Chapter One: Purgatory
The water bloomed over the rocks at the edge of the beach, cascading over the tops and into the crevices between the stones like tiny pools of smoke.
He coughed, shrugging his suit jacket over his shoulders and pressed it to her mouth, she took a deep aching breath. The smoke had lifted now, a thick barrier of white billows swam from ceiling to floor. She could barely see two feet in front of her but she knew he was there, in midst of the numbness that crawled through her veins she vaguely felt the press of his hand in the small of her back.
He hadn't woken up yet, he lay on his side face pressed into a patch of sand. His suit jacket was gone now, taken by who every took them presumably and he lay in a now filthy white shirt and dress pants. She sighed and reached for a flat stone and tossed it lightly into the ocean, the sound of the stone hitting water echoing lightly through her silent exile.
The man rushed forward, reaching for her arms. Oliver lunged at him, sluggish from the gas and whirled into motion, sending a series of hits to the larger mans abdomen. The man gripped the front of his shirt, lifted his feet from the ground and slammed him into the far office wall. Oliver groaned as he slid to the tile floor, felicity ran for him but everything swayed and her feet couldn't find the ground.
Oliver woke, sun perturbing his eyelashes and blinding him momentarily. A hand gently rested on his shoulder, he looked up, loosing himself in the blue of her eyes.
Felicity cupped the side of his face and his grey eyes met hers, darkening with worry. She lay on her stomach in from of him, as if shed fallen. Maybe she had, he didn't know. He curled his arms around her, pulled her to his chest in one last attempt to protect her as the gas filled his lungs and his eyelids dropped. He drifted into darkness as her scream filled his ears.
Abruptly Oliver sat upright, reaching for Felicity and inspecting her from injury, sighing in relief when he found none. "Why did you scream?"
Her voice rose inside her throat as the man pulled her from Oliver, pulling something over her head, a pillow case possibly and tightening it around her neck. She felt herself being picked up, someone's shoulder digging into her abdomen. The world rocked back and forth as she was carried from the office. She pressed her eyes shut and let the numbness seep further into her veins, taking her into a thoughtless sleep
"I was scared." She stated simply. Oliver frowned, she wasn't rambling. It was a classic felicity mouth moment but she sat there, gazing as the dark ocean water. Because she knew where they were. She'd been her only once before, but she remembered.
They were on LianYu.