Author Note: Okay, no more songfics. I'd wanted to try one; it didn't work out; oh well. Anyway, now for the next chapter!
"Get the Commander. Quickly. Now."
Hotch was taking charge, as always, while Gideon darted towards the conference room. Before playing it, he marked it as evidence and snapped the appropriate photo. By that time, everyone in the department was torn desperately between staying with Officer Keenan or running to watch the tape. Hotch solved that dilemma by ordering that everyone leave the vicinity until forensics could detail the scene. In the meantime, the agents would watch the tape. Grumbling more out of fear and shock than genuine anger, they moved away.
They swung into seats and cued the player to copy as it played. Hoping against hope that it would show them what had happened to Reid, Morgan hit the button.
The image did not move. With the camera stationed high in the corner of a dark room, it was apparent that the room's sole occupant did not know he was being recorded.
Lights came on as a door opened. It was Green's home--- in the room where he had been tortured. The agents knew that upstairs, at a table, his girlfriend was lying dead next to the phone. It was clear that Green knew it, too. His face was pale with fear.
"What happened to Amanda? What's going on? Who the hell are you?"
"For being a genius you are surprisingly stupid," said his attacker. "Quite obviously Amanda is dead. The sight of the gun to her head didn't give you a clue, before her brain exploded?"
"Ohmygod..." Green's words came out rushed, the syllables strung together like tears. There was a pause. Gideon barely detected a sigh.
"I apologize," said his captor after a moment. "I forget my place. Pain is not mine to give unless it is warranted. At least this is what my supervisors tell me."
"What are you talking about?" Green's voice came out as if he could barely believe he was speaking.
"We desire something from you," said the unsub. "I wish very much for this to be as painless as possible. I'm just going to draw a little blood."
"Why?"
"Use that overly-gifted brain of yours," he answered. "Figure it out. Give me your arm."
"NO!" The negative came out as a shout, full of panic, its volume buoyed by the adrenaline of terror.
"Fine. We'll do this your way."
After a brief struggle, the blood was drawn. At that point, the tape began to speed up. It became a time-lapse video. For days, days marked only by the timestamp scrolling in the corner of the screen, Green was victimized.
It had started simply: blood drawn here, a truth serum there. But it became torturous at an exponential rate. By the end of the tape--- visibly thinning, and losing his mind--- Green hung against his chains, drool and blood leaking thoughtlessly from his dehydrated lips, talking incoherently. The questions directed at him were useless. Injections resulted in nothing but rambling. Pain stimulus rewarded only screaming.
At the very end of the tape, in the last frame of the room, he was shot and killed.
Almost immediately, the image changed. Handheld and directed at nothing but a plain, white, unmarked wall, the image was accompanied by a voice.
"You see now what we wish to do. Green was a failure, much as we expected him to be. We knew we would need someone stronger, someone who could hold up to much more than the sight of blood, and answer our questions effectively. Special Agent Reid fulfills that need. I send you this tape to inform you of his captivity, and our goals. Such are the rules. That is all."
Then, finally, the tape ended with a click.
In the resulting silence, no more than a moment went by before Morgan's phone rang. Distracted, shaking, not quite knowing what to think, Morgan said nothing, not even hello.
"Morgan?" Garcia's voice felt too loud.
"Yeah," he said softly.
"Listen, I've got a hit on the kidnappers you sent me."
Morgan put her on speaker.
"Three guys," she began, "that have nothing but straight records. They were all military at one time, and they all worked together on a few separate occasions. They made it up the ranks fairly well, before resigning to pursue lives of absolute nothingness."
"They dropped off the grid?" Elle asked.
"No, they just never cropped up again for any reason," Garcia answered. "No parking tickets, no arrests, no overdue taxes. We've got nothing but addresses, which appear to be current."
"Fax them," Hotch said shortly.
"I already did, sir," Garcia said. "But here's the real news: the few times they worked together, they worked under the same commander--- Captain John Essex. It lists here that he died during a tour of duty in Israel."
"When?"
"2002--- the same year our three henchmen resigned. Uncle Sam lists his death as being a suicide. He overdosed."
"Send a picture."
"I already did," Garcia repeated. "But here's the interesting thing. The report of his death was written very quickly, and with no apparent study involved. There was no autopsy. The coroner determined Essex's death by the empty bottle of pills on his cot, the suicide note in his hand, and the lack of physical injury. That's all."
"What happened to the body?" Gideon asked.
"It was bagged, transported to a separate building, and it wasn't cremated until after the coroner finished and filed his report. Six months later, on an unrelated issue, the coroner was fired for drinking on the job."
"The pictures are here," interrupted JJ, over by the fax machine. "Look!"
The three henchmen were very obviously the same men. But the picture of John Essex looked strangely familiar.
"Wait a minute," Hotch said. He hit rewind on the tape, watching it intently, before hitting pause. It was a moment when the unsub had glanced up at the camera, his face and eyes in full focus.
It was Essex.
"I'll be damned," Morgan whispered.
"He faked his death," said Elle. "What did he do? He, what? Took a suppressor?"
"Yes," Gideon said, his voice growing more decisive. "Yes, he did. He would have been unconscious, paralyzed, no obvious heartbeat. The coroner would have pronounced him dead easily enough, if he was too drunk to put some extra time into it. Because he undoubtedly woke up later."
"He woke up in his body bag," said Hotch. "After the drug wore off. After the report was finished. He could have replaced the bag with some other weight, maybe another body, who knows?"
"The coroner didn't take dentals from the body that was cremated," Garcia said.
"It's basic procedure... but the man was too alcoholic to notice."
A second or two passed in shock and quiet.
"Okay, so Essex's alive, and his boys are working for him again. What does he want?" Morgan asked.
"I know what they want," Garcia said. "Check this out, guys." Her voice was shaky, but she held firm. "Essex's job was to work with physical and psychological testing of the soldiers on the base. He quantified their physical and mental ability to stand up to torturous methods and physical illness; he studied their ability to deal with the long hours and the demands of being a prisoner of war."
"That explains why he knew procedure," said Hotch. "He fits the profile. If he worked medically, he would know how to fake his death; he would know what sedative to give Reid. And if he was a student of military interrogation of prisoners, he would know exactly how to torture, and for how long."
"But what is he doing?" Elle asked. "Why would he want Green and Reid?"
"Look, they're both geniuses," Morgan answered. "It's all they have in common."
"He's treating them as prisoners of war," Gideon said softly. "Sending us a tape of Green's captivity, informing us of what he plans for Reid. 'Such are the rules.' He wants us to know that, as a nod from one soldier to another."
He got up and looked at the freeze-frame of Essex's face. "He's turned the tables. Instead of working with prisoners of war, he's keeping one."
Out of the screen, the eyes burned into Gideon--- dark, empty, cold. Insane. "He developed a taste for it. He enjoyed asking, "How do you feel?" after giving someone an electric shock. He wanted to do it again, and again. He wanted it to be real. He couldn't do it while he was working--- too many eyes over his shoulder, too many reports to file, too many innocent men who knew they were being tested. But if he got out--- if he got out and pulled together men he trusted--- he could run whatever kind of operation he wanted, and he could hurt his prisoners as often as he pleased."
"So he left," Hotch continued. "And now he's doing this. Holding men like Green hostage, bombarding them with questions, hurting them when they don't answer."
"He keeps referring to his 'supervisors'... he's doing it to keep up the pretense that his work is a legitimate military operation; as soon as he lets himself realize that he's doing this all on his own, for his own personal enjoyment, then some of the joy goes out of it."
Gideon paced, talking, feeling the thoughts come out of his mind and knowing they were true. "Does it matter what he would be searching for? Not really, I don't think... as long as he had a point. In this case, the point is to tap into whatever genius Green and Reid possess."
The energy in the room was almost tangible.
"All right, we've got less than week now," Hotch said suddenly, standing up. "We know what he wants, we know these men's addresses. I want to get cops out there, and I want them scouring all three apartments. I want them to find anything and everything having to do with this--- operation." Hotch spit out the word as if he could hardly stand the taste of it.
"But there's more," said Gideon. "There's more we have to do."
"What?" Morgan asked.
"We've got to profile Reid," said Gideon. "We have to figure out exactly how much he knows about his condition, how much he can actually tell Essex. How much can he invent, how quickly can he lie? Because if he can keep up the game, with any luck, he can avoid some injury. Also, we need to determine what will physically happen to him if Essex decides to work on his brain."
"Oh, man..." Garcia whispered, her voice tinny over the phone. "What do you mean?"
"If you wanted to figure out what was physiologically going on inside someone's brain, you wouldn't stop at asking questions. You'd actually test him, electrically, magnetically, whatever, and see for yourself," said Elle.
"Where do we start?" asked JJ.
"Here's the plan," said Hotch. "Morgan and Gideon, I want you to work Reid's apartment. Elle and Garcia, I want you to research the neurology we're talking about. JJ, I want you to coordinate this department into covering the addresses of the men working for Essex. I am going to get in touch with someone who I think can help us out."
Everyone began to move, standing, opening notepads, making calls. As Hotch moved quickly towards the door, Morgan called across to him, "Hotch! Who are you talking about?"
"You'll see," he said. And just like that, he was gone.
Whew! Yeah, I think that chapter was better than the last one. (Which, by the way, I will be reworking, so it gets better.) Anyway, as always, reviews are lovely! Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next chapter!
