Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is not mine.

Evil brings men together : Aristotle

It had been a long and very tiring day but he was happy. As usual he were one of the last to leave the Mall. He carried bags of things he had picked up from the various book shops around the big mall.

The 'This store is closing.' Message had been called out a few times already, but he knew the guys in the coffee shop and he knew he had three minutes and seventeen seconds before they would say they couldn't serve him. He walked quickly into the shop and asked for 'my usual' and the guys grinned and he grinned back as he removed his wallet.

The first thing that happened was that the power went off and emergency lighting came on. Then the shutters slammed down at the front of the shop as the alarms and claxons went off.

'Please do not be alarmed. Please stay calm. Please walk to your closest exit.'

Terrorist alert? Please no.

'Please do not be alarmed. Please stay calm. Please walk to your closest exit.'

He flipped open his phone and speed dialled Hotch, but there was only static.

'Please do not be alarmed. Please stay calm. Please walk to your closest exit.'

He turned to the guys behind the counter standing there with big scared eyes. "Is there a land line phone here?" One of them handed over a small phone to Reid. No dial tone.

'Please do not be alarmed. Please stay calm. Please walk to your closest exit.'

"OK we need to get out of here. Rear exit?" One of the guys with Dave on his badge shook his head.

"When the security doors come down they auto lock all exits. Even if we get out the back door we can't get out of the service passage."

"So we are trapped?" Reid's eyes went big too now.

Dave nodded. "But it's alright. If it was a fire the shop fronts don't close. More likely to be a robbery. We are safe in here. Not the first time. Wont be the last but still scares the shit out of me." And he laughed nervously to himself.

Reid walked over to the security doors. "We need to get this open."

A voice came from behind the counter where the three shop workers had ducked. "No you don't. Just keep down 'til they open again."

'Please do not be alarmed. Please stay calm. Please walk to your closest exit.'

'Please do not be alarmed. Please stay "

The message suddenly cut off. Reid took a deep breath and walked quickly to the barrier in front of the shop. He slipped his fingers through the bars and tugged upwards, but it was locked tightly in place.

He turned around again frustrated with not being able to do anything. "What's that funny smell?"

The voices from behind the counter. "Cant smell anything."

Reid looked around and found the air conditioning duct. Something was being pumped through the air conditioning. Reid looked up at all the ducts in the ceiling and ran back to the security doors. "Hey! Anyone out there?" But all he could hear was the gentle hiss of something getting pumped into the shop and then the coughing and choking sounds of the guys behind the counter.

Spencer called over to them, "Get over here by the door. There is more air."

"Please do not be alarmed, but we are gassing you." Sounds of laughter. "We are opening up the gates. Please proceed to the fountain on the first floor and we will provide you with gas masks. You will be needing them."

………….

They walked in groups. Some from the upper floors, and some from the lower. They walked in coughing and choking clumps of scared looking people towards the fountain. Reid kept to the middle of a small group of people who had appeared from the shop next door. Most of the people here were the shop workers and security and cleaning crew. In total there were probably just over a hundred people there. Not everyone had accepted the invitation to get a mask. It was a trap of some kind, but he was out of the shop now and so more able to see what was going on.

There was a young woman standing in front of Reid. As the warm something sprayed over Spencer's face she jerked and fell at his feet. Some one was screaming. Everyone was trying to run. A voice over everything saying. "keep down keep down lay down Reid get down." inside Reid's head. He started to crouch as the head of the man he had been standing next to exploded in a mass of blood and brains. He felt something catch in his hair and with a whimper he lay down on the floor and put his hands over his head.

The sound of gun fire seemed to go on forever. He could smell the blood and the other vile smells that arrived with death. People screamed and moaned and twitched. Spencer didn't move. He was laying in a puddle of blood coming from the bit of head from the man he had been next to. He could feel the warm liquid pooling under his head and was thinking. "Ok I am going to die. I am going to be a statistic."

As he lay in the bloodbath he listened to the sounds of people groaning and then single gun shots, and then silence. His stomach churned in fear. Killing the survivors? He didn't want to lift his head to find out. He just lay and listened and tried to work out what was going on. There were definite sounds of crying which didn't follow up with a gun shot. What the hell was going on? Why was SWAT not all ready here?

"You get up." The voice was close but strangely muffled. A boot in his ribs made him move his hands away from his head and roll over to his side. "I said get up."

Reid slowly with his hands up and fingers spread squelched out of the blood he was laying in and stood to face a man in a hazmat suit. Not good. Not a good sign at all.

"Hands laced behind your head. Quickly." He did as he was asked not wanting to annoy or do anything which was going to have him end up on the floor with the others. He was checked for a weapon then his hands were pulled behind his back and cuffed. "Against the wall with the others." And he was pushed forward.

He quickly took in who else they had chosen to stand at the wall. There were ten of them. They were lined up in front of a shop selling men's clothing. One at a time they were inspected again. Wallets taken. Phones removed and broken. Jewellery and watches taken. All thrown onto the ground in a pile next toe a big puddle of blood forming next to the fountain. Reid's stomach turned over when they took his ID from his pocket, but they didn't bother to look at it. It ended up on the pile of iPods and cell phones.

One at a time they were told to turn and face the shop front and then kneel. Reid desperately wanted to try to talk to them, to try to dissuade them from doing what he thought they were going to do. He turned when they reached him but didn't kneel.

"You don't have to do this. You can still let us go."

The gun but against the side of his head had him on him knees suddenly, his forehead leaning on the glass. When each was positioned correctly the men in the hazmat suits stood back. They held their guns up and shot the glass out of the window. Suddenly Reid had nothing to lean on and he fell forwards on his face into the glass. He couldn't hear the sounds of the cameras clicking, only the sounds of screaming and crying. Reid lay still where he had fallen. He didn't want to give them any excuse to put a bullet in the back of his head.

Each person was now ordered to stand and follow, and any move to try to escape or do something stupid and they will join the pile of bodies by the fountain. Reid was dragged up out of the glass by his hair and lined up by a woman with very short black hair. They were all walked quickly to a hand rail running along the side of the fountain area.

They pulled Reid forwards first and put a small hand gun to his head.

"I know you don't want to die. I know you want to try to live through this, so this young man here is going to demonstrate how. We will un-cuff him and turn him to face the rail. We will then reattach the cuffs linking him to the rail. Do you all understand?" Some mutterings and whimperings where heard. Reid felt the gun press hard against his head. "Right you first." He felt them undo the cuffs and he moved his hands to the front as they tied him to the long chrome railing. The gun was kept at Spencer's head as the next person was pulled forward and tied to the rail.

"Kneel, I want you all kneeling." Slowly Reid knelt down still feeling the gun pressing on his head. This meant that Spencer's hands where held up at head height as he knelt down, looking along the line of people he was with trying to work out which one would take the lead here. He could see eyes looking back at him. All of them pleading 'what are they going to do to us.'

It was now with renewed horror that Spencer realised what they where doing. Two of the men were searching the bodies, and two of them going through the pile of things take from the group he was in. He watched them pick up his wallet and flip it open. He watched one of them walk over to a man who seemed to be supervising, and pass the wallet over. The man stood and pulled his mask off his face and smiled.

He walked over to the group of people tied to the railing and said whilst raising his gun.

"Which one of you is the Fed?"

…………………….