AN: Considerably updated in January 2019 with additional chapters and plotlines added. Many thanks to Greeneyedconstellations and Desdaemona for all their work beta'ing this piece.
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Prologue:
Where We Wake Up (and regret it immediately)
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#05
STATUS: unexpectedly abducted
Aaron Hotchner closed his eyes in his own home with the soft sound of rain pattering against the windows and opened them once more in a four by four cell with no recollection of the time in-between. The air smelled bleach-sharp and the cement he lay on was icy under the bare skin of his arms. He was still in the same worn shirt he'd gone to bed in, his loose shorts a reminder that, outside, it was still summer. When he twitched his fingers and considered the abrupt turn his night had taken, they were chilled by the frigid air and, as such, sluggish to respond.
The temptation to close his eyes and return to sleep surmounted, as though this was some abstract dream he could so easily escape from. It felt unfathomable that this was actually happening, that he could have been plucked so neatly from his bed and deposited elsewhere without a murmur of protest. That didn't happen to men like him, capable men of the FBI who were trained in self-defence and with a side-arm within easy reach in the gun-safe by his bed. It didn't happen intheir homes, it happened at work, to others. The victims they helped… not them.
Except, apparently, it had, and he had to deal with this just as he dealt with any other workplace emergency. Just another day with the unit; with that thought in mind, he sat up and resolutely decided to approach this calmly and as a leader.
In that frozen, silent room, Hotch struggled to his bare feet and observed his surroundings: sliding door, automatic, no handle; a humming intercom mounted on the wall beside the door; a large number five stencilled to the concrete floor; and behind him on the wall…
Hotch turned to stare, processing the image that took up the entirety of that bizarrely clean surface. It only took him a moment to register exactly what he was looking at and, once it registered, his heart sunk. It was just like any other day at work indeed, complete with maniacs playing dangerous games with the victims they'd trapped helplessly. Except, today, he was that victim and he was just as trapped as any other.
However, one thing he wasn't and had never been was helpless.
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#06
STATUS: alone
Jennifer Jareau ran a worried hand over her son's skin as her own head throbbed with a tension headache that she knew wasn't going to go away easily. Henry coughed as he'd been coughing all night, face flushed and blonde hair lank against his sweaty forehead. The sound was hoarse, and she winced at every bark.
"I'm gonna be sick for always," Henry whined, curling deeper into the bedding with his knees drawn up to his chest. His pyjamas, when she smoothed them down over his back, were damp to the touch. "Do I have to take the medicine again?"
"If you don't want to be sick for always, you'd better," she told him, losing her reassuring smile in favour of a stern look as he burrowed his face into the pillow and closed his eyes, as though feigning sleep would stop her from forcing the cherry-flavoured Robitussin down his aching throat. A plaintive hope that would remain unrealised when she reached for the bottle and spoon and the sharp, medicinal tang of it filled the air.
"Open, buddy," she coaxed. With a rueful stare, Henry obeyed. The medicine went down smoothly with minimal fuss and, sorry for her son's pain but desperate to go and soothe her own, JJ leaned to kiss his fevered forehead and whispered goodnight to him.
"Nuh-night, Mommy," he grumbled, eyes already heavy-lidded as the medicine knocked him out for the night. One last cough squeezed out as she switched off the light, lingering for a moment and watching him for any signs of distress.
Her head thumped in time with her blinking eyes, every blink just making it thump worse as exhaustion slunk through every limb of her body.
"He okay?" her boyfriend called as she slipped out of Henry's room and closed the door. Padding towards their bedroom, she found Will curled on top of the covers and blinking fast as though struggling to stay awake. Just as tired as her, which wasn't right because he'd been fine before she'd gone to check on their son? She frowned at the groggy downturn to his mouth, his eyelids heavily lidded. If he was getting sick too, they were in for a hell of a time.
"He'll be fine," she replied. Her hand shook against the doorframe, trying to hold herself upright as her head throbbed harder and fractured her focus. Opening her mouth again, she tasted the medicinal scent of Henry's remedy: how had it gotten here? How…
"Jennifer?" she heard Will call, his wavering shape lifting from the bed as he stood and stood and tilted sideways with a blurred yelp. And maybe she called for him or stumbled towards him, but all she really knew was that suddenly the carpet was lurching up and she was waiting for the falling to end but it kept going and going and going and she tipped—
She woke up alone.
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#02
STATUS: ready to raise hell for Clooney
Derek Morgan's dog was limp on the kitchen floor. Morgan's usual piercing whistle did nothing to rouse the animal, despite his sides moving steadily as he breathed.
"Clooney," he tried, concern slamming hard when the dog's ear didn't even flick at his name. "Yo, boy, what's up with you? You sick?"
There was no response. Ah hell, he thoughtbefore leaping up with the intention of bolting to his phone and calling the emergency vet. But his feet slipped out from under him. He found himself sprawling, one hand on the ground and the other heavy on his dog's warm side, the tiles bitterly cold against his bare legs.
As his head lolled on a neck that had somehow forgotten how to support it, someone moved into his field of vision. Morgan could just make out that they were tall, masculine, and stood overtop him looking down with their face distorted into a nightmare shape by the mask they were wearing. Their form blurred and wavered with his awareness, dipping and weaving out of focus, but that mask never lost its nightmarish quality to his struggling vision.
"The hell you do to my dog?" he tried to snarl, tasting aspirin on the back of his tongue like he'd let a pill rest there too long. Choking the bitter-laced taste down, he managed to lift his hand and swipe at that hallucinatory shape; it brushed against stiff material with his fingers curled weakly in a last-ditch effort at self-defence.
In the end, he wasn't even sure that he'd managed the words before the world slipped away from him. And, when he opened his eyes again, he was dressed exactly as he'd been when he'd fallen — jogging gear doing nothing against the freezing air of the cell he was in — and he definitely wasn't in his kitchen anymore.
"If you've killed my dog, you're a dead man," he told the cell around him through his nausea and shock. Then, with that stated firmly, he got up and started recon: sitting on his ass being angry wasn't going to get him out of here, wherever 'here' was — and he wasgetting out.
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#01
STATUS: dressed up and pissed off
David Rossi studied the map splayed across the wall of his prison. In case the assclown who'd put them in there was watching, he kept his body language calm and nonchalant. Bow tie undone but still wrapped around his throat and his hands slung absently into the pockets of his suit jacket. He made sure it looked like that he didn't even care that, somehow, his long-awaited plans had fallen through and left him here in this dug-out with no idea about how his abduction and relocation had happened. The timing seemed strange too, that this would happen tonight of all nights, considering what those plans had been…and the last thing he remembered was lighting up a cigar over a glass of wine and settling down to wait for his cab.
None of those things being here with him now, sadly.
No point panicking and wasting time, he rationalised.Just breathe, plan, and the team will find you.
After all, he had absolute faith in his team.
The map was concerning, though. It was clearly a blueprint of a building: a seven-sided shape with a labyrinth of passages and rooms leading through it. Rossi eyed it, praying hard that it was merely the odd decorative choice of a demented mind and not the blueprints of an actual building. An actual building that he was in right now, sans wine and only sort-of-legally-obtained cigars but, thankfully, still with his shoes.
Although, he supposed as he examined the large number 'one' painted on the floor below said shoes, an actual building will make for a good book.
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#03
STATUS: this is not what she signed up for
Penelope Garcia was an IT bunny and nothing spookier for a reason. Watching her friends run towards danger day in and day out like a litter of particularly heroic kittens was more than enough excitement for her.
This? Being kidnapped and shoved into a tiny cell? That was what was known asfar too much excitement, thank you very much. Especially when she was still the littlest bit drunk from the half-off cocktails at ladies night and even more especially when she was a little bit stressed because she couldn't remember walking home. Not to mention, absolutely freezing in the frilly nightie that was great on the shelf at half-off but not so good at being warm when imprisoned in an ice-box.
Although, being kidnapped was honestly the least of her worries. More worrisome concerns were curled up on the icky cement floor in front of her, still snoozing from the aftereffects of whatever the sicko had given them before dumping them all here. One of those concerns coughed with a sad little wet bark as Garcia crouched beside them and reached out to brush her hand against his flushed skin. The other just kept sleeping, looking so sweet and innocent and vulnerable in his superhero pyjamas and with only one sock on his poor, cold feet.
She blinked back frantic tears and looked around, hoping for something, anything, that she could use to escape. It was hitting her hard that she couldn't count on the team being able to save her this time.
She didn't even know if they were still alive. Because, after all, there was one thing she did know: if Jack Hotchner and Henry LaMontagne were locked in this icy poop-hole of a cell with her, something terrible must have happened to their parents to have let it happen.
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#07
STATUS: doing an awful lot of assuming
Out of the seven current members on their team, Spencer Reid probably had the most experience with being drugged and waking up alone in strange and frightening locations. Fortunately, this also meant that he was likely the most qualified to deal with what he could tell at a glance was going to be a positively hellish labyrinth to escape.
He eyed the map, memorising each and every turn, with symbols on the map denoting some sort of landmark — what though? — and the measurements of each area. Spatially, it was simple: three concentric circles in a seven-sided figure, thirty-six visual landmarks indicated by green dots, twenty-five possible routes to the centre. Timeframe to reach that centre: a maximum of, assuming he took the longest path and it was a level plane, ninety minutes, supposing the cell was to scale. Minimum, approximately an hour, but that would heavily depend on luck and, despite being born and raised in Vegas, he'd never quite learned to trust in luck. After all, he counted cards.
Of course, this was all assuming that the simplicity of the maze was from design and not in order to lead him into a variety of nasty traps. And it was assuming that his cell was the one denoted by the 'seven' on the map — which seemed obvious, really, considering the number on the floor below his odd-socked feet, although he didn't trust assumptions either.
He was doing an awful lot of assuming.
It also struck him that if he was here and there were seven other cells also denoted at each vertex of the figure, then he probably wasn't here alone. Which added a whole mess of unpredictable confounds to his calculations of the likelihood of not only escaping unharmed while also removing any other innocent from this maze who needed to be removed, also unharmed.
But he shoved that thought into the 'to be worried about after compiling a plan' pile, pulling his coat tighter around himself and thanking his insomnia for meaning that he was still fully dressed during this firsthand experience in capture, although shoeless. After all, there'd be time for panic later since this didn't seem like a situation that would be swiftly resolved. Where he and an unexpected abduction were involved, they very rarely were.
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#08
STATUS: fuck
Emily didn't remember going to bed, and certainly not in a nicely contained little prison cell with a yellow 'eight' painted onto the cement floor beneath her.
"Fucking fuck," said Emily since it felt like an appropriate time to say so, before unfolding her legs with painful twin cracks and staggering upright.
"Fuck," she added, looking down and realising she was wearing nothing but an oversized sci-fi tee and men's boxers with fish on them, her skin goose-pimpled against the chill. Just the chill. Not anything like fear. She refused to be afraid since that fear was evidently the purpose of this shit-hole cell she'd been dumped in, half-naked and very confused.
She had absolutely no doubt that whatever was in store for them was going to be nasty, messy, and exceptionally dramatic. If her team were in here with her — she realised that she was running on the assumption that her team was here with her — then there was no one out there that she trusted to save her silk-clad ass.
On the bright side, that meant that everyone she trusted was in the perfect position to save said silk-clad ass if they could find each other and make a plan. Emily turned again to study the map emblazoned on the wall behind her and realised just how hard it was going to be to meet up with whoever else — she really hoped it was her team — was trapped here too. Emily liked to do things alone, but she also recognised that there was definite safety in numbers.
But if the numbers shown on the map were cells, with her being eight, and assuming that the team was also here — including Garcia, as horrifying a concept as that was — then that was only seven.
So, who the hell else was there?
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#04
STATUS: ready to knock some heads together
Elle was, to put it politely, pissed right the fuck off. How dare someone come into her home and take her from it? How dare they! It was Garner all over again but with eight times the betrayal because she'd fucking left that life behind, she'd left it! This wasn't her world anymore, psychopaths and serial killers and abductions in the dead of night. It wasn't her life to wake up in a tank top and shorts, barefoot and groggy on the floor of some hellish cell and all sprawled out like a sacrifice on top of a painted yellow 'four' that she sure hoped wasn't an omen of something terrible to come. And the map?
What was with the map?!
Elle prowled the room feeling like a cat in a cage, nails clawing at every possible escape route. Scrabbling furiously at the cracks of the door, the hint of an air-vent, the cement that the map was painted on. Nothing worked, not clawing, not kicking, not screaming her fury at the silent, watchful walls.
"I'm going to end up being saved by Aaron fricken' Hotchner," she said to the air as she turned to examine the intercom that sat there watching her. The first thing she'd done was hammer the button, but it had remained silent and useless. And wasn't that going to be the feather in her bullshit cap, having Hotchner sauntering in here and snatching her ass out of trouble, after what she'd done…
But then again, as it slowly dawned on her how much trouble she was in, that was better than the alternative. There were plenty of people they hadn't saved, after all. Plenty of 'too lates'. Hadn't that been her problem, in the end? That she'd been one of those 'too lates'. And now, probably again…
"Shit," she said once more to all that empty space around her before walking forward and hitting that intercom button again, just for something to do. Then again, she drew back her fist and went to slam it down, anger bubbling hot and—
It beeped.
Cautious now, Elle pressed the button again. "Hello?" she called, that fury rising as she considered the asshole listening to her shaking voice. "What the fuck is going on, you sicko? Where the hell am I?"
The last person she'd ever expected to hear again responded which, for some bizarre moment, was the briefest moment of calm she'd had since waking up.
"Greenaway?" came the unmistakable voice of the sanctimonious Aaron Hotchner himself, sounding as stunned about this twist as she felt. And, for a second, her brain went, 'well, that was easy, cavalry is already here'.
Seconds later, she considered whether maybe he was the Unsub.
And, then, sanity prevailed. She sighed, said, "Hotch? Aaron Hotchner?" just to confirm, and then came to the rapid conclusion that maybe her life with the BAU hadn't ended after all and they were right the fuck here with her in Wonderland.
His silence only confirmed that, and she swore in rapid-fire Spanish just to vent some of her anger.
"You know," she managed finally, once she'd finished cussing this place and everything in it out, "me quitting means I'm not being paid to be kidnapped by lunatics anymore?"
"Sorry," he said quietly. She supposed that was really all he could say and leaned against the wall with her eyes shut as she considered what to do next.
The intercom, however, interrupted her consideration.
It buzzed, an unfamiliar voice replacing Hotch's.
"If I were you, I'd start running," it announced with a sick kind of calm, Elle jerking up so fast that her neck cracked at the motion. As though it had been waiting for this moment — she supposed it had — the door hummed and then, with obnoxious slowness, opened.
