the art of saying goodbye

the inhaler

Aaron Hotchner's team of agents rode silently to the police station, their brains churning with all the information they had taken in over the last few minutes. Once they pulled into the station, they practically ran inside. 

What if Spencer really was alive?

Detective Willis greeted them and hurried the team to the back of the station. She showed them to an interrogation room. 

A boy sat inside. Morgan guessed he was about eighteen, nineteen years old. He had light brown hair, a dirty blond-- it had recently been sheared off by someone who was... not very experienced in hair cutting. Despite the short length of his hair, it was trying to curl. He seemed uncomfortable with it, and kept trying to ruffle it, or brush it out of his face. He had light green eyes, almost grey, and they were constantly shifting around. He didn't just look unnerved, he looked terrified. 

"His name is Corbin Gray. IQ of 152, and would be 19 years old." Willis said, reading from a file.

"Would be?" Hotch asked.

Willis nodded. "He died five months ago. I remember it. It was a nasty car crash, the whole car went into a river. They never found the body. I was the one that had to tell his family..."

"Have you already talked to him?" Rossi looked at the boy.

"Yeah, just when I first brought him in. When he started talking about Dr Reid, I had a feeling you all should be here."

"Thank you." Emily said, and then added, "Are you sure that's Corbin, though?"

Willis shrugged. "I'm waiting for a DNA test to come back, but that would be a hell of a lookalike if it's not him."

"I can talk to him." JJ offered. 

"I don't know, JJ. If we wanted to scare him even more, then that would be the best option. I think Emily should talk to him."

Emily looked up, startled. "Are you sure? I haven't interrogated in... well, a while."

"I'm sure." Hotch said with a reassuring nod.

Morgan bit his lip, nearly making it bleed. He hoped this went well. If it didn't... well, who knew what would happen? He watched Emily walk calmly into the interrogation room.

Corbin looked up. "Oh, thank goo-- who are you?" He looked startled by his rudeness, and quickly added, "Sorry, I was expecting Detective Willis."

"It's okay. I'm Agent Emily Prentiss--"

"Wait, really?"

Emily furrowed her eyebrows slightly. "You've heard of me?"

"Well... yeah. Spencer told me all kinds of stuff about his family."

"...Family?" Emily asked.

"Er-- sorry, he-- I just assumed-- that you all felt the same? He said his team was the closest thing he had to a family. I..."

"Oh, well... he was my little brother. Not by blood, but... well, you know."

Cory let out a sigh of relief. "Okay, good. I felt really bad for him for a second."

Emily nodded and sat down in front of him. "So you're Corbin Gray?"

"Yeah... I go by Cory, though. But that's not important--"

"Well, maybe not right now, but it's still something. I understand that you died five months ago in a car crash?"

Cory shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. "No, no I didn't. I've been in an underground testing facility, they test humans. They kidnapped a ton of people with high IQ's. They say they're running experiments, but it's just torture. They make you wear stereotypical insane asylum clothes, which isn't really that bad, but they also do terrible things, and the hygiene is nonexistent--"