author's note: i do not own any of the criminal minds concepts, characters, or storylines. all rights belong to CBS. i make no profit from this work whatsoever. this is a work informed by the US copyright fair use. rated MA for mature - content warning for murder and violent images.

part I: mercilessly

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both. " -James A. Michener

the sunlight was filtering through the window, gently touching each piece of the room: long fingers of light across the metal radiator, the squeaky floorboards, the bookshelves bowing under the weight stacked at their centers, the unmade bed, white sheets pulling up off the corners of the blue mattress. spencer reid laid at the center of the mattress, asleep, sleeping in on a rare saturday off from work (so far). evil doesn't rest for weekends, but spencer was. finally. he had slept for almost a full eight hours, for once. it was 8:22 am.

there were only three more minutes before evil rang.

8:23, 8:24, 8:25. the clock ticked around. next to his bed, on wooden nightstand with used tissues scattered across the top, the cell phone started to buzz, shifting back and forth. the flat screen of the phone said: HOTCH.

spencer, his wavy hair standing nearly on end, reached out a hand and scraped the phone from his nightstand. he saw the name. he answered.

"reid," he said.

"reid, we have a case," the voice, spencer's boss, hotch, said.

"what are the specifics?" reid said, sitting up in bed, wiping at his eyes. he wished he was still sleeping, but felt the duty of his job calling to him. he was proud to be an FBI agent, but he also wasn't quite awake yet.

"portland, maine," hotch said. "a series of abductions. two bodies already found in the bay, possibly - probably - more."

"okay," spencer said.

"can you be here in 30? wheels up in 60," hotch said.

"it's a little tight, but i'll make it."

"okay. see you then." hotch hung up the phone, and spencer stood - he thought of himself as spencer mostly while at home, when he conducted internal conversations with himself, within his thoughts. it wasn't until he put on his dress shirt and tie, hooked his badge to a pocket, and holstered up his piece that he felt like he was reid, or dr. reid, the way his coworkers referred to him. to be honest, he preferred to leave off the doctor piece because he didn't feel like his academic work was something that should be used for status. but, still: the two halves - spencer and reid, each the same person and not the same person at all.

29 minutes later, reid was dressed, clutching a mug of coffee, and sitting around the table he and his 8 coworkers often sat around at Quantico. his go bag sat at his feet, a tan messenger bag holding a few outfits, another pair of shoes, toiletries, three books. other people brought small rolling suitcases - reid preferred to carry everything in his usual daytime traveling bag, which he had purposely purchased to be large enough for both needs. he was also remarkably good at looking and seeming completely awake before he actually was completely awake. he suspected that was true of most of his coworkers.

the table was a large, round, plastic-topped table, sometimes smeared with bits of food and coffee rings. spencer often cleaned off the food bits and took a paper towel to the coffee rings - he wanted the table to look as professional as a large round plastic table could. near the front of the room, hotch - aaron hotcher, his boss - stood, pointing to pictures projected onto a screen. penelope garcia, the Behavioral Analysis Unit's technology queen, had set up a quick slideshow, since they were leaving on the jet shortly.

"this is gillian barre," he said, hand lilting near a photo of a dead woman, her eyes grey and glazed over by white, body pulled from the casco bay in portland. her head looked like it was resting on a dock or wooden structure of some kind. "31, paralegal at a local small law firm. she was last seen alive on april 10. her body was found yesterday, three days later, in the bay. it appears that she was manually strangled." there were photos of gillian's body floating flacedown in the jean-blue hues of the bay, and a photo of her when she had been alive, some sort of professional headshot. she had been beautiful, reid noticed - clear skin, curly brown hair, a mischievous edge to her grin.

"this," hotch gestured to another photo, "is william coldman. 48, construction worker." again, his head looked as though it were being photographed on top of a dock. in life, william coldman was also an attractive man - silvering hair at his temples, thin wire-frame glasses, and sharp facial features that played against the kindness in his eyes. reid often noticed the contradictions in others like these. "he was also found strangled in casco bay. manual strangulation. disappeared april 12, found in the bay this morning. locally, there are usually less than 3-5 homicides in a year, so it is highly unusual for portland to have two in one week."

"so our unsub doesn't have a gender or age preference and he's speeding up," morgan, agent derek morgan, one of reid's coworkers, offered.

"wait - how do we know these are victims of the same unsub?" reid asked.

"like i said, it is highly unusual for portland to have more than once homicide in a week, and both victims had pieces of paper in ziploc bags with one-word messages shoved into their throats post-mortem," hotch said. he gestured at a final series of photos projected onto the screen.

"calling card," reid murmured.

jj, agent jennifer jareau, another of reid's coworkers, asked, "what did the messages say?"

"the message in gillian's throat said 'the.' the message in william's throat said 'master,'" hotch said.

"do you think our unsub is spelling out a message using the victims?" jj asked.

"i think it's possible," hotch said. "very possible. 'the master' sounds like it could be the beginning of some sort of sentence to me. and now, the reason we're going to portland - a third possible victim has disappeared. hannah samuels, 22, student, was abducted by force between 6:45 and 7am this morning while jogging in portland's western promenade area."

"our unsub apparently had a busy morning," morgan said.

"did anyone see the abduction?" blake, agent alex blake, asked.

"yes," hotch said. "a couple walking their dog near where hannah was abducted saw and heard her being forced into a light-colored four-door sedan. she was screaming bloody murder."

somewhere near portland, in a dark dungeon-like basement, hannah samuels was trapped. the air around her was heavy with mildew and darkness.

she was dirty and exhausted, her dark hair strewn with bits of dirt and grass from her struggle earlier in the morning - at least she thought it had been that morning - with the terrible man who had taken her away from her life. blood caked on her temples and forehead from the blow the terrible man had issued to her head as she struggled. her head was aching, pounding, wouldn't let up.

as hannah roused more, she felt a heavy weight on her wrists and ankles and realized she was chained to a bed without sheets. she didn't know how long she had been out, she didn't know where she was - all she knew was that she was alone for now, waiting for the next horrible thing to happen to her. perhaps death. she wasn't foolish - she knew people had been being abducted in the last seven days and turning up dead in casco bay a few days later. she hoped that wasn't next on the list, but something told her she was next.

she wasn't ready for death yet.

she was only 22. she was studying biochemistry at one of the local universities, southern maine college of sciences. she had a boyfriend named ben that she loved and wanted to marry. they'd been together for two years and she still loved holding his hand and all the simple small gestures of a relationship that they shared.

she wasn't ready for death yet and she hoped a time wouldn't come where death was a welcome reprieve.

"our unsub is getting bolder," jj, now on their all-purpose jet, said to the team. "the other abductions, william and gillian, weren't witnessed, correct?"

"gillian was taken from her house in the middle of the night, no sign of forced entry, but definitely signs of a struggle inside the house," reid said, looking down at the case file, at pictures of gillian's black-and-white dining room chairs keeled over.

"william disappeared from the construction site he was working on sometime after most of his coworkers had gone home. again, there were signs of a struggle near his car. disturbances in the dirt, blood smeared across the side of his car. there were tire tracks found near the scene of the struggle," reid added.

"the one thing that gets me," jj said, "is how often no one sees our victims getting taken. how do you miss a struggle like that? one that leaves blood smeared across the entire side of a car? it was 7pm. it wasn't even dark yet."

"perhaps the unsub was known to both victims, with the lack of forced entry and the unsub approaching william on the job site," morgan said.

"but that doesn't explain hannah's abduction. it was very public, at least for 7'o'clock in the morning. we'll need to interview the couple that saw the struggle," hotch said.

hotch began giving out assignments. "morgan, i want you and blake on victimology when we land. visit the abduction sites and/or the victims' homes. reid and jj, i want you to interview the couple that saw hannah samuels' abduction. they might be able to provide crucial details that will lead us to the unsub. reid, if you could, also do some geographic study of portland and the surrounding areas too. rossi and i will take the ME's office and local police precinct and catch their take on what's happening."

hotch was a good leader, reid thought. he played to the strengths of his team, and he also varied the assignments enough so that everyone's specific skills were being used on different cases. the jet was due to land in portland in 15 to 20 minutes, and as a silence fell over the team, reid thought back to this morning, laying in his bed before the call. he wished he was still there. he wished that terrible things didn't happen to people all the time. he wished he could sleep without seeing gillian barre's eyes glazed over, dead on a dock, alone, completely alone.

shortly, they landed at the portland international jetport. reid thought it was ironic that it was called an "international jetport" because it was one of the smaller airports he had been to. he didn't mean it insultingly - he just thought it was ironic that that the airport billed itself as a bustling international jetport. and it was bustling, in a way - there were handfuls of people scattered about the airport waiting for boarding as they exited the jet. small families, little children, businessmen sitting alone in the uncomfortable-looking chairs. there were a series of white rocking chairs in the boarding area that reminded reid of wrap-around porches and ocean stretched out as far as the eye could see.

realistically, he knew, from statistics of maine's population, portland was the largest city in the state with a population of 66,000 in the metro area and, as of 2010, 514,000 in the greater portland area and its surrounding towns. he thought perhaps as they landed that portland, like other cities in primarily rural states, would have a Really Big Town sort of feel to it. the airport seemed to confirm that. the bulk of the state's population was in the southern part, and though the airport serviced every major airline, it still felt like a small airport. reid didn't mind - he liked to get up close and personal with the population and land of every place they visited, get to know the lay of the land intimately, personally, connect with the people and the places as if he lived there. that was one cool part of the job - traveling all over and learning about new places. it was maybe the only part that didn't come imbued with heaviness, heaviness in reid's heart, as he thought about all the terrible things people did to each other.

not long later, reid and jj were in a black FBI SUV driving to the downtown precinct on middle street. morgan and blake were off to the victims' homes and abduction sites, rossi and hotch to the medical examiner's office. reid hated driving, felt too distracted by the thoughts that occupied his brain 100% of the time, to drive, so jj was behind the wheel.

"this is a quaint little city," jj commented on the drive over.

"yeah, it is," reid said. "i actually really like all the cobblestone. it reminds me that portland was part of the original settlements in puritan america. portland was originally settled in 1633. did you know it was a site of major rebellion during the prohibition era, too? the mayor hid a bunch of moonshine in the basement of city hall until revolutionaries blew it up."

"i don't know how your brain remembers facts like that," jj said. "like, you even know the specific year portland was settled. how?"

"i...read a lot, i guess?" reid said, looking out the window. he felt a little embarrassed at times by how much he talked, how much information he spouted off, how often his coworkers had to remind him to stay on track. he just loved information and facts so much. he wanted to know everything about the world. and facts were facts, you couldn't argue with them - and they rarely ever hurt anyone the way the people did. plus, facts were easy to keep control of, unlike the rest of reid's life. he was often lonely at home and grateful that his job took him away from having to spend all that time facing himself. spencer and reid, he thought again: two halves of the whole. at work, he was cool, confident, connected, if a little verbose; at home, he felt adrift in a sea of books, and only books. he didn't feel confident or cool. he felt like the nerd he had been in high school, the one that the bullies - including the girl he had a crush on - had picked on mercilessly.

by now, they were at the police precinct.

they parked the car and went inside. they were greeted by a glassed-in window with a receptionist behind it. they approached the window, and jj said, "hello, we're here from the bureau. agents jareau and reid. officer candless should be expecting us." the way she said it was so commanding, yet still kind. he appreciated that about jj, and about all his coworkers - getting to see confident, commanding sides of them, and vulnerable sides, he imagined not everyone in their lives saw.

the woman behind the window said, "let me call her for you." she was a bit abrupt, reid noticed, but again, not unkind.

a few moments later the agents were behind the glass, meeting officer jenna candless for the first time. she was a little under 6', blonde, with her hair pulled back in a bun. she was clearly a confident woman. reid enjoyed being surrounded by confident women, as he felt that women should not have bullshit imposed on them by society that made them shrink away from embodying confidence and empowerment.

"good to be working with the bureau," candless said. "we have the couple still here. larry henderson and maria mcdane. they're both late 20s, working professionals, walking their dog in the morning before work, witnessed most or all of the samuels abduction."

it was a little after 11 am. reid calculated that meant that the couple had been sitting at the precinct for several hours now and was probably long past ready to leave, making it more likely they'd be candid with him and jj.

reid always liked these moments before the investigation truly began. it gave him a sense of peace and a sense of drive - to help, to rescue, to heal, to unearth the truth at all costs. he felt like it was his true purpose in life.