A/N Last chapter! Hope you have enjoyed it!

Chapter 8

"Freeze!"

The doors crashed open for the second time that evening, but this time it was Hotchner standing in the doorway.

"Drop your weapons!"

To Riff Raff's credit he recovered from his surprise very quickly and merely pointed his laser more threateningly at the group of hostages.

"Shoot and they die," he stated nasally.

"Look around you. It's over," Hotch returned calmly.

The hostages looked around at the same time as their captors, spotting the multiples of agents standing in the wings with their guns pointed towards them.

It was Magenta that broke the stalemate by sedately placing a hand on her brother's shoulder and giving him a level look. After a beat Riff Raff nodded, seemingly to an unspoken request and laying his gun on the floor put his hands in the air. Magenta did the same and they were quickly surrounded and cuffed.

"Oh great," Morgan muttered seeing the streams of people in the wings beginning to relax their weapons. "More colleagues to see me dressed like this." Reid in turn glanced down at himself and grimaced. Two of the contingent of gunmen broke away from the pack and went to untie Gideon and Morgan.

Hotchner approached them down the aisle that Frank had stumbled backwards down mere moments before. As he reached the stage he gave them all a once over, the only reaction at their attire a very small upward twitch of his eyebrows and at the corners of his mouth. By this point Reid was trying hard to keep his mind neutral to stop embarrassment turning his face pink. Garcia had already lost the fight and was trying to wrap the feather bower around herself in a more modest way. She had no objection to the outfit itself but her boss seeing her in it was a step too far. To his credit Hotch kept his gaze resolutely on their own, not dropping it to their attire.

"The ambulance will be here in a moment," Hotchner told them all, "they will be bringing in blankets for the shock." That wasn't why he was telling them but they were grateful. His eyes clocked the two bodies in the swimming pool and his mouth flattened to a grim line. "I know it's not ideal but I will need to take your statements as soon as possible."

They knew the drill.

Finally free of the ropes Morgan stood up, rubbing his wrists.

"There are at least two other bodies," he told his boss and pointed at the lighting where Columbia lay, "one there and one in the..." he swallowed, "...dining room. There are also two guns unaccounted for. My own and Gideon's."

Hotchner nodded and beckoned to the remaining team that weren't dealing with the arrested unsubs or sweeping the building and giving them specific instructions sent them to locate the weapons and body.

"Agent Hotchner, a word please."

Gideon snagged the attention of the team leader and with a small nod Hotch followed him over to the side of the room. Morgan quirked his head at them.

"What's all that about?"

Reid was watching the exchange with a closed expression.

"He's not coming back with us," he said it quietly, in a deadpan voice.

Morgan and Garcia both looked at him sharply.

"But he has to, hasn't he?" Garcia said faintly and then the ambulance personnel arrived and their conversations died under a swath of blankets.

Reid was right though, as they discovered when Hotch finally approached them where they were sat outside the house, without Gideon. The storm had stopped and the night air was cold outside of the blankets.

"He gave his statement and left."

Penelope gave Reid a concerned look as she noticed his flinch and hurt expression. No goodbyes then. Just gone. Just like last time.

"Here," Hotchner threw them some clothes. "Get yourselves changed and then we'll take statements."

"Thank God," Morgan muttered as he snatched up the items of clothing and prepared to bail to the nearest place he could get changed.

"You need help getting out of that corset, my chocolatey mountain of hotness, then give me a shout," Penelope grinned saucily and winked at him.

Morgan gave her a feral grin in return, "Funny I was going to say the same thing to you, Baby Girl."

Both pairs of eyes turned to Reid and he held his hands up.

"I'm good, thanks."

"Reid," Morgan stared earnestly at the younger agent, "it's okay, you know, if you want to keep the clothes on a little longer..."

Reid threw a shoe at his head.

They left someone else to oversee the tidy up at the crime scene so that Hotch could drive them home. It was now the early hours of the morning. Reid and Garcia immediately fell asleep in the back of the SUV but Morgan stayed resolutely awake at the front with Hotch.

"You need to talk about it?" Hotch asked after a number of hours of driving in almost complete silence, "I'm meaning as a friend, not a BAU agent."

Morgan shook his head slightly as though to clear his thoughts.

"I'm glad we dealt with that other case while we were still out there," he said finally "This would have knocked it clean out of my head." He stared out the window for a moment at the sky beginning to lighten as it got closer to the sun coming up. "I'm telling you Hotch, they don't come much weirder than that." He jerked his thumb back the way they had come and dropped his voice so the two in the back couldn't hear, even if they weren't asleep. "There were a few moments back there where..." he hesitated, "...where I thought our time had finally run out."

Hotchner nodded in understanding, eyes fixed on the road.

"They had it so much worse than me," Derek murmured, staring at the two sleeping agents in the rear view mirror. "He took a...special interest in Spence and a special dislike to Penelope. The number of times I thought he was going to kill her..."

"You mean the original Unsub? Doctor Frank ?" Morgan nodded and almost continued but Aaron cut across him. "It must have been difficult for you too, I mean..."

He was interrupted by his mobile ringing.

Morgan grabbed it quickly before it woke the two sleepers; not quite quickly enough as Reid jumped awake and Garcia stirred.

"Hello, this is Agent Morgan," he said, "Special Agent Hotchner is here..." He suddenly went very still and quiet. "What do you mean they've escaped?"

"They've what?" Reid jerked forward in his seat, startling Garcia fully awake.

"Dammit." Morgan covered the mouthpiece of the phone. "Hotch, they took the bodies."

"The murder victims?" Hotch replied, an aggravated edge to his voice. He had had three of his team go through a traumatic event and he was angry.

"They'll go back to the house," Reid interjected up from the back-seat. "Riff Raff told Magenta that they were going back to Transylvania and to get the transport ready."

"So there must have been transport that we missed," Hotchner added and with a scowl did a U-turn in the road. "I'll drop you off at the local PD..."

"Hell no!" Morgan exclaimed, and Reid nodded from behind, "we're coming too." Hotch met Garcia's eyes in the rear view mirror and she pretended to sigh dramatically.

"Well if everyone else is...but I'm staying in the car with the door firmly locked."

"I don't understand..."

There was no house. Only the pitted ground it had once sat in. Small bricks and rubble lay in scattered piles.

"It was here, wasn't it? We haven't taken a wrong turn..." Hotch turned back around to scan the horizon. Garcia had been tempted from the car and now stood with them.

"If there is no crime scene," she murmured, "no bodies, and no creepy bad guys to lock up, does that mean it didn't happen?"

Reid said nothing as he absorbed the data his mind presented him with, drawing the relevant conclusions.

"They must have blown up the house to destroy the evidence," Morgan announced. Reid looked away from the scene towards his colleague, his mouth opening to explain that it would be impossible without leaving more debris, but instead he shut it again.

Morgan was on his phone in the next instant.

"You need to be setting up road blocks in a perimeter around the house," he commanded the people on the other end of the call.

"If only we knew what they were driving," Hotch said, thinking out loud.

Reid stared at the void. "They weren't driving," he whispered but not for the others to hear, "that wasn't what they meant by transport."

"So...wait..." Garcia said slowly, "you mean...they get away with it?"

"Unless we catch them..." Hotchner replied equally as slowly.

Reid looked out across the desolation, his mind whirling and clicking as it settled. His eyes swept the ground where mere hours before he had watched men and women murdered in cold blood, where debauchery and mayhem had been the aim of the game. Finally, unwittingly, his gaze turned up towards the lightening sky, one edge tinted with red, the other still showing the last few stars. He took a deep breath of cold air and let it out in a rush of two finalised words.

"You won't."

'And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race. Lost in time. And lost in space... and meaning.'

The Criminologist