Hello again! Thanks for stopping in to read this chapter! Sorry for the wait (I started school and switched some job stuff around so I hardly had time to sleep)... here's the next chapter! Reviews make me smile, folks, and more importantly, they make me a better writer! Thanks to those who have done so!

"Hurry! This way!"

There was no humor in seeing Hotch running down a wet ditch in a suit. Along with a few other officers, armed with rubber gloves and evidence kits, the other agents followed close behind.

"I shot him in the ditch," said Reid. "I was scared, I didn't know what to do... I'd forced him along until... I didn't know what to do anymore. Then I killed him. I killed him."
"How far did you go?"
"I made him get out of the truck in front of a farmyard."

The farm stood desolate. Empty. The whitewashed boards were falling off the house, the shingles caving in. A condemning, forgotten notice stuck to the door, its edges peeling, as if the notice itself begged for release. A barn stood lopsidedly down from the driveway, a few rusty, anonymous machinery parts hanging from the wooden beams. A chunk of the roof was missing.

And there, in a stand of dying trees, was a bright, almost new, black pick-up truck.

They charged to it. Sure enough, it was empty. The dimples in the seats, suggestions of people having sat in them, were long gone--- but the thin, husky scent of blood remained. A few officers stayed back to secure the truck.

"Where did the truck come from?"
"I forced him to tell me how to escape. How to get out. Then I made him drive me."
"From where, Reid?"
"It looked like an old, abandoned confinery. Something... metallic. Old. Like it didn't belong."

A half mile up the road, visible in the dim daylight, stood an abandoned concrete warehouse. Once used to store hogs, it now stood empty.

And coming from its wed, muddy drive (unused except these past few days) were truck tire prints.

They ran up the drive, parallel to the prints, being careful not to run in them. Excitement--- the passion that came from being close, so close--- filled them up further with every beat of their hearts, every loud slap of their shoes against the mud. These were moments that came only once or twice a career, moments that stung and bled and intoxicated, that feeling of knowing that you were about to find an answer, regardless of how sick and disturbing that answer might be.

The confinery, like the farmhouse, was useless. It was obvious that Reid had not been held here--- sections of the concrete walls still allowed the dim, translucent morning light through, lighting up bits of forgotten dust, illuminating the scent molecules of forgotten sweat and feces of farm animals.

"The hatch," Reid whispered. "He led me up through the hatch."

Below their feet, very nearly hidden in the grime of the floor, was an old cellar hatch. It was nothing like the cellar doors seen in films; no hand-crafted iron handles, no wine bottles resting quietly inside, no rustic, photogenic barn slats. It was purely for practical use--- and secrecy. It's dank, gray tone almost disappeared altogether.

Gideon reached down and pulled it open with a surprising grunt of strength. It's hinges swung silently, suggesting that it had been recently oiled, despite the door itself's ancient quality.

Dark steps descended down into the pale, wet blackness. Vomit clung to the third step down, on the left. It was fresh, but mostly dehydrated, and pale with sickness.

"Reid's?" Morgan whispered. No one answered him.

Flipping back her hair, Elle took the lead, her flashlight clicking on.

"What kind of hatch?"
"The steps were filthy. I was so terrified of myself. I didn't know what I was doing. How had I gotten here? How had I gotten a gun to his head? Was I even alive? I think I threw up. I don't know if he noticed. I was so hungry I almost wanted to eat it."

The hallway broadened, becoming a wider, emptier, darker room. Obviously, this had once been the trap cellar for the confinery. Now, it was only the harbinger of larger things.

A tall, strong, double-reinforced door stood in the far wall. A naked bulb hung from the ceiling in front of it. It was cracked. They all knew that filaments would click inside, if they were to shake it.

"The light bulb was out. It was dark. I didn't want to see backwards... I didn't want to think about what I had come from."
"What did you come from?"
"Oh, God."

"I'll go," said Gideon.

The door was not locked.

With a heave, he pulled it open.

It was another hallway. Newer. The walls were thicker, heavier. The very air tasted recycled and damp. Once again, a naked bulb gave them fizzing, flickering light.

In one wall was a door. Off the other was a second room. The room contained three chairs, a table, a television monitor, an extra gun, and tranquilizing hypos. No cards were splayed across the table, and no beer bottles stood half-empty.

"It's the crash room," said Morgan. "They stayed there while they watched him." The monitor showed nothing but darkness. The tape had run out.

A bizarre stench was coming from the four large air holes in the other room. Sweat. Blood. Urine.

Death.

"I don't want to think about it."
"Reid."
"No."

Silence hung in the air.

"I'll do it," Hotch said. His voice was all business, breaking the silence with the force of an oath. Inside, he wanted to puke himself.

All the agents knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this would be the last one of these cases that they could handle.

The dimness, the darkness, the half-light, made it almost impossible to breathe. Elle realized that she felt like she needed to urinate--- stress had clenched her bladder to the size of a pencil eraser.

The door swung open just as silently as the first. The light bulb here was brighter. Too bright. Too sharp. Stark.

"I killed them."
"How many of them?"

They stepped into the room. For a moment, no one could think of anything to say.

"All of them."

Laying on the floor, on top of one another, eyes open, were four men. They were all dead. Blood leaked in anonymous trickles from various eyes, as well as bullet holes. Waste darkened the fronts and seats of their uniform pants. None of them had drawn their weapons. Their blood had formed a sticky, half-dry pool on the cement floor. Handcuffs lay unlocked, chained to a pipe.

"How did you do it?"
"It doesn't matter."

In the corner, high up above the door, hung a video camera.

Back at the office, having sped across the gravel roads so quickly they felt their stomachs very nearly fly out of their bodies, they threw the tape into the player and hit "copy" as the image began to run.

It was not the edited time-lapse pseudo-artwork of the previous victim. Reid's escape had been a surprise.

They hit the fast-forward button. They would review his injuries later. They wanted to see the end of the tape.

Reid lay curled up in the corner of the room, his hair damp and in his face. His eyes were wild with fear. Bruises and broken bones had torn up his body. He didn't even look sane.

One of the guards--- "Needle guy," recognized Elle--- entered the room. Two metallic objects flashed at his waist. At his right, his gun. And across from it, on the left, his keys.

Suddenly Hotch noticed something. He hit pause, his finger jamming the button so hard it almost broke. "Look!" He pointed. The snap, holding his gun in his holster, was hanging open.

As the film played, the guard reached for his keys, almost lazily, as if he barely expected a fight. He wore his confidence like a bulletproof vest. He pulled them out and unlocked one of Reid's arms. His left. Reid allowed it to be taken, his hand hanging limply in the other man's, his fingers hanging off the edge of the larger palm, fingertips trailing air.

They remembered one of the first victim's wounds: being shot in a non-lethal area. The upper arm.

With his other hand, the man reached down. His hand slowly neared his gun. It was already loosed. He seemed bored, as if he'd done this a thousand times before. Reid's eyes rolled back in his head and he let out a soft moan. The larger man smiled.

Suddenly, quick as lightning, Reid snatched his arm from the other man's grasp and lunged forward. He'd palmed the snap away and had the gun in his hand faster than the guard could move. He pulled the trigger instantly, grazing his captor in the side. Then he pulled back, and without aiming, without taking the time to sight anything, shot him straight in the head.

His eyes widened. The death of the other man seemed like it surprised him. Bloodshot, almost crazed, he swung out his legs and wrenched the other man towards him. He screamed as his already broken leg cracked with a loud, painful snap. But the keys hung out of their strap, and with his bare foot, he grabbed them and pulled. Using his free hand, he unlocked his other cuff.

Then he stood. Swayed. At that point, three other men entered the room. The two initial guards, and a new one. Not Essex, but close.

Their guns were drawn. Reid's was already in his hand.

He shot one, who fell in the path of the others. They swung around him, giving Reid just enough time to aim and shoot again. Then again. They fell, on each other, on the ground.

He continued to shoot. He aimed at their heads and shot. Over. And over. And over. Tears leaked from his eyes and still he continued to pump lead into them. Finally, after arterial spray had shot wide and hit him, after their eyes had nearly fallen out of their ravaged heads and their lungs almost poured from their chests, he stopped. His finger still pulled, the gun clicked empty a few more times, and then he lowered the gun.

Suddenly his head snapped up. Without warning, he reached down, snapped another gun out of it's blood-soaked holster, and raised it.

At that moment, a fifth guard entered the room. His gun immediately blew out of his hand and clattered on the floor. Blood from his fingers began to pour. He did not scream. His eyes only opened in shock. And then Reid was there, putting a gun to his forehead. As he raised his arms in supplicance, Reid patted him down. Disarming him of his knife, he swung him around and put the gun to the back of his head.

His broken arm, jutting painfully into his skin, seemed to cause him no pain.

Adrenaline had him now.

Then they disappeared out the door. The story had ended in a wet ditch in the middle of the night, and in his body finally giving up.

Back in the hospital, as Meg waited outside for the others to call, Reid was sitting up, rocking back and forth in his hospital bed. No one had picked up his crumpled ramblings. Despite Meg's interrogation, after she left, he felt absolutely alone.

"Is this what's it's like to be my mother?" he said out loud, talking to himself for the first time in years. "I remember everything. But it's all so loud inside. Oh, God."

A nurse entered the room. She carried a needle. He knew it was simply a sedative, but at the sight of it he wanted to scream.

"Get away from me," he said, his voice growing louder than he felt it had ever been before. His eyes were huge, pale, and staring. She backed away.

"All right, Dr. Just hold on," she said. "I'm going to get your physician."

He knew he was breathing heavily. Oh. God. He wished his mother were here. What was he talking about? He never wished for his mother, not since he was a child. His father had died, and she'd been committed, but she'd been going schizophrenic for longer than that.

First it was, "Oh, Spencer, let's decorate the Christmas tree!" (even though it was April and the heat was beginning to melt tennis shoes). Then, slowly, it became "Spencer! Let's skip school today!", although she had four classes, three TA's and some thousand students depending on her, and he had mountains of homework to do if he expected to graduate by twelve. By the time it was "Spencer! Walk into the bathroom and see my artwork!" and the artwork was broken glass all over the floor, his father had had quite enough. It was time to go. His heart condition flew in on wings of melted chocolate in the kitchen sink and maniacal laughter coming from locked doors, and by the time his son was sixteen, he was dead and she was away.

He didn't even look at her face when he visited. He'd essentially taken the money and run. And now he was going to die.

What? He wasn't dying. Christ.

That needle.

He felt like he was beginning to cry. What a pansy. He'd been called the name before and was now finally beginning to believe it.

He looked down at the floor. Was this going to be it? Was this honestly the end of this whole mess? He'd killed all those people... and now he was going to be driven quietly insane by... everything?

Outside, Meg clutched her cell phone in her hand, her eyes narrowing with shock. "He knows he killed them, but he won't talk about how," she explained. "He blames himself."

"It's a miracle he killed anyone, much less survive it," said Gideon, his voice rough to hide the pain beneath it. "He needs to see someone. He needs to be able to get through this."

"I'll get someone to get him in touch with one," Meg said.

"Okay. You've been a big help, Meg."

In his bed, Reid stared at the wall.

In the conference room, the other agents knew they were on their own. The rest of the department would be overloaded enough with trying to work the newfound crime scenes. Reid was completely out of commission. Finding Essex would have to be done by the agents, and the agents alone.

And by God, they were more than ready.

Oooh! What happens next? I feel as though this story is ready to reach its end; perhaps in the next chapter, or the one after that. Again, thank you all for reviewing! Fifty reviews make me feel like some people care!  Tune in soon for the next chapter!