Disclaimer: see my profile

Reid woke to a screaming headache and a very tender bump at the base of his skull. He was lying draped across a bed, fully clothed. He sat up and instantly regretted the quick movement as he got very dizzy and his stomach heaved. He took a couple of deep breaths to try and steady his stomach, but it continued to churn till he lay back down on the bed. His eyes closed again and he stayed still till the dizziness and nausea passed. He experimented a few minutes later by opening one eye. When that didn't bring on another round of dizziness, he opened the other eye and carefully sat up again. The pain in his head gathered strength again, but he didn't feel as sick as he had upon waking.

He looked around the room. It seemed to be ordinary enough. The walls and ceiling were painted a light eggshell blue. There were fluffy looking white clouds painted on the ceiling. The carpet was royal blue under the bed he sat on holding his head and his stomach at the same time.

The space was very large. It was easily three times the size of his apartment. At one end of the room, the wall was covered with a bookcase that stretched all the way up to the ceiling. It was wooden and stained to look like mahogany. It was filled with books of all kinds. He shoved over to the edge of the bed and stood up, swaying like a new tree in a strong wind.

There were three doors, one to his right the other opposite the bookcase and a third right across the room from where he sat on the bed. He decided to test out his feet, and his stomach, to see if they would cooperate and find him a way out of here. He took a step forward and managed to stay on his feet. The headache was backing off a bit and he didn't feel quite so much like a newborn baby deer as he walked to the door. It was set into a wall that was built of block and concrete under the paint.

He jangled the door knob even though he knew that it would be locked. "Great, how the hell did this happen to me again."

The last thing he remembered was Agent Stark telling him that he had a new piece of evidence regarding the Zodiac case and then nothing but blackness. Had someone taken out Stark too, and then kidnapped him? How was it possible that he'd managed to get kidnapped inside the base?

"Because you are you, and you seem to get into trouble more often than the average unsupervised two year old child!"

His voice was rough and he felt parched. He looked to his left at the other door. He wondered what was behind it. Maybe it was a bathroom with a sink to get a drink of water. He went to the door and it opened easily onto a very large bathroom with a toilet, sink, bathtub and a separate shower incased in carved glass. The tub was jetted, and there were several bottles of bath salts, as though the person that had taken him knew his preference for bubble baths after a stressful day. Well, there was no way he was getting into that tub anytime soon.

He turned back to the sink and picked up the drinking glass that sat on the vanity top next to the sink. The vanity was dark grey marble and the fixtures were bronze, polished to a high sheen. The toilet, bathtub and shower were done in light pink, an attempt to warm the room, but it only made it look like some mad child had decorated the room.

Everything looked brand new to his eyes. It was much nicer than the place he lived in and curiously devoid of windows to the outside world. It made him feel closed in, trapped, and buried alive. He supposed that was what the men that took him wanted him to feel. His heart was thumping loud enough to be heard all around the room. No one else was there to hear it, he reminded himself.

Austin, she was suddenly smiling in his mind. What day was it? How long had he been out? What if he'd been out for days? Would she be mad if he didn't show up in Atlanta? Would she care? He swallowed again and his throat burned and throbbed with thirst.

"Stop worrying about her and start thinking about how to get out of here."

He picked up the water glass and filled it from the sink. The water tasted clean enough. He doubted they would grab him just to kill him. The room had obviously been decorated for comfort, but for whose comfort? Surely not just for him, maybe someone else had been held here. Had the other person or persons survived?

He was shivering. He ran the water till it was almost too hot to touch and splashed over his face. There was no need to think about death. Someone would come back and tell him what they wanted with him. What if was someone like Tobias? He hadn't been logical or sane! What if he had been captured for purposes he didn't want to think about?

He filled the glass again and drank it down in several fast swallows that made his head spin and feel light like a balloon. There was no reason to think that someone like Tobias was behind this. The room was made for comfort not torture. Still, he looked down could see his arms pinned back and restrained. He closed his eye and shuddered. His foot began to throb where it had broken under the 'gentle' ministrations of Tobias Henkel.

He screwed up his eyes tightly closed and breathed in the smell of nothing in the room. There were no fish hearts burning on the stove, there was no smell of his own body order or his fear that Rafael had seemed to feed on. This was different! The pain in his foot eased and he unclenched his hands that had turned to fists. His nails had left marks in his palms, almost drawing blood. He looked down at them and watched the white crescents turn pink again.

He needed to look around for something to help him get out of this room. Speculating on why he was here was unimportant. It was time to find away out of the room.

The towel rack was metal and screwed so tightly to the wall he figured it could withstand a nuclear explosion. He wasn't going to be able to use it was a weapon. He looked under the sink, but it was devoid of any of the cleaning chemicals he might use to throw in someone's face. There were bars of soap, but what good would that do to someone with a lousy throwing arm.

He paused to get his breath from his frantic search and look at his face in the mirror above the sink. It was a round mirror and it showed a man with a wild look in his eyes and hair standing on end from where he'd run his hands through it. The grey dress shirt he wore was wrinkled on one side and his charcoal tie was askew. His vest was gone and his grey cords were a bit wrinkled.

He went back to the main room and noticed a royal blue leather couch along one wall with a coffee table in front of it that was made from thick glass and metal. It was round and sparkling clean as though it had been recently polished. It also looked like it wouldn't be easily broken, not without something large and heavy. The carpet was so clean he could believe it had been laid that day. He noticed while looking at the carpet, that his shoes were gone. He walked around in one blue sock and one white and green stripped sock. So much for the good luck his mismatched socks were supposed to bring.

He stood in the middle of the room turning slow circles, but there was no way out. There was nothing he could see or touch that would help him escape from the room. The painting of a seascape at night on the far wall wouldn't help him. It was all just a cozy nest that he was trapped in like a bird in a cage.

The door opened and he spun around, going for his gun which he realized way too late was gone. Agent Stark entered the room and shut the door. His Glock was pointed at Reid's chest. He smiled at the young agent as though they were the best of friends. So it was the agent that had hit him over the head and brought him here. His hands turned to fists again.

"Hello Dr. Reid… It's good to see you on your feet."

"Why am I here?"

"All in good time… In the meantime, please enjoy your accommodations."

He moved sideways to the door Reid hadn't explored yet in his frantic search for something to help him get out of the room. The agent opened the door and said, "We've brought in all of your clothes." He pointed to the big walk-in closet.

"All of your books are in the book case."

"I don't want to read… Why am I here?"

"You're very single minded Dr. Reid."

"And you're hiding something."

"That's true, but only because the boss man wants to explain your new station in life to you himself."

"Why don't you tell me about it?" Reid changed tactics and smiled broadly at the man in front of him. He tried to ignore the gun still pointing at his chest. It wouldn't do to panic now.

"I don't think so Dr. Reid. I'm a profiler, just like you are, and I know the tricks you use to get inside another person's head. Now, why don't you make yourself comfortable and Calloway will be in here to talk to you very soon." He left the room and Reid in silence.

---

Calloway entered the large room and surveyed the wall of computers and monitors he'd had set up next to where Reid was staying. The pinhole camera that was set up in the room where the good doctor waited was showing the room at all angles. He watched the young doctor look over the room, trying to find away to escape, but the young man wouldn't find a way out. He was a guest of the team indefinitely. Not even his own team would be able to find him and Calloway would take his place as the leader of the most successful profiling team in the world, while Agent Hotchner wasted his time trying to find Dr. Spencer Reid.