Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.
Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.
Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.
Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.
This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!
Chapter 10
January 2010
Reid leaned back in his seat and put his feet up on the row of seats in front of him. He watched the reels play themselves over and over before his eyes. They were clear and stable, unlike the rest of the lecture hall, which tilted and spun every time he moved his head. He breathed deeply, sucking air past the tight band around his chest, and let the reels take over for awhile.
Princess Grendelin smiled encouragingly at him from the passenger seat of her VW Beetle. He gripped the steering wheel and pressed down on the gas pedal. The car lurched up the hill as he grappled with the stick shift. He wondered why he had agreed to take driving lessons from this particular girl, in this particular car, up this particular hill. How much trouble would they be in if the police caught a thirteen-year-old behind the wheel?
Princess Grendelin peered critically at his face while she applied glitter over his lipstick. She smoothed back a few stray hairs that had escaped his pigtails and adjusted his cardigan over his shoulders. He fidgeted in his Catholic schoolgirl outfit, struggling to recall exactly how she had talked him into entering the Dabney House Drag Competition. She demanded that he practice his lollipop sucking one more time, and he complied without a second thought.
Princess Grendelin wrapped her arms around his waist as he tilted the plastic container lid beneath them. The make-shift sled raced down the hill, spraying up the knee-deep snow on all sides. He wrenched the sled away from its collision course with a yucca plant, and they tumbled sideways out of the flimsy conveyance, their laughs filling the cold mountain air.
"Princess Grendelin!" he remembered.
The name bounced around in his brain, deep in the structures of the limbic system, where the rational cortex held no sway. It had never been associated with reason, and now was not the time for change. It generated a chain of signaling events in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis that led to the production of adrenaline. Adrenaline mobilized the meager energy stores of Spencer Reid's body.
The glucose from the energy stores made its way into his bloodstream, then into his cells. The molecules of glucose encountered molecules of cyanide in the aqueous medium of his body. They reacted to produce a jumble of useless harmless chemicals. The cellular concentration of cyanide remained above the threshold needed to derail the electron transport chain. The cells continued to rip apart molecules of glucose, collecting the fragments and feeding them into the M subunits of lactate dehydrogenase. The M subunits of lactate dehydrogenase continued to drive the ancient fermentative pathways, producing a meager two molecules of ATP for every molecule of glucose consumed. The molecules of ATP continued to sacrifice their terminal phosphate groups, barely powering the primitive and non-primitive functions of Spencer Reid's brain.
Cyanide gas stopped diffusing into the room. As the counter stuck at 100 ppm, Reid's brain switched into the mode that it adopted under intense starvation. That was when it made mistakes.
"How do you feel?" asked the UnSub.
"Better," Garcia lied, swallowing away the shock of the injection. "Can we please leave now?" she asked wearily.
"I'd rather stay," said the UnSub. "I like it here," he swept his hand over the walls of the control room. "Here with you," he added.
Garcia's head cleared as the injection performed its intended function. "Or maybe that's just the placebo effect," she thought.
Her series of programmable steps did not include an UnSub who wished to stay here and bond with her in this dark little hole.
"Please," she begged, "I don't feel well. Can we go now? Through the hole in the wall? I'll show you a way out through the steam tunnels. No one will be able to catch you."
"I know my way around the steam tunnels," said the UnSub. "I went to college here in the '70s. College, then grad school."
"Oh right, I forgot about that," she answered.
"You know all about the steam tunnels, so you must have gone to college here too, right?" he asked.
"Yeah, I was here in the '90s, but I never graduated."
The UnSub looked at her expectantly, waiting to hear the story of her old failures. There was time now, now that lives had been saved, now that the psychotic murderer in the lecture hall had been subdued. The UnSub had fallen into a harmless orbit rather than a cataclysmic freefall. It was time for him to be melted down and crystallized anew.
"My parents, my mom and stepdad, were killed in a car accident shortly before my sophomore year," Garcia explained. "They were on their way to visit me when a drunk driver hit them on the 110 Freeway. A drunk driver on a Sunday morning! My brothers saw the whole thing from their van, driving behind my parents. I was the only one who wasn't there..."
She trailed off, not knowing why she was divulging such information to a total stranger. She had never talked about it with her friends, neither her friends in the FBI or her friends outside of work. She had never talked about it at the Victim Assistance Center, where she counseled the families of murder victims every weekend. Sometimes, it was easier to share such information with a total stranger than with friends and family, even if the total stranger happened to be a psychotic UnSub in the midst of a hostage situation.
"I'm so sorry," he said gently.
His tone was sincere. He felt empathy for her. He paused, as if debating something in his own mind.
"I dropped out of school after my parents were killed," Garcia continued. "I lived in an underground pit in Arms. I spent all my time learning to code, and when I had gotten really good at coding, I started hacking into government computer systems for fun. The FBI noticed me, traced me, caught me. They offered me a job. I had no choice but to accept it for fear of landing in prison."
"I know how you feel," said the UnSub, "My wife and son..."
His voice faltered. He had finished his internal debate. She was going to hear his sob story.
"My wife and son were murdered, shot in a carjacking, twenty years ago today. I wasn't there. I was flying home from a conference in New York, and my in-laws met me at the airport. I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw them."
Tears formed in his eyes, balanced on his lower eyelids, dropped into his lap.
Garcia leaned forwards, offering her handcuffed hands for him to hold. She felt empathy for him. He seemed as pathetic as herself, reaching out to a total stranger after years of isolation.
At the moment, the greatest difference between them was that the UnSub considered Garcia to be his ally, while Garcia considered the UnSub to be her adversary. She patted his palm, urging him to go on, encouraging him to continue, distracting him from the jiggling doorknob where Reid was picking the lock outside the control room.
Reid jiggled the doorknob as quietly as he could while he picked the lock with the lock-picking kit that he carried around in his bag at all times. He was a magician, so the task should have been easy in his nimble fingers.
It was not easy today. His hands refused to hold still. His fingers shook, and he found it difficult to grip anything between the numbing digits. His brain threatened to shut down, but he was not concerned, because it had already come up with a plan for escaping the room alive.
Through the fog of his blurry vision, Reid could see a series of programmable steps leading to the happy ending that he fervently believed in. They composed the final act of his psychodrama.
The only way to divert the UnSub from his fight response was to activate his flight response. He required a sizable shock to kick him out of battle. Reid nominated himself.
"My wife," continued the UnSub. "She was an assistant professor here, just like me. She was a Techer too. We met during Freshman Orientation, started dating right before Finals Week, took the same courses and worked in the same lab for four years in college, stayed in the same department for grad school. We were two of those infamous 'lifers' you might have heard about."
He smiled, recalling the joyful times of his youth. Garcia felt another wave of empathy. She smiled as well, recalling the joyful times of her own youth.
"I was the biggest dork you ever saw, even by Tech standards," said the UnSub. "You should've seen my clothes, my glasses, my pocket protector," he laughed. "Before I met Liz, I could never have imagined myself finding love, being happy, sharing my life with a woman. I loved her so much. She was the best friend I ever had."
"My son," he sniffled. "He was just a little boy when he was killed. He was so smart. Started kindergarten at four, skipped third grade, was always ahead of all the older kids. He wanted to be just like his mommy and daddy - go to Tech, study everything under the sun, launch rockets and cure diseases in the same breath."
He sobbed into his hands, the sound of his crying drowning out the sound of the doorknob turning. He didn't notice the third person who joined them in the control room.
Reid stumbled unsteadily into the control room. His eyes snapped into and out of focus, as if he were missing his black horn-rimmed glasses.
Without a word, he smacked the UnSub over the head with his cane. The UnSub crumpled to a heap on the floor, crying in equal parts pain and grief. Reid kicked him a few times with his good leg before turning his attention to Garcia's handcuffs. He struggled to recall the plan that he had brought into battle.
The handcuffs snapped apart with a satisfying click. Garcia hopped up from her chair and rubbed her bruised wrists. She looked down to see Reid sitting on the floor, leaning his head against a desk drawer, his eyes wandering, his lips curving into a smile.
"Hi," he waved awkwardly, "My name is Spencer Reid. I'm a freshman, and I'm twelve years old," he smiled nervously, as if uncertain of his reception.
He remembered that there was something he wanted someone to do, but he couldn't remember what the thing was or who the person was. All he could see, besides the cloud of messy blonde hair hanging over him, were the digits pulsating over the chambers of his revolver.
Garcia watched in slow motion horror as the UnSub lifted himself onto his arms, reached towards Reid's belt, and snatched Reid's gun out of its holster. He placed the barrel over Reid's forehead and squeezed the trigger. He had become a murderer.
"Let go of me!" screamed Garcia.
She tried to twist her way out of the UnSub's grasp. She thrashed her body back and forth, trying to bring him down with her weight. She kicked backwards with the sharp points of her high heels, aiming for his shins.
The UnSub wasn't exactly the fighting type, but he was too strong for her. He dragged her down the stairs to the front of the lecture hall. He blocked her way every time she tried to dart back up the stairs.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" he shouted. "I'm trying to help you! We need to get out of here!"
He shoved her through the open doorway of the prep room and maneuvered her towards the hole in the wall. She scratched at his face and arms with her long nails.
She scanned the lab benches for a weapon. A piece of glassware would suffice - a flask, a buret, a graduated cylinder, even a stirring rod. She could use it to stab him in the eye, or stick it up his nose and jiggle it around in his brain.
Her hands twitched with the impulse to slash his throat. She looked around the prep room for a box of razor blades. Perhaps she could garrote him with aluminum wire instead, if only she could shake off the dizziness that hit her every time she moved her head.
The empathy that she had felt for the UnSub, the empathy arising from their common tragedies, had vanished in a puff of cyanide the moment he had squeezed the trigger against Reid's forehead. She hated him now.
"Go!" yelled the UnSub, indicating the hole in the wall, "Get in there! We don't have much time!"
He waved Reid's gun towards the hole. He grabbed her arms to pull her down to the floor.
"What are you waiting for?" he screamed. "We have to get away from the cyanide! It's flooding the room! Do you want to die here?"
He pointed the gun at her forehead, his hands shaking, his face begging her to obey.
Garcia complied. She had no choice but to lie down on the floor and begin skooching her way through the narrow coffin-like passage.
Reid and Garcia had titrated the UnSub to his endpoint. By their calculations, the UnSub contained four clicks of the trigger. There was a fifth click remaining, which they could use later, if they needed, to titrate him again.
The revolver had not fired when the UnSub had squeezed the trigger at Reid, which meant that the bullet was now aligned with the barrel of the six-shooter.
Reid wandered down the stairs, stopping every now and then to steady himself on the rows of seats. He yawned, struggling to stay awake. He wanted candy, but he couldn't find his messenger bag.
"Lecture was even more boring than usual today," he thought. "I didn't come to Tech to watch digits scrolling up on a counter."
He looked at the blackboard, admiring the elegant chalk drawings upon them.
"Oh well, I guess it wasn't a total loss. At least I got to draw up schematics for my pranks. Pre-Frosh Weekend is coming up, so I should probably start working on that wall of duct tape."
He stopped at the front of the lecture hall, bracing himself against the lab bench. He changed his mind, deciding that what he really wanted was coffee. For coffee, he would have to exit the lecture hall.
The cyanide counter scrolled up in a dizzying stall. Visible clouds of gas emanated from the emergency shower, emergency eyewash, and emergency sprinklers at the front and back of the room. The pipes of the emergency safety system shook as cyanide gas was pumped through them at high pressure.
Clicking the button to flood the room with cyanide had been strangely satisfying for Reid, after all this time of preventing the UnSub from doing the very same thing.
The UnSub had gawked at him, open-mouthed and terrified, after the revolver had failed to fire. The UnSub had tried and failed to kill him, which meant that it was time to try again, fail again, fail better.
Failure was the color of the day. Even Reid had failed.
He had failed to remember that he was a murderer.
Murder was not within the realm of Spencer Reid, Caltech freshman, twelve years old. It was only within the realm of Dr. Spencer Reid, FBI agent, twenty-eight years old.
The boy held sway over the man. Letting him do so was the man's mistake.
In the world of the boy, the bad man needed a kick in the pants to flee the lecture hall. In the world of the boy, they could all walk out of here together. The boy believed in happy endings.
In the world of the man, the bad man needed a bullet to the forehead. In the world of the man, they could not walk out of here together. The man did not believe in endings.
In the end, it was the boy who had turned up the cyanide. He had given the bad man a kick in the pants. Unfortunately, he had not counted on the bad man dragging the girl down the stairs with him, trying to protect her from her dangerous psychotic friend.
The boy had wandered down the stairs of the lecture hall, searching for candy. At some point in his journey, the sweetness of candy had been replaced by the bitterness of coffee, and the boy had turned back into the man.
The man limped into the prep room, just in time to see a pair of legs disappear through a hole in the wall. The sight bothered him immensely. He tried to remember why it bothered him, but his brain refused to process his repeated requests. It had shut down for the day.
The only thing that he focused on was the creature hovering over the passage. He needed to remove the creature before it crawled into the passage. The pair of legs, whoever they belonged to, depended on him.
Garcia sat up on the dusty floor, checking above and behind for hazardous obstructions before pulling her legs out of the passage. She peered through the hole on her hands and knees, just in time to see the UnSub snap his head back as a pair of hands clamped down over his throat. The hands pressed into his carotid arteries. He struggled to breathe through a constricted windpipe.
The hands released his throat as the UnSub twisted and thrashed and kicked. He was too strong for the long skinny fingers.
A small object fell out of the UnSub's grasp and clattered across the floor of the prep room, away from the passage. The UnSub fell back against the hole as a lanky figure crawled onto his feet, scurried towards the object, and pinned it under his body. The lanky figure struggled to flip over onto his back, but the UnSub tackled him from behind. The UnSub pinned him to the floor and smashed a 500-mL Erlenmeyer flask into his skull. The lanky figure never stopped struggling, not even as blood colored the tiles of the floor, not even as projectiles of glass clinked on the ceramic surface, not even as another object rolled with a different timbre, across the floor, through the hole, across the bricks, into a pair of knees.
Garcia waited for the UnSub to pull himself out of the passage before she emptied the sixth chamber into his forehead.
Reid shied away from the vial of dark red liquid. It glowed in the light of the fluorescent lights overhead. It shook before a cloud of messy blonde hair.
He whimpered as a needle pricked his skin. He tried to pluck the needle out of his arm, but his hand was slippery with blood.
He swatted weakly at the cloud. It bent over his face, coming into and out of focus in his blurry vision. He was horrified to discover that it had eyes, red-rimmed and rectangular, bugging out of their sockets.
The cloud fell towards him, collapsing into the nook between his collarbone and his chin. It was soft and warm. He nuzzled its wispy locks with his nose and wrapped his arms around the mass of fur. He wiggled into a comfortable position, preparing to settle into a leisurely nap with his soft furry blanket around him, but a smell tugged at his consciousness. It refused to let him sleep. It was a heavenly smell, one of those smells that took the sting out of living.
"Coffee!" he remembered.
Reid braced his hands against the floor and pushed himself up to a sitting position.
Nerd speak clarifications
1) Limbic system/cortex
These concepts are rather outdated, but fit in with the story. The limbic system contains brain structures associated with emotion, while the cortex is associated with reason. The limbic system contains the amygdala (fear response), hypothalamus (stress response), and hippocampus (long term memory).
2) Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis
A signaling pathway that allows the brain to control the release of stress hormones, such as adrenaline, from the adrenal glands located above the kidneys. Adrenaline has global effects on the body, governs the fight-or-flight response, and mobilizes the body's energy stores for an acute crisis situation.
3) Lactate dehydrogenase
When cells break down glucose, the fragments have two choices. They can go into the citric acid cycle and electron transport chain to be completely burned by oxygen, or they can go into lactate dehydrogenase, an enzyme that converts the fragments into lactic acid, which causes the burning sensation in your legs when you're exercising and your muscles aren't getting enough oxygen. The lactate dehydrogenase route is much less efficient in producing energy (ATP), but Reid has no choice because his electron transport chains are not working. This pathway is also known as fermentation, the waste product being lactic acid for animals and alcohol for yeast.
4) Reid's flashbacks
Will appear in detail in later chapters. An entire chapter is devoted to the Dabney House Drag Competition.
Author's Note: A big thanks to all readers and reviewers! I'm taking a mini hiatus for Labor Day Weekend, so updates will resume on Tuesday, 9/7. Sorry to hiatus on a cliffhanger, but you don't really think Reid and Garcia are going to die after all this, do you?