The Boss' Niece (Spencer Reid)

55. Suspension lifted

"This is cosy." Emily exhaled as she lit a candle and handed it to Derek, who grabbed it and held it.

"Do we have any idea what's going on yet?" Derek asked, sitting on his desk.

"Garcia's trying to get some answers. Power's out in the whole building. Backup generator, too." Hotch announced as he walked into the bullpen, having just come from Penelope's office.

Everyone was confused. Sparks blew. Lights flickered and now the entire FBI Academy building was enduring a power outage, all because of some asshole called "Mr. Scratch".

"This guy's got some mojo. He knocked us out right when we got our best lead." Rossi scoffed, rolling his eyes.

"We could cross-reference the name Mr. Scratch against old statements. We'd have to go to the paper files." Emily suggested.

"We don't have time. This unsub's probably already found every kid that made an accusation from back then. If we don't get back online soon or get a lucky break in this case, we're gonna be looking at more drugged victims and dead bodies." Derek explained.

"Ahem. Getting online is gonna be a lot harder than you think." Penelope exhaled, holding a candle in her hand as the team followed her into the conference room.

"Whoever engineered this, he did a complete and total network and infrastructure shutdown." Penelope revealed as she set her phone and candle onto the table.

"But I thought we had firewalls to protect from this kind of breach?" Hotch questioned, Penelope shaking her head.

"We totally do. And that's what scares me. Okay? Look, look. I managed to capture some of his hacking code on one of the hard drives before he could fry it. I printed this out at the copy shop. This is what I can tell you. It's the only thing, but it's good news. He wasn't hacking us. He was looking for something in the Witness Protection files, 'cause that's what he raided first." Penelope explained as she put a large pile of papers down onto the table, Emily picking up only a small section of the pile.

"Do we know who in Witness Protection?" Derek questioned, Penelope exhaling.

"Well, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it? In that I will pay you $64,000 if you can answer it. His encryption algorithms are beyond the beyond the beyond." Penelope explained, everyone still confused, but more concerned than before.

"We're not gonna find him through his computer expertise. Certainly not now. We need to figure out why he'd take the risk to hack us." Rossi crossed his arms, unsure.

"It's like JJ said. He's looking for every kid who made an accusation. One of them is in Witness Protection." Derek exhaled.

"And he saved them for last because if he killed that target first, we'd be on him immediately." JJ shook her head.

"Huh." Emily spoke up, her eyebrows raised in intrigue.

"What? You see something?" Derek asked, confused.

"Well, I'm definitely no Reid...encryption's a highly specialised skill set, but it's fundamentally a mathematical process, which means it's a human process, but sometimes your technique can reveal where you learned it. I think I know where he learned how to do this." Emily gasped.

"Where?" Hotch asked.

"Harvard. Which oddly enough isn't known for its advanced math program, but it is known for one particular class. When you're good at math, you're good enough to get into Harvard, you take a math class called Math 15. When you're better than that, you take Math 25, but when you're the best, the absolute best, you take Math 55- honours advanced calculus and linear algebra. Graduates are immediately employed by the U.S. government because they're too dangerous to work anywhere else. More specifically, they're employed at the NSA." Emily revealed.