After briefing JJ, you head back to Garcia's office. Hotch and Rossi both take off for Bio-design Technology, leaving the three of you left. On the way to her office, you pause in the bullpen. Watching part of your team disappear for the second time that day makes your heart hurt with both fear for them and a desire to be out in the field. Sniffling, you grab a chair and haul it to Garcia's office with you.

You put it next to Garcia at the monitors.

"Have you looked into his history at bio-tech? There might be something in the records that they might not tell Hotch."

You can see her nervously chewing on the inside of her cheek.

"I try not to hack into things I don't have to. If we get audited, I have to defend every single breach of privacy." Her fingers rest on top of the keyboard like she's itching to type.

Something flashes on her screen and she presses a button on her keyboard with lightning speed.

"Hello, gorgeous." she prompts.

"Hey, baby girl. Reid and I are on our way to Nichols' house. Reid thinks there must have been a practice run before the park." There's some shuffling on the phone before Reid's voice comes through.

"The unsub must have used a more concentrated dose. It would have shut down the organs before unique anthrax poisoning symptoms manifest. Look for unusual emergency room admissions in the past two weeks. They should still be within the comfort zone, so Annapolis and the surrounding areas."

"I will hit you back." Garcia chirps and ends the call.

While she works on accessing recent ER deaths, she directs you to another computer to make up a list of diseases that might have been the cause of death instead.

"Meningitis." Garcia says, snapping you out of your focus.

"What?"

"There was a spike in meningitis for one day only. All the patients died within a few hours of each other. I need you to figure out if anthrax could be mistaken for meningitis. I'm going to track bank records."

You skim through some articles about meningitis.

"As long as there wasn't an autopsy confirming meningitis in the spinal fluid, I think its possible, yeah." You're no doctor, but you give it your best try.

Garcia opens her mouth to speak, but her door swings open.

"I just got a call." JJ says. "The anthrax was developed in Nichols' house. Reid got exposed."

Your heart is racing. "What do you mean exposed?"

"I mean he's trapped in a room with it. He's already breathed it in."

"Who's with him?" you ask.

"Hotch and Morgan. They're both outside of the house."

"Garcia, can you call Hotch for me?" you say in a tight voice.

She patches him through on speaker.

"What's going on there?" you ask.

"Nichols is dead. Blunt force trauma to his head. Reid thinks he's been dead 2 or 3 days."

"The unsub is still loose." JJ hisses under her breath.

"And how's Reid?" you ask, voice wavering.

"He's up and talking. Asymptomatic so far."

"Okay. You're going to get him to the hospital, right?"

"He's staying here. Whoever killed Nichols worked in his home laboratory. The unsub kept meticulous notes. He must have created a cure. He wouldn't have risked dying before he could carry out his plan."

"Are you crazy?" you hiss. "Hotch, you need to put a full unit of people in there that are suited up. Reid's brain isn't going to function like normal after an exposure. He won't be able to find the cure, and he sure as hell isn't able to consent to rejecting life-saving treatment."

"Agent, he is asymptomatic. I tried to pull him out. He wants to stay. I've already got a decon team suiting up, but we won't be able to find somebody who can profile and understand what the cure would look like. Right now, we need both of Reid's skill sets. His best chance is himself."

Hotch is right, but that doesn't make you feel any better.

"Can I speak to him?" you ask through the tightness in your throat.

You can hear some sadness in Hotch's voice when he sighs "Put her through, Garcia."

The line rings twice before he picks up.

"Spencer?" you ask.

"Hey," his voice crackles through. "I don't have very long. I've gotta work this case before I...can't anymore. I just want you to know that you're going to be the best mom. I believe in you." There's some shuffling in the background of the call. It must be the arrival of the decon team because the next thing you know, Reid is saying "I'll see you when I can, alright?"

Your tears don't start until the line goes dead.

"This thing killed the first 3 victims within hours." Garcia practically whispers.

"Garcia, stop. Please. I--we can't think about it that way. He took cipro. He's got help. He's gonna be fine." JJ insists.

"Didn't you just hear him? He was saying goodbye. He knows what's going to happen." you manage to croak out between sobs.

The three of you sit in tears for a minute before Garcia speaks up.

"I'm not good at this part. Every time you guys go away, I... I know you're in all kinds of ginormous danger, And all I can do is sit here in my bubble, And I hope and I pray and I will my babies to come back to me... I try to stay positive, but... I don't know how to do this."

You put one of your hands over Garcia's, glad to at least be with part of the team.

JJ's voice is soft when she speaks again.

"Guys, if you could do anything to keep your family safe, even if it meant breaking procedure, would you?"

"Yes." Garcia says without pause.

At the same time you ask "What procedure?"

She doesn't look at either of you when she says "Never mind."

"Garcia, can you patch us into the team's comms? Just to listen in?" you ask.

"I'm not really supposed to." she says, but she's already typing to make it happen.

It's hard to tell what's going on since nobody is narrating for you, but Hotch relays some of the information to Prentiss and Rossi. You take deep breaths while listening to Hotch speak against the background noise of a crime scene investigation. You start to feel almost numb.

The possibility that you could lose Reid is becoming horribly real.

You're jolted back to reality when Reid's voice is on the comms again. He's just describing the room to Hotch, but every word is confirmation that he's alright. Calm enough to recognize your surroundings, you realize that at some point, JJ slipped out.

One of the worst parts of your job is the way that it never stops. Even when your world ends, you have something you should be doing. Garcia designates you as the go-between for Prentiss and Rossi, so you step out to call them and see what they've learned. You pace around the floor to work off your nerves. On your third pass by JJ's office, you finish your call with Prentiss.

You can hear JJ speaking.

"Just calling to...see where you are. Um... give me a call. OK? Love you."

You've already hung around for too long. JJ looks up as she puts her cell down and you stare each other right in the eye. Objectively, you just watched her almost break a media blackout. Objectively, she could have created a mass panic and caused deaths.

But you weren't trained to think like a bureaucrat.

You think like you. You think about Henry. You think about how vulnerable he is.

You echo her words to her.

"If you could do anything to keep your family safe." you give her a slight nod.

Whatever she was planning to say, whatever could have happened, it died right in that room when she hung up. There was no point in berating her.

The two of you both had family in danger. It was the saddest understanding you'd ever come to.

You returned to Garcia with the clean behavioral report from Nichols' employer.

"Any update?"

Garcia leans back in her chair. "They're still profiling the unsub. They think he was a mentee."

"Well, he didn't meet him at work." you snort. "Apparently, Nichols' is a star employee without any notable attachments to coworkers."

She turns her comms mic on.

"The unsub isn't from his work. Prentiss and Rossi's report was totally bland." She parrots to Morgan and Hotch.

Morgan's voice comes through. "Reid said Nichols' was like a teacher to him- maybe the unsub really is a student?"

"Check PhD students in the sciences." you suggest.

"I'll cross them with the bookshop." She informs everyone.

"Bookshop?" you mutter.

"Darling, you miss so much when you go." she says, but her heart is clearly in the computer. "Nothing." she huffs.

Reid speaks next, with a voice that is noticeably weaker. "I don't think this paper was

written by a science student. It's about city preparedness and response. Check with students

in the social studies...public policy, urban planning."

"Hot to trot. There's a Chad Brown, School of Public Policy at U of M. Matches a Chad Brown, former employee at the book front. He's been in the doctoral program on and off for 5 years. Nix on a steady job. Was slapped with a restraining order from his former girlfriend and has been arrested and released twice at protest rallies in DC."

Morgan is audibly fond when he speaks again "Kid, you did real good. Now get the hell out of there."

The comms go dead while the team reorganizes. Garcia sends you to the Fort Detrick team to see what they know about Brown. You try very hard not to think about what Reid didn't find in the house.

The cure.

A/N: sorry this is late- i moved in which was great and my roommate dumped her bf which was also great but then a girl ive had contact with tested positive (my university is basically trying to keep people in their dorms as much as they can. the only people ive seen are my roommate, a roommate from last year who lives across the hall now so we share the same communal bathrooms and stuff and she hasnt had contact outside of the building(shes been wearing masks and following rules rlly well, so has my room), and another former roommate who lives on the floor below us. the one below us tested positive (we found out yesterday). the university contact tracing team is super overwhelmed and wont pick up my calls so my roommate and i have just been sitting in our dorm (which we do any way) and limiting outside exposure (we leave once a day for food and our mini fridge is struggling). The roommate across the hall also tested positive. the really frustrating part is that the one below us was(and still is) lying about who she has seen and when. ie she told us shes seen a total of six people and all tested negative but she facetimed my roommate one night in a different dorm with no mask and two people in the room that she isn't talking about now, not to mention some other shady stuff. overall she's really been irresponsible and infected at lest person and put another two in quarantine and that isnt including me and my roommate. she keeps saying she got it from passing somebody outside or an elevator button or something but it just seemed much more likely that she doesnt want to own up to breaking rules. she and the roommate across the hall have both thought they have a sinus infection for a while and given the timeline we've worked out  it seems like they were exposed before I even moved in. my roomates test from tuesday was negative and we are waiting for my results tomorrow morning. we've also both signed up for the next test which will be monday, so we will know on wed. overall its just a long and scary and frustrating experience. i could get into many other details but this is me venting about trying to follow the rules and somebody who thinks they are above the rules

also- thank you thank you for the wonderful comments. they are such a bright spot in these *rough* times and i came very close to crying over them today. your support is so inspiring to me

UPDATE: my test came back negative!! we aren't out of the woods yet but its wayyyy better than a positive result lol