The first thing that hit Mac was the smell. Stagnant, sour, and uncomfortably human, given any other situation he would have identified the mix of concentrated urine and stale body odor as a long-neglected locker room. Given his current situation, particularly that he was lying with his face pressed hard against a cracked linoleum floor in pitch dark, his mouth uncomfortably dry and his head aching and foggy, he could only peg it for serious trouble.
"Desi?" He croaked, pushing himself onto his forearms. The movement made him feel dizzy and sick. Despite the hard flooring, the sound seemed to stop dead in the air. There was no response.
It was so dark he couldn't tell whether or not his eyes were open. He reached out, his hand hitting nothing. "Desi?" He asked again. "Riley?" The sense of there being literally nothing in front of him that he could see or feel was deeply disorienting. He clawed numbly at his face, trying to pull away a blindfold that wasn't there. "Boz?" Still no answer. "Matty?" He asked desperately. Nothing.
He managed to push himself to a sitting position and forced a brief moment of panic to fade. He'd been with Desi. He didn't remember much but he knew that. If he was in trouble, she probably was too. Unsure his body would let him stand, he leaned onto all fours. Despite the lack of incoming visual stimuli the world felt like it was spinning. "Desi!"
He heard something move and he froze to make sure it wasn't just the rustle of his own damp clothes. "Desi, if that's you, say something." The idea that it might not be Desi, and that they'd been going by different names the last his brain was able to recall struck a second moment of fear within him.
He inched forward on all fours, feeling the ground gingerly in front of him. It was linoleum, long disused, with cracks and loose tiles. He could feel disturbed dust and paint chips under his hands. His eyes slowly closed but in the dark he didn't notice. He knew he was moving ridiculously slow but there was a growing fear that he would never find a wall- that he could just keep edging forward forever and he'd be lost in the dark.
His eyes snapped open again as his hands finally hit something. Not a wall, this was something moderately forgiving and covered in satin. A body. Female. Desi. "Desi, hey." He said urgently. She hadn't responded to his touch. He felt his way up to her neck, feeling a pulse that was too fast under sticky skin. "Desi!" He said louder, shaking her shoulder. He felt her start, but she didn't attack him. "Its me, its Mac." He felt her groan tiredly and relax. "Wake up, Desi." She didn't respond. He felt her pulse again, eliciting not even a groan from her still form.
Weak, disoriented, and unable to do any more, Mac pushed Desi onto her side and used his back to brace her in that position.
"C'mon, Mac." His face was pressed into the floor again. Desi was shaking him. "Hey, stay awake this time, huh?" As he opened his eyes, the room was no longer pitch dark, but an impossibly faint green light lent just a few photons to outline Desi's face, less than a foot from his own.
This time? Had he woken up again after he'd found her? He couldn't remember, but she looked relieved as he pushed himself back into a sitting position. His head still throbbed, but it was clearer now than it had been. His mouth was so dry it was hard to swallow. "Mfgh." He scrubbed his face with gritty hands.
"That's it, just… give it a minute." She put a hand on his shoulder. Mac chose to interpret it as a comforting gesture, even though he was reasonably sure she was simply trying to prevent him from falling back over.
"You good?" He asked.
"I'll live." There was a sense of relief there.
"What happened?" He asked, hoping she had a better answer for him.
"I mean, we were made. Beyond that…" She raised her hands unhelpfully. Mac stood slowly, almost surprised when his head didn't hit anything. Now he could see a wall a few feet to his left. A similar distance to his right he could make out a waist-high bank of dials and toggle switches, their labels illuminated with faint green glowing paint. Mac instinctively reached into his pocket. "Already checked." Desi confirmed. "We've got no mics, no phones, no jewelry, no watches, no belts, no jackets. Nothing that could hold a GPS chip or comm device. And even if they had missed something, I think we're underground. They were thorough."
"No blindfolds or handcuffs, though." Mac offered hopefully, trying desperately to remember if there was a specific "they" Desi was referring to but coming up eerily short. Desi shook her head.
"Not sure that's a good thing- all that means is that either they didn't think we'd survive the drug they gave us, or they know we're not going to be able to break out of here."
Mac sighed. The heat was stifling and he forced away the notion that even though they had survived, there was a lot that needed to happen for them to make it out alive. They had no food, no water, and judging by the utter and complete lack of airflow were working with a possibly limited amount of breathable air. That was on top of an extremely low likelihood anyone knew where they were or even that they were in trouble. "Then we'd better get to work- what's the last thing you remember?"
