Chapter 10

The Cut

A/N: Vile underhanded doings going on here! Mention of drugs and other nasty stuff.

Because I could not stop for Death -- He kindly stopped for me -- The carriage held but just ourselves -- And immortality: -Emily Dickinson.

Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is not mine.

She looked down at the watch on her wrist. It was half nine now. Time to go and meet up with Reid again. Emily didn't want to be late – she hated being late. Very unprofessional, but then so was everything she was doing.

Prentiss picked up the few things she had and pocketed the painkillers and left her small room. She went to reception and told them that she had the accident and that there was blood in the bathroom. She needed them to see that it was her that was injured and not someone she had murdered and cut up in the bath. She knew how the minds of some of these people worked. She paid her bill and went outside. The ride back to the parking lot where she was going to meet Reid was not long. Just around the corner. She was there and waiting for him at seven minutes to ten.

She locked up the bike and went to a stand and got a strong sweet coffee and a doughnut. She then sat on the small two foot high wall and waited.

The next time she looked at her watch it was about one minute to ten. This was strange – Reid was a good time keeper and usually early too. She stood up and brushed the sugar from the doughnut off the front of her vest top and looked down the road to see if he was coming yet. It wasn't a busy street, but nor was it so quiet that she couldn't miss him….even so he was no where to be seen.

Maybe her watch was wrong. Maybe. She stopped the next person who walked by her and asked if he had the correct time on him. "I think my watch is fast." She explained.

But it wasn't and she knew it wasn't – and now it was nearly fifteen minutes past the hour. "Where the hell are you?" And now her head was thumping again not only with the pain of smacking it on the door frame but with the worry of where Reid was. She couldn't call him. He didn't have his cell with him. But maybe he had called hers. She walked over to her car which she had paid to keep in the lot for a week and unlocked it. She pulled open the passenger door and then unlocked the glove compartment. She pulled out her phone and flicked it open. The battery was dead.

"Fantastic." She glanced at the side arm and sighed and then she secured it all up again and walked back to the wall half hoping that Reid would be sitting there with a smile on his face waiting for her.

Nothing.

"Damnit!"

And she was pacing and the more she paced the more she worried and the more her head hurt.

She knew she had to call Hotch. She had to at least call in sick. Later….she would wait until eleven…..maybe his watch had stopped. Maybe he was delayed by something….

"Damn you Reid." She muttered and sat back down on the wall.

Three coffees and one more doughnut later she looked down at her watch. It was nearly half eleven. He wasn't going to turn up. She should have known that yesterday. She should have followed him. She should have persuaded him to stay. Now thinking back she could think of a very easy way to get him to stay, but that wasn't a direction she was or ever would be willing to go in.

Was he still where he had planned on going last night? Had he moved on without her? Had it all been just a ruse to get rid of her because she rejected him and then showed him that she wouldn't be pushed around by him. Her pacing on the sidewalk was becoming more and more frantic as she tried to profile where she thought he would have gone last night.

As Reid he would have stayed with her or gone to get coffee and then sleep. As Floyd – what was she thinking – he isn't Floyd so anything else he did would be so out of character he would have been easy to pick out as being out of place.

Emily decided to give it until mid day. Give him a chance to get here, but two hours late was quite bad. She snapped around and walked to the telephone kiosk which was just inside the parking lot. She picked up the receiver and pushed in some loose change and then stood with the thing to her ear waiting.

"Hotch – it's Prentiss." A small pause. "I know I'm sorry. I had an accident and I know I should have called…." Another pause. "No I think I will be fine – I fell and hit my head. I've got stitches." More listening. "Yes – yes I will – if you can give me a few days." A sigh as she listened again. "I will do – and thank you sir." She replaced the phone. A few more days grace. She just had to hope no one came to give her some flowers now because she wasn't going to be at home.

-o-o-o-

They hauled him out of the car and took him over to an elevator door. Spencer knew he was walking because there was no other way he could have been moving, but he couldn't actually feel his feet on the ground and everything was bouncing almost as though the ground was shaking. If he could fee the ground. He knew he flinched a couple of times. Things were around him and it confused him, he couldn't work out what they were or where they had come from. He was sure the dream would be over soon as suddenly arms grabbed him and pulled him into the elevator.

A tiny room. Minute. Hardly big enough for one person let alone the five – ten – however many people were crammed into this tiny box which seemed to be getting smaller.

Spencer turned and placed his hand on the cold metal of the elevator call and tried to push them back out again. He could hear his whimpers of panic and he could feel the sweat on his face. He sat. He couldn't think of what else to do as the ten or was it twenty people stood and stared at him as he started screaming and kicking at the walls of the metal coffin. He was shouting out words, but he had no idea what they were or if they meant anything or if they were just noises.

The hands on him now pulling him away from the wall didn't understand. Too many hands – too many people – he couldn't breathe. They had sucked all the air out of the elevator car and now the walls were bending and buckling and the thing was creaking and squealing and dropping and Spencer was screaming and kicking and flailing at the people holding him down who were now shouting something back at him which he couldn't hear because his ears wouldn't work and all he could hear was the sounds of an animal trapped in a hunters toy.

They watched the weirdo freak out in the elevator – kicking and screaming and spitting foam from his mouth. When they reached the floor they needed. They just grabbed the junked out scum by his arms and dragged him into the lobby of the offices they were visiting.

Reid could feel that the floor was moving. He could feel that something was sucking him out of the now open doors and his kicking and howling didn't stop. Finally more hands were on him and lifting him from the carpeted floor. Hand grabbing his ankles and his forearms so that he was now facing down looking at the floor shaking his head spraying spittle up the arms of the men he was with and drooling onto the floor.

-o-o-o-

They threw him into an empty room where they watched for a little while and then walked away. Unsure now how the boss was going to react to this small dilemma. They didn't know he was going to freak out like that on them. They were going to have to be more careful what they gave him, but at the time it had been necessary. That or crack him around the head to stop him getting out of the car. They'd been told this one was compliant. It didn't look that way to them. This one was going to have to be knocked into place by a few well practiced hands.

-o-o-o-

He opened his eyes to find he was in an empty room. Spencer had no idea how he got here. He had fuzzy memories of being in a car and even fuzzier ones of being with Gert. The last real thing he could remember was telling Emily he would be back by ten in the morning. He was laying on his side and he could feel that the part of his face which was laying on the floor was wet. He lifted a shaking hand to his face expecting to see his watch on his wrist but saw an unfamiliar dark item of clothing. Now he moved his head and that was probably the mistake. The room span so violently that he just curled up into a tight ball on the floor and squeezed his eyes shut waiting to bounce off the walls. He could feel liquid gurgling in his stomach wanting to escape and so still with his eyes tightly closed he moved carefully and just let it go.

He let in huge sobbing gasps of pain as his muscles contracted over and over again trying to rid his insides of whatever it was he had in there…and judging by what was managing to come out it wasn't much. Once he was able to control the cramps in his stomach he rolled over onto his back and ran cold fingers over his face. He had been drooling. He could feel it over his cheek and on his neck and the way his muscles were hurting made him wonder if he had suffered a seizure. That would maybe account for the strange flashes of memory he was getting, but either way – whatever had happened he couldn't be late for Emily. She would throw a freaking wobbler at him for being late. He scrabbled to his feet and leaned on the wall of the room which he guessed was probably about twelve foot square and painted all over a very pale baby blue. Even the inside of the door was the same colour. Keeping one hand on the wall he walked on wobbly legs to the door.

There was a small window in the centre at about head height and it brought a little quick twist of panic in him wondering if he had had a breakdown or something and had been locked up. It would certainly account for the loss of memory and the feeling that he wasn't quite all there. Or here – wherever 'here' was.

It was just as he reached the door that it suddenly opened. The people standing the other side of the door didn't look like doctors. Spencer's mind raced trying to force his brain to wake up and tell him what the hell was going on.

"Nice to see you awake at last. Follow."

Not that he was given much of an option. One man walked in front and two others held Reid by each arm and walked him a bit quicker than his legs wanted to move down a long corridor and into a large dark room at the end. They pulled him over to the middle of the room and let go of him, where he took a stumbling step forwards and then swayed slightly. He tried to turn to see what the hell was going on, but was stopped.

"Stand still."

And so he did. The old fear crept up his spine and filled his brain with one thought. 'Do as you are told and they wont hurt you.' And though logically he was well aware that this wasn't true, Taki had left his mark on Reid. In more places than the scar on the back of his neck which was now tingling wildly.

"Strip."

He couldn't see who was talking to him. The voices were behind him.

Spencer didn't move. They had told him to stand still and that command over rode any others – especially ones telling him to do something he was definitely not going to do. He didn't expose his body for anyone.

It happened in slow motion.

One set of hands pulled at his clothes as another set of hands pushed a stinking rag over his face for him to inhale a few breaths and another began to wipe a cold oily liquid over his now exposed body.

Then it all happened in fast forward.

The sudden rush to his already fogged over brain had him flying forwards until he reached the wall. He could feel that his hands were being held in wide metal cuffs and then pulled high above his head. Voices suddenly too loud and the just as quickly fading to nothing.

He wanted to shake his head. He had a growing needed to shake his head violently side to side but his order to stand still wouldn't let him. He kept his face to the wall and looked down. He couldn't see anything….his eyes had decided to close as the very slight twinklings of light in the room were threatening to blind him.

Spencer didn't feel the pain of the whip. He felt nothing more than a tiny sensation that something was touching his skin. It touched firstly along his back and then lower down on the backs of his legs.

Still. As completely motionless as he could manage with just the smallest of tears creeping from his eyes where the light was still trying to pull open his eyelids and scrape over the tender insides of his brain.

More coldness….They were wiping something over his skin again and now a voice horribly loud – almost to burst his ear drums was in his ear.

"You are doing good here. Just remember. Stand still."

And then another voice which he couldn't quite understand the meaning of but it was somewhere far away and probably down a tunnel. "Going live in – five – four – three – two – one."

And he didn't move. He stood and took it although this time he could feel it. He could definitely feel something biting hard into his skin, but it still wasn't hurting, he was just aware that it was happening. He could feel his blood trickling down the back of his legs and tried to calculate how long it would take for it to reach his feet but his concentration was broken by the hands now on his back and that very cold feeling of something getting him ready and now he bit on his bottom lip as he felt his body respond to what was being done to him and the hands touching him and then the mouth moving along his spine and then back up to his neck.

How long it lasted he had no idea. He just knew that when the cuffs were finally removed from his wrists and he was let to slide to the ground that there seemed to be slight concern in voices he was managing to hear.

"Went too far."

"New boy needs to be broken in slower."

"Behaves well once he knows what's expected."

"We got a lot of hits and some nice responses."

"A shame it's going to take a while to heal that mess."

"Stick him in with Ardal. He's on his own now."

-o-o-o-

The two of them stood looking down at the corpse.

"It's not doing what it's meant to." Kelly mused.

"What you talking about?"

"No rigor." Kelly bent down and picked up a hand. He demonstrated how the fingers were still moving properly and how the whole damned hand moved. "He's cold as ice though."

"He's got no fucking brain Kelly – he's dead. Course he's cold you moron."

"But look." A few kicks and he had kicked the now redressed Floyd over onto his back… he leaned down and pulled his shirt up. "Look."

"Can't see nothin'"

"Exactly! He aint got no blue splodges. His blood hasn't uh - what's the fucking word for it Bo?"

The other guy now moved forward and looked down at the exposed pure white skin and then up at the face with the closed eyes. Clearly he could see insects on the lips and crawling over the damage on the side of the head but the face still look at peace. It didn't actually look dead. Bo pulled a small pocket knife out of his pocket.

"What you doing Bo?" Kelly asked with a worried look on his face.

Bo crouched down and ran a finger over Floyd's stomach. He looked at the still soft skin and then with the blade drew it over where his finger had just been. He stood up and they both watched.

"Holy crap." Bo snapped the knife shut and just stared.

"What?! You cut him and wonder why his bleeding? You stupid?"

"Kelly you tosser – dead guys don't bleed."

"But he's got not fricking brains!" Kelly was leaning in getting a better look at the small cut which had been made. "He's gotta be dead! Bo! What we gonna do?"

"Take him home. Pa will know what to do. Grab a foot. Let's get the hell out of here before someone comes and finds him."

"No one gonna find shit out here." Kelly was just standing looking at the impossible.

"Well we found him didn't we? Come on….help me out here."

-o-o-o-

"Hey babygirl." Morgan said quietly as he entered Garcia's bunker. "Thought you might want company." He walked quietly over to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm.." She rubbed at her nose. "I'm fine Derek. Thank you."

"Mind if I sit?" He moved from behind her to next to a spare chair.

"Go for it." Her normal bubbly self sounded very tired and sad.

"Bad?" Morgan slid his chair closer so he could see what she was looking at.

A sigh. "The same things over and over again really. Different people. I don't know Derek – what drives someone to do this to someone else? What is wrong with them?"

"We are sure this isn't just acting?" he looked up at the frozen image of a man being beaten with what looked to be a split bamboo cane.

She shook her head. "I'm still working on that. They don't look to be bothered by what is being done to them. Surely they would be."

Now Derek was shaking his head. "Some people get off on this sort of thing. The pain pleasure barrier thing. They could be there because they like it."

"Or it could just be for the cameras. And I have to sit here and try to work it out." She took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. "I'm seeing – trying to see if they use the same person more than once. If they do then it's not close together. You know….not the following day. I want to compare markings - cuts – bruises – but they are a clever lot – so far nothing." She put her glasses on and looked down at her empty coffee mug.

"I'll get you another drink Pen and then I'll be back and we can look together. You shouldn't have to watch this sort of thing alone in here. Do they do more than the beatings?"

A nod. "Oh yes…a lot more."

-o-o-o-

She walked reluctantly back to the car and pulled out a note pad. She wrote on the page with a marker pen. 'Spencer – I am at the Night Rest Motel around the corner. I am really concerned – please let me know you are alright.' She then wrote the note out again. One of them she put on the dashboard so it could be seen from outside, but not easily. The other she tucked behind the wipers on the front of the car.

Then she was back on the bike and back in front of the motel again. She managed to get the same room as the previous night and booked it for two more. She then asked that if someone should call for her to send them to her room. She was expecting someone – she was hoping they would show up. She then got a sandwich and a drink from the machine and asked if there was a pair of scissors she could borrow.

Emily stood in the bathroom in her shorts and vest. She had been crying and she didn't know why. She didn't think she had ever felt this confused and alone before. She didn't know who to talk to. Mother wouldn't understand and no one from work would – where the hell was Floyd in all this? What the hell part did he have to play.

When she looked down the basin was full of Emily's long dark hair. She had cropped it off to a few inches all over.

"Compartmentalise that!" She spat at the mirror and went back to the room where she curled up and fell asleep.