"Guilt is a weight that will crush you whether you deserve it or not." - Maureen Johnson
Anger was not an emotion Reid was used to feeling.
Sometimes that meant his anger boiled over. The boy genius could handle memorizing entire bodies of fiction or putting together a good office prank, but the unfamiliar swell of blood in his cheeks and his rapidly increasing heart rate was so foreign, so unfamiliar that all he could do was clench and unclench his fists as he paced in Garcia's office. His chest rose and fell with his quick, short breaths, and for a moment his lungs were so hot, he was sure he was breathing fire.
"This is...this is absurd..." he muttered, walking side to side in Garcia's small office. He looked at Garcia for support. "I mean, don't you think? He had no reason not to let me go with the others and—"
"Okay, boy wonder! Right now you're turned up to 11? I need you to take it down to a one if you're going to be in here. Or at least three," Garcia paused her typing but didn't turn her attention to Reid, hoping that the pause for silence in what was usually the infinite click of her keys would be enough to communicate to the doctor just how serious she was.
It wasn't.
"It was a bad call. It was a bad call and he didn't have any justification for it..."
Did they know? How could they have found out? Sure, Reid hadn't exactly been normal, but that was to be expected, right? After all, he had been kidnapped and tortured. He was playing psychological games with a mentally unstable man while tied to a chair in the middle of the woods. It would be ridiculous for Hotch and Gideon to expect anyone to be normal after that.
And Reid was never normal to begin with, anyway.
Spencer's thoughts were racing so loudly in his head that he didn't notice Garcia gasp. "Reid..."
The young doctor began to rub his forehead. The thoughts, his racing heart-it was making him light headed. He had never craved Dilaudid more in his life. The liquid euphoria made his scope of the world so much smaller, so much easier to handle. Being introduced to it was like reaching another level of enlightenment-simultaneously awe-inspiring because he knew that he was capable of feeling that good, and torturous because he would always know that he was capable of feeling that good.
"Do you know anything about it, Garcia?" He wasn't used to the anxiousness accompanied with doing something wrong and trying to hide it from people. "H-have, uh...have they said anything to you? Or anyone...else...?"
"Reid." Garcia's shaking, staccato voice beckoned him to stop. The tech goddess was staring intently at her screens, her body entirely unmoving. For a moment, Reid thought she had even stopped breathing. "You need to see this."
Those five words made his stomach sink instantly. He cleared his throat and walked over to the computers, leaning over Garcia's shoulder.
On the screen, a crude video feed was displayed. Reid could make out what appeared to be cages, all neatly aligned in a circular fashion around a ten-by-ten pit. Two women stood in the pit, facing each other.
"What is this?" He asked as he squinted, tilting his head. He could make out the shapes of women, but no distinguishing features.
"There are ten separate video feeds, Reid. Ten."
"What?"
Garcia closed out of the feed, revealing a website with ten separate video feeds arranged neatly in two rows of five. Eight of the feeds were inside the cages that Spencer had originally noticed, and the other was a close up of the pit.
"Garcia, how did you find this?"
Penelope swallowed nervously and Reid could feel her stress rapidly increase. That was one way Reid always knew he would differ from his partners-clues, no matter how gruesome, always gave him a sense of calm, of reason, as though he finally had a puzzle piece he had been missing for hours.
Garcia's breathing quickened, "I, uh...I have a group of friends, we're kind of like, like, uh, online Batmen...we take down gruesome websites...Westboro Baptist, abusive Twitter accounts, child pornography, that kind of stuff. A guy I know, he just sent me this and said it was impenetrable...thought maybe I could do it..."
"Don't take this down, Garcia," Reid mumbled as his eyes moved from video feed to video feed, running the pictures of the victims against the women whose faces he could make out in their cages.
"W-what?"
"Don't take this site down. These are our victims. And that..." Reid squinted, pointing to one of the women in the close up feed, "is Violet Knox."
Something in Spencer's stomach dropped as realized just how hard this case was going to be.
A/N: Sorry about the long gap in updates. I moved across the country and it took some time. I'm back for good now. Please take some time and review. Enjoy reading.