramped gym.

"I wanted to let you know I was the one who worked the initial scene," he said. "We can't afford some of the heavier equipment, so I got the students out and secured the scene until State showed up."

"Good work. Where are the state guys, anyway?"

"Oh, they're around," said Mitchell darkly. "State saw what was going down, they dumped the evidence truck and some guys and called you as fast as they could. It's one thing for them to cover a homicide. It's another thing completely for them to cover one like this. The guys they sent have been working their fingers to the bone to get what forensic evidence they could."

"All right. We'll need to get that."

"It's on it's way. Let me know when you need anything."

Twenty-four hours later, back in the conference room, they had the beginnings of a profile, and the beginnings of a headache.

Half of the board was filled with still photos of the crime scene--- murder's little art exhibit. The other half held facts: times, dates, names, forensic notations. One column remained bare, left for the appearance of the most important character: the profile itself.

Gideon stood, beginning to scrawl the first of many adjectives. "All right, here's the rundown on this, based on accumulated evidence.

"He's organized. Methodical. This was not a crime of spontaneity. He planned everything from his entrance into the apartment to his use of the girlfriend for a week-long excuse. Once she served no further use to him as a hostage, he shot her. He brought his tools with him, and took everything except the chair and the chains. He wanted the body to remain the way he had left it, probably out of a sense of apathy--- he didn't pose it, as would someone with an emotional desire to cause the maximum visual effect."

"Like we figured, his methods suggest military training," Reid said, sounding (as always) as though he was reading from a book, and more exhaling knowledge than actually thinking it. "The unsub was smart enough not to leave a physical trace of himself at the scene, save your classic "right-handed, hundred-seventy-five-pound" forensic indicators, left by weapon movement and trajectory."

"He used strong, largely unbreakable blades and power tools, leaving no pieces of the weapons behind. As expected, all of them are nondescript, carpentry and-or combat, military, and hunting issue," said Elle. "Virtual untraceable, except to your nearest Gander Mountain."

"The nearest military base is nothing more than a National Guard armory," said JJ, looking up from her file. "It's nearly six hours away, and there have been no reports of weapons theft or personnel changes."

"He's from out of the area. Door-to-door interviews indicate no young, strong, active military personnel live in the city, only sixty years and up retired vets," Morgan continued. "Local residents also say there have been no signs of emotional disturbance in Green and Synthia's relationship--- no missed work, no public fights, no signs of sleeplessness. Nothing, in fact, except a pretty obvious happiness between the couple."

"So it's not some psychotic affair thing," JJ finished.

"We're dealing with some kind of professional killer, with military background and knowledge of technique, from somewhere other than here and most likely out of state," Hotch said. "No interviews of area businesses mentioned any such appearance--- no mysterious guy in black at the local convenience store, no unnamed check-in at the Super 8."

"We'll run like crimes tomorrow," Gideon said. "For now I think we need to catch a few hours and hit this again in the morning."

(What happened next was not a coincidence.)

They'd all been thinking it. As they packed up files and grabbed their coats and headed back across the street to the hotel, they were all thinking it. In the background, running on wires, was a small, simple fact. The reason Green was the community's darling, the reason everyone knew him, was because he was the smartest person in the entire town.

His career was high. His intelligence was higher. The college had never had a younger professor, and they'd certainly never had anyone with an I.Q. of at least one-eighty. His apartment was full of books and his notepads were full of words. His friends and family oftentimes hadn't been able to keep up with the speed and quantity of his memorized information, and until he met Amanda Synthia, he'd rarely gone outside his realm of school and home.

His hair was long, to his ears, and he constantly brushed it back with long, thin fingers. He wore rumpled sweaters and never had a tan. His girlfriend was the one reminding him to eat regularly, and his work was all that kept him from hanging out in libraries and at computers all day.

Reid rubbed his face with his hand as he dropped his bag on the thin, scratchy chair in the corner of his motel room. What were the chances? Five years and a girlfriend were all that separated the victim, dead in the morgue, and the very much alive young man in the motel six blocks away.

He stripped off his gun and miscellaneous layers of clothing, folding them in a haphazard pile on top of his suitcase, before laying down on top of the covers and eyeing the "Rules", framed on the wall opposite his head. The third rule dictated that there was to be no watching of dirty movies on the room's television.

Before Reid could qualify that statement in any way, there came a knock on the door.

Mildly annoyed, but cautious ever the same, he slipped on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, going to open the door with his gun in his hand.

It never went off. It simply fell to the floor with a clunk, a split second after a hypodermic needle entered a small point in the skin of his throat.

The next morning, he was gone.


	3. The Disappearance and the Aftermath

It wasn't like him to be late.

More often than not, the young genius was nearly the first in the room and the last to leave, his dedication shown up only by Gideon and Hotch. When they hadn't seen him at the motel's cheap continental breakfast, they assumed he'd already gotten to work. But when they got to the conference room, and he wasn't sitting at his computer, poring over a file, or doodling randomly on the whiteboard (he was particularly fond of doing small caricatures of the team), this caused a brief moment of alarm.

"Where's Reid?"

"I don't know--- I thought he was here," JJ said slowly. "No one's seen him?"

Gideon felt a small stir of annoyance. If Reid was going to hold up the investigation because for he'd overslept for some reason--- but then Gideon felt a second stir of something else: worry. Reid never overslept. The boy hardly slept at all, anyway.

"Here, I'll call his cell," he said, pulling out his phone. Reid was on speed-dial, and in a moment Gideon was hearing nothing but silence, before another beep sounded. Following Reid's automated message, Gideon snapped the phone shut. "It's off."

"Weird," Morgan decided. "Should I have the motel buzz him?"

"Yes," Hotch said. "Have them see what's going on."

Minutes passed in quiet, marked only by the slow turning of a page or the squeak of the ergonomic chairs. Then Morgan closed his phone. For the first time, he looked worried. "He isn't there," he said. "They knocked and there was no answer. They opened the door..."

"And?"

"They found his gun on the floor, like it had been knocked out of his hand," Morgan continued. "The maid's words, not mine."

"Christ," Elle swore. "Damn it, Reid, what did you get yourself into?"

Hotch blinked, once and once only. "All right," he said, his voice snapping into authority. "We'll spread out. Start low--- ask the desk, ask some staff. If there's nothing, we'll start door-to-doors and see if anyone noticed anything on the floor. Understood?"

An hour later, they'd heard nothing that mattered--- except one very, very valuable testimony: the midnight janitor.

"He said he saw three guys standing around outside Reid's room. One of them knocked on his door. Then the janitor passed by and didn't see anything else."

"What did they look like?"

"Military was his first thought," JJ answered. "Crew cuts, monochromatic dress. Also said something like a ring glinted on one of the guys' hands--- but he didn't stop to look."

"Get me any and all security tapes from the motel," Hotch said.

"There won't be many," JJ responded, "but I'm on it."

By lunch, the rest of the police department had caught wind of what was going on, and all eight members crowded the window of the conference room, while the six agents watched Hotch hit "play" on the cued tape.

The image was grainy and grayscale, but it worked. They saw three men, all dressed roughly alike. What the janitor had thought was a ring wasn't a ring at all--- it was a hypodermic needle.

The door opened. There was Reid, looking tousled but awake and aware, his gun swinging up (with an aim, they had learned, was better than expected). But it never met its line of sight. The first man darted forward and hit him with the needle faster than Reid could have pulled the trigger. The tape barely caught up.

Six pairs of eyes melted in sympathy and pain, as they watched Reid drop the gun. He threw out his right arm, attempting to brace himself against the side of the door, and for a second he held himself up--- they could see his large brown eyes meeting his attacker's for one extremely brief, lucid moment--- before his hand slid lifelessly off the beam and he pitched forward. The second man, in a movement than resonated too loudly of indifference, caught his slender weight with one large arm, before swinging him up into a fireman's carry and disappearing down the hallway and into an elevator.

None of the tapes after that picked any of them up. It was like they had disappeared.

The screen went black. "Okay. I want to start running those men's images through every system and lab available to us. Get Garcia on the phone, have her work on that," said Hotch.

Morgan nodded and grabbed his phone.

Raising his voice, Hotch continued. "Everyone else, keep working like crimes, but expand it to include use of hypodermic needles by more than one assailant. Expand torture to include military technique."

Morgan dialed Garcia's number.

"Welcome to the jungle, baby," she answered, hundreds of miles away, her eyes distracted as she put a red eight on a black nine.

"No sugar today, honey," Morgan said. "This is incredibly important. Reid was kidnapped this morning."

"What!" Garcia didn't particularly love Reid (she considered him to be lacking in the flair department, unlike her platonic lover Morgan), but she liked him well enough, and the thought of anything happening to the poor boy sent a cold, hard punch to her gut. "How?"

"Needle, following the abduction, torture, and subsequent homicide of Newman, New York's local genius. They're connected, we can feel it--- and we've only got a week before he's dead. I'm sending you photos of three men discovered kidnapping him. If you can ID these guys, we can get him back."

"I'm on it. Hurry," she said, her manicured nails already beginning to fly over the keyboard.

Back at the department, while everyone else launched into a flurry of activity and shouted orders, Gideon stared at the screen, replaying the tape, bit by bit, thinking of what Hotch had told him to do. _I need you to work the victim._

"Why did you do it?" he whispered, watching the needle drive into his boy's throat. "What's in it for you? You're military, not a serial killer. You're working for someone else... but why Reid?"

Then he stopped. "Why Green?" he corrected. "Why both of them, in such close proximity? Was Green a ploy, a tactic? Or is Reid simply part two?"

He blinked. Reaching out to click the replay button one more time, he suddenly froze. Someone, somewhere in the department, was screaming blue murder.

He launched upwards, almost tripping over himself as he flew out the door of the conference room and into the department's main area, where a woman was standing next a desk, screaming, tears running down her face. Unintelligible words ran thickly out of her mouth and her hands shook.

Following the direction of her trembling fingertip, he stared. Officer Keenan, his two hundred pounds and well-made expertise negated, lay sprawled back in his chair. On his screen was a report of a torturous crime, committed in Michigan.

He'd been working like crimes when he was killed. He lay there, his eyes wide and dead, seeming to be nothing more than asleep with his eyes open.

Next to him, Hotch paled. Gideon ignored him. He was staring, staring, wheels clicking, at a small, bizarre patch on Keenan's chest. His shirt had been unbuttoned, his tie removed and hung over the chair. But beneath his skin, pressing forward, it's corners sharp, was a little, square object. A dark red line noted where his skin had been cut open and the object inserted.

"What is that?" he said, his voice low. He moved forward, crouching at the body. He pulled out his knife, clicking it open. All around him, people moved, fidgeted, or made noises of confusion and worry. _What is he doing?_

He slid open the score, parting the envelope of flesh. The object slid gently into his hand.

It was a tape.

**Well, spooky!... Luckily the next chapter explains some things. And, also fortunately, I am catching on and have begun to cut down on some of the over-detailing (which should correct some of the slowness.) The bad news, though, is that with band, work, and an impromptu family vacation, I won't be updating til at least next week. Stay tuned!... what happens next? ;)**


	4. The Valley of Hinnom

**Author Note:** Ah... the plot thickens! Also: Thanks to all the extremely helpful reviews! I am catching on, and have begun to cut down on the over-detailing. That should correct some of the slowness. Anyway, here's the next chapter (which should answer questions like "what was that tape doing there? are you crazy?")

**Chapter Name:** The Valley of Hinnom was an example used to describe Hell in the Bible. In Biblical times, it was a giant landfill that people lit on fire when it grew too large. (Now the same valley is a public park. Go figure.) Anyway... here goes!

* * *

_It had been remarkably easy._

_For all his experience, for all his years on the force, the good officer had one basic human need: privacy. He'd slipped into the restroom to pee and that's where it had happened. A quick slit, a closure, a forced injection with an illegal substance, and Officer Keenan was toddling back to his desk with a dazed look on his face and an itching in his skin._

_In less than five minutes he was dead, overdosed, without a sound in the world. Like a baby in a car, a brain in an oven; a slow, simple cessation of life._

_He'd known they'd find Keenan. And as quickly as he'd come, he slipped away. He hadn't trusted this job to his men, and he was glad of it; no one could have done it as smoothly._

_He smiled to himself as he climbed into his Jeep. He'd been trained well. Why shouldn't he gain a little pleasure from it? Besides... his assignment was soon to wake._

Reid woke up very, very slowly. He took inventory of his body as he gained feeling, before his eyes cracked open. There was no sound to speak of. He was surrounded by blackness. He would have thought he was dead, were it not for the feel of cold, wet concrete at his back.

He was sitting, handcuffed to something coming out of a wall. He moved, stirring, straining to see something, anything.

Suddenly, he began to hear a sound. And while it began quietly, it became loud. The volume grew, heightening and strengthening, until it was _too_ loud, too punishing, and Reid could nearly feel his eardrums fighting the invasion.

In a matter of seconds after it began, he'd placed the song. It was called Wings for Marie, and it was his favorite song--- track four on his favorite CD--- although he rarely listened to it on such a high volume. He'd bought it after hearing it on the radio. The title had drawn him. Marie was his mother's name.

_We listen to the tales and romanticize  
how we follow the path of the...  
__hero._

Ignoring the music, Reidtwisted, amazed that he was suffering no serious pain.

_Listen to the tales as we all rationalize  
our way into the arms of the...  
__savior._

Suddenly, a door opened. A man entered the room--- roughly six feet, but with at least fifty pounds on Reid. He appeared to be dressed entirely in black, illuminated in silhouette by the light from the door. He hit a switch, and a naked bulb flickered into life as the door swung shut.

There was nothing else in the room except the two men.

"What do you want?" Reid said.

"Do you feel all right?"

The question was such a non-sequitur, Reid didn't quite know how to respond. So he didn't. "What do you want?" he repeated.

"We--- not I--- want something that you possess," he answered. "This is not a personal effort. If I derive enjoyment from it, it is for me alone, and not my superiors."

_Military_. The word rocketed into Reid's consciousness.

"I understand," he said, blowing a strand of hair out of his eyes. Then he took a chance. "I assume you want me for the same reason you wanted Green?"

"You would be correct in that assumption. Green, however, was purely an experiment. The first, if you will."

_None of them can even hold a candle up to you.  
Blinded by choices hypocrites won't see._

"You won't touch me," Reid declared softly, summoning more bravado than he thought he could stand.

"I will, actually. I apologize in advance, but some rules must be broken. It won't hurt unless you make it hurt."

His kidnapper lunged. The syringe was aiming to take some of his blood. Reid wouldn't let it.

_Who could deny you were the one who illuminated  
your little piece of the divine?_

He struggled, shifting, pulling away, avoiding for all he was worth. The man crouched, beginning to land fists that felt like steel into his body. He fought them, clenching his body, curling into a fetal position, his muscles knowing what to do, having learned, having memorized years of school locker room abuse---

_Oh, what are they gonna do when the lights go down?  
Without you to guide them all to Zion?  
What are they gonna do when the rivers overrun?_

--- the blows continued, attempting to break him, pummeling his will. And then--- unbidden and too fast for words--- the needle entered an unprotected point, withdrawing a pull of dark red.

_You're the only one who can hold your head up high  
Shake your fist at the gates saying,  
"I have come home now!"_

Reid curled against the wall, his hands still cuffed behind him. The man stood. "That will do," he said. "Was it so hard?"

Reid ignored him. His muscles were beginning to relax, to repair.

_Fetch me the Spirit, the Son, and the Father  
__Tell them their pillar of faith has ascended._

The man studied the syringe. "This will be helpful. I will return to ask you a few questions. In the meantime, get some sleep."

He left. Time passed. Reid concentrated on breathing, and for one of the first times in his life, felt like a fool. _Pillar of faith..._ The song had been more than just a method of distraction and overstimulation; it had been a mockery.

But whileshame lit a fire inside him, he alsofelt a realization coming on, the onslaught of epiphanal knowledge. It had been unknowingly given and immediately received: Reid knew what the unsub wanted.

It was the gift Reid had been given.

* * *

**I have a question: what does Mary Sue mean? I've heard that in reviews about Reid-centric stories... Anyway, more chapters up soon! Reviews are extraordinarily helpful, too :)**


	5. The Understanding

**Author Note:** Okay, no more songfics. I'd wanted to try one; it didn't work out; oh well. Anyway, now for the next chapter!

* * *

"Get the Commander. Quickly. Now."

Hotch was taking charge, as always, while Gideon darted towards the conference room. Before playing it, he marked it as evidence and snapped the appropriate photo. By that time, everyone in the department was torn desperately between staying with Officer Keenan or running to watch the tape. Hotch solved that dilemma by ordering that everyone leave the vicinity until forensics could detail the scene. In the meantime, the agents would watch the tape. Grumbling more out of fear and shock than genuine anger, they moved away.

They swung into seats and cued the player to copy as it played. Hoping against hope that it would show them what had happened to Reid, Morgan hit the button.

The image did not move. With the camera stationed high in the corner of a dark room, it was apparent that the room's sole occupant did not know he was being recorded.

Lights came on as a door opened. It was Green's home--- in the room where he had been tortured. The agents knew that upstairs, at a table, his girlfriend was lying dead next to the phone. It was clear that Green knew it, too. His face was pale with fear.

"What happened to Amanda? What's going on? Who the hell are you?"

"For being a genius you are surprisingly stupid," said his attacker. "Quite obviously Amanda is dead. The sight of the gun to her head didn't give you a clue, before her brain exploded?"

"Ohmygod..." Green's words came out rushed, the syllables strung together like tears. There was a pause. Gideon barely detected a sigh.

"I apologize," said his captor after a moment. "I forget my place. Pain is not mine to give unless it is warranted. At least this is what my supervisors tell me."

"What are you talking about?" Green's voice came out as if he could barely believe he was speaking.

"We desire something from you," said the unsub. "I wish very much for this to be as painless as possible. I'm just going to draw a little blood."

"Why?"

"Use that overly-gifted brain of yours," he answered. "Figure it out. Give me your arm."

"NO!" The negative came out as a shout, full of panic, its volume buoyed by the adrenaline of terror.

"Fine. We'll do this your way."

After a brief struggle, the blood was drawn. At that point, the tape began to speed up. It became a time-lapse video. For days, days marked only by the timestamp scrolling in the corner of the screen, Green was victimized.

It had started simply: blood drawn here, a truth serum there. But it became torturous at an exponential rate. By the end of the tape--- visibly thinning, and losing his mind--- Green hung against his chains, drool and blood leaking thoughtlessly from his dehydrated lips, talking incoherently. The questions directed at him were useless. Injections resulted in nothing but rambling. Pain stimulus rewarded only screaming.

At the very end of the tape, in the last frame of the room, he was shot and killed.

Almost immediately, the image changed. Handheld and directed at nothing but a plain, white, unmarked wall, the image was accompanied by a voice.

"You see now what we wish to do. Green was a failure, much as we expected him to be. We knew we would need someone stronger, someone who could hold up to much more than the sight of blood, and answer our questions effectively. Special Agent Reid fulfills that need. I send you this tape to inform you of his captivity, and our goals. Such are the rules. That is all."

Then, finally, the tape ended with a click.

In the resulting silence, no more than a moment went by before Morgan's phone rang. Distracted, shaking, not quite knowing what to think, Morgan said nothing, not even hello.

"Morgan?" Garcia's voice felt too loud.

"Yeah," he said softly.

"Listen, I've got a hit on the kidnappers you sent me."

Morgan put her on speaker.

"Three guys," she began, "that have nothing but straight records. They were all military at one time, and they all worked together on a few separate occasions. They made it up the ranks fairly well, before resigning to pursue lives of absolute nothingness."

"They dropped off the grid?" Elle asked.

"No, they just never cropped up again for any reason," Garcia answered. "No parking tickets, no arrests, no overdue taxes. We've got nothing but addresses, which appear to be current."

"Fax them," Hotch said shortly.

"I already did, sir," Garcia said. "But here's the real news: the few times they worked together, they worked under the same commander--- Captain John Essex. It lists here that he died during a tour of duty in Israel."

"When?"

"2002--- the same year our three henchmen resigned. Uncle Sam lists his death as being a suicide. He overdosed."

"Send a picture."  
"I already did," Garcia repeated. "But here's the interesting thing. The report of his death was written very quickly, and with no apparent study involved. There was no autopsy. The coroner determined Essex's death by the empty bottle of pills on his cot, the suicide note in his hand, and the lack of physical injury. That's all."

"What happened to the body?" Gideon asked.

"It was bagged, transported to a separate building, and it wasn't cremated until _after_ the coroner finished and filed his report. Six months later, on an unrelated issue, the coroner was fired for drinking on the job."

"The pictures are here," interrupted JJ, over by the fax machine. "Look!"

The three henchmen were very obviously the same men. But the picture of John Essex looked strangely familiar.

"Wait a minute," Hotch said. He hit rewind on the tape, watching it intently, before hitting pause. It was a moment when the unsub had glanced up at the camera, his face and eyes in full focus.

It was Essex.

"I'll be damned," Morgan whispered.

"He faked his death," said Elle. "What did he do? He, what? Took a suppressor?"

"Yes," Gideon said, his voice growing more decisive. "Yes, he did. He would have been unconscious, paralyzed, no obvious heartbeat. The coroner would have pronounced him dead easily enough, if he was too drunk to put some extra time into it. Because he undoubtedly woke up later."

"He woke up in his body bag," said Hotch. "After the drug wore off. After the report was finished. He could have replaced the bag with some other weight, maybe another body, who knows?"

"The coroner didn't take dentals from the body that was cremated," Garcia said.

"It's basic procedure... but the man was too alcoholic to notice."

A second or two passed in shock and quiet.

"Okay, so Essex's alive, and his boys are working for him again. What does he want?" Morgan asked.

"I know what they want," Garcia said. "Check this out, guys." Her voice was shaky, but she held firm. "Essex's job was to work with physical and psychological testing of the soldiers on the base. He quantified their physical and mental ability to stand up to torturous methods and physical illness; he studied their ability to deal with the long hours and the demands of being a prisoner of war."

"That explains why he knew procedure," said Hotch. "He fits the profile. If he worked medically, he would know how to fake his death; he would know what sedative to give Reid. And if he was a student of military interrogation of prisoners, he would know exactly how to torture, and for how long."

"But what is he doing?" Elle asked. "Why would he want Green and Reid?"

"Look, they're both geniuses," Morgan answered. "It's all they have in common."

"He's treating them as prisoners of war," Gideon said softly. "Sending us a tape of Green's captivity, informing us of what he plans for Reid. 'Such are the rules.' He wants us to know that, as a nod from one soldier to another."

He got up and looked at the freeze-frame of Essex's face. "He's turned the tables. Instead of working _with_ prisoners of war, he's keeping one."

Out of the screen, the eyes burned into Gideon--- dark, empty, cold. Insane. "He developed a taste for it. He enjoyed asking, "How do you feel?" after giving someone an electric shock. He wanted to do it again, and again. He wanted it to be real. He couldn't do it while he was working--- too many eyes over his shoulder, too many reports to file, too many innocent men who knew they were being tested. _But if he got out_--- if he got out and pulled together men he trusted--- he could run whatever kind of operation he wanted, and he could hurt his prisoners as often as he pleased."

"So he left," Hotch continued. "And now he's doing this. Holding men like Green hostage, bombarding them with questions, hurting them when they don't answer."

"He keeps referring to his 'supervisors'... he's doing it to keep up the pretense that his work is a legitimate military operation; as soon as he lets himself realize that he's doing this all on his own, for his own personal enjoyment, then some of the joy goes out of it."

Gideon paced, talking, feeling the thoughts come out of his mind and knowing they were true. "Does it matter what he would be searching for? Not really, I don't think... as long as he had a point. In this case, the point is to tap into whatever genius Green and Reid possess."

The energy in the room was almost tangible.

"All right, we've got less than week now," Hotch said suddenly, standing up. "We know what he wants, we know these men's addresses. I want to get cops out there, and I want them scouring all three apartments. I want them to find anything and everything having to do with this--- _operation_." Hotch spit out the word as if he could hardly stand the taste of it.

"But there's more," said Gideon. "There's more we have to do."

"What?" Morgan asked.

"We've got to profile Reid," said Gideon. "We have to figure out exactly how much he knows about his condition, how much he can actually tell Essex. How much can he invent, how quickly can he lie? Because if he can keep up the game, with any luck, he can avoid some injury. Also, we need to determine what will physically happen to him if Essex decides to work on his brain."

"Oh, man..." Garcia whispered, her voice tinny over the phone. "What do you mean?"

"If you wanted to figure out what was physiologically going on inside someone's brain, you wouldn't stop at asking questions. You'd actually test him, electrically, magnetically, whatever, and see for yourself," said Elle.

"Where do we start?" asked JJ.

"Here's the plan," said Hotch. "Morgan and Gideon, I want you to work Reid's apartment. Elle and Garcia, I want you to research the neurology we're talking about. JJ, I want you to coordinate this department into covering the addresses of the men working for Essex. I am going to get in touch with someone who I think can help us out."

Everyone began to move, standing, opening notepads, making calls. As Hotch moved quickly towards the door, Morgan called across to him, "Hotch! Who are you talking about?"

"You'll see," he said. And just like that, he was gone.

* * *

**Whew! Yeah, I think that chapter was better than the last one. (Which, by the way, I will be reworking, so it gets better.) Anyway, as always, reviews are lovely! Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next chapter!**


	6. The Entrance

**Author Note**: Yay! Good reviews! Thanks! In other news, though: I would do a crossover if I thought it made sense, but the only other shows I know/like well enough would be The West Wing and Grey's Anatomy, and I really can't think what President Bartlet would have to do with the storyline. McDreamy maybe could get in there somewhere (what with the neurology and everything), but I think that's pushing a little too far. Anyway, read on!

* * *

It was the second day. Perhaps not the second day since his capture, but the second day since he woke up.

Reid knew it because, like so many others with a high IQ, he had a fairly good sense of time. He also knew that this ability, like a clock in his head, would soon become as disoriented as the rest of him. He held on to it as long as he could.

He cast his mind back. _All right. He wants what I have. He wants to know the things I know--- or at the very least, learn to _learn_ the way I do. What can I give him? What do I know?_

His body was beginning to heal, but he knew it would only be a matter of time before the first questions began--- and the repercussions he would face if he didn't answer satisfactorily.

With that in mind, he began to plan.

Miles away from Reid's as yet unknown location, Morgan and Gideon walked into Reid's apartment building.

Reid had spent all of his available funds on other aspects of his life, purposely not wasting them on things like apartments and vehicles. After his father's death, the inheritance went towards his mother's subsequent commitment, and when she entered the sanitarium, her money went towards Reid's education. Gideon knew this. He wasn't sure if anyone else did.

As a result, Reid's apartment building was low-end and small. Paint peeled in some corners, and harsh light made dingy white hallways look yellow and angular. The apartment itself was on the end of one such hallway. Curiously, it had a green door.

Using the key he'd gotten from the super, Morgan opened the door, and the two of them entered.

True to Reid's personality, not much extra work had gone into home décor and appearance. His loft apartment was built with no inner walls; the perimeter was brick. All available wall space was taken with bookshelves, crammed to overflowing. On the far wall, three large windows gave a spectacular view of the alley and street below, consisting of not much more than other brick buildings and first-floor businesses. Inside, the opposing wall was a long counter of a kitchen, with an old-school curved refrigerator. It was neat and tidy. A few magnets hung on the refrigerator--- they held up a bill that was due, a library fee, and a piece of paper with his work schedule, written by hand. On the counter sat nothing of notice, except a coffee maker and a loaf of bread, half gone already. The fridge contained little more than bachelor provisions, and a few bottles of beer. On the near end of the counter, near the door, sat a small green basket, full of extra keys, pencils, a pad of paper, and the charger for his cell phone.

Between the kitchen and the windows, Reid had created two small rooms. On one end was a dining area--- a small table, with a fruit basket as a centerpiece (its contents steadily being eaten; the accompanying note read "Thank you for your patronship!", with the logo from the local library), and three chairs. A hanging light provided illumination for the table.

On the other end, Reid had grouped together a long, low, brown couch, and two mismatched chairs. Between them sat a broken coffee table, its fourth leg held with duct tape. Books lay scattered on the table, full of hand-written notations and dog-ear bookmarks. If one sat on the couch, one could see what appeared to be the only over-expense in the whole apartment: the plasma screen, bolted between two of the windows.

A small curtained doorway led into the rest of the apartment: a narrow hallway, with two doors on either side (one to a closet, one to the bathroom), and his bedroom.

Like the rest of the apartment, his bedroom was sparse. There were no windows here. An unmade bed with black, scratchy sheets sat unmade in the corner. Its end table was a neat, but crowded array of a desk lamp, alarm clock, glass of water, and several books. A closet opened the wall at the foot of the bed. In classic Reid, it was full of sweaters, wrinkled dress shirts, and plain tees.

The other half of the room was given to his computer desk, another bookshelf, and an acoustic guitar.

"There's nothing here," said Morgan. "Nothing to indicate that he knew or suspected anything."

"Maybe," said Gideon. "Start looking through the bookshelves. Look for Carl Saga, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould. Books on intelligence, books on the psychology of genius. I'm going to check out his computer."

"Did you know he played guitar?"

"He doesn't--- he's learning," Gideon said, motioning towards the open book on the stand. It was a beginner's book; it looked new, and Reid was about halfway through it.

Morgan sighed. This was Reid's life. How much of it, apart from his small hobby of learning to play the guitar, was spent at the office?

Looking for an answer, he glanced at the calendar, the only art on the walls. It was from last year, left up because the picture was interesting: it was a photograph of two old men playing chess.

_Most of it_, he thought.

A couple of hours passed. Both men kept notes. Reid had used his computer more as a source of information than a source of amusement, Gideon discovered. The only personal site bookmarked was a Star Trek fan site. On another note, he'd been involved briefly with a group online, made up of highly-academic Ivy League alumni, but it appeared that when they discovered who he was, they'd shunted him out of the group. He'd not been involved since. He did not show a preference or an interest in putting himself out on the Internet in any real way. _That rules out the theory that Essex found him that way_, Gideon thought.

His books ran the gamut from purely intellectual (Stephen Hawkins's "A Brief History of Time") to somewhat bizarre (Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything") to downright frightening (a coffee table book, "Car Crashes and Other Sad Stories", with statistics and photographs of car accidents). He had whole shelves devoted to criminology, others devoted to Gothic crime novels. Some stacks were all about psychological illness in general; others were solely about schizophrenia. He had three shelves worth of encyclopedias and almanacs, and Morgan understood that Reid had nearly memorized their contents.

Currently he seemed to be on an aviation jag; the library books he'd rented, the books piled on the table, revolved around airplanes, flight, and the history thereof.

Nothing in the apartment pointed to an over-zealous quest for information regarding genius itself, save a handful of books in the corner of a shelf. They numbered no more than his books on any other subject; they had not been bookmarked or highlighted any more than any other book. While Reid undoubtedly knew about his own intelligence and its extent, he wasn't overly concerned with it.

Two hours after they began, both men met to compare notes. They really had nothing more than they started with, except a deeper insight to Reid's interests: reading, studying, working, and a hint of Star Trek.

"_Bupkes_," Morgan said into his phone, as they left.  
"Don't bring the Yiddish unless you know what you're doing," responded Garcia. "Anyway, I've got really nothing from that tape. It's Green's basement. He's dead. Period. No distinguishing sounds, characteristics, or conflicting timestamps. It's very straightforward and very well-done."  
"All right, thanks, Garcia. How's the research going?"  
"Pretty much as you would think," she said quietly, her voice suddenly sounding a good deal less bright. "High-level equipment requires both training and funds. Application of such equipment results in nothing more than a few pinpricks here and there if done correctly--- but if not, it would result in some very serious pain."  
"Life threatening?"  
"Possibly."

Morgan hung up. Gideon, having heard his end of the conversation, knew without having to ask.

A few hours later, as they re-entered the conference room, they ran headlong into JJ. Along with the rest of the department, she'd cased the henchmen's homes.

"There's nothing there, guys," she briefed quickly. "We were in and out. They'd locked up the apartments and returned the keys before they took Green. No furniture, no clothing, no nothing."  
"They've disappeared," said Gideon.  
"Yeah," JJ agreed disheartedly.

After a few moments of exchange, including Elle's reiteration of what Garcia had essentially found out, they came to the conclusion that they'd managed to uncover very little.

Finally, as Gideon was about to call him, Hotch came into the room.

"Well?"  
"All right, guys," he said by way of opening. "This is Dr. Meg Walker."

Dr. Walker was, apparently, the five-foot-nothing brunette who entered the room behind him. With her dark, exotic, angular curls piled on top of her head, it made her petite face seem even smaller; this was further accentuated by her very large, dark green eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips.

Dressed in scuffed black Converses, blue jeans, and a tight black t-shirt, she looked to be about sixteen. A wallet chain hung between her left pocket and hip; she had at least six piercings in each ear. What appeared to be a tattoo peeked from the neck of her top.

"Hi," she said, shaking hands with all of them. Different silver rings and bracelets clinked on each hand, and each nail was long and painted a glittering purple. Her voice was low and contralto; her eyes sparkled with a purely intelligent humor. "Call me Meg," she continued. "I apologize for my appearance; Hotch had the misfortune of pulling me out of an... artistic session," she explained. It was then that they noticed the small patch of gauze inside her right wrist--- it didn't cover a wound, but a tattoo.

"How old are you? And what are you doing here?"

Elle's voice came out a little sharper than she had intended, but she didn't care. "Hotch, who is this girl?"

"Dr. Walker is twenty-four years old, and she works in the New York field offices. She graduated from a New York City public high school at age twelve. She has degrees from Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, in that order--- the last two being pH. Ds in psychology and criminology, achieved when she was twenty. She lobbied hard for a position in Quantico, was shunted down and sideways due to her age and circumstances, and to Quantico's surprise, wound up excelling, quite spectacularly, in the NY offices."

Hotch motioned for her to sit. She sat.

"Anyway, her subsequent success meant that it was obviously much easier for Quantico to hire Reid. They didn't want to make the same mistake twice."

"Does Reid know?" asked Gideon.

"No," answered Meg. "It was proposed that we should meet following the commencement of his work here; I decided against it. I wanted him to understand that he had been hired on his own merit, not Quantico's mistake." Now that the shop talk had begun, Meg's voice was all business.

"So what do you know about what's going on?" Morgan asked.

"All that you know," said Meg. "Your coworker has been abducted, undoubtedly by an ex-military officer who went off the reservation, and took three men with him, all for his own personal enjoyment. For whatever reason he has deemed men like Green and Reid to appropriate subjects for his sick games. But quite evidently, as proven by his attitude and style, he does not view his work as a 'game'... he views it as an assignment."

She stood. "I imagine you've done some work with the tape and found nothing. I'm willing to bet that the addresses you've been able to find came up cold. These men are unique in their sophistication and well-informed of our procedure. Rifling through Reid's belongings has netted you little more than you had before. How am I doing so far?"

"Very well," said Gideon. "Honestly, I'm surprised I haven't heard of you."

"Quantico believed very strongly that I was not apt for the job," she responded. "Due to my age, my gender, and my... appearance (at the time, my hair was pink), they declined my application. When I went on to do quite well, they decided to keep that success under wraps. Who needed to know that they had made an error of judgment?"

Despite her words, her tone harbored little sarcasm; only a small, quiet disappointment.

"Anyway, I'd like to know everything you know about Reid. Speaking as a genius myself, I believe I can offer some pointers on what he is going through."

Elle opened her mouth, thought better of it, and closed it. Meg met her eyes and grinned. The made her features seem both wicked and beautiful. Her eyes shone. "His and my IQ differ only by a point or two. Spatially, he outranks me; intrapersonally, I outrank him. We're roughly equal in both verbal and mathematical intelligence (as well as interpersonal relations) due to our professions and training. I undoubtedly have a better kinesthetic awareness, but Reid has a better rhythmic one. I've seen his charts."

"They have charts?"

"Indeed," said Meg, her grin widening at Morgan's obvious surprise and discomfort. "You, Agent Morgan, would undoubtedly score high on both the artistic and interpersonal graphs, but perhaps not quite so high on the ones dealing with objectivity. It makes you a truly wonderful agent and friend, but not someone I'd want to meet in a dark alley if I'd stolen your wallet."

She winked at him, then readjusted her tone. "Okay, as long as we're all of a general accord, I would really like to get started. May I see a picture of Reid?"

"What--- you haven't seen him?" asked JJ.

"No," Meg answered, turning her gaze to JJ. She liked the blonde's face, and her sense of style, she realized. Women like JJ always struck her as visually perfect and eloquently accessorized. Not like herself, she noted, with a twinge of familiar shame. "I haven't," she continued. "I saw his charts when he was hired and heard about him through the grapevine, but I've never actually met him in person, nor have I seen his photo."

"Here," said Elle, stepping forward and handing Meg a 4 x 6. It wasn't the stock FBI identification photo. It was a photo taken of him on the jet, when Morgan had bought a new camera and wanted to try out a picture. He had looked up from his reading and smiled slowly, his eyes polite and curious, as if feeling both happiness and latent uncertainty. It was an excellent picture.

When Meg's eyes fell to the photo, something strange occurred. She seemed to squint, blink, and inhale, all at the same time. It lasted no more than moment, before she adjusted her composure and returned the photo.

"What was that all about?" Gideon asked gently. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine," she said, her tone almost informal. She felt intimidated by Gideon's soft eyes. "Yeah. It's just... he's more attractive than I thought he would be. Anyway, we should probably be..."

"Of course," agreed Hotch immediately, sensing her discomfort. "While we start putting this together, I'll have the rest of the department keep at it. One of us will come up with something soon."

* * *

**Wow... that was a longish chapter. I hope I didn't lose anyone's attention! ;) I'm excited to keep writing this story... I hope you're excited to read the next part. Soon, very soon! But first, a little explanatory note on some of the terms I used:**

**_Spatial_ intelligence: Visuals, shapes, construction; those tests where you were asked to find out where a hole would end up if you punched it in a folded paper were designed to measure this. **

**_Intrapersonal_ intelligence: Knowledge/awareness of one's inner self.**

**_Verbal/mathematical_ intelligence: Self-explanatory, methinks.**

**_Interpersonal_ intelligence: Knowledge/awareness of others.**

**_Kinesthetic_: Physical/bodily awareness.**

**_Rhythmic_: Rhythm and music. (Remember he was learning the guitar?)**

**Anyway I hope that might be of some assistance. (I know I would be confused if I hadn't looked it up.) Thanks for reading... more chapters soon!**


	7. The Surprise and the Discovery

**Author Note:** Back to Reid! Time to see how he's doing! (And just wait, the whole OC thing will be resolved.)

Reid had never felt more out of sync.

He had attempted, during the first wave of questions, to lie. He'd concocted nothing but strings of air and wisps of half-truths. The questions had been basic and fairly well-centered: who are you? What is your name? Who do you work for? Who are your parents? He'd told less and less of the truth until, by the last question, he was saying nothing meaningful at all.

He had intended to come up with a baseline, some kind of standard he could use to determine how much they actually knew about his life. As it turned out, they knew everything.

As they beat him, as blood flowed from his lips, hands, and eyes, as bones crunched and joints snapped in protest, they let him know exactly what the true answers would have been. They reminded him of the facts of his existence by talking loudly over the rhythmic sounds of physical violence--- chains against bare skin, masculine grunts of physical exertion, the quick gasp of excruciating pain.

He'd taken the abuse, understanding that this was the price he would have to pay for his success. While he screamed (his body involuntarily expelling the sound as the only release it could find) his mind was a thousand miles away--- extrapolating logic, consequences, and comphrension.

When they finally left him alone, he curled up against himself, shielding his face from the darkness he was left in, trying to think.

He hadn't felt that basely humiliated since he was in high school.

He'd been an eleven-year-old freshman, with a voice that had barely lowered, hair that was a bit too long, and skin too white and clear to be considered masculine. The fairy jokes had started his first day and the freak jokes the second; by the end of the second quarter he had been shoved and locked into more lockers than he could count.

He'd been bodily picked up from the floor and shoved face-first into a used toilet, almost drowning as filthy water rushed around his head and up his nose. He'd been pushed into walls and beaten as his books were dumped on top of his head and cracked into his skull. The mandatory swimming unit had been torture--- the other boys had made fun of his lack of chest hair and his pale skin, and made references to his anatomy as being the antithesis of his intelligence. Of course, not quite in those words. ("Antithesis" was probably a bit more than they could spell.)

He thought his life was over the day the school found out his father was dead and his mother was psychotic. The fact that schizophrenia is a mental illness and his mother had been a fifteenth-century literature instructor really meant nothing. He started bumming grades, trying to lapse out of his life, trying to disappear. But then he discovered criminology, discovered a passion, discovered something he could care about.

And now he felt like a complete failure. He knew that was what his torture was designed to do: break his spirit.

Would he let it?

Once the question was out of his subconscious and into his mind, it was too late to take it back. Like a power drill driving through his ear, it wouldn't let him go until pain blinded him.

Would he let it?

He feared the answer was, already, yes.

Bearing down hard, he decided he needed to do something. He needed to do something before the situation spun completely out of control and his "yes" would be irrevocable.

But what?

At that moment, the door opened again. He felt his heart sink.

Later, through the pain, through the questions shouted at him, without his intent, something his mind began to pick up and spin.

Another day had passed. Reid had now been out of contact for four days.

Back in the conference room, the agents and the newcomer sat around their tables, dissecting, tossing back and forth information, until eventually the conversation dwindled into random, leadless musings. They knew the unsub, they knew the crime, and thanks to Dr. Walker's questions and categorization, they knew their victim.

They knew that Reid would undoubtedly break at some point. They knew that if he chose to lie, he would not be successful. They knew, also, that if the topic stayed true to matters of genius and discussion, _without_ the threat of physical violence, Reid would, perhaps, be able to build an upper hand. But this was unlikely.

So, too, the likelihood of the team finding Reid was getting smaller by the second. Never before had they been painted into a corner the way they had. Never before had Dr. Walker been unable to come in ahead of schedule, and save some kind of day.

"Why wasn't it me?" she muttered quietly, looking aimlessly at her computer.

"What?"

It was Gideon, eyeing her with a soft kind of concern.

"I was talking to myself. Thinking. Why wasn't it me? Or, on a broader scale, why wasn't it any one of the several working geniuses in the world? There's a marine biologist in Miami, a mathematician in Los Angeles, and two geneticists in Paris. Reid and I are the only ones working in criminal justice, and I would have been just as easy to take as he."

"You weren't working this case, however," said Gideon.

"No, but I could have been. I work in the same state that this crime was committed. The only reason you guys were called in was due to the BAU's reputation, and availability at the time of the murder."

"Does it matter?" Gideon's tone was not belligerent, but curious.

"I don't know," Meg said, leaning back, rubbing her eyes with both thumbs. "Probably not. I'm grasping at straws here. Beyond my initial assistance, I feel like there isn't much more I can do."

She sighed. "I can't be that girl," she said.

"What girl?" This came from Morgan, who had clued in on the conversation.

"That girl who comes in during the last third of the movie. You know her: the beautiful career-driven scientist, the assassin working for the other side, the lawyer who wouldn't work the good guys' case. She finally agrees to help, or gets recruited, or whatever. She inevitably saves the day and falls in love with the hero. She's Mary Sue. She's everything everyone needs. And I can't be her. It isn't possible."

"Are you losing hope?" asked Elle.

"Are you?" Meg said, her voice coming out almost as a snap. "We've got nothing. I thought I could help and I can't."

She stood. "It feels as though all of our combined expertise has amounted to nothing, and this man (whom I haven't actually met, but who I have come to care about so much it surprises even myself) will _die_. Killed for something as inherent in him as the color of his skin."

She sighed. Then she shook her head. "I don't know. If anyone has any better ideas, you can fill me in." She sat.

"Acknowledging our shortcomings is helpful," Gideon said, "but not productive if done too thoroughly. We've got to regroup. Look somewhere we haven't looked before. Has Garcia turned up anything new?"

The question had been asked multiple times and the answer was always the same: a steadily more downtrodden "No."

The clock ticked incessantly. Somewhere, from a pickup truck driving down a nearby block, the agents heard Def Leppard. The quiet was almost too much to take.

"All right," said Hotch, using a familiar expression. "I'm going to go call my wife and get my mind back in order. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Before Gideon could speak, Hotch smiled. "I'll be careful." In response, Gideon gave him a wan smile.

As he walked out the door, he collided with the commander of the department. The graying man looked older than he'd been when they showed up; the death of his younger officer was heavy on his chest.

"Guys," he said, his voice whipping out of him like a hot breath of wind. "They found a body."

"What?" Like men rising for a woman in another time, they all stood up as he entered the room.

"You heard me! They found a body. Some guys on a hunting trip. They turned it over in a gully--- thought it was trash. I sent two men to secure it as soon as the dispatcher relayed the message, and I'm on my way right now. I thought you should be the first to know."

By the time he'd finished his last sentence, Hotch had decided his wife would just have to wait, and he and the rest of team were already piling out the door. At the last moment, Elle turned back.

"Dr. Walker!"

Meg was staring after them, somehow looking both unsure and wildly hopeful.

"Yes?"

"Come on! We haven't got time to wait."

With what could have been the ghost of a smile, Meg followed.

The night was cold and wet, the gully ankle-deep in water and thick with stagnance. The trees were dark, the moon and stars were dim, and the landscape was quiet.

Two parked squad cars' lights swung in wide, fast, silent circles--- red, blue, red, blue, red, blue. Flashlights swept in low arcs, up and down the ditch. The agents followed, armed and drawn, heading to the place where three men in blaze orange stood huddled together, talking to another police officer. The lit tip of a cigarette, hanging forgotten from the lips of one of the hunters, shook with cold and shock.

"Here! Here he is!" The young officer's voice was high and strangled, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

The agents broke into a run, Converses and Brooks Brothers and loafers soaking through to the bone. Hotch's breath was coming harder than it should have been: fear of what he would see in the next few short seconds was making his chest burn with unheard of terror.

Morgan felt his entire body going hot, then cold, as if it didn't know quite what to expect: hell or a lake of ice. Elle narrowed her mind and focused desperately on picking them up and laying them down: getting from point A to point B, to see what lay like trash in the weeds.

Gideon felt his own fists clenching. If anything had happened to that boy while they were sitting around helplessly, he would resign. Period. That was it, that was the end. If they came up and looked and it was their boy---

They stopped in a rush. There, laying in the gully like a thousand other corpses of a thousand other homicides, was a body. It was very much dead, but hadn't become so until recently. Both legs were sprawled straight out, one toe pointing up to the sky, the other laying at an odd angle. One arm was flung up over his head, like a saint, index finger pointing lifelessly, while the other crossed his chest like he was asleep.

Asleep he was not. Both eyes were open. One had rolled back into his head. The other was staring straight out. What appeared to be a bullet hole had expelled dark, sticky fluid into the weeds behind his head. His face was very nearly destroyed from physical beating, but it was identifiable.

Gideon felt bile rising in his throat.

It was not Reid.

It was the man who had tranquilized him.

Suddenly another officer, who had been walking up ahead with a flashlight, swinging it back and forth, looking for anything worth seeing, shouted and began to point, jumping up and down in a movement that would have been comical had the situation not been so serious.

"Look! Oh my God look I see SOMEONE RUNNING!"

After a moment they had all rushed up beside the Officer, staring where he pointed, at a figure who seemed to shine against the darkness, a figure running for all he was worth against a limp, cradling a broken arm to his side.

Taking a wild chance, making a decision that should never have functioned, Gideon took a deep breath.

"REID!"

His shout made the running man stop, turn his head, and look back. They were well within sight of each other and in that moment, Gideon saw two large dark eyes, looking like empty holes in the darkness, shine and blink.

Then, as unexpectedly as his emergence in the first place, the other man collapsed.

The first person to shoot out from the pack was Meg. Her Converses beat the pavement as she charged towards his crumpled form. When she drew near, she saw something that made her heart seem to simultaneously stop or go out of control: he was alive.

Breathing, nearly unconscious, but alive.

He looked up at her, blinking slowly. His voice came out raspy, like it had barely been used.

"Who are you? What..."

Then, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell, but his mind was down for the count.

And then, in another unexpected move, Gideon blew past Meg like she wasn't even there, picked Dr. Spencer Reid up as if he weighed nothing, and holding the young man in his arms like a child, ran with him towards the waiting ambulance.

The sirens wailed the entire way there, through dark backcountry roads and one-stoplight towns.

During the speeding ride, only one other person was allowed in the vehicle. At the last minute, Gideon and Meg eyed each other, then Gideon swung up into the ambulance.

The whole way, he held Reid's thin, pale left hand.

**Well! I feel like that was my best chapter so far. I know Meg isn't in it much, but don't worry, her character will be resolved in good time. Thanks for reviewing! More chapters to come:-)**


	8. The Revelation

**Author Note:** New chapter! Yes! Here it is! Thanks for reviewing... enjoy!

The agents felt like they were at a funeral. No one had died, at least not yet, but as they stood over the sleeping form of one of their dearest friends and coworkers, a man who had been through some very serious trauma, they knew something had broken.

Even in soft, medicated sleep, Reid's forehead remained creased in pain, and his leg still hung high in a curious kind of traction. Behind them, in the hall, Meg waited in a hard, plastic chair, for some kind of word.

"He looks so tiny," Morgan said. "I guess I never really knew how much of a little guy he was until now."

The weight on his chart, hanging at the foot of his bed, put his weight at a low one-forty.

"His IQ is higher than his weight," realized Morgan, continuing to talk, although he knew no one was really listening. "Weird."

Reid's silence meant a world of unknown things. Without his traditional, constant stream of knowledge, Reid had been reduced to little more than an unconscious boy, looking far younger than his actual age.

"Excuse me," said a voice. "May I speak with you out in the hall?"

It was the doctor. Not Meg, but Reid's physician.

His prognosis was both clear and troubling. Reid was unconscious due to the incredible amount of physical exertion it had taken to escape, shoot his captor, and run down the road. In addition to the broken leg and arm, he had suffered multiple facial injuries, orthopedic and muscular bruising, as well as a general malnutrition and emotional shock. The blood they had discovered on his hands and on his clothing--- stark against his white skin and clothes, but which had been invisible in the night--- was a mix of both his and an unknown group of three other people.

He had yet to awake, but when he did, it was very likely that he would not remember what had happened. This would be his mind's block of personal trauma, and would be temporary.

Until then, all they could do was wait.

They did so, slowly, feeling time stretch out into an agonizing five minutes, then fifteen, then forty-five.

In another state, in another city, Garcia eyed the clock, waiting for news. Even her new online chat room couldn't hold her attention now.

Two cups of coffee, three cell phone calls, and fifty-four minutes later, Reid's eyes opened.

"Only one at a time," stated his doctor calmly. "You don't want to rush him."

Gideon took the opportunity. No one questioned this decision.

The older agent had been in hospital rooms before, both as a visitor and as a patient. His kind of a hospital room was one reserved for dying. There were no questions when you walked into one of _those_ rooms. The smell of death means finality; the smell of illness and pain means nothing but uncertainty. And while you can't mask either smell with flowers, he would take finality over uncertainty any day.

He entered and sat quietly, waiting for Reid to speak.

The young man's eyes were slurred with painkillers and confusion. His voice, generally light as air and full of excitement and intelligence, came out raspy and malformed, as if the words scraped his throat on the way up and left him with little more than a breath to escape on.

"What..."

"I'm here, kid," he said. "You're in a hospital, you're safe now." The question, burning at the back of his mind, raging to charge forward, remained held at bay. No need to ask, not just yet.

Because, in the next moment, Reid answered it for him.

"What happened?"

Something that had previously shone, that light of awareness and memory, was dark.

"I know you don't remember now, Spencer," he said (employing Reid's first name as a guidance tactic), "but you will soon."

"Okay," Reid said.

"What's the last thing you do remember?"

"You spoke to me before I left the department," he said. "Told me to get some sleep." He swallowed with some difficulty. "I went back to my hotel. I don't remember anything after that, but I really don't think I just laid down and went to sleep."

"No," Gideon said, almost smiling. "No, you didn't."

Reid's eyes swung a slow, lazy left and met his own. "I can't think. I have all these... things rattling in my head and... I can't quite get them in the right order."

"Do you want something to write on?"

"Please," Reid said. "And... if you could..."

Gideon eyed him. "What do you need?"

"Could I please just..." He closed his eyes, as if pulling darkness back over them, as if generating some kind of buffer between himself and the world. "Could I please be alone?"

He turned his head.

The dismissal would have stung, had Gideon not understood it so implicitly. He'd felt the same way, once, in a time that felt like it was long ago.

He got the pen and the notebook, then left alone the man who had become something like his son.

Time passed. They all knew that one of them could give it another shot in a little while. Reid just needed time.

Suddenly, they heard Meg sigh. She was standing over at the door, looking through the crosshatched, double-paned window of Reid's room.

It was not wistfulness or lovesickness that darkened her eyes, but sympathy.

"Look," she said.

Due to the way the bed was arranged, at an angle away from the door, they could see Reid, but Reid could not see them.

He had gone through multiple notebook pages, and as they watched, flipped one aside with a hard, self-punishing sweep. More pages lay in a crumpled heap on his sheets and on the linoleum floor. His pen dug deep into the paper, until suddenly, he stopped and began viciously scrawling out whatever he had written.

That page ended up on the floor, too.

Before he began writing again, he dropped his pen on his lap and wrenched his good hand through his hair, leaving it standing up from the static. Then he pressed his hand to his eyes and moaned with something that sounded like fear.

"It's every genius's worst nightmare," said Meg quietly, as Reid began to write again, his handwriting becoming steadily more elongated. On the screen near his head, his blood pressure had gone up with a low, soft beep.

"What?" Elle said, distracted by what she was seeing.

"It starts when we are very young," she said. "That continuous desire for the answers we can give. First, we're handed books of puzzles, and pages of crosswords and mnemonics. As we grow older, the puzzles become quizzes and the crosswords become standardized tests. We fill notebook after notebook with things we've studied and facts we've learned; we recite knowledge with an ever-increasing ease. And there is always, always a demand for it."

She stepped closer to the glass, watching Reid.

"From parents, tutors, teachers, professors, supervisors, we are constantly reminded that we are important because of what we learn and understand. We are constantly given things to write, constantly given questions to answer, constantly given books to fill."

Gideon realized her eyes were beginning to shine with a hint of tears.

"As soon as we start to put that together, every genius that has ever functioned in society begins to realize that there will, one day, come a time when the answers they have will mean nothing. One day, there will be no more questions. One day, no one will want the one thing they have to offer."

She blinked. "We all realize that one day, we will run out of notebooks."

Hotch stared at her.

"What should we do?" he asked in a low voice.

Morgan made a sound in his throat, but said nothing.

"Look, this is why we brought her on, for exactly this kind of thing," Hotch said. "Meg: what should we do?"

"I want to talk to him."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Hotch said, lowering his eyes to her. "There are procedures for this kind of thing. One of us should do it."

"There are procedures?" Meg asked, one arched eyebrow raised. "There are procedures for interviewing a twenty-four year old genius who was recently abducted and tortured for days in some kind of twisted military mind game?"

Hotch's mouth tightened. "There are rules. Liabilities."

In the hospital room, Reid moaned a second time. It was louder than before, and carried with it a faint, upward cry. He was lost, lost in a place where his own intelligence couldn't rescue him.

He was scared.

"Forget 'em," said Gideon, without turning from the window. "Just forget them. Send her in."

On his words, before Hotch could move to stop her, Meg opened the door and walked inside.

Reid turned his head as best as he was able, surprise widening his eyes. His hand tightened on the pen, his knuckles widening. Meg wondered--- in a hidden pocket of her mind--- if he had been intending to throw it at her.

"Relax," she said calmly. "My name is Dr. Meg Walker."

"Doctor?" he said, taking in her appearance. She certainly didn't look like one. His mind fumbled, trying to grasp and failing. His eyes thickened with the chaos behind them, bright with tears.

"Ph. D's. Two of them. You?"

"Three," he responded automatically.

Inwardly, she smiled.

"Stanford?" she asked.

"Duke. Princeton?"

"Harvard. Yale?"

"Dartmouth."

"Damn," she said, "Wonder boy."

Where the whisper of a smile would have been, fear surfaced instead. His eyes shifted, left, right, like a ship in turmoil, like the room was dipping back and forth around him.

"It's okay," she said. "You remember that much about yourself. Your name, your degrees, your career. Where you've been and what you've done. It's what makes you who you are," she said.

Then she pulled her first card. "How smart are you, anyway?" she asked. "IQ-wise?"

His hand trembled. He began to doodle ferociously on his paper. Wild, random scribblings. Distracting his mind. The question sounded so familiar... so... threatening in a way he couldn't place... where had he heard anyone ask that before?

Like a flash of lightning or the slice of a chain: a male voice, hard, loud: _"What's your IQ, Dr. Reid?"_

He couldn't answer. He closed his eyes, wanted to scream. He willed this woman to be gone when he opened them. But no, there she was, standing there.

"What?" he snapped, his voice coming out fast, riding on a wave of pure, wild insecurity.

"Nothing," she said, her tone conversational. "Mine is 183. My name is Dr. Meg Walker," she repeated. "You've heard of me. You know my name."

"You're the agent from New York," he said slowly, speaking as it came to him. "The one they mentioned for awhile, when I was hired. I never contacted you," he said. What was he doing? Apologizing? For what? His pen scratched harder. Mutilating something.

"Listen," she said. "I know how you feel right now," she said. "There are a lot of things you wish you understood. You feel like you should be able to answer the questions going through your head. But you can't."

"Go away," he said. "You don't know anything about me."

"I do, actually," she said. "I've been working with your team--- your friends--- to try to find you. They care a lot about you. You remember who they are, which is good, because they make you who you are, too."

"Stop," he said. "Please. Go away."

"No. Here's the deal, Reid. You've got to understand. Whatever you're writing can't help you now. You have reached a bizarre, terrifying pinnacle in your life. The answers aren't in the past you remember, or in the random facts you've accumulated on the way. This isn't a puzzle."

"Shut up," he whispered.

"No. You can't beat your mind bloody for this. You've got to just relax, open up, and start to remember what happened in the last couple of days--- yes, days--- because there is a very dangerous guy out there, and we don't know what happened to him."

"What?"

"Yeah," she said. "So. What? You went back to your room. You laid down. You probably looked at the stuff on the walls, made some random observations. Then what? Did you fall asleep? Did you get naked? Did you---"

"I didn't do anything!"

"Yes, you did. Did the doorbell ring? Oh, right, you were in a hotel, no doorbell. So, did someone knock? Did someone bang on the door? Did room service call?"

"Wait!" Reid cried. "Wait. Someone..."

He squinted, then closed his eyes.

The sound, like a sharp, loud, rapport.

_No watching dirty movies._

He'd gotten up... gotten dressed.

The door had opened. Did he open it? Did they? Did it matter?

He dropped his pen. _He dropped his gun._

"Did you find it?" he said suddenly, eyes flying open.

"What?" She leaned forward, knowing that the agents could hear everything he said through the door she'd left half-open.

"Did you find it? My gun?"

She grinned.

"Yeah, Reid. We found it. What happened next?"

She reached out, took the notebook away, set it on the table. Reid didn't protest. He just let his mind wheel backwards, let his mind take in the sight of her standing there, watching and waiting, let the silence of the room and space between them fill up his mind...

"I woke up," he said.

And then he began to speak in earnest.


	9. The Way

**Hello again! Thanks for stopping in to read this chapter! Sorry for the wait (I started school and switched some job stuff around so I hardly had time to sleep)... here's the next chapter! Reviews make me smile, folks, and more importantly, they make me a better writer! Thanks to those who have done so!**

"Hurry! This way!"

There was no humor in seeing Hotch running down a wet ditch in a suit. Along with a few other officers, armed with rubber gloves and evidence kits, the other agents followed close behind.

"_I shot him in the ditch," said Reid. "I was scared, I didn't know what to do... I'd forced him along until... I didn't know what to do anymore. Then I killed him. I killed him."  
_"_How far did you go?"  
_"_I made him get out of the truck in front of a farmyard."_

The farm stood desolate. Empty. The whitewashed boards were falling off the house, the shingles caving in. A condemning, forgotten notice stuck to the door, its edges peeling, as if the notice itself begged for release. A barn stood lopsidedly down from the driveway, a few rusty, anonymous machinery parts hanging from the wooden beams. A chunk of the roof was missing.

And there, in a stand of dying trees, was a bright, almost new, black pick-up truck.

They charged to it. Sure enough, it was empty. The dimples in the seats, suggestions of people having sat in them, were long gone--- but the thin, husky scent of blood remained. A few officers stayed back to secure the truck.

"_Where did the truck come from?"  
_"_I forced him to tell me how to escape. How to get out. Then I made him drive me."  
_"_From where, Reid?"  
_"_It looked like an old, abandoned confinery. Something... metallic. Old. Like it didn't belong."_

A half mile up the road, visible in the dim daylight, stood an abandoned concrete warehouse. Once used to store hogs, it now stood empty.

And coming from its wed, muddy drive (unused except these past few days) were truck tire prints.

They ran up the drive, parallel to the prints, being careful not to run in them. Excitement--- the passion that came from being close, _so close_--- filled them up further with every beat of their hearts, every loud slap of their shoes against the mud. These were moments that came only once or twice a career, moments that stung and bled and intoxicated, that feeling of knowing that you were about to find an answer, regardless of how sick and disturbing that answer might be.

The confinery, like the farmhouse, was useless. It was obvious that Reid had not been held here--- sections of the concrete walls still allowed the dim, translucent morning light through, lighting up bits of forgotten dust, illuminating the scent molecules of forgotten sweat and feces of farm animals.

"_The hatch," Reid whispered. "He led me up through the hatch."_

Below their feet, very nearly hidden in the grime of the floor, was an old cellar hatch. It was nothing like the cellar doors seen in films; no hand-crafted iron handles, no wine bottles resting quietly inside, no rustic, photogenic barn slats. It was purely for practical use--- and secrecy. It's dank, gray tone almost disappeared altogether.

Gideon reached down and pulled it open with a surprising grunt of strength. It's hinges swung silently, suggesting that it had been recently oiled, despite the door itself's ancient quality.

Dark steps descended down into the pale, wet blackness. Vomit clung to the third step down, on the left. It was fresh, but mostly dehydrated, and pale with sickness.

"Reid's?" Morgan whispered. No one answered him.

Flipping back her hair, Elle took the lead, her flashlight clicking on.

"_What kind of hatch?"  
_"_The steps were filthy. I was so terrified of myself. I didn't know what I was doing. How had I gotten here? How had I gotten a gun to his head? Was I even alive? I think I threw up. I don't know if he noticed. I was so hungry I almost wanted to eat it."_

The hallway broadened, becoming a wider, emptier, darker room. Obviously, this had once been the trap cellar for the confinery. Now, it was only the harbinger of larger things.

A tall, strong, double-reinforced door stood in the far wall. A naked bulb hung from the ceiling in front of it. It was cracked. They all knew that filaments would click inside, if they were to shake it.

"_The light bulb was out. It was dark. I didn't want to see backwards... I didn't want to think about what I had come from."  
_"_What did you come from?"  
_"_Oh, God."_

"I'll go," said Gideon.

The door was not locked.

With a heave, he pulled it open.

It was another hallway. Newer. The walls were thicker, heavier. The very air tasted recycled and damp. Once again, a naked bulb gave them fizzing, flickering light.

In one wall was a door. Off the other was a second room. The room contained three chairs, a table, a television monitor, an extra gun, and tranquilizing hypos. No cards were splayed across the table, and no beer bottles stood half-empty.

"It's the crash room," said Morgan. "They stayed there while they watched him." The monitor showed nothing but darkness. The tape had run out.

A bizarre stench was coming from the four large air holes in the other room. Sweat. Blood. Urine.

Death.

"_I don't want to think about it."  
_"_Reid."  
_"_No."_

Silence hung in the air.

"I'll do it," Hotch said. His voice was all business, breaking the silence with the force of an oath. Inside, he wanted to puke himself.

All the agents knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this would be the last one of these cases that they could handle.

The dimness, the darkness, the half-light, made it almost impossible to breathe. Elle realized that she felt like she needed to urinate--- stress had clenched her bladder to the size of a pencil eraser.

The door swung open just as silently as the first. The light bulb here was brighter. Too bright. Too sharp. Stark.

"_I killed them."  
_"_How many of them?"_

They stepped into the room. For a moment, no one could think of anything to say.

"_All of them."_

Laying on the floor, on top of one another, eyes open, were four men. They were all dead. Blood leaked in anonymous trickles from various eyes, as well as bullet holes. Waste darkened the fronts and seats of their uniform pants. None of them had drawn their weapons. Their blood had formed a sticky, half-dry pool on the cement floor. Handcuffs lay unlocked, chained to a pipe.

"_How did you do it?"  
_"_It doesn't matter."_

In the corner, high up above the door, hung a video camera.

Back at the office, having sped across the gravel roads so quickly they felt their stomachs very nearly fly out of their bodies, they threw the tape into the player and hit "copy" as the image began to run.

It was not the edited time-lapse pseudo-artwork of the previous victim. Reid's escape had been a surprise.

They hit the fast-forward button. They would review his injuries later. They wanted to see the end of the tape.

Reid lay curled up in the corner of the room, his hair damp and in his face. His eyes were wild with fear. Bruises and broken bones had torn up his body. He didn't even look sane.

One of the guards--- "Needle guy," recognized Elle--- entered the room. Two metallic objects flashed at his waist. At his right, his gun. And across from it, on the left, his keys.

Suddenly Hotch noticed something. He hit pause, his finger jamming the button so hard it almost broke. "Look!" He pointed. The snap, holding his gun in his holster, was hanging open.

As the film played, the guard reached for his keys, almost lazily, as if he barely expected a fight. He wore his confidence like a bulletproof vest. He pulled them out and unlocked one of Reid's arms. His left. Reid allowed it to be taken, his hand hanging limply in the other man's, his fingers hanging off the edge of the larger palm, fingertips trailing air.

They remembered one of the first victim's wounds: being shot in a non-lethal area. The upper arm.

With his other hand, the man reached down. His hand slowly neared his gun. It was already loosed. He seemed bored, as if he'd done this a thousand times before. Reid's eyes rolled back in his head and he let out a soft moan. The larger man smiled.

Suddenly, quick as lightning, Reid snatched his arm from the other man's grasp and lunged forward. He'd palmed the snap away and had the gun in his hand faster than the guard could move. He pulled the trigger instantly, grazing his captor in the side. Then he pulled back, and without aiming, without taking the time to sight anything, shot him straight in the head.

His eyes widened. The death of the other man seemed like it surprised him. Bloodshot, almost crazed, he swung out his legs and wrenched the other man towards him. He screamed as his already broken leg cracked with a loud, painful snap. But the keys hung out of their strap, and with his bare foot, he grabbed them and pulled. Using his free hand, he unlocked his other cuff.

Then he stood. Swayed. At that point, three other men entered the room. The two initial guards, and a new one. Not Essex, but close.

Their guns were drawn. Reid's was already in his hand.

He shot one, who fell in the path of the others. They swung around him, giving Reid just enough time to aim and shoot again. Then again. They fell, on each other, on the ground.

He continued to shoot. He aimed at their heads and shot. Over. And over. And over. Tears leaked from his eyes and still he continued to pump lead into them. Finally, after arterial spray had shot wide and hit him, after their eyes had nearly fallen out of their ravaged heads and their lungs almost poured from their chests, he stopped. His finger still pulled, the gun clicked empty a few more times, and then he lowered the gun.

Suddenly his head snapped up. Without warning, he reached down, snapped another gun out of it's blood-soaked holster, and raised it.

At that moment, a fifth guard entered the room. His gun immediately blew out of his hand and clattered on the floor. Blood from his fingers began to pour. He did not scream. His eyes only opened in shock. And then Reid was there, putting a gun to his forehead. As he raised his arms in supplicance, Reid patted him down. Disarming him of his knife, he swung him around and put the gun to the back of his head.

His broken arm, jutting painfully into his skin, seemed to cause him no pain.

Adrenaline had him now.

Then they disappeared out the door. The story had ended in a wet ditch in the middle of the night, and in his body finally giving up.

Back in the hospital, as Meg waited outside for the others to call, Reid was sitting up, rocking back and forth in his hospital bed. No one had picked up his crumpled ramblings. Despite Meg's interrogation, after she left, he felt absolutely alone.

"Is this what's it's like to be my mother?" he said out loud, talking to himself for the first time in years. "I remember everything. But it's all so loud inside. Oh, God."

A nurse entered the room. She carried a needle. He knew it was simply a sedative, but at the sight of it he wanted to scream.

"Get away from me," he said, his voice growing louder than he felt it had ever been before. His eyes were huge, pale, and staring. She backed away.

"All right, Dr. Just hold on," she said. "I'm going to get your physician."

He knew he was breathing heavily. Oh. God. He wished his mother were here. What was he talking about? He never wished for his mother, not since he was a child. His father had died, and she'd been committed, but she'd been going schizophrenic for longer than that.

First it was, _"Oh, Spencer, let's decorate the Christmas tree!"_ (even though it was April and the heat was beginning to melt tennis shoes). Then, slowly, it became _"Spencer! Let's skip school today!"_, although she had four classes, three TA's and some thousand students depending on her, and he had mountains of homework to do if he expected to graduate by twelve. By the time it was _"Spencer! Walk into the bathroom and see my artwork!"_ and the artwork was broken glass all over the floor, his father had had quite enough. It was time to go. His heart condition flew in on wings of melted chocolate in the kitchen sink and maniacal laughter coming from locked doors, and by the time his son was sixteen, he was dead and she was away.

He didn't even look at her face when he visited. He'd essentially taken the money and run. And now he was going to die.

What? He wasn't dying. Christ.

That needle.

He felt like he was beginning to cry. What a pansy. He'd been called the name before and was now finally beginning to believe it.

He looked down at the floor. Was this going to be it? Was this honestly the end of this whole mess? _He'd killed all those people..._ and now he was going to be driven quietly insane by... _everything?_

Outside, Meg clutched her cell phone in her hand, her eyes narrowing with shock. "He knows he killed them, but he won't talk about how," she explained. "He blames himself."

"It's a miracle he killed anyone, much less survive it," said Gideon, his voice rough to hide the pain beneath it. "He needs to see someone. He needs to be able to get through this."

"I'll get someone to get him in touch with one," Meg said.

"Okay. You've been a big help, Meg."

In his bed, Reid stared at the wall.

In the conference room, the other agents knew they were on their own. The rest of the department would be overloaded enough with trying to work the newfound crime scenes. Reid was completely out of commission. Finding Essex would have to be done by the agents, and the agents alone.

And by God, they were more than ready.

**Oooh! What happens next? I feel as though this story is ready to reach its end; perhaps in the next chapter, or the one after that. Again, thank you all for reviewing! Fifty reviews make me feel like some people care!  Tune in soon for the next chapter!**


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Criminal Minds, Mystery, Suspense