Chapter 2

Date-December 12, 10:27 AM

Location- ?

The world seemed to pulse around Apollo as he lay. As consciousness flowed back to his body, his senses came back in waves. He kept his eyes shut as his head throbbed dizzily, while the world around him began to materialize. The surface below him was lumpy, and creaked when he moved. It felt unstable, as if it was floating on water. There was a pressure on his chest that made it hard to take a full breath.
He was cold in his clothes. The grey t-shirt he'd been given at the hospital was thin, and had a low hanging neck, exposing his collarbone, and his pajama pants had rolled halfway up one leg. His feet were bare, and so cold he could barely feel the toes.
Where am I? Thought Apollo. He opened his eyes for a moment, then squeezed them shut again as a wave of nausea swept over him. Instinctively, he went to cover his mouth, but found his arms bound tightly behind his back. Opening his eyes, Apollo realized with a shock that the pressure on his chest was from the length of rope ensnaring his upper arms before looping down around his wrists. He now realized as well that the strange taste in his mouth was due to the cloth tied tightly around it.
Groggy though he was, Apollo's mind raced. How did I get here? Where exactly is here? He had been in the world of law long enough to know what a kidnapping looked like, though he hadn't quite expected to ever experience one himself. What were you supposed to do when you found yourself in that kind of situation? What was HE supposed to do?
Apollo caught his heart beat accelerating, and willed himself to calm down. He took a slow deep breath through his nose and told himself rhythmically, "I'm fine, I'm going to be fine."
"First things first," he thought, "I need to figure out where and what this place is." Apollo decided to approach the situation as a crime scene investigation, only with him as the victim. He needed to gather as much information as possible if he was going to be rescued, or escape himself.
In his current position, he was laying on his side, facing a concrete wall. Apollo rolled slowly to a sitting position, doing his best to ignore the nausea that pulsed through his skull. "I've been drugged," he thought. "That's probably how I got here." He tried to remember anything before waking up where he was now, but the memories were all smeared together, making them indistinguishable.
Shaking his head to clear it, Apollo took stock of his surroundings. The room was essentially a large concrete cube, with a sturdy looking door in the far corner. The ceiling was low, and a single lightbulb hung from a wire at its center. It seemed to be on its last legs, as its slight flicker and orange tint reminded Apollo of candlelight. Dim as it was, the light didn't reach to the corners of the room and there were inky shadows on the walls. A single spindly table stood directly under the bulb, also in the center of the room. It cast a solid circular shadow on the ground beneath it. On the table stood a few crumpled water bottles, and, Apollo noticed with surprise, his bracelet. He hadn't even noticed it was missing from his wrist. Why had it been removed? Did they think it was valuable? He didn't know. Apollo looked down at what he was sitting on. It was a stained mattress lain atop an old metal bed frame. Any movement he made caused the entire thing to creak and bow. He frowned. That would make stealth difficult.
The door in the corner seemed to be made of metal. The faulty light meant it was shrouded in darkness, but from what Apollo could see it had a smooth texture. No wood grain. There was what seemed to be a small window above the handle, but Apollo couldn't see what was on the other side from where he was.
Intending to go and peek through, Apollo scooted to the edge of the bed and swung his feet over. His ankles hadn't been bound, so walking wouldn't be a problem. Or so he thought.
The instant he put weight on his feet, they slid out from under him and sent him crashing to the floor. Without the ability the use his hands, Apollo landed hard on his side. A muffled cry escaped through the gag as pain exploded up his arm and across his chest.
When the bomb went off in courtroom four, Apollo had been partially crushed by falling rubble. Then that very same day, he had been bludgeoned with a rock by Ted Tonate, the bomber himself. Though it had been two weeks, his wounds were still far from healed. The bandages across his arms and chest hid bruises, burns, and more than a few stitches. Three of his ribs were still bruised and tender. Falling hard on a concrete floor certainly wasn't good for any of his injuries.
Apollo curled on his side, biting the cloth in his mouth and trying to breathe through the pain. The arm he'd fallen on was beginning to feel wet. He guessed he's probably torn the tender, burned skin. While it was painful, Apollo had learned a valuable lesson. He was still very fragile from his wounds. Fighting with his kidnapper would be out of the question. He doubted he'd have the strength to run if he couldn't even stand.
There was only one thing he knew for sure. He was in big trouble.