The BAU's conference room had never been so silent. The six FBI agents stared at the blank screen as if it would reveal that this was all just an elaborate hoax, if they just looked hard enough. Truth be told, they weren't really looking at the screen – they were all lost in their own thoughts.
Garcia was the first to break the silence. Her voice was shaky. "He's okay right? I mean, he's going to be okay? He is still breathing, so that means that he's going to be fine, right?" Garcia turned to look up at Morgan who was still standing behind her. As she looked up at him, she could tell that he had moved past his anger and now just looked sad.
"Ya baby girl, he's going to be fine, you'll see." Morgan squeezed one of Garcia's hands and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Reid's strong. He's going to make it through this. He'll be back here telling us his not-so-fun facts before you know it."
Hotch, who had been deep in thought, snapped back into his role as team leader. "Garcia, were you able to get a location from the video?"
"I'm afraid not sir. He was routing it through a bunch of different proxy servers. With some time, I might be able to unravel the video's path. I won't know until I get into it. Which I'm going to do, right now." Garcia immediately turned back to her screens and started typing. There was a determined expression on her face and Aaron knew that she would do anything in her power to find Reid.
JJ, who had seemed to be in her own world for the last few minutes, looked around the room at the remaining profilers. She set her hand on the large stack of manila folders sitting in front of her. "Okay, I have made a pile of possible suspects who could have a vendetta against Reid or this team. But the list is too long. What did we learn from that video that will help us narrow it down?"
Emily jumped in, glad to be able to contribute something that might help them find Reid. "The unsub was more or less calm and in control. He almost seemed scripted. And he clearly came into this with a plan. He's been working towards this for a while. I think we can eliminate any cases that happened very recently."
Hotch had some ideas of his own to throw into the mix. "He said that we had destroyed everything that he had built. Look at men who lost their families, homes, or jobs after our involvement in a case. This is a man who believes, without a doubt, that our involvement in the case ruined his life."
Morgan was next to throw in his two cents. "I think Reid is this guy's main focus. He called Reid 'meddling' and said he needed to be punished for what he did. He wants us all to suffer, but Reid most of all. Look at cases where Reid had more contact with the families or loved ones than the rest of us."
"Ok. This helps. I'll start sorting through these cases again," JJ said.
Hotch chimed in. "I want everybody to take a stack of files. There's not much more that the rest of us can do right now anyway. We need to find the identity of our unsub quickly. I'd like to find Reid before another video link is sent to us."
Rossi nodded in agreement. "I don't think we are going to be able to negotiate with this unsub. He has an image in his mind of how he wants this to go. He has probably plotted out everything that he is planning to do. And from the other side of a computer screen, there's very little we can do to or say that will cause him to deviate. We are going to have to find him and disrupt him before he carries out his endgame." Rossi knew that the endgame was likely to be Reid's death, but he didn't think verbalizing that would be productive. The team needed to focus on figuring out who the unsub was, not on what could happen if they failed to find their missing friend.
Ow. He had an IQ of 187, and 'ow' was the best word Reid could think of to describe how he hurt. Reid kept his eyes closed for the time being, trying to assess the damage before bringing himself back in to the real world. He could feel that he had burns where the electrodes had been placed. The pain from them radiated out in waves. The electrodes had thankfully been removed, giving Reid a vague assurance that he wouldn't be subjected to shock therapy again in the immediate future.
Reid's entire body ached, as if he had overworked every muscle in his body. That's exactly what happened, Reid knew. He strained to recall what he could about the effects of electroshock therapy. These days it was called 'electroconvulsive therapy' but Reid highly doubted that what he had just experienced was conducted as ECT normally was. For one thing, the patient was normally placed under general anesthesia, not completely awake as he had been. The therapy was most commonly used to treat severe depression. The most common side effects were confusion and memory loss. He didn't think he was suffering from either of those. He unfortunately remembered everything about his abduction. Reid noted that his thought processes seemed a little slower than normal, though that could be attributed to a possible concussion or the general stress of the situation he found himself in.
Reid could no longer delay the inevitable. He slowly opened his eyes. The drugs made it difficult, but he managed. The first thing he noticed was that it was now fully daylight outside. At the angle that he sat, all he could see through the windows was the sky, blue and cloudless. Not that it would really help if I could see more, he thought bitterly. Reid tried to move his hands… his feet… his head… anything. He couldn't move a muscle. It was infuriating. He noted that the restraints were gone, and he couldn't see the tray that held the electroshock machine. The laptop still sat in front of him on the folding table, though it was now closed. His cell phone and gun sat on either side of the computer. It was a taunt, he knew. The items he needed to save himself were so close, yet they might as well be on the other side of the country for all the use they did him in his current state. As an additional taunt, the door at the top of the stairs remained open. Reid's inability to move his body was the only thing that confined him to this place.
In his peripheral vision, Reid saw that an IV was hooked up beside him, and the line went into his arm. Just like Samantha used to do with the women she treated as dolls. He suspected that the line was feeding him more drugs, and fluids so he wouldn't dehydrate. How long is Dr. Malcolm planning on holding me here? Reid wondered. He suspected that the man knew exactly how he wanted this to play out, and hoped that the timeline Dr. Malcolm had in mind left sufficient time for his team to find them. As much as he wanted out of here now, he knew that the team needed as much time as they could get. So Reid would have to play the waiting game.
Reid listened but no sounds could be heard, from either upstairs or outside. The cement walls and thick windows likely prevented much sound from getting in or out. Reid wondered where Dr. Malcolm could be. It didn't sound like anyone else was in the house. All Reid could do was sit and wait for his abductor to come back.