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“How scared should I be right now?” wasn’t the kind of question Reid usually asked out loud, or even asked himself at all, but as Ben’s eyes flicked between him and Prentiss, the words pressed tightly against the back of his teeth.
Reid’s never been scared like this before. He hasn’t panicked. The only time he had was when Tobias Hankel kidnapped him from a wheat field and made him watch as he murdered people on the screen. He still remembers the burning odor of fish guts and the unusual euphoria that’d coursed through his veins each time he’d inject the Dilaudid. The weird mix of drowsiness and relaxation that’d hit all at once like a freight train, his limbs growing heavy like lead.
Although, Reid will always argue that he wasn’t technically on duty during that time so in his books, it doesn’t exactly count as a time he’s been scared like this.
Ben strides up to them, lips pressed into a thin line and slowly blinked, glancing at them both. Sighing wearily, he begins to open his mouth. “Which one of you is it?” he asks. Ben’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried the weight of command, the kind that made silence feel dangerous.
He walks past them both slowly, analysing the way Reid and Prentiss hold each other up in posture and facial expression. Searching for any tic, any difference in their expressions, any indicator that it might be them. Reid would almost compare his skills to an amateur profiler if he hadn’t decided to keep them hostage inside a church-turned-cult-location.
Reid had already catalogued the compound’s layout. Its narrow halls void of any achievements or photographs, reinforced doors locked with steel locks and an absurd amount of security chains, and the steep steps leading down into a basement, one where the girls would disappear every so often with their heads held low.
Ben stops in front of Reid, turning to face them both. His face represented the expression of a man who’s tired of everything life had thrown at him. Benjamin Cyrus was already a dangerous man when they’d profiled him. Reid worried with the newer developments, and the questions he was asking, he’d become more dangerous than they’d planned for.
Without warning, he brandishes a gun from a hidden holster. “Which one of you is the FBI agent?” he clarifies, staring deeply at them both with glazed eyes.
Prentiss turns to him with an exasperated expression, brows raised and lips pursed. “Why do you think one of us is an FBI agent?” Reid challenges carefully, brows furrowed in mock confusion. He glances at Prentiss before returning his gaze to Ben.
Ben stares at them both for a mere moment, analysing the emotions they’re wearing like shields. Prentiss and Reid are both staring back, brows carefully raised and lips pursed, their expressions a mask, a costume they wear in order to gain some sort of protection.
“God will forgive me for what I must do.” he mutters, before directing the gun at Reid’s forehead. He clicks the safety off, the subtle click reverberating around the silent backroom.
Reid shakes his head lightly, blinking a little faster than usual with the gun in his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And, to some extent, he’s speaking the truth. How had Benjamin, in the space of a few, maybe twenty minutes, learnt that there’s undercover agents here? Where’d he heard that undercover agents had infiltrated his fortress? Who’d told him such things?
The only source Reid can think of is either an inside man, one who somehow knows Reid and Prentiss and is Ben’s right hand man. Or, the news, probably the most common suspect option. Of course, this unsub wouldn’t avoid the news. No, he’d study it, searching for some sort of idea of what’s going on and how he should approach things next.
He’d study it intensively, analysing it like a madman. He yearns for control, the need to know everything and everyone. Control of the cult, and everything that goes on in and outside of its fortified walls.
Ben holds the gun steady, the butt of the gun digging painfully into Reid’s forehead. “One of you does.” His eyes stay locked on Reid, analysing, searching, intent on finding any sign of guilt. His face relaxes, morphing into a mask Reid can’t decipher. “Who is it?”
“Me,” Prentiss rushes out, “it’s me.”
Reid glances at her, the gun still trained on him. Prentiss hangs her head low in resignation, eyes glued to the hardwood floors. Wild, tousled strands of hair flow over her shoulder like uncontrolled waves in a tropical storm. Her eyes, once bright and sparkling and swirling with hope, now are glazed and curtained by shadows of pessimism and acceptance of what’s to come.
The unsub blinks a tad too quickly, still directing the gun at Reid. Dark brown eyes locked on Reid, as if he’d just confessed to a heinous crime. He’s still wearing that mask, that costume of a relaxed man, as calm as a clear sky, unaware of the storm brewing on the coast.
She glances up at Reid for a single second, breaking out of her stupor before her gaze shifts to the floor the next second. Reid wanted to tell her not to take the fall, but the words stuck like glass in his throat, the words dying on his lips.
Ben begins to lower the gun, retracting it from where it sat against Reid’s forehead. Reid turns his head to stare at Prentiss with furrowed brows. His sharp, alert eyes find Prentiss’s resigned ones, asking in everything but words why she’d give herself up like that. The words rose in his throat but logic strangled them before they could escape
Holding the gun tight in his fist, Ben turns his head toward Prentiss. Prentiss levels him with a calm look, as calm as the sea on a good day. Her gaze remains unbroken, a practiced mask she can easily slip into.
Ben’s gaze lingers on Prentiss like some sort of twisted staring contest, but the gun never fully leaves Reid. His eyes flick between the two agents, weighing the risk of sacrifice against cold suspicion, innocence against guilt. Then, with a sudden jerk of his chin, he gestures towards the stairs, the same one Reid had watched girls disappear down with heads hung low. “He stays,” Ben states, voice lower than usual but certain.
Reid’s stomach drops. “What?” he finds himself asking aloud.
“The innocent must not suffer further with the guilty. God commands me to shield you, and so I must place you where no sin can touch you. You will be safe as long as you remain where I put you.” Ben explains, as simply and casually as if he were discussing the weather. “The innocent must be shielded from corruption. God commands me to protect the pure.”
Tucking his gun back into the holster, he hoists Reid up easily by the arm. Reid stumbles, not expecting the sudden movement, glancing a weary look back at Prentiss. Her mouth opens and closes a few times as if wanting to say something more, protest something further, but the words never make it past her lips. With clenched fists and shallow breaths, she watches as he leaves the room.
Ben firmly grips Reid’s wrist, directing him towards the stairs. “Come, it’s in God’s will that I protect you from this evil.”
“Where—” They hurry swiftly past the corner wall. “Where are we going, exactly?”
The unsub shakes his head, eyes focused on the path ahead. “The corrupted cannot hear us. You’ll know when we get to the sanctuary.”
The word sanctuary echoes in Reid’s mind, but the image it conjures is not of safety and its warm embrace. Benjamin Cyrus has never been about safety and sanctuaries. The closest example he could think of is how fortified he made the church, how closely he studied anything going on outside of it, as if searching for any sign of infiltration. Like he’s waiting for something to go wrong.
He’d anticipated something going wrong from the start.
In some twisted sense of logic, the puzzle pieces began to fall into place. Why Ben had been so trusting at first, why he’d so calmly allowed them into the church itself—his fortress—without many questions being asked, why he’d acted so nonchalantly about the FBI and local law enforcement getting involved with his cult. He’d anticipated this—all of this—and had planned for it in advance. When and where is an unknown answer.
Benjamin Cyrus had anticipated them.
He’d been waiting for God’s test.
As Ben dragged him forward, the realization hit with the weight of inevitability like a train speeding towards him at high speeds. Ben’s grip tightens as they begin to descend the steps. He wasn’t being protected. This has never been about protection or his safety at all. He was being contained.
Buried alive in foresight.
“Why me?” Reid asks cautiously, matching Ben’s pace. “I mean, I’ve been interacting with Nanc—I mean, the corruption, for a long time.”
Ben hums. “Factually, yes. But God’s test reveals your soul has not been tainted by her corruption, despite your interactions.” His voice was calm, almost gentle, as if explaining scripture rather than delivering a world-wrecking sentence.
“Ben, I don’t quite understand why you’re moving me, then.” he says, searching for any cracks in his demeanor or his carefully crafted mask. By the book, it’s dangerous to engage so openly and truthfully with an unsub such as him, but he has to try. He has to. “If my soul isn’t tainted, if I’m still as pure as you say I am, then why move me at all?”
Their voices echo around the narrow passageway lying at the bottom of the steps. Thick concrete walls lined the narrow hall, smooth to the touch and leaving shadows of dust on his fingertips. The air is stale, drier down here than up top. It invades his throat, pushing the fresh air out of his lungs while stale air slithers its way in. Lamps are strung up along the path by rusting mounting brackets, their lights flickering like a dying flame. As they walk, their footsteps echo along with their voices, the squeak, squeak, squeak of Reid’s Converse shoes louder in the openly narrow space.
“You belong in the Sanctuary.” Ben replies cryptically, loosening his grip a little.
Somewhere in the back of Reid’s mind, he knew he’d get at least some sort of lecture from Hotch. He’s supposed to prevent this. He’s supposed to be smart enough to prevent this. Why is he going along with this?
“What is the Sanctuary?"
They reach a door. It’s not a wooden door, not like the locked ones upstairs which’d held their only escape. No, it’s worse. It’s a steel door, reinforced with various locks and chains Reid would expect to find in top-security prisons, not the basement of a church. His reflection shines on the clean metal like a mirror.
Ben smiles at him. It reaches his eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching upward like clockwork. “This is the Sanctuary.”
Reid’s reflection stared back at him from the steel, pale and distorted.
This is bad. Every profiler instinct inside screams at him to get himself out, get Prentiss out, go. This is very bad. Hotch will have a field-trip with his dumb decision. He needs to get out. He needs to go. This has all gone very wrong. The blueprints never revealed this room, like it’s hidden from view both in person and on paper.
Ben begins to unlock every lock and chain meticulously, as if it’s routine for him (which, now, Reid believes it is) before the final click reverberates around the passageway. Pulling on the stiff handle, he opens the door.
It’s a vast room, bigger and more open than the hallway. Concrete walls line the room, smooth but cold with faint moisture stains originating from the ceiling and dust that’ll cling to Reid’s fingertips. The air is stale and dry, almost recycled and metallic in taste at the same time. Two harsh, buzzing fluorescent bulbs hang from the ceiling, their yellow lights flickering.
Sorted neatly on bolted down wooden shelves, canned food and bottled water practically making its home on the surface. On that same shelf, worn bibles are stacked in towers of threes in co-ordinated rows. Outdated first aid kits lie on the shelving beneath that, its supplies sparse and inadequate.
In the far back corner sits a single cot. No duvets nor pillows, just a firm mattress, designed for endurance and not comfort. It’s military-like, the sort of cots you’d find in field camps, not the basement of a church.
Ben moves forward into the space, pulling him deeper into the Sanctuary. His footsteps echo along the tiled floors, Reid’s measured breaths the only other thing disturbing the silence. Gesturing around the room, he begins to speak once more. “This is where the pure wait. God commands me to shield your very soul from the corrupted.”
“Like Nancy?” Reid asks carefully.
“Like Nancy.” he agrees, grinning. “I’m pleased you’re beginning to understand.” he sighs distastefully, as if Prentiss’s code name left a bitter taste on his tongue. “I’m forever unsure of how that woman got into the compound. Corruption is supposed to be deflected by this fortress, not attracted toward it.”
Reid shifts from foot to foot, staying close by the door. “Perhaps God was testing you, Ben.” he says, playing along to the unsub’s delusions.
“Yes, perhaps you’re right.” He mutters. “See? This is why you’ll stay here. You’re a pure soul, you understand exactly what this compound stands for. The corruption it punishes, and the purity it celebrates.”
Reid takes another glance around the room. “If I’m pure as you say, why isolate me? Why not let me help you out, weasel out the corruption together?”
Hotch’ll lecture him if he doesn’t find some way out of this.
Ben tuts. “These steel walls'll be better than sin. They’ll protect you better than up there.” He turns to face Reid. “And, as for why you’re alone, well, it’s quite simple. I haven’t had another pure soul turn up at the compound.”
Reid splutters like a broken printer using its last cartridges of ink. “But–Ben, what about all those people you’ve taken into your church? Surely someone you’ve taken in has a pure soul like myself.”
The door looms behind him, its locks rattling faintly like a promise. One that smells of rusting steel and stale air, the heavy hinges subtly swinging the door back and forth in a cycle as air enters and leaves the room.
He cannot get himself trapped here.
Ben strides back towards Reid, placing a gentle, calloused hand on his shoulder. “I have to go. I do hope you understand.” he smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Every profiler instinct screams at him to run, run, run far away.
“You don’t have to do this.”
The hand leaves. Ben moves into the doorway, hand fumbling for the smooth handle.
“I already have.”
The steel door swung shut, swallowing the flickering lights of the hallway. Gone was the fresh outside air, replaced with the stale air of the Sanctuary. The locks clink into place one by one, each one sealing Reid deeper into silence and confinement.
✮✮✮✮✮
“Hotch,” Prentiss whispers, body taut against the locked bathroom door. “Ben’s taken Reid. Said something about Reid being innocent and protecting the pure. He didn’t say much more before he was dragging Reid out of the room. I don’t know where he is now.”
The bathroom is probably not the best place to hide inside a cult, however it was the only place she could think of that’d seem somewhat normal. Under the guise of simply going to the bathroom, Prentiss had been led down the corridor by Ben’s other companions, only leaving her be once she reached its door.
The line is silent for a moment before Hotch’s voice cuts through, sharp and urgent. “Emily, stay calm. Tell me exactly what you saw. Direction, door, anything’ll help.”
Morgan’s voice follows straight after, tight with frustration and tone clipped. “Damn it, Emily, he could be anywhere in that compound. We need a location, stat!”
Prentiss closes her eyes, leaning her head back against the wooden door. “I’m not exactly sure. First, we were in a backroom and he was pestering, interrogating us on which of us was the FBI agent. Reid had tried to deflect but then Ben pulled out a gun and aimed it at his head, so I gave myself up.” She sighs, biting her lip. The stress of not knowing where her friend had gone is physically eating her alive. “He chose Reid to stay. Said something about him being pure, which you already know. The point is, he took Reid. I think Ben led him down a staircase but I’m honestly not sure.”
“Emily, it’s okay.” JJ responds, jumping on the line. “Just keep talking us through it.”
Rossi’s gravelly voice cuts in. “If Cyrus separated him, it’s deliberate. He believes Reid is different, pure. That’s leverage, of some kind. We need to figure out why. Why would Cyrus need leverage, and why Reid more specifically?”
“It can’t be because he’s an FBI agent. I gave myself up, not him.” Prentiss reminds them. “Unless he’s figured it out already, he still believes Reid is some CPS worker.”
“Garcia is already pulling up blueprints.” Hotch intercepts the line. “We’ll find him, Emily.”
She glances at the door handle. “God, I hope so.”
Turning to face the door, she wonders if there’s anything she could’ve done differently. Protested more when Ben talked about keeping Reid someplace else, either with her words or her fists, both options would work equally well. Asked more questions, maybe even interrogated him like he’d done to them, about where he was taking Reid, although she’s not positive he would’ve said much. Offered to go down in his place, instead of letting the words dissolve on her tongue and letting him go. Her nails bite into her palms, the sting a poor substitute for the fight she hadn’t given.
✮✮✮✮✮
There’s many things speeding up Spencer’s heart rate right now.
The first, and most obvious, is the locked door. Usually, he could lock-pick his way out and that’s the end of it, but today is a completely different cautionary tale. There’s too many locks, a majority of them rusting anyway, not to mention the chains he’d seen earlier and heard rattling as Ben locked him in.
The second is how, at the same time, the room is both small and vast. It’s small enough, probably the average size of a bedroom in a flat. Clearly, the room is only made for one person, despite Ben’s insistence that he’d been searching for many more pure souls. One cot with a firm mattress sits lonely, empty in the far corner of the room. Spencer hasn’t moved from where he stands beside the door.
The third is how even though in his big smart brain he knows, knows, he has enough air, the air tastes stale and dry enough that he’s convinced he’s going to run out. He’s underground, will be for who knows how long, and there’s only one small vent behind the tall shelving. He knows, recites religiously to himself, that if he panics and speeds up his breathing too, he’ll use up more air than is in this small locked room.
Spencer stands stock-still by the door.
His pulse thuds in his ears, louder than the buzz of the flickering bulbs above. He tells himself over and over and over to breathe slowly, to converse what little stale air he has left even as it leaves a bitter metallic taste on his tongue, but every inhale scrapes his throat raw as if the air itself is sandpaper. The cot in the corner isn’t a bed, not really. It’s a reminder that this room is built for endurance, survival, not comfort.
He could probably list a dozen ways to escape a locked room, but none of them involved steel doors and locks this thick or air this dry. He stays by the door, a small part of his mind hoping it opens, as if the proximity alone might will it open or summon Ben to open it for him.
Reid never panics. He’s always wearing a mask, the calm and professional persona an act he easily slips into. He’s the guy who can read an unsub’s journal collection in a matter of minutes and link patterns law enforcement hadn’t seen before. He’s the guy who analyses an unsub’s handwriting and figures out the most minute facts about them, leading to the arrest. He’s the guy who calmly reassures crying scared kids whilst his team stalks out the unsub with guns blazing.
He can never panic on the job. Panicking gets people killed, and with how deranged most of their unsubs are, they can’t afford any more deaths.
So, he never panics. Yet, some part of him can’t help but compare this to his previous kidnapping. The small rooms, the locked door that was always too far out of reach, the stale air that dries his throat and rids his lungs of air. It’s all too similar, too familiar.
Breathe.
He stops pacing, opting to lean against the wall instead. Back against the smooth concrete wall, he places a gentle hand on his chest. He needs to breathe. In for four, hold, out for four, repeat. The stale air cycles in his lungs, throat uncomfortable and dry.
Step 1. Don’t panic
He’s calming down. His breathing is regulating, breaths measured instead of short and shallow. The panic is subsiding, all his fear squished into a tiny bottle he won’t open again, at least not until he finds a way out. He can’t risk panicking again.
Step 2. Listen out, either for perpetrators or your team
Slowly standing up from where he’s leaned against the wall, he strides over to the steel door. Its shiny surface showcases his reflection: his pale face gradually gaining more colour, his chest moving erratically as it begins to regulate, eyes as wide as dinner plates and hair tousled in messy curls.
Gingerly, he presses his ear against the door. Silence. No footsteps from outside, nor voices signalling any sort of threat or sanctuary.
Step 3. Attempt to signal for help
Raising his fist, he knocks. It’s a deliberate pattern, three knocks, a pause, then another three. The hope blazing in his heart hopes and wishes that his team hears him, or maybe even Prentiss, however that’s unlikely. She’s still upstairs, probably speaking with Ben or giving in to whatever punishment he had in store.
His heart aches. He’d left Prentiss alone. He should’ve fought harder to stay, should’ve fought harder to stay out of this room, even though it’d defeat the entire purpose of his undercover identity. He should’ve fought harder to prevent Prentiss being alone with him. Despite how much prior experience she might’ve had, being alone with a delusional unsub who had a vendetta against any type of law enforcement is never easy. Especially when he’s got an FBI agent as a hostage, alone.
No. He can’t be thinking like that now. He needs to focus on getting out so he can get back to Prentiss and his team.
He leaves the door, heading straight for the cot in the corner. Unlike the shelves, the cot isn’t bolted down. Its iron bedposts drag along the floor, screeching in protest as he drags it along the tile. Beneath the high-pitched scream is a low, grating undertone as the heavy metal holds itself up and leans all its weight into the tiled floors.
He stops when he reaches the steel door once again. His arms ache where he’s been dragging the cot, but he pushes it down. He can worry about it later when he’s out of it.
Channelling his strength, he forcefully bangs the cot against the steel door. It’s loud, reverberating around the empty room. Drag, bang, repeat. It’s a routine, a sound that may very well guarantee his escape.
With Tobias Hankel and his deluded methods of “rescuing Reid”, he’d been tied down, unable to do anything except tip his own chair over, recite an incorrect passage and speak lies about his unit chief, praying he understood what message really lied underneath the surface of his speech. The difference, however, between Tobias and Ben is that while they both believe they’re saving him, Ben has a more complicated way of showing it.
In the form of steel doors and rusting locks, Ben fully believes he’s saving him, or at least, that’s what Reid can understand about his delusions. Everything about this was pre-planned, everything was anticipated. That’s the stark contrast between them, and Reid isn’t sure if this is any better.
Well, it’s not every day you ask yourself if being held hostage by a cult and not being tied down is any better than your first kidnapping experience.
The mask stays firmly tight on his face, acting as a cork to the bottle containing all those complicated feelings he could never quite figure out, as well as the panic churning in his veins. Panicking will only limit his air intake and decrease his chance of escape, things he cannot afford to lose. So, he hammers the cork into the neck of the bottle and wears the calmness like a comfortable costume.
If his team comes, if they figure out where he’s disappeared off to, he needs to be ready. If it’s Ben, he needs to be ready to stall.
✮✮✮✮✮
Rescue had never felt so dire.
The compound looms ahead, towering over them like a wildfire creeping towards dry grass. It stands tall, the church itself unsuspecting to passerbys. Every light is lit, gleaming, bright lights streaming out of each window, burning into the dark night. The wooden entrance doors remain locked, guiding strangers—those who didn’t fortunately know the truth of this horrid compound—away.
Hotch stands uneasily in their field set-up, hand resting on his holster where his gun sits. “We’ve got minutes.” He says, voice cutting through the chaos of the night, clipped and commanding as he continues to communicate with Garcia. “Reid’s somewhere below that church. Garcia, keep feeding us the schematics and blueprints. Morgan, Rossi, stay with me. Prentiss,” he addresses, switching to the next channel, “secure the perimeter and keep an eye out for Cyrus. He cannot know that we know.”
Prentiss hums over the line, a strained breath passing her lips before she responds. “Affirmative.”
Morgan exhales heavily, glaring ahead at the compound with palpable anger and frustration. “He’s down there. Hotch, how much longer until we can breach?”
Garcia’s voice crackles through the comms then and Hotch switches the channel back. “I’ve got a reinforced section flagged. It’s on the basement level, straight ahead when you descend the stairs. Somewhat northwest, but I can’t tell from the blueprints alone.”
Hotch nods once, already moving, hand wrapping around the grip of his gun. “Thank you, Garcia.” He turns to the others, Morgan and Rossi. “Then, that’s where we breach.”
The rescue operation did not go quickly, though every second screamed urgency. Morgan, Rossi and Hotch breach the compound with guns blazing, splitting off into different directions as they search for the backrooms Prentiss had described. They’d walked gingerly, footfalls quiet on the hardwood floors and raised weapons inadvertently silencing anyone daring to speak out or alert Cyrus.
It doesn’t take long to find the backrooms nor the staircase a few steps beyond it. Morgan takes the lead, taking the steps two at a time as he descends into the basement. The lamps flicker like dying flames as he briskly walks down the hallway, gun raised as if expecting to find Cyrus down here, waiting for them. He’d anticipated their arrival before, he could very well do it again.
Rossi notes the unusually cold, dry air as they approach the steel door. Then, they hear it. The steady, repetitive pattern of knock, knock, knock, pause, knock, knock, knock. Another long pause. As if routine, a resounding BANG clashes against the steel like a drumbeat of survival.
“Reid?” Hotch calls out, his voice is a lighthouse in a dark storm.
Silence. The banging and knocking stops. For a singular heartbeat, nothing.
“Hotch?” Reid responds, hoarse and ragged. The single word carries exhaustion, relief and the fragile thread of hope all at the same time.
“Yes, Reid. We’re here.” Hotch confirms.
Morgan turns to him. “Hotch, we won’t be able to just open this door. We need something stronger. There’s too many locks and chains and we don’t know the combinations to any of them.”
Hotch’s jaw tightens, eyes flicking to the reinforced frame and its top-security locks. He doesn’t waste any time debating theories or possible points of entry. “Morgan, get the spreader. Rossi, cover him.”
Morgan tucks his gun back into its holster, pulling the hydraulic tool from the pack slung over his shoulder. The majority of the weight on his back lifted, the pack no longer pressing harshly against his FBI vest.
The steel jaws bite against the seam of the door, whining as pressure builds. Sparks erupt and spit like a tamed cat turned savage where the rusting chains resist, the sound echoing down the corridor like rapid gunfire.
“Reid, back away from the door now,” Hotch calls, voice steady but urgency underlying his tone. There’s the faint screech of iron grinding against tile before it all goes silent. “We’re breaching in three…two…”
The deadbolt shrieks, metal tearing against metal in a tragic dance of bright fire and wild sparks. Rossi’s weapon stays trained on the mouth of the hallway, eyes keen for any sign of Cyrus or his followers. His hands are steady, fist tight around the grip of the gun. Hotch’s hand hovers near the frame of the door, ready to pull Reid through the second the door gives way.
With a final wrench and scream from the groaning metal, the hydraulic tool forces the jamb wide open. The chains snap beneath the growing pressure, clattering to the floor in a heap. The door peels open, stale air rushing out in a major gust of wind.
Hotch reaches in, seizing Reid’s forearm. “We’ve got you.”
Reid stumbles forward into Hotch, arm grabbing onto the wrangled door frame to gain some stability. Rossi scans the interior briefly for traps as Morgan packs the tool away, grinning at Reid, relief flooding both their veins like a drug they don’t mind taking.
The compound groans above them, timbers cracking like bones. Dust falls like snow, showering them in white and grey. The concrete cracks and threatens to collapse in on itself. They had a few minutes, maybe even mere seconds at most.
“Move!” Hotch commands, already moving down the corridor. Morgan and Rossi follow close behind, Morgan staying close with Reid, who’s working to match their speed.
Reid pants harshly, practically running up the steps. “Is Emily okay?”
Morgan chuckles. “Emily’s fine. She’s outside. We were more worried about you. God, I didn’t even know what to think when Emily told us he’d taken you someplace else.”
“I played into his delusions.” he reports, walking back through the crumbling backrooms. “He said I was pure. I had to play into it. I just didn’t think he’d lock me away.”
Rossi hums beside him. “Cyrus didn’t say anything beforehand?”
“He said God told him to protect those who are pure.”
“I don’t think God intended for him to lock the pure away, though.” Morgan argues.
Reid stumbles up the final steps, lungs burning and dust clinging to his tousled curls. The compound groans uncomfortably behind them, its support beams collapsing beneath the weight of an unstable structure. Hotch’s hand stays firm on his arm, grounding him.
Ben had called him pure, claiming God wanted him protected. All Reid wants now is distance from the word. He isn’t pure. He’s alive. And as the compound roars behind them, that is always enough.