As the team landed a worried Garcia popped up onto the laptop again.
"Whoa, Garcia, what's up?
Garcia just looked straight ahead, her eyes glazed and worried, lips pressed tight, and her hands were shaking and she shook her head and pressed a key on her keyboard. A horrifying video of what seemed to be a commercial, or a trailer for a movie took over the screen. Funhouse music blasted through the speakers and a man with a purple suit and a painted mask walked on screen.
"Welcome to the show. It will blow your mind!"
"What the hell…"
Grayson was being lifted off of the floor and hung like the others, but she was still in the middle of the warehouse. The masked man walked back over to her with a costume and makeup in hand. He unzipped Grayson's bloody leotard, she knew he has done this before as she could feel the crude stitches down her back, sting as they met the humid, dingy air of the room. She winced.
"Does that hurt?"
Before she knew it she was naked, in front of all these people, a tear streamed down her cheek.
"You silly drama queen… I'll make the pain stop."
He pulled out a needle and a rope. Grayson struggled to resist the drug, but the stitches pulled at her skin and she started to bleed. Pain. Pressure from a rope. A prick on the arm. Then black.
The horrific preview raged on the laptop screen. Bright colors, glitter, and living bodies.
"the best thing about this show is that they are real… PUPPETS ARE REAL!"
Following that statement was a huge fit of laughter, but no one in the BAU had found it quite that funny.
The preview was over and Garcia had popped back on the screen.
"You okay Garcia?" soothed Agent Emily Prentiss
"Yeah, it's just that girl is only six, and this psycho-crazy is… ugh, I don't know, will you guys just get him and get back?"
"Can you trace the video?" snapped Rossi from a chair next to the computer.
"I have tried but this thing is all over the internet, at least in places where people look for this kind of stuff, and so many people have forwarded it and copied it and the guy who made it was not connected to a single ISP, and whatever, and the video was sent to me from an anonymous email and not one I can crack so…"
"Garcia."
"I'm so sorry."
"Hey sexy girl, it's okay, we'll get him" reassured Morgan.
"Don't call me sexy, I don't deserve it. You guys do your thing and I'll keep doing mine. Love you" she flashed off the screen again and members of the BAU looked at each other in disbelief.
A sliver of light broke the blackness that appeared before Grayson's tired eyes. Soon that sliver became the warehouse, this wasn't over. The man in the mask had strolled right in front of his new puppet, and looked straight in her eye.
"Don't think that you are just going to stand here. There is a reason I use real people you see."
He walked to stage left and then dragged a black metal music stand, creating a piercing screech across the stage, then ceased as he placed it in front of Grayson. On the music stand was a script, titled "The Puppeteer".
"Memorize this. By tomorrow."
Now Grayson had a secret weapon, an eidetic memory, she could memorize these lines in ten minutes if she wanted to. She had been offered to go to many colleges because of her amazing memory, but she never went to them due to financial problems, plus she wanted the whole "high school experience". Her mother had cancer, and Grayson was determined to keep her alive. She tried to pay for chemotherapy by working at the dance studio, which is how she had gotten the key to sneak in at night. Grayson thought about her mother, what she was thinking, and where she thought she was. In fact, Grayson did not even know what day it was, or how long she had been here. She started to read the script.
"It's been over two days, there is a very low chance that any of them are alive", Dr. Reid spoke, breaking the bad news.
"Reid…"
"Sorry Emily but…"
SSA David Rossi interrupted, "the man is a psychopath, and he thinks that these people are objects, he does not want to kill them, so they have a chance, they may die because of other reasons, but he will not kill them on purpose. He wants them to be in his show, he has done his research on them, he wants them to be alive, that's his whole shtick, don't count them out just yet."
"Thank you Rossi", replied Prentiss
They landed in Ocean City, boarded their black SUV's and headed to the Ocean City police department.
Grayson had read the script. It was a horrific surrealist tale about a man taking over the world. He had the power to move anyone the way they wanted using magical strings. When his father had found out about his power he had banished him to a cave, and took the power for himself, but the son had made the father a puppet and made him kill all of his enemies, without the son getting in trouble. The son soon renamed himself "the puppeteer" and had created a gang of puppets to murder everyone. It was a sick child- like, tale, not well written nor a good subject, but Grayson had predicted the ending for herself. She was playing the love interest of the puppeteer, Leah, and had wound up becoming part of the gang, she would kill her daughter, and herself in the end. She had pieced together the other parts, the black man was the father, the other man and the red- headed girl were members of the gang, and the worst part, the six year old girl was… Kaya, Leah's daughter.
"Hello Officer Brent, I'm Agent Hotchner, and this is agents Rossi, Morgan, Prentiss, Jareau, and Dr. Reid. FBI, we are here for the trend of disappearances in the area. Do you have a place where we could set up?"
"Of course, I spoke to Mrs. Jareau on the phone, I have everything ready. Follow me."
The blue clad officer led them into a briefing room stocked with a white board, a map, a corkboard, and a large table.
"Thank you" J.J. had said as he walked out of the room.
Dr. Reid had pulled numerous folders out from his leather messenger bag and placed them on the table. He had started to take the pictures and tack them on the corkboard in chronological order. First was of an playroom, with pink walls, yellow tape reading "crime scene", and a purple chair that said "RACHEAL". Next a plastic easel with white paper and a message in blue finger- paint, "thank you for your audition she will be part of my show". After, came a picture of green grass and a swing set. Looking close at the swing set you could see marks in the sand, a sign of a struggle, and then drag marks. Next, he had put up a tree trunk with crude, deep gashes, spelling out, "number two, I have found another actress for my show". He pinned up another one, this one showing a parking lot of a local market. There is fruit and packages of meat all over the ground along with plastic bags, and a pool of blood. The next photo was of an open car trunk, and the next was of the market window, next to the 50% off cookies sign, in blood, "he has been cast in the show". The next was of a highway, and a pulled over red Chevy pick- up truck, license plate reading "DRMAGEEK" and a bumper sticker reading "I LOVE OCEAN CITY HIGH". Next was a shot in the truck bed, words in twigs and animal bones read "the fourth one in the show" and then the last three pictures, a teenage girls room with a small bed and an open window, then a woman, tied to a chair, murdered, and lastly the woman's back reading "the girl will be part of my show".
He pinned them up one by one, along with a photo of their faces attained by family members or taken from the house, placing names under each photo representing the victims, "CARAWAY", "LYNCH", "DOWRY", "BARNES", "BRASS", and looked at each carefully. He was puzzled, none of these people looked alike, lived in the same financial bracket or interacted in any way, besides the performing arts connection, he came up blank. How are we going to find where he will strike next?
"Dress rehearsal", boomed the man in the mask.
Grayson tried to maintain composure as she looked at the petrified little girl on the east side of the stage. She noticed that the girl was struggling to read the large script before her. A large screech rang in the dingy warehouse as the man in the mask had pulled the music stands away from everyone's view.
"Okay, act two scene one, the puppet gang, the father and, Leah and daughter. Action."
"Oh the masterful Puppeteer, he has made us part of his gang" the Hispanic man whimpered.
"We are now one of him" said the read- headed girl.
"Don't you even think of taking him away from me" Grayson managed to say.
"I wouldn't dream of it. I know he loves you. Look at you beautiful daughter you have made together."
"Speak fine child"
The timid and afraid girl stayed silent. Grayson's mind was reeling Speak, Say something. But the girl merely whimpered and burst into tears.
"Cut!"
The man shuffled from his spot on a metal chair to the stairs, then on to the stage. He had his beady eyes focused like lasers, through the mask, on the little blonde girl. The girl shook. Grayson wished she had a gun; she could just shoot the man before he did anything to hurt that innocent girl. He shuffled until he was right in front of her, her big misty blue eyes looking right at him. He placed one of his beefy hands on her neck, she trembled, and he placed the other on the side of her head, she squealed, her blue eyes as wide as they could get.
"Don't hurt her!"
"No! Stop!
"Don't do it! Kill me!"
Snap.