A/N: Beta read by the Gubetastic editor frog - thanks doll! Oh, I'm gonna die...!
!! Warning !! Character death!! If you don't like it, don't read it! And don't flame me! You have been warned!!
The team couldn't bear going into the rooms where their dead co-workers lay, and moved themselves into the hallway. JJ was twisting her hands, the peeler slipping around in her loose fist. As the hours went, she felt herself coming closer and closer to snapping. Seeing her friends die was getting to her. The young woman was no stranger to death, it played a major part of her everyday life, but this was different. These were her friends. Her family.
Reid leaned against the wall, holding his forehead. His head felt like someone put it in a blender and hit "gooify". Wiping the sticky blood from his brow, he tried to gain full control of his mind again. He felt a hand on his arm.
It was Gideon.
"Come on, let's get you washed up."
"Don't touch me!" Reid tore loose from the older man's grip and took a step away from him. Things were getting too intense for the young doctor to handle. "Don't come here and play that father-son game with me; it doesn't work anymore!" Reid was nearly shouting out his frustration.
His fellow team members watched, partially in awe, as they had never seen their young genius speak up like this against anyone, let alone Gideon.
"People are dying, Gideon; and you want to bond?!" Waving his arms in the air, he stepped closer to the older man; who in returned backed away an equal distance, a shocked expression on his face. But Reid didn't stop. The floodgates had opened, and everything he'd had inside him came pouring out, despite current situation and company.
"You don't even know how much I hated you when you left; how much I hated myself! I thought it was my fault that you took off, but thank God – I had some real friends who could tell me how wrong I was! It's your doing, Gideon – you deal with it. I'm done. Don't talk to me, don't touch me, and don't even come near me."
With that he turned around and walked away down the hallway, leaving his team behind. He didn't know what was waiting in the house, but anything was better than being close to that man. He'd rather be alone.
Hotch watched the whole scene, and as Reid had disappeared behind a corner, he began to follow him; motioning the rest to stay behind. As he passed Gideon, he slowed down enough for the older man to hear him.
"I think you just lost the one person who trusted you."
Then the superior continued on his way to find his youngest subordinate.
Gideon stood as if frozen, looking down the hallway where the two men had just vanished. He didn't need his profound knowledge about the human behavior to come to the conclusion that he truly had lost his young protégé.
Rossi crossed his arms over his chest, having seen the spectacle before him.
It's understandable to loose a bit of composure at a time like this, but we still have to try to get along if we're gonna get out of here...he thought, looking at Gideon, who was still staring down the hallway. He then turned his look towards the young blonde on his right, who was still fidgeting and flicking the peeler in her hands.
Stick me with the whack-job and the hysterical woman, why don't you...
-o-o-o-
Hotch caught up to Reid as he rounded a corner upstairs. Grabbing his arm, the superior stopped his colleague.
"Reid."
As Reid reluctantly turned around, Hotch could see the tears running down his bloodied face. There was hurt and desperation in the young man's huge puppy eyes as he looked at his superior.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have, I..." he sobbed pitifully. "I'm just so scared!"
Hotch grabbed the young man by the shoulders and pulled him into an embrace. He knew the young man before him was in an incredible amount of pain right now, and even though it wasn't really standard procedure for Hotch to hug the subordinates, he felt it was necessary. Reid sobbed in his arms as warm tears streamed down his cheeks onto Hotch's shoulder, soaking his t-shirt.
"You have every right to be angry, Reid. But you might have to wait until we get out of here."
Reid's sobs settled after a while, as Hotch still held him in his arms. "It was my fault."
"What?" Hotch almost couldn't hear the small voice emanating from his discouraged colleague.
"Garcia. JJ's right. I should have protected her. It's my fault she's dead."
"No, Reid." Hotch slowly shook his head. "It's not your fault. The only person to blame for this is the one who put us in this house."
A few hoarse breaths could be heard from the young man trying to regain his composure. "Hotch...?"
"Yes, Reid?"
"Was that door open before?"
Letting go of each other, the two men turned to face the door down the hall; the door to the room where Morgan had been brutally murdered. They had closed the door earlier, as they left their dead colleague. Now the door was open.
Hotch grabbed the gun from the lining of his boxers, aiming it in front of him. Lacking a weapon, Reid stayed behind his superior as they slowly approached the room.
As Hotch pushed the door to a full opening with the gun, both of the men gaped.
Morgan was gone.
-o-o-o-
JJ paced the floor in the hallway, trying to calm herself down. Rossi stood only a few feet away, leaning against the wall, and Gideon had placed himself with his back against the two a bit down the hall.
"This isn't real..." she mumbled. "This isn't happening. No one's dead, I'm just dreaming all of this, it's not real." She needed her mantra to keep what little balance she had left in her system.
Rossi was getting fed up with his female colleague's refusal to accept the situation. Not only were they stuck in this godforsaken house, he also had to listen to this distraught woman chanting nonsense beside him.
"JJ, you need to get it through your head that this is happening. There's nothing we can do right now but stay together and try to stay alive."
He hoped the short assessment of the situation was enough to settle the woman down, but it had the opposite effect.
"Nothing we can do?" JJ looked at him, a mix between fear and anger in her eyes. "We are dying one by one, and there's nothing we can do?! Goddamnit, Rossi! Is that the best comforting you can come up with? Just shut up!"
"JJ!" Gideon had turned around and faced the young woman. His voice was stern and slightly annoyed. "If you panic now, there's no turning back. You need to calm down."
JJ stared at her former colleague. In her mind, not a word he said sounded reasonable. "Shut up, Gideon! Like you have any saying right now! You are the one person in this house I can actually imagine being behind this; if what the voice said was true! So shut up!"
Racing down the hallway, Rossi right behind her, JJ threw herself on the iron door, banging it furiously with her fists. "Let me out! Let me out!"
Rossi grabbed the frantic woman as he reached her and pulled her away from the door, as she all the while threw her fists around her, trying to tear loose from her colleague's strong hands.
"No! Let me go! I have to get out! I have to get out! I don't wanna die!"
"You're not gonna die! JJ!" Rossi shook her violently, trying to clear her mind and reach her. But the woman kept hitting his chest and arms in attempts to get away from his grip, and the man realized he had no choice.
Letting go of her arms, Rossi let her take a step back before he sent his palm straight across JJ's already bright red face. The slap wasn't hard enough to cause any damage, but made JJ freeze.
Holding her cheek, she stared at Rossi. The sudden jolt of reality literally hit her in the face, and she returned to the real world. "Rossi... I..." She shook her head.
"It's okay. Are you all right? I didn't want to do that, you know that, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I know."
Rossi looked at the timer on the door. He sighed. It felt like three days had passed, but in reality only about 4 hours had passed. The timer ticked down, it was now at 4.19 and counting.
Will this nightmare never end?
Suddenly, he heard JJ's trembling voice. "Rossi?"
"Yes, JJ?"
"Where's Emily?"
He looked around into the living room, following JJ's glance. What he saw made his heart skip more than one beat.
Emily was gone.
-o-o-o-
"Where is he?" Reid whispered as they slowly walked into the room, Hotch pointing his gun into every corner.
Hotch didn't answer. His concentration was placed solely on the room, knowing that lack of focus at a moment like this would most likely be fatal.
Once the room had been secured, Hotch turned to his subordinate, not putting away his gun. "This is wrong. Where did he go?"
"You don't think that..." Reid began.
"No. No, I don't." Hotch was not ready to place blame on anyone in his team. Besides, he had felt Morgan's carotis himself – there had been nothing there.
"Whoever is doing this has taken him; put him somewhere, to make us suspect him or each other."
A logical conclusion.
"Call the others. We need them up here." Hotch looked through a dresser, remembering that this room was never officially searched for weapons. And indeed, he found another gun; another Glock. But this one had only 2 bullets in it.
Reid took a few steps into the hallway and opened his mouth to call out for the others. Before he could make a sound, a dull thump came from the other side of the staircase. Looking over the dark-carpeted floors and dusky walls, he couldn't spot the source of the sound.
Turning his head as he stood in the hallway, he tried to catch Hotch's attention. "Hotch" he whispered. "I heard something."
And as Hotch turned, he saw something. A bright red dot darting over Reid's chest, moving up towards his head. Reid was oblivious as he looked at his superior in expectation of an answer.
"Reid, get down! Get down!" Hotch dropped everything he held, leaping over the bed in an attempt to push his dumbfounded colleague out of harms way.
But it was too late.
Before Hotch even reached the end of the bed, a gunshot rang through the house. Hotch saw the young doctor's head jerk back as the bullet penetrated his head, knocking him to the ground with a thud.
"NO!!" Hotch tripped over a nightstand, falling on the floor; straight into the pool of blood still lingering in the carpet. He frantically crawled out into the hallway, trying to reach Reid.
The young doctor lay in the corridor, limbs sprawled in every which direction. As Hotch reached Reid, a knot twisted tightly in his stomach.
The young man was dead. The bullet had pierced his left temple, leaving a pool of nearly black blood in his tousled hair. Reid's mouth was wide open in terror, his lips cracked and dry.
Hotch felt sick.
The eyes. He had seen dead eyes before, but these... So full with fear and terror, staring straight at him as if saying "why didn't you save me?"
He could hear footsteps running up the stairs.
"Hotch! We heard a gunshot! What hap..." Rossi stopped short when he saw his superior kneeling beside the body of the young agent. "Oh, God."
"The shot came from over there!" Hotch yelled and pointed in the opposite direction as he tried desperately to steady his voice.
Rossi fumbled at the lining of his pajama pants for his gun, but it was nowhere to be found. "Hotch! Give me your gun!"
"Where's yours?"
"I don't know, downstairs I think."
Giving Rossi his gun, Hotch watched the older man run down the hallway in search for a psychotic murderer.
He also saw JJ. And JJ was losing it.
She stood by the staircase, shaking her head while running her hands through her hair, violently yanking it. "He's not dead! He can't be dead!! He's Reid! Reid can't die!!" She screamed in anguish.
"JJ, I'm sorry..."
"This is your fault! I'm not supposed to be here! I don't wanna die! Reid!! Wake up!!" Her voice became more and more hysterical with every word she uttered.
"He's dead, JJ – he won't wake up!" Hotch tried to make contact with the panicking woman by the staircase.
JJ said nothing, but turned around, racing down the stairs; her every breath a small scream. On her way down, she ran straight into Gideon who was on his way up. She shoved him aside, and ran down into the hallway.
Gideon let her run. He had also heard the gunshot and run upstairs after the others. As he saw Reid on the floor beside the kneeling Hotch, he could no longer hold his balance. Falling to his knees next to the lifeless body, he let his eyes meet with those of his superior.
"Is he..?"
"Yes."
"My God..."
Hotch looked at his former colleague through his own tears. "Where were you?"
"What?" the older man asked somewhat confused.
"Why didn't you come up with the others?"
"I was in the kitchen, they were in the hallway. Is there something you want to say to me, Hotch?" Gideon looked at his former superior, not believing what he was hearing.
"Why do you have Rossi's gun?" Hotch nodded towards the Desert Eagle in Gideon's hand. The only gun in the house with a laser sight.
"I have Reid's gun too. They were both left downstairs. You can't be serious, Hotch."
Hotch shook his head, slowly. "I don't know what to believe anymore, Gideon. Morgan's body's gone."
"So's Emily's. And Garcia's."
"What?"
"They're both missing. No traces of blood, nothing."
"What the hell is going on here?"
As the two men sat by their lifeless companion, the perverted child's rhyme once again swept through the house, along with a cold wind of despair.
Five little agents, losing their trust
Seeing each other through eyes of disgust
Who is the saint, who is the sinner?
Who will stand tall in the end as the winner?
One agent was shot and fell to the floor
He gave up his life, and then there were four...
A/N again: Calm down, calm down! I know I've done the unthinkable, but bear with me on this. It's critical for the plot. Stick with me, it will all be worth it in the end! Come on, don't you wanna know who shot resident genius!?
Please don't kill me.