"Fleur, we need to take more pictures of each other, with each other." Elijah sighed as he looked through the pictures in his wallet.

"You have more pictures than money in there." Fleur pointed.

"Because I spend all my money on that one." Elijah nodded to Reid.

"Wh- No." Reid shook his head.

"Then where did all my money go? Hm?" Elijah raised a brow.

"For the cats."

"And not on those books?"

"Nope." Reid shook his head.

"Hm.. I'd rather have the photos anyway." Elijah shrugged.

"Derek keeps my money because I'd end up spending it all." Fleur hummed.

"Ain't that the truth." Morgan chuckled.

"Leave my spending habits alone." She pointed.

"Y'know, I don't think I will." Morgan shook his head.

"Eli, tell him." Fleur groaned.

"You two, man." Morgan chuckled.

"Hey, I'm just doing my part." Elijah shrugged.

"Thank you." Fleur hummed.

"You are most welcome." Не smiled.

"So, who's Hotch interviewing?" Morgan asked.

"Merrin, I think his name was." Reid nodded.

"Yeah.. He's claiming a shadow monster killed his wife." Fleur sighed.

"Y'know.. That's a new one." Elijah nodded slowly.

"Maybe he's just been high."

"Drugs can make you do wild things, but I don't think this guy had any history of substance abuse." Reid shook his head.

"You ever see shadow monster?" Fleur nudged Elijah.

"Oh, ha ha." Elijah rolled his eyes,"..Okay, maybe, I've seen some weird shit."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah."

"Once I saw-" Fleur began.

"Stop comparing traumas. Do you know how bad that is?" Reid pointed.

"We weren't even comparing that time, I said something and Fleur just so happened to want to regale me with a story of her own." Elijah crossed his arms.

"But if Fleur was to continue her trauma, you would add on, hm?" Reid looked at him.

"That's just called a conversation, baby. We're not trying to compare who had it worse because, let's face it, we've all been through some shit." Elijah pointed.

"Got a point." Morgan nodded.

"I always have a point."

"Not always."

"Most of the time." He shrugged.

"We got files for us to go through." JJ walked in.

"Come on you three." Morgan nodded.

Fleur hummed and walked through to the Conference Room with the others where files were already placed on the table for the team and they all quickly got to work.

"Alright, why don't we start with the simplist explanation? They're lying." Morgan shook his head as he looked up from a file.

"There are easier lies to tell to cover for murder." Fleur pointed,"Why tell the same one, especially one that doesn't make sense?"

"Could it be a group delusion?" Kate asked.

"Their similar age range all points in that direction, thirty-three to thirty-four years old, but the geographic diversity kind of rules that one out." Reid shook his head.

"Yeah. Larry Merrin's from Topeka. Christine McNeil is from Roswell, Georgia. Daniel Karras is from Derry, Maine, all different economic levels, social circles, obviously different racial backgrounds." Garcia told them.

"So if he's an UnSub, he's not killing, but creating killers. Murder by proxy if you will." Rossi tilted his head.

"We discussed it briefly earlier but it has to be drugs. Larry Merrin's story just sounds like a bad trip." Elijah sighed.

"According to the police reports, all three tox screens came out negative." Garcia nodded.

"Well, they only screen for known compounds. This could be a cocktail we've never seen before." JJ shook her head.

"Every drug affects every person differently, yet somehow this UnSub is able to make his drug affect three completely dissimilar people in exactly the same way." Reid pointed out.

"Well, maybe they're not dissimilar at all. Maybe the drugs are just the tipping point and these three share some sort of pre-existing medical condition he knows he can tap into to convince them to kill." Hotch suggested,"We find that, we find him."

*********************************

Fleur and Morgan were in another room, interviewing one of the suspects from a previous murder.

"Did she feel a lot of pain? Did I kill her quickly?" Karras asked.

"Mr Karras, we want to get to the bottom of this too. So we'd like to take you through a cognitive interview." Morgan told him.

"What's the point?"

"It could help you remember details you couldn't before. And those details could help us understand what happened." Fleur explained,"So please.. Close your eyes. And put yourself back in your home a week ago. You got home from work early, right?"

"Right."

"How did you feel when you walked through the door?" Fleur asked

"Happy.. She wasn't home. And the I remembered she said she was going to the movies with some friends. I thought my beer tasted funny. And then I realized it wasn't my beer, that it was a smell coming from somewhere else." Karras began.

"What was the smell?" Fleur tilted her head.

"Sage." He answered.

"You're sure about that?" Morgan blinked.

"Yeah. Yeah, because once I placed it, I was out." Karras nodded.

"How long were you out?' Fleur raised a brow.

"I don't know. All I know is that when I came to, it was dark and I couldn't move.." Karras began to tear up and his voice became quieter,"It did sexual things to me.. He- He had these talons for hands and.. And I got free and, uh.. And then I hid somewhere in the house and uh.. The next thing I remember is standing over my mom's body... And the cops were cuffing me.. So, I.. Maybe.. You know, maybe the rape, maybe I snapped. You know- You know what I mean? Maybe I snapped and I lashed out at the first person I saw."

"Mr Karras-" Morgan tried.

"Just listen, because this is the only way that it can make sense." He shook his head.

"At your lawyer's insistence, the Maine police ran a rape kit on you. There was no evidence of assault, sexual or otherwise." Morgan nodded.

"Okay, well, run another rape kit." Karras pointed.

"No rope burns on your arms or legs. No evidence of a break in, at all.." Fleur sighed.

"What, you guys trying to tell me that this didn't happen to me? 'Cause it did!" Karras snapped, looking down as his tears fell,"There are others.."

"Excuse me?"

"My lawyer said that there were others that this happened to.

"That's right." Morgan nodded.

"Well, can I talk to them?" Karras asked.

"No." Morgan sighed.

"Why not?" He questioned.

"They're not stable." Fleur answered.

*********************************

"The plastic tasted positive for sevoflurane and scopolamine. Both powerful disassociates. The first is to put you into a waking dream. Dentists often use it during oral surgery. The second, in high doses, makes you completely suggestable." Reid explained as he held up the plastic bag, a small plastic tube inside.

"And the UnSub uses the first to make the victims hallucinate their worst fear." Kate sighed.

"Then he uses the second to make them attack that fear when it's really the person next to them. They don't realize that they're actually killing someone that they love." Morgan continued.

"And once they do, their lives are ruined forever. Even if they plead insanity, we've got three victims who ain't never going back to Mayberry." Rossi nodded.

"Let's go back to the part about hallucinating your worst fear. JJ, what's your earliest fear from childhood?" Hotch turned to her.

"Being separated from my parents." JJ answered.

"Dave?" He looked over.

"Lon Chaney, Phantom of the Opera. She takes off that mask, forget about it." Rossi chuckled.

"Kate?"

"Melissa Gordner. That bitch." Kate scoffed.

"And yet each of these victims saw exactly the same thing." Hotch pointed.

"The initial police reports called it a dark figure, but our interview revealed shared details, a shadow monster with talons for hands." Reid explained.

"And that level of specifity says it's not just a childhood nightmare, it's something they actually experienced, though they were too young to understand what it was." Hotch shook his head.

"But they were from different states." JJ pointed out.

"They were adopted in different states. Maybe at some point, they shared the same group home." Elijah suggested.

"So the UnSub has them recall thar memory from childhood to make them kill as adults.. How do we prove it?" Fleur asked.

*********************************

"Alright, let's assume all the victims share Bill Kinderman's propensity for recovered memories. What does that mean for the Unsub?" Hotch looked around.

"It means his drugs would have more of an effect on them." Fleur nodded, looking at the drawings of the 'shadow monster'

"Why them, more than a normal person?" Kate asked.

"Because when something's remembered for the first time on a therapist's couch, it's often a fantasy the patient is talking themselves into believing." Reid explained,"Popular thinking is recovered memories are actually just a form of self-hypnosis. That's why the patients are so convinced the delusion is real."

"So if these victims are already talking themselves into believing fiction, they would be more suggestable when three dosed." Rossi realised.

"We profiled these victims had a pre existing condition. I think this is it." Hotch pointed.

"How would the Unsub know that?" Morgan questioned.

"Because he was there the last time they made up a story, in 1985." Hotch answered.

"So they were only three to four years old. Kids that age can't distinguish fantasy from reality." JJ shook her head.

"Exactly. And their age plus their time record puts us right at the height of the satanic ritual abuse allegations." Hotch sighed.

"Oh, crap." Elijah cursed.

"This is a completely different set of circumstances." Fleur shook her head.

"Was it? Throughout the 1980's, preschool-age kids made accusations about their teachers." Hotch pointed.

"McMartin, Fells Acres, Kern County. Two hundred and seventy cases by 1988." Reid hummed,"Numerous innocent teachers had their careers and lives ruined, and all the cases were ultimately debunked.V

"By the BAU and The Lanning Report, thank you very much." Rossi added.

"Except that was a mass hysteria involving teachers and kids, and these victims were adopted." Kate pointed out.

"Well, that's the deviation that made us miss the profile until now. Thirty years ago, these victims could have made similar accusations in a foster home, all saying the same thing, taht they saw this." Hotch told them, holding up the drawings.

"Three year old Larry Merrin would have said the monster dragged him down the stairs." Fleur nodded.

"And four year old Daniel Karras one-upped it by adding a sexual assault detail. That's how kids tell stories, especially when they're reinforced by well-meaning parents, therapists and cops." Morgan shook his head.

"And in doing so, they ruin the Unsub's life, and now he's taking revenge." Hotch looked at them.

"Okay, so if this is the 'why', how do we find him?" JJ asked.

"We talk to Christine McNeil. Maybe she can tell us where the foster home was." Hotch sighed.

"Flag on the play there. Shes not talking to anyone." Rossi told him.

"Maybe she will." Hotch walked off.

*********************************

After Hotch and Rossi left to interview Christine, the lights soon began flickering and Garcia yelled at them to 'Unplug everything' before they were all left in complete darkness.

"What the hell?" Fleur looked up.

"We've got candles somewhere." Reid told her.

They had gotten them all lit up and on their desks.

"This is cozy." Fleur sighed.

"Do we have any idea what's going on yet?" Elijah raised a brow.

"Garcia's trying to get some answers. Powers out in the whole building. Backup generator too." Hotch walked in

"This guy's got some mojo. He knocked us out right when we got our best lead." Rossi shook his head.

"We could cross referenced the name 'Mr Scratch' against old statements. We'd have to go through paper files." Reid sighed.

"We don't have time. This Unsub's probably already found every kid that made an accusation from back then." JJ pointed.

"If we don't get back online soon, or get a lucky break in this case, we're gonna be looking at more drugged victims and dead bodies." Morgan shook his head.

"Ahem." Garcia cleared her throat as she walked in,"Getting online is going to be a lot harder than you think."

"What do you mean?" JJ asked.

"Whoever engineered this, he did a complete and total network and infrastructure shutdown." Garcia told them as they entered the Conference Room.

"But I thought we had firewalls to protect from this kind of breach." Hotch blinked.

"We totally do. And that's what scares me, okay. Look, look. I managed to capture some of his hacking code on one of the hard drives before he could fry it. I printed this out at the copy shop. This is what I can tell you. It's the only thing, but it's good news. He wasn't hacking us." Garcia explained as she handed out the sheets,"He was looking for something in the witness protection files, 'cause that's what he raided first."

"Do we know who, in witness protection?" Morgan tilted his head.

"Well, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it? In that, I will pay you $64,000 if you can answer it. His encryption algorithms are beyond the beyond the beyond." She shook her head.

"We're not going to find him through his computer expertise. Certainly not now. We need to figure out why he'd take the risk to hack us." Rossi sighed.

"It's like JJ said. He's looking for every kid who made an accusation. One of them is in witness protection." Kate crossed her arms.

"And he saved them for last because if he kills that target first, we'd be on to him immediately." Fleur realised.

"Huh.." Reid nodded slowly as he looked over the file.

"What? You see something?" Morgan asked.

"Encryption's a highly specialized skillset but it's fundamentally a mathematical process, which means it's a human process, so sometimes your technique can reveal where you learned it." Reid explained,"I think I know where he learned how to do this."

"Where?" Kate turned to him.

"Harvard." Reid answered,"Which, oddly enough, isn't known for it's advanced math programme. But it is known for one particular class. When you're good at math, good enough to get into Harvard, you take a math class called Math 15. When you're better than that, you take Math 25, but when you're the best, the absolute best, you take Math 55, Honors Advanced Calculus and Linear Algebra. Graduates are immediately employed by the U.S government because they're too dangerous to work anywhere else. More specifically, they're employed at the NSA."

"Oh sir, that would make a lot of sense." Garcia nodded.

*********************************

The team pulled up outside the house where Mr Scratch had targeted, the woman who caused the children to make up false allegations against his father.. And he was alone in there with Hotch. Elijah, Reid and Rossi opened the door slowly as a gunshot went off.

"Hotch!" Rossi ran over to Hotch who was on the ground,"We need a medic in here."

"Take it. Take it." Hotch shakily handed his gun to them,"He made me see things.."

"Okay.. You're okay." Elijah put a hand on his shoulder.

"He's gone." Reid walked in.

Meanwhile, the others were around the back of the house when they heard the floorboard creak.

"We've got him." Morgan spoke over the comm.

Fleur opened up the door infront of them, pointing their guns at Mr Scratch who just sat there.

"I win." Scratch hummed.

Morgan slowly approached Mr Scratch, sending the news back to the others.

"He surrendered." Reid told them.

"Ambulance is on its way." Elijah walked towards Hotch with Rossi.

"He surrendered. That doesn't make sense." Hotch shook his head

"We need to get you looked at." Rossi began.

"I'm fine." Hotch insisted as he walked off.

"Hey, this is not a suggestion." Rossi tried but Hotch was already gone.

*********************************

"So.." Elijah looked around the car,"How was that case?"

"He creeps me out." Fleur shivered.

"I'm pissed about what he did to Hotch." Morgan shook his head.

"We all are." Reid sighed.

"People like Scratch make it hard to remember that there are good people out there." Elijah nodded.

"Hotch is strong..He'll get through it." Morgan told them.

"He always does." Reid agreed.

"Well, we have Scratch so no more creepy shadow monsters." Fleur hummed.

"No more mind-controlling drugs." Elijah added.

"Hell yeah." Fleur nodded.

"I can't wait to get home to try and forget about him." Morgan sighed.

"I'm going straight to bed. Anyone else?" Fleur looked at them.

"Most definitely." Elijah told her.

"I'll feed the cats." Reid chuckled.

"Thank you, my love." Elijah hummed.

"We'll see you two tomorrow, hm?" Morgan stopped the car.

"That's right." Reid nodded.

"Bye boys." Fleur waved.

"Bye Flo." Elijah waved back as he and Reid got out of the car.

"See you guys." Morgan chuckled and drove off.