SPENCER - spencer reid

F I F T E E N

CHAPTER 15: BLACKOUT

Dr. Spencer Reid's POV

[January 28th, 2010]

I awake to the feeling of cold water being doused over my face and chest. I gasp in fright, accidentally pulling some of the icy liquid toward my lungs.

"Wake up!" I hear the man shout as I cough and sputter, flipping onto my side to further open my airway. "It's time for a little game, Dr. Reid."

"W-what s-sort of game?" I stammer, shaking both from fear and the water soaking into my cardigan.

"A game of chance," a slight smirk tugs at the corner of his lips. "While you were unconscious, I took the liberty of unblocking one exit in this entire building," a chill runs down my spine at his next words. "If you find it within one hour, you will obviously go free. If you fail, however, I'm afraid that you will never see that pretty little redheaded girlfriend of yours again."

"Don't you dare touch her!" I am immediately protective, my seldom-seen aggressive side erupting before I could stop it. "If you so much as lay one finger on her, I'll break your arms!"

"I never said anything about hurting her, Dr. Reid. I merely said that you'd never see her again," the man tilts his head, pleasantly surprised by my outburst. "But what I will say is that a dead man sees no one."

꧁꧁꧂꧂

Less than five minutes later, I am shoved from the room in which I had been held since I arrived here. The fluorescent lights flicker and buzz so loudly and frequently that I am surprised that they haven't yet burnt out or caught fire. With a bang, the metal door slams behind me, leaving me alone in a long hallway.

For a moment, my eyes strain to focus on my surroundings, the lights making it difficult to see anything for more than an instant. After blinking a few times, I realize that I am in what appears to be an abandoned school building. Lockers line the hallway, some hanging open while others are completely without doors.

"The clock is ticking, Dr. Reid," the man's voice sounds through the thick door. "I suggest that you get moving."

I look down the hallway to both sides before deciding to go right. There is a trick that if you follow along the right-side wall while in a maze, you will eventually find the exit without backtracking. The rubber soles of my Converse tap against the tile floors, creating a slight echo that trails eerily behind me as I walk.

The flickering bulbs threaten to give me a headache, and I rub my eyes wearily. Although I've always loved reading about superstitious traditions and spiritual rituals, I've never personally believed in the supernatural. With that being said, though, the strange sensation of eyes resting upon me in this corridor would make any sane man contemplate the validity of his beliefs.

After roughly fifteen uneventful minutes of ducking into every classroom and trying every window, my paranoia has subsided. I try yet another abandoned classroom, seeing what I have seen in most of the others. Tattered posters hang from the walls - all of them outdated - encouraging sobriety and responsibility to the students that had filled these seats in the past.

Desks are left in crooked rows, thick layers of dust coating them like a blanket of snow. This fleeting thought almost immediately brings me back to the night of the Bureau Christmas party when Rosemary and I had childishly played in the snow. My eidetic memory does not fail to recall the sound of her symphonic laughter or the way her dark red hair danced delicately with the wind.

I snap out of my reverie, a renewed determination to escape filling me as I quickly check both of the boarded up windows, pulling at the planks of wood that were covering them but not being able to pry them loose. I turn on my heel, nearly jumping out of my skin when I see a model skeleton in the corner of the classroom. I resist the urge to slap myself for my skittishness before exiting the room and slamming the door behind me, continuing down the hall. I glance at the papers scattered along the edges of the floor, wondering why they never bothered to clear this place out when they abandoned it.

I am drawn out of my contemplation when I hear loud clicks echoing down the hallway, and I whip around to determine the source of the odd cacophony. My heart pounds in my chest when I see the lights turning off down the hallway, two by two.

I instinctually begin to run down the hallway away from the dark, realizing that the man had tripped the breaker. The lights continue to turn off behind me and I desperately push onward, not wanting to be consumed by the darkness. But no matter how fast I ran, the darkness was faster, quickly hurling me into complete and utter blackness.