[[AN: This was something I wrote just because I had an idea that I knew too little about to make it into a full story. So this is just a short thing that, unless I delve deeper into it, probably won't have added chapters or anything. But still, I hope you guys like it; and as always, whatever you have to say, please let me know in a review, or favourite or follow this if you did like it. I apologize beforehand for any grammatical or spelling mistakes you might spot: proof reading is not my good spot. I think that's all I have to say. Enjoy :) ]]
When Connor awoke, he was not in his bed. He hadn't woken up in his own bed for five nights. No; instead of the white walls and the sunlight creeping through the crack in the curtains, and the feeling of a soft pillow and comfortably firm mattress beneath him, were the grey walls and the dim lights on the ceiling, and a stiff pain in his back from spending the night on the hard floor of the locked room. He had, since the beginning of their year in the Cretaceous, been used to waking up with Abby in close proximity; be it that she too was sleeping, or keeping watch for any predators that may come across their sleeping forms. That much was constant, at the very least. Or it had been, for the previous four mornings.
Since being imprisoned in the windowless room, Connor had been sharing space with five other bodies: Matt, Emily, Becker, Jess and Abby. This morning, there was one less person cramped in the room (and though it was a room and not a containing cell, the latter of the two names seemed much more fitting). Connor sat up, rubbing at the knots in his neck and back, stretching out and wincing at the audible creaks his bones made. "Where's Abby?" He spoke sleepily, though coherently. Jess was still sleeping — Becker crouched adjacent to her. Matt was sitting in the corner; legs outstretched and head leaning back to touch the wall. Emily was pacing across the room, as the other team members had found she did quite a lot when in moments of stress. It was Becker who answered — the remaining being too preoccupied by thoughts or unconsciousness.
"They took her out for questioning whilst you were asleep." The soldier said, eyes diverting from Jess and fixated upon the newly awoken inmate.
Within thirty minutes of the ARC being infiltrated and the alpha team members being forcibly driven to the building of which they were being held captive in now, the man whom they knew solely as the Interrogator had been introduced. He took Matt out first, due to the man being the leader of the team. Matt had come back with a stiff upper lip and a swelling eye: one of many souvenirs the Interrogator made sure each ARC employee had to remind them of their session. Jess was second, Becker third. Connor had been the last to be taken out, and though the experience was not so pleasant, he came back with less to show for it than Captain Becker had (whose number of bruises had accumulated due to his attempted attack on the guard who had bought Jess Parker, supported by a bruised cheek and tear stained eyes, back into the room.) Abby and Emily had yet to have a turn of their own; though it seemed that had changed for the former when Connor was safe in the confinements of slumber.
"How long ago was that?" The scientist asked, after a few moments of silence. Connor was uncomfortable at the thought of Abby being in the situation that he knew from a firsthand account was not a fun one to be in. The Interrogator was certainly good at his job; though he had yet to coerce the team members into giving him the information he so desperately wanted, the surly man knew exactly what to say to lower the confidence and stability of the person he was accosting. For Connor, he had bought up his anomaly research with Phillip Burton and the consequences of it: he had known things that only prominent people in Connor's life had known, and even some things Connor himself had managed to forget. It was as if the Interrogator had lived those moments with him, taking down thorough notes as he did.
Becker stood up, walking softly so as to not wake the sleeping brunette on the floor beneath him. The soldier walked over to Connor, leaning against the wall space next to him. "About half an hour ago." Silence. The boy who always had an argument or a response to everything now had nothing to say. Only Becker's excursion had taken so long — and Becker's only had taken that long so the evidence of his punishment was clear when he met with his friends once again.
Before either of the men or (awake) women in the room had anything to say on the matter, the sound of the door being unlocked from the outside could be heard, following the brightness of their living space being heightened as the guards bringing Abby back entered. At first the blonde zoologist was no-where to be seen; but shortly after all eyes were on her as her crumpled form was thrown into the room, landing discarded on the floor. Jess woke up to the sound of Connor scrambling to his feet and skidding over to his fiancées side, kneeling beside her fallen head and rolling her so that she was facing towards the ceiling; her injuries then becoming visible to all in the room. "What did you do?!" He exclaimed, just as Jess mumbled a confused 'what's going on', hand running through her bed hair, and after a suddenly alert Matt jumping to his feet.
"This," spat out the guard, "is what happens when one of you try to assert authority. Our Interrogator, thanks to her, has been attacked and incapacitated." The man clad in black spoke with the upmost tone of resentment, as if he was personally offended by the now unconscious state of the man whom he and his colleagues clearly followed orders from. Every person they had met so far — whether it be the woman who bought in their food, or the boy in his mid-twenties who handed them various items they needed for the bathroom (which was similar to the size of that in an aeroplane) — had the same aura of allegiance to the man they all collectively hated. This blind faith would have been something the ARC members would comment on, had they not all been busy with more pressing matters.
Abby's head was bleeding; the blood impossible to miss when in contrast against her lightly coloured hair. Matt, who had taken the floor space beside Connor, was looking at the wound, concluding from it that Abby had been hit on the head with something to then be in her current unconscious state. Her jaw bone was also beginning to bruise, currently a purple colour — not unlike the one Jess had. It was clear she put up a fight, and the team could only imagine how the petite girl had taken down the large, armed Interrogator. "So you knocked her out?" Becker retorted, his words just as angry as the guards had been. Connor had already forced himself not to lash out; he knew he couldn't fight the guy (especially as Becker had failed to succeed in that exact task) but it was hard to resist the urge to try — especially with Abby's head in his lap and the knowledge that the guy holding a baton and standing in the doorway had been the source of her injury. The man merely smiled at Becker, before taking a step backwards and closing the door behind him. The cruel laugh that could be heard from inside the locked-once-more room made each prisoner feel sick.
Jess was now on her feet, and Emily (having stopped pacing when their sixth member was returned in such a state) was standing beside her, both looking more worrisome than they had before combined. It wasn't the image of a crumpled friend who had always shown herself as invincible that caused such obvious distraught that every other person in the room internally held: it was that laugh. That laugh didn't just say 'I hold the upper hand and you can do nothing about this.' It also screamed 'there's so much more coming for you.'
Everyone was given a break from such thoughts when Abby began to stir, groaning as she sat up, hand immediately going to the open cut above her forehead. She was immediately bombarded with questions, the majority of which were about her well being. She didn't say much about what went down between herself and the Interrogator, and the people who knew her so well knew not to push too hard, but Abby did assure everyone that she was just fine — which for the most part, she was. It was only when it was just Connor and herself left awake hours later, that she disclosed the events of her interrogation.
"He knew things, Connor." When Abby spoke up after at least a quarter of an hour of silence, Connor didn't need to question who or what she was talking about. The tone of her voice, her expression, and her slumped posture taking support from both the wall and her fiancée was answer enough. "Things that aren't on any files or police reports out there." That was why the blonde had acted against the Interrogator, doing things that everyone wished they could do to him thrice over. The way he spoke about repressed childhood memories that she no longer let haunt her, as if he had a personal connection to them, to her — she couldn't handle it. And though Abby knew it made her weak and though she knew the others taken before her had managed to not let it cut them too deeply, Abby refused to let that man delve deeper into her past than she herself had gone. "Things I haven't told anyone but you."
Connor was afraid. Afraid that now, someone else had noticed how the Interrogator seemed to know just too much than plausible, which made it more than something he cooked up in his head. Afraid of the broken voice used to speak the last sentence Abby conversed to him before she returned to her curled up position on the cold hard floor, drained from the day's happenings. Afraid because it had been five nights and another one was coming to a close; and they had yet to break their way out of there and bounce back as they always, always had done before.
They were Anomaly Research Team Members. Creature Incursion Specialists. Soldiers, scientists, herpetologists and zoologists. They were from the future, past and present. Together they had knowledge on prehistoric creatures, computer science, firearms, combat skills, and of course anomalies.
But not one of the six bodies cramped in that room knew what to do.