Rescue

When Neal's captors came into the room, they weren't very nice.

He opened his eyes to see them walking into the room before a fist collided with his face. The blow knocked him sideways and caused his head to collide with the floor hard enough to knock him senseless.

Throwing a bucket of water over him, they brought him back around before shoving a phone to his ear. "Speak!" They commanded.

"Hello?" He had just received a hard blow to the head so he wasn't entirely clear in his speech.

Before he could hear anything from the person on the line, the phone was yanked away and his captors left the room. "You have your proof of life. Give us our first drop, or he dies." As they left the room he was unable to hear anything further.

Interesting, they had contacted his supposed parents. Would they discover that they had the wrong person and dispose of him, or would the parents play along to protect a stranger?

Dropping into unconsciousness, he decided to look into his past to see if there was anything that he had missed. After all, he had learned that he didn't know everything once, so it was possible that there could be more to his past.

After a few hours of sleep, the team was back in the office and continuing to search for their missing comrade. Despite the efforts that they had put forth, they still weren't finding anything conclusive.

Diana had gone over the camera footage from the gym with nothing suspicious. Jones had gone over the footage following street cameras and ATMs, but Neal was on a blind corner when he disappeared. Blake had lead a team that did door to door checks and called into taxi services to see if anyone had seen anything with no luck.

What had happened?

Peter got the first clue when a satellite recording showed up on his computer showing exactly what had happened to Neal.

Watching the video, the team noticed several details. Neal was caught by surprise, he was abducted somewhat violently, and they didn't know the perpetrators. Then they started tracking the source for the information. It was supplied by someone high up in the government who was looking out for Neal… that was unexpected.

Following the lead of the perpetrators, they quickly found and address and got a warrant to execute a rescue.

Entering the building, they noticed that it was abandoned and seemed to be full of creeks and odd noises. Combing through it from top to bottom, they checked each room and continued to find nothing. When they had finished going through the building, they were about to give up hope when Peter got a text to check for secret entrances.

Thinking that it was Mozzie texting him, Peter ignored the source of the information and directed the teams to look for anything unusual.

Checking through the building again, they looked amusing as everyone was crawling around knocking on everything. From the floor up the wall and even to the ceiling they searched with painstaking care. Eventually Peter heard a signal from the kitchen saying that something had been found. Gathering together, they opened the secret passageway and Peter led the procession down.

Wandering the mazelike hallways, Peter came to a door and held his breath. It was solidly made of wood and reinforced with metal. He could see that the hinges were on the outside and all of the mechanisms for opening the door seemed to only be accessible from the outside too. This had to be it!

Opening the door, Peter saw Neal lying on the floor in a chair that had obviously been knocked over violently. His head was resting in what appeared to be his own blood and his face had a huge bruise forming on the side. When Peter got to him, he discovered that he was zip tied to the chair and his hands bound behind. Gently, Peter reached out to tap Neal's cheek in an effort to get a reaction from the man.

Neal groaned which Peter took for a good sign.

"Ambulance is on its way boss. ETA seven minutes." An agent from behind let him know what was going on.

Jones moved to the base of the chair and cut the binds there while Diana cut the binds holding Neal's arms. Peter crouched in front of Neal and supported him as his body fell forward. Freed from his bonds, Neal became a dead weight so Jones and Diana moved to help Peter ease him to the floor.

Laying him out flat, they assessed his injuries and didn't like what they saw. He was pale, his head was bloodied, and his face was multicolored. The worst of his injuries was probably a concussion if they were lucky, if they were unlucky he could have a more serious head injury.

It didn't take long for the paramedics to arrive, but it felt like it took three times as long due to the anxiety involved in waiting.

The first one to Neal began to check him over and clean up his injuries while the second one prepared to move him. After he was ready to be transported, they counted off and moved him over to a crash cart.

When they wheeled Neal away to the ambulance, Peter tagged along. Flashing his badge and telling them that he is the emergency contact, he demanded to ride along.

Closing the doors, the ambulance sped off with lights and sirens blazing.

Monitoring the situation, the man and woman were relieved when they heard that Agent Burke had rescued their son.

It didn't come as a surprise that the agent rode along in the ambulance. He was one of their son's closest friends and their son had good taste in friends after all.

Once the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Peter was relocated to the waiting room while Neal was checked out in the emergency room. It took a while for Neal to be cleaned up and for the doctors to get the results for all of the testing that they put him through, but eventually they finished.

Walking into the emergency room they found Peter and gave him a run down on his friend's condition. Neal had burn marks from the taser, minor cuts from the zip ties, a bruise from being punched rather violently, and a concussion resulting from his head injury.

When they finished updating him on Neal's condition, Peter requested to see him. With the doctor's permission he was lead to a room and allowed a few minutes with his friend.

He didn't have much time so he took in his friend's appearance. Neal was pale, except along the side of his face where he was a multitude of colors, there were the monitors connected to him to keep track of his condition, and he was stretched out sleeping.

The doctor said that he hadn't woken up yet, but they figured that he would come around as soon as he was ready.

With his time up, Peter left for the office to place his report and called his wife to update her on his way.

What he didn't realize, was that his phone call was tapped and his report was read by more people than he expected. After all, who would guess that Neal's biological parents were government and capable of doing so?

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