A/N: I know I said I would post this tomorrow, but I was encouraged by kind feedback and got it done tonight. Warning: this chapter contains violence and drugs (but you should know that already if you read the warnings on chapter 1)
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Chase tripped slightly on the uneven floor of the basement as he passed the threshold, biting back a curse as the still-fresh memory of the gun against his forehead resurfaced. Behind him, he could hear Foreman following him into the dark. Unsure what he faced, and unwilling to proceed blindly, he pasued. Forman bumped into him, a solid, warm, mass, and Chase was almost grateful for the contact.
Their captor swore incoherently, and Chase could hear him scrabbling for something on the wall. Sudden light flooded the room and he grimaced, squinting at their surroundings. They were in a large concrete room, cluttered with dusty boxes and broken down furniture. A large water heater squatted in the far corner and several corroded, leaking pipes ran overhead.
"Move," the man ordered again, and he must have prodded Foreman with the gun because his coworker stumbled into his back abruptly. The unexpected force jostled him, and the shoe box of drugs slipped from his hands to land on the floor with a thud.
"Goddamn it," the man behind him screamed in outrage, and he felt Foreman being shoved to the side before a huge, meaty hand landed on the back of his neck.
"You little fucker!"
"I'm sor-" he tried to apologize, but before he could get the words out he was tossed effortlessly forward onto the floor, his hands and knees scraping painfully on the dirty concrete.
"Pick it up," the gunman ground out, and when Chase dared to glance up at him his eyes were rolling madly and his teeth were bared. He caught a glimpse of Foreman, looking alarmed and angry, picking himself up slowly off the floor.
"Don't look at me!"
The man punctuated the words with a hard kick to Chase's stomach, and all the air in his body seemed to whoosh out of him in one gust. He wheezed painfully, his arms collapsing so that he rested on his forearms. This was quickly getting more and more out of control, he realized, desperately trying to draw air into his starved lungs.
"Pick it up!"
Unwilling to risk another blow, Chase forced himself up onto his knees and gingerly gathered up the box and its semi-spilled contents. A few of the baggies and one of the syringes had fallen out, and he placed them deliberately back into the box, being careful of the needle.
"Now stand up," the man ordered through gritted teeth, and Chase hurried to comply. His stomach ached fiercely where he'd been kicked – the gunman was obviously on some sort of upper – there'd been a lot of force behind that kick.
"Move forward. Don't – don't fuck around, understand? I'll kill ya…"
Chase had no doubt that their captor would do just that without a second thought. He kept him eyes down and his grip on the box firm as he and Foreman stumbled deeper into the musty room. When they reached the far wall, the man gestured for them to sit against it. As they were preparing to do so, a sudden scuffling came from their right. The gunman gasped, muscles and veins bulging in his neck, and swung the gun towards the sound.
"Come out, you fuckers," he screamed, his eyes wild, "I'm not gonna let you take me again!"
Chase exchanged a quick glance with Foreman, and was alarmed to see a calculating, determined look in his coworker's eyes. Bloody hell, he was going to try something stupid and reckless and get them both killed. Chase shook his head adamantly, but it was too late.
Foreman launched himself at the distracted gunman, putting considerable force behind his attack. He collided with their kidnapper, who grunted in rage and shock and squeezed the trigger. The shot was unbelievably loud in the closed-off room, the bullet thwacking into a stack of old, mildewed magazines. Chase was distressed to see that Foreman's attempted tackle hadn't even knocked the man off his feet. Foreman was trying to choke the man with his forearm, but it was painfully obvious that whatever the guy was on was giving him the upper hand.
"Fuck," he spat, flipping the lid off the box hastily and grabbing a syringe. Judging by the light amber color, he had guessed earlier that it was most likely heroin. He was no help physically to Foreman – he was half the man's size, for heaven's sake, and about half as big around. He could only hope there was enough in the syringe to counteract the effects of whatever else was coursing through this lunatic's viens.
The gunman was easily dislodging Foreman's hold on him as Chase plunged forward with the syringe, his co worker' face full of alarm as the man turned and pistol-whipped him across the temple. Foreman dropped instantly, and Chase could actually see his eyes roll back as he lost consciousness.
He was literally inches from injecting the man when he turned on him, face almost purple with rage. Spit was foaming around his mouth and tendons in his jaw and neck twitched uncontrollably. He swung out one massive arm and caught Chase in the shoulder, easily deflecting his attack. Chase saw the floor rushing up to meet him for the second time in less than ten minutes, and then he hit with a painful thud, his head bouncing off the concrete. A fiery, piercing pain flared in his abdomen and he gasped and rolled weakly onto his back.
He had only a few second to process the sight of the hypodermic sticking out of his stomach, an inch to the right of his navel, the plunger completely depressed. Then the gunman was screaming in rage and kicking him. A warm weakness rushed through him, the most intense feeling of relaxation and pleasure he'd ever felt. The blows he could distantly feel raining down on him didn't matter. Foreman, bleeding from a head wound five feet away and unconscious, didn't matter. He felt as though he were sinking into the floor, away from the distant pain in his body and the fading realization that he was most likely going to die. Then the world grayed out and everything stopped for what felt like a long time.
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A throbbing, incessant pain in his skull brought Foreman back to awareness, and he groaned in protest as the world came flooding back. After a moment, he dared to open his eyelids a crack. The dim light in the basement seemed overly harsh and he moaned again and squeezed his eyes shut. Nausea boiled in his gut, and he rolled weakly to his side in case he vomited. The floor seemed to tilt under him.
Nausea, vertigo, he pried open a lid again – yup, blurred vision. His head felt sticky with blood, and his skull throbbed in time to his heart. He definitely had a moderate-to-severe concussion. He could only hope there was no intercranial bleeding. One of the downsides of being a neurologist in a situation like this – he could think of hundreds of ways in which his body might be permanently damaged, a hundred ways he might die before ever getting out of this basement.
A fuzzy memory of attacking the gunman drifted into the forefront of his mind. Obviously, he had failed in his efforts to overtake their captor. There was something else he should be worried about… Chase. He forced his eyes open again, a little alarmed to realize that they'd closed without him noticing. He was facing the long expanse of the basement floor leading to the only way out. The gunman was seated against the door, convulsively running his hands through his hair and mumbling incoherently. The shoebox was on the floor next to him, the gun still clasped in one sweaty hand. He didn't seem to see Foreman, or didn't care. Either way, it seemed that he was lost in his own fucked up world for the time being.
Gathering his strength, Foreman rolled in the other direction, gulping back bile as the movement sent another wave of vertigo through him. It took a moment for his vision to clear, and when it did the nausea surged back with a rush of panic.
Chase was sprawled out several feet away from him, his face turned away. There was a syringe jutting from his abdomen, and it was empty.
"Oh, shit," he gasped, pulling himself up onto his hands and knees. The floor tilted again, but he ignored it and crawled unsteadily to his coworker.
"Chase," he said softly but urgently, slumping into a seated position near the Australian. There was no response, not even a twitch. Foreman reached out a shaky hand and rested two fingers on Chase's carotid artery. His coworker's skin felt unnaturally cool and clammy, but after a tense moment he felt a sluggish pulse throb under his fingers. He counted the beats, watching the second hand on his watch with bleary eyes. After ten seconds he had only felt Chase's heart beat seven times, for a total of 43 beats per minute. Way too low. His respirations were way down, as well, his chest barely moving as he breathed.
Sighing, Forman carefully pulled the needle from Chase's belly, applying gentle pressure to the puncture site. He tossed the hypodermic away from them in disgust. Chase would be lucky if he didn't contract hepatitis or HIV from the needle, assuming he survived the contents of the actual syinge.
After a moment, he tugged Chase's obnoxiously teal shirt from the band of his pants (who the hell had taught this kid to dress?) and lifted it to inspect the injection site. There was a small, neat hole where to needle had gone in, an ugly bruise beginning to form around it. There were several nasty looking contusions forming over his ribs and belly, the clear shape of a boot coalescing on his side. Feeling anger burn in his chest, Foreman gently palpitated the abdomen and was relieved to feel no unusual firmness. It didn't seem as though there was any internal bleeding. There was, however, a broken rib and at least two bruised. Crazy Dude had obviously kicked the shit out of his coworker.
Chase moaned low in his throat and his eyelids fluttered.
"Hey," Foreman urged, tapping his cheek lightly, "Come on, man, stop being so fucking lazy and wake up."
Chase's eye's cracked open slightly, a sliver of blue visible under each lid. His hand twitched weakly where it lay on the concrete and his head lolled towards Foreman. It was apparent that he wasn't actually aware yet. Foreman placed a hand on the intesivist's forehead, frowning at the coolness of his skin, and used his thumb to pry up Chase's eyelids. They were all iris – an alarming amount of blue surrounding tiny pinpricks of pupils. The man was loaded.
"Damn it," Foreman whispered, letting Chase's eyes drift shut again. It was pretty obvious that Chase had been injected with heroin – anywhere between 75 to 150 milligrams. Depending on the purity, that could easy be a lethal dose to someone who didn't use. And Chase was a pretty small guy – something Foreman usually took perverse pleasure in teasing him about. There was nothing in the least bit funny about it now, though.
There was nothing he could do to help his coworker in this basement. Crazy Dude was still mumbling away over by the door, twitching occasionally. He seemed completely out of it, but Foreman was certain that any attempts to subdue him or escape would be met with deadly force. Assuming that he could even stand on his own, let alone carry the unresponsive Australian. The only thing he could do was wait, and hope that Chase didn't die before the guy crashed, or decided to kill them both.
Damn it, House. We are so even after this is all over, he thought bitterly, leaning against a nearby box to watch Chase's shallow breathing. Next time you want a B&E, you can do it yourself.
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A/N: Thanks to those of you that reviewed. It encouraged me to get chapter 2 out quicker. See how that works? Feedbackmore fic. Pretty simple math, actaully. :) You get the idea.
