There is never a morning when he does not wake up with clarity and precision and an immediate grasp on his surroundings and his sense of self, so the loss of awareness before this point, the lack of memory of shower, dressed, morning tea is alarming. Let alone how he got on the subway. He removes the earbuds and forces himself to breathe. He's dressed for work in the winter, which fits because yesterday had been first snowfall. He starts to count down the things he remembers.
Last night he'd had dinner with Eve and some of the girls from accounting. He'd done some coding before sleep, had read a few paragraphs of a thriller, and then- and then he is here on the tube. He glances at his reflection in the glass as the underground flies past, there is not blood on his face, his hair is carefully brushed. This doesn't feel right at all, he can't remember how he got here, but he looks like he obviously was put together enough to get here. A concussion doesn't seem likely, his head doesn't hurt and he doesn't seem to be in shock.
He knows the symptoms regrettably, and fitting none of them, he starts to focus on alternatives. A surreptitious test of his reflexes proves he can catch a pen, and also that he is likely not been drugged. He doesn't need to look around to know he's alone in the car, he'd already checked. He's running out of options for how he came to himself on a train and panic is an ebbing tide flickering at the edges of his consciousness, he tamps it down and pulls out his phone even though the tube plays merry hell with service. Five pm, the time, and he should have been in work at nine am, and it's Thursday at least, so at least he isn't missing any days.
The train stops at the station and the automated voice tells him the station and gives warnings and he steps off even though he's three off from the one he would need to go to work. What he needs now is a car to come around and a trip to medical. The gates are shut is what he notices first, second being that the station is empty. He stands very still, breathing even through his nose, then grasping the metal gate he shouts and shakes it and doesn't panic.
He stops, trailing off to silence because he's noticed something more important than anything that had come before, something terrifying, absolutely maddening.
On the quietest day, on a day of national observation, on the god damn prince's wedding even, the bustle of bureaucratic London is deafening. Cars, tourists, state workers, barkers advertising some overpriced sandwich, noise, cacophony, the sounds of life flow never ending as they have since the city's founding. Q holds his breath and listens, and the panic is there now, rising, rising like waves, suffocating; yet still, all he can hear in all of this is just his own hyperventilating edging into madness.
The city is silent. London is dead.
Q settles down with his back against the grating and holds his phone. He's close enough to freedom, metaphorical and literal what with the gate and the approximation to above ground. Wireless has full bars, he just has to. Has to what really, there is no sound and he's sure he hasn't gone deaf, for he can hear the train set off and the automated voice of the overhead, he can hear his own heart in his ears. There should be people out there, even if the city is in lock-down, and if it was he'd have been pulled out of his bed in the middle of the night by some agent and dragged to work to help put it to rights or go down with the maddening ship as it sunk.
He taps out a text crouched in on himself like a uni-student locked in the tube station and that only happened once and he wasn't nearly so terrified because of it. Eve's number is his last texted because drinks and dinner needed organization and she always wanted to know if he got home safe and sound like a good boy. She calls him boy only when she's annoyed with him, and he's sure that as long as she just responds to this message he won't mind that ever again. The text is comprised of nothing but the emergency access number and that holds all the instructions she needs. From there he calls his office and his throat clenches up when there is no answer of operator.
He isn't patient in most instances, just usually he has things to distract himself, to focus on for completion or people to play off that can shut down his internal nervous tension. He's literally helpless here though and he isn't at all okay with that. Locked in a tube station, and he'll have to find a way out if Eve doesn't respond. He's starting to convince himself he must be mistaken about the sounds, about the nothingness out there, he's just mixed up. There must be a logical explanation for all of this.
He waits fifteen minutes and there is no return text from Eve. So he brings up the radio app and fiddles with the controls until Cherry Ripe comes in. He isn't an agent, but well, this fits enough. He waits till the numbers circle around, counts digits, and thanks his memorization skills that he has a firm enough grasp on the algorithm to work out the new contact line from the jumble. He inputs the number and hovers over the call line. Eve still hasn't responded.
He hits call and holds the phone to his ear and underneath that bubbling horror frothing at him is the thought that M is going to be so righteously angry with him for using an agent call line to get himself out of a locked down subway station.