Warning: depictions of violence and torture, implications relating to suicide (no actual suicide)
Chapter 4
"I got it," Caitlin said softly, finally managing to get one of Cisco's small clips undone. It dropped to the floor with a soft click. Cisco knelt closer to the ground, trying to find it he had, he pressed it back into Caitlin's hand.
She felt blindly, her hands still chained behind her, trying to use the small saw edge to cut through the plastic zipcuffs binding her friend without cutting him.
"Caitlin, don't worry about being careful, just cut. There's not much time." Cisco craned his neck, trying to watch the door. It was several long seconds before the plastic gave way. Cisco winced as circulation started up again, faint pins and needles intensifying. He hurried to examine the cuffs holding Caitlin, retrieving a bobby-pin from his hair.
"You should go," Caitlin started as the thin metal scraped the lock. "Leave me and get-"
"That's not happening. You're family, I'm not leaving you." Cisco's voice was as steady as his hands, though his legs shook. "And...There." he grinned as he popped the cuffs open. He helped her to her feet, and Cisco checked the door. Also locked, but not a high tech key-card deal. He slipped the now sadly mangled pin into the key-hole and started his work again.
"Caitlin, see if you can bring the chair, some kind of weapon…" he hissed.
"Got it," Caitlin whispered back, lifting the chair experimentally-it wasn't too heavy, but it still felt too bulky to be a real weapon. When they got out of this, she was going to start going to the gym, maybe start training with Barry.
Cisco started as the door gave a small snick and something gave way. Carefully, he listened, straining for any sign that there were guards posted. Nothing. He waved Caitlin over, and she abandoned the chair, shaking her head.
Too heavy, not worth it, her eyes communicated.
No match against guns anyway, Cisco's sharp nod conceded. He passed her the other clip from his hair,wishing he had an elastic to keep it out of his face, but knowing that having even as small a weapon as a hairclip that doubled as a tiny saw and a screwdriver might be useful.
Ready to run? Caitlin held up a fist, then five fingers, counting down
Together, Cisco tilted his head left, the opposite direction his cell had been.
With the last finger down, Cisco shouldered open the door and they ran, bare feet slapping the concrete floor, eyes peeled for anything that might be an escape, a door, a window to the outside, anything.
Someone shouted an alarm as they reached the first corner, and they skidded as they turned. They might have failed gym, but running from people who probably wanted to literally kill you was a bit different than dodging a ball-adrenaline replaced fatigue and they practically flew.
Someone shot at them, and if Cisco had had the energy he might have made a stormtroopers joke, because the shot missed, as did the next several. The two ducked, clinging to each other and running for all the were worth.
Caitlin spotted a door that looked to be an actual door to another hallway, not a storage-closet-turned-prison, but it was locked. Rather than waste time, they left it, trying another door and another.
Footsteps pounded after them, heavy, but no more shots were fired-either because they'd gotten orders to keep them alive, or didn't want to risk ricocheting bullets. At last a door opened under Caitlin's hand just as someone-she dared not look-grabbed at her arm. She swung backward, hammering her captor in the face and bolted like a startled deer, Cisco just ahead of her.
It was as she had thought, a warehouse type building, with back hallways and storage spaces-probably offices. The room the two captives torn into now was huge-and not empty. A line of soldiers, men and women in uniform, blocked the doors, impassive. The fading afternoon sun hardly made it through the high up, grimy windows, and the ceiling lights hummed as Caitlin pressed against Cisco, the two of them looking for any opening.
There was none. They tried to break for one of the huge trucks-they didn't need to know how to drive it so much as get in and hit the gas- but Caitlin felt the thudding of boots in her bones as one of their captors grabbed her from behind, one arm around her waist, the other hand knotting in her hair. Someone else grabbed Cisco, tossing him easily to the ground like a sack of grain and pinning him there.
"Let us go," Caitlin shrieked more out of instinct than the hope that Eiling's goons would actually do so. The only reply was a harsh laugh.
"Seems we underestimated you. Don't worry, girly, we won't a-" he was cut off with a howl of pain, Caitlin sinking the tip of the hairclip into his wrist. He swore, but his grip didn't loosen enough for her to pull away, and the man keeping Cisco on the ground with a boot over his throat adjusted his position. Cisco let out a choking garble, and Caitlin stopped her fighting, limp. The adrenaline rush left her heart pounding, her hands and feet numb, but what chance they'd had was gone.
"Get them back in their box," a bored female voice ordered sharply. "And this time, check them for tools properly. Honestly, hairclips?"
Cisco spat as he was hauled upright, a set of metal cuffs locking around his wrists, the manacles tight against the raw place where the zipcuffs had been.
The man holding Caitlin's left arm released his hold, and she noticed the heavy looking baton in his hand a second before something solid crashed into the side of her head.
When Caitlin woke again, it felt like hours later. Her head throbbed with a headache, and she couldn't tell if it were more from dehydration or the blow she'd taken. Both, probably, but she still felt slow and sluggish. Still, she could feel her pulse in the side of her head, a promise that she was alive enough to feel pain. There was a chill in the air, and the cement under her bare feet was cold. She jerked to wakefulness, terror gripping at her. Both hands were locked again behind her, to the same chair, and when she moved, she felt the dig of metal at her ankles.
"Caitlin?" Cisco croaked. When her eyes met his-her eye, she realized, the other was swollen- he winced. He looked nearly as bad as she felt, half curled on the floor. His ankles had been hobbled like hers, as well as his wrists, and more blood stained his shirt from a cut lip. One eye mirrored hers, already darkening with a bruise.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have-"
"It's not your fault. It wasn't a great plan." He winced, sitting a little more upright.
"It feels late. Ronnie…" Caitlin cut herself off. "Ba-The Flash will look, so will J-The police. They'll find us."
"I hope it's soon," Cisco murmured. His stomach growled, cramping painfully. Caitlin's mimicked the call and she winced. "Once he's got Ronnie…"
"We've gotten through worse," Caitlin tried to put bravery she wasn't sure she felt into her voice.
Cisco nodded, and looked about to say something when the door swung open, a handful of armed guards entering. One at a time, Cisco and Caitlin were "escorted" down the hall, the opposite direction of the failed escape attempt, to a windowless bathroom and back before returning them to the holding cell and locking the door. Most of the guards had left-Caitlin shuddered to think of why, but knowing it probably had to do with Ronnie.
Two of them had brought two water bottles and half a packet of crackers into the room, freeing Cisco's hands first to let him have his share, careful firearms pointed at Caitlin and the door both locked and blocked. Cisco'd wanted to snark at the uniformed man, but didn't dare, not yet. Finally able to stand, he tried to give Caitlin's shoulder a reassuring stale fake-cheese crackers later, the cuffs were replaced, his hands bound in front of him this time, and one of Caitlin's cuffs was undone. Both knew they'd need whatever food they could get, and hunger was at full force even as terrified as they were. Caitlin thought mournfully of the pastries left in her car and swallowed, wondering if she would be able to save the water bottle. She was so thirsty she could have easily drained the bottle, but forced herself not to chug it. There was no certainty they'd get more.
One of them took the half drained bottle she'd put down, giving it a little shake before tossing it back at her. She didn't wait to be told twice, finishing the rest.
"Don't waste it. If it were up to me, you'd be getting nothing."
"What did we ever do to you?" Caitlin demanded. "This is illegal, you have to know that." She saw the edge of a fading burn on his hand, crawling up his arm, at least a few months old. He might have been one of those who'd attacked Barry and Ronnie while they'd rescued Stein. Savagely, Caitlin hoped it had hurt him, badly. This wasn't what soldiers were supposed to do-this wasn't protecting, wasn't fighting for freedom or to help. Kidnapping people, whatever Eiling's team had been done to Bette, had been planning to do to Stein, to Ronnie, to Barry-sometimes she worried and wondered about those caught in the crossfire of Barry and whoever he was fighting, but she had not lost sleep over what might have happened to monsters like that. She wondered now if she should have. The soldier-she wasn't sure what his rank was, but then, her memorization had always been more focused on classifications of plants and atomic numbers, not how people sorted themselves-only stared her down, silent and coldly-furious. The door was shoved open, and the guard stepped aside for General Eiling.
The general strode in, hands folded behind his back, as if he owned the place. Which, Cisco figured, he probably did.
"What did you do to Ronnie?" Caitlin demanded, and Cisco knew that tone, that was Caitlin furious, Caitlin desperate, fear and sense tossed aside.
"Nothing I'll regret." He stood in front of the table, making Cisco feel small for all he was standing. Eiling towered over them. Caitlin drew breath, and Cisco knew he had to act. He couldn't let her draw the anger and attention onto herself, not with these people. Not when they might have already gotten everything they needed out of her.
"Hey, General Fuss'n'feathers," he snapped, "how stupid are you to think you'll get away with any of this? I mean, all brawn no brains, we've seen that before, but even Woodward was smarter than you, and I'm pretty sure his brain was made of scrap metal." Someone drove a fist into Cisco's gut and he bent double, narrowly avoiding smacking his head on the table. He coughed, hard, but kept on. "You have no jurisdiction to do this, you can't just keep us here. Even if Firestorm wouldn't inevitably turn you into a roast chicken-Mason Bridge was on to you, the media will connect the dots when we go missing. People will notice, they'll look. You won't get away with any-"
A second blow cut him off, though it was not aimed at him, this one an open handed smack that would have knocked Caitlin out of her chair if not for the let out a short cry, clamping her mouth shut again stubbornly. Cisco's eyes burned, anger replacing worry in him nearly as much as it had for Caitlin.
"I wouldn't worry about that, if I were you," Eiling smirked. "As long as I have you, Firestorm won't risk defying me, not again. And as for the rest, well. I can assure you that no one will find you, no one I don't want to."
"We have friends-" Caitlin started, her voice low.
"You're two disgraced scientists from a defunct laboratory. And no one looks for the dead, as I'm sure you well know, Doctor Snow." Eiling laid a pad of paper and a pen on the table as one of his guards carefully unshackled her hands, leaving her feet cuffed. She looked at it, not comprehending what it was he wanted-the paper was blank-no, worse, it was her own stationery, from her desk drawer. "Now, why don't we make certain no one comes looking, hmm? You're so sorry, but with the loss of your fiance and father in the same year, and then the man who supported you dying in yet another freak accident at your workplace, you simply can't continue…"
Caitlin felt the breath in her lungs freeze solid with fear as understanding set in. Wordless, she shook her head. If they were going to kill her,- oh god they're going to kill me, they're going to kill us, - they'd have to take responsibility for it, dammit. Her mind raced, white with panic. It would never work. Barry, Joe, Iris, Clarissa, Eddie, even Oliver and the rest of team Arrow knew that Ronnie hadn't died in the explosion, that he was alive. They'd know it had to be a trick, a lie...But that won't help them save you if you're already-a shiver ran down her spine. Eiling couldn't kill her, not yet, not if he needed her to use against Ronnie.
"Doctor Snow, write it. Don't make me tell you again." Eiling gestured to one of his men, and he grabbed Cisco, unsheathing a knife from a hip holster with the other hand. Caitlin's hands shook as she jerked the paper toward her.
"Alright, just don't. Please." The word burned her throat. Even as she wrote, she recognized the pen-from the glove compartment, fat-tipped with dark ink, not a standard, scratching bic-pen. When she paused, a drip of ink blotted the page. There would be no way to prove she hadn't written this, not her handwriting, her paper, her pen, but-there had to be something. She couldn't look up to meet Cisco's eyes, but she knew he was staring at her, that Eiling was watching. She finished, her own name hardly legible, and dropped the pen as if it had suddenly turned white-hot. General Eiling reached down, taking the suicide note in a gloved hand. Caitlin's breath caught in her lungs, turned sticky with fear.
"You must think I'm dumber than a sack of hammers, to fall for something this sloppy," Eiling growled, slamming the pad of paper down again like a clap of thunder. Caitlin flinched backward, her heart kicking into overdrive. "What kind of idiot do you think I am, that I wouldn't recognize Morse Code?"
Caitlin kept her gaze on the table, the pad of paper with all the scattered inkblots she'd hoped might have gone unnoticed. A harsh grunt made her look up in time to see the second guard lash out, kicking Cisco's legs from under him. The only thing that kept him upright was the bruising grip of his captor, yanking his arms back painfully.
"Stop it!" Caitlin shrieked, her voice painfully shrill in her ears. Eiling shook his head.
"Perhaps this will teach you to do as you're told, Doctor Snow."
Cisco's face shone with sweat as he squeezed his eyes shut, another blow catching his jaw. Caitlin heard the faintest whimper of pain, tears stinging her eyes, too hot on her cheeks. The healing split lip opened afresh; the man holding Cisco up let him drop to the cement floor with a crash. A booted foot slammed into his ribs.
"Stop it, you're killing him, stop!" Caitlin shrieked a second time. They did not stop, simply ignored her as Cisco tried to curl to protect himself. The one with his knife out spun it almost lazily, crouching. Eiling held up a hand.
"Enough. Dr. Snow, try again. And this time, no tricks, or I won't stop them."
Caitlin's hand trembled as she wrote, the inkspots random this time. The ink might as well have been blood, but for the color. This time, when Eiling read over the finished product, he nodded, and the guard behind her bent, uncuffing her ankles. Twin iron grips held her elbows, hauling her to her feet. She struggled uselessly as they half-dragged her to the door.
"Wait, no, let go of me!"
"Where are you taking her?" Cisco managed from his crumpled heap on the ground.
They didn't bother to answer, just pulled her down the hall. The door to the holding cell slammed behind them, cutting off any further cries.
It's been a hell of a week. to my American readers: I am with you. If you are scared, if you are hurting, if you are still numb, my tumblr box is always open. Be safe. and look after your neighbors, particularly those who are now in danger, physical or mental.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter. feel free to leave a comment. As some may be aware, this was plotted out pre End of season 1, and this chapter was written some time ago, hence the reference to Caitlin's father having died in the last year. Just go with it. Again, I update weekly.