Locked In

Kelly Severide tilted his head to the side and listened. Outside the rain was pouring down, beating on the walls of 51, and had been all night. Every so often there was an explosion of thunder. The power had been faltering off and on for hours, and everybody had placed their bets on how long it would be before the power was totally out and they were in the dark, and how long the power would be off.

But, around all the noise caused by the weather, Kelly would've sworn he could hear something else. He held his breath, and listened, and strained to hear past the rain and the occasional rumble of thunder.

"Hey," he suddenly spoke up, "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Tony asked.

He tried to think, finally he shook his head, "I don't know...something."

"Yeah, five inches of rain busting down outside," Mouch answered.

"I am definitely not looking forward to mowing tomorrow," Herrmann said, "once the ground soaks up all that water, the lawn's gonna be ten inches tall."

"No," Kelly insisted, "something else..."

Everybody thought he was nuts, but they all found themselves trying to hear what he was hearing.

"I don't hear anything," Capp said.

"Me either," Otis added.

"Hey," Kelly thought of something and looked around, "Where's Casey?"

Everybody found themselves looking around once again.

"When was the last time anybody saw him?" Kelly asked. He knew he'd seen Matt earlier, but he didn't remember when that was, and it just now dawned on him he hadn't seen the Truck lieutenant for a while.

Nobody could answer that right offhand either.

"Maybe he's in his quarters," Otis suggested.

Kelly decided to check. He made his way to the bunk room and went over to the lieutenants' quarters and looked in. The room was dark. On the offhand Casey was taking a nap, he opened the door and turned on the light. Nothing. It didn't look like Casey had been there all day. Feeling confused and truth be told a little concerned, he backed out of the room, pulled the door shut behind him and headed back to the common room.

"He's not there," Kelly told them.

"You don't think he actually went outside, do you?" Herrmann asked.

"In this weather?" Kelly shook his head. He took out his phone and dialed Casey's number, it went straight to voicemail.

"A fireman doesn't just disappear from a firehouse," Herrmann said, "maybe ask the chief if he's seen Casey."

The windows lit up with a white flash of lightning and then the power surged in the room, but the electricity stayed on.

"At this rate we ain't gonna be able to see each other soon enough," Tony commented.

Severide wasn't laughing, and he couldn't shake the feeling that was nagging at him.

"Something's wrong," he said, "come on, let's see what's going on."

If the others were starting to come to the same conclusion that Severide was, that something actually was wrong, they didn't let on, but everybody got up from what they were doing and they left the room to search through the firehouse.

"Hey Chief," Kelly said as Boden turned the corner and came into their line of vision, "Have you seen Casey?"

"No, why?"

"Nobody's seen him for about half an hour and he's not answering his phone," Kelly answered.

Boden didn't say anything, but the look on his face spelled it out loud and clear for the others. Something was definitely wrong.

"Casey?"

"Casey!"

The sounds of the lieutenant's name being called echoed off the walls and up and down the corridors as everybody searched a different part of the firehouse. The power had surged again but this time it had actually gone out, everybody used their flashlights to see where they were going, but the sudden plunge into darkness just made it that much more unnerving for the firefighters as they continued their search. Every so often somebody heard footsteps nearby but when they turned the corner there was nobody there. The whole situation just went from weird to even weirder.

Cruz cupped his hands beside his mouth and bellowed out, "Yo Casey are you here!?" There was no response.

"We're running out of places to look," Tony pointed out.

"He's got to be here somewhere," Kelly said as they headed to the apparatus floor. "Casey!"

The floor under them rumbled from a deafening boom of thunder exploded overhead. As the noise died down, Kelly listened, and he would've sworn he heard something else.

"You hear that?" he asked.

"What?" Tony asked.

"Come on," Kelly headed over to the rigs.

As they made their way to the trucks they heard a faint metallic sound, and as they got closer, the noise grew louder, but it was still muffled. Shining their lights on the rigs, they didn't see anything, but Kelly followed the sound over to 81 and heard the distinctive sound of somebody banging on metal. He flashed his light over the side of the truck and realized it was coming from the doors to the compartment where the air bottles were kept.

"Casey?"

The pounding noises continued and he heard a muffled, "Get me out of here" coming from inside the compartment. Kelly grabbed the doors but couldn't get them to budge.

"Tony! Over here!" Kelly waved him over.

"What is it?"

"It's Casey."

Tony heard what Kelly heard and asked the Squad lieutenant, "How the hell'd he get in there?"

The two firemen worked the doors and finally got the bolt to release and pulled them open. As they did, a loud, disgruntled breath could be heard from inside. Kelly shone his light in the compartment and they saw Casey sprawled out on the bottom shelf.

"How'd you get in there?" Kelly asked.

Casey fell out of the compartment and said in a very unamused tone as he shakily got to his feet, "Some-body knocked-me-out."

In the beam of illumination from his flashlight, Kelly could just barely make out the bloody cut over Casey's eye before he turned his head.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Casey insisted.

"Did you see who it was?" Tony asked.

"Not a good look," Casey huffed in exasperation, "He's got to still be in here somewhere."

"We've been searching the whole place for you," Kelly pointed out, "There can't be a lot of places for him to hide."

Echos of people screaming from another part of the station house reverberated down the corridors to the apparatus floor.

"Sounds like they found him," Tony noted.

"Come on!" Casey took off running.

It didn't even seem to dawn on Casey that he was running in pitch darkness, somehow he made his way through the corridors without bumping into the walls or anything else. The voices grew louder and he saw lights up ahead, and he was just able to make out the image of somebody running towards him.

Acting on pure instincts, Casey grabbed the person and threw him to the ground, then to make sure he stayed down, or at least better the odds of it, threw himself on top of the intruder. Everybody else came running and with their lights they were able to finally get a good look at 51's mysterious intruder. It was a man in his 30s with short dark hair, grungy facial hair, a bad complexion and a tattoo on the back of his hand.

"Holy crap," Herrmann said, "this guy was on the news this morning, he busted out of jail last night."

Casey let out a strained exhale as he collapsed against the man, using his full body weight to keep him pinned to the floor.

"Never a dull moment in this house, is there?" Antonio asked when he and Jay showed up to take the guy back to jail. By the time they showed up, the power was back on and running throughout 51.

"Especially not when you mention it," Otis responded.

"How the hell did he get out?" Kelly asked.

"With a couple other inmates, they were all arrested for violent charges, all of them looking at 20 year sentences easily...the other two were recaptured sometime during the night...this guy's the only one we were still looking for," Antonio explained. "Is everybody okay?"

"Yeah, fine," Casey answered, though as he spoke, his eye directly under the cut squeezed itself shut and stayed that way for a couple seconds.

Kelly walked over to him, looked at him and asked, "Are you sure? You don't look good."

"I don't?"

"Well you've looked better," Kelly responded.

"Very funny, I'm fine, Severide, okay?"

As Casey spoke, his head lolled to the side and his feet moved under him as he lost and quickly regained his balance. Kelly grabbed him by the shoulders to steady him and told the blonde lieutenant, "That does it, I'm taking you to Med."

"I don't need to go," Casey insisted.

"The doctors will be the judge of that," Severide replied as he walked Casey towards the door, "Come on, we'll take my car."

"What's the report?" Boden asked when the two lieutenants returned an hour later.

"Minor concussion," Casey said, "Nothing to worry about."

"They said," Kelly corrected him, "for him to take it easy for the next couple days and let them know if he starts having any problems."

"I'm fine," Casey insisted.

"That might be," Boden told him, "but I'm sending you home early, Herrmann can fill in as acting lieutenant for the rest of shift."

"Chief-"

"No argument, Casey," Wallace told him.

Casey grumbled under his breath and responded, "Copy that, Chief." He turned and headed to the locker room to change.

"Casey."

"Yes, Chief?" Matt turned back.

"I'm glad you're okay."

Casey looked at him in awe for a couple seconds before nodding and replying, "Thanks, Chief."

Kelly followed Casey down the hall, and when Casey saw they were alone he turned to the Squad lieutenant and told him, "Thanks, Kelly."

"For what?"

"For getting me out of there...when I came to it took me a couple minutes to figure out where I was...good thing I'm not claustrophobic or that would've been really ugly."

Kelly chuckled in response and told him, "I'll stop by tomorrow to see how you're doing."

"That's not necessary."

"I know, but I'm going to anyway," Kelly said.

Casey looked at him and nodded, "Thanks."