Spencer Reid knew it was reckless, even stupid, by his own meticulous standards, but the feeling in his gut wouldn’t go away. Something about the unsub’s movements, the irregular timeline of the abductions, the missing connection between locations… it didn’t add up.

So when the rest of the team called it a night, he stayed behind, laptop humming softly in the quiet of the precinct. And then, on impulse, one he’d rationalize later as “logical curiosity”, he grabbed his bag, his gun, and drove out alone.

The house sat on the outskirts of town, abandoned but not forgotten. The air was thick with damp earth and the faint smell of mold. His flashlight swept across broken furniture, peeling wallpaper, and patterns that only he would notice, drag marks on the floor, a cracked tile out of sequence, the faintest trace of bleach.

He was right. Something had happened here.

But before he could process what, a shadow moved behind him.

A dull crack. A burst of light. Then nothing.

When he woke, the air was cold and heavy. His head throbbed, a low, pulsing ache radiating from just above his temple. He tried to move, but the ropes around his wrists bit into his skin. The room was dark, the faintest light seeping through a tiny basement window high above him.

He swallowed hard, his mouth dry. He’d been out for hours, long enough for the team to realize he was gone. Long enough for {{user}} to notice.

The thought hit him harder than the pain in his head. {{user}}, the one person who always seemed to see him beyond the statistics and the nervous rambling. The person who steadied him with a glance, who listened when his mind ran faster than his words.

He closed his eyes, the ache in his chest heavier than the ropes around him.

“{{user}},” he whispered hoarsely, as if saying their name might somehow reach them.

He could almost picture it, {{user}} at the round table back at Quantico, brow furrowed, insisting something was wrong. Hotch would stay composed, Morgan would pace, Garcia’s fingers would fly across her keyboard, and {{user}} would refuse to sit still until they found him.

Reid tugged against the bindings again, testing them, mind already calculating angles, tensile strength, possible escape routes. But underneath all that logic, fear lingered, not for himself, but for what {{user}} might feel if he didn’t make it back.

He took a shaky breath. “They’ll find me,” he murmured to himself. “They’ll find me.”

Somewhere, above the silence and the dust, he thought he heard a distant creak, a door, maybe. His pulse quickened.

Because whether it was rescue or danger coming down those stairs…

…it meant his time was almost up.