A/N: I'm so sorry this has taken me so long! Hopefully this chapter makes up for it. I've also started a new AU fic called The Riverside Kids, in case you want to check out my other stuff. Reviews make me write faster! If there's anything you want to see, let me know!
WARNING: this story deals with dark and violent plotlines. In particular, this chapter briefly mentions rape (there are no graphic descriptions AT ALL, purely implied). If this is triggering for you, please proceed with caution.
As usual, I don't own any of the CM characters.
In reality, in human time, it had been thirteen days. For Spencer, JJ, and Emily, it felt like lifetimes. They looked ghoulishly thin now, their frames more resembling lanky high schoolers rather than seasoned FBI agents. A diet of a single slice of bread once every three days would do that to a person. Often, when one of them shot a glance at the other two (which was the closest thing they had to a mirror), they would fail to distinguish between dirt and dried blood, between sheer grime and unending pain. Sometimes it felt like more of their skin was bruised and cut than wasn't. Their old wounds had aged now, bruises turning bright yellows and horrible greens as if they were some sort of fucked up woodland creatures, burning bacteria ravaging each gash.
Tom had taken JJ upstairs on the seventh day. Emily on the ninth. Neither spoke of it.
Two of the three vials that had been in Spencer's bag were empty. He was injected with Dilaudid almost every day. He didn't fight it anymore. No. He'd never say it out loud, but he looked forward to it. What kind of sick bastard did that make him? Then again, Spencer supposed, this situation was exactly the type to warrant a numbing of pain. Physical and emotional. He'd just have to forgive himself.
The three of them looked straight out a boxing match gone awry. Each agent's face was horribly discolored and swollen. They were all sporting broken ribs now, as well as pretty obvious infections to the myriad of cuts strewn about their tired bodies. Reid's collar bone was broken, as was JJ's wrist and Emily's ankle. More angry red taser burns spotted their paling skin. Tom seemed to enjoy keeping the torture rather even towards all of his "children." They didn't laugh much anymore, not even in the memories of Garcia's eccentric antics or Rossi's sharp humor. There was not room in that rank cellar, it seemed, for joy. Only this suffocating sort of emptiness.
It was afternoon on the thirteenth day, but of course, the agents had no way of knowing that. They were huddled together around the pipe as usual, shivering in the damp chill. Every inch of their bodies radiated a blinding soreness, like they'd just run three marathons whilst simultaneously carrying hundred pound weights. Spencer was preoccupied (having just received a dose of Dilaudid), swimming in a drug-induced haze. His eyes were moving lazily across the far wall of the basement, and he occasionally muttered incomprehensible words. JJ's head was in Emily's lap. Prentiss sighed and looked down at her friend, knowing what had happened upstairs. Knowing because it had happened to her too. The blonde's icy blue eyes were hollow, almost bottomless. Her previously glowy face was now sunken in, cheekbones looking sharp enough to cut metal. JJ's eyes found Emily's own gaunt visage.
"Em?"
"Yeah?" She replied softly, shifting against the wall, trying to find a comfortable position.
"Do you think they're still looking for us?"
Emily thought about this for a second, searching through her foggy mind for a reputable answer. What would the rest of the team be thinking right now? Odds, she decided. They'd be weighing odds. And the probability that their three friends were still alive, at least to the rest of them, was awfully slim. Still, this was the team they were talking about.
"They won't stop looking until they find us. They won't let themselves," she said, with as much conviction as her hoarse voice could muster. JJ gave her a weak smile.
They both practically jumped out of their skin when the door creaked open again. Tom was whistling the same sick tune he always did, and this time spinning a kitchen knife around in his hand. JJ scrambled to sit up, pressing herself against the concrete wall as if to get as far away from the man as possible. Emily reached for Reid's drowsy hand, and then for JJ's trembling one. She gripped the two of them like the world depended on it. Like if she let go, she would lose them both.
"Sir."
Hotch could hear the choked tears in Garcia's voice, a noise that had become all too familiar to him in the past two weeks. Morgan jerked his head up from the desk, quickly awakened from his listless slumber. Dave immediately stood up and blinked the crust of exhaustion from his eyes. The three jogged into the conference room, Garcia's makeshift batcave at the police station.
The once bubbly blonde was turned away from her computer screen, tracks of tears stremily steadily down her cheeks. On the screen, three figures were bound in three metal chairs.
It was them.
Penelope Garcia felt as if she were going to collapse. She hated herself for being so grateful at the sight of her friend's horribly battered bodies. They were alive. After a week, she hadn't dared hope anymore. None of them had. Still, she could not bear to look at the three of them anymore than she had too. Even through the unsub's pixelated camera, Penelope could see the devastation in their faces. The utter hopelessness.
Derek took a step back from the screen, running a shaky hand over the stubble of his hair. A chill shot up his spine. What had happened to his friends in the past thirteen days? What merciless horrors had they experienced?
Rossi moved closer to the screen, trying to verify that his friends were, in fact, breathing. He was flooded with simultaneous relief and terror at the sight of their steadily rising chests.
"What's he saying?" Dave asked, trying his best to sound steady. Aaron bit back sour bile and motioned for Garcia to raise the volume.
"I missed you children. My beautiful Katie, my lovely Cora. You both look so beautiful."
He walked up to Emily and JJ in turn and planted a kiss on their lips. Both women jerked their heads away. It took every ounce of willpower for Morgan not to smash the laptop screen. The unsub continued to mumble slews of words, praising his so-called "family."
"Garcia. I need every family that's lived in the area in the past century with children named Katie and Cora. Now," Hotch called desperately. He needed to get his people home. He'd never forgive himself if he didn't. She typed furiously.
"Sir! Adrian-Thomas and Louise Baker, children Katie, Cora, and Jamie. They had a spot in the woods twenty years ago! Oh my God… Jamie still owns the place. I'm sending the address right now."
The glint of the knife signaled a haunting truth; this was the final day. The three of them sat silently, hands and mouths bound with duct tape, listening to his endless ranting and raving.
"I've kept you all much longer than most. But all good things must come to an end."
Each agent felt their heart quicken in their chests, and they began to shout muffled protests into the tape. Tom only chuckled.
JJ tried to slow her breathing. Think, Jareau. Come on. A flash of an idea darted across her eyes. Yes. The old wound on her forearm, the one from a few days ago. That had to be it. She began to subtly rub the cut against the chair. A drop of blood trickled down her wrist, mingling with the adhesive.
Tom approached Emily, dangling the knife above the bridge of her nose. She thrashed ferociously, which only seemed to amuse him. Prentiss screwed her eyes shut as the blade traced her clavicle.
Spencer watched from the chair between the two women, a look of unmitigated horror in his wide brown eyes. He shook and flailed, trying to free himself, trying to do anything. This could not be happening. He could not let them die.
"Stop moving, or I stab her!" Tom growled. Reid went still.
Tom continued to taunt Emily with the knife, but all the while, JJ had procured a steady stream of blood from the re-opened gash on her arm. It ran down towards her wrists, the liquid beginning to loosen the tape tight grip of the tape. She was so close.
There was a sickeningly sharp scream. JJ whipped her head to the right to see a growing patch of crimson seep through Emily's shirt, a wide-eyed look of horror on the brunette's face.
"FBI! Open up!" Derek shouted, a seething urgency creeping at the edges of his voice. The sun was setting in the deep woods; even going forty miles above the speed limit, it had taken an hour for the team and the horde of police cars to reach the rickety old house. Derek wasn't about to let more precious time slip by. Hotch gave him a small nod. He kicked down the wooden door with practiced ease.
The officers rushed into the dark house. The inside very much resembled the exterior; cobwebbed and outdated. The team scattered.
"Hotch!" Rossi called, a white knuckled grip on his glock. "I've got a door!"
A frenzy of movement followed. Dave swung open the thick metal, and carefully climbed down a few of the wooden steps. Directly underneath a dim ceiling light, two bodies lay beside a scattering of metal chairs. Hotch and Rossi sprinted towards the gravely injured forms of Prentiss and Reid, both bleeding from large knife wounds to the stomach, neither conscious.
Morgan was focused on the noise coming from the back of the cellar. He raised his gun and flashlight, and darted around a corner. The beam of light fell upon a dark-haired man, pinning a wheezing and terrified JJ down with his knee.
"Drop your weapon," he growled.
Derek fired the shot just as the knife plunged into her abdomen.