"War makes ghosts of the living. But only the toughest walk out of hell." —Jason Cole
Quantico, Virginia – BAU Headquarters – 10:34 AM
The case started like any other: a cluster of seemingly unrelated homicides across three states—each victim tortured for hours before death, each body left in a mock-prayer position. No fingerprints. No DNA. No known connection between victims. But Jason saw it before anyone else did.
"This isn't a spree," he said, eyes locked on the whiteboard, hand hovering above the pins like he was feeling heat. "This is a hunt."
Hotch stepped beside him. "What makes you say that?"
Jason's jaw flexed. "Because whoever this is… he's escalating toward something. These kills aren't his goal. They're his practice runs."
Reid frowned. "We've seen that before."
"No," Jason said, voice cold. "Not like this. This is surgical. He's probing boundaries. He's watching for response times. He's learning us."
Garcia's face popped up on the screen. "Oh… I really don't like where this is going."
Jason turned to Hotch. "He's not chasing victims anymore. He's chasing a target."
Hotch's eyes narrowed. "You think it's someone on the team?"
Jason nodded slowly. "And I think it's me."
Rural West Virginia – 36 Hours Later
The BAU split up to follow a new lead—Jason and Morgan took the southern route, tracing the unsub's van to an abandoned fire lookout station deep in the mountains. What should have been a simple recon turned into a trap.
They never saw the second man.
Morgan was knocked unconscious just outside the tree line. Jason fought hard—too hard for someone the unsub expected to capture. He took down two of them before a cattle prod to the spine dropped him.
By the time Morgan came to, Jason was gone.
Only blood, spent shells, and Jason's sidearm remained.
Unknown Location – 17 Hours Later
Dark. Concrete. Cold.
Jason woke to restraints on his wrists and ankles, steel biting skin. A single bulb swung from the ceiling, casting shifting shadows. The unsub stood beside a table of instruments—blades, hooks, a blowtorch.
"I wanted to know if you were real," the man said, voice soft, eerie in its control. "They call you the ghost. The prodigy. The profiler who sees through killers. Let's see how clearly you see when you're broken."
Jason stared at him with blank calm. "You picked the wrong ghost."
The first blade went in.
He didn't scream.
Quantico – Emergency Briefing Room – 24 Hours Since Disappearance
Morgan's voice shook with anger. "He pushed me out of the way. He knew it was a trap and went anyway."
Reid stared at the whiteboard, fingers clenched. "Why would the unsub take him alive? It doesn't fit his previous kills."
Gideon stood, staring at the profile they were building. "Because this was never about random victims. This was about challenging a rival predator."
Garcia was pale. "I've got nothing. No cell signal, no credit card usage, no traffic cams—Jason vanished like a shadow."
Hotch's voice was ice. "Then we find the darkness he disappeared into."
Unknown Location – 41 Hours In
Jason had stopped counting the cuts after the twentieth.
He sat slumped forward, blood dripping from his nose, his arms pulled tight behind his back. But his eyes—sharp, intelligent, defiant—never left his captor.
"You think you're in control," Jason rasped, voice barely audible. "But you've already lost."
The man laughed. "You don't even know where you are."
Jason smiled, one tooth red with blood. "Don't need to. I know who you are. You flinch when you cut left. Your hands shake before the pain starts. You don't kill because you want to. You do it because it's the only time anyone paid attention to you."
That smile—calm, knowing—shattered something in the unsub.
He screamed and lunged forward.
Jason used the motion—dislocated his thumb, slipped one wrist free, and headbutted the man so hard he collapsed backward. Jason scrambled, half-falling onto the tools, slicing through his own wrist strap with a surgical scalpel before the door burst open and a second man tackled him.
He fought like a soldier. Like a ghost come back wrong. They beat him down again—but not before he whispered:
"You better kill me now. Because if you don't… I'm coming back."