Chapter Text
“As far as we’re aware, there are the lives of two teenagers currently at stake. Above all else, this means we still stand a chance at saving them,” Rossi addressed the local police. They belonged to a precinct in a big city and were well-adjusted to major crime, of course, but a serial killer was always its own beast and the apprehension, excitement, and rapt attention evident on each and every one of their faces made it blatantly clear that they were all aware of that fact.
“We believe our unsub is being compelled by a delusion to commit the murders,”
“We believe the centre of his delusion is the sacrifices made at Mount Lykaion approximately three thousand years ago,” Reid explained. There was plenty more detail there, of course, but there was neither time nor reason to share every shred of information they had at their disposal. “In order to prepare his victims for this sacrifice he is in the habit of holding them for a week before they are murdered, during which he feeds them well and keeps them restrained. Aside from resulting abrasions on their wrists, it seems he causes them no other injuries,”
“We suspect that the unsub is acquiring his victims via blitz attacks as he likely doesn’t possess the social graces to charm them,” JJ explained, “The bodies have all been found missing the upper section of their skull, so it is likely this is also the spot he targets when abducting them, as the M.E has found only minimal suggestions of head trauma on the bodies. He is likely unemployed, and any job he does is likely unskilled and part-time. He is unlikely to be educated beyond a high school level and may have at one time been hospitalised for psychiatric care,”
“Though we would like to believe we have four to five days to find Thomas Miller alive, we have reason to suspect that our unsub may have broken his usual pattern,” Hotch picked up where JJ left off. “We suspect that Perseus Jackson is actually the primary target of these attacks, and, as he was abducted yesterday, it is likely the unsub will continue to unravel at an accelerated rate. This means we cannot predict how long we actually have to save these boys,”
“Jackson was abducted some time between leaving the station and arriving at his family’s apartment on the Upper East Side,” Morgan explained, “Though it is difficult to be more specific than this. The disposal sites indicate that Midtown is the unsub’s comfort zone, but it is also likely one or more of the other victims was abducted from closer to Jackson’s home. As such, we can’t rule out the possibility that the unsub was staking out this station, perhaps even in the hopes that we might bring Jackson in and he might be able to abduct him on his way out,”
They finished the profile and left Colmer to assign the locals tasks and collect any information or ideas they may have to offer, retiring back to the conference room that had been set aside for them.
“There’s been no sign of Miller’s body yet,” Morgan reasoned. “That might be a good thing,” he didn’t necessarily sound convinced.
“Or maybe not,” Reid rubbed his hand on the back of his neck, “We know he managed to hide the earlier victims effectively, and if he has given up on his ritual with Miller he may be able to replicate that effectiveness,”
Rossi put his hand on Reid’s shoulder. “Come on, kid,” he urged, “You know we don’t assume it’s too late to save someone until we’re sure,” Reid nodded.
“Garcia is still on surveillance duty,” JJ commented, “I wonder if she has anything yet…”
“Do my ears deceive me or have I just been summoned?” a familiar rhythm of footsteps clicked along the floor as Garcia appeared with her laptop in hand, skirt moving gracefully around her shins.
“That voice of yours is like music to my ears,” Morgan grinned at her. She returned it eagerly; if they required any more confirmation that what she had was indeed news for them that was it.
“Well keep listening,” she insisted, “Because we found something. Okay, so, you know how this guy knows Midtown like, scarily well? Yeah, so it looks like he actually knows it well enough to keep any and all criminal activity well away from just about every surveillance camera which is pretty freaky,” she noticed how Hotch was looking at her and quickly interrupted her own train of thought “But also not the point. So we shifted the focus of our search. We knew a few of the victims had links to the Upper East Side so we started looking there instead and, quelle surprise , the unsub doesn’t know that area quite so well. In fact, one of the junction cameras captured the abduction of Thomas Miller, we just had to figure out where to look,”
“That’s news,” Rossi’s eyebrows shot upwards, “any chance we can identify him from that tape?”
She winced. “No such luck,” she set her laptop down on the conference table and pressed the spacebar. The footage was pixelated and empty of any signs of life until a teenager with dark hair entered one side of the frame. He had headphones on, flattening his hair in the middle of his head and causing it to stick almost straight upwards around the band, and was walking with his thumbs tucked into the front pockets of his baggy jeans, his eyes cast down, watching his own footsteps. He seemed relaxed, untroubled, and unaware. He had almost exited the frame by the time a second figure appeared. He was shorter than the first, wearing a bulky coat with an overly large hood pulled up over a cap that kept his face cast in shadow, the lower half of it equally as obscured by a wrinkled surgical mask. “He may not know the Upper East Side well enough to avoid the cameras but he’s aware enough to make counter measures,”
“That’s interesting when he profiles as so decidedly delusional,” Lewis rubbed her chin, “His criminal sophistication seems really out-of-place,”
Reid nodded thoughtfully. “It’s almost like somebody is there to remind him to keep his identity hidden. It is possible that his actions are fuelled by a delusion but he is still aware that they’re illegal, though,”
“You’re still going to catch him though,” Garcia seemed to be reassuring herself.
“Of course,” Hotch nodded, “He’s just bought himself a bit of time and no chance at an insanity plea,”
“We can still find information on him from this video,” Lewis commented.
“Already done,” Garcia declared, “I ran the video through my software--as expected we got a very correct 5’11” for Thomas. The hat and the coat made the unsub’s height a little trickier but he’s between 5’8” and 5’9” and he’s pretty fast and light on his feet,”
Morgan looked at the video. “The coat distorts his body type, but for him to be able to drag away these kids who are all in good shape themselves he’d have to be pretty fit,”
“It also confirms that we were right about the blitz attack and the initial blow being aimed at the area of the upper skull that is found removed on all the victims,” JJ remarked.
“It also further demonstrates the unsub’s sophistication,” Reid squinted at the screen as the same silent clip played repeatedly, “He’s able to strike the victims’ heads with what looks to be a frying pan without causing extensive damage to their skulls or accidentally killing them with blunt force trauma,”
They were greeted at the station the next day by a very harried looking Penelope Garcia.
“Hey Mama, have you slept at all?”
“No, I have not slept. I have been thinking. And watching. And drinking coffee. Mainly drinking coffee. The issue with there being so many cameras in this city is that there is an awful lot of footage and only so many hours in a day to watch it all. But that won’t stop me from trying. And, good news, we found footage of the unsub dragging Andreas Kerr’s unconscious body. Bad news, we’ve learned nothing we didn’t already know from the video of Thomas Miller, because we couldn’t find any footage of what Andreas was being dragged to,” She was practically tearing her hair out.
“It’s okay,” Morgan attempted to reassure her, resting his arm across her shoulders.
“No,” she insisted, “It is not okay, and not even your incredible arms and welcome affection could make it okay. We have so much on this guy and yet it seems like we have nothing because I can’t find anything that actually gets us closer to him. I hate-- hate-- feeling useless but I’m already doing everything I can and my uselessness is about to cost two more teenagers their lives,” she groaned then yelled at the ceiling, drawing attention from just about every officer in the bullpen.
“Okay Baby Girl, how about you take a deep breath and have a quick power nap. There’s a couch in Colmer’s office I’m sure he’d let you use,”
“No, no, I’m fine. And I need more coffee,”
“You really don’t,”
“Sorry, I can’t hear you over the call of the coffee machine,”
Morgan chuckled fondly. “That woman’s crazy,”
“I’m right here!” She called as she poured herself a cup of the sort of burnt, dirty-tasting coffee that tended to exist in stations, loaded with all the necessary caffeine to make people overlook its dishwatery taste. He rolled his eyes and guided her to the conference room. Her hands shook as they held her cup, the liquid inside of it sloshing up and over its sides, landing occasionally on her hands, evidently not hot enough to burn them.
“If you won’t sleep you can at least sit down for a moment and look over our boards. There has to be something that we’re missing and your fresh eyes might help,”
“I’m not sure fresh is the right word,” Rossi commented, “But it couldn’t hurt for her to have a look,”
She nodded too quickly. “I can do that,” she sat in one of the cushioned chairs around the conference table but quickly jumped straight back to her feet as though she had been electrocuted when the door creaked timidly open.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” the voice was small and wavering, belonging to an officer who must have been brand new to the force and only a handful of years older than the victims in the case. “But Perseus Jackson just arrived at the nearest hospital with a boy assumed to be Thomas Miller. Jackson is adamant that he talks to you, and soon,”
Hotch nodded. “We’ll head straight over,” he then looked back at the BAU. “We know now that we need to assign him a protective detail. And quickly. Our unsub is motivated by obsession; Percy Jackson isn’t free yet.”
It was decided that Morgan and JJ would be the two to talk to Percy Jackson in the small, impersonal hospital room he had been placed in, as well as the first that would stay with him should the unsub come back. He sat on the edge of the bed, his legs crossed beneath his body, balling up the sheets in his hands then smoothing them out repeatedly.
“I hate hospitals,” he said in lieu of a greeting. His wrists were snugly bandaged and there was blood matting the hair at the top of his head, he looked desperately tired and very much twitchy but, all things considered, disconcertingly calm. “I was going to take the other one here then go straight to the station but they insisted I stay so they could check me over so I got them to bring you here. The other one--what’s his name?”
“His name is Thomas Miller,” JJ told him, careful to keep her voice soft yet still far from condescending. “And you saved his life. We’d like to know how,”
“Right,” he left the sheets alone to pick at the blood in his hair. “It was dumb luck mostly. We were in some sort of basement and this water pipe burst. He had our hands tied over our heads with blindfolds on. The water knocked mine off and I saw the knot and figured I might be able to untie it. I kind of sawed my wrists with the rope in the process but I managed to get myself down and then I untied Thomas,” he stopped picking at the clumps of blood in his hair to show them his abraded palms, the skin red, raw, and screaming. “He was barely conscious so I had to drag him out. We went up these concrete steps and out onto the street and this woman saw us and offered to drive us to the hospital,”
“Impressive,” Morgan raised his eyebrows, “That’s more than just dumb luck, kid,”
Percy shrugged. “Maybe,”
“Is there anything else you remember?” JJ leaned towards him. “About the basement or the street or even the man who did this?”
“I was walking from the police station to the subway. I must’ve only been a couple blocks away when this guy hit me hard. I think I blacked out because when I woke up I was already tied and blindfolded. I didn’t really see anything, but the guy kept muttering. He sounded pretty local, had a high-pitched sort of voice, but what he was muttering didn’t make any sense,”
“What was he saying?”
Percy shook his head. “It was like he was trying to speak ancient Greek,”
“Trying?” JJ pressed.
“Yeah, like he was reading it but he had never actually been taught the language. His pronunciation was all wrong,”
“Wait,” Morgan held up his hands, “Rewind kid. You speak ancient Greek?”
Percy laughed with about as much humour as he could manage. “Uh, yeah. I’m a counsellor at a summer camp where they teach it,”
“Right. And could you understand any of what he was trying to say?”
“Something about the son of Zeus? It was more gibberish than not,”
“That’s okay,” JJ reassured, “Anything else?”
“He was pretty erratic. He’d show up and make all this noise, I think he was sharpening knives. I got the feeling Thomas didn’t have long and I had what I was pretty sure was going to be my only chance to get us both out,” He looked down at his torn-up palms. “He’d feed us when he came. I didn’t want to eat but he’d grab my jaw and force me to chew. I think he learned at some point not to get his hands too close to our mouths,”
“You think one of the other victims bit him?” Morgan checked.
Percy nodded. “I hope so,”
“What was he feeding you?”
“Like, meat-” and suddenly his face went rather green. “Oh gods!” he started prodding at the bandages around his wrists with frustrated vigour, jagged edges of chewed, chipped nails poking at the wounds beneath the gauzy fabric. He swallowed and it sounded dry and painful. “I remember Annabeth saying something about the human sacrifices being cooked with the animals…”
JJ caught on quickly. “You think the animals from the sacrifices were what he was feeding you?” She took his hands in hers softly, making an effort not to startle him whilst also trying to stop him from continuing to aggravate his wounds. He nodded and settled his hands in his lap as JJ let them go.
“Annabeth?” Morgan asked.
Percy nodded, seemingly less green already. “My girlfriend. She lives in California. When she learns things she likes to tell me about them and I like to listen to her. When they found the body at Lykaion she told me all about it,”
“Shades of Reid,” Morgan commented dryly to JJ. She chuckled.
“Was there anything that stood out to you about the street you were on our the basement you were in?” she asked.
Percy looked apologetic as he shook his head. “I’d barely stumbled a few feet on the street when the woman saw us and picked us up so I didn’t have the chance to really get my bearings. I wasn’t paying attention when she was driving either, I was trying to make sure Thomas was okay. The basement was just a basement,”
“Were there any businesses on the street? Local stores or even chains you managed to catch?”
He sighed. “I’m severely dyslexic and mildly concussed. There was a bodega on the street corner but I couldn’t read the sign. It was green. I know that isn’t helpful,”
“You’re doing great,” JJ reassured. “Did the woman who picked you up stick around?”
“I don’t think so. Her car was black, four door, kinda old. I don’t really know cars all that well but the hospital has surveillance cameras, right? You’ll be able to find her?”
“I’m sure we will,” JJ said, then her phone started to ring. She looked down at it and walked to the door. “If you think of anything else, tell Morgan and we’ll look into all of it,”
She stepped outside of the room and answered the conference call, glancing quickly through the thin sliver of window in the door to Percy’s hospital room to see him talking to Morgan. Rossi’s voice was the first she heard. “How’s the kid?”
“Miller’s barely conscious and in no state to talk to us,” she admitted, “there are police stationed inside and outside of his room. They’ve told us he’ll make a full, physical recovery though his head wound is significantly worse than Jackson’s. The abrasion of his wrists is less severe, though,”
“And Jackson?”
“I’m almost worried about how well he’s doing,” she admitted, “He’s acting like a kid with ADHD and PTSD who has missed a day of his meds, but not one who has just survived one of the worst things that has ever happened to him,”
“You aren’t saying you're suspicious of him?” Lewis checked.
“No,” JJ shook her head despite knowing they couldn’t see it. “I’m saying I don’t think this is one of the worst things that has ever happened to him. Whatever went on the last time he was missing was obviously more severe than a madman kidnapping and intending to kill and cannibalise him,”
“Well that’s a terrifying thought,” Garcia piped up.
“It is,” JJ agreed, “But him being so collected has made him pretty helpful for information. He says they escaped from a basement where a pipe exploded and a woman picked them up from the street outside. He couldn’t give us too much more because he couldn’t read any of the signs or plates, but Penelope, do you think you could look at the hospital surveillance from when Percy got here? We have a rough description of the car and we’re hopeful she might know which street she picked Percy and Thomas up on. I don’t know what sort of building the basement was in, but there’s an outside chance somebody else in the building might have noticed an issue with the plumbing because of that exploded pipe, though I doubt the unsub would have called anyone else into his murder basement,”
“Ooh I get to be useful!” she heard Garcia clapping her hands together, “I am all over it. I will get back to you as soon as I have anything,”
Meanwhile, Morgan was trying his best to figure out what to say to the kid. He eventually landed on “That’s an interesting tattoo,” casting a lingering glance at the kid’s forearm, marred with the shape of a trident and a series of letters.
Percy quirked his eyebrows upwards. “That’s definitely a word for it,” he said, looking at it as though he had just remembered it was there. Morgan got a sick sense that he might have been referring to the word tattoo rather than the description he had chosen for it, because the longer he looked at it the more it looked like a brand. That thought sat sick and heavy in his gut and he didn’t want to confront that there might be somebody out there who was so brazenly branding kids like Jackson.
“What does SPQR mean?”
“Senatus Populusque Romanus,” he said. “It’s sort of a slogan of the Roman Legion,”
“Does the Roman Legion mean anything to you?”
“Nothing particularly good,”
“And the trident? That seems a lot more like Poseidon than Zeus,”
“It’s for my dad. Did my file tell your team he was lost at sea?”
“It didn’t tell us anything about him at all,” Morgan admitted, “But we did learn about your maternal grandparents dying in a plane crash,”
“Poseidon and Zeus,” he muttered, “It seems like the gods have something against me, right?”
“They’ve definitely not been kind to you,” Morgan agreed. “I bet your family goes through a lot, huh?”
He hung his head as though ashamed. “Yeah,” he said. “They do. They’re on their way over now,”
“I get it,” Morgan said earnestly, “I put my family through a lot when I was your age too. A lot happened to me as a kid and when I got the chance to help other people who were going through their own types of awful and give my mom a son she could really be proud of, I took it,”
“Is it worth it?”
“I’d like to think so,” Morgan settled in his seat, “But that doesn’t make fate any less cruel”
Percy all but scoffed. “Yeah.” he said, “You can say that again.”
“Okay,” Garcia said, “I found the car that drove the boys to the hospital on the surveillance footage. According to my search, it’s registered to a Mr. Pedro Menendez of Manhattan, New York. The most likely candidates for the woman Percy was talking about are either his wife Penny or their daughter Isabel,”
“I’ll check with Percy how old the woman in the car was,” JJ said.
“Good idea,” Hotch approved, “Reid and I will head to the Menendez house to ask her, JJ call us when you know which woman we need to talk to,”
The drive from the station to the Menendezs’ apartment was a short one and Reid had barely gotten off the phone with JJ by the time they arrived. “Percy says the woman was college-aged,” he relayed, “So that sounds like the daughter,”
Hotch nodded and they headed over to the stairs leading up to the Menendez’s apartment. “Do you not want to take the elevator?” he asked Reid, the beginnings of a smile twitching at the corners of his lips.
“Uh, no,” he stepped onto the first of the stairs, making a concerted effort not to touch the handrail. “I think I’ve learned my lesson,”
It was Pedro Menendez who opened the door when they knocked, but he showed no hesitation in calling after his daughter and bringing her to the door. It seemed pretty evident that the family didn’t believe they had anything to hide, as they were unflinchingly forthcoming. Isabel was in her early twenties, with long hair that had been dyed a light caramel brown but that was growing in almost black by the roots. She dressed well and had one of those overly expressive faces that would inevitably deter her from picking up poker as a hobby.
“Of course I remember those boys,” she told them as they sat on her family’s overstuffed couch in a lounge room almost lined with grinning family photos and childhood artworks. “They looked like they were in pretty rough shape and I’m not oblivious, I’ve seen the news reports about those kids’ bodies and they looked a lot like them. I figured they were in danger and I could get them out of it,”
“You did well,” Hotch reassured her. “You only spoke to one of them, right?”
She nodded a few too many times, evidently stressed by the overly straight angle of her spine and the way she twisted her rings around her fingers. “Yeah, he was practically carrying the other one, he was in a bad way. I know I should have stuck around, but I was already late to an important meeting at my work--I’ve only been there a few weeks, I could only afford to be gone for so long, you know,”
Hotch nodded. “You aren’t in any trouble,”
“Only one of those boys is currently able to talk to us,” Reid explained, “And we doubt that the other will be able to provide us with any more information than we currently have. The kid you talked to has been a lot of help to us and we’re making sure he’s safe, but he is also dyslexic and wasn’t able to give any information that would help us learn the address where they were held. We were hoping you could fill in those gaps,”
“Good news, my sweets,” Garcia was excited, an end finally in sight, “I have found a digital complaint forum for an apartment building on the street Ms. Menendez named with a sudden influx of plumbing issues starting this morning. The building has a basement unit that is rented out to a Hugo Gabrish for a greatly reduced rate in exchange for basic handyman jobs he occasionally does around the building. And I know I called Percy’s record a red flag but this one’s less of a flag and more of a neon sign. He’s 32, unmarried, and seemingly as lacking in the friend department as he is in the romantic one if his Facebook is anything to go off. He has a grand total of three friends on the site, which wouldn’t be all that odd if he didn’t use it regularly, but he posts multiple times a day, every day. And would anybody care to guess what he posts about?”
“Mythology?” Rossi guessed.
“Ding ding ding, right on the money. They’re all rambling and nonsensical and definitely obsessive,”
“Who are the three friends?” Reid asked.
“They seem to just be three residents from the building who took pity on him. He has lived in the building for about six months even though he has lived elsewhere in Midtown for his entire life. He moved into the building when he was released from psychiatric care for a psychotic episode and suicidal ideation. The reports from his doctors on the ward are troubling, to say the least. During his time there he did a lot of reading which isn’t, in and of itself, worrying, except for the fact that there seemed to be two recurring themes in his literature: crime and mythology,”
“The doctors didn’t have any problems with him reading about criminals?” Rossi asked, sounding somewhat incredulous.
Garcia hummed. “Well, not at first. The suicidal ideation was the primary reason for his hospitalisation so his interest in crime seemed to be nothing more concerning than regular morbid curiosity,”
“At first?” Lewis repeated.
“Yeah… his reading materials were limited following an incident involving another patient. He sharpened a spoon into a weapon and attempted to attack another patient with it,”
“Robert Maudsley is a British serial killer who committed three of his four murders whilst incarcerated and who is currently kept permanently in solitary confinement in a special unit in HMP Wakefield due to the risk he poses to the other prisons. He killed the second of his victims in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital with a makeshift weapon formed from a sharpened spoon. Despite there being no actual evidence of cannibalism, this incident fallaciously earned him the nickname Brain Eater,” said Reid.
“Well I don’t think our unsub got the fallacious part,” Garcia grimaced. “Gabrish had no violent criminal record prior to his hospitalisation, though he did have a bit of a reputation for unprovoked bar fights, nobody ever pressed charges. He really doubled-down on this in psychiatric care, which led to the duration of his hospitalisation being extended but evidently wasn’t severe enough to prevent him from being released back into the public. Following his release he developed a reputation for being meek and mild-mannered, probably because he redirected his anger elsewhere,”
“We have the address for the basement apartment unit?” Rossi asked
“That we do. Sending it to your tablets--pause for dramatic effect… now!”
“FBI!” Hotch pounded his fist against the door to the basement but there was no answer. “Open up!” This was usually Morgan’s speciality, but he was still occupied with his protective detail. There continued to be no sort of response from the other side of the heavy door. They had spoken to the landlord earlier and had been given a key so they wouldn’t have to kick the door in. So, hand clasped securely on his weapon, he clicked the key into the lock and watched the door creak steadily open. It was loud but distant from the other apartments, and the sound their boots made on the concrete floors was almost deafening with how it echoed in the space. There was a kitchenette tucked into a corner and a door on the other side of the room that must have led to a bathroom, all of the movable furniture seemingly pushed flush against the far wall so they were just barely usable for a person who didn’t mind having to clamber over their bookcase to access their bed. The windows were small and high up on the wall, they should have just been sufficient to light the room to a dim sort of visibility in the afternoon sunlight, but they were covered by curtains that were caked in dust as if they hadn’t been moved in weeks, at least.
The rest of the room seemed to have been dedicated to Gabrish’s extracurricular activities. A nauseating miasma filled the room, seeming to originate from the thick stains on the mismatched rugs that had been put down to combat the cold of the floor, something sweet and putrid, something else hot and bodily and sharply metallic. There was a small weapons rack against the wall, every space on it occupied with an ornate blade aside from one that was conspicuously empty. Much like that space.
Gun still held in front of him, Reid gestured up at one of the pipes running along the wall. “That’s the one that exploded,”
“And that must be where the kids were tied up,” Hotch remarked, observing two ropes dangling lamely from the support beams on the ceiling just beside the damaged pipe. There was a puddle on the floor, soaking into the rugs and sitting stubbornly on top of the concrete. The ropes were situated closely together as to accommodate for the lack of space in the unit, so close that, had they not been bound by their wrists, one of the kids would likely have been able to reach out and grab the other.
Hotch dropped his gun back to his side after they had cleared every nook and cranny of the space. “He’s not here,”
“Then where is he?” Rossi asked. Lewis looked around the room.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “But I don’t doubt that he’s our guy. Everything here fits in with Percy’s story: the burst pipe, the ropes hanging from the ceiling, the door can even be locked and unlocked from the inside without a key,”
Hotch’s phone started ringing, a loud trill that rattled around the room, quickly drawing every pair of eyes to its source. Hotch answered it and put it on speaker but there were no words transmitted over the line for a long moment that felt as though it lasted forever, only a panicked sort of clatter. “Morgan?” Hotch called worriedly, but there was still more loud and concerning noise and no intelligible words. The closest thing was the low, pained groan that resonated before the phone on the other side seemingly fell to the ground.
“We need to get to the hospital,” Hotch decided. “Immediately.”
There was chaos when they got there, hospital staff trying to get other patients out of and away from the wing, Morgan slumped against a wall, his head bloodied, a particularly brave young doctor knelt at his side doing her best to attend to him. “He went through there,” she gestured towards one of the rooms. “He wasn’t told where the kids were but the protective details outside the room made it pretty clear which two they were in,” she looked at Morgan, “He must have come up behind him with something blunt and heavy. It’s amazing he was together enough to call you before he went out,”
“Thank you,” Lewis told her before they moved down the corridor towards the room they had been waved to, the slumped figures of two local police officers making it clear where they were needed had the instructions been insufficient.
There was an intense commotion in the room, shouting and struggling. Lewis looked up at Reid. “That’s JJ’s voice!” Reid responded with a silent and very intentional glance, shouldering open the door, his gun held out steadfastly in front of him.
“FBI,” they called as they walked into the room, unsure of what to expect. Whatever that may have been, it had to have been exactly what they got or nothing that even began to resemble it.
JJ was hunched helplessly on the floor, her fingers at strange, painful angles and her legs splayed like she had attempted, desperately, to make them work and they had failed underneath her. She was looking, bright eyes wide and blown with a combination of terror and apprehension, at Percy where he stood, grappling with a shorter man who had a wild look on his face, as though there was little chance he would be deterred, his teeth gnashing and limbs flailing wildly, the offending frying pan from the surveillance footage kicked far behind him. But Percy, face grim and determined, was holding him in place, flinching but not loosening his grip as Gabrish prodded and scratched at his bandaged wrists. His left hand was almost bisected by a deep gash bleeding in earnest, his right holding what seemed to be the offending weapon: a wickedly sharp ceremonial blade, slick from tip to hilt with claret. It was Thomas Miller’s room, and he remained barely conscious but evidently very aware based on the tremble rushing through the body he could hardly move.
“Percy, it’s okay now. Put down the weapon and let him go,” Lewis urged. She liked to consider herself relatively unshakable, but Percy Jackson’s eyes, angry and almost feral, got to her. He seemed to have been making an effort not to let the blade’s wicked edge strike the unsub’s skin and, with the FBI’s reassurance, cuffs and guns, he released Gabrish and took a quick step back, waiting for Gabrish’s hands to be cuffed behind his back before he let the knife fall with a resounding clatter to the floor.
Even from where he knelt, from his position of absolute loss, Gabrish continued his crazed mutterings, quiet and breathy and almost entirely indecipherable.
“Before we leave, I’d like to speak to Percy one last time,” Reid told the team as he helped them pack up the case files and pieces of evidence neatly back into their boxes.
“I’ll come with you,” Morgan decided, still a little unsteady on his feet but more okay than not. It was hard to say the same of JJ who was balanced on crutches with her hands bandaged and splinted. Every step she took was slow and labouring and it hurt like hell.
Percy’s mother greeted them at the apartment with a grateful but incredibly exhausted smile. She was pretty heavily pregnant and it was evident the stress was taking its toll on her as she stumbled over her own feet, managing to do little more than gesture them towards Percy’s bedroom door.
He had dark circles beneath his eyes when he greeted them, and the bandaging around his wrists and his left hand was bulky and he kept looking at it with disdain, but his hair had been cleaned, no longer clumped up with blood or even dusted with flour, and the clothes he wore weren’t doused in his own blood or anyone else's.
“He ruined my swim team hoodie,” Percy lamented, sitting on his bed with his legs crossed, knees angled upwards.
Morgan couldn’t help but grin. “You must be their star athlete and these are extenuating circumstances; I’m pretty sure they’ll give you a new one,”
“Yeah, maybe,”
“You know you’re tough as nails, kid. I’ve never met someone quite like you,”
Percy snorted. “Yeah well, been there, done that,”
“You saved a lot of lives,” Reid told him. He was sure Percy had to already know that, but he wanted to reiterate it just to be absolutely certain the kid was well-aware of the good he had done. “Not many people could have done what you did and been so confident in doing it,”
“Not many people have had to do things like that as often as I have,” he shrugged.
“It’s still impressive,” Reid insisted.
“Sure,” he said with all the enthusiasm of somebody agreeing to a medical exam they didn’t really want. “I really don’t get how you guys do this job,”
“It’s taxing,” Morgan admitted, “But it’s more than worth it for all the good you can do. Once you get a taste for saving people it’s hard to just stop,”
“That’s not what I mean--well maybe it is. But that’s not all of it. I mean, how do you do this job? You have to find out all the worst things about people, right? I don’t think it’d feel great to keep finding out all these things the killers have in common with me,”
Morgan and Reid looked between each other, a sense of knowing, of understanding. They got the sense Percy got it too, because of how his eyes bore into them, asking a series of questions he couldn’t find the words to voice. “I’m not gonna pretend it doesn’t suck,” Morgan admitted.
Reid looked at Percy, not quite making eye contact but getting close enough to get the point across. “This was one of those cases for me. But we got him and now he can’t kill anybody else and that makes all of it worth it,”
“Okay,” Percy breathed, “Maybe it does, but I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for the chance to just relax. I’ve done my fair share of saving people already,”
“I hope you get your chance kid,” Morgan patted him on the shoulder, “But if you get through college and realise that you can’t just do that, I’m sure the FBI academy would be willing to offer someone like you a place,”
Percy fully laughed at that, a genuine sort of guffaw. “The FBI academy? I kinda doubt they’d want me with my record,”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Morgan said.
“Your record is interesting,” Reid admitted, “But there is something conspicuously missing from it: criminal responsibility. Bad luck won’t disqualify you from anything,”
“Still, I doubt I’d pass the psych evals, right? And I already told you, I just want to rest,”
“You’re pretty inscrutable, kid, and your composure is kinda incredible,” Morgan said, “We aren’t trying to make you do anything, just making sure you’re aware of your options. Take our numbers, and if you do decide that restfulness isn’t right for you, call us and we can put in a good word,”
The decompression on the jet was always a welcome part in any case, a chance to process and consider it in relative safety and exclusively familiar company. Reid was rifling through a book, Morgan trying to nap in the chair across from him, but his periodically fluttering eyelids making it clear he wasn’t having much success.
“It’s strange,” JJ said. She wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, just putting her thoughts out into the air so she didn’t have to keep them held in. “That this case was about human sacrifice and cannibalism, but the part of it that’s going to stick with me most is Percy Jackson,”
Lewis nodded. “He must be the strangest kid I’ve ever met and part of me is so glad that he happened to be at the centre of this case; if it was somebody a little less capable it’s possible a lot more lives would’ve been lost,”
Rossi nodded. “Yeah, if the unsub had killed his primary target and the ritual still hadn’t worked there’s no telling how quickly he would have fallen to pieces or what he would’ve done next,”
“He was really strange as an unsub, too,” Lewis commented, “Even now I’m having trouble reconciling the level of delusion and the level of organisation,”
Rossi nodded thoughtfully. “And his muttering… I can’t make sense of it. He kept rambling about some sort of pit?”
“Logic may indeed be unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.” ~ Franz Kafka