Thank you to eneryone who's already reviewed or followed this story! I hope I can finish it and make it worth you guys' while!
To .144, your question will be answered! (I hope)
Chapter 1
-LineBreak-LineBreak-
It was dark.
So very, very dark.
He hated the dark.
The fogginess in his head was just as frightening. It was like someone poured honey into his thoughts. A poisonous honey, eating away at the strands of reason until all that was left was a cobweb of confusion and fear.
A light opened in the dark, and the silhouette shown in the welcomed brightened made him whimper.
The silhouette didn't react, creeping forward to caress his face in a loving manner. "Don't cry son, you're doing so well."
The gag in his mouth muffled the scream that tried to escape as a knife cut into his skin.
-LineBreak-LineBreak-
"We have to rethink the profile now," Morgan said as the team gathered in the round table room. "Gideon's not working alone now, and the only reliable pattern we had was him killing an FBI cadet."
Rossi sat down heavily in one of the chairs and watched as Morgan paced a bit before commenting, "But now that he has his 'protege', he won't need to kill any more cadets. A blessing and a curse."
The team as a whole looked shaken, with Morgan pacing, JJ nervously playing with a bit of her hair, Rossi and Prentiss sitting quietly while obviously compartmentalising, and Garcia was busy fretting over her computers like a hummingbird.
The only sign of nerves on Hotch's face was the line showing between his eyebrows. "Alright let's look at this as if it's a new case. We know Gideon is the dominant partner in the relationship, and believes he is helping the world by getting rid of the criminals. The cadets were all found beaten and drugged, so we should assume he's not afraid to hurt or kill one of us. He may even enjoy torturing his victims now and could be abusing his partner."
"The partner is most likely younger," Prentiss added, thinking out loud. "A submissive type that's going along with what Gideon says. They're probably quite compared to Gideon and with less intelligence. That'd make them easier for Gideon to control."
Rossi tapped a pen on the table and nodded. "Maybe, but we can't rule out them being intelligent. Gideon may be crazy now, but he'd always get irritated when he had to dumb himself down to talk to someone. And considering Gideon called the partner a protege, they might be as smart as Gideon."
Hotch nodded, silently proud of his team. "So it could be something else Gideon is using to control them. Morgan, Prentiss, I want you both to go to the morgue, ask the medical examiner everything about how the cadets were killed. JJ go talk to the media, get this under control before it gets any ground. Rossi, you and I will go to the Academy, find out if anyone's went missing or had a sudden change in behaviour. And Garcia I want you to search through the local murders within the past month and a half. If he's training his partner, they wouldn't have gone far. Let's go." And the BAU was off.
-LineBreak-LineBreak-
"Come on kid, you have to play."
The voice was friendly and even, but he could tell the threat hidden behind the words. He looked down at the table top, then up at the man. "I don't want to." His voice, in comparison, was small and childlike, his fear evident to the man.
"If you don't play, you lose and I win. And if I win..." The man trailed off and looked at him.
"If you win I get cut, but if I win I don't get cut," he replied, almost automatic now.
A hand ruffled his hair, crudely cut short by a pair of scissors. "Good boy. Now, your move son."
He swallowed but nodded, looking down again. Tightening his hold on a small knife, he slowly begins to cut the tied up man on the table, ignoring the muffled screams. Looking at the man standing across from him, he smiled a little shyly. "Your move Jason."
-LineBreak-LineBreak-
Outside of the FBI Academy, Hotch and Rossi stand off to the side on four way call with the rest of the team. "Rossi and I haven't found out much. Based on his past behaviour Gideon probably took the cadet on the day of or right after graduation. There's a list of names I'll get sent to you Garcia, but it'll take time to track them all down," Hotch explained, glaring at his cell phone like it was the one that made the long list. "JJ, Morgan and Prentiss, what did you all find?"
"Not much," JJ's voice was distracted, as if she was looking at something else at the same time. "The media has picked up on the fact that someone was killing cadets, but it hasn't spun out of control. Barely mentioned and I'll make sure it stays that way."
"We've got nada on our end." Morgan stated, running a hand over his shaved head. "It's the same as last time. All the cadets were subjected to torture for about a week, their hair cut to about an inch, and drugged. Killed by a single stab through the heart."
"Actually, there was something." The shuffling sound of papers could be heard before Prentiss continued. "The medical examiner did a tox screen, and it came back with high levels of hydromorphone, or dilaudid."
Rossi nodded next to Hotch. "Drugstore heroin. That could be how he's controlling them. Getting them h-"
Rossi didn't finish. A sudden beep was heard over the lines followed by Garcia's manic typing. "Oh my. A body has just been found dumped on the road heading to Quantico, about ten minutes away from Hotch and Rossi. Let me see..." There was more typing heard as the team waited for their tech genius. "White male... Mid thirties-ish... Large X cut postmortem and... Oh my bunny, that's just..."
"Baby girl what's going on?" Hotch could almost see the worried look on Morgan's face since it was plain enough in the man's voice.
"There are cuts all over his back. Well, carved. Sets of numbers and letters. I sent a picture to all your phones. PG out my wonderful agents." And with that hurried farewell the lines all went dead.
Hotch wasted no time to pull up the picture, but a few seconds of silence later he handed the phone to Rossi. Curious, the Italian looked down at the device and sucked in a breath. "Well I'll be damned. You know what this is too right?"
"Chess coordinates," Hotch said with a nod, grim faced. "They played a game of chess and carved it into his back."
-LineBreak-LineBreak-
Gideon looked into the darkened room, smiling slightly to himself. The boy had played along and their game had ended in a stalemate, but it was better than the boy losing. As a reward Gideon had put a small nightlight in the room, so the boy wouldn't have to sleep in complete darkness.
Sighing almost contently, the ex-profiler entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed. The boy wasn't asleep, and watched Gideon with hazy eyes and a lazy smile.
"You did good son," Gideon praised, ruffling the boy's hair. "But it's time for bed now. Are you ready?"
A silent nod, and the boy offered his left arm. Immediately Gideon filled a small needle and inserted it into a vein, watching as a smile crawled onto the boy's face and those big brown eyes slid closed. "Goodnight Jason," the boy mumbled, curling up and drifting into a high induced daydream.
Gideon chuckled and walked out, locking the heavy metal door and leaving the drugged boy shackled to the bed. "Goodnight Spencer."
-to be continued...-
A/N: Please don't hate me for all this. I love Spencer as much as the next fan, but it gives me a very sick pleasure to make him a bad guy. There is reasoning though! It should all be explained later (hopefully...). All reviews and comments are welcomed, and flames will be used to grill me some hamburgers.
