.

.

.


Despite the later hour of the evening and not long after everyone retired from staring at Spencer like he was a spectacle, Alex reached out to Marcus. If he and his sister were keeping up with the news, then they saw the faces that were being shown across all media in the passing hours. The various angles that McAllistar house that was being shown in—aerially and on the ground—might be recognized by him from the night that he escaped.

He didn't answer the call, so Alex texted him instead.

« I hope you're well.
I wanted to tell you
personally that we
caught them.

« I know you've
probably seen it on
the news.

« Would it be possible
for you to conduct a
voice line-up eventually?

There was no response. No matter. She went on anyway, much in the same manner that she had when she stood in front of his bedroom door.

« It's thanks to you
that we found the
latest victim.

« Please know that
your resilience is
your strength.

All the messages showed as being read, but Marcus Delaney didn't respond.

This just isn't our loved one were words often heard among staff when a person was in a state as grave as their patient.

That's not him.

He shouldn't be like this.

If you knew him, you'd know that he—

How were they in the hospital to know who, what, or how the person used to be? Their core personality? This present person was all they knew of. They could only hope to help restore their patient to some faded echo of what they were before.

Since recovering from his emergency and elective surgeries, patient Spencer Reid's vitals were checked every half hour, blood tests were conducted often, and he was checked for signs of infection.

The visitors—most of them, at least—rotated watching over him from beyond the glass doors.

"I need to touch him," one of them said, standing outside his room, pressing her face and splayed hands against the glass. "If I never get to touch him again while he's still—if—if something terrible happens and he never gets to know that we were here for him, I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

And the first tenuous hours dragged into Sunday evening like this, with them coming and going, hoping and wishing.

'The first 24 hours will always be the most important following cardiac arrest and following such intense surgery,' Dr Goswami had warned Aaron, escorting him aside to relay additional information to him as the others kept on staring at Spencer. 'This interval is when his condition can rapidly decline or remain stable. Let's hope he fights for the latter.'

That thread-thin tendril of hope vibrated when—about 24 hours after surgery—they traversed that window of time with no further complications.

"It looks like as of now we won't have to remove any part of his skull to relieve the pressure," Dr Kane, the neurologist asserted with a kind smile. "It's slowly going down. We're not out the woods and this can take a worse turn, but let's hang on to the good for now."

It was early Monday morning.

"I'd like to move forward with removing Spencer from the therapeutic hypothermic protocol, and we'll see how he progresses from there."

He made comparisons with Spencer's most current scans and those that were taken years ago. There were definite signs of cell death, none of it localized to one specific area. This he related to Aaron.

"Even still, what a brain he had." This he didn't tell Aaron, but to Dr Goswami. "I'd love to pick that grey matter when there's activity and hope that it's restored to some facsimile of what there was before all this mess—with time and with therapy, depending."

With Aaron—and by extension with the visitors—Dr Kane was sensitive but realistic. He and all the staff were coming to both understand and accept that Aaron and his unit were a package deal. At one point, he gave the unit chief multiple copies of a booklet—Hospital Treatment and Early Recovery after Brain Injury—and encouraged him to distribute the additional copies to the rest of the team.

"This booklet is a good way for you all, as his dear ones, to prepare yourself for what his condition might entail—if all goes well—and know what to expect after we've taken him off the sedation."

Nearly the third full day of his hospital stay, swelling of Spencer's tongue was starting to recede, and there was no sign of infection at the surgical site.

"I'll not lie," the otolaryngologist began, smiling at Aaron, "we all had our reservations about moving forward with the replantation procedure, as it's an elective surgery and Spencer was in such a bad way. But Dr Goswami fought for you—and him. We here also strive to take challenges and wanted to see good come from all this."

There was a slight sheen casting reflections on Aaron's eyes, and he could do nothing more than puff out a trembling breath of relief and gratitude.

"When he awakens," he continued, "he may notice that his tongue isn't quite the same lengthwise. We had to debride some tissue from the amputated limb at the base of where it'd been cut."

"By how much, Dr Johnson?"

The doctor lowered his jowls, shaking his head. "Not by much, I assure you—less than three millimeters. But when one is used to the shape and feel of something that's been with them their whole life, any change is foreign and noticeable at first."

Aaron's eyebrows darted up in acknowledgement. "Mm."

"And while this is one of the rarer replantation microsurgeries, these cases have shown that recovery of the tongue tends to go almost uneventfully well once everything is back in place."

"That's a relief," Aaron strained out, feeling evermore justified in having decided to move forward with the procedure. "And the laryngeal trauma?"

A shake of the doctor's head. "That's still in a bad way, I'm afraid. The best is that he can breathe with the intubation. Let's not worry about addressing this for a few more days, though from my observations this will still need to be dealt with surgically, as it cannot heal on its own in its state. Since he's still in deep waters, we wait until he's more stable."

"Understood."

"Either way, Spencer will need therapy sessions when all is said and done. The goal of surgical intervention for laryngeal trauma is to restore the three primary functions of the larynx, which are breathing, phonating, and swallowing. He may have trouble with the latter two; and that doesn't include the therapy he'll need from the lingual trauma. His ability to properly enunciate will be affected. But with time and diligence, all these things can be restored."

During Spencer's surgery to address his bowel perforation and his anogenital injuries, all specimens found and or swabs and gauzes used during the procedures—surgical, investigative, or from cleaning areas to prepare for medical attention—had been collected, sealed, cataloged, processed, and secured into temporary storage. Spencer's legally authorized representative would decide if these would be turned over for actual evidence collection.

'They might be inadmissible,' Dr Goswami had said to Aaron. 'But I took it upon myself to have a nurse log, categorize, and bag them carefully, as well as cite the location where anything was collected.'

On that note, the surgical team had found two blond pubic hairs in Spencer's rectum.

Now it was the beginning of the fourth day since finding Spencer, cresting beyond the 72-hour window in which these examinations were regularly performed.

"It's likely that it won't be admissible like you said the other day," Aaron began, "but either way, I would prefer to wait until Spencer's awoken to have him give his own consent regarding the release of the collected evidence. But I'm moving forward to give consent for a photographic examination."

The wounds and bruises had become more pronounced in the passing days—like dirt on snow—and where photographic evidence couldn't be cataloged during initial intake for obvious reasons, it could be now.

With the curtains drawn closed and as the first visitor allowed in the room, Aaron watched from a distance as the photographs were taken, following proper protocol and wearing proper PPE—face mask, head covering, face shield, gloves, and gown.

The forensic photographer and her assistant went about the long process in slow, careful measures, operating as if the comatose patient were awake by leaving parts of his body covered when photographs weren't being taken. With a delicacy meant to ease and calm a conscious, traumatized victim, they maintained his dignity and spoke to him in hushed tones behind their masks as if he were present and consenting with each step.

As the camera click-pinged away, capturing everything from his hair follicle hematomas—the roots where his hair was gripped with such force that some had even been torn out, the petechiae in his one eye shown as a ruptured blood vessel and blooming in peppery dots on his cheeks and jaws, the bruised inner upper lip—Aaron couldn't prevent the winces. These were things they hadn't noticed initially.

She descended from head to toe as regulated, recording every grouping or singular fingertip or finger pad remnant, every scratch and indentation, the otherwise unscarred hands but polished wrists and ankles where lateral abrasions were indicative of restraints.

After and with the help of a few more nurses, Spencer was turned.

Aaron found that he needed to sit as the same procedure was then done to Spencer's backside. Before, he'd watched through vision that grew evermore blurred, a fisted hand pressed to his masked mouth, shifting his weight from his left to his right foot again and again. This now weakened him.

It was a false, small measure of solace that Spencer wasn't conscious during this and that there would be no invasive internal examination to take place. And though he was just a spectator who was losing the will to continue watching, his guilt would have consumed him had he left Spencer alone with the two during that hours-long process—despite his unconscious state and despite their utmost sensitivity.

But there they were again, the whirring click-pings of the camera capturing it all: the abrasions, raised belt and electric cord markings, the fading impact site bruises, the scratches and finger pad markings, the additional suction and bite marks on his buttocks and on the back of his thighs. There it was again, the empty but pacifying voice of the forensic nurse.

After the completion of the examination, Spencer was given another bath, his skin was moisturized, and his limbs massaged and exercised.

When they finished, Aaron wavered over to Spencer and took his hand in his own, wishing he could feel him beyond the gloves. He bent over him, brought the curled knuckles to his shielded forehead, and he apologized to Spencer for it all.

He spent a few minutes with Spencer like this before taking the time to text and invite the other members of his unit. Within a short amount of time, the others began trickling into the room, themselves belabored with proper protective gear and doing the same as Aaron. Although some of them had touched him the night they found him—just as Aaron had—it hadn't been the same. Now, after many months, they put their hands upon him, confirming and ensuring that he was real and not some fever dream—a crudely pieced puppet made manifest from weeks and months of hopes and disappointments and fears.

Alex, though, found that she couldn't yet enter the room.

The staff that worked the intensive care unit was aware of current news reports. Apparently, security had warded off three reporters who managed to get past the receptionist—two had managed to get in under the guise of pretending to be hospital staff and nearly made it into the intensive care ward where Spencer was staying. There was now round-the-clock security posted near his room.

"We apologize for this," said Agent Jareau. "We've tried keeping a tight lid on everything since Friday night and have been making sure to be as inconspicuous as possible, but it seems that one or more of us was recognized."

Months ago, some of the staff had been around, assisting one of the agents in her convalescence after she was involved in a collision and a multiple-stabbing attack.

They covertly spoke among one another. It wasn't a huge leap of logic to know who their patient was, what grand machinations he had fallen victim to. He was a survivor of The Linen Assassins, of The Stokes State Slayers—a people the public was coming to know about in the passing days, a man and a woman that had the community divided.

Some people who knew the McAllistars spoke of their disbelief, vied for their innocence in all the murders—despite irrefutable evidence. The public didn't know the extent of what the victims suffered, but there was speculation.

Speculation wasn't needed among these hospital workers; they had a fresh specimen under their care and knew that it had been at his great suffering that he had survived the clutches of those two.

They knew the visitor's first and last names within the passing days, knew the limited list of visitors allowed and wondered what the relationships were. They knew their dispositions and quirks—or lack thereof in some of their cases—within the following days. In time, this became reciprocal.

There were a couple of visitors, though, that the staff wasn't at all familiar with. Both came Tuesday—once in-room visitation was permitted and after those of the team had their time with Spencer. One was a middle-aged blonde woman accompanied by Agent Hotchner who came near the middle of the day and whose brusque disposition left much to be desired. But when she went inside the room, the rough exterior smoothed a little. She didn't touch Spencer—aside from a gloved hand to his shoulder—spoke no words to him, and left mere minutes later.

The other visitor was a peppery-haired man that came with Agent Rossi in the late hours that same evening when no one else was there. He had been hesitant to enter but stood beyond the threshold within the room for many minutes. Rooted to that spot, it wasn't until Agent Rossi approached him—spoke some brief words to him that none could hear—that he traversed further into the room. He sat at the bedside, held Spencer's hand in his gloved hand, and sat over him. Agent Rossi stood outside the room along with the security officer, giving the man privacy.

The nurses thought they could see a hint of resemblance between that visitor and their patient and wondered what the relationship was.

It was something about the eyes that gave it away.

Spencer was diagnosed as having Ketamine cystitis.

"He's in the earlier stages, so the effects aren't quite as severe as they could be," Dr Goswami told Aaron early on. "Recent medical advancements dictate that while it's not completely reversible, he can still experience clinical improvement and manageability with time and treatment. Surgical intervention won't be necessary. During his captivity, he undoubtedly experienced incontinence, urge frequency, and even pain during urination. If he's as intelligent as you claim, then he may have perhaps thought that these were due to an STD or due to the asphyxiation. Truth is, it was both the cystitis and the asphyxia. As of now, testing is revealing that he's not been exposed to any STDs."

Despite the positive outcomes, Spencer wasn't free of the infections that Dr Goswami had warned Aaron of. By late Wednesday evening, Spencer developed aspiration pneumonia, though the complications were mild.

It was at this time that Agent Blake finally crossed into the room, having been leaning against the doorframe and just staring at him. It was the sudden sound of the clogging of phlegm in the tracheostomy that said it all for her, and she was calling over a nurse to address the familiar sound, going over to him instinctively.

"We expected this," a nurse said in a tone to calm the agent as she suctioned the tracheostomy. "Which is why we'd preemptively given him a combination of antibiotics. These helped, and he's fighting along with the medication."

But she fretted anyway, and there was something doting in the way she reached for a clean handtowel and dipped it in cool water and wrung it and then patted it over him.

"Oh, you must be a mother," the nurse said in fondness as she put items away. "I know the touch when I see one."

Agent Blake said nothing in return but gave a tempered smile, humming.

"I hope you don't mind my asking. Are you two related or . . ."

"No." The voice croaked out. "No relation."

"Ah. Well, then; let me get out of your hair. Give you some time with Spencer here."

The visitors came, worried, lingered as they saw an increase in medication to fight the pneumonia—and the peritonitis that came despite the efforts to keep it all at bay—and they went. The phlegm kicking up and constant suctioning of the tube became a normal sound and sight.

When the fever peaked in another three days, he suffered another seizure, the first but not the last post-surgery, they would find. Agent Garcia along with Agent Prentiss were both present during the occurrence. The former had pressed the nurse-call button and then burst past the room for assistance; the latter had calmly moved forward.

"This cause is purely non-epileptic," Dr Kane started, "and I wouldn't want you all to worry over it."

However, to be safe and given the simultaneous peritonitis and pneumonia, it was recommended to hold off on the surgery that would address the laryngeal trauma, and it was decided to keep him in the medically induced coma.

"These were self-inflicted," Alex murmured, standing over Spencer and tilting her head. She and Emily were getting to know each other, and they were here together, assisting the nurse in bathing Spencer.

Upon seeing some bruises that hadn't been as pronounced before, such as the ones crawling high up his thigh, there was a simultaneous groan from the both.

But it was the grooves in the visible thigh that prompted the words from Alex, and it rushed before her—the memory of Spencer in his throes of distress the evening before he was abducted, when they were at the restaurant. Seeing the remnants of these scars now, seeing the direction that the scars crawled over his thighs—these were by none other's hands but his own.

Heat built behind her eyes. "I don't want him to wake to any of this," she croaked out.

Emily hummed in agreement.

Alex checked with the staff to see if it would be alright to apply anything topical to his skin. With a list of things that were permitted, she went about using those—and she encouraged the rest of the team to use them as well.

No one said it, but it was of common consensus that maybe it was better that Spencer hadn't awakened yet to find his body covered in bluish purple bruises or red marks on almost every surface of his skin. If he could continue on without waking to see them until they were no longer marring his skin, all the better. They wanted him to awaken, but not to this.

And it seemed this might be the case.

Thirteen days after finding Spencer, on a Thursday evening, it was confirmed that there were no signs of pneumonia or peritonitis, though the recovery would be slow to come.

They were now allowed to be in the room without the heavy PPE, could brush their fingers in his hair or hold his hands properly, could press his fingers to their lips or lean forward and press their lips to his face.

The following day, the physicians then had a conversation regarding removing him from the medically induced coma.

Aaron didn't know how fruitless the next thing would be upon speaking with Dr Goswami and the anesthesiologist.

"He refuses to be given narcotics."

Dr Goswami straightened her lips in understanding. "Where possible, we won't administer any narcotics, Aaron, but it will undoubtedly be in his best needs medically. He will be in severe pain. But we'll try to keep any administration of dosages low and monitor him closely. Unfortunately, given the cardiac issues, it would be inadvisable to use NSAIDs, so I would recommend a fully synthetic analgesic instead, as they are the least . . . habit forming."

Aaron sucked in a breath, relenting. "Okay. Thank you." There was a sharp pang in his chest.

And so, Spencer Reid's medical coma was lifted in slow measures. Where they hoped he would awaken within a day or two, this wasn't the case.

"There's very little brain activity," Dr Kane began, "but testing is showing that Spencer is low on the scale—as in he's the lowest possible score that one can have for Glasgow testing. It's not good, but give it some time to improve."

This remained the case for days with no sign of improvement but with complications. With the induced coma, Spencer had but the one non-epileptic seizure caused by his fever and infection. But now were the seizures within another day brought on by abnormal brain activity. Though not often in occurrence, they were frequent enough that it gave the staff some reservations.

"Here's the reality," Dr Kane began, "and I'll make it simple. Seizing while comatose isn't a great prognosis factor but isn't uncommon with hypoxic brain injury. Even remaining comatose after removing the deep sedation that's lasted for as long as we had him under isn't uncommon for brain injury, but it is also unfavorable. We'll continue our assessment. His age is on his side, and his slowly recovering health is, too. We just need to get him through this acute stage and see how he progresses from there."

Often within the passing hours of the day, short tests were performed to assess Spencer's alertness—from applying pressure on various parts of his body to pinching him, from rubbing his sternum with their knuckles to speaking his name and asking him to open his eyes in an elevated voice.

One day crawled into the next, into the third and the fourth. Aside from the occasional seizure came the next in the changes—the frankly unsettling ones where his body went rigid or his heart rate ascended, the chest heaving as he labored to breathe, the sweating and fevered state thought at first to be another infection, the backward arching spine—sometimes with no external stimulus of any kind.

"Oh, he's storming." Dr Kane beamed the first time these manifested. "Not uncommon with hypoxic brain injuries. It's called paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity. In the easiest terms, this is a stress response—the fight-or-flight response—kicked into high gear and unable to properly shut off as it would you or me once danger has passed in our case. This usually goes fifty-fifty, where it's an indication of deterioration of one's condition, or some level of recovery. In his case, it's a good sign. His brain is trying to return to activity where there was little before."

And a nurse—who was often looking after Spencer and who gave them more in-depth understandings of the physiological effects of such storming—reassured them. "There are risks associated with storming—dehydration, muscle atrophy, weight loss, pressure sores, and even musculoskeletal damage. But we're keeping on top of everything to prevent any of these things—or, at the very least so that if any of these come to pass, they're not as drastic as they could be. We'll introduce some medications to address the elevated blood pressure and temperature. We'll also increase his caloric intake, hydration, and protein to supplement his elevated metabolic rate to help reduce his risk of muscle atrophy and dehydration."

"Is there anything that we can do, though?" Jennifer asked. "I noticed it's more frequent when he's being bathed or repositioned."

"Yes, and that's normal. And you can definitely help. A cool cloth to keep his temperature down, gentle massaging of his arms and legs, gentle voices—these are all effective measures to keep his stress levels at a minimum."

"So . . ." Jennifer tilted her head. "What we're already doing."

The nurse smiled at her. "What you're already doing, yep. Just keep at it."

On that, Spencer's visitors were often keen to do what they could to help, and had even asked the stomal therapist to teach them how to lightly clean his tracheostomy site, his gastrostomy site, as well as empty his colostomy pouch when it would reach a third or half-way full and how to clean it if permitted to do so; they asked the attending nurse how to empty his urine pouch if permitted to do so; they asked how to properly bathe him in the early days if permitted to do so; or shave him, or wash his hair, or clean his teeth if permitted.

They were given those permissions in the smallest fractions, under the watchful eye of the nurses, therapists, or respective physicians, but were strictly unallowed to do these things without the assistance of an attendant for multiple liability reasons.

But it was good training.

Beyond his hospital stay, no one knew how long he might need assistance—if ever he progressed beyond this state to some disorder of consciousness, or if ever he was well enough to be discharged. They were prepared to be there for him where they could be. It could be for days more, or for weeks, or for—

"Reid has an advanced medical directive in place in case of situations such as these," Aaron told the team one day. "In case he's suffered brain trauma and is comatose or is suffering a disorder of consciousness, and the length at which he finds it acceptable to be in any of these states, especially if he needs respiratory management."

Jennifer blinked at him and brushed her hand in her hair. "Okay. Um." Her blinking increased, and she swallowed. "Okay." She tipped her head in a single nod. "Um. How long . . ."

Aaron took in a breath. "In this case, we have a little more than five more weeks until I'm to move forward with his wishes."

Alex closed her eyes and straightened her lips.

"Jeez, this kid," David murmured. "He'd not given a sufficient amount of time at all, did he?"

"Wait, but no," Penelope objected, distressed. "Wait. But he's not brain dead. Dr Kane says that he's showing signs of progressing." She didn't accept the calming warmth of Derek's hand upon hers and wrenched her hand toward herself. "He's doing better. That's a good thing. He's doing better."

"Garcia," Emily started.

"Yeah, but Baby Girl," Derek reasoned, "Reid decides on how he lives his life or if there's any kind of termination of—"

"No." She gave her head a firm shake and pointed up her index finger. "No thank you. No."

Either way, they continued to practice these things—how to properly care for him at his sickbed—for however long or short it might be needed.

His room had lost its drabness with the help of Penelope, who started first by bringing in the chunky blanket she'd knitted for him (when permitted), brought in all arrays of fake plants, brought in team photos and artwork to put on the walls, brought her own soothing lighting. They brought Spencer-approved toiletries and continued to soothe ointments and lotion over his skin, passing lip balm over his cracking lips. They held his hands and smoothed his puckered eyebrows, rubbed his chest to ease the mucosal buildup, rubbed ice or a dampened towel on his lips, kissed his forehead or hands, spoke softly to him, read to him, softly played his favorite music for him with headphones, tucked various textured things in his palms or brushed them along his fingertips to stimulate his touch, and watched what seemed to be his favorite shows as he laid beside where they sat.

Over the days, though, when they could no longer come in the larger groups, what the hospital staff expected would happen came to pass: eventually they had to get back to work; traveling interstate constantly wouldn't be feasible, and apparently none of these people were related—to him or even to each other.

Seventeen days after being found, Spencer was taken back into surgery to have his laryngeal trauma repaired.

"Nothing significant occurred during the surgery," the otolaryngologist assured Aaron. "He's currently in the recovery room and will be returned to his room in ICU. As always, there's a chance for postoperative complications, but let's hope that he continues to fare well."

On the afternoon of Wednesday, December eleventh—nineteen days after Spencer was rescued from the clutches of Lorraine and Russell McAllistar, staff was able to assess with the EEG that Spencer was in a wake cycle and that he had been in a sleep cycle the previous hours. This was the most significant progress by far.

It was also confirmed—after testing that they often did—that he was resuming breathing on his own, though with some difficulty. As the days followed, his respiratory therapist weaned him off the ventilator in measured steps until he was confident that it would no longer be necessary.

This improvement was one step closer to preventing Aaron from having to make any undesirable decisions.

The newest Glasgow coma test determined that Spencer was continuing to progress from his coma: his eyes now fluttered and flickered to painful stimulus, but they didn't open. His brows puckered, and he reacted only at loud, clattering sounds or raised voices, twitching his head.

From that day, the visitors decided it was time to introduce a more rigorous physical therapy with a team of physiotherapists—one that went beyond the regular exercising or massaging of his muscles as they had been doing with him already. They were sitting him up in his bed or letting his feet dangle over the edge towards the floor. They were pressing their hands against his chest or back to prevent him from tipping over, or wrapping their arm around him to prevent him from falling to the side. They were increasing his range of motion, copying the actions of the physiotherapists to get it right.

They would do whatever was within their capacity to increase his chances of awakening.

Aaron pressed the speaker button on his phone and put his hands back on ten and two at the wheel. "Hotchner."

Erin Strauss' voice came through on the other end. "I was calling to get some word on Agent Reid's condition. How is he progressing?"

Aaron sighed. "He's coming along. Physically, that is. There are still some misgivings on the neurological end."

Erin heaved a heavy breath. "I imagined that to be the case. His recovery is of utmost importance. I understand that," she said. "I just wanted to be sure of it all. I'm trying to present a proper review of everything for assistant director Barnes. Based on Agent Reid's files, he doesn't have listed any next of kin as primary contacts in case of emergency, except you as his medical proxy."

Aaron swallowed. "He doesn't, no."

"Mm. Right. Believe it or not, I know you all better than you think I do. I don't want you to view me as your enemy, Aaron. This is a difficult and delicate situation, and I am trying to pave a way for you all to be able to address his needs."

"It is," he agreed. "And thank you."

"I'm receiving some heat from Barnes, though. I know I'm not an easy person to deal with, but I think you should be glad that you're not dealing with her. That being the case, it's time to discuss having a new agent in for a provisional time, Aaron."

"Has our performance as a team not been satisfactory?"

"Far from it. And Emily Prentiss has been temporarily reinstated, but we know that's not for long. She still has her Interpol station to return to."

"Right."

"If Agent Reid is unable to return to his post, that space will need to be filled on a permanent basis. What I'm proposing for now is only temporary. What can't be avoided is that after this weekend full consultation is required of the team. I'm allowing the rotation to continue, but I can no longer allow members of your team to be unavailable for consult. So adding in a new agent might help to counterbalance the deficit whenever two of you are rotating in New Jersey."

"Understood, and thank you Erin."

"You understand that this is all temporary, Aaron. You'll all need to return to full duty soon."

"I understand, yes. Your support hasn't gone unnoticed."

"Eh. I would have preferred to see my agent back in one piece and not in such a bad way." It was said drily, but Aaron knew she was becoming more attached to the outcome of this whole issue, and he couldn't figure out why. "Anyway, I want that position filled by the first week of January. What's the development on the McAllistars' end? What of the other material witness? Marcus Delaney?"

"He's still reluctant to assist us further at this time. Agents Alvez and Blake have reached out a few times but are ceasing efforts for now."

"Understandable, but we will eventually need his testimony. Hopefully it doesn't get to the point where we have to subpoena him. Has Agent Alvez told you anything yet from the videos?"

"Barely. Once Agent Alvez came to view some of the footage, he requested Agent Blake's assistance in putting a team of professionals together. It's a large project and requires specific, limited resources. And for the moment, we're electing to leave the task to them."

"Mm. Alright. I'll leave you all to it, then."

The call ended, and Aaron continued his travel to Newark, thinking on the conversation with her. In the passing days and weeks, she had shown her true colors, and they were still charcoal dark, navy blue, black—rigid and unwavering—but not without specks of soft tones. She had pushed back against the assistant and head director, who initially only gave the team one week to focus solely on Spencer. She fought for an additional week. Somehow, she managed to allow the agents to rotate traveling for a maximum of two days during the week with no imperative to consult on cases.

But on this late Friday morning of December 13th, just a couple of days after receiving news of Spencer's most recent progress, the team—split between a physical presence and a conference monitor—was to meet with Luke and Alex at the Newark division to discuss the progress of the case. Due to Alex's skillset not only in Sign Language but as a linguistic pundit, Luke elected to have her oversee the selection process for the translation team, and it had been slow-going.

When all was set up to get things underway—with Luke, Alex, and Aaron conferencing the rest of the team—Luke began.

"Defense is trying to push for an insanity plea for Lorraine McAllistar," Luke began, wrinkling his nose.

"Excuse me? They're what?" Jennifer in disbelief. "We were there among other officers and members of SWAT. You were there. They've found Kenneth's body and the bones of the previous victims' hands buried in their own backyard." She shook her head. "The evidence against them is undeniable."

"Yeah, well unfortunately, they're posing that she probably wouldn't pass the irresistible impulse test."

"The what what?" Penelope asked.

Aaron spoke up. "Defense is going to argue that Lorraine shouldn't be held criminally liable for her actions because she couldn't control them, even if she knew them to be wrong."

"Um, no, sir," Penelope objected. "Unacceptable. I don't—just, no."

"Unfortunately, Lorraine might meet the criteria," Aaron retorted, chagrined. "And she's garnering a sympathetic audience."

Alex wrinkled her nose. "They think she might have been abused and coerced."

"Mm." Aaron ticked up a brow and slipped his eyes closed, and even those watching could detect his irritation.

Emily tilted her head. "If they knew the facts, they'd know that it's almost completely the other way around."

"Unfortunately, there might be some basis for the plea. We were all there that night," Aaron said. He knew the law, and this was when he hated it. "Lorraine was not all there, even with us right before her. She needed to execute some type of release, despite the presence of law enforcement."

"Either way," Luke started, "right now, her lawyer is trying to add onto that collective voice, but it's almost impossible to prove if there was abuse between the two until we start getting some kind of word of mouth. And actual character witnesses are—as of now—naysaying all that noise. So it's either that, or spinning a more believable angle that Lorraine's been under some kind of psychological duress since Kenneth died."

"Was murdered, you mean," Penelope interjected. "He was their first victim. Had to be. I'm no profiler, but I am by proxy."

Luke's lip quirked.

"Defense is going to have another set of technicians and analysts run a secondary analysis to see if they can determine Kenneth's cause of death since it's inconclusive," Aaron responded. "Anyway, they're also using Lorraine's history of childhood abuse as well as her past psychological evaluations to spin this all in her favor."

Penelope shook her head. "Sir? Hotch, sir! Is this stuff going to actually stick in court?"

Aaron sighed. "Some of it might. It's not unheard of that her sentence might be greatly reduced."

It was David's turn to wrinkle his nose and tip his head in his hands as if he needed to stave off a headache. "I'm getting Homolka vibes right about now, and I'm not likin' it."

"What of Russell, then?" Alex asked evenly.

Luke sighed. "So, the dude's completely shut off for now and he's refusing to cooperate, let alone speak."

"But he's not pleading guilty either," Jennifer stated.

"Right, yeah. He's got a slew of character witnesses vying for him, but . . ." Luke shrugged a shoulder. "Nobody's gettin' anything outta him. So it's up to the footage and those character witnesses."

"It doesn't help that he and Lorraine are both long-time business owners and fixtures in the community, are very well known in the area, and that Lorraine does so much for the surrounding counties," Aaron sighed out. "So they will spin this any way they can."

"There's something mighty off about the guy," David murmured, pursing his lips. "As intelligent as he is, I have an aching suspicion that he's somehow trying to manipulate the outcome of this all."

Derek turned to him. "In what way?"

David affected a look of indifference. "Lorraine has emotional attachments to the victims. He doesn't. She claims that he had some affinity for Reid. He's not showing that he cares for any of the victims. He'd not refused the suspect exam; he allowed for a meeting with Luke and myself before lawyering up, knowing that it was well within his right to remain silent. He's not refuting any claims that there might have been any abuse in the household—towards Lorraine or towards Kenneth. But he's not making a defense for himself either. "

Emily kicked back her head. "So what are you thinking? That he's sabotaging himself?"

David shrugged.

"To what end, though? Especially if the footage might reveal more than what either of them claim?"

Derek shut his eyes for a moment, tilting his head as some brush of understanding came his way. "The incinerator. He was gonna destroy the footage and the albums. Not some other kinda evidence."

"Believable." Emily nodded. "Okay, so his goal's to protect Lorraine, even if it would vilify himself. Without more tangible evidence such as that footage, people would more readily believe that he abused and perhaps even manipulated Lorraine, and that Kenneth may have been victim to abuse, too."

"If that's the case," Jennifer started, "then we're talking extreme loyalty to her, and he'll continue to stonewall us."

"Wonder what stopped him from actually going through with it, if this is the case," Luke posed.

"Yes, well . . ." David trailed off then sighed. "I'm pretty sure he was distracted at that time. With Reid. Or Lorraine could've prevented it due to sentiment."

"In either case, there's emotional investment involved for sure with Lorraine," Derek began. "But the stuff Lorraine said to you the day you went to the hospital, Alex. We'd theorized on it, but you think it might be true?"

Alex shook her head and shrugged. "It very well could be, and I think the only way we might know is through the video footage. There might've been some emotional investment on his end after all."

"He has fewer childhood records than Lorraine does, though, so they have less character history to work with," Aaron said. "But if there is some kind of paternal desire in there and if there is this impenetrable loyalty to his wife, who we suspect is the manipulative one and is more of the mastermind behind this, then we're going to have to dig this out so that both of them get the maximum and appropriate sentences."

"Well if that's his goal," David started, "the most obvious thing to do would be to outright lie. He's merely remaining silent. He probably figures he's stuck."

"Or maybe he's conflicted," Luke suggested. "He lies, then to the public he becomes some dude that abused his wife and son."

"Which is likely not the case," David said.

"But he tells the truth, and Lorraine's image is tainted."

"Which—if the loyalty's there—he can't stand for."

"Or could it even be that she's . . . manipulated him to do this?" Jennifer asked. "Take the blame for everything so that she gets a reduced sentence in the end?"

"We can't know for now," Aaron answered. "This may conflict with the insanity plea. In her eyes, her ultimate objective was likely linear. Every moment she's had to speak to anyone, she's claimed that Kenneth is coming back to her. And that it's thanks to Reid that Russell was able to facilitate this. It's exactly as you'd theorized after we found Reid, Prentiss."

Emily rolled her eyes and grunted. "It's about him coming back to her."

The solarium—which had both short and elevated beds of various herbs, trillium, exotic root vegetables, and other healing plants such as aloe—had trace evidence of Kenneth's DNA in various parts of the soil.

'Kenneth's body hasn't been in this spot for long,' Dr Bates had posited, standing by the corner of the yard. 'I would say within the past few months. Although none of the bones were missing, there's evidence of natural disarticulation, indicating that he was basically pieced back together to be put into this current grave.'

It was further affirmation that something about Spencer was considered special to Lorraine, for it was during his captivity that Kenneth's body was moved to the backyard. It also brought to question Alex's theory that the previous victims may have met their end on that soil.

'The dog's been dead for some time, but it was also only recently buried on top of Kenneth's body. It was most definitely kept frozen.'

Among other things kept frozen was the tongue of Victim C, which was found in the basement pantry freezer and which was matched empirically to his remains. The feeding bags also found in the freezer as well as the refrigerator contained food that—when tested—revealed that they were pumped full of the same drugs in Lorraine's medicine cabinet as well as some of the root vegetables in the solarium.

Aaron almost dreaded the answer but had to ask anyway. Not everything regarding the case was transparent. "Luke, what have the hCG test results shown? It's been three weeks—there should be a definite result by now."

Luke cleared his throat and blinked, shaking his head in chagrin. "Right, yeah. Uh . . ."

"Oh my god," Jennifer groaned, curling forward and covering her face with her hands. "Oh my god, I'm going to be sick."

"She's actually pregnant?" Penelope's voice came out weak and distressed.

"M'yeah."

David puffed out a breath. "All of the stuff they pumped Reid full of, the murders, all of the evidence against them, this wacko pregnancy—she's not getting any plea. She can't."

"Oh, yeah, no," Luke objected, shaking his head. "We're doing our damnedest to make sure that the strictest sentences are passed."

"We don't need just that, though," Emily retorted. "We need the truth so that each of them gets exactly what's due to them."

"At best we get that with the footage," Aaron said.

"And then the prosecutor that we've got—" Luke ticked his head. "Honestly, Prentiss, you weren't lying about Fiona Duncan."

"What can I say?" Emily shrugged. "She's good at what she does."

"Mm. And I've got my hands on a really good FBI forensic psychologist who's gonna try to tackle the interviewing process—for both Lorraine and Russell."

To this, Aaron nodded. "The name's Tara Lewis," he started, looking through a folder. "She's got an admirable record in ensuring that perpetrators are not only fit for trial but are fit to receive the maximum sentence due to them. We have a high chance of ensuring that for the McAllistars with her on our side. She's interviewed and helped convict Loren Herzog and Archie Sutton, among many others."

"It's just gonna take a while," Luke admitted. "There's a lot of footage to go through."

"Mm, yes," Alex agreed. "Defense is also gathering their own team of forensic investigators to review all the footage as well. But on our end, it's a huge undertaking. Though they're at the beginning of digging into it all, one thing's apparent."

"And that is?" David asked.

"Although Spencer may be the only victim who might confirm this"—she swallowed, for the conjecture was of hope—"there may have been no communication through the listening devices or the ear buds at all. We may have largely underestimated the mode of communication. Although footage with Austin and Victim C isn't as clear as it is with Zachary, Noah, or Spencer—the latter of whom have videos with much higher resolution—it seems that the only means by which the McAllistars spoke with any of their victims was through Pro-tactile Sign Language."

Emily tilted her head. "Is that exactly what it sounds like, involving some form of touch?"

Alex sighed. "Yes. So Pro-tactile Sign Language is used for those who are deafblind or deaf and have limited visibility, or the other way around. Some people with a genetic disease that causes both vision and hearing loss tend to use Pro-tactile Sign Language. ASL was spoken in the McAllistar home—that we already know. When the blindness overtook Kenneth, it seems they defaulted to PTASL to keep up the means of communication. Over the years and with each victim, they may have become more fluent with this mode of communication."

"This . . . this sounds like it involves a lot of physicality," Jennifer murmured, scrunching her face and no doubt thinking the same as everyone else: Spencer, with his issues of intimacy, would have found this difficult to play along.

Alex nodded. "Absolutely, yes. Proximity," she pointed out, sitting straighter. "A person's presence. This is imperative when it comes to PTASL. To the person categorized as deafblind—which it seems the victims were forced into, including Austin—if they don't feel a connection to you, then you may as well not be in the same room. That connection is the signer's hands upon yours—a knee pressed against your knee or your hand pressed against their knee or their shoulder. It can involve more than two people, just as any normal conversation like ours. Either way, it is highly intimate."

Penelope's face was marred with a look of horror, and she groaned. "So they forced them—they forced Reid— to have some kind of closeness with them."

"Mm. It's multiple levels of attachment to one's captor. Either way we're going to have multiple teams translating and transcribing the interactions. And as mentioned before, as they abducted newer victims, the footage has been at better resolution, so a lot may be lost in translation for Austin and Victim C."

Jennifer shook her head. "This could go on for months."

"Yes," Aaron agreed. "Unless either of them outright changes their plea to guilty. They're complicating this case."

"What about Marcus?" Jennifer asked, turning to Alex. "Material witness accounts are going to be key for getting the sympathy of the jury. He's the only person aside from . . . aside from Reid who can account for the emotional duress."

Alex shook her head. "He's basically refused interaction at this point. And again, as he was in the system for his drug abuse and solicitation, he can certainly be used as a witness, but he won't be seen as the most reliable witness to take the stand."

Derek sighed. "Then as the only two victims still alive, neither he nor Reid are exactly the best material witnesses."

"But no one outside of these two rooms knows that he had an addiction before he was abducted," Penelope objected. "And he's been sober for years."

"I promise you," Aaron retorted, "defense will dig into every corner of Reid's life, and they will find out the truth on that. They won't care if he was sober. In some people's minds, once an addict, always an addict. So the allure of the drugs will, in their minds, have basis for insinuating that after a while, these victims didn't want to leave the situation when given an opportunity for escape."

"I don't like this at all. I hate it," Penelope murmured. "I just want to go back up north to see after my dove."

The conference was broken up soon thereafter.

Indeed, in the meantime, Luke and other bureau agents continued to work the case, gaining more insight on the McAllistars from their employees, their other acquaintances—few though they were since Cece and Bradley were momentarily left unbothered while in mourning—and from family members. There was no family to be spoken of when it came to Lorraine. But after Russell's mother had left him and his father back in the seventies, she'd later gotten remarried and had other children. In speaking to his three half siblings, they had only found out about Russell's existence at his mother's funeral back in 2010, and none of them had cared to kindle a relationship with him when he briefly sought it.

There were many other things to delve into but having a better understanding of their characters would be key. Catching such an offender was always helpful in the study of behavioral analysis. Catching a team—a couple—was indispensable. They would be studied for years.

Oftentimes in this pursuit to study such criminals, the victims would be forgotten to the public, but not so in this case—at least, not all the victims would be forgotten.

Spencer Reid was officially diagnosed with epilepsy.

"They're not medical emergencies; they're merely medical inconveniences," Dr Goswami stated one day. "Spencer's not at this stage, but if he has a seizure that becomes status epilepticus—where he cannot stop seizing—Dr Kane and I would suggest putting him back into a medically induced coma."

"I promise you, this is not abnormal for a person with a brain injury," Dr Kane said another day. "Again, these might reduce in frequency. In time, they may be a thing of the past. He's still quite sick for all intents and purposes."

The first time anyone saw Spencer's eyes flicker open without any stimulus to force a reaction out of him, it was fleeting, and his eyebrows scrunched and wriggled afterwards.

"Oh Boy Wonder," Penelope cajoled in a soothing voice, hands swiping at his eyebrows, as she was the one in the room with him. "Oh please, please, Treasure, just open those honey browns for me. Come back to us, please."

As if he'd heard he—and in a near dogged defiance—he tilted his face toward the pillow, to his right side. They would find in time that he seemed to favor this.

It wasn't the last where they would find his gaze flitting open or where he would shut and squeeze them, and the heart monitor would show his escalated heartbeat.

There was new progress. While Spencer didn't respond to auditory demands and had minimal eye-opening response, he did have localized motor response beyond basic withdrawing—whether in response to pain or haptic stimuli. They were consistently inconsistent.

"His progress is a little better than anticipated so far considering the severity during intake," Dr Kane started, speaking to Aaron. "And that's a reason for hope. But now that he's progressed to this state, there's technically no time coefficient for further improvement. He either remains like this permanently, or he can continue to improve and progress to fuller consciousness over time—days, weeks, months, or years from now. As each brain injury is unique to a patient, there's no definite prognosis, but there are some possibilities. The longer this state lasts, the more chance there is of never recovering higher cortical function, and the more long-term issues there might be even after progressing to full consciousness."

Aaron blinked and swallowed, thought on certain clauses within Spencer's medical directives, but allowed the doctor to continue.

"Conversely, there can be complete or near-complete recovery that allows a patient to resume an independent lifestyle. I just have to make you aware of the realities. I feel obligated to properly identify this disorder of consciousness, and I want to see if we can transition Spencer back into the nexus of his friends and family. Let's start a series of assessments and then introduce therapies that've shown the potential to reactivate injured neural networks and promote a re-emergence of consciousness. I want to start administering mild electrical stimulation and see if this helps."

Upon detecting Aaron's distress, Dr Kane would be remiss if he didn't give some assurances though.

"In the best-case scenario, if Spencer does emerge from this, I have to say that his reactions are encouraging for what his potential recovery might be. He has progressed from not reacting to stimulus to abnormal flexing and now to withdrawing. It seems simple and automatic to us, but these prognostic factors tell us that he's more readily processing things outside. Understand this from a neurological standpoint and remove the emotional components of his responses. When you look at it from that angle and pair that with his motor function, these are all reasons for continued hope."

Dr Kane was given the green light to proceed with the stimulation, and so they observed.

It seemed the agents collectively understood all that Dr Kane had said and went for the aloof approach of cautiously optimistic. But anyone could see: the emotional components—the reactions to stimulus—were prominent. Some panged them, and others made them curious.

One day, upon a nurse finishing up blood drawing and pat-patting his hand, Spencer unfurled it. His shoulders quaked, and his wrists flexed as if he was trying to lift his arms. It was the first time, and it wouldn't be the last.

Sometimes they did lift. They would shake, fall back flat against the bedding, and twitch before he would still again. It didn't happen every time, but it was always the same reaction.

"That might be the familiarity with having his hands tapped to begin a conversation," Alex observed.

If they touched his wrists or his ankles, though, he would tense or his legs would bob and tremble and his knees would bend.

"Right. These are conditioned emotional responses," David agreed another time, seeing it himself.

Indeed, Spencer began reacting to the bodily rotations as a prevention of the bed sores and the bathing and the massaging or exercising.

During a few baths, when his arms and hands were being washed, his fingers would splay out and his wrist would turn like he was attempting to present his hand; he would stretch his neck back, back—as far as it could. The first time anyone saw it, they thought he was having a seizure, but neither the EEG readings nor his heart rate monitor revealed anything of the sort.

This one was curious, then. Alex didn't have full access to the various video footage—for multiple reasons—so she couldn't explain everything. It occurred mere days later, and they tracked the reaction as inconsistent but the same as the last.

When his ostomy nurse cleaned and redressed the site of his tracheostomy after he had emerged to this new level of consciousness, he wrenched his head away, and his fingers danced, reaching up and nearly tearing out the tubing. The monitors showed that he became tachycardic, that his breathing had elevated. It happened again when he needed to be suctioned as a matter of course. It produced an endless cycle—the physiological reactions that would cause the mucosal buildup that would need to be treated with suctioning, which escalated his fear. The reaction was inconsistent in that it didn't occur each time fingers went to his neck, but it was nearly the same each time.

"Oh, but look at that!" Dr Kane proclaimed in something too close to excitement. So he corrected himself, voice evening. "Apologies. I know it seems off that I'm at any measure of excitability, but this is proof of how combative he is, and that's an amazing thing. He's not just withdrawing, he's localizing. He's in there; the networks and highway systems in that noggin' are intact."

One day, his fingers swiped at his growing facial hair, and his nails scratched and scratched. He was given a shave, and his neck stretched back during it, just as it would sometimes do during the bathing.

Derek and Jennifer—the latter of whom the staff had often seen in news broadcasts but was seeing less of on the screen in the passing weeks—were both with Spencer and became distressed upon seeing the reaction. The air grew somber.

Hips, thighs, and knees were a zone that caused some poor attempt at a reaction wherein his legs bobbed or the weakening muscles jittered, danced, jerked.

Derek put his own spin to it one day when he was helping to exercise Spencer—just light work today. "Yeah, this ain't nothin' new." He grinned as the person below him drew and twitched away. "The kid's never liked workin' out. I should know. I trained him years ago. Used to drag 'im to the gym with me sometimes."

Beyond the sounds of shuffling, the physiotherapist watching and correcting Derek spoke up. "Did you?"

"Mm. Was a wise-ass back then and"—Derek waggled his head at Spencer as if the ribbing would spring him to life and force him to crack back in kind—"still a little punk now, refusing to wake up."

The physiotherapist gave an uneasy laugh, unsure if it was appropriate to do so.

"Yeah, when he gets out of this, he'll have to deal with me grillin' him again 'til he's good and fit." Derek said this with a large, straight-toothed grin, but his actions below were a delicate performance of flexion and extension exercises, bending and unbending the knee.

A brief bout of silence followed as Derek concentrated on the task, hands gripping the leg loosely, curling and uncurling it.

"He's fortunate to have people like you to care for him. I'm sure he knows you're here."

But a few times during routine checkups, a shaking hand went to cover his groin, and once he pulled the catheter out. It wasn't indwelling, and from that point they moved forward with using an external catheter instead. Multiple times, they found it had been ripped from his person.

Some reactions were more obvious in nature. Others were more curious in nature, and they couldn't quite understand them. Spencer's eyebrows were a safe zone to smooth and comfort, but the actual eyelid was not, and he became tachycardic if fingers subtly went there, whether it was to sooth him or if staff was checking for dilation of his eyes. Kissing or nuzzling his knuckles calmed him, as found by Penelope and Jennifer. A gentle thumb brushing across his cheek had the same effect as found by Emily.

It was a temperate testing that everyone—staff and agents—mentally cataloged over many instances to avoid additional stress.

Reducing stress of any kind was paramount to abating the seizures—aside from the medication. Even the brightness of the room was found to have caused elevated stress which—on three occasions—were thought to have triggered a seizure.

Moving his hands wasn't cause for a medical emergency, but Spencer could hurt himself. Early on it was decided to employ a basic pull-pin alarm system that would sound out if he so much as moved his hands more than two or so inches when they weren't in the room.

After Spencer progressed into what Dr Kane was positive was a minimally conscious state, hospital staff was reticent to use any type of restraints—no matter how innocuous, like Posey mitts—and made the decision not to, especially in case he were to spontaneously progress to a confusional state without staff or his friends being present. The presence of restraints might induce a state of acute distress, which could be detrimental.

The loud alarm barely did more than produce a scrunch or head tilt from him, which indicated to them that there might be a hearing deficit.

The pull-pin system was effective, though, for nearby nurses had been alerted many times and came running into the room within seconds to find him reaching for his tracheostomy or for his external catheter while his eyes remained closed, giving himself new scratches on his neck and inner thighs that were treated accordingly.

On one occasion, when patient Spencer Reid was receiving another rectal proctoscopy from the gastroenterologist, he—in the lateral position after much hassle, had flexed his spine convexly and scratched at the doctor's wrist from behind with a trembling hand. It was shocking, and she—looking up at him—fully expected that she would be faced with an alert person.

It was a desperate expression wrought with discomfort, and his heart rate went the highest they saw post-coma. His fingers twitched and reached for the invasion, but he wasn't awake, locked in a horror from which they couldn't release him.

It was the most complex response he had made in his whole hospital stay—and the most eerie.

The nurses assisting her had to unlock his hand from her wrist with easing and gentle massaging. It was days like these where they had to maintain some emotional distance from their work or they might be consumed by such woefulness. Another had to suction his tracheostomy.

They knew what he suffered, and his body reacted involuntarily—subconsciously—to the intrusion, remembering what it, too, had suffered.


FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2013
On the 35th evening after finding Spencer, despite many odds against him in the first few days, Spencer Reid's prognosis—health-wise—was better with each passing day.

The hue of his skin, before a sick pallor, had long restored to something a little warmer than death. Just a touch of that Las Vegas sun. Most evidence of violence was a permanent remnant in their minds but barely upon his skin, leaving behind relatively smooth skin and only whispers of scarring—apart from the one deep bite-mark that penetrated into his skin and those deeper grooves in his thighs. Ointments infused with aloe vera helped, but most of the scars were topical in the first place. It wasn't a stretch at all to conclude that during his captivity, he was well taken care of.

And why not come to such a conclusion? Spencer was one of the longest held victims, yet he had the least missing teeth. The contents of the basement refrigerator—and of his urine and stool in the early days of intake—revealed that nutritionally he was not at all found in wanting.

Like Noah, Spencer's toxicology report and blood work revealed that he had no vitamin deficiencies, that he had low cholesterol, he was rich with antioxidants, his blood sugar levels were normal, but that he had abnormal kidney and bladder function.

The homemade ointments and the more natural soaps and toothpastes and skin care products found in the utility cart and the storage room spoke of the McAllistars' additional care for him and previous victims.

They were loath to admit it, but his nutritionally sound diet and regimen had probably facilitated his current physical recovery—but these alone wouldn't have spared him if he was subjected to their excessive abuse without some sort of rescue around the corner.

His stats were also much improved and physically, Spencer Reid was doing well. Six days ago saw him taken off the ventilator completely. His respiratory therapist and the otolaryngologist were both pleased with this. He still needed the tracheostomy.

Though it was slow—very slow—to heal, the concerns of Spencer's body plagued the agents and hospital staff less. Until he awakened, though, no one would know the full scope of the psychological or neurological damage. He was getting there. They knew he was.

And so sat Alex and Derek that evening on their rotation.

It was a strange, monotone, protean shifting of profound blacks and greys that he experienced in droves. He felt things—fleeting things and more persistent things, soft and solid things. He felt them everywhere: on his face and in his hair, on his neck and arms and torso and legs, underneath his fingertips. Elsewhere.

He was comforted when the mother bathed him and washed his hair, when she soothed his brows and her hands tightened around his and kissed them, or when she would rub her ointments on his limbs or his back.

The fear of fingers lingering on his neck had long passed, but sometimes it flared, and he was sure that they would squeeze until he was struggling for air.

That surge of panic sometimes came when the father engaged in a few sessions with him, as if he'd forgotten that he was accustomed to the encroachment. They were cold and detached in ways they hadn't been in a while, no hand upon his ankle afterwards to indicate that all was right, or the touch far too brief.

Sometimes there was an unfamiliar but benevolent firmness in their touch. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Neither welcomed nor refused.

There was the falling sensation. Countless times that float-falling sensation filled him with unassailable dread.

And then there were the hallucinations. He kept seeing flashes of them— the ghost memories—before him. At the least these weren't violent as they had been in the past, where he enacted atrocities upon them that he both regretted yet which released a velveteen thrill within. It was then that he would hear those words being whispered behind him, telling him not to do this, and it was then when he wept, because he didn't want to be this way.

So he was convinced that he was being drugged again. Punished. He didn't know what for, and he couldn't track the time. It could be mere days, or it could be weeks. It could explain why the hands often felt so unfamiliar. And there must have been physical punishment because—

The aches were a pressure he couldn't quite explain, dull but ever present and in places they shouldn't be.

So. They were doing something different. This was a newness that he didn't understand, and each newness was—

What had he done to warrant this? The last he recalled, they'd been enacting violence on him in droves for days. But he'd learned well, yes—learned not to reason on why things turned violent, not to complain. It didn't prevent him from asking what he had done wrong. Better to know so he could never again take such an action and offend them.

Best to be good. Very good. The—

'—best boy.'

Yes, that. Oh, he could just feel her expressing such a thing to him—a hope so realized that the sensations of her hands under his were firm as she would relay such magnanimous words to him. Was that similar to—

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

It was such a foreign voice that recited such words. A voice he forced out of his mind—

'I have a mother, and I have a father just like you, and they taught me the—'

The mother and the father, yes. Let this be a good day with them. Today, whatever this fog was—while it was denser and thick enough that it might be a solid mass surrounding him, cementing him—he would pull away from here.

So let this be a good day.

When his hand twitched, there was no weight of leather or chains on either wrist, or—he noticed—on his ankle. His head wasn't wrapped in leather, but there was still tightness about it. There was no constant pressure in his ears or over his face. What was all this change?

Change wasn't good.

This much change was bad. Patterns, regularity, he needed these.

His eyes were met with no resistance as his eyelashes fluttered. While the brace he always wore didn't press against them, he always felt his lashes brushing against the cupped suede. He felt nothing right now.

Yes, this was—

A sudden, bright, painful sensation touched his closed eyes, and it wouldn't ebb. There should be none at all.

So he tried to measure out, understand, perceive. There were things in places that were never there before—things on his neck and on his skin and underneath his skin.

Just. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

They normally positioned him on his right side whenever he lost consciousness or whenever they wanted him to rest. He was on his back, angled. Little changes like these—

Unsettling. Something within him mounted, clawed at all of this and he wanted the feeling gone. His heart clamored in his chest and his brain was telling him that he was breathing heavily through his nose, but that sensation wasn't quite right either. His throat was uncomfortable, even more than with the nasogastric tube.

On that. He couldn't feel that on his face. He tried to reach up to touch it.

He wanted to fall back. He clenched his jaws to prevent anything from dribbling past his lips but—

Yes, this all was squarely unacceptable, and he wanted to test opening his eyes, knowing that he would surely find darkness. He was afraid to, though.

The father wouldn't trick him. Surely he wouldn't. Would he? He said he would pluck out his eyeball and feed it to him. He was benevolent whenever the brace was removed, and he allowed—

'I won't look.'

'You won't look.'

Oh, to receive the praise and pride the father conveyed whenever he obeyed.

No. He couldn't open his eyes. He couldn't. He was so good.

He reached his hand up to brush against his chin. No, he wasn't hooded. His face also itched with bristliness. These days, even just a little seemed to bother him.

This couldn't be real. It couldn't. People sub—jugated to? No. Subjected. People subjected to—

Think clearly.

People subjected to sensory destitution—no. No, not destitution.

Think. Calm down and think. Synonym. Similar word, but the word destitution itself is not correct in this context. Four syllables, starts with D.

So he went through it—his new system of retrieving the correct words when it all would become jumbled, spelling out the word by crossing out letters alphabetically until he would reach the correct one and then repeating the pattern, all until he could manifest it. Of course he did this with speed, but the fact that he had to do it at all in such a manner was—

Well, he knew he was damaged. Brain rot. Brain injury. Hydraulic—

Wrong word.

What had caused his thoughts to derail? What was he trying to do before? Find a word. Which—

Oh yes, deprivation.

People subjected to sensory deprivation are prone to vivid hallucinations. The word hallucination comes from Latin and means to wander mentally. Hallucinations are defined as the perception of a nonexistent object or event and sensory experiences that are not caused by stimulation of the relevant sensory organs.

Yes, the mind was quite sluggish today and he would have to break things down to smaller tasks to progress his train of thought and his actions.

So he was hallucinating. He had to be.

Okay, then, yes, he could open his eyes. Because it wasn't real, right? Right. Yes. Good.

They could only flutter, and it was dark, but he couldn't make out much. Just another hallucination. That explained it. It was all in his mind.

He closed his eyes again and tried to reach beyond the depths of this pressure. It felt like he was clawing and flailing for an eternity, that echoes of himself were thrashing and twisting for some purchase and trying to keep up as sensation crept all over him. Firm. Soft. Fleeting. Insistent.

Hands were eventually upon him, and he was being shifted. Oh god, was he to be punished? Had it not been a hallucination? Was an eye to be taken from him?

One hand, two hands. That must be the mother. Three and four. The father, too, then. But not the right shapes. He tried to lift his hands to indicate that it was only a mistake, but then—

Five and six.

His eyes fluttered again and again.

Except for Maeve, none of his auguries ever outright touched him. He only ever—it was he who touched them, and his hands weren't kind. Was this a tactile hallucination? He had those sometimes with the lizards. But those were always light and fleeting. Only the woman and the man ever touched him, and he'd learned the shape and size of each of their hands—the grooves, the lines of their palms, the brush of his calluses or the moistness of her palm.

He knew their temperament with their touches.

He knew every dip of the man's skin, the taste of his mouth and tongue, contours of muscles and, the feel of his—of his—

Of what?

He was turned to his back. He wanted to resist, tried to resist, but to resist was to complain, and to complain was to suffer consequences.

Oh, god, he was going to lose his eye.

If he opened his eyes, he might finally see their faces. He didn't want to. He didn't want to. But to know them, to know them the way he'd wanted to finally know Maeve—to see her, to feel her—

But the fear of what his insubordination might bring—

Alex turned the page of the book she was reading. It was a biographical book detailing the life and many works of John James Audubon. Months ago, David had taken the book from Spencer's Barnes and Nobles tote bag. It was among the few that he hadn't used in his research of the McAllistars, and clearly they were for personal pleasure. Over the months, she began reading through all of them keenly, wanting to know what about these books had tickled his fancy.

Some were of famous botanical illustrators and illustrations—Redouté, Marianne North—others of art nouveau botanical illustrations. She wondered if these had to do anything with Maeve.

This one was a clearer interest. Ornithology was Jason Gideon's interest.

In the low lighting, she had to squint to see the pages and texts properly, finding difficulty despite the lamp by her side.

Every now and then, she would lift her eyes up and look at him when he shifted or when a tremor passed through him.

When that happened, especially the latter, she got up from her seat and smoothed his pale brow. It was still all too strange seeing him with blond hair. Of all the things the McAllistars had done to him—and they were awful—this one sat well with her the least, this stripping him of his identity. A hint of his russet brown hair was already peeking at the roots. Where his head had been shaved for the drainage tube weeks before was now a small patch of brown.

As she stared down at him, her thoughts drifted to those two, to their son, to hers.

Spencer shifted and she was glad of the distraction. She hated to draw any lines of similarity between herself and Lorraine. How she and James reacted to Ethan's death and how Lorraine and Russell reacted to Kenneth's was where the delineation was. Although it wasn't the healthiest coping mechanism, she and her husband became consumed by their life's work and with helping people. Lorraine and Russell had collapsed inward.

With the flick of her gaze, she looked at his monitor and started. His heart rate monitor, his EEG readings—these were both elevating.

Closing the book and placing it on the nightstand, Alex stood and stared at it before peering down at him.

Spencer's eyebrows were puckered, and he was shifting and curling his hands. His chest began to jerk as his breathing increased, his fingers twitched, and his body stiffened.

His eyes flickered open and then closed.

She heard that awful gurgle of mucosal build-up in his tracheostomy. Like a clairvoyant, she sensed that he was soon to have another seizure. The monitor was programmed to send out an alert if there was a simultaneous occurrence of a highly elevated heart rate and more erratic brain activity. While he wasn't there yet, it was precautionary for his seizures, and she wanted to be prepared. She pressed the nurse call button and afterwards placed her hands on him in a gentle, easing manner.

"Hey. I'm sorry," she said over him as soon as a nurse walked in.

"There a problem?" he asked.

"Not sure, but he might be progressing towards a seizure," Alex proposed, voice low and calm.

The nurse turned on the light just a little brighter to better see and walked to the bed. He reached forward to unclip the two pull-pin alarms and heard the choking gurgling that accompanied his increased breathing and heart rate.

"Oh, looks like you turned off the pull-pin alarms?"

"Yeah, earlier. I figured since I was sitting here—"

"It's no problem. I'll need to suction first."

He called in for other nurses to assist and went about the process of suctioning the tracheostomy perfunctorily and quickly as they came all while watching the EEG output. It and the heart monitor had jumped.

"Hm."

Spencer was turned to his side and they raised the padded rails, taking note of his readings. There were abnormalities. But.

Alex went to the other side of the room toward the door for just a quick moment to give Derek a call, just in case. He had left a little over ten minutes ago to get them something from the Starbucks.

She went back to the bed, and there everyone waited.

They waited and waited while his heart rate ascended. And they waited and waited. They looked at his EEG monitor. There were no severe spikes and waves, but rather, the readings were—

One of the nurses reached out and put a gentle hand on his leg and another on his side to comfort him. He was shifting, yes, but there was no seizure. He contracted at the touch.

"Oh, I don't think he's about to have a seizure," she said in realization. "I think he's progressing to a fuller consciousness."

His skin was flush, and his veins were protruding. One of the nurses left to retrieve Dr Goswami, and the other two began to restrain him, for his left hand moved to his neck and the fingers curled over the skin near the tube.

It was sudden, but his lashes flew open before slamming shut again, and he dug his face into the pillow before trying to lift his arm to cover his head.

"Oh!"

He curled his hands. The nurses were gentle as they held him and called his name to calm him, but nothing worked. His jaws tightened and his aborted breaths puffed out of the port. He trembled like a great chill had settled into the room, turning his head and drawing up his shoulders.

Dr Goswami finally came in and she lowered the lights to a dark but visible glow. By now he was on his back, and his legs were quaking beneath his blanket. "Sorry, Alex—Dr Kane's out for the rest of the evening."

"Well, you're the next best thing," Alex quipped with the wink of an eye, and Dr Goswami, in return, puffed out a chuckle.

Derek rushed into the room and went to Alex, a confused expression on his face. The staff was holding Spencer and he was on his back, two opposite things to do when a person was having a seizure.

"What's going on?"

"We think he might be progressing to a confusional state," Alex answered, her voice weak but with a note of awe.

"Oh my god." Derek resisted breaking through the people, seeing for himself, and—just maybe—grabbing Spencer's shoulders and shaking him awake.

"Spencer?" Dr Goswami's tone was gentle.

His eyes were scrunched, and every time she touched his face to try to check for dilation, he pressed it against the pillow and held his breath before breathing rapidly, like he was awaiting tremendous pain to befall him. His heart rate was skyrocketing.

"Spencer? Spencer, can you hear me? I'm a doctor and these are nurses. We're taking care of you. You went through quite an ordeal for a very long time, but you're in a safe environment now in a hospital. Your friends Alex and Derek are here. We don't want to restrain you but you're at risk of hurting yourself."

His hands were moving sporadically, jerkily. He was trying to push himself up in his mighty effort to free himself, back bowing. The nurses held him loosely, and his hands began to move in laborious but distinct gestures, shaking and then twisting inwards.

Dr Goswami turned to Alex. "He's not responding to our voices or my words, but he seems present. I think, as we proposed many days ago, that he does indeed have significant neuropathic hearing loss. Does he know Sign language?"

"Yes," Alex answered breathlessly, startled. Of all things for the doctor to ask her in this moment, this hadn't been a question she expected.

"I thought so. He seems to be trying to speak in Sign language."

One of the nurses gently patted his hand in sympathy; he in turn moved his shaking hands to his chest, palms out in front of him, fingers slightly furled like a belly up animal.

Something kicked in Alex's brain at the nurse's declaration. "May I try something, please?" she implored.

Dr Goswami paused before dipping her head to give consent. There was no immediate threat to his life, after all, or to herself and the nurses; and having someone familiar to him may make him feel more at ease and less disoriented as he came to fuller consciousness.

"Can I . . . squeeze in here?" Alex asked as she neared the wall of nurses.

One of the nurses looked at Dr Goswami, who nodded, and she released Spencer.

Alex moved forward, taking the nurse's place and tucking her hands beneath his.

He stilled.

His fingers twitched before clasping hers, first firmly and then loosely, head tilting toward her and eyebrows furrowed. Alex knew this expression—that of him trying to unravel an enigma or puzzle—and she couldn't help herself. Tears burned at her eyes, but she let out a soft bark of laughter.

The remaining nurses kept a loose and gentle hold on him.

His fingers clenched and unclenched over Alex's again, gauging, measuring out, understanding.

Derek moved forward as well, nearer the head of the bed on the other side. "Gimme a little room?" he asked softly to the nurse next to him. "I think it's okay, man. Please."

The nurse looked at Dr Goswami, she nodded, and he released Spencer's arm.

Derek tentatively reached out his right hand until he cradled Spencer's head—hair and jaw and cheek—pillowing it. Underneath the touch, Spencer shrank back, and his eyes scrunched ever tighter.

"Doc, can I take this thing off 'im for a quick sec?" He was referring to the EEG headband.

"Yes, it's okay." If just for some few minutes, Dr Goswami would allow it.

Derek removed it and the nurse reached forward to take it. Spencer's wild and unruly blond hair made him look like a ghost despite his returning healthy tint, and he worried his expression under furrowed, blond eyebrows. Derek stroked his thumb gently at the corner of the eye and the eyebrow, wiping away the tear that leaked out, but it seemed that removing the headband aggravated his mounting distress instead of alleviating it.

Derek's own eyes were glassy, and his throat constricted as he swallowed, looking down so fondly and desperately at the only person he could forever rightfully claim as his flesh and blood, wishing him awake.


These weren't their hands. These hands weren't the ones he'd come to know.

This is wrong.

This was just further manifestations of his hallucination. He needed to fall back, stay back, stay with her. Or maybe if she could help him. Help him reorder all of this. Help him make sense of it. This was all not real.

Not real.

Where was she, anyway?


"Let's give them a little room to breathe, guys," Dr Goswami directed. "Trust the process."

The remaining two nurses released him and backed away, but everyone was eager to see this.

Alex wasn't proficient at this. But she was becoming more and more familiar with Pro-tactile Signing as the days passed, and she was sure she could make it work. So she tried to ease herself in. She fingerspelled slowly, giving him her name.

"It's Alex. A-b-Linguist. Alex."

His chin quaked, and his head tilted at attention.


Alex.

Well, no. She was dead. This was a trick. A ghost-memory here to taunt him.

There was evidence—evidence that this couldn't be real.

I observe and I assess.

The fabrics were different, and though some had fallen away, there had been too many hands—never this many hands, and never did they feel like this. There was no familiarity of the tube, of the weight of leather on his wrists and ankle.

Given the evidence, the inference was that this was all wrong. It was fake. This wasn't real.

Sometimes he retreated deep, deep within himself until there was no thought or feeling and he feared what these absences might bring. But other times, Maeve took him away from these things, and he preferred it. So where was she?


Alex repeated herself. "Alex. A-b-Linguist."

They watched as Spencer's chin tucked toward his shoulder and his brows puckered, a blind animal seeking something with its other pressing senses.

Derek clenched his lips before his voice lifted. He tried to make light of this, chuckling. "Stubborn kid's determined not to open his eyes."

Alex smiled down at Spencer and puffed out a small laugh. She repeated her words to him again.

Spencer's breath stuttered out of his port. His ears and nose were reddening. He gave almost imperceptible shakes of his head from left to right again, again, again, trying to comprehend something about all this.

"What are you saying to him, Alex?"

"I'm just telling him my name." Her eyes flicked up to Derek before concentrating on Spencer. "Spelling it out and then giving him the signed version of my name we discussed a couple of times—those that are usually unique to people in the Deaf, hard-of-hearing, or non-verbal community. It's something unique to him for me, and it's something he should recognize if he can remember this conversation."

"I think he does," Derek declared. "Something's being jogged for sure."

To Spencer below, she spoke, hands moving slowly. "We saved you. You're safe now."


Safe? From—from whom? He knew what safety had become. This wasn't it. This was change and unpredictability and—


"We saved you. You're safe now. You're in the hospital." She simultaneously spoke the same words in a whisper for Derek's benefit.


They're not like this.


Spencer's hands shook as he tilted his head down toward his chest. His breath quickened. He shook his head again, fingers clenching and unclenching around Alex's hands. It seemed, knowing Spencer, that he was testing the solidity of the things he was feeling beneath them.


It's not safe. Please, don't do this. You're not like this.

They wouldn't trick him like this. They weren't like this.


Alex nodded, vocalizing the words as her hands moved in his. "You're safe now."


Please, don't do this.

Where was Maeve? He couldn't—for some reason, he wasn't able to escape.

Or maybe it was real.

Maybe this, now, was all a part of some newness, a next phase of atrocities with them.

No. Not atrocities. Interactions. They were good. They were good to him. They cared for him. He was sick and they were good. They were good. Good. Good—good—good—

Boy—


"It's Alex."


But why?

He didn't know what he did to warrant this, and he had learned not to question them, but this . . . this was a level they'd not yet reached, that of tricking him in such a way. He was good. He was so good. He'd behaved.

He could smell it now. He could smell the leather and grease and earth and herbs and flowers and pine now. He could. He knew he could. They were here. They had to be. So he had to be good—continue being good.

Comply. Behave. Relax. Enjoy.

If he did these simple things, they were kind; if he did these simple things, there were no pangs. There hadn't been for so long.

He finally pulled his hands away. He'd been good. If they were to punish him, he would implore their leniency, seek out that which he yearned to receive from them—Good job or Good boy, very good boy in one manner or another—whether it was by tapping or clapping a hand on his face or leg or neck, or tucking their hands underneath his and declaring it.

Better those kind touches than the cruelty those hands could inflict. He knew, upon such-like declarations, that he was truly spared.

But to question them was to show defiance. He was theirs.

So he would beg.


Spencer's hands trembled, and they moved distinctly, lethargic. "Have I done something wrong?"


And then the sensation came—that of the hand that tightened around his neck, wrenching him from the bed and dragging him to the floor.


"I'm sorry—I'm sorry."


But no, that violence had melted away, and oh, it came, the tenderness. There was a hand—

Not his hand.

—cushioning and bracing his head, and he tilted into it to show, truly, that he was contrite. He would be good. Better than good.

It wasn't the man's hand, and it just wasn't right. But he did what he needed to gain favor. And yet, what if—what if they had recruited other people who were as sick and depraved as they were?

No, no—they were—good to him; loved him, took care of him, and he was—

'Mine.'

Oh, if only to receive such a declaration.

But what if that was why the hands weren't the same?

No. They wouldn't do this to him. Not to him. Not to their —-— Boy. He was—he was theirs—they wouldn't do this to him. They wouldn't just give him away.

Safe?

No, he wasn't safe. He would have to relearn, to reassess, to understand again. It was simple with them. Listen and suffer no consequence; listen and spare the rod. It wasn't difficult when he knew how much they loved him.


One of the nurses gasped and tears sprang to her eyes. Dr Goswami felt a heat pooling and pressure building behind her own.

Spencer kept repeating the words—Have I done something wrong and Sorry, sorry.

"Oh . . ." Alex's throat stopped up. "He's pleading, apologizing."

"Oh, kid," Derek said in a low, hurt voice. He smoothed the brow with his thumb.

"You're safe. You're safe."


Was it because he looked? Because he'd allowed his eyes to catch an image moments earlier?

Was this it, then? Was his eye—


Like a fatigued person slurring his words, Alex had to concentrate on what Spencer was saying with the slow, grueling positions he attempted.

"I'll comply. Please don't remove it."

Remove? Alex thought. Remove what? A tooth?

His laborious, broken desperation continued, and it was like a knife to her chest. He didn't believe that she was who she said she was. He just wanted to get away from the pain, or the promise of it.

"Alex?" Derek urged.

With a stuttering breath, she whispered, "Ah, he's, um, saying that he'll comply and is begging not to have something—I'm unsure what—removed. He may be talking about another tooth."

Derek let out a soft moan.

"No one's going to hurt you. Can you open your eyes? Do you think you can? You're safe now. You're very safe. Nothing's going to hurt you."

His hands squeezed.

"If you open your eyes, you'll see that you're safe." The words came slowly to allow Spencer the ability to process them. For Derek's benefit, she kept her voice in a hushed, private tone.

"There's no need for punishment. Please, don't do this."

"Mm. He thinks he'll be punished," she whispered to Derek. "I don't know what for." She regarded Spencer again, speaking to him slowly and repeating reassuring phrases. "No. Nobody is going to hurt you. Are you able to open your eyes for us? You are safe now. Nothing will hurt you. Nothing. If you open your eyes, you'll see that you're safe."

"I'll comply. Don't—don't—don't remove it, please." He was trembling, vibrating in Alex and Derek's hands. His knees were bobbing.

Over the course of the next few minutes, Alex repeated the same soothing expressions. Derek—who was now awkwardly leaning over his dear friend—massaged and stroked both of Spencer's eyebrows in both hands to help calm him, whispering his own encouragements under his breath.


He kept repeating that opening his eyes was bad, and he kept being assured it was not.

He kept trying to mitigate punishment, and he kept being assured he would not be.

He didn't understand.

They never lied regarding the meting out of their punishment, and the father distinctly said he would lose an eye.

He couldn't trust these untruths. And they hadn't said it yet. They hadn't said the words yet, and he had learned it well: it was upon the declaration of those words that he spared due to their benevolence.


"It'll be necessary to calm him," Dr Goswami warned. "I'm afraid that the high stress might trigger him, trigger a seizure."


In the moments where he didn't know what castigation he would be met with, the safest was to stay hidden, to remain deep, deep within himself with her and be insensate.

So, again, where was she? Why wasn't she here?


"You're safe now. You're safe now."


The word kept cutting into him. But if he was to stay here and not there he needed the other words, and they weren't saying it . So perhaps he had to make them say it.


"I haven't done anything. I've complied. I have. I have. I have."

"No, you didn't do anything. No one is going to punish you. You're safe in a hospital. You're safe."


So close. He wanted to hear it. He needed to hear it. But he was hesitant to be so forward.


"I did nothing wrong. What have I done?"

Alex was alarmed at the question. He was being indirect, but he was seeking something. She remembered a part of what Lorraine had said to her while she was leaving the hospital the day she and Luke went to interview her.

'In the end, he was better than all my others. You need to understand—you have to understand—he healed my husband. He was so good for him. Such a good boy. My very, very best boy. No boy loves his mother quite as much as mine loves me. I don't imagine he ever will, just like my Kenneth.'

Alex blinked and shook her head. She understood. He needs affirmation. He's seeking praise.

She didn't want to feed that need. She didn't want to continue where they had ended, but—


He would beg. But he wasn't sure if he should.


"What have I done?"


He'd never had to get to the point of begging them, of making them say the words—his behavior would dictate it—but he would grovel if he needed to. The levels of degradation they'd put him through—what they could still put him through—weren't worth the pain. He preferred their kindness. They were generous with their kindness.


"Alex?" Derek pressed.

She puffed out a breath. "Lorraine—she kept calling him a good boy days ago." Her voice was low and soft and lamenting, but there was an edge to it. "She kept saying it."

Derek breathed out tremulously. "What is it, Alex?"

"He's asserting that his behavior is good or acceptable. As in, one question away from outright asking if he's good, but too fearful to actually put the words out."

The air seemed to thin around Derek. "No." It was said with dread. And then again: "Damn it. No."

And below them: "Please. Haven't I—aren't I—what have I done?"

"It's beyond seeking a reward. He's seeking validation."

Derek's eyes closed and he didn't even have to mull over it intensely. This was not at all unheard of with victims of repeated physical and mental and emotional abuse and manipulation.

"It's—they conditioned him, Alex. He's trying to avoid punishment by presenting himself as having had good behavior. He was probably told that he was good when he was facing the threat of punishment but he won their favor enough to mitigate it. Or it was said to him after he had already been punished so Lorraine could remind him that she still . . . treasured him."

"Ugh."

"Do it. Just tell him."

"I can't, Derek. I can't. Don't make me do this."

Spencer urged beneath them.

"I hate it, too, but please, Alex. Right now, he's might be locked back there and refuses to come here without getting that reassurance that it's safe to do so and that he's on good terms with us. He thinks we're them. We need to give him that sense of safety for now, even if we have to lie to make him feel it."

She knew the logic behind what Derek was saying. She intimately knew the power of words, knew how they could break a person down. These people had done just that, and to break Spencer from this, she had to start at his new baseline—not where she felt comfortable—and build him back up. She sighed out, relenting.

"You're very good."


No. He didn't believe it. It wasn't the same.

I think you're safe, Spencer. I think you're safe.

Maeve? Where had she been?

I think you're safe, Spence. I—I'm sorry I left you. I'm here. I think you can believe this.

But it wasn't right. Nothing was the same, nothing felt the same. He would be more direct.


"A good boy?"

A slap to her face would have stung less. She gave a quaking moan and her stomach pinched. "Spencer," she begged, wounded. She relented, hating herself, nauseated, knowing that this might not be happening if Spencer had his wits about him..

"Yes, you're a good boy. A very good boy."

It was almost alarming how his heart rate just plummeted, then, to something manageable. Derek moaned at seeing the monitor in the corner of his eyes stop flashing, confirming what he had said. It had put Spencer at ease.

"You're safe. You're very safe," Alex repeated.

However, it seemed to circle again—like he was trapped, like he truly didn't believe that he was going to escape some type of abuse—because his worry reemerged:

"Please. I was—I was—I behaved. I've cooperated. Have I done something wrong?"

She agreed. "Yes, you're good. No one will punish you. I promise." She had also caught on to the repetition, which he had now done multiple times. Stuttering and Signing was a phenomenon that was gravely understudied, but it wasn't impossible. She didn't know if this was psychological—something to stave off impending fear—or if it was neurological.

"Please. Please, don't remove it."

God, what they had done to him. So she repeated. "Nobody will hurt you. Nothing will hurt you; nothing. You're safe. It's Alex."

Beyond the shroud of fear and doubt, something, something seemed to penetrate the veil as Alex's words were repeated to Spencer, coaxing him.


I think it's safe. I think you can trust this.

He had finally turned his face upward and breathed deeply, chest expanding, steeling himself.

He trusted Maeve.


Spencer stilled. His hands on Alex's gripped and loosened, and his chest heaved.

"Hey, that's it, Reid; that's it that's it, kid," Derek intoned, his cupped hand gliding from sweaty forehead to blond crown over and over. "You got this, kid. Come on."

Spencer's wet lashes separated and he oh-so-fractionally opened his eyes. They blinked and fluttered languidly, and his chest vibrated.

His eyes trained on the dark ceiling above him. He closed them, and when he opened them again, his lashes were lowered with his gaze trained upon his hands, which were shaking and grasping Alex's. His hands squeezed, and hand bobbed in a closed fist in his left hand, telling him yes over and over. He closed his eyes again.

It was all too soon that he released her hand, and the tips of his trembling fingers pressed against his streaming eyes.


.

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Apologies. I tried trimming this chapter down to the bare essentials, but every time I trimmed, more seemed to need to be tacked on. Hope it wasn't too much. But our boy is 'back' with us. Thanks for your patience. I do apologize that the last few chapters are taking longer to get out—I've had a slew of unexpected things hit me and they're preventing me from having the time I afforded this before. I fear the same will be the case moving forward until we've reached the end. Either way, thank you for reading, and ta 'til next time.