Author's Note: Okay, so I think Phil is probably OOC even though he's got one speaking part. *sigh*

Also, it's late (early) and I should probably rethink posting at this time, but I did read it over and reorganize it, and hey, I didn't do quite the evil cliffhanger I could have. I even made fun of myself in here a little. So, there is all of that to enjoy, perhaps.

Trapped Again

"Frank is in there," Joe insisted, his eyes not leaving the building despite the emergency personnel crowding him. He didn't know how he could make it any clearer—they were not taking him to the hospital without his brother. "We have to get him out of there."

"Son," one of the officers began, and Joe glared at him past the paramedic, hating when anyone other than his father called him that, and even sometimes when Fenton did. "This may have been a rather controlled explosion, with minimal damage to the surrounding areas, but it was still an explosion. That building is rubble. Unstable at best, deadly in most cases. That means... Well, I'm sorry, but your brother is gone."

Joe wished he could throw something at him. He looked around, trying to find something, but someone poked him where the bullet had hit, and he had to forget about revenge and deal with the pain. "Ow. Damn it. Stop that."

"We need to get you to the hospital."

"I'm not going without my brother," Joe said, making an attempt to sit up and only getting a few inches. "Let me go. I'm not staying in here. I am going to find Frank."

"Joe," Fenton said, shaking his head. "You're being unreasonable. You've been shot. Even if the building was in a state that was safe to approach, you're not up to that. Please stop this. I've already lost one son today. Do not make it two."

Joe groaned, leaning back on the stretcher. "Dad, he's not dead. I'd know if he was, and he isn't. W can't just leave him here. He might need medical attention, too—of course he does. That sick freak had him. Or maybe Nancy got him away or—she was shot, too. Dad, if she's anywhere in there—she needs our help. We can't just abandon them."

"We're not," Fenton told him, "Some of us can stay here and see what we can do about getting closer, but you, Joe... You have to get to the hospital."

"If we leave now, there might not be any chance later. Don't do this. Frank is alive, and we can find him," Joe insisted. He reached over to swat the paramedic as the guy hit one of his other, still healing wounds. "Leave that alone. I'm fine. I just need to get to my brother. Look, I'm coherent. You can hear it in my voice. The drugs are nice. I'm talking better than I was before I got shot. I'm lucid, and I know what I want, and it is to get to my brother. Now."

Fenton sighed. "You're being unreasonable and irresponsible, and do you really think that's what your brother would want? Frank is the logical one. The responsible one. If he were standing here right now, you know he'd be telling you that you couldn't wait for anyone inside there and to deal with this when you can actually stand—meaning after you've gone to the hospital, seen the doctors, and had surgery. You need to do this. Frank would want you to do it. He would not want you killing yourself for him or because of him, so go to the damn hospital already. If you keep fighting them on this, I will inject you with a sedative myself. I am not doing this, do you hear me? I will not lose you and Frank. We will come back. We will search every inch of that goddamned rubble, and we will find your brother, but we are not going to let you stay here a minute longer when you need medical attention. You're going. Now. End of discussion."

And it was.

"Tell me they found him."

Bess shook her head, exchanging a look with George, and Joe swore, hitting his hospital bed in frustration. He was two seconds and a huge dose of morphine away from yanking out his IV and jumping out of bed. He didn't want to be here, and they knew that. They all knew, but they'd let him sit here and rot while his brother was out there somewhere, and no one had found him. This was wrong. All wrong. Frank would have come up with a way to stay and be of use finding Joe if their situations were reversed. He would. Joe knew that.
He'd been chucked off to the hospital, and now he was stuck here, stuck, and he couldn't do anything for Frank here. He knew no one would be willing to take him out of the hospital, not with all the scary machines he was hooked to.

"This is all wrong... I shouldn't be here. I should be where Frank is."

"Yeah, someone definitely goofed on that one."

Joe frowned, and George elbowed her cousin. Bess shrugged, like she didn't know where that had come from. Maybe she didn't. Maybe it was all this stress. "I can't believe I got shot. I can't believe I'm here. Dad read me the riot act earlier, but none of this feels real."

"That would be the drugs," George told him, pointing to the IV. "You're on good stuff. A lot of it. And I'm not surprised, not with as many times as you've been hurt. If anyone in your family was prone to hysterics, you'd have had a disaster on your hands when your mom and aunt heard about you getting hurt again."

"Yeah," he said, though he couldn't find much humor at the moment. He closed his eyes, letting out a breath. "There has to be a way. I know Frank would have found it. He'd know where to look."

"I didn't know your brother had become psychic somehow in among all the rest of his skills," Bess said. She shook her head. "I don't know that we'd find him without some kind of outside intervention. You really didn't see the damage that explosion—correction, explosions—did to the place. It's bad there, Joe. It looks like a war zone. No one's been able to find anything in there."

"Yeah, but you're searching with cadaver dogs or something stupid like that," Joe said. He hit the bed with his fist. "Frank isn't dead. He can't be. We didn't get that close to lose him like that. It's not possible."

"Here. At the risk of giving you something else to obsess over," Phil began, and Joe looked over at him, surprised. He wasn't sure he'd said much of anything to the guy since Frank went missing, which was beyond wrong of him. "Um... It's not much, but you can look at the building plans here. I downloaded them the tablet. It'll give you something to do while you recover some more. Your aunt will kill me if she finds out—no one really liked my idea—but it's the only one I had."

"Thanks," Joe said, calling up the schematics. He didn't know that he could find anything, but he was going to try. It was a hell of a lot better than doing nothing.

Pain drew Frank up out of a fog he thought he wanted to stay in, but the flare from his leg was too intense to ignore, nothing he could sleep through and might not have been able to ignore even if he was still fully drugged. He groaned, pushing himself up to where he could get a better look at it.

He was bleeding. A lot, and even if it wasn't, he was almost certain that damned thing was infected. He grimaced. That wasn't something he wanted to think about right now, and he couldn't do anything about it anyway. He was going to have to go without, since he didn't have anything close to a first aid kit here, and what little attention had been given to his wounds must have been undone in that fall.

He sighed. That had not been the best of plans, and it was executed worse.

Wait. Nancy. She was shot. She was bleeding. She could already be dead.

Frank blinked, not sure where the light was coming from, but if this was their escape plan, there had to be something down here besides a small room, right? Zollner had said they would be far away by the time that Joe found them, and that meant a vehicle of some sort.

The idea of being behind the wheel in his current state was laughable at best, but Frank didn't necessarily need to drive. Maybe the car had something else he could use. A first aid kit would be great, and not just for him.

There. Nancy. Frank dragged himself over to her side. Leather Jacket had gotten her all the way down this ramp—he thought it was a ramp, it felt slanted to him—and left her out of the path of most of the rubble, which was something, though since she was already bleeding and almost unconscious—at least from what Frank had seen—not much.

He glanced back at the rock. Did the lack of other movement really mean he'd managed to get Zoller—both of them—and Leather Jacket stuck up there when the roof caved in on them? Did that mean... they were actually dead?

Frank didn't know what to think about that.

"Nancy?" Frank asked, leaning as close to her as he could, his body protesting the movement. Everything hurt anew, the band-aid from the drugs having been ripped painfully off and leaving all his wounds exposed and bleeding again. He knew he was exaggerating, but he had gotten knocked around pretty good in that fall.

She groaned, and he didn't think she wanted to be awake any more than he did. "I... Frank?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I think we are trapped underground at the moment. Zollner was talking about getting us out of the building, and this must have been his escape route—of course the bastard had one, he must have several which means he definitely allowed himself to be taken before, though that is what he told me and since there were two of them I'm not sure it matters but—"

"Frank," Nancy interrupted, grimacing. "I think we have to worry about a few other things before starting to theorize on Zollner."

"Right. Yeah. I knew—the bullet. You got shot. I haven't forgotten, but I... My mind's not all here. I was thinking about—I don't know what we're going to do, not if I managed to get us trapped down here."

She put her hand over the wound. "Vallin did say the wound wasn't fatal."

"If he gave you medical attention, which he hasn't and—Vallin?"

"Joe said that was what his name was."

Frank put a hand to his head. "When did you see Joe? Is this another lie? I think I'm... Everything is such a mess. I don't know what to think and I know I'm not drugged anymore, but I feel almost like I must be..."

"Just stay calm. You could be going through withdrawal now, and that is going to... Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Nancy said, hissing out a breath. "Okay, we have to find something to deal with the fact that both of us are bleeding."

"Which was part of what I was doing before I freaked out about the underground thing. I may have blocked off any help and killed us both. What a stupid plan..."

"You may have stopped Zollner and his brothers for good," Nancy whispered. "I have to think that... It might just be worth it."

"Not that long ago, I would have agreed with you, but now..."

"So, what, it was okay if you were the only one at risk?"

He snorted. "Of course it was. This whole sick twisted thing was about me. About making me... like them. And I... I think if I'd thought it would stop them, I would have... if it meant savying someone else, sparing them... But I didn't spare anyone."

"You may have spared them all," Nancy said, taking his hand. "Try and remember that."