Many apologies for taking so long to update. The device with my stories on it was left two hours away and it's been two weeks till I could get it back. The rest of the story will be updated much more frequently, I promise!

Kinchloe wasn't sure how long it had been before he felt a hand patting his cheek. He woke with a start and opened his eyes, momentarily confused at the darkness.

"Shh. It's okay. You're safe. I just need you awake to examine you."

"What?"

"Sergeant Wilson, medic. You're Kinchloe?" The voice was firm and soft. The combination was reassuring.

"Yeah."

"And I hear you can't see."

"Nope."

"Alright. We'll get to that. First, where does it hurt?"

This man could get down to business. "Well, my head hurts. And I think I broke my collarbone and arm. Pulled a muscle in my leg too."

"Hm. You're lucky."

"Lucky?"

"Yeah. You should see some of the guys they bring in. You've got nothing permanent. Let's check these breaks first. I'm going to need you to sit up and take your shirt off."

As he did so, Kinchloe asked, "You mean I'll be able to see again?"

"If you just lost your vision hitting your head—and it looks like that's what you did—it should be back real soon."

This was the medic speaking. And he sounded confident. Kinchloe felt better. Together, they slowly worked his shirt off without moving his broken arm.

Wilson spent some time poking around and asking what hurt. He found the painful spots pretty quickly. Soon enough, he had his diagnosis. "Two breaks, don't even need set. One sling should take care of both. I'm also going to wrap your arm against your torso so it doesn't swing out and move the collarbone any."

"Thanks."

"It's what we do here."

While they were getting his shirt back on and getting his arm all wrapped up in a sling, Kinchloe heard the ladder and voices.

"No beans." That first voice was a very familiar-sounding American.

"What?"

"No beans. It means I couldn't get him out. And Klink wants to know where his outfit came from."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him I could get him one if he wanted." With a chuckle, this apparently passed as an explanation.

"How many days, then?"

"Thirty. And I intend to shorten that yet. We need him for our next mission."

"We have a next mission?"

"Yeah, hold on. Wilson? How's your patient doing?"

"Looking good," the medic said. "Just a sling and some time and rest for his vision to come back."

"Good."

Kinchloe asked, "Newkirk's in solitary?"

"Oui." The Frenchman was down here. What was his name again?

"And I don't intend it to stay that way," said the American. He placed the voice. That must be the Colonel. "Wouldn't have happened if we got to work on Bruno."

"You mean, got him to cover for you?" Kinchloe asked. It seemed they were all unnecessarily vague around here.

"Yeah. LeBeau's working on finding his favorite food but we haven't come up with anything to trump his hatred of Newkirk just yet." That did not help Kinchloe's feelings of worry or guilt. But, favorite food?

"What?" he said.

"If you ask me, it's because he doesn't trust Newkirk," analyzed Colonel Hogan.

Kinchloe hadn't realized the Russian was down here until a dry voice said, "I wonder why?"

"You tell me," Hogan replied in kind.

Then LeBeau was speaking to him. "Do you have any ideas? I've tried ham bones, chicken carcasses—"

"You tried what?"

"What do you mean? All of the other dogs like it. Too much. They won't get off of me. But not Bruno."

"Wait." Kinchloe took this in. "Bruno's a dog?"

There was a confused pause. "Yes. What did you think?"

"I thought he was a guard. You said Bruno caught Newkirk."

Then they started laughing. It made Kinchloe feel a little better. They were taking things pretty lightly.

"He did," stated Minsk. "Bruno is the dog that hates Newkirk. Kohler is the guard that hates him."

"Not that the other guards much like him," qualified Hogan.

"Again, I wonder why," mumbled LeBeau.

Kinchloe was confused. "Why?"

LeBeau informed him, "He was here before the rest of us. Tell me, if you were a prison guard, would you like your gun handed to you by one of the prisoners?"

"Or your cigarettes missing?"

"Or your trousers—"

"Hey, hey, quiet down," ordered the Colonel. "We've got to get down to business. You were on a bombing raid, sergeant?"

"Yes. That's right," Kinchloe confirmed.

"Get your target?"

"Yeah."

"Did it happen to be a tank factory some thirty miles east of here?"

Kinchloe was about to respond positively, but the impossibility of the situation struck him. "How do you know?"

"Nevermind," he said as the others cheered. "Glad you got it. But I do want to extend my apologies."

"Apologies? What could you be sorry for?"

There was a short silence. Minsk said, "We asked London to bomb that factory."

"We're sort of the reason you're here," said LeBeau.

Kinchloe was silent for a moment. "It's not your fault. London has to get their coordinates from somewhere. It just happened to be you...somehow. And it wasn't you that took us out anyway. It was those AA. We didn't even know they'd be there. We were too low altitude, trying to see—"

"What? Anti-aircraft?"

"Around here?"

"No one told us!"

"That must be our next mission," finished LeBeau.

"Right. Can you give us a more exact location?" Hogan asked Kinchloe, then addressed the others. "Get the radio set running. Ask the Underground about the other crew members too."

Kinchloe worked with the Colonel to get the exact location, combining their knowledge of the area to guess where the guns were while answering Wilson's questions. By the time they had settled on something Hogan found satisfactory, Wilson was done, leaving instructions to drink plenty and assurances that he'd be back later to check on him, and Minsk and LeBeau had come back from the radio.

"Sounds like the Germans picked up five new flyers," Minsk said. "As for us, it was murder finding any of you, but we got two."

"That leaves three unaccounted for," said Hogan. "We'll look into it."

"Two unaccounted for," Kinchloe corrected. "We lost our tail gunner before we went down."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Though Kinchloe couldn't see anyone's faces, he could feel the atmosphere grow more somber. "We'll see about those other two."

"Oui."

"We will."

The Colonel got them back on track. "I'll send the AA location to the Underground in case they find the time to take it out. Back to barracks, before Schultz misses us. We'll leave you, Sergeant, to get that time and rest Wilson was talking about."

Kinchloe nodded and heard scuffling feet as everyone went about their duties.

~~HH~~

It wasn't fifteen minutes until LeBeau came back. He announced himself. "Kinchloe?"

Kinchloe pulled himself out of his fuzzy daydream. "LeBeau?" he asked.

The Frenchman sounded pleased. "Oui. I brought you something." At that moment the scent hit his nose. Oh, food. "I knew you'd like it." He must have seen the smile spreading across his face.

"You bet I would."

"Here," he said. Kinchloe felt a tin plate set on his lap and a fork slipped into his hand. "All the food is right in the middle."

Feeling the plate on his legs, he was able to judge with decent accuracy where to aim his fork. He tried to take it slow, and the difficulty of getting the food to his mouth helped, but all he wanted was to inhale it. Never had potatoes and carrots tasted so good.

"Sorry I couldn't get more. Klink put a temporary guard on the mess hall. It's been harder to steal food." Kinchloe made a dismissive noise and waved his fork, not stopping his eating for a moment but clearly saying he didn't mind in the slightest. LeBeau gave him some water, and when he was nearly finished, helped him find the last few chunks of carrot. Kinchloe briefly hoped it wouldn't always have to be that way.

He finished, and sighed in satisfaction. "Thanks. That was amazing."

"That was nothing. You should stick around and try a real meal of mine. Then maybe I will have someone who actually appreciates my cooking." Kinchloe thought he heard him mumble something in French about tasteless English. Then he realized something.

"Why are you still down here? I thought you didn't want the guard to miss you?"

"Oh, I made sure I said hi to Shultz and gave him some food. He won't be worried. Unless he wants more and tries to find me."

"Then what?"

"Someone will probably tell him I'm on the other side of camp and get me from down here."

Hm. They made it sound so easy. "So this operation really works, huh?"

"Beautifully. Well, perhaps not beautifully. German military interior decoration is rather dull, but it works well."

"Except when you get caught."

"Caught? Oh. Newkirk." Kinchloe really wasn't one to pry in any circumstances, but he had liked the Englishman and wanted to know what would happen to him. "Don't worry about him. He will be out in no time. I bet you can see him by tonight. Hopefully we can find your other crewmembers by tonight too."

"Really? Is that possible?"

"We will try, mon ami. In the meantime, I must get back upstairs. Get better soon."

"Thanks." And with that, he was gone.

Kinchloe was left most of the rest of the day to think about his crewmembers in captivity, those on the plane and those in this camp. His imagination gave him more than enough food for thought. He wished he hadn't heard quite so many stories about the Gestapo. He was grateful for the respite given him when Wilson came to check on him later, and they got to talking about what the camp was like. Wilson described the camp to him and several of the guards and prisoners in it. He didn't know much about the operation, but he had some pretty amusing stories. Kinchloe appreciated them. He hung onto them, retelling them to himself to stave off his fears after Wilson left. LeBeau came with lunch—he liked the spunk of the Frenchman—and a few hours later the Russian came to visit.

"Good news, soldier," he said, right off the bat.

"What's that?"

"The Underground picked up one of your crew members."

"Who was it?"

"Didn't mention a name, but he was the pilot."

Kinchloe breathed a sigh of relief. Bailey was okay. Was he? "He wasn't hurt?"

"Nope. They're getting him off to London right now. He knows where you and the rest of your crew ended up."

"Good." Except for one. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me for relating what I heard. Thank me for the clothes I'm going to make you to get out of here. They're going to be a challenge. If you get seen, the clothes have to tell the story themselves or else you're just going to get caught as an escaped prisoner. Then when they have no record of you in the camps, they'll wonder how you got papers and clothes if you're just a downed flier." Kinchloe swallowed. "My advice? Don't get caught. Or seen."

If I can see to make it out of Germany, Kinchloe thought. "Thanks. What about my last crew member?"

"Colonel says we're doing our last sweep of the area tonight. We haven't heard anything about the Germans getting him, so he must still be out there." Kinchloe heard the unspoken "alive or dead" on the end of the sentence clearly. He nodded.

"We're also shipping out your crewmember—Durant?—tonight."

"Really?" He was glad Durant was going back, but he also liked having something familiar here in this strange lightless world he'd landed in.

"Da. Going out during evening roll call. I'm giving him the same advice I gave you. But don't worry. We have a second escape route to be traveled with the least amount of time in the open. It just takes a lot longer."

"Oh."

"I have to get back to the radio. We're preparing that route right now with our Underground contacts. Good luck with your recovery." Minsk left quickly.

Back to the radio? It sounded so good. Oh, he'd love to get his hands on some equipment.