AN- I've never gotten so many quick and positive responses (story alerts, reviews, favorites, etc.) before in such a short period of time. (I've never written a story for such a large fandom either though so yeah. But still.) Thank you guys so much, it made me so happy! I'm trying to get this next chapter out quickly because I'm really busy at school so I want you guys to have another piece to look at. Hope you like it!

The Countdown

Chapter 2: Six

They stood around the latest body, and by glancing at the faces around him, Reid knew that now some of the others felt it too; the warning, the fear.

"Morgan…he looks just like you," Emily murmured, turning to look at him. A sea of four other heads followed. Morgan shrugged lightly, his eyebrows furrowed. Reid could tell that he was trying to hide his apprehension. His fingers were tapping ever so slightly- almost shakily- against the insides of his arms.

Hotch's face was tight and drawn when he approached them. "Cause of death was ten stabs to the chest, six of them post-mortem."

"So he's escalating," Rossi noted.

"Obviously as these numbers decrease, the anger he feels towards these people increases," Reid said. He licked his lips, running a hand through his hair. JJ. Morgan. Who would be next?

"There's still no proof that they're surrogates," JJ continued, but her protest seemed weak. She was still seeing those blue eyes, Reid knew it. Truth be told, he was too. They all knew the truth now, to some degree, whether they wanted to or not.

"But how did the unsub manage to kill so quickly? Amelia was killed early this morning, Charlie just an hour ago. I mean, it's possible, but it's not so likely." Morgan crossed his arms tighter, as if refusing to believe that it could be true. That this man could be him. The six cut into his stomach peered up at all of them, taunting.

"Actually, Morgan's right. Not that it's impossible, but the improbability is true." Reid crouched down beside the body and gently lifted the man's right hand in his gloved one. "Right here, look at his fingertips on the right hand."

Emily knelt down next to him. "Frostbite."

"So the unsub is freezing his victims now? Why go to the trouble?" Rossi asked, wrinkling his nose. "The cause of death was exsanguination, so the freezing is obviously unrelated to his actual method of killing."

"He wants us to find these bodies quickly." Hotch said it so quietly that the others were hardly sure that they had even heard him at all. "No down time. He wants us to become tired and careless."

"He's after us, isn't he?" Emily was the brave one. She was the one who dared to say it out loud.

Almost imperceptibly, Hotch nodded. "We need to get back and try to work out a profile as soon as we can."

"But if this guy's going after us, aren't we personally affected? Like a conflict of interest? Shouldn't another team be assigned to the case?" JJ asked, worried.

Hotch snorted. "If you want to be separated in protective custody. If you want to sit and wait to be found. I don't know about all of you, but I think the best thing for us to do right now is what we do best- profile. We're the only ones who can find the unsub. You all know that."

"He's right," Rossi shrugged. "If the unsub's after us, only we would figure out why."

"Morgan, call Garcia and tell her we're coming over. We need to look through some old case files. The unsub is obviously out for revenge." Hotch turned back towards his car without another word; glancing at each other, the rest of the team followed.

"This case really has him rattled," Emily murmured into Reid's ear as they climbed into the car. He shrugged, eyebrows quirking upwards. He knew that right now she was evaluating his uncharacteristic silence. Before she could comment on it, the car pulled out and she seemed to redirect her attention on reviewing the case.

They tried to build a steady profile during the car ride, and continued it even as they walked back into the bullpen in a bustle of activity.

"Well, being that JJ's surrogate was the least injured, I think it's safe to assume that the related case was one in which she was not in the BAU with us," Reid explained, spilling a pile of folders out onto the conference room table. "It's also more likely that it was somewhere in the three months where Morgan was recovering from his broken ankle, being that he was only number six on the list of offenders. He probably wasn't kicking down any doors."

Hotch nodded. "Then what we need to determine is just who is the number one offender. That'll make it easy to pin the case. But until then, we need to go through all of these files. Think of any criminal with a brother or family member who may want to take revenge. Send all potential names up to Garcia."

A squat officer stuck his head in the doorway, normal smile gone for a grimace. "Um…sir?"

"What?" Hotch glared at the agent.

"T-two more bodies have been found, uh, sir."

"Dammit," Hotch cursed. The others were surprised at the outburst. "Okay, Rossi, Morgan, and Prentiss, you go and check out the crime scene. Reid, you start working on a geographical profile, and JJ and Prentiss, you two keep looking through the cases with me."

"You got it," Rossi answered, pulling on his jacket and straightening it out.

"Rossi?" Hotch's tone was quiet, conspiratorial, but everyone could hear him anyway.

"Yeah Aaron?"

"When you get there, call and say who it is."

These words hit everyone harder than they had expected. JJ covered her mouth, and Emily looked away. Reid, meanwhile, rubbed at his face and bent in front of his map. Only Rossi seemed unruffled, nodding.

Reid was watching his maps when JJ sat next to him. She whispered, "Doesn't this freak you out, Reid? There's an unsub deliberately after us. Even though he doesn't want me, er, most dead, still."

He wanted to be compassionate, he really did, but the best he could manage was a wry smile. "They're always after us. We just usually don't know it, or don't pay attention. And, after all, they always get us in the end." He walked up to the white board and started to scribble an equation- the distance formula, JJ remembered. After one case where his mental math had failed him, he always wrote this one out.

"Reid…" She sat still. There was nothing to say, but that tone in his voice, how it caught on some words like he was uncertain and worn and almost about to cry, it frightened her like nothing else.

He ignored her for a moment, until the chirping of her cell phone made itself all too known in the room. She glanced at Reid one more time before answering.

"Hotch? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we'll stay here." She hung up and looked over at Reid again. Now he was paying attention to her, the white board forgotten.

"They…they just found numbers five and four. Five isn't exactly the same, but looks the most like Rossi. Four…four's a spot-on surrogate for Garcia," JJ said.

Reid cursed, and it was so uncharacteristic that JJ looked up in surprise.

"Reid?"

"September 28, last year, when you were off. It was sometime between then and April, when Rossi was out of the field for parts of cases. Call Garcia, I need every case file from that time, specifically one that includes an unsub that was taken down primarily by me, Hotch, or Prentiss."

She was going to ask more, but there wasn't time. And deep down in the pit of her stomach, she knew that Reid's surrogate had yet to appear. What if he was number one? She couldn't even consider it.

AN- Felt rushed, but I hope you liked it! Trying to update as frequently as I can.