A/N: Herro =D OK I rushed this chapter a little, so it's a shorter chapter. And there are probably heaps of grammar mistakes too but I really hope you'll enjoy all the same xD
Chapter 4: Memories
Reid stared at the one way mirror, seeing his reflection and wishing he could see through the other side. He curled his arms on the table and laid his head down, feeling extremely tired. He let his eyelids droop down and sank into sleep.
~(CM)~
Spencer sat at the back of the class listening vaguely to Ms Rosa explaining to the rest of the class how to search words in the dictionary. He always sat at the back of the class to avoid attention from the rest of his classmates.
"Spencer?" Ms Rosa called.
Spencer looked up at Ms Rosa who, like the rest of the class was staring at him.
"Yes, Miss?" Spencer said looking up at her.
"Can you look into your dictionary and tell me the definition of clairvoyance?"
"The termclairvoyance(from 17th century French withclairmeaning "clear" andvoyancemeaning "vision") is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known humansenses, in other words it is a form ofextra-sensory perception," Spencer said, talking quickly, his dictionary untouched. A few kids from his table sniggered, laughing at him.
Ms Rosa nodded reading from her dictionary, the definition was quoted word for word, except for some extra information added here and there. It had always been like this, she asked a question, Spencer answered correctly and she would feel proud of how gifted this child was. But she just didn't know what to do with him anymore, she had spoken to the principle about Spencer but he had said that any changes made to his classes would have to wait until next year.
Ms Rosa picked up a pile of worksheets and handed them to a girl sitting in front of where she was standing.
"Jenny, could you please hand these out to the rest of the class?" She said handing the papers to the girl sitting in front of her. The girl nodded and beaming she began handing out the papers to the class.
Spencer looked down at his sheet and read the top line, 'Use your dictionary to find the definition of the following words' and below were 10 words Spencer easily knew the meanings to without needing to use his dictionary. He scrawled down his definitions quickly for the first 9 words but paused hesitantly at the last word.
'Schizophrenia'
~(CM)~
As the bell signaling the end of the day rang out, Spencer grabbed his belongings and walked quickly out of the room before the rest of his usual bullies could hassle him. He sprinted to the front gate before, thankfully, anyone could do anything to him.
"Spence!" He heard a girl's voice call from behind him.
He wheeled around and saw Jenny running to catch up to him. She was holding a book in her hand. As she approached him she stopped to catch her breath.
"Y…you -pant- drop…dropped," She straightened up chest heaving, "You dropped this," She held out a novel Spencer recognized as the novel his mother had given to him for his birthday. He had started reading it during their five minute reading session and was already halfway through.
"Oh um… Thanks…" he muttered feeling himself go red. He wordlessly took the book from Jenny and placed it into his back.
They stood there in silence until Jenny finally spoke up.
"Is it good?" She said.
"The book?" Spencer said looking pointedly at his bag.
"Course, silly, what else do you think I'm talking about?" Jenny giggled.
"Um… Yeah, it's pretty good…"
"Yeah, I saw you reading it during class… You read really fast, even faster than my brother and he said he reads 2,000 words per minute. And he's also really smart, he's got an IQ of 150! Is that really smart Spence?"
Spencer felt himself go warm at the ears at the use of his nickname.
"Yeah, it is," He said simply.
The two stood there in silence until Jenny grabbed Spencer's shoulders and glared at him.
"Listen, Spence," She yelled angrily, "Don't listen to those bullies, they're just jealous of you, you're way smarter than them and you read faster and you're just better OK?"
Spencer blinked in confusion.
"What?" He said dumbly.
"You're better than them in every way! Maths Writing, Science, everything we learn in class! Plus you're just way nicer! One day, they're gonna be living in dumpster eating rats and cockroaches and you'll have a really cool job and you'll live in a cool house! Don't listen to them, you should so what you want to do and I'll bet you'll do something so much more helpful than what they would do!"
She let go and Spencer stood there in silence for a moment before smiling.
"Thanks, Jenny,"
Jenny smiled, "Call me JJ, it's what my friends, Aron, Derren, Emmie, Dave and Penny call me, " She giggled before waving and running off towards a car parked on the street. Spencer stared longingly at the car, wishing he could have a parent to pick him up after school like the others kids and talk to him about his bullying problems. But he didn't want to worry his mother, who he loved enough and he knew his father probably wouldn't care anyway. Sighing heavily he walked out of the gate and took his usual route home.
As he passed a police station he realised that he didn't want to go home. He wanted to have some time alone before facing his parents. He changed directions and crossed the street to enter a small café he always saw on his way home.
As he entered the shop, a strange feeling of insecurity hit him square in the chest. He wondered why, the café seemed to be safe enough. It was probably just his conscience telling him that he was supposed to be going straight home after school.
He stepped into the café and walked to the counter pulling a ten dollar note from his pocket.
"Um… Hi, how may I help you?" The woman at the counter said looking uncertainly down at the nine year old boy.
"Hi, can I have a large coffee, please?" Spencer said.
"Sure, would you like anything else?" The woman said still looking uncertain as she punched some numbers into her counter.
"No, that's all thanks,"
"That'll be $6.50 please,"
Spencer handed his note over to the woman who placed it into her counter and pulled out a handful of change. Handing the coins to Spencer, the woman walked over to the coffee machine behind her and pushed a combination of buttons holding a large cup underneath the flow of the coffee.
As he waited for the coffee to be done, Spencer couldn't help but feel that he shouldn't be here, that it wasn't safe. It was like something was screaming for him to just hurry up and get out of the shop. He ignored the feeling; there was nothing wrong with the café…
"Honey?" the voice of the woman brought Spencer's mind back to the café.
"Um… is the coffee actually for you?" The woman said casually.
Spencer nodded politely and slowly took the cup of coffee handed to him. Ignoring the nearby stares of the other customers, Spencer walked quickly to a small table in the corner of the shop where no one would look at him twice. Placing the coffee on the table, Spencer reached into his bag and pulled out the novel his mother had given him. He opened the book to page he had marked and started reading, trying ignore the feeling that something just wasn't right.
He found it extremely annoying, he knew everything was perfectly fine but something just kept nudging at him, telling him something was wrong. It was like a thorn in his arm he couldn't locate that stung and annoyed him. He tried shaking the feeling off again; everything was perfectly fine…
~(CM)~
Reid snapped awake suddenly, eyes slamming open and looking around feeling alarmed. His heart was beating at a rapid pace and he was sweating. Realizing where he was, he calmed down and breathed in and out slowly. He had almost seen it again, he had almost seen that horrible memory again. He rested his head in his arms and looked warily at the one way mirror careful not to fall asleep.
He didn't need to go there again…
~(CM)~
"Agent!" Rossi said when he approached Moran who was reading some files on his desk. He looked up, looking half amused and half annoyed.
"Agent Rossi," Moran acknowledged lazily.
"We need to see your technical analyst, NOW!" Rossi demanded.
"Why?" Moran said stupidly, eyebrows raised.
"We believe he may have a connection to the murders," Hotch answered calmly, approaching the desk while the rest of the team trailed behind him.
"How so?"
"When our technical analyst tried to search up files on the victims, she found that they had been erased," Hotch said, talking quickly, "What's more, the hacker had erased anything that could help her track his IP or any other information. So we believe it is someone with professional hacker skills but also someone who could keep tabs on the investigation,"
"Oh, come on!" Moran said looking furious, "You really think ERIC could be connected to these murders? That annoying kid would just sit there and whine about things he didn't like, he hardly does anything about it unless it's something to do with those stupid computers!"
"Oh, come on," Morgan said mockingly, "You really think REID could be the person responsible for these murders? The kid could probably couldn't look directly at large amounts of blood without fainting,"
Moran turned and stared at Morgan, muttering a quiet "touché".
"If Eric has nothing to do with these murders, you've got nothing to hide," Rossi said.
Moran stood there in silence for a moment before nodding and pointing to a door. He sat down and looked back down at his files as if he were never interrupted.
Hotch hurried to the door and opened it to reveal a confused looking teenager wearing glasses with thick lenses. His eyes darted back and forth to each member of the team as they entered the room after Hotch.
"Are you Agent Moran's technical analyst?" Hotch said.
The boy nodded slowly, eyebrows starting to raise, "Eric Taylor,"
"You seem a bit too young to be able to get a job like this," JJ commented. Eric looked annoyed.
"I'm 25," he said looking irritated, "It's 'cuz of these annoying glasses that I look so teenager like…"
"Really now?"
"Look agent, just cut to the chase," Eric said abruptly, "What do you want?"
"Excuse me?" Rossi said.
"Look, nobody ever comes to me for small talk, every time someone comes to me they only want things, nothing but Eric do this or Eric do that, so it'll just save all of us time for you to just get down to the point and not pretend to have all that annoying fake small talk,"
"Alright," Hotch said before anyone could reply to the strange response, "Eric, are you aware of the case about the three murdered schizophrenics?"
Eric rolled his eyes, "Duh, Agent, my unit chief is the freaking guy who arrested the guy who did it,"
"So you have nothing to do with the murders?" Rossi demanded.
"What? What you talking about?"
"Do you?"
"Look, why would I be connected to these murders? What is it that made you think that?"
"We have reason to believe that the person who wiped away the files on the victims could be-"
"Wait, what files were wiped?" Eric said suddenly.
"Our technical analyst searched up files on the victims and found that they had been wiped off the system. We believe the culprit could be someone who could keep tabs on the investigation but would also have advanced hacker skills,"
Eric frowned at them before turning to his computers and started typing rapidly. A few windows showed up as Eric typed command after command. He turned to face the team again.
"I found it really strange," he explained, "I was looking up some stuff for Moran when my system was disturbed. So I immediately looked for the source of the distraction and I saw that my files on this case had been opened. I tried tracing the IP of who opened them,"
"And?" Prentiss said.
"Well, that's the thing, I couldn't. But he did leave me something…"
"What?"
"A note," Eric opened a document with only two words written on the page.
'She's Next…'
The team stared at one another before Morgan grabbed his phone and dialed the sanitarium number.
Diana Reid was in danger.
A/N: oooooooh~ Do you really think I'll kill Diana? ;P And yeah, if you noticed the little SpencerxJJ moment (No it's not JJ from the series, duh =P) and she mentions names similar to the team's names xD She's actually pretty important to the story, didn't write it just for fun xD But I did write the similar names bit just for fun, they don't come out in the story. More into Reid's past in the next chapter.