#merdacaeca

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Leningrad- Chapter 2

Sorry this update took so long to post, I’m on vacation at the moment! Hope you enjoyyyyyyyy :) 

Anya woke dimly, feeling the crushing pain that forced her into unconsciousness continue to press the breath from her lungs. Her vision was blurred, but even if it hadn’t been she wouldn’t have been able to see more than the darkness she had been engulfed in for the past day.

Had it been a day? It felt endless. She had no sense of where she was or when she got there. In a distant memory she could see herself walking towards a blinking red exit sign, the feel of the gun pressed against her back burning panic into her skin. She hadn’t tried to speak, hadn’t tried to fight. She was frozen inside her head, not really controlling the movement of her feet as they stumbled over the doorjamb into the grimy alley behind the restaurant.

Her captor hadn’t spoken either, just carefully walked her towards the back of the alley, away from the main avenue filled with cars and people. People, the one thing that might have saved her. But he had thought of that. As they rounded the corner onto another side street Anya saw the car parked and waiting for them.  To her horror, she heard the electric click of a car remote and thee trunk popped open.

Her breath started to come in strangled gasps, she couldn’t manage to fill her lungs with air because the fear had seeped into every empty crevice of her body but still, she couldn’t bring herself to make a single noise. The gun against her back shoved hard and Anya tumbled forward into the cramped trunk of the old car. She looked up, finally seeing her captor, before a blinding pain seared across her eyes as thee man struck her with the butt of his gun. The darkness embraced her.

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The team settled into their typical spots on the jet. Kate, Rossi, JJ and Morgan at the small table, Hotch perched against the arm of a chair across from them, and Reid reclining on the couch, displaying his mismatched socks beneath his slacks.

“Let’s go over victimology.” Hotch intoned, and he and the team opened their tablets while Reid flicked through the pages of his hard copies.

“Well he definitely has a type,” JJ started, thumbing though the pictures Garcia had compiled of the petite mousy girls. The images flashing across the tablets showed happy faces, senior photos, families laughing, memories of young lives that these girls should still be living.

“They’ve gotta be a surrogate for someone the unsub knows,” Derek added. “They’re incredibly similar looking.”

“I think you’re right,” Hotch nodded. “Get Garcia up on the screen, will you?” Morgan hummed his assent and hit the requisite buttons on the laptop. Penelope’s sunshiny face, outlined today by pink streaks through her hair, popped into focus on the small screen.

“Hello my heroes! What have you got for me?”

“Garcia, have you managed to find any connection between our first and second victims yet?” Hotch leaned forward from his perch to make himself more comfortable as he spoke.

“Unfortunately nothing solid yet. Our first victim, Katerina Russo, or Katie as she preferred to be called, was a bit younger, she was supposed to turn 18 last August but she didn’t make it to her birthday.” Garcia’s face was the picture of sympathy as she continued to rattle off her findings on the girl. “She had applied to several colleges already, looking for early admission definitely. One of those was NYU but that list also includes most of the major schools in the tri-state area. I’m not sure we can really call that a connection yet.”

“Garcia, was Katie taking any college courses through her high-school? Something that might have been taught off-site at NYU maybe?” Reid jumped in.

“Um let’s see, genius boy…” Garcia clicked for a few moments before answering. “Yes, Katie was taking several Advanced placements courses, one of which is a Manhattan-based college course, meaning that professors from schools like NYU, Columbia, Fordham, you get the gist, all helped develop thee program so the credits would help students skip freshman requirements when they enrolled in college.”

“What class was Katie taking?”

“Um… it looks like Katie was enrolled in their history survey course over the summer, we’re talking European history from the Renaissance until like, now. But the class was taught on her high school campus by high-school faculty. No where near NYU.” Garcia grimaced apologetically.  

“Okay, well, keep looking for any other points of cross-over Katie might have had with Lina and Anya. Maybe coffee shops, shopping malls, parties they might have gone to, that sort of thing,” Hotch instructed.

“Aye aye, captain!” Garcia signed off with a salute.

“Okay everyone, when we land, I want to hit the ground running. Dave, Morgan, I want you to go to Anya’s abduction site and start coordinating with the team there. JJ, Reid go to the coroners office and hook up with the ME. Kate, you and me are going to go to the station and speak with the families of our first two victims.”

Everyone nodded their acquiescence to Hotch’s assignments and began to settle in to the final twenty minutes of their short flight to New York.

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The fluorescent lights of the morgue hummed lowly in the cold room. With the metal walls and tables it felt like they had stepped into an icebox. Reid and JJ both pulled their jackets a little tighter around themselves. Neither of them had much body-fat to keep them warm after all. The figure of a petite girl lay in front of them under a dingy sheet.

The Medical Examiner pulled the cover off the girl, revealing a waxen figure. Her body had been cleaned and embalmed, to prevent its decomposition pending investigation of her murder. The BAU hadn’t been the first port of call for the detectives working to catch her killer, and the M.E. had gone over Lina’s injuries and cause of death so frequently since her arrival at the morgue she knew the answers to most investigators questions without having to reference her primary notes.

Lina’s body looked almost peaceful if you could ignore the bruising that dappled her ghostly skin. Her face had been reconstructed following the gunshot, so her family could have an open casket funeral after law enforcement released her body from evidence. Reid and JJ approached the dead girl with a practiced ease and forensic curiosity but their faces both registered fleeting traces of their more private feelings. It was always sad to see such young lives cut so brutally short. Especially when it was clear just how much they had suffered before they succumbed to the release of death.

“So this is our most recent victim, Lina Mills,” the ME started in. “The first victim, the first girl, Katerina Russo, was buried shortly after her autopsy and her parents have requested that we don’t exhume her body unless completely necessary.”

“Can I see her medical report?” Reid reached forward and took the proffered clip-board, scanning the entirety of the ME’s findings in a few seconds. “How consistent are the wounds between Katerina and Lina?”  

“I’d say they’re consistent, but Lina’s injuries are far more extensive.” The ME pulled up the section of sheets covering the body’s leg, displaying a mottled pattern of bruising and a very clearly dislocated knee. There were shallow cuts littering the skin, and electrical burns on the soles of her feet. It was sickening.

“This kind of torture…” JJ trailed off, burying her own memories of pain deeper inside herself. “I don’t think there’s any kind of sexual component here. He’s not using the torture to get off. This reads more like interrogation.”

“You’re right,” Reid murmured as he stooped to examine the bruising on the girl’s body more closely. “There’s no penetrative elements to what he’s doing. The bruises, electrical burns, ligature marks… they all look like what you see on POW��s. Do you have a time line for her injuries? Spencer asked.

“Yes,” the ME glanced down at the clipboard detailing the original observations she had made several weeks ago. “The oldest burns and bruises start on her extremities and seemed to move slowly inward, towards the core of her body. They also seem to increase in brutality as time passes. She has several broken ribs and in some places the electrical burns have penetrated down to the hypodermis and exposed vascular tissue. She also had extremely low nutrient density and was severely dehydrated. If he hadn’t shot her, she would’ve died soon anyway from the lack of water and food.”

“Was this the same on the first victim from sixth months ago?” JJ asked.

“Yes,” the ME nodded, “she was deprived of food and water as well but her injuries weren’t as extensive.”

“So he’s escalating the torture with each victim,” Spencer mused. “They must not be giving him what he wants to hear.”

“Now we need to figure out what that is,” JJ nodded.

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[writethelifeyouwant]

url change :p

heyyyyy I changed my url because I’m a fickle bitch. 

merdacaeca = writethelifeyouwant