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𝑬 𝑽 𝑬 𝑹 𝑮 𝑹 𝑬 𝑬 𝑵
❝ 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚢 𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚝 𝚍𝚘𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚕𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚐𝚒𝚗 ❞

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"𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐆𝐔𝐘𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐆𝐎 𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓? Take a shower?" Hotch asked Derek, May, and Elle as he trailed after them. They had just gotten out of the elevator, and were about to head back into the bullpen. As much as May dreaded to be back in Quantico with her vacation cut so short, she refused to go home and rest, not when this—whatever this is—is happening.

Elle was in front of all of them, and she halted in her steps and turned to face Hotch upon hearing his words.

"Like hell!" She refused. Though she looked strong and defiant, May noted how the hand that was holding up her bag trembled slightly.

Derek, who had also stopped, agreed with Elle's words. "I'm good."

May also nodded, standing in between her two friends. "We're good, Hotch."

"How much sleep have you gotten in the last 24 hours?" Hotch inquired, looking at all three of them one by one, his dark gaze assessing them.

"Hotch, I spent half of the night in an interrogation room," Elle stated with a glare. "I am not sleeping until I find this Frank Giles."

That was when JJ walked up to them. "Frank Giles left Jamaica last night on the red eye. Flew to Florida, then got onto another flight to Virginia."

"Virginia?" Elle repeated in disbelief. "You mean that son of a bitch is from here?"

"I don't know if he's from here, but this is where he flew to. Arlington," the blonde then lifted up a piece of paper, eyes scanning it as she continued. "He's got a long criminal record. Manslaughter, robbery, rape."

"How the hell was he even able to leave the country with all those chargers?" May scoffed.

JJ gave her a helpless look.

"What about the other victim, Marty Harris?" Derek asked JJ.

"Uhh, he's a two-time convicted fetish burglar," JJ spoke after checking on another paper. "Registered child sex offender..."

"And we have his head," Gideon cut in. May still couldn't believe that both Frank Giles and Marty Harris were able to leave the country with their criminal records. "CSU just positively identified the one delivered to my cabin."

May shook her head as she looked at Hotch, who was reading his notepad. "'Don't waste time on the first victims. They were unrepented bad men. They only got what they deserved.'"

"What is that?" Derek wondered.

"I got a phone call last night before you called from Jamaica."

"Any mention of a 'her'?" Elle looked at him.

"'You must help him save her.'"

"So there's a him now, too?"

May suddenly jerked in realization. "Spencer. He's talking about Spencer."

Gideon pointed at her in agreement. "I also think he means Reid."

"Reid?" JJ frowned.

They all turned towards Hotch as he spoke. "We need to regroup."

May nodded firmly. "I'll call Spence."

After her brief call with Spencer, telling him about what's currently happening—and him telling her about a key he'd received—May found herself in the round table room with the rest of the team. She sat between Derek and Gideon, while Elle stood behind them, pacing. JJ sat on Derek's other side, and Hotch stood with his arms crossed in front of all of them.

"Clearly, we've got ourselves a psychopath intent on drawing us into his game," Hotch stated, his usual frown deepening even further.

"Playing with us," Gideon agreed.

That was when Elle stopped her pacing. "Then let's return the favor."

It was clear that she was holding a grudge. May admits that even she would feel as agitated, if she were in Elle's shoes. Imagine being stuck in an interrogation room from hours in a foreign country, where the officer in front of you believes you murdered someone in cold blood and even decapitated them.

Derek spoke next. "He kept telling us repeatedly to save 'her'. What 'her'?"

"The items he sent must be some kind of clues," Gideon pointed out.

Hotch nodded. "Let's get them up on the board." JJ was immediately on her feet, and Gideon quickly began to list down what he got.

"I got a Nellie Fox baseball card from 1963," he said. "And I got a head in a box."

JJ turned away from the board for a second, a marker in her hand. "I got a rare butterfly in a shadowbox."

"And repeated messages to save 'her'," Hotch noted.

"I got the decapitated body and a nice visit to the Jamaican police headquarters," Elle smiled sarcastically as she spoke before the expression broke and she was frowning once again. May sighed and offered her hand to the woman without facing her, and her lip twitched when she felt Elle grab her hand and squeeze it to reassure herself.

May cleared her throat. "Spencer's on the way back. He's got a skeleton key and a note he got too."

"And the guy who called me said the youngest one holds the key," Hotch told her.

"That's Spencer. By a few hours."

"Okay but wait a minute," Derek interjected, all eyes turning to him. "Unsubs, they don't contact us this way. I mean, they might taunt us, dare us to catch 'em, but they don't drag us into their fantasy."

JJ turned away from the board again after listing down the items. She looked at Derek. "Why not?"

"Because they're sexual fantasies. I mean, taunting us is a show of power, but making us the object is..." He struggled to find a word for it, and eventually settled for, "I don't know what the hell that is."

"Something else about the baseball card," Gideon spoke up. "Nellie Fox was one of the stars of the 1959 White Sox. I went to almost every game with my father that year. Fox was my hero. So is that a coincidence that he sends this to me or does he know how I feel about him?"

JJ frowned. "I collected butterflies when I was a little girl. That's how I knew what butterfly was in the box."

"So then he knows us," May realized.

Hotch shook his head. "I got an anonymous message."

"I got a police raid," Elle rolled her eyes, slowly pulling away from May's reassuring warmth.

"But he knew exactly where we were," Derek pointed out. "Hotel in Jamaica, Gideon at the cabin, Reid in Vegas, you at your home." He looked at Hotch pointedly.

That was when Penelope entered the room, trepidation clear in her form. "He got that from the Bureau computers," she said. "Your locations are always in there so they can find you if they need you. I checked the log. The hacker was definitely in the personnel folders. There were room numbers to the hotel in Jamaica, the address of Gideon's cabin...there's a lot of information in those databases."

May scanned the woman up and down, unable to stop herself from profiling her. There was something wrong. "Have you figured out how he was able to get into the Bureau's computers?"

Penelope looked teary eyes, obvious even behind her spectacles. "I'm-- I'm still working on that."

Every profiler in the room exchanged looks.

"Penelope," May spoke in a slower pace, as if almost afraid to ask, "if you know something..."

"No, it-- um...it's ju-- I..." Penelope began to stutter excessively, worrying May to the core.

"Take your time."

Penelope looked at her. "I was playing a game yesterday...an online game."

"A game?" Gideon wondered.

"Not on the Bureau computer, sir," she looked at him. "On my own personal laptop."

"Oh, Garcia," Derek immediately put two and two together, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "No, no, no, no."

"I don't understand," Hotch frowned.

"Wireless internet."

Penelope gulped. "By wirelessly hooking into the net here to get online, the hacker could've gotten into my computer first and...I have far less protection on my own laptop."

"And he could have gotten into the entire Bureau computer system this way?" Hotch asked.

She nodded with a grimace. "Yeah, it's possible."

Even from her position, May could hear Penelope's rapidly beating heart—to the point that she was almost concerned for her health—and wanted nothing more than to help. But Gideon's rising emotion, stopped her. She could smell an onslaught of anger and disappointment on her mentor's body that it rooted her on the spot, unsure of what to do.

"Playing a game?" Gideon muttered, heard clear in the incredibly silent room. May watched as he stood up from his seat, his hands shaking. He turned to Penelope. "How could you be that stupid?" The technical analyst looked close to bursting in tears. "Information, files. You have a responsibility."

"I know, sir. I'm so sorry." Gideon turned away, shielding his expression. "But I found him."

Immediately, Elle asked, "You what?"

"I know who he is, the hacker. His name is Giles. Frank Giles," at the revelation, the three who were in Jamaica exchanged looks, "he lives in Arlington, Virginia, four miles from here. I have his address."

"Garcia, you said Giles?" Derek asked.

It didn't take long for the team to rush out and head towards the address Penelope gave them. None of them had enough time to fully change, so May was stuck strapping her FBI vest, and every single necessary weapon, above the clothes she'd put on the night before. A white fitted tank top and some jeans, paired with some running shoes she took on the trip to Jamaica.

Admittedly, Derek had to stop and stare at her figure—something he'd been unable to do earlier due to his distracted brain—and now he was drinking it all up. He unabashedly checked her out as they prepared, thanking whoever god was up there for making her look incredibly stunning in such a simple get up. May had to snap her fingers in front of him to take him back to earth.

Now they were in Frank Giles' apartment, staring at his dead body that had a sword pierced through his chest.

May grimaced, not because she was disgusted, but at the realization that this case seemed to be designed by someone who was into some niche shit that she knew only Spencer could understand. She put her pistol back in its holster as she sighed.

"We definitely need Spence," she groaned. She watched as the others examined the room from top to bottom, and she did the same with her enhanced vision. She didn't need to lean or get down on the floor like the others did to see the details. Instead, she curiously stared at the sword itself, how it glinted and reflected the light from the window. Then, she looked up to examine the words on the wall, and read it aloud: "Here thy quest doth truly begin."

"What do you make of it?" Hotch asked her quietly as they stood in the corner, while Gideon, Derek, and Elle looked around. Everyone had taken their vests off and were now stood in whatever clothes they came in.

"Guy's into medieval shit," she said in a deadpan tone. "The longsword, the wording...the game that he played with Penelope."

"Longsword?"

"Or bastard sword. Épée bâtarde in French," she shrugged. "Late medieval, Renaissance. Around what, approximately 1350 to 1550?"

Hotch gave her a contemplative look. "You know sword history?"

"I have hobbies," she sniffed. "And I like dragging Spencer and Penelope to ren faires."

He had to bite his lip to keep himself from smiling. He shook his head as Gideon came up beside him, schooling his expression. "He's definitely playing with us," he said loudly.

"His identification checks out," Elle said, holding the man's IDs and handing them over to Hotch. "That's Frank Giles."

"There's a big old bag of money sitting right here on the dresser," Derek pointed out, walking towards said dresser and patting the back, pulling out a few wads to show the others.

"So Giles took Harris to Jamaica to kill him and unsub killed Giles," Hotch concluded.

"Yeah, but he paid him first."

"Left the cash?" Elle asked.

"Well, he's apparently well-funded."

"He said 'unrepented bad men'," Hotch pointed out. "Are we looking for some kind of vigilante?"

May shook her head. "No, bodies are nothing but a way to get us interested."

"They're game pieces," Gideon agreed. "The killings are secondary."

"Well, this guy likes to write things in blood on the walls," Elle stated, gesturing towards the writings.

"All kinds of cult and demonic significance to that," Derek told her.

"'Thy'? 'Doth'? 'Quest'? 'Thy quest doth truly begin'. Why start phrasing things like this now?"

"Yeah, all the other messages were in modern English," Hotch spoke as he walked closer to the wall. "May?"

"Gotta be something about the medieval times, I'm tellin' you," May put her hands on her hips. "Can't give you much more than that, though. Spencer's the genius, not me."

Derek looked at her. "Maybe this is the first one the unsub actually wrote."

"So we're looking for Shakespeare?" Elle snarked.

"Hey guys?" A CSU member spoke up. "There's something etched on the blade."

Everyone leaned down and looked at what she was pointing at. May took the initiative to read it out loud.

"'To learn of what should next be done, leave the blade 'til the hour be none.'"

author's note: ngl i love me some mystery solving like this. indiana jones style; my fav.

hope u guys enjoyed !!