The case was daunting, high on her worst-case list. And with everything she's seen and done, that was saying something. She listened to them spout off conclusions, but their voices were drowned out by her own thoughts. She could tell that JJ was more affected by this case than she wanted to let on, and she guessed that she lost someone close to her to suicide. After all, not many people would know about the spontaneous proclamations of love from a suicidal person. She only knew about them through a horrendous case when she worked with an abused girl who was helping them bring down a human trafficker.

But that wasn't what was bothering her. Something about the case seemed off. Yes, teenagers were known not to be too bright – unless you're Reid – but something about the macabre nature of the whole thing made her doubtful of the age of their UNSUB.

She'd kept her doubts to herself, as she tried to sort through her own thoughts, and try to see where they fit in with the evidence, and the narrative. She was listening with half a mind to her team as they gave the local police their profile, when the officer's question slid everything into place for her. She waited till they were done with the profile before she approached Hotch.

"Hey, you got a minute?" she wondered.

"Of course," he said, as he followed her into the Sheriff's office.

"I know this may sound crazy, which is why I didn't say anything before," she started, and he frowned at her. She may have been new, and he didn't know her very well yet. But he knew her well enough to know that she didn't often doubt herself. "I think we have it all wrong." She stated, and now he was really confused.

"How so?" he asked her.

"I don't think it's reckless homicide; I think it's cold-blooded murder, and premeditated. This isn't some competition gone wrong, he does this on purpose, and I think he takes pleasure in watching them die slowly. He likes watching the life as it leaves them and enjoys their futile attempts to get the ligature off," she explained.

"A psychopathy this advanced at such a young age would show. We haven't found someone who could fit that profile in the area," he negated her.

"That's because he's not a teenager," she argued. "Our entire profile revolves around his age, and I think that's where we have it wrong," she continued, and he crossed his arms across his chest as he listened to her. "He masked his voice. Yes, it can be a simple act of anonymity because he's a nobody in real life. Or he's covering up his tracks to avoid leaving any damning evidence." She finished, and he looked thoughtful.

"Hotch, I know the theory doesn't have much ground to stand on, and that's why I didn't pitch it to the whole team, and I don't want you to scrub the profile just yet," she stated, and he continued for her. "No, you could be right. Why don't you head to the school with Morgan and Reid? Try to get a feel for the kids and see if any of them raise any flags, and I will look at the evidence once more with a fresh set of eyes?" he suggested, and she nodded.

"Thanks."

"No need to, that's why I hired you," he told her.

At the school, Reid did most of the talking as he tried to dissuade the teenagers from choking themselves to death, while Morgan jumped in from time to time, and she strolled leisurely between the rows, her hands in her pockets as she studied their reactions to what Reid was saying. She had three theories in mind, and only one of them could be true.

One; he was a teenager who was choking himself and got in over his head when he dared others to do it. Two; he was a psychopathic sadist who enjoyed watching others die slowly and was doing it all for his own pleasure. And if he was a teenager doing this, then Reid's explanation would certainly elicit a reaction in him that he would not be able to mask.

The third option was what she feared the most. That the teenager was a Trojan horse meant to distract them all from the real killer, at which point being here is a huge mistake.

There was a kid in the back who caught her attention. He was dressed in all black, a chain necklace around his neck, and he seemed absolutely bored with what Reid was saying. He wasn't euphoric like you would expect from someone with such psychopathic tendencies. He wasn't hiding from the facts like you would expect from someone who simply got in over his head. He was simply bored with it all…. Until he saw that Reid was getting to his classmates.

But still, even as he pretended to be the tough kid who didn't believe what Reid was saying, something was still not sitting right with Amalya. She was a couple of desks away from him when Morgan invited him to come upfront and speak to the class about what he thought; so, when he broke off into a run, she was closer to him than Morgan was. Once she saw the empty hallway, she pulled the retractable baton, whipped it open, and aimed it at his feet, tripping him as he ran, and allowing her to catch up with him just as he was about to get up again. He tried to resist her – with her size, he thought he would be able to take her – but she had him on his back in seconds, and Morgan was right behind her.

"Hey, kid, stop fighting," Morgan instructed firmly, but the kid was still squirming.

"Let me go," he demanded, as he struggled against Amalya's surprisingly strong hold.

"You have a baton?" Reid wondered, as only Reid could, and she chuckled.

"Why'd you run?" Morgan asked the kid, who simply looked like a caged puppy looking for an escape, moving his neck from side to side in a panic, which was when Reid saw it.

"Guys look at his neck," Reid said gravely.

"Let me look at your neck," Morgan stated, and the kid immediately started to fight back against Amalya's hold once more. "Don't touch that!" he said, but his voice showed the panic he truly felt despite his outside bravado.

"Hey, hey, what did I say?!" Morgan snapped. "Relax," he said a bit gentler now, as he pulled down the chain choker the kid was wearing.

"Different colors mean different stages of healing," Reid pointed out.

"You've been doing this to yourself a long time, haven't you?" Morgan asked, but the kid didn't answer, his eyes locking with Amalya's, who frowned slightly at the look in them. "There's no telling how much his brain has suffered," he remarked.

Back at the precinct, Morgan and Reid were talking to Christopher, trying to get under his skin and get some sort of confession out of him, or at least an explanation. While Hotch and Emily were looking through his background trying to find a trigger for his actions.

"He's not worried about us finding anything," Emily pointed out.

"They aren't building rapport," Hotch added, just as Amalya entered the room.

"Hotch, I think we have the wrong suspect," she declared, and Hotch looked questioningly at her. "I think it's his father." She stated.

"What?" Emily questioned in surprise. "Our profile says teenager," she argued.

"She's been working a different angle," Hotch told her, before he turned to Amalya. "What makes you say that?"

"Both Christopher's demeanor, and his father's," she replied. "When Reid was talking about how the choking game could lead to death, he wasn't fazed at all; he wasn't euphoric or even interested like you would expect to see in someone with such psychopathic tendencies; nor was he showing signs of guilt," she elaborated, as she pointed at Christopher on the monitor. "And when we caught him, he was scared, until we saw the ligature marks on his neck," she continued. "His demeanor changed; he was no longer scared. More like resigned, or relieved even. It's like all the fight left in him was gone suddenly," she finished.

"But the ligature marks on his neck," Emily argued.

"Maybe that's how the father got the idea from," she suggested. "It's easy enough to write off as suicide, and easy to inflict on yourself."

Just then, Rossi entered the room. "They're back," he announced, and they all turned around to see Christopher's father entering the station with the Sheriff.

They huddled around Garcia's computer setup and watched in horror as the videos popped up one after the other. They were all dreading the inevitable; that one of those kids will not make it out alive.

Amalya was starting to doubt herself. The kid's computer was as secure as some of the intelligence agencies she worked with throughout the years. If time wasn't of the essence, she would've suggested bringing in outside help. But with the international loops, she knew it won't be effective.

She grabbed the file they had on Christopher, trying to find anything in it to persuade her that he truly was behind it all. But the more she read, the more convinced she became that he was nothing more than a Trojan horse. She vaguely heard Hotch tell Garcia to talk to him, to try and get anything out of him that would help them crack his security system.

"You still think it's his father?" Hotch asked her, when he saw her frowning at his file.

She looked up from the file and studied him for a few seconds before it finally clicked in her head what truly bothered her about the father's demeanor. "If – God forbid – someone told you that Jack was choking himself repeatedly until he passed out," she started, and could see the horror of the prospect of this happening on his face. "How would you react?"

"I would be in denial, ask more questions," he replied.

"And if instead of answering your questions, we spoke of something else?" she pushed.

"I would keep circling back to my son." He told her.

"Exactly. You won't ask questions about the investigation, about the other suicides. You would at least look surprised when some FBI agent tells you that your son has been chocking himself and think it's some sort of mistake. Not brush over it like we just told him he had bacon for breakfast," she explained.

"Yeah, now that you mention it, he seemed more interested in the investigation than what was going on with his son," Reid agreed with her.

Just then, the man in question walked up to them, and invoked on his son's behalf. Hotch sighed but went into the room where Christopher was talking with Garcia to put a stop to the interview with the man hot on his heels. Amalya followed them at a distance that allowed her to listen in on what the father was saying, and at the same time observe the Christopher's demeanor around his father. She felt Morgan come up behind her. "Something about this guy is off. I don't know what it is. But his tone seems almost robotic to me, devoid of any emotions," she commented.

"Yeah, I'm starting to get the feeling that the kid's innocent too. Not sure it's the father yet though," he told her, and she nodded.

There was a moment when she locked eyes with the father as he left the station, and she found herself visibly shuddering at the dead look in his eyes.

"You three stay with Garcia and look through the website for anything that might identify our UNSUB," Hotch ordered, as he pointed to Morgan, Reid and Amalya. "Dave, you and Emily come with me to review the family's history for anything that corroborates either theories. We're running out of time!" he continued, before he made his way into a separate room.

Morgan, Reid, JJ and Amalya huddled around Garcia as she continued to try to break through the security on his computer.

"Another video is going up," JJ pointed out.

"That's four kids playing in half an hour," Morgan interjected.

"How many kids go to this school?" JJ asked.

"Kashmund is the whole county, that's almost two thousand," Reid informed her. "Garcia we need to gain administrative access to the website," he stated urgently, as he told her of his list of passwords.

"No, there was something pathetic about him, not criminal." Garcia objected, and Amalya agreed with her. "That's what I've been saying. He doesn't strike me as a criminal mastermind. When we saw the marks on his neck, he wasn't defiant about them. He simply looked defeated." She said.

"When he was leaving he said he misses his mom," Garcia lamented, before a thought hit her. "What's his mother's name?" she asked.

"Cynthia Summers," Reid answered immediately, and Garcia quickly hit the keys.

"That's it." Garcia declared, once she was past his firewalls.

Amalya grabbed the printed pages as soon as they appeared, and gave some of them to Reid, while she poured over some of them herself.

"That's a pretty sophisticated behavior for a kid," Morgan commented, after Reid's observation.

"That's what's been throwing me off all along. A psychopathy this advanced at such a young age would show in his behavior, and it's not," she elaborated.

Reid started spouting off his observations as he read through the transcripts, and Amalya couldn't help but agree with him as she looked at the papers in her hands.

Just then, Rossi, Emily, Hotch and the Sherriff came over.

"Christopher's being manipulated by an adult." Reid declared.

"You were right," Hotch told Amalya. "The mother's death is a classic case of Munchausen by Proxy," he told them.

Back on the plane, she stood over the sink in the small bathroom staring at her reflection in the mirror. This case was harder on her than she thought, worse than Foyet even, and he killed far more people. But this one brought back a harrowing case she worked on a few years back that still haunted her to this day. A human trafficker, who was – by far- the worse she had ever seen. And it wasn't the ties to the terrorist organizations that made the case this haunting to her. No, it was his methods of breaking the girls so they wouldn't put up fights as they carried out missions. It was his methods of disposing of bodies, the way he mutilated them and then put them on display for the girls to see. For them to find once they apprehend them. They found meticulous records dating back decades, and thousands of girls who were eventually never found.

Most of the girls were teenager, and horrifically, many of them were his own. He had no compassion, nor did he feel any connection to them. They were mortified by the amount of incest going on within the ring, and it was one of the main reasons why she left that particular agency behind, and why she almost accepted the offer at the BAU years ago.

But now she was starting to wonder if she was really cut out for this job, would she be able to do it day in and day out? Can she handle the horrors? She knew how to compartmentalize better than most people, but she knew that some cases would dredge up her past more than others.

The sound of shuffling feet outside the door pulled her out of her reverie, and she decided to put a pin in her thoughts for now and figure it all out later. She pulled the door open, and found JJ making a drink for herself.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Hey," JJ said smiling.

"I…uh…. I know you lost someone to suicide, and you don't have to tell me who, or why. And I know this case hit you harder than most. And I can't possibly imagine how you must feel, but my mom once told me that you never really stop grieving. It simply becomes a part of who you are; there are good days and there are bad ones. And you can't deny the bad ones, you simply have to embrace them." She spoke softly.

"Thanks, Amalya," JJ said gratefully, and Amalya smiled at her, before she turned around and headed for the main cabin.

"There's a lot to hate about you, Dr. Reid," Emily said through gritted teeth, and Morgan laughed.

"Play poker with him sometime," Rossi chimed in nonchalantly.

"Try playing chess with him," Morgan chuckled.

"Or Go," Garcia added from her place.

Amalya bent down, and rummaged through her go-bag, before she pulled out a box, and headed over to where Reid was sitting and set it down.

"Up for a challenge?" she teased, and they all gave the box weird looks.

"Historically speaking, backgammon was…." He was cut off by Amalya's voice. "No, no. I don't want a history lesson, or you rattling off strategies. I want to know if you're up for a challenge!" she said calmly, a smirk on her lips.

"Bring it on," Reid said confidently, and Emily immediately gave up her seat.

"Oh, our inhouse genius vs. Cairo street smarts," Morgan announced. "Let's see who wins!" he egged them on.

It wasn't long before Morgan's roaring laughter echoed in the small cabin of the plane. Despite not knowing how the game was played himself, he could tell by the look on Reid's face that Amalya was winning. Sounds of cheers and protests mixed in with laughter and applause echoed soon after, and Amalya found her worries disappearing little by little into the abyss of her mind. And that's when it hit her; this was how she could handle the cases. How she can put it behind her. Instead of shutting down inside her head, she should appreciate the small moments between the team members as they enjoyed each other's company. She knew that some cases would have them shut down more than others, that each person handles their post-case stress differently. But for now, they were all immersed in the game she was playing with Reid. And they were even starting to take bets on who would win. And the more she focused on the game, the less her mind remembered about that daunting case. And by the time Morgan and Rossi cheered when she won – since they also won the bet – and cheerfully collected their winnings as the other groaned – while Reid scowled at the board, and tired to analyze why he lost – she found herself completely relaxed, with no stress over the case, or the ghost of the other one looming over her.