"What do we do now?" Rachel asked. She was getting really sick of that question. She was sure the others were getting sick of hearing it but she couldn't help herself.
"Well," Johnny said, stalling. He looked at Roy, then Sam, Bob and Spencer.
"Will you stay here to watch out for them?" Johnny asked, staring hard at Dean. He knew how much the brothers hated to be separated.
Dean's instinctual reaction was to stay by his brother's side. Sam wasn't a hundred percent. He suspected that it had almost as much to do with him using his powers as with the abuse he'd suffered at the hands of the agents. Sam was trying to hide it but he could see how much just this little bit of movement and excitement had started to wear him out. The sooner they got out of here, preferably in their own time, the better.
"Okay," Dean said stepping forward. "Bob, could you watch the monitors? I want to know if they start to get suspicious."
"Sure," Bob responded as he left the room. That was where he was planning on going anyway. For exactly the reason Dean had suggested.
"Thanks," Johnny said feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted off of him. All he really wanted to deal with at the moment was Roy. He was deeply concerned about his partner. "Rachel, can you bring the others along?"
"Okay," Rachel responded. As she watched, Johnny started herding Roy toward the bedroom. Sam hesitated. He hated to leave his brother without back up. It was one lesson their father had drilled into their heads. They always watched each other's backs. He barely managed to stifle a jump when Rachel laid a hand on his back and tried to subtly guide him out of the room. "He'll let us know if anything comes up," she tried to reassure him.
For her part Rachel felt a little silly. Here she was trying to force a man a good foot taller than her to move. If he decided he wanted to stay with his brother there wasn't a whole lot she could do about it. Relief flowed through her was she felt Sam take a step toward the door. Once she knew Sam was moving, she turned her attention to Spencer.
The young genius was standing at the bottom of the tank looking up toward the hole. It almost seemed as though he could see beyond the darkness to that was going on in its depths. He was so intent on watching where the others had gone that she hesitated to touch him. Truth be told, she hesitated to touch him anyway. She wasn't a touchy-feely type person.
"How are you feeling?" she asked quietly.
"Hmm?" Spencer replied. He had to tear his eyes away from the hatch. His mind had been sifting through all of the information he'd ever read about bomb shelters and ventilation systems. Nothing had been particularly helpful. "Oh, I'm fine."
"Yeah, you look fine," Rachel responded sarcastically. "We should go to the bedroom so Johnny can check you over."
"I'm fine," Spencer reiterated. He wasn't sure if the woman had heard him or was just ignoring him.
"Please, Spencer. If they do find a way out we're going to need all the energy we can muster. You'd better serve yourself and us if you rested while you can," Rachel insisted.
Spencer looked at her. Behind his brown eyes she could see that he was thinking very hard. So hard in fact that he wasn't really aware of what was going on around him. Distantly she wondered if this happened a lot. With a slight nod, he took a step toward the door. Rachel followed him as they shadowed Sam into the bedroom.
"I'm fine," Roy was saying as they stepped inside the door. Roy was sitting on the big padded chair in the corner. His elbows were resting on his knees and his head was hanging down between his shoulders. From her position by the door Rachel thought that his blue eyes were shut. Clearly Roy was lying.
"No, Roy, you're not. You have a bad concussion. I need to check your vitals and make sure things aren't getting worse," Johnny tried to reason with him. The fact that Roy was arguing with him indicated to him just how impaired his partner's judgement was. Fear began burning in Johnny's belly. Feeling helpless and frustrated, he glanced at the others as they entered the room.
Sam was concerned for Roy, the man had been nothing but nice to him, but at the moment his bed just looked too damned inviting. Giving into the headache and other aches and pains, the youngest Winchester meandered over to his bed and collapsed into it. As soon as his head hit the pillow, Sam's eyes closed but he stayed aware long enough to hear Spencer climb into the bed above him. The oblivion took him.
"I'm fine," Roy growled. It was the first time Rachel had heard the man lose his temper. Things were definitely wrong.
Ignoring his partner's protests, Johnny began taking his vitals. Roy lifted his head up to watch. Rachel was sure those blue depths didn't seem to be focusing very well. A frown was quirking Johnny's mouth downward in the corners as he got his results. Even she could tell he wasn't happy with what he was finding.
"Do you need anything?" Rachel asked. Damn but she hated feeling useless.
"Water for him to drink and maybe some food," Johnny replied automatically. He was checking Roy's pupils and coming to the same conclusions as Rachel had at a distance.
"All right, I'll be back in a minute or two," Rachel responded. Then she headed out the door and toward the kitchen.
"Have you seen anything?" Rachel asked as she walked by Bob at the monitors.
"Not really. They keep coming and going but so far there isn't any indication of alarm," the military man answered. He didn't bother to look up from the flickering television screens. He knew who it was that was walking by him.
"That's good. The last thing they need is for someone to notice them in those narrow ducts," Rachel responded as she filled a pitcher with cold water and slipped a couple of plastic cups into her back pocket. Then she tried to round up some food. The very thought of being trapped in the ductwork sent a chill up her spine.
It was all Mack could do to keep from laughing out loud. As it was he had to plaster his palm across his mouth to keep any sound from escaping. Just behind him, Mack could feel Nick's presence.
"What's going on?" Nick breathed into his ear. The two of them had reached the end of their duct and were spying on the agents beyond the grillwork. They were situated just above the main table where the 'laptop' was located.
"We thought it was a laptop," Mack replied just as quietly. "It's some kind of a code box. They're using it to encrypt messages. That thing is massive!"
Glancing over Mack's shoulder, Nick spied the piece of equipment. Sure enough, it did look like a laptop from a distance. That was until he looked closer at the manual typewriter type keys on the front of it. The CSI could see Mack's shoulders shaking in silent laughter.
Not quite catching the joke, Nick quietly turned his body around in the duct and began to make his way to the last branch. They'd chosen to go straight ahead until they reached the end. Then they planned on going back to check out the other trunks of the ductwork. The branches were slightly smaller in width so Nick wasn't really looking forward to it. While Nick's waist and legs were fairly small, his shoulders were broad. The idea of getting stuck wouldn't quite go away.
Behind Nick as he shuffled back through the duct, he could feel Mack following. They were going to have to split up to finish the search but that was okay. It would get done faster that way. The sooner Nick could get out of these dark confines the better. The time he was entombed in a glass box, buried under the earth kept sneaking in on him. If Nick wasn't careful he would begin to hyperventilate as the memories crashed down on him. He also suffered from a tremendous need to rub at his arms and legs, knocking imaginary fire ants off his body.
Taking a deep breath and swallowing his fear, Nick took the first right he came to. The sooner he found out what was at the end of it the sooner he could get back to the relatively fresh air of the bomb shelter.
At first Nick had wondered about the rationale of having the ducts lead to the outside. The idea of the bomb shelter was to protect against radioactive contamination. If the vents led to the cabin and the fresh air beyond, didn't that result in exposure? Then they'd found the thick lead doors that could be sealed in place. Clearly the builders had planned for every eventuality.
"Well, I guess we found the way out," Booth said. Beyond the metal grate he was crouched in front of was the green world of the forest. They'd also found thick lead doors that could be pulled into place. The FBI agent assumed the owners of the cabin and shelter were well aware of the need to close them. Until they had to though, they might as well enjoy the fresh air while they had it.
"Where exactly are we?" Mike asked from behind him. Over the taller man's hunched body the engineer could see the sunlight shining on green leaves. That was about it though. Booth was not a small man and tended to hide most of the view.
"I'm not really sure," Booth admitted as he examined the scene before him. "I've spent some time camping up in these hills but not enough to know my way around by heart. As near as I can tell we're about a mile north of the cabin."
Mike supposed that made sense. There was no use building the ventilation system too close to the lake where it would be susceptible to cave-ins or infiltration from the water. He tried to create a mental picture of where they were based on the information he had. Unfortunately that didn't really help Mike much. Why couldn't they have gotten kidnapped in the areas of Los Angeles he knew?
"Come on. We'd better head back before they start to worry about us," Booth suggested. He had to wait while Mike slowly and carefully turned his body around in the narrow space before he too could get properly turned around.
"Well?" Dean demanded as Mack and Nick climbed down the ladder. Both men were filthy and sweaty. Clearly climb around the ducts wasn't a whole lot of fun. Dean couldn't seem to muster much sympathy though. He just wanted to get back to his brother.
"There's no way out from the section we followed," Mack informed the young hunter as he absently brushed dirt off his knees. His hands were dirtier than the material of his jeans making it a futile effort.
"Hopefully Booth and Mike had better luck," Nick said. All he really wanted at the moment was a nice hot shower.
"Well, go get cleaned up. I'll watch for the other two," Dean instructed.
Rachel had returned to the bedroom. Unsure of what Johnny had meant by 'food', she'd made a selection of sandwiches. "Here you go," she said as she carefully set the tray with the food and the water down.
"Thank you," Johnny breathed as he scooped the top-most sandwich and handed it to his partner. One whiff of the peanut butter slathered between the pieces of breath and Roy's stomach rolled. He tried to push it away before he emptied his stomach on the floor in front of him.
"You have to eat," Johnny ordered. He could see how green Roy had become but his partner really did need to get something into his body. The last few days had been too hard on him. His body needed reserve energy if they were going to get out of this. Johnny pushed the fragrant meal back at Roy.
"I'm really not hungry," Roy insisted as he sat back in the chair in an attempt to evade the food. The smell was doing nothing to calm his queasy stomach.
"I don't care," Johnny growled. "You need to eat."
Somewhat amused by the conversation, Rachel was hanging around by the door. One second she was watching the by-play between the two men. The next she felt the world shift under her feet. Startled, Rachel reached for the door frame to keep from losing her balance. A gasp escaped as the cement floor was again superimposed on top of her parents' carpet.
"Are you okay?" she heard Johnny ask from what seemed like a great distance. Looking up in the direction of the paramedic's voice she saw the bay window in the living room of her parents' house. Shaking with the need to go home, Rachel didn't get a chance to respond. She pitched forward onto her face in a dead faint.
"What the hell?" Johnny breathed. Disbelieving what he'd just witnessed the youngest paramedic rubbed at his eyes before looking again. Where Rachel had stood just a few moments ago was now empty. There was absolutely no sign that the woman had even been there. The sandwich was placed on the arm of Roy's chair as Johnny sprinted to the door. Opening it, he looked beyond. Maybe Rachel had left when he wasn't looking. Unlikely but it made more sense than her disappearing into thin air.
"What?" Roy asked. He pushed the sandwich as far away as he could without throwing it on the ground. They were going to need all the food they had if they were stuck down here. In his preoccupation with his stomach, Roy hadn't noticed Rachel's departure. Not getting an answer, he looked up at his junior partner.
"She vanished," Johnny said more to himself than to Roy. Quickly he looked around for Sam and Spencer. He was relieved to find both men sleeping quietly in their beds.
"What do you mean 'she vanished'?" Roy asked. His stomach was forgotten. He pried his protesting body out of the chair and padded over to where Johnny stood, looking up and down the hallway.
"I suppose it makes some kind of sense," Johnny continued. He hadn't really heard Roy. He was trying to figure this whole thing out on his own. "She was the first one to appear. It makes sense that she would be the first one to leave. Right?"
"What are you going on about, Junior?" Roy asked. He still wasn't too clear on what had his partner so excited. Obviously Rachel had just left the room on another errand. That seemed to be her favourite occupation.
"Rachel. She's gone. One second she was here and then she was gone," Johnny said. He finally turned away from the open door to look at his partner. "I think she went home."