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“It’s nothing more than an accurate translation. Superman preserves the original German wordplay by using the Latin prefix super but Superman, as a character, just isn’t a suitable candidate for the Übermensch. I mean the very fact that he’s not human disqualifies him but it’s more than that. He has never had to really overcome anything. He’s always been this god-like character. Now Batman, Batman is the perfect embodiment of the Übermensch. He is constantly striving to overcome his own humanity and he creates his own moral code. He justifies his vigilantism while retaining his reluctance to kill. That’s the Übermensch. Plus Superman’s stories have always kind of bored me. What’s the point of going up against a man who could literally kill you as soon as look at you?”
“You’re missing the point, Spencer. Superman is the superhero. He’s the all-American good guy. His strength is that he knows when not to use his powers.”
“You’re both wrong,” Garcia interjected and Kevin gave her a glare. “Sorry, sweetie, but Superman is boring and Batman’s only power is having too much money, Übermensch or not. The greatest superhero is definitely Jean Grey. As Phoenix, she is literally one of the most powerful beings in the universe. How awesome is that?”
“Garcia, you can’t just jump to Marvel. We’re talking DC here.”
“DC is so boring. Seriously, Marvel is where it’s at: X-Men, Spiderman, Thor, Iron Man. Need I go on?”
“DC has the iconic characters: Batman, Superman, the Flash, Green Lantern.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” Hotch murmured, Reid could just see the hint of a wry smile on his lips. “But apparently there are real criminals out there and Batman isn’t responding to the signal I put on the roof.” Garcia sniggered while Kevin looked utterly taken aback by Hotch’s elusive humour. “We have a case so back to work.”
Reid lingered and walked up to the conference room with Hotch. “So, who’s your DC hero?”
Hotch sighed heavily, “Spencer, we’ve had this discussion before. Garcia is right. Marvel is simply better that DC and Captain America is the greatest superhero ever. Period.” Spencer grinned at his boss and lover as he took his seat at the roundtable.
JJ entered shortly with files for everyone and an incredulous look on her face. “We’re off to Carson City, Nevada.” Three pictures appeared on the screen: two men, one Caucasian and in his mid-fifties while the other was in his early twenties and Hispanic, as well as a Caucasian women, also in her twenties. “Brad Gilbert, Juan Olvera, and Elizabeth Hendricks all went missing on Thursday 16th and were discovered yesterday, two weeks later, outside the city limits, dehydrated and mal-nourished. Until today, the disappearances have been treated as separate missing persons. They all claim that they were abducted by aliens.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Rossi grumbled.
“I have started looking into the victims, my Avengers, and so far I cannot find anything to link them. Brad Gilbert is divorced with three children, he’s originally from Passaic New Jersey but moved to Carson City, his ex-wife’s hometown, almost twenty years ago. Juan Olvera was born in Los Angeles, he’s been in Nevada for about a year and Elizabeth Hendricks is born and raised in Carson City. Brad is a realtor, Juan is in college and Elizabeth works at a hair salon. I cannot find any link but I will keep digging.”
“You do that, Garcia. Everyone else, wheels up in thirty.” Hotch led the team out of the room.
The jet rides cross country were always the worst. The team would toss ideas back and forward between themselves for an hour or so until there was nothing more to be said. Unless, Garcia contributed something new (or sometimes the killer struck again) they would then retreat to individual pursuits or sleep. Spencer found it mind-numbingly dull. He’d finish his books and if no one wanted to play poker he’d be left to awkwardly curl his long frame into his seat and, mostly, feign sleep. Which was what he was attempting to do when Hotch’s sock-clad foot nudged at his thigh from under the table.
“Hey, Reid,” Hotch’s voice was raspy and low, he’d obviously managed to sleep, “I know you’re not sleeping.”
“You know nothing,” Spencer grumbled but cracked open an eye. Hotch was looking at him with unadulterated affection in his eyes and Spencer quickly looked around the plane. Everyone appeared to be asleep. It wasn’t that the team didn’t know about them but usually they were just very circumspect about their relationship and the look in Aaron’s eyes was anything but. Spencer couldn’t help but grin back at him in response.
“You know why I like Captain America?”
“You admire his patriotism, his unwavering sense of duty?”
Aaron hummed his agreement. “It’s not just that, though,” Aaron’s eyes suddenly looked sad, “you know, Steve Rodgers was so weak and then he was given these amazing powers. He was so strong. He could defend himself and everyone he loved. I admired that a lot as a kid, you know.” Spencer swallowed heavily. It was always like this with Aaron, these little snippets of insight into his broken childhood that came in the middle of the night when his shields were down. It had never been on the jet before, usually, it was in their bed, sometimes on the couch in the middle of a movie. Spencer never knew how to respond but Aaron never seemed to expect a response. Even now he just nodded softly and lay back down with his head on his carefully rolled jacket. There wouldn’t even be a crease in the fabric when they got off the plane whereas Spencer’s suit would be a mess of crumpled cloth, his hair utterly chaotic.
“I love you, Aaron,” Spencer murmured and heard a happy rumble roll from Hotch’s chest in reply.
When they touched down into the scorching Nevada heat, Spencer remembered why he was so happy to leave his home state. Sherriff Hank Watt greeted them, his face lined and serious. “Thanks for coming. I don’t really know what to make of all this.”
“Well, we’ll do our best to get to the bottom of it,” JJ assured him.
“We should have called in Mulder and Scully,” a younger detective behind Watt quipped.
“That’s Deputy John Marshall. He’s a good man, just talks a lot of shit.”
“Hey!” Marshall complained but he was smiling good-naturedly. The team piled into the waiting SUVS with Reid, Morgan, and Prentiss heading to the hospital to interview the victims while Hotch, Rossi and JJ went to the station to set up.
It was mid-afternoon when they met up again at the station to report.
“Well, their stories are remarkably cohesive,” Morgan began. “They certainly seem to believe that they were abducted by aliens and experimented on. Not one of them can describe their attacker other than very tall, thin with an enlarged head. Probably a mask of some kind. The room was dark apart from a spotlight that was constantly focused on their face and another that the unsub was able to move around the table they were strapped to.”
“There are symbols carved into their stomachs, backs and buttocks,” Reid continued. “They suffered significant pain in addition to being underfed and dehydrated. These people were tortured. In between the sessions of torture, one arm was freed and they were able to feed themselves small amounts of food and drink water with a straw.”
“Also,” Prentiss completed, “each of them was raped without a condom. DNA was collected from each of them and it points to one rapist, definitely human, but so far Garcia hasn’t found him in any system.”
“Ok, good. Morgan and Emily, drive out to where the three were found. JJ you need to contain the press. The alien story leaked and they are descending on this like vultures. Reid, I want you working on the geographic profile. We interviewed the relatives of each victim and managed to get a rough idea of their movements on the day they were abducted. Elizabeth was definitely taken first while walking from the carpark to her work at the salon in the mall. We think that Brad was taken next. He may have been lured by the unsub as his car was found abandoned outside a property he was meant to be showing that morning. Juan was taken in the late evening but the exact time and place is unclear. He definitely went to his afternoon class but he didn’t show up for his shift at the bar where he was working. His manager said this was unusual so we can assume that he was taken in between 1800 and 2000.”
“Each of the victims described a bright light shining on them and a silver room. None of them remembered being taken but there are several drugs that could induce the memory loss especially when combined with the trauma they suffered,” Emily continued. “They describe a similar experience on their release. A bright light and then suddenly they were in the desert.”
“Their clothes were covered in ulexite, a mineral found all over Nevada so it doesn’t give us much,” Reid murmured, already sticking pins into the map on the bulletin board.
“Why release them?” Rossi queried, looking up from the reports in front of him on the table. “No one was really looking for these people. He could have kept them indefinitely.”
No one had an answer.
The team stayed into the night, poring over reports and collating information. Finally, Hotch called it a day and ordered them all back to their hotel. In their room, Spencer collapsed onto the bed, exhausted from not having slept on the plane. Aaron bent and untied Spencer’s shoes before gently stripping him of his tie, shirt and slacks. Spencer fumbled with the T-shirt Aaron handed him and sighed when he realised it was one of his lover’s. He popped out his contacts and crawled under the covers to wait for Aaron to finish in the bathroom but was asleep before he knew it. He awoke early to Aaron’s strong arms wrapped around him, protecting him through the night. Sometimes, it was hard to imagine Aaron as the scared little boy, cowering in the corner to avoid his father’s fists. He seemed so solid compared to Spencer but when he un-shuttered his eyes, Spencer could see how easily Aaron could be hurt, could have his heart broken. Spencer turned carefully and snuggled into Aaron’s chest, wrapping one arm around his back and vowing to always protect him.
Spencer stared at the map in front of him. There was very little consistency in this case. The victims were so varied. The abduction style differed. His pins were all over the map. The only constant was the ‘alien’ aspects. Frowning, Spencer tapped his pen against his lip and willed a pattern into existence. He flicked through different ideas in his head, examining and discarding each one in turn. His mind drifted to the conversation with Garcia and Kevin before they left. “Phoenix!” he exclaimed before turning to the room. The team was looking at him expectantly. “The points in the map. It’s like an incomplete map of the constellation Phoenix. Look, the three abduction points form the triangle with beta phoenix at the centre. This point is where the victims were found, and alpha is the point where Morgan and Emily discovered they originated. If I’m right, then this” Reid drew a long line out into the desert from point beta, “is where they were held.”
“Kid, how would the victims have known to walk to this point? They were disorientated, wandering.” Rossi stood up and pointed at the map.
“The unsub must have made them walk in that direction, somehow.”
“Alien mind control?”
“Suggestion? A path?” Reid countered.
“I guess it can’t hurt to check out this point.” Hotch sighed and grabbed his jacket just as the Sherriff burst through the door.
“Three more people were taken this morning. A woman and two men again.”
“Ok, JJ, Morgan, you’re interviewing the families. Rossi, Emily, go to the sites. Reid and I will head to the desert.” Rossi looked like he wanted to argue that Reid’s hunch was a wild goose chase but he bit his tongue.
As they drove out into the desert, Reid sat in the back with his maps calculating. He was jolted as Hotch suddenly stopped the SUV and reached for his gun. Spencer looked out the window to see a dilapidated van in front of them. There seemed to be an abandoned mine shaft about 300 yards in front of the van. Reid slid out of the back and pulled his gun too. Hotch radioed in for back up and then with a nod they both began to edge towards the van. Hotch quickly checked the empty front seat before nodding at Reid to throw open the back doors. There on the floor, unconscious, were one woman and two men. Reid was just leaning forwards to check their pulse when he heard rapid gunfire. He ducked behind the van.
There was a short burst of controlled return fire, reassuring Spencer that Aaron was well enough to shoot before Hotch shouted. “He’s down.” Spencer peeked round the van and saw Hotch kick the gun from the man’s hand before leaning to put pressure on the wound in his shoulder. Spencer approached softly. The unsub was certainly tall and thin but there had been no mask, his head was swollen and misshapen, probably with a brain tumour, but he looked Aaron in the eye and spoke clearly.
“I am the Phoenix. I will rise again,” before he passed out. In the distance, Reid heard sirens.
The jet ride home was more buoyant that the one out. It wasn’t often that there were no victims. The still unidentified unsub was in the hospital but there was little chance that he would awake again. The doctors were amazed that he had remained mobile this long with such significant tumours. Aaron sat beside Spencer, smiling softly as he flicked through a book and seemingly ignored the poker game going on around him. “Hey,” Spencer protested, swatting at Aaron’s hand as he grabbed some M&M’s. “You’re eating my chips.”
Aaron just snorted. “You’ll hardly miss them, Reid.”
Garcia’s face popped up on screen. “Hello, my Avengers.”
“We could be the Justice League,” Spencer grumbled.
“Hmm. Possibly, Morgan is Superman.”
“Damn straight,” Morgan grinned.
“Hotch is Superman,” Spencer protested.
“Leave me out of this,” Hotch groaned but he’d put his book down.
“Emily’s Wonder Woman,” Garcia continued. “I guess, Morgan could be Green Lantern.”
“I can live with that. Bossman can be the boss, man.”
“JJ, hmm, Flash? You are as speedy as they get.” JJ smiled softly.
“Rossi’s Batman. He’s got the money.”
“I want to be Batman,” Spencer moaned again.
“Sorry, honey, you are many wonderful things but you are not Batman.”
“Batman’s smart. I’m smart. I am not being Aquaman.”
“No, ooh ooh, you’re Atom. He’s smart.”
“Garcia,” Spencer wailed. “I don’t even have a PhD in Biology.”
“Aww, sugar, you can get one next week.” Spencer just munched on his M&M’s as the team laughed. Aaron’s hand was warm and firm on his thigh and that was all that mattered.