Present

Rossi and Morgan crept down the well-lit and considerably more populated hallway than the area that Hotch and Prentiss had disappeared to; dodging the occasional bolted down bench or potted plant until the two men met up at the end of the passageway and tucked their weapons back into their holsters. Morgan was just clipping his service piece into his belt when he heard a shout. It sounded suspiciously like Emily's voice, and was coming from the same direction he had last seen her. Morgan frowned and grabbed Rossi's arm, causing the older man to still his movements. They listened intently for a moment, but all that surrounded them was a vacuum of silence.

"You heard that, right?" Morgan asked, straining his ears over the noise of Rossi's stuttered breathing.

"I didn't catch it."

Morgan made a shushing motion with his index finger, and sure enough, another cry of alarm from the East wing. The men broke out into a sprint, drawing their weapons once again.

"Emily?" Morgan called out as they approached the closed off area of the hospital.

"Derek! I need your help!" came Emily's voice, anxiety noticeable. He picked up the pace and scrambled around the corner leading to the hallway and felt his middle tighten at the sight before him. Hotch, lying on the floor flat on his back, dark head toward him, hands and feet splayed out lifelessly. Emily was on her knees next to the unit chief, one hand clutching Hotch's shoulder, the other touching the crook of his neck. Feeling for a pulse.

Morgan dropped down on the other side of his boss, eyes seizing the man's slackened face in shock. "What the hell happened?" he gasped, just as Rossi joined them. He already had his cell phone out and pressed against his ear.

Emily looked flustered enough, and Morgan felt slightly mean for barking out such a harsh query, but his expression remained intense as she met his gaze with dismay. "I—I don't know, Derek. We were clearing separate hallways and suddenly I heard him call my name. Some kid wearing a ski mask and a hoodie shoved me into the wall and ran off. Hotch just fell right into me and lost consciousness." She lowered herself close to the unit chief's face, ear to his mouth and nose. "He's barely breathing."

Morgan grabbed Hotch's chin and shook it gently, willing the man to snap out of it. "Hotch, man, come on! Wake up!" No response. His frantic, dark eyes met Emily's. "He didn't say anything before passing out? Did he seem hurt or sick?"

She shook her head. "No, he was fine until he had a run in with that kid!"

Rossi took two long strides and peered down the hallway in both directions. "Do you remember which way the kid went?"

Emily palmed her forehead. "Uh," she stammered nervously. "Left!"

He scrambled over the scenario to their teammate over the phone. "Reid, we need you now. Make sure you bring any available staff, because we're not even sure what happened. Hotch needs emergency medical attention ASAP. We're over in the East wing where all the construction is taking place. Reid we need you to hurry! Have JJ call the sheriff's office and have them sweep the grounds!"

Morgan straightened to his fullest height and backed up against the wall, peering into the room nearest to them, and just as he did so, his boot-clad toe kicked a small object on the ground and caused it to skitter away a few feet before it came to rest near the large, barred window. He followed its path, then knelt down and picked up the hypodermic needle, a newfound fear gripping his insides. "I think I know what happened to Hotch."

Emily and Dave glanced over at him desperately. "What? What is it?" Emily asked, her fingers once again underneath Hotch's chin.

Morgan held up the needle and pressed his mouth into a grim line. "I think he was drugged."

"Oh, God, that could be anything!" Emily gasped.

What felt like hours was actually a couple of minutes at most, and Reid came scrambling around the corner and to a screeching halt next to the group, shrewd gaze sweeping over the state of affairs with the practiced ease of a true professional wunderkind. "How did this happen?"

Morgan showed Reid the evidence collected from the ground just as sweat trickled from his temple. "We believe Hotch was injected with an unknown agent—I'm thinking a medication used to sedate combative psych patients."

"Reid, can you think of the most common drugs used in psych wards?" Rossi asked, his eyes firmly holding the younger man's, whose usual timid physical demeanor was now frowning, genius brain working furiously at possible causes.

"There's so many, it's impossible to think of all of them and accurately deduce which was injected, especially with the new medications that come available every year."

"Just the most common, Reid! Think!" Spencer's eyes narrowed and he wrinkled his forehead in nervous, rapid contemplation. Rossi leaned forward, bringing his ear to the unit chief's mouth. "God, he's not breathing!"

Emily placed her hand against Hotch's chest, real fear wrestling to the surface. "Reid!" Her eyes implored him to think, and then she turned her attention back to her boss, whose color had washed out to a sickly pallor.

"Uh, okay. Ativan, Xanax, Valium, um…Phenobarbital, Klonopin, Diazepam, Dilaudid…the list goes on. However, from what I remember after studying medication books and brochures is that all of these taken in excess depress respirations. We need to maintain Hotch's airway." Spencer fell to his knees next to Rossi and pushed the unit chief's chin upward, then felt for a pulse in the crook of his neck. "His pulse is faint and thready, but it's there. Emily," he said to the brunette directly. "Mouth to mouth resuscitation is the most effective method of intervention. Every few breaths check his pulse again, okay?"

Morgan paced anxiously, glancing down the darkened hallway leading to the area of the hospital currently in operation. "Where the hell is the staff? We called them five minutes ago!"

As Emily pinched Hotch's nose and forced her breath into the still man's mouth, Reid's swift brain scoured everything he knew about psychiatric meds, his own experiences with his mother, what he had seen, what he had studied, what was commonly used, what was no longer standard practice, and finally came to a confident enough conclusion.

"Based on Hotch's symptoms," he began, just as a couple of harried, disheveled doctors and two paramedics armed with a medical bag and a backboard rounded the corner. "Respiratory depression, loss of consciousness, weak pulse—I'd have to say it's an Ativan overdose."

Morgan regarded the young man with intense scrutiny. "Are you sure?"

Reid nodded, although his eyes were too wide to appear certain of his findings. "Yes—it has to be. Ativan is one of the most commonly used medications to subdue patients during a mental health crisis." He moved out of the way and fell back to his haunches as the paramedics and doctors took over.

"What have we got here?" a female paramedic asked as she pulled down the collar of Hotch's shirt, stuffed her stethoscope into her ears, and pressed the listening device into his upper chest.

Reid responded, sounding uncharacteristically confident and in control. "FBI Agent Hotchner, injected with an unknown medication, presumably Ativan. He's been out for approximately seven minutes with increasing signs of respiratory and cardiac distress. We've been performing mouth to mouth resuscitation and checking his pulse after every few breaths."

"Great job, ma'am. Let me take over for you." A male EMT touched Emily's shoulder and she moved out of his way so that he could place an ambu mask over her boss' mouth and nose.

Dr. Fisher was one of the responders, his face a mask of shock. Clearly he had spent more time in his office behind his big, luxurious desk polishing his plaques and APA accolades to be too familiar with an actual medical emergency, relying on his underlings to manage that kind of care, although the team was certainly aware that the man had to have done some sort of medical rotation to attain his role as psychiatrist. "There is no possible way a violent schizoaffective patient got his hands on a full IV dose of Ativan. My hospital is safer than a church and we keep our medication locked up and completely inaccessible to anyone other than staff. I refuse to believe it as negligence on our part."

Morgan held up the needle so the doctor had full view. "Believe it."

The female medic glanced up at her partner. "No response to external stimuli. I'm setting up an IV." She shuffled through her bag, ripping open sterile packages of tubing, gauze, and a ready-to-use liter of saline solution. "Definitely seems like an overdose."

"You'll want to give him Flumazenil STAT," Reid demanded, apprehension climbing up his throat and threatening to stifle the words before they came out. When the group stared back at him uncertainly, he continued. "It's the only way to reverse the effects of the Ativan. Trust me, it'll work."

"Administering Flumazenil can be dangerous, especially in conjunction with a benzodiazepine overdose."

"It's an accepted form of drug intervention used to reverse the side effects of the Ativan."

"How the hell do you know, kid?" The other doctor demanded, dallying off to the side and watching the scene with his fists pushed into his hips.

"I just know," Reid answered, unwavering.

"You want to stake that on Agent Hotchner's life?"

The male medic was busy watching Hotch's heartrate on their portable EKG monitor. "Look, fellas, we don't exactly have time to argue over this. If we want Agent Hotchner to remain alive for much longer, he needs to be transported to Sacred Heart now and that trip alone will take about fifteen minutes."

Before

A black SUV and a forest green Dodge Charger with the Spokane County Sheriff's Office emblem on its sides wound through the immaculately manicured grounds of Eastern State Hospital and made a left turn onto Pine Street, past transitional housing developments for their juveniles and geriatric population, following in line a procession of other police cars, lighting up the evening skies which revealed heavy clouds full of precipitation. They continued until making a right turn onto another shorter street, and Hotch noticed that the trees and shrubbery had become impossibly thicker as they got closer to their destination—just off the Southwest shore of West Medical Lake—until the sheriff double parked next to another of his unit. Red and blue lights were everywhere then, complete with harsh flood lights shining toward the swamp-like embankment.

Uniforms and suits were milling about, several on their cell phones, most armed with blue rubber gloves and grim faces. Hotch found an open spot to park right behind a white truck with flat black lettering on the back just underneath the tinted windows—'M.E.' The agents, minus JJ and Rossi who were still trying to get out of Spokane and back onto the highway, exited their vehicle and followed the activity down the shore. The agents walked past a patch of dense trees until coming through to the other side, revealing an open space, and the picturesque lake finally came into view. The sand under their feet was thick and grainy, and the aroma of freshly-rained earth filled their senses.

Camera flashes lit up the path before them and Hotch led them forward until he noticed the body in question. A woman, nude except for one sock, lying face down. The unit chief held up his badge to whoever was paying attention and he ducked underneath the caution tape, coming to a stop next to Sheriff Jenkins.

"We never used to see this kind of activity," Jenkins muttered, staring hard at the young woman's form, and then faced Hotch, expression schooled to impassivity. "There's a long-term juvenile detention home just across from the mental hospital, and even with that kind of element we still never really saw anything quite like this until about five months ago."

Morgan and Prentiss pilfered a couple of pairs of gloves from a box resting on top of a parked squad car and then squatted down next to the body. Reid wandered further down toward the water, which was about three feet from where the woman had been left, and peered left and right, sweeping his gaze along the shallows. Jenkins and Hotch both armed themselves with their own gloves, and a young deputy cleared his throat in his attempt to get his superior's attention.

"Agent Hotchner," Jenkins said, motioning at the man to his right. "This is Deputy Juan Ortiz. Deputy, these are the FBI agents from the Behavioral Analysis Unit."

Ortiz held out his hand, lips pressed somberly, and then shook Hotch's hand. "Good to have you guys out here. We could certainly use all the help we can get."

"Thank you, Deputy. I'm SSA Aaron Hotchner, and with me are agents Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, and Dr. Spencer Reid. We're unfortunately missing two others at the moment, but they should be arriving soon."

Ortiz nodded cordially at the group, and then took a deep breath. "Let me bring everyone up to speed. The victim is a 22-year-old female, who has been positively identified by Dr. Fisher as Jocelyn Russell, one of his patients. Former high school valedictorian from Clark County who had recently graduated from college. She'd suffered from a psychotic break shortly after returning to her parent's house. They took over as her power of attorney and had her committed after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. She had only been a resident at Eastern State for approximately two months showing vast improvements after treatment, but according to Dr. Fisher, her behavior had changed abruptly within the last week. A staff member noticed she was gone from her bed this morning at 8:00 a.m. and notified her superiors, but nothing was done about her disappearance until she had already been located."

"Who found her?" Morgan asked, pulling his eyes away from the girl's battered face. Her fair skin had become blotchy where the blood had settled and clotted. Finger-shaped bruises formed a grotesque kind of collar around her neck, and her sandy-blond hair was damp and stringy from the rain that had fallen earlier in the day.

Ortiz used his thumb to point behind his shoulder. "A fisherman discovered her a little less than an hour ago. This spot isn't as widely used because of the dense line of trees behind us, but he said he wanted to try out a new area he hadn't seen yet and had been planning on setting up a camp spot when he nearly tripped over her. Called it in short afterward."

Hotch let his eyes wander over the fisherman, immediately determining that he was not their suspect just in his posture alone. He knew as a tenured behavioral analyst that there were times when serial killers were quite convincing deceivers, and to the untrained layperson may appear to function normally, display seemingly genuine emotions. He knew what to look for, and this man was clearly despondent, head down as he spoke with law enforcement, hugging himself, refusing to look in the girl's direction. Killers often enjoyed the attention, loved to see how authorities conducted themselves at the scene they had created. The fisherman had a woeful, cheerless expression and slumped shoulders. No, he wasn't the suspect. He'd definitely be brought to the sheriff's office for questioning, but Hotch had already made up his mind on the guy.

"She has some prominent ligature marks around her neck," Prentiss remarked, then touched the skin around the girl's eyes, nose, and then mouth. "Lacerations and bruising on her face." She gently lifted the cold, lifeless lids, then scrutinized the woman's stiff fingers. "Petechiae in her eyes. Pretty typical of strangulation. It looks like this was what killed her, but we'll of course wait for the official autopsy report from the ME. I also noticed her fingernails have blood in them and are broken. She may have wounded her killer."

Jenkins nodded. "Yeah, it's exactly like the four other girls. Females, all in their 20's, all discovered around the West Medical Lake within the past six months. Sexually assaulted, then beaten with a blunt object, and then strangled to death. It was only about a week and a half ago since the last one, but that was farther north up the lake."

Reid rejoined the group, large rock in hand. "I think I found our murder weapon." He brought it closer so the others could see in the growing darkness. "There's some blond hair and bits of skin fragments still on it, as well as some blood." He handed it off to the sheriff and the agents crowded in closer to get a better look.

"Same hair color as our victim, same length," Jenkins mumbled, then turned around and motioned for Ortiz, who was talking at length with a passive, stone-faced woman in what looked like scrubs. Clearly the ME. "We'll drop this off with our medical examiner, Sydney Sullivan, for processing." He wandered over in their direction. "Syd, we've found our blunt object."

The woman rummaged around in her evidence bag and pulled out a bag large enough to hold the rock, then acknowledged the agents, just as fat raindrops began to fall.

Emily's phone chirped to life. "It's JJ," she announced, then pressed it to her ear. "What's up?"

JJ's voice was evident from the receiving end. "You want the good news, or the bad news?"

Emily's dark eyes met Hotch's, and just then a rumbling noise erupted from the skies above.

Thunder.