The Enemy

Author: Regency

Title: The Enemy

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Pairing: loosely Reid/Morgan, maybe Team

Spoilers: None, but set at some time during the second season.

Rating: PG

Word count: 1,196

Summary: Reid feels tangible evil in a rail yard in Baltimore.

Author’s Notes: Written for the comment_fic prompt Criminal Minds, author's choice, oddly reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project.

AN II: Bring on the constructive criticism. (It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen this movie, so I may be way off-base. I’d be willing to re-write if it’d get me closer to the source material. Yeah, no forest, but that was intentional. ETA: Maybe it feels like Torchwood. I'll take it!)

Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from Criminal Minds. They are the property of their respective producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

~!~

It had seemed like a good idea, then, to take the camera with them. It was an experimental measure, to test the psychological effect of its presence on witnesses and law enforcement officials. When they were reviewing crime scene photos later, it even allowed them to pick up when something was out of the ordinary. Objects had disappeared from the scene between the time the photos had originally been taken and the time they’d arrived.

The unsub had returned.

Thusly, the Behavioral Analysis Unit followed suit.

Reid truly believed there could have been a better time to do it than the dead of night. There was nowhere he would rather be less than a rail yard in the city’s industrial district at 2 a.m.

If wishes were horses…

He was situated behind Morgan, his camera hand crossed underneath his firing hand. He could record, but he could also shoot. Hotch had made it clear that his entering the premises without weapons drawn was not an option. If Reid was completely honest, he’d never had any intention of entering at all. Their original visit to the rail yard had left him shaken in daylight; he hadn’t been keen to see what it would do with night sounds as accompaniment.

Yet, here he was, eyeing their surrounding through the camcorder’s night-vision lens. He took in what remained of the crime scene tape, the evidence the markers knocked askew. Someone had been here who had no idea how to navigate a scene and go unnoticed. An amateur at avoiding law enforcement detection. Has either never been caught or is escalating. Perhaps from lesser offenses. He made a note to re-check criminal records for the greater Baltimore area; then, he removed the safety on his gun. A gut instinct is an agent’s first defense.

He heard rustling to his right as they surveyed the area surrounding the particular boxcar where the crime had taken place. He swiftly turned and adjusted his aim for the sound. It had no source. Where there should have been rustling—bushes, maybe a hedge—there was only the solid, unwavering presence of another boxcar. Rust red and covered in graffiti, it wasn’t an intimidating artifact in and of itself. It was the aura it carried, the tension that surrounded it as densely as fog on the English moors that warned him to keep his distance. If anything, it was an aura of intense violence.

Reid swept the camera along its exposed length for any visual indication of what he felt in his gut. He wanted to walk away. He wanted to run. He wanted to tell the team that something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t say what. He felt as if he was being devoured by some monster unseen.

Morgan shifted at his side. Hotch moved several yards ahead of them, flanked by Emily and Gideon. He didn’t have to tell them what the matter was. Whatever was wrong, they could feel.

Reid wished again, even more intensely, that they had waited for daylight to come. The dark turn-offs and inexplicable noises were ripe for unwanted guests or ill-intending unsubs.

The rustling began again. He felt something clammy brush the underside of his hand. Reflexively he twitched and twisted away from the startling contact. The camera fell with an expensive crack. He backed, panting, into a solid frame and spun around again.

Morgan stood with his hands raised in defensive pose, the business end of Reid’s gun wedged against his sternum. “You all right,” he asked, not angry, but concerned. Reid was both, at himself. And Reid realized just then that he was shaking, though he could give no plausible explanation why. Fear of the dark was something he’d always known. Fear of the absence of illumination was common for a man with Reid’s thirst for knowledge. The darkness was simply a metaphor for ignorance; he feared what lurked in the cavern between what he knew and what he had yet to learn. Most of all, he thought he feared descending headfirst and falling into the oubliette of his childhood nightmares. The one place he could be forever trapped.

He was still shivering when Morgan touched his shoulder. “We need to leave here,” he told his friend. “We need to put distance between us and this place.”

Morgan began to rub his shoulder in what was likely supposed to be a soothing way. “We have to find evidence of the unsub’s return. He might have left transfer that Evidence Collection didn’t catch.” He spoke in a mellow tone, at an even pace. He wanted to reassure Reid, the man in question could tell.

Reid knew that everything he said was right. He knew that he had nothing to fear. They had numbers, numbers and guns. He wasn’t alone here. He knew he was safe. Intellectually.

In reality, he’d like nothing more than to run back to the car and retreat to the safety of the local motor lodge. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want the mystery. He just wanted to go home.

That, he thought, but this he said: “Right.” To himself, “Right. We’ll be fine.” He held his gun in a vice grip but switched the safety back on. He would not kill someone because of irrational fear. He was better than that; at least, better trained. Frank Sinatra once said, ‘Fear is the enemy of logic,’ Reid mused. He was absolutely right.

He picked up the fallen camera and began to inspect the damage. It was an adequate distraction given the circumstances. Morgan was still near enough to be a comfort. Not that I need a body guard or shield. When he wasn’t, Reid took a few completely incidental steps to put him within arm’s reach. Reid furrowed his brow as he spied the peculiar damage inflicted on the camcorder. It had suffered more than mere crash trauma. At some point, it seemed to have been pummeled with some sort of blunt instrument. He thought he could even make out an impression of it. He was about to call Morgan over to verify his finding when…

Like the shearing of a switchblade across one’s throat, a shriek sliced through the fabric of the night.

Fear is the enemy of logic. Fear is the enemy of logic. He chanted to himself so vehemently that he knew he’d soon be saying it out loud. Fear is the enemy of logic. But, Sinatra never said that they could not become allies when logic dictated there was cause to fear.

They all instinctively dropped into a crouch. The principle was to make one’s self as small as possible in the vicinity of a predator. For his part, Reid just wanted to get out of its vicinity—finally. They were on its territory, he could feel it. The man-made structures of the property were drenched with its rage, with its compulsions, its thirst. Somewhere out there, fury personified was waiting for them. It wanted them to know its cry, perhaps even its face. And they would. There was no escape for them now.

Intellectually, Reid knew that, too.

That didn’t stop him, or any of them, from running.