Never Together Nor Apart

[Chapter 84]

[Parts of this chapter will go along simultaneously with the last chapter]

Hotch's POV:

"How much do you know about Daniel James Cullen?" Morgan asks.

"You mean The Crimson King? I know he liked to carve words into his victims bodies. Three years ago, your Phoenix Field Office arrested him. That's why we didn't call you in last time," The chief answers.

"Has his most recent victim said anything?" Morgan questions.

"He just woke up," he opens the door to reveal a man no older than 30.

We walk in to see him with a nurse.

"Brian, these folks are with the FBI. Would you mind?" The chief wonders.

He nods. The nurse then pulls back some gauze on his stomach. The letter irk me, a bubbling pain and anger washing over me.

"Do you know what it means?" Brian pleads.

"Yes, we do," I say as I stare at the three letters, spelling the BAU.

*time skip*

"That's the last batch," an officer hands Morgan photos of Brian's stomach.

"Garcia, did the pictures come through?" I ask over speaker.

"Yes, sir, they are coming in loud and disconcertingly clear," she sighs.

"This is it. You compare pictures of the old victims with pictures of the new victims and see what's different?" The officer asks enthusiastically.

"Hotch? You see this?" Morgan points.

"Yes," I whisper.

"See what?" The same officer questions.

"Garcia, we need everybody," I call out.

"Will do," she shutters.

*time skip*

"Go ahead Hotch, we're all here," Rossi speaks.

"The details of the Cullen case are the same except for one," I begin.

"The cuts on the latest victim are shallow and show definite hesitation marks," Morgan explains.

"It doesn't make sense from his first victim, Cullen inflicted as much pain as possible," Kate counters.

"And prison would have made he mean. They're not nice there," Rossi agrees.

"Brian Phillips doesn't match Cullen's previous injustice collected victimology, and the message this time is BAU when we had nothing to do with his initial arrest three years ago. So, maybe he met someone in prison and told them all about us, but more likely—" Morgan is stopped.

"This isn't Daniel Cullen. It's a very sophisticated copycat," Reid realizes.

"I need everyone to look for any other discrepancies between the copycat and Cullen. Morgan's gonna interview the latest victim and see what he remembers," I hang up.

*time skip*

"Garcia sent us an address, she talked with everyone else and they seem to think Peter Lewis could be behind this. She found that a prank phone call had been made about a Jennifer Jareau on a Rossi street. She said to be careful in case of a trap," I inform Morgan.

"Brian is sleeping for now, so we won't be getting anything else out of him for a bit now," Morgan states.

I nod as we enter the car and head towards the supposed trap. We have other police cars trail behind us. We arrive, surrounding the house, making sure our guns are at the ready. The front door is slightly cracked.

"Police," the chief calls out.

"Hotch," I hear a woman's voice call out, "Hotch", the shaky voice sounds out again.

I train my gun on a door and make my way towards it. I hear footsteps behind me, Morgan close on my heels.

"Hotch, Hotch, Hotch?" I hear her voice three more times before I enter the room.

I open it slowly, the buzzing of flies is loud.

"Hotch... Hotch," she whispers again.

"I'm Hotch," I answer.

She slowly looks up at me, exposing her forehead. I feel the breath leave my body as my name is etched in her forehead.

*time skip*

"Hotch. Hotch," she continues to say as a stretcher wheels her out.

I try my best not to look at her, feeling horrible for what had happened. Any doubt I had about it being Mr. Scratch completely vanished.

"Her name's Chelsea Carter. That's a complete dissociative break. I'm still trying to figure out what connects her to Brian. Other than being a year younger, nothing," Morgan approaches me.

"Well, Peter Lewis found a shared mental condition he could exploit. That's his victimology," I shake the girls image from my mind.

"Last time he dosed men and women who had made false accusations of satanic ritual abuse but that was in the mid-1980s, and Brian and Chelsea are both far too young to have lived through that hysteria," Morgan remembers the last case we had about Mr. Scratch.

"Then they share a different condition," I assure.

"Well, these are all heavy-duty anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs," Morgan goes through the pill bottles left out on the table, "this one's for PTSD."

"Now play out the scenario. Someone like her inhales Peter Lewis' drugs. What's he trying to induce?" I give him time to think about it.

His face twists, letting me know he realizes what's happening.

"We need to build the profile," I state.

Morgan nods in agreement.

*time skip*

"Thank you very much. That was Chelsea Carter's psychologist. He confirmed that for the past 15 years she suffered from dissociative identity disorder," I announce.

"D.I.D.? You're talking split personality," Kate states.

"Technically it's an updated diagnosis for multiple personality disorder," Reid corrects

"Both of our victims shared the same diagnosis, and Brian has it too. That's a small victimology pool," Alex points out.

"One that's localized here. The University of Tempe has a summer camp that helps kids with dissociative disorders," Reid explains.

"And Garcia's contacting all the doctors and administrators. It's got to be where he's finding his victims," I add.

"Yeah, but what does D.I.D. get him?" Rossi questions.

"He wants to manipulate their identities, and he wants a violent one," I tell.

"That means Peter Lewis is not the copycat. It's someone with D.I.D. who he dosed. So he's telling this alternate to cut his victims like the Crimson King and he would need to keep dosing him to maintain the illusion," Alex explains further.

"Peter Lewis never liked to kill. He always got others to do his dirty work for him," Rossi scoffs.

"Here's the thing. D.I.D. is a difficult disorder to treat, but it's even more difficult for a third party to control. To succeed with this kind of experimentation, he would have had multiple failures," Reid reminds.

"We are seeing that. Brian survived the torture, and Chelsea's mind snapped from it," Kate connects the information with what we've seen.

"Begs the question though, why didn't Brian go crazy?" Morgan wonders.

Very short, I apologize, but I felt like you guys deserved a chapter since in the past months or so I've been taking a couple breaks

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