"JJ, I'm sorry, I know I promised the team a restful night, but I just got a call. The police say that there's a bomb threat, and they're holding someone hostage. They're going to blow up the building-- possibly kill the people inside, but we might be able to evacuate some. Be there. Soon. It'll blow up if we aren't all there fast enough."
JJ had just hung up the phone and was pulling on her coat. She heard a patter of footsteps. She turned around.
"Henry?" She whispered. "What are you doing awake, I thought you and daddy were sleeping in the blanket fort tonight?"
"I heard you come downstairs. I wanted to tell you bye." He whispered back.
Did she really go to work that often?
"Oh, baby..." She smiled sadly and pulled him into a tight hug. "I'll get some time off soon, okay? Then I can be home for a while and we can have so much fun."
He nodded. "Bring Uncle Spencer. This time I'll beat him in chess without him letting me."
JJ laughed quietly and stood back up. "Go on back to bed. When daddy wakes up, tell him where I went. Make sure he knows I'm sorry." She gave him a kiss on the forehead.
He ran back to the living room where she had come home earlier to Will and Henry making a blanket fort. It was honestly impressive: it covered the whole living room, and they had filled it with lights, and-- well it was basically just the living room but with blanket ceilings and pillow walls.
She hurried out to the car and typed the address into her GPS without thinking. She had done this how many times before? Every time she had to do a hostage negotiation, she went completely numb. She didn't really think about anything, her mind was blank; it was like stage fright. But this would happen to any sane person: it's hard not to be nervous with someone's fragile life in your hands.
But Agent Jareau delivered once she was negotiating-- so they kept sending her in.
She arrived shortly after leaving her house, her body tingling as the numbness began to wear off. Fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances surrounded the building. Officers and paramedics rushed around, people lined the barriers.
"Did they evacuate?" JJ walked briskly to Hotch's side.
"Yeah, everybody's out, except..." He sighed, looking up at the building. JJ hadn't seen him so visibly worried in a long time. "I know there's a hostage. We'll get him out. Or her. We can do this."
Hotch nodded. "Reid's the hostage." He said. He didn't giver her time to react and continued, "We're getting set up over there in that tent. We don't have too much time; let's go."
But JJ couldn't go. She couldn't move. She looked back up at the apartment building. There was his window. What was he doing inside? Was he asleep, completely unaware of the danger? Unconscious and hurt? Was he tied up, awake, unable to move, so he could watch himself burn to death, and feel himself die?
She ran to the tent.
"How do we know this genius plan will work?" Harry stared at Spencer, who lay motionless on a bed in his cell.
"Because I know how profilers work. They follow evidence: evidence and circumstance is all they have. They follow the trail we leave." Leo crossed his arms. He felt powerful. This was his plan, and it would work.
"So. What trail did you leave?" Mark asked, leaning on the bars of the cell, and eyeing the still doctor.
"They'll start with the profile." Leo answered confidently. "I wait for them to call me. I give them an entirely different story. This is for revenge. They'll be looking for someone with a criminal record, someone disorganized, with experience in intricate constructions: a criminal wouldn't order a bomb. But they'll also think that we are sloppy and unorganized, because I called his whole team. They think that I didn't think about blocking any tracing, so they would know it was Spencer's phone I called the police with. Also, I'll leave a false trail, so when they have their tech goddess track this plain burner phone phone call, they'll go to a fake location with 'evidence' of a hasty departure. They will think they know it's about revenge. Once they are all sure that the doctor is dead, they will continue to investigate, and using this false profile we left them. They will slowly lose motivation and energy, and the case will go unsolved."
"And why couldn't we just fake his death in a car crash like the other ones?" Harry inserted.
"We are scientists. We can't run the same experiment on similar people forever. We have to see how people are affected by other circumstances. We are comparing and observing. We don't just experiment on all of our 'dead' geniuses. We watch the families, too. We already know what the families did when their child, or significant other, or sibling died in a car crash. They were sad, but could be comforted by the fact that nothing could be done about it. It wasn't their fault. It's a subconscious reassurance, they don't even know that they're comforted by that. But Spencer will be our first change. Because his family will think they had everything to do with the bomb going off." Leo smirked. He couldn't help but be encouraged by his own smooth speaking. He was convincing and cunning; his colleagues were always more helpful after one of his monologues. This time was no different than the others.
"He's right! We are scientists. We know what we're doing, and with this leader," Harry gestured to Leo, "All that can happen now is new lessons and new discoveries!"
The men cheered.
"Who is it, Penelope?" Morgan shouted over the sirens and loud rumbling of a noisy crowd. He didn't often use her actual name, and that got her attention.
Penelope jogged silently next to him, heading to the tent.
Emily caught up. "Morgan did you just get here?" She asked.
"Yeah, me and this silly girl were over on the other side of town. Don't appreciate the sudden silence from her, though--"
"Derek, if I knew who it was I would tell you. They just told me that I'm going to record the negotiations and try to track the caller's location--"
"Because he wouldn't stay in the apartment with the bomb. What a clever guy." Emily groaned.
They entered the tent together. JJ, Rossi, and Hotch already stood around a table with a phone connected to a recorder set up.
"Where were you." Rossi demanded. He looked furious. "We can't start without you. I assume you know that."
"Other side of town. We haven't been briefed yet, what's happening?" Morgan asked.
Emily walked to the board in the room. "This all we know about him?"
"How much time do we have?" Penelope was frantically setting up her laptop.
"Only sixteen minutes. Our profile isn't great, but we know that the unsub is unorganized. Hopefully his resolution is as weak as his tech skills." Hotch said with a bit of a growl. "We have Garcia, we should be okay."
Garcia sat nervously down at the table and pulled her electronic setup to her. Morgan looked around the room. "Where's--"
But Emily beat him. "Where's Spencer?"
Rossi looked up at them. "That's why you took your damn time. If you knew, you would have been here before we called, huh?"
"Knew what?" Morgan leaned on the table. "Where's Spencer?" he had a sinking feeling in his stomach. "Spencer... he isn't--"
"He's the hostage, and if we don't start the negotiations, then." Rossi didn't finish. He paused, then said: "We can't change the fact that he is stuck in there with a bomb. We need to do this."
Morgan looked out the tent flap up at the building. Up there. He could see Spencer's window. His little brother was in there, waiting to die. And he was late to the meeting that was Spencer's only chance of survival.
"Why don't we call him now, then, we're all here." Emily said tensely.
Rossi sighed, and looked apologetically at Morgan. "I'm sorry, Morgan. I'm just on edge, you haven't done anything to hold up the negotiations. We're waiting for him to call."
"Incoming call!" Garcia's voice shook.
They all gathered in a circle around the table. Hotch clicked a button to answer it. They all waited for the other end to speak. They looked to Garcia, who was quietly tapping at her keyboard.
"Ready?" Hotch mouthed.
She nodded hesitantly.
"I have your doctor." Leo said, watching Spencer stir in his sleep. He let himself be a completely different person. Deeper voiced, more aggressive-- raw and readable.
"We know. How can we get him back?" Hotch said.
"He's tied to his bed. He's awake. If you don't give me a good argument on why I should let this sick, lying bastard live, then he's gonna feel himself burn to death. Send bomb squad in, and he dies anyway."
The team winced.
"Why do you think he's a liar?" Emily asked.
"It doesn't matter." The voice said. "Present me your case. Aaron Hotchner, I hear you're a lawyer. Maybe you should take the lead."
"Location?" Hotch mouthed to Garcia.
Garcia nodded as she scribbled on a piece of paper. She walked quietly out of the tent and gave it to a group of officers. They were going to the address to arrest the unsub.
Leo sat across from Spencer's cell and listened to the team's argument. He was spacing out again; he hadn't even heard most of it. Nothing they said would bring Spencer "back to life" anyway.
He looked at the timer on the table. The team had a minute left.
He interrupted JJ. "Alright, I think I've heard enough."
JJ looked up at the team, tears streaming actively down her face.
"What can you offer me?" The voice said. "You have one minute to give me something better than this coward's life."
The team scrambled to offer him anything he could ever want.
Leo watched the timer. Thirty five seconds.
He didn't want the apartment to blow up by itself. He was going to push the button. He was going to make it the team's fault.
"You call him your family?" Leo asked quickly. Morgan stopped talking.
"What?" He answered.
The team looked bewildered at the phone.
"You call him family?" The voice repeated.
"Yes." Garcia said. Although she was in tears, she spoke with strength. "We are all family here. We know you must have lost something like that at some point. Remember that person. Right now, think of them. What would you do to bring them back?"
"I--" The voice seemed thrown back.
Leo pretended to be taken aback. "I-- It doesn't matter! He's gone. He has nothing to do with this!"
The team looked at each other. This could be their breaking point. Hope had emerged.
"Yes, it does." Morgan pushed softly. "Think about what you're doing."
"This is your choice." Hotch said.
"Don't make it." Rossi added. "Don't become what stole the best thing in your life from you."
JJ nodded and continued; "Don't be the monster in your nightmares."
Emily paused. "What do you say. Shut off the bomb. Save yourself. You don't need to do this."
"I don't think you understand." Leo said. He smiled at his own brilliance.
The team looked at each other.
"Why not?" Hotch asked.
"Because I already am the monster." The voice said. "It was my fault. And now this is yours."
The phone disconnected.
"No, no, no..." Morgan ran outside with Rossi and JJ. Hotch and Emily recovered quickly from their shock and followed.
Penelope was frozen. She heard a deafening boom. She didn't process it for a full ten seconds. Only then did she join the team outside.
She stumbled out of the tent and was immediately greeted by flames and smoke billowing from the apartment. It lay in crumples on the ground, a pile of ash and rubble and homes. And one man, supposedly somewhere inside all of it.
JJ whipped to look at Garcia, who was behind her. "Am I the only one who saw what just happened?" She asked herself. She began to scream.
"SPENCER? SPENCE? NO, HE'S IN THERE, THAT'S MY--" But police were restraining her from running to the remains of the building. She screamed and cried and kicked.
Not far off, Morgan was also being restrained. He was yelling at the officers and actually fighting his way to the fire. "NO, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! THAT'S MY LITTLE BROTHER IN THERE, YOU GOTTA GET HIM OUT." He turned to the firemen. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? MY BROTHER IS IN THERE, PUT THE DAMN FIRE OUT, GET HIM OUT--"
Rossi leaned against an ambulance. Spencer-- his son-- was dead. He couldn't fight that fact. He couldn't fight. He weakly sat down on the edge of the ambulance and let the numbness steal over him. He didn't want to think right now.
Hotch stood frozen and watched the flames billow to the sky. He had actually begun to cry. Had he even noticed? But who cared now.
Emily sat on the ground. She looked at the fire. She let herself break. In small pieces, in the form of tears and ripped off fingernails, she fell apart on the ground.
Morgan had given up. He was still being held by a couple police officers, but now they were supporting him, keeping him from collapsing. He had begun to sob openly.
But JJ wasn't giving up. She still fought and screamed. Her throat was ripped and burning, but still she fought.
"PLEASE!" She screamed at an officer. "PLEASE." She broke down as the police pulled her away. "Please," She whispered. "I promised my son that they would play chess again..."