A/N: Okay, so I feel stupid. I can't believe it never occured to me before, but do you think Amy and Dan have Boston accents? I mean, it never said they did, but since they grew up there, does that mean we should just assume they do, or does that mean they don't? I wouldn't care either way, I love Boston accents, but I just feel so dumb for never questioning it before. What do you think? Oh, and R&R please.
Ooooohhhh ...
Man, Dan's head hurt. Like the time he attempted an all-night Ninja Gaiden marathon, but multiplied by, like, a gazillion.
Oh, and he didn't get the headache from the actual marathon. Uh-uh, he hadn't been so lucky. The headache had been Amy scolding him for doing it on a school-night - like that mattered.
Wait ...
Amy.
Not just Amy, but him, and Nellie, and Saladin, too. They had been running. They had been ... breaking free. They had been so close, too. Dan had seen the door, the early sunlight filtering through, and they were going to make it ... he was sure. They were home-free.
Then stuff happened too fast. It was like they weren't in real-time, but things were sped-up like in action movies - except this was no movie.
The masked men came all at once, a blitz of them form every possible stand-point. They were seized, and swallowed alive by the crowd.
They had been crying, screaming, and panicking trying to get away so badly. And how many times had they shrieked each other's names in desperation?
He saw the needle shoot into his sister's arm, her eyes become marbles, and before his could do the same, he managed to call out to her one last time, "A- ... Amy... "
Dan's eyes flung open.
Amy. Nellie. Saladin.
He wasn't in bed back in Boston; he wasn't even close. He wouldn't slam a fist on his bleating alarm clock, and Amy wouldn't have to drag him out of bed after he went back to sleep. He wouldn't stumble into the kitchen and smell Nellie's pancakes, cooked just the way he liked it. That reality was shattered.
Where he was now only confirmed it.
He scanned his new situation, and came to this terrible realization - not slowly, but suddenly, like a thud from falling back to earth. All that stuff really did happen.
This new place wasn't at all what he thought a prison cell would look like, though: the floor was carpeted, he lay almost comfortably in a king-size bed, and there were no bars.
Okay, that made no sense at all. In all the prison movies, there were always bars. On the doors, the windows, practically everywhere. But no bars here. If he was being held captive or prisoner or whatever, shouldn't he be in some sort of cell?
His captures were doing it all wrong.
His captures ...
Vespers
Dan drew ina sharp breath. Vespers. The people more evil than even Isabel Kabra. Oh, God. He had to get out of there.
He tried sitting up, and with a disorienting wave of dizziness, he managed to get up into an upright position. He made note of the fact that there were no windows or vents, just a steel door resting open a crack.
Open.
Struggling with the Vertigo he had developed, Dan swung his legs over the side of the bed, and had to take a break. He shut his eyes tight, and held his face in his hands to stop it from shaking. It didn't work, but when he opened his eyes and saw the door just lazily lying there limp, letting in a ray of light, he felt a surge of desperate adrenaline.
Taking short breaths through his mouth, he pushed himself up and nearly puked. Now, Dan usually loves the word puke, but right then, it was the last thing he wanted to think about.
He had to hold onto the bed as he slid his feet slowly across the carpet, so his knees wouldn't get their way and just give. He was a mere two feet away, he could almost reach out and-
The door collapsed outwards, and light charged forward at him. His eyes burnt like what he imagined it would be like if he had ever wanted to see the stove up close. His hands went to his eyes and knees gave way to the floor.
"You're not supposed to be up yet." a female voice stated, firmly and almost angrily.
Dan slowly let his hands fall as he squinted to see who was talking. He first saw the silhouette of feet and legs, and though it hurt, he forced himself to look upwards. Thin waist, stomach, with what must've been arms held straight down stiffly. Further, he told himself. Keep going.
Winching from the pain of his eyes adjusting, Dan's eyes followed the torso upwards to the neck, and finally, the head.
Dan could make out a couple features of this girl, and she made him scared and nervous, but in a weird way. It wasn't normal nervous, it felt ... weird. Really weird. Like, his stomach did this weird fluttery thing and it gave him chills, but the weirdest thing of all was he sort of ... almost ... kind of ... (did he?) like it.
Almost, sort of, really liked it, you could say.
As his eyes adjusted further, the nervous tingle in his stomach increased. It almost looked like the light wasn't coming from behind her, but resonating off her.
"Well?" she snapped. "You're not supposed to be up yet. Are you just going to sit there and gawk all day? Get up!"
Dan hastily did as he was told, indulging in this oddly enjoyable feeling as he got up, still staring.
The girl was just below eye-level with Dan, but her piercing blue eyes made up for that. She could be twenty feet tall for all Dan knew.
She scowled, "What are doing out of bed? Where exactly were you going?"
It took Dan's brain a moment to realize what she said, and when he did, he couldn't find an answer, or even talk, since his mouth felt like he was eating peanut-butter. "... Guh ... u-um ..."
The girl sighed impatiently, "Cahills." she shook her head slightly. "Look. You don't go out unless we tell you to go out. You don't get up unless we tell you to get up. You don't even take a leak unless we say so. I don't care if you wanted a glass of water or whatever, because unless we say so, you didn't. Got that?"
Dan nodded slowly, so as not set off another wave of Vertigo. "But ... c- ... can I ask questions?"
"You can, but it'd be futile; you wouldn't get any answers." she told him, looking over her shoulder, as if anticipating something.
"Where's my sister? A-and Nellie, and Saladin - he's the cat. Where are they?" he blurted.
"That's classified."
Dan licked his dry lips without moisture, "Then ... are they safe? You can tell me that, right?"
"I could, I suppose," the girl said, pausing to once again look over shoulder. She hesitated, but decided, "They're fine."
"... What's fine? I don't care about fine, I need to know are they safe." Dan persisted, his voice wavering quite a bit.
The girl regarded him slowly, and repeated, "They're fine."
Dan's eyes intensified. He tried his best to look intimidating, but he was pretty sure she could see straight through that. He knew he wasn't getting any better answers.
"I've already said too much, get back in the bed and stay there this time," she pressed, watching over her shoulder, and pushing Dan back towards the bed. After a moment of consideration, she said, "I'll be back later. Don't try anything stupid or else we'll have to knock you out again like your sister."
"What?" Dan rasped. "What'd you do to Amy? Where's Amy?"
The girl regarded Dan again with a hard look, and shut the door.
"Hey! Come back! Where's Amy? Where's Amy? Tell me! Come back, please! Te-ell me," he said, voice hitching, and pounding on the door. "Please! Come back and tell me! Where's Amy?"
After a few minutes, he was reduced to a blubbering mess with the whole package; red face, puffy swollen eyes, tears and gunk dripping down his chin.
He still pounded, not caring that no one could hear, not caring that his fist were bruised by this point, just caring that the girl and the rest of those awful Vespers did something to his sister.
And he couldn't do a thing. Well, not unless they said so.
