Chapter 10
University of Maryland Medical Center
Baltimore, MD
T-minus 2

Keep your hands at your sides.

No, Spencer thought. He was lying on his back once more, looking up at that drop tile ceiling. The Unsub didn't even hide the cameras well. I don't want this, he thought. No more. I can't. It hurts.

Keep your hands at your sides.

He thought this was over. Why was it happening again?

Keep your hands at your sides.

He heard the buzzing start...

Spencer Reid woke up, opened his eyes, and looked at the familiar blur of a drop tile ceiling. I am so sorry, he thought. Then he shut his eyes tight, rolled, curled into a ball and pulled the thick blanket over his head.

Wait. Blanket?

He carefully opened his eyes again. From what he could make out he was looking at the railing of a hospital bed. Beyond it was a large chair holding a large, dark form. From the sound, the shape, the color and the likely odds the buzzing that had trickled into his dream was the sound of Derek Morgan snoring.

Apparently they had been rescued.

Spencer took a deep breath and tried to call to Morgan, but he couldn't make the words come out. Also, his core was still shaking, making him want to curl up tighter to try to get it to calm. But it wasn't working.

And then someone turned on the light in the room. It made his eyes burn so bad he had to close them, and even that wasn't enough.

"Dr. Reid? Dr. Reid?"

Someone touched his shoulder. It made the trembling worse.

Someone please make it stop.

Please make it stop.

Morgan blinked and sat up as a doctor and a nurse. The nurse headed for Spencer's bed as they watched. Morgan noticed that Reid had curled up in a tight ball, and was ignoring any attempt to move him. "Dr. Reid? Dr. Reid?"

"Do you have any idea what's causing this?" He asked.

"No." The doctor replied. "Maybe some form of drug reaction. But so far the tests have come back negative."

"It's got to be something." Maybe the kid's mind finally snapped. It had good reason after all. Wait. Spencer had stuck his hand out from under the blanket, just a little, and was motioning for him to go over there. "Reid?" The kid didn't stick anything else out but made an odd motion with his hand. "What are you doing?" He did it again and again. It looked familiar. It looked like... "Do you have anything he can write on?"

"Yeah." The doctor handed him his clipboard and pen. Morgan held them in front of Spencer, who took the pen, wrote two words, and the burrowed back under again. "What does it say?" The doctor asked.

"I don't know what the first one is but the second is above my pay grade." Morgan replied. He looked at the lump in the bed. "Are you going to sit tight while I go get Hotch?" Spence stuck his hand out again, thumbs up. "Okay."

"You think this has something to do with Anthrax?" Dave asked.

"I have no idea." Hotch replied. As they watched the laptop screen switched over to video conference. "Dr. Kimura, you got my message."

"I did." She replied. "How is Dr. Reid?"

"Not well. We're having trouble communicating with him right now. He gave us your name and the word 'Baclofen'. Does that mean anything to you?"

She seemed to understand right away. "Yes. I put him on a ten-day tapered course while he was in treatment with us. Let me guess, tremors, light sensitivity, avoidance of touch and inability to speak?"

"Yes." Hotch replied. "Are those side effects of the Anthrax?"

"No. Baclofen is an anti-spasmodic, usually used to treat spasticity in patients with muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy, and sometimes to help with the DTs in alcoholics. It's also being used experimentally in patients on the autistic spectrum with co-morbid sensory processing disorder to treat hyperstimulation."

"Hyperstimulation?" Hotch asked.

Dr. Kimua smiled a little. "The short version is that some individuals on the Autisum spectrum can react to certain forms of stimuli by becoming hypersensitive. Their sensory nerves become over stimulated and start reading what we would consider normal sensory input as overwhelming, sometimes to the point of painful. Something in the decontamination procedure triggered that for him and he ended up in a hyperstimulated state. The most common medication used is diazepam but he refused anything with an addiction potential. Baclofen is experimental in these cases but it's non-addictive and he indicated he was willing to try. It helped."

"Can you share that information with the doctors here without violating national security?"

"Sure."

"Do you know specifically what part of the procedure triggered him?"

"No. We were too focused on the Anthrax problem. Sorry."

Hotch briefed them on what was going on. After that Morgan went back to his vigil. He was there when the nurse very quietly told Spencer what he was getting as she injected his IV. After that there was nothing to do but wait.

Forty-five minutes later Penelope Garcia joined them. "How is he?" She asked.

"Hanging in there." Morgan replied. "We're waiting for the meds to kick in. Keep your voice down; Dr. Kimua said to keep it very quiet, like we did last time. How did you do with the Unsub's computer?"

"Oh, that beast is not going to go down easy. We're taking it back to DC to work on it some more." She went and leaned over Spencer's bed, peering into the tiny hole in the blanket cocoon where you could just see his nose. "Spency. Are you alive in there?"

"Don't let Morgan eat all the Jell-o." came the very quiet reply.

"Hey, sounds like someone is awake." Morgan said.

"I've been awake the whole time. The Baclofen is working." Spencer replied.

"How are you feeling?"

"Horrible."

"Are you coming out?"

"No."

Morgan chuckled. "All right. I'll go tell Hotch you made it this far."

Spencer didn't know why Morgan was bothering, other than it was Hotch and they should let him know. He wasn't planning on moving anytime soon. The shaking in his core had gone away, and he could talk, at least quietly. He didn't want to twitch for fear it would all come back.

Intellectually he knew why this happened, but he didn't want to think about it right now.

Instead he decided to work on getting out of this self-imposed cocoon. The problem was that it was warm in there; he'd reached the state of perfect thermostasis, where the air between him and the blankets was precisely body temperature. The blankets were providing even pressure and protecting his touch receptors. And it was blocking out at least 82 percent of the light. As long as he didn't move he was perfectly insulated from anything that might hurt.

But there were other needs arising. "I have to keep this IV in, don't I?" He asked, hoping that someone was there to answer.

Thankfully someone was. "I think so." Penelope said. "Why, what's up?"

"I'm afraid when I crawl out of here it's going to be cold." He admitted. "And I'm not wearing pants and I need to go to the bathroom. I was hoping for a robe of some kind."

She chuckled. "How about if I just call a nurse?"

Damn. "Only if they keep the lights off." He might be able to handle touch and temperature, but light was a bit beyond him just yet.

"I have your sunglasses, would they help?"

"Possibly." It was worth a try.

"Let me see what we can do."

"Thank you." Spencer was going to hope that this meant that life was...well, life would never be good again. But it might be starting to look up.