Author's note: I own none of this. Thanks to my amazing beta; any remaining errors are completely my fault.
Rise and Meet the Day
Casey drowsed for a long time. The only thing he was aware of was the pain in his head, and the dim light every time he tried to open his eyes.
Eventually he came more awake, reaching hesitantly for his temple, where the pain was centred. He hissed as he touched a scar, only partially healed.
Partially...
He forced himself upright, looking around. This wasn't a hospital, as he'd half thought; the walls were grey concrete and there were no windows. It was reasonably comfortably furnished; it looked rather like a hotel room, with a small table, a bookshelf and a radio as well as the bed he was lying on. Clothes were stacked neatly on shelves; there were no windows, and the lights were recessed into the ceiling.
And there was a girl, sitting on the floor in the corner and staring at him.
Casey swung his legs off the bed, watching her. "Who are you?" She bit her fist, eyes wide, and he climbed off the bed, swaying for a moment before catching his balance. "Who are you? Where are we?"
"In the bunker," she said around her fist. He took a step towards her and she scrambled to her feet, cramming herself into the corner. "You can't...are you real?"
"What?"
"You can't be real. There's only the bunker. You can't be..." She pressed her hands over her mouth again.
Already out of patience, Casey turned away to study the room. One wall had two doors; one turned out to be a bathroom, and the other was a well stocked kitchenette - a kitchenette, he noticed, with no actual machinery beyond a fridge set into the wall. No doors, no windows, no way in or out.
He went back to the main room. The girl was still crammed into the corner, watching him. "How'd I get in here?"
"I don't know," she whispered. "I was sleeping. You were just here. You were bleeding, I cleaned it up..." She brushed her fingers over her temple, and Casey echoed her without thinking, wincing at the sharp pain.
"Ok." He slid down to a crouch, dropping his head into his hands. "Where are we? No, wait, the bunker, right?"
"The bunker," she agreed.
Casey glanced up at her, studying her carefully. She looked a few years younger than him, pale and slim – almost too thin – straight dark hair falling the length of her back and green eyes. "What's your name?"
"My..."
"I'm Casey."
"Oh." She frowned for a moment before saying hesitantly, "Kayla."
She said it as though she wasn't sure, and he frowned. "Kayla?"
"Yes," she said defensively.
"Cool name," he said, easing back to his feet. "How long have you been here, Kayla?"
"I've always been here. There isn't anywhere else. There's only the bunker."
"Right, yeah, I forgot."
"Are you really real?" she whispered.
Casey nodded, holding out a hand. He waited patiently while she picked her way out of the corner, hesitantly taking his hand. "See?" he murmured. "I'm real."
She reached out, tracing the shape of his face. Casey held still, letting her do it; her touch lightened over the cut on his temple. "Is that sore?" she murmured.
"I've had worse."
The lights darkened suddenly and she looked up. "Sit," she said, catching at his shoulder.
"What?"
"Sit. Quick. Eyes closed." She sank down, trying to pull him with her. Casey pulled free, staring around.
The door to the kitchenette clicked and he threw himself at it, yanking on the handle. It didn't budge and he cursed, thumping futilely at it.
When he turned Kayla was sitting curled in on herself, hands pressed over her ears. Casey scowled, dropping to sit next to her. "What's going on?"
"Lights go down, shut your eyes," she breathed. "Lights go down, shut your eyes. Lights go down, shut your eyes."
She kept it up until the lights finally went back up. The kitchen door had clicked a couple of minutes earlier, but Casey didn't bother getting up; Kayla was still curled into a ball, rocking back and forth.
When the lights went up she uncurled carefully, looking around. "There," she said, satisfied. Climbing to her feet, she crossed to the kitchen and returned with a tray.
Casey eyed the two bowls of soup, frowning. "Where'd that come from?"
Kayla shrugged. "Lights go down, sometimes things come."
"But where from?" Casey insisted. "If there's nothing else out there, where's it come from?"
"It just comes." Kayla turned away, busying herself with the tray. Casey gave up, waiting until she'd had some of hers to risk his. Nothing happened, and he finished it off.
Time passed very, very slowly. Casey spent some time studying the supplies in the kitchenette; there was enough food, even with both of them, to keep them going for quite a while. An extra toothbrush turned up after what he guessed was a day or so. Clothes appeared sporadically, and the small amount of rubbish they generated vanished. Fresh air came from somewhere up in the roof, and sinks in the kitchen and bathroom provided water.
Kayla entertained herself with books and music; the radio never picked up any signal, but there was a collection of CDs. It was mostly classical music, a little jazz; nothing Casey recognised, nothing up to date. The books were mostly puzzles; there was a first aid manual, and a couple of cookbooks – he didn't know why, since there was no way to cook anything – but no history, no atlases, nothing to suggest the world outside the bunker.
Whenever the lights dimmed Kayla stopped what she was doing and lay down; she made Casey take the bed until his head healed and the headaches stopped, then he started sleeping on the floor. The lights never fully went down and it took him a long time to adapt to sleeping.
He stayed in the kitchenette for a while, determined not to be locked out again. Kayla mostly ignored him, making sure he ate whenever she did and apart from that leaving him alone. Casey spent a lot of time staring at the walls, slept as much as he could – he was adapting to the lights, and that worried him – and stayed put.
Kayla came in eventually, fiddled with the taps, and then turned to him. "There's no water."
"What?"
"There's no water. None of the taps are working."
Casey cursed. He'd been ready for the lights going off, for the food running down, he'd already been planning how to ration out the food, but he couldn't deal with the water going off. There was no water stored anywhere in the bunker; they were completely dependent on the taps.
He gave up, and followed her back into the living room, and tried not to curse when he heard the lock click and the lights went down.
Casey was bored and frustrated. He couldn't track time, couldn't tell how long he'd been there. Every so often he woke aware that he'd been drugged, which only messed with his sense of time even further. Kayla usually slept longer than him on those occasions, leaving him prowling helplessly around the room. She couldn't tell him if that had happened before he got there, since she had nothing to measure it against. He tried to get around the drugs by not eating at the same time as she did, but it was coming through the water or in the air for all he knew; he still woke up groggy and tired at random intervals.
Kayla still refused to believe there was anything outside. She couldn't explain where he'd come from, but she was steadfast in her refusal. She claimed not to remember anything outside of the bunker, and Casey thought she was telling the truth; he caught her looking at him oddly when he mentioned certain things, she didn't recognise anything from popular culture, and he didn't think she was skilled enough to keep up a lie like that.
"But you can talk," he pointed out one day. "And you can read. You must have learned those things somewhere."
She considered, turning a page in her book. "I don't remember."
"Kayla."
"I believe you, but I don't remember. There's only the bunker."
"You don't talk like a kid, either."
She looked up, meeting his eyes. "I don't remember."
"Yeah," he said with a sigh. "There's only the bunker."
"Yes."
He spent some time thinking. He couldn't trace a pattern in the visits, or in the lights falling and rising, but he took to sitting on the floor near the kitchen door. The puzzles were boring for him, but he did his best to make it look like he was trying, leaning against the wall and waiting.
When the lights dipped one day he put the book down, carefully wedging one corner of the cover into the door frame. Kayla was on the other side of the room, curled in on herself as usual.
The door clicked. Casey counted out sixty heartbeats before rising slowly to his feet, wrapping his hand carefully around the door knob. A glance back to make sure Kayla wasn't watching, and he yanked it open.
He was on his back before he could focus, nose throbbing where the punch had struck it. He squinted through the pain and the involuntary tears, but all he could make out was a dark figure. The figure stepped towards him, studying him for a moment before kicking him in the head.
Casey woke curled on his side. He couldn't see anything, even when he blinked and strained; eventually he decided to assume the lights were off, though he'd never seen them off, not since he got here.
His hands were tied behind his back, tightly enough that his fingers were tingling with blood loss. His ankles were tied, too, making it awkward to move. With some effort, he got himself sitting up and shuffled along the floor until he hit a wall.
Eventually he figured out he was in the bathroom. The door wouldn't budge, and the taps weren't working. He couldn't reach high enough to get at the bathroom cabinet, not that he could think of anything useful in there.
He sat back down on the floor, finding a corner to tuck himself into. His head was pounding and he was thirsty, but the darkness and silence were worse. He couldn't keep his mind from wondering, and it always went right back to one thing.
Why isn't Brax here yet?
When the lights came on he groaned, curling over to bury his face in the floor. He'd lost feeling in his hands and feet and the room seemed to be freezing cold. The door clicked and after a couple of minutes it edged open.
"Casey?" Kayla said uncertainly.
He shifted so she could see his hands and she hesitated before coming to kneel behind him, tracing the ropes uncertainly before starting to work on the knot.
She had to tug and pull at the rope, trying to loosen the knot, and every move made it dig and shred at his wrists, but the strands finally parted and she unwound the rope. Casey hissed in pain as blood started flowing again, and she went down to his ankles, where at least his trousers had protected his skin a little.
By the time she got it untied Casey was able to move his hands around in front of him. Kayla vanished briefly and came back with a cup of water; Casey took it gratefully, aware enough to sip instead of gulping. Kayla wet a cloth and rubbed gently at the blood caked under his nose.
"Can you move?" she asked quietly, once he'd finished the glass.
"Yeah. I'm just stiff. What was that?"
"Was it dark?"
"Yeah." He levered himself up on the sink, carefully not looking at himself in the mirror. Fumbling at the cabinet, he found the single package of painkillers and downed both pills. They were never given any more than two at a time.
"Dark is for punishments."
"What?" He turned back, studying her.
"When we're bad, the light goes off," she told him. "That's how we know we've been bad. Are you bleeding?"
"No." He touched the cut on his forehead, checking his fingers briefly. "No."
The room had changed. He hung in the doorframe for a moment, staring at it; a double bed now sat against one wall, and the wardrobe was bigger. Two chairs and a larger table stood in one corner. It made everything more crowded, taking away what little floor space they'd had.
"Who did this?" he asked, wobbling in to sit gingerly on one end of the bed.
"I was sleeping," Kayla told him. "Tilt your head." He obeyed, letting her examine the cut.
"Will I live?" he asked when she stepped away. The painkillers were starting to cut down on the pain in his head, and he could move without wanting to be sick.
Kayla gave him a look; he was starting to learn that that particular look meant 'I don't know what you mean.' "Show me your wrists," she said instead, studying the cuts left behind by the rope.
"It's nothing," Casey told her, tugging until she let go. "I don't understand any of this."
"Any of what?"
"I've been kidnapped before, but he wanted something from me. I don't get what this guy wants."
"What guy?" She took his wrist again and he let her rub antiseptic cream into the worst spots.
"The guy who's keeping us here."
"There's only the bunker," she reminded him gently, starting on the other wrist.
Casey's temper flared and he pushed her away. Off balance, she crashed to the floor, gasping. "There's a whole world out there," he hissed, leaning over her. "I'm not going to be stuck here forever."
"There's only the bunker," she whispered, holding one wrist awkwardly.
Casey stepped over her and let himself into the kitchen. He knew himself too well, and he didn't want to be around her right now, not until he'd calmed down a little.