A/N: Sorry for the-... you know the drill. But, yes, sorry for the wait, things have been a bit crazy! I hope you enjoy this chapter, and comments would be lovely! :D
PS: oh, I also received a couple of messages throughout this asking about PMing. YES, hit me up! But, I'm terrible at checking messages (fanfic) and I don't think you CAN PM on Ao3 (can you?) so feel free to add me on Instagram if you want to: liseyschokker. (If you've read this far, I can probably trust you not to be a total weirdo... if you are, that's okay, at least there'll be two of us.)
"Is he coming?"
House asks as Chase climbs into the passenger seat of his car.
"He's meeting us there."
"Good... The more of us there are, the stupider she's going to feel."
House scoffs, although it's a rather strained attempt at humour, and he imagines the fact that Foreman has agreed to come out to seventh in favour of catching up on sleep means that the neurologist shares in his concern that they aren't out of hot water yet.
"Maybe."
Chase nods, too anxious to spring to Cameron's defence, and hopeful that feeling stupid is all that the blonde has to worry about.
"She'll be alright."
He insists as House starts up the engine; the greying doctor sat behind the wheel with his jaw clenched as they wait for the windscreen to demist. House offers no reply, and Chase grits his own teeth as he lowers his attention back to his phone.
The small chime that had alerted him to a new message had irritated him at first; exhausted after having helped House with his asphyxiation patient, and gathering his things with the intention of going home to at least attempt to get some rest in spite of the blonde's absence when it had gone off. The last thing he'd wanted to contend with had been a message at the crack of dawn requiring him to fret about something else (after all, good messages generally come after breakfast). Upon seeing who the message was from, his mood had done a one-eighty so fast that a sharp pain had flashed between his temples, and he'd fumbled to enter the passcode into his phone. His relief had been short-lived; the tone of Cameron's text very much unlike her in its blunt distress. It had been at this point that he'd shoved his bag back into his locker, donned his coat, and left to find House; imagining that the blonde might have messaged her old boss too if truly in a pinch.
The fact that this theory had been proven correct had in no way brightened his mood, given the way Cameron and House had been at each other's throats just before her disappearance.
Still, House's reaction upon reading the blonde's text had been the same as his own; one of urgency.
"The idiot's gotten herself stuck in one of those old factories. She must have locked herself in."
House had grumbled, but he'd done so while hurrying to gather his things, and his reasoning had been as obvious then as it is now; waiting impatiently for his car to warm up enough to get it off the lot.
"It's freezing."
Chase remarks unnecessarily, glancing up from his phone to the dashboard where the outside temperature registers as 16 F.
"Try calling her again."
House requests as he ducks down in his seat a little to peer through the small section of cleared glass. Frustratingly, he knows he'll have to wait for that little patch to widen. The last thing they need right now is to be pulled over by the police for something so menial. As if on cue, the blond pulls a face as he lowers his phone from his ear- the call going straight through to voicemail now without even ringing- and asks for the third time
"Are you sure we shouldn't call the police?"
"And tell them what? That one of our team decided to trespass on private property and got herself stuck? I want to see Cameron redfaced and feeling foolish for this ridiculous little stunt she's pulled. I don't want her in trouble with the police... Much as I'd find it interesting!"
"But-"
"-If she wanted them involved, she would have contacted them, not us. As we have now so eloquently discussed; she and I aren't exactly on the best of terms right now. I'm not a person she's desperate to see, so I'd say the fact that she decided to text me rather than phoning 911 is telling."
"Point taken."
Chase agrees, letting out a sigh of impatient relief as House finally backs the car out of its space. He has no wish to land Cameron in trouble, but as he looks out of the window at the thick swathes of snow, he feels his chest tighten. According to the others, the blonde had left the hospital on her doomed mission well before yesterday noon, and with the temperature only plummeting lower with every hour, his initial concern that Cameron sounds to have gotten herself trapped has taken on a much darker cause for fear.
"Do you know what she was wearing?"
He asks uncertainly, and House frowns as he inches the car along the road that has yet to be showered with a new dose of grit. He is torn between making a few witty remarks he imagines will be met with a sour audience, but in the end, he realises that he fails to see much humour in any of them himself with his head pounding the way that it is.
Not to mention, the last time I commented on Cameron's wardrobe, it backfired spectacularly.
"No. Hopefully a decent coat, but I doubt she was planning on setting up camp in the middle of a fucking blizzard."
"Maybe it's not so cold inside..."
Yeah, because the heating is sure to be on in a derelict building on the rough side of town.
"Maybe."
House agrees, and when he catches Chase's genuine surprise at his accord, he mutters with his jaw clenched
"Windchill. If she's stuck, then she's inside... That's something."
"Right."
Chase nods, looking back down at his phone with a frown.
"What do you think she meant, 'be careful'?"
"Well, I presume she's warning us to prop our mode of entry open so that we don't end up in the same predicament she has."
House replies, although something in his tone suggests that he's not wholly convinced, and when the blond asks him dubiously if he reckons there's anything else Cameron might have meant, he responds with stony silence, broken several minutes later with a grunt beneath his breath
"She should never have gone to seventh on her own."
"Lena?... Hey. Lena, you have to stay awake, okay?"
Cameron pleads, giving the girl a little shake before hurriedly tucking her hand back beneath her arm where the relative warmth is so minuscule she feels like crying.
Which would do you absolutely no good!
No, she knows, and the last thing she wants to do is upset Lena who had gone from woozy and compliant following her descent down the stairs to panicked and irrational; clawing at the blonde as though wanting to be mothered, and screaming helplessly for her release. Still, her frantic movements had allowed Cameron to conclude that none of her bones appear broken, and, save for some ugly gashes to her left leg and bruising to her wrists and ankles, she seems alright, although concerningly dehydrated.
A prognosis that is slowly becoming shared, although the blonde tries not to think about it.
Just as she tries not to think about how lightheaded she gets when she stands, or how heavy her limbs have started to feel when she moves.
"What we do?"
Lena asks now, regarding her nakedly, and Cameron shakes her head- unsure- and simply repeats apologetically
"You have to stay awake."
A frown at this, followed by a sorrowful bleating as the girl resorts to weeping; no longer producing tears, but thankfully keeping her distress in check rather than shrieking uncontrollably as she had not so long ago.
Up above, the hairline gap between the door and the floor remains dark, and the blonde is fairly sure that the men running this shit-fest have left for warmer pastures. She has no idea what she means to do when they return, and she feels a cloak of dread settle over her shoulders as she glances up at the shadows she'd inhabited on top of the lockers.
I don't think I can get back up there... I'll try, but I don't think I'll succeed. I don't think I have climbing left in me.
She sighs, sitting back against a large drum filled with seed and closing her eyes.
"Don't sleep."
Lena warns her accusingly, and she grins- opening up the cut to her lip- and assures,
"I'm not. I'm just trying to picture my place. My apartment. Trying to pretend."
She shrugs, having read accounts penned by those who have found comfort in this practice when faced with adversity, but it seems to be doing nothing to aid her in the slightest, and so she goes back to her morose cataloguing of her surroundings. An activity that has become a little easier as the tiny, rectangular window in the top corner of the room has gone from black to indigo behind its thick veil of muck.
"Zamknij oczy. Close eyes."
Lena demands her attention, and she nods, asserting
"It's okay, I know, I won't. I won't, I'm sorry."
"No. You close. Now."
Lena insists, motioning that the blonde should raise her hands to her face. Cameron frowns uncertainly, before understanding what it is the girl wants, and she complies stiffly.
"Go in the corner."
She jabs in the direction of the far corner tucked beneath the stairs with her elbow, while her hands remain pressed over her eyes in a purposefully theatrical way to appease Lena that she has no intention of peeking at her. Waiting for the sound of water hitting concrete to stop, she lowers her hands as Lena shuffles back over, struggling to do up her jeans with purple-tinged fingers.
"You. Go look."
Lena points to the corner, and Cameron frowns, looking from the wet glisten just discernable from where she sits to the girl.
"Look?"
"Look."
Lena nods, and the blonde blinks but pushes herself unsteadily to her feet to oblige her companion. She has explained what she can to the girl about how she ended up in the hellhole they share (a tale hindered both by language, and a careful attempt to be as truthful as possible without scaring the life out of the poor thing), and so has divulged what it is she does for a living. As such, as she heads over to the corner- the room seeming suddenly very large and not entirely solid as she stumbles a little- she swallows fearfully as Lena's odd request has her wondering if the girl is passing blood in her urine; not a good sign if she was able to see such a thing in the dismal light available.
As it is, there doesn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary in the small puddle under the stairs, and the girl speaks up irritably from her slumped position on the floor.
"No. Don't look. Not siusiać. Not pee. Wall."
She instructs with an audible note of embarrassment, and the blonde glances back at her, before crouching a little and spying what had caught Lena's attention.
"Shit."
She breathes, as she traces a finger over one of the jagged marks made in the paint beneath the lower treads of the stairs. Seven shaky lines in all, etched in the style of tally marks, beside an unsettling smear of maroon.
"Drawings."
Lena remarks, and Cameron opens her mouth to argue that the lines don't really look like drawings to her, but rather a means of keeping track of the time- of days- when she sees that the girl isn't altogether wrong; a small series of etchings lower down suggesting an attempt at an illustration, but ultimately unintelligible save for a single word.
MARTA
Touching her finger to the letters, she nibbles at her grazed bottom lip, trying to recall if House's team had positively identified any of the girls recently in their care save for Lordes. She doesn't think so, and she sighs as her attention flickers back up to the tally scratches.
Seven.
You were down here for seven days?!
Realistically, it's possible, provided the girl had been fed and watered, but the thought is almost too much to bear. Still, she recalls what Foreman had told her about their first case. The girl had shown signs of being mistreated for weeks, perhaps even months.
"I don't understand..."
She murmurs.
"Co?"
Lena asks, before jerking as though receiving an electric shock when a loud banging sounds from above. Exchanging a terrified glance with the blonde, she scrambles back against the wall- striving to hide beneath the shelves- as she whispers frantically.
"What we do?!"
"I don't know."
Cameron shakes her head; her heartbeat in her throat as the knocking above intensifies, before suddenly, it stops.