(no subject)
Title: Rock Paper Scissors 19/?
Rating: FRT
Pairing: Morgan/Reid, but mentions of Garcia/Kevin & Hotch/JJ
Summary: Morgan gives Hotch an ultimatum. Reid starts to see what Barry is really up to.
Beta: None. Ah well. All mistakes are mine.
ConCrit: Better than Reid’s boy band haircut. Wait, nothing’s better than that :)
SPOILERS: Some canon from all seasons, but not always in the way it happened on the show.
~~~
Disclaimer: I don’t own any rights or trademarks to Criminal Minds, the FBI, CBS or any of the characters within. No infringements of these copyrights are intended. Any similarities between original characters therein are a coincidence. I make no profit from the following fictional story. (Fictional, maybe, but I swear this happened all in my head).
~~~
The Gaia Camp
Agent Derek Morgan
“Derek? Derek wake up.”
I hear Emily’s voice, I smell the smoke from campfires. Prentiss and Hotch are standing over me, obviously worried. I’m on the ground, outside. “What happened?”
“You fainted in the RV,” Hotch says quietly.
“RV?” I sit up, maybe a bit too fast. Shit, I’m at The Gaia camp. We were doing a raid... “Spencer. Where’s Spencer?”
Prentiss kneels down next to me. “He’s not here, he must have gotten away with Barry. From what Rossi could gather maybe a few others, including the man he was with at the march.”
I feel sick and I quickly lean to my side to throw up, but nothing comes out. Tears sting my eyes, and I’m not sure if its from the bile in my throat or the horrible feeling of not knowing where Spencer is. I feel a hand on my back and soon Prentiss is pouring water into my mouth from a bottle. “Thanks,” I mutter.
“Hotch?” Prentiss turns to him. Hotch leaves quietly and she waits until we are alone before turning back to me. “When’s the last time you ate anything?”
“Ate?”
“You might be having a low blood sugar episode brought on by stress and physical exertion,” Prentiss rubs her hand on my back. “When did you eat?”
“This morning, back at the hotel in Miracle King,” I rub my forehead. “I may have had some coffee here or there, I don’t remember.”
“You’re dehydrated, sit here and drink this, please.” She stands up. “I should get back to helping JJ with the kids.”
“Em, we have to find him. I can’t...I don’t know what I’ll do if we don’t.” I swallow more water. “Have to.”
“I know, Derek, I know.”
I watch her turn and walk away and I suppress the urge to follow her like a lost puppy. I’m so uncertain, so terrified. I’m angry at Hotch for not doing this raid earlier, for letting Spencer do this in the first place. What if Barry knows Spencer is FBI? What if he’s already dead?
“Morgan,” Hotch appears, handing me a cardboard box. “Eat these.”
I take the box from him, which turns out to be a pack of granola bars. I open one, but I’m afraid to eat it and throw up again. “Hotch, we gotta find Reid.”
“I know.”
“No, Aaron, I don’t think you do. If anything happens to him, I’ll never forgive you.”
“That makes two of us. Now come on, we’re going to transport everyone back into town. The Sheriff got us permission to use the diner to detain them. We have a lot of interviews to do.”
~~~
Snicker’s cabin
Dr. Spencer Reid
“We follow the plans tomorrow,” Barry says, yawning. “I’ve stashed a change of clothes here for you Strawberry. We can’t take the same route, because of the feds. But Snickers and I have mapped out an alternate. Strawberry, Jared, Tucker, you’ll leave an hour earlier,” Barry waves them over to the table where a map is laid out. “Take the horses, leave them here,” he points. “There’s three bicycles there for you to ride into town for your vehicles. Hank is going to stand watch in town, keep an eye on the feds. Loki and I are taking a trip in the morning.” He looks over to me. “We’ve got some things to do before we leave Autryville, a few more loose knots to tie up. Now everyone, let’s get some sleep. You’re no good to me tired. Might as well be dead.”
Strawberry takes my hand and leads me to a sleeping bag next to hers. I close my eyes and attempt to get some sleep because Barry is right, I need my rest. But I need my rest in order to stop him, not to help him. If the bombs are going to be detonated after everyone has left for the day, I have all day to either convince him not to do it, convince the others not to do it, or to contact the team. My best shot is Strawberry, but I don’t know if I’ll have enough alone time with her before she goes. I could call the mine, but then again I’ll be with Barry the whole time and a private phone call is going to look rather suspicious. My only shot is to somehow get in contact with the team.
Kevin. I can call Kevin. I can make the excuse to Barry that Kevin is taking care of something for me unrelated and that I have to contact him. Not a lie, Kevin is watching Taffy and Sally. I can tell him something cryptic enough that he’ll know he has to call Garcia and the team. He was in the FBI, he’ll know. Derek is smart enough to understand what I’m already thinking to tell him.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be safe.”
Derek puts his hand on my shoulder and I want to hold him so terribly bad. “I’m going to worry anyway. If Barry is our unsub and he smells that you’re not the real Loki, or that you’re not true, I wouldn’t doubt for a second he’d kill you.”
“I understand. But I am right for this. Hotch wouldn’t let me if I wasn’t. I need to do this.”
“I’m sorry. About everything...” Derek’s voice wavers a little.
“Me too.”
I open my eyes at the plinking sound of metal across the cabin. I turn my head to see Barry pouring nails into a sock. I watch him as he ties the sock off and grabs a strip of duct tape hanging from the wall next to him. He gently begins to tape the sock onto the side of one of the bombs. Why would he do that? That type of shrapnel wouldn’t do much structural harm, especially to a mine with rock walls. That’s the type of thing you put on a bomb...
When you’re trying to kill people.
~~~
5:15 in the morning at The Diner in Autryville
Agent Derek Morgan
“Closing down the breakfast joint in this town to house a bunch of environmentalists is going to piss off the locals,” I comment, taking another bite of an apple Prentiss gave me after she forced a bowl of cereal down my throat.
“Where else are we going to house them all? The jail is already at double capacity,” she says, sitting across from me in one of the few booths not occupied by cuffed Gaia members. “At least they are all processed and interviewed.”
“Ha,” JJ slips in next to me. “Nobody said anything.”
“Who is watching the children?” Prentiss asks.
“Hotch ordered them back with their parents.” JJ says, reaching across the table for a banana. “Once everyone is ticketed we’ll release them.”
“Ticketed?”
“Joe wanted to issue them all warning citations to make sure they are in the system. He’s already cross-checked, one threat about Guantanamo Bay made sure they coughed up their real names.” JJ laughs. “Of course they didn’t know we can’t actually send them there.”
“No wonder people are terrified of the Patriot Act, the way we use it to scare people into cooperation,” I mutter. “Has Hotch said anything about getting Spencer back?”
“None of The Gaia knows anything. But earlier Ringer did overhear some of them whispering about how someone saw Hank take Loki and a woman out of the camp not too long before we showed up.” JJ remarks.
“Which could indicate they had lookouts,” Prentiss says. “I think the three men we caught outside of camp weren’t on the run, they were the look outs.”
“Which would explain how they were able to get a jump on us, but why wouldn’t they all try to leave? They had to know we didn’t have enough man power, they were at the march,” JJ says.
“Because they weren’t warned,” I say. “Think about this for a minute. We are dealing with a cult leader who obviously knows how to cultivate his flock. Nobody said anything incriminating, if anything they gave us the same speech. They all have plausible deniability.”
“Why would you say that?” JJ asks me.
“They know something is going on, because Loki showed up, and Barry took him and some others away before we raided the camp. They just don’t know the details. That’s how Barry wants it. Maintaining complete control, not giving anyone the ability to question his behavior. If Barry isn’t the one who has been raping and slaughtering these women I would be surprised. He needs to maintain control, he’s aggressive, we’ve seen that from past Gaia activity.”
“Maybe the murders and the activism aren’t totally separate,” Prentiss ponders aloud. “What if he’s always had these urges to rape and kill, and what if he has raped before. But then he uses these killings to bring in the media?”
“As if the march wasn’t enough?” JJ asks.
“Except you going on national news and warning people not to come here had the opposite effect, and we all knew it would,” I add. “Where are most of the media right now?”
“Some are still here in Autryville, some went to Miracle King to wait and see what happens next, but quite a few went home,” JJ taps the table top with her short fingernails.
“Our latest victim was specifically planted at the station to taunt us. He’s telling us he’s still in control and that this isn’t over.” I take another bite of my apple and swallow. “But what this is has yet to be seen.”
“If Reid knows anything, you know he’s going to find a way to tell us,” JJ says quietly. “We need to be alert. He could make a phone call to someone on the force, or Anderson, he could try to set something up for us, leave us a note or package or something. But he will contact us.”
“If...” Prentiss begins before shutting her mouth. She looks to me with apology in her eyes.
“He’s alive, he has to be. Spencer is alive, and he’ll be safely back with us by the end of the day.” I motion for JJ that I want to stand and she slides out of the booth to let me do so. “Don’t even THINK otherwise, no matter how high the probability may be.”
“Derek,” Prentiss starts.
“Shut the fuck up.” I spit as I turn to walk away.
My hands are trembling. I knew it wasn’t the lack of food that made me faint, its the fear. I’ve never felt fear on this job, not this way. I remember when Reid went on that train to save Elle, I was scared for the kid, and I was beyond furious when he took his Kevlar vest off, but I wasn’t attached to him then like I am now. I didn’t love him. I do now. I can’t believe how irrational I feel.
“Morgan?”
I turn around to Hotch’s voice. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
He bows his head and I know why. “What’s the next step?”
“Well, we are letting them go. Sheriff Remmick is going to escort them back to the camp to gather personal belongs and basically see them out of town, otherwise they get an illegal camping charge. They got the RV off the mountain and it’s on it’s way to Autryville. What we need to do is go back to the police station and see if we can get anything else out of those protestors before the 24 hour hold is up. I’m having the others stay here to see if they can overhear anything else, come with me to the station.”
“Hotch, if we get a lead on where Reid is...”
“I’m not going to try to stop you, but I’m not going to support you doing something reckless. And we both know he wouldn’t either.”
~~~
Slatyville, West Virginia
Dr. Spencer Reid
“What are we doing here?” I ask, tucking my hair behind my ears before sliding off the horse in my usual awkward way.
“Leave her loose, we don’t need her anymore,” Barry says. “We need another car.”
“Another car?”
“I left mine at the police station yesterday,” he laughs, walking across the county road and towards a parking lot outside a small apartment building.
I follow closely behind, silently acting as the lookout as he slips into an open 4-door Ford. He pulls a huge ring of keys out of his pocket. “Old tow trick. In the early 90’s, Ford only made 8 ignitions. So, if you worked at a junkyard and collected all 8, you could open and start any Ford made between 1990 and 1992. Now by the time we get to Miracle King we pick up my hidden car that’s clean and we’re off to Autryville.”
“I coulda saved us a step if I hadn’t left my cell behind, fixed the plates and make the car ours,” I get into the passenger’s side just as Barry gets the car started.
“Can you do it from a payphone?”
“Can I use yours?”
“This is the prepaid to set off the bombs. Can’t use it for anything else. Besides, I have some things in my car I need to have.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“You’ll see.”
“I suppose going to watch ACC blow is out of the question,” I muse. “It would be beautiful to see it happen.”
“I’ve got a surprise for you then, when we get to Autryville.” Barry turns the car and gets it on the county road to Miracle King. “You’re going to love what we have planned.”
Something tells me that I’m not so sure.