This is my Last Resort (Chapter Thirteen) by Lexikal

Spoilers: None.

Warnings: Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...

Summary: Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.

Chapter Note: I really should keep track of small details in long fics (in the future I will do that). I'll re-read old chapters so everything fits, but I couldn't sleep and got an idea for chapter thirteen, and I had to get up and write this. Enjoy and please review. I got out some index cards and wrote down basic details. This chapter takes place on day 4 after Reid's (and Elle's) rescue (I made an earlier mistake, when Reid was hypnotized; he (Reid) said it was almost 8.5 days since his abduction, I was off by a day). Again, I try to beta for typos; please excuse any that sneak by.

Author's Note: Many people have reviewed this now, and I am getting a lot of feedback that Elle is evil, etc... While I am glad you find her creepy (sort of the point of the character), this story is also about the root origins of so-called psychopaths. I'll admit, she is a very disturbed (and probably disturbing to most readers!) little character, but she is a lot more complicated than simply being "evil". I also wrote her as having Reactive Attachment Disorder (which she no doubt does have at the very least), but not all kids with RAD are nearly this bad or "unattached" and this story isn't meant to cause unnecessary stigma for children with RAD or their families. If you want to watch a very good movie about Reactive Attachment Disorder I recommend watching the 1992 made-for-TV movie "Child of Rage" (based on the true life story of a little girl named Beth Thomas). I believe someone has the full movie up on YouTube. Oh yeah, it's almost 4:00 am right now and I am tired, so again, please forgive any typos or mistakes. Thank you.

"We have a problem." Hotch said, coming into the briefing room. He was late, just having gotten off the phone with the hospital. It was nearly 11:00 a.m. and briefings usually started sharply at 10:30.

"Reid?" Morgan asked, looking up. The rest of the team was silent, waiting.

"Well, Reid is having some problems, but I mean...Elle is missing." He didn't have time to go into Reid right now, Reid's earlier revelation. That would have to wait for later.

"What?" Rossi asked, perking up. "Her room was heavily guarded! No one in or out. Even the child herself..."

Hotch sat down, looking more distressed than the rest of the team could ever remember seeing him.

"Elle's IV was removed yesterday evening, around 7:00. Yesterday was also when she was interviewed, as you all no doubt remember..."

Silence hung over the room like a potential thundercloud. When would the storm hit? Everyone was waiting for Hotch to speak next.

"The hospital was apparently running low on beds- rooms- and a child around Elle's age was admitted about 8:00 yesterday evening to the ICU so they moved her into Elle's room."

The silence was eerie now. Nobody liked where this seemed to be going.

"At around 11:00 there was a room check and the child- Samantha Adams- was found dead. Cardiac arrest. She'd been admitted for cardiac problems and it was touch and go, but no alarms went off at the estimated time of death. There was no alarm, and then a sudden flat-line. They came in, and just found her dead... they attempted to revive her for over 10 minutes so we know for a certainty that the child in that bed, at that time, was Samantha Adams. When their attempts failed, they asked a security guard to come and move the body to the morgue, and the guard checked the admission bracelet, which he is adamant belonged to Samantha Adams. Things were hectic. Elle was apparently asleep, and by the time they checked on her next, which was about 1 in the morning, they found a dead child in her bed..."

"Let me guess...they found Samantha Adams in Elle's bed?" Morgan's voice was surprisingly devoid of emotion.

"Yes," Hotch said flatly. "Same hair colour... and the nurses on duty last night were fairly new."

"Elle swapped their medical bracelets and...What? Got herself wheeled down to the morgue?" Prentiss asked, blinking slowly, as if trying to make sense of a very difficult and convoluted game. Which wasn't far from the truth.

"At the very least," Hotch said. "Thing is, she didn't hang around. She was wheeled inside, the room was locked, but the door opens from the inside. Nobody expects the dead to escape. The hospital staff checked the morgue immediately when they realized she was missing. No sign of Elle."

"She used this child's death as a way to escape." Prentiss said, shaking her head.

"Prentiss," Hotch said sternly, looking his agent in the eyes. "Samantha Adams' death was too convenient. We know at the very least she changed their hospital bracelets. But someone shut off the cardiac monitor... and Elle was the only other person in the room."

"She killed this child," Morgan said dismally.

Hotch nodded. "Almost certainly, and at the very least she watched the child go into cardiac arrest and used it as a ruse to escape. She unplugged the machines. The staff apparently locked down the hospital, but she would have had about two hours on them before they even noticed she was missing."

"How far can a six year old get in pyjamas with no money?" Morgan asked.

"I don't know," Hotch said simply. "I don't know many six-year-olds who could think up such an elaborate escape plan, but this one did."

"So many things could have gone wrong." Prentiss murmured. "How did she know this would work?"

"My guess is she didn't. She took a risk- a very large risk- and she got lucky."

"APB?" Rossi asked unnecessarily.

"And an amber alert, but this child is smart. Smarter than any of us realized. Maybe smarter than we think, even now. She is going to keep a low profile."

"So what do we do now? This kid was our last real lead..." Prentiss sighed.

"J.J. is getting her photo out on the news but...basically, we find her." Hotch finished tiredly.

"She was shot in the stomach, what, four days ago? She shouldn't even be mobile!" Morgan barked angrily.

And yet she was.

It had almost been too easy. The girl had been on a stretcher in the hall, hooked up to a monitor, with an IV, her lips blue. She'd asked about the child around lights out time.

"She can share my room."

"That's...your room is guarded, honey." The nurse had said kindly.

"I don't mind. And I don't mind if her Mommy and Daddy visit her, either. I can keep her company," and then she'd smiled, like she had at Spencer. And the nurse had smiled back, just like she'd known she would, and gone to check, muttering something about not enough rooms, and then the girl had been wheeled into the room and hooked up to a little oxygen machine and another machine.

Her name had been Samantha. She'd had something wrong with her heart. Was good as dead anyway, really... No harm, no foul.

"They put these things on too loose," Elle had said conversationally when they were alone, and went on to show the girl how to pull the hospital bracelet off. Samantha had laughed.

"Why are you here?" Elle pressed, staring at the child.

"My heart... I was born with a bad heart. Waiting for a transplant." Samantha had responded.

"Oh. Me, I just got shot in the stomach, is all. Say...we should switch medical bracelets. It'll be funny."

"I don't know."

"What? You afraid of getting in trouble?"

"No..."

"They'll just laugh and make us switch back." Elle coaxed.

"Well..."

"Come on, it's easy. You don't even have to get out of bed." And Elle had gotten out of her own bed then, bracelet already removed, and then she'd changed them. And gone back to her own bed to wait. This had to be timed carefully.

Except Samantha was a baby. She fell asleep very fast. And that was all it took. Elle hadn't really wanted to do it...not really... but she had to get away. Her parents had told her about psychiatrists and psychologists before and one had already come, earlier in the day. There would be more, now. She knew it. He didn't smile as easily as the nurses. She couldn't fool him. She'd fooled him a little, but not enough, and that was dangerous. Being in this place was dangerous.

So she'd taken the pillow from her bed and put it over the girl's face, but the heart machine had started to beep too fast. Elle then fiddled with some buttons and the red lights and waves and beeps shut off. She put the pillow back over the girl's face and pressed down. Samantha hadn't even struggled. And when she checked, she pressed two fingers to her neck, like she'd felt Spencer do to her, but there was no beat, no pulse. When she removed the pillow, Samantha's eyes were open and shiny, but nobody was home.

The next part had been harder. If it didn't work, well...they couldn't prove anything, not anything serious. But they'd suspect- the FBI and that stupid shrink would suspect. She had wanted to make sure the bracelet moved off the girl, and it had. And her bracelet did, too, of course. She put Samantha's bracelet back on and turned the machines back on. A loud whine filled the air and she went back to her bed.

Nurses and doctors rushed in then, but they were night staff and didn't really know her, or Samantha. No wonder so many babies got switched at birth. She closed the curtains around her own little bed and blinked blearily, and then pretended to go back to sleep. She distantly heard someone say the child was dead and they called the time.

Leave the body, leave the body, leave the body...just for a few minutes. I need to make a switch.

They'd run out of the room then and Elle had worked quickly, her own heart fluttering with adrenaline. She switched the bracelets back in matter of seconds, and put Samantha in her bed and crawled in and played dead. She'd half-expected them to wheel the dead girl right out of the room, instantly, but they hadn't. They'd left her.

Within minutes a man in a uniform came in. Elle cracked an eye open and then shut them again. She heard him mutter something about how he wasn't paid enough to deal with this shit. Then he'd covered her with a white sheet and wheeled her out of the room. She'd almost wanted to laugh, but she'd managed not to, not to make any noise. Barely breathe, even. Her heart had been racing the entire time.

She felt and heard them entire an elevator. Her parents had told her about hospitals, and morgues, how they were usually in the basement, and sure enough the man wheeled her into a room, left the sheet over her, and she heard him walk away. For a moment, there, she'd been scared he'd lock her in one of those little cold drawers for dead people, but he hadn't. The morgue was very bright, very white, and she wanted to hang around and explore- it looked like the dungeon- but she hadn't had the time, unfortunately.

She waited a few minutes, then quickly climbed off the gurney and opened the morgue's door just a fraction of an inch, just to see... but the hall was empty. She'd run then, run for the elevator, but there had been another door. It said Emergency Fire Exit, and she bit her lip, considering it. Maybe it was hooked up to an alarm? But when she pressed it open, no alarm went off. She was in a gray cement stairwell and she ran up a few levels. One level read P2. Parking 2. She ducked out of the door and into the underground parking.

And then it was a matter of not being seen. She'd seen video cameras in the hallway, but by the time they- the doctors, the shrinks, any of them- saw the film she'd be long gone. She checked out different cars, until finally finding one that was unlocked. But no good...someone could see. So she got out of the car and checked around a little more. Then she heard voices, a man talking. Security guard?

And there it had been, like it was sent from God himself. A pick-up truck. The back was nearly empty, but there were tarps. She crawled into the back of the truck, under a tarp, and waited.

And waited. But eventually she heard footsteps and then felt the motor rev, and she was gone. She didn't know exactly where the driver was going, but he could get her away from this horrible place a lot faster than by walking, and even though she had hospital pyjamas on, and not a gown, a little kid walking around barefoot in pyjamas would attract attention.

Stupid FBI. Thought they were so damn smart.

Elle grinned to herself. Her stomach still really hurt, but she was already formulating another plan. There was scrap metal in the back of the pick-up truck, and some of it was really sharp at the ends. That made some of the stomach pain more acceptable.

End of chapter note: Want to post this chapter. I realize it is short but it's also late at night and I am not sure if any more will make sense. I hope you enjoyed it (please review!), and yes, Elle is a devious little character (and yes, a lot of things COULD have gone wrong with her "plan", as Prentiss pointed out). Elle did what she did impulsively anyway... and I do know that some hospitals have security guards take bodies down to the morgue. Some of them are left inside for the pathologist, if he or she is only going to be a few minutes, without being locked in a "drawer" so this plan could have worked in real life. It also could have failed, and she took a LOT of risks, but she is impulsive, and that's a sign of what, in adults, is called "Antisocial Personality Disorder" (the term "psychopath" isn't an actual diagnosis). She could have been caught SO many times, too, and the fact that she was willing to kill another child when her escape wasn't even guaranteed makes her creepier, even to me.