Chapter 5
Dr. House felt kind of weird with a strange man riding behind him on his motorcycle, but then again, the whole day was strange. Normally, if House had needed to take a passenger somewhere from work, he would just steel Wilson's car, but today that didn't sound like a very good idea since it was him who they were going to spy on.
They soon came to the ally that House had seen his friend go down earlier. They both got off the bike and House led the Doctor to the entrance to the basement. When they reached the entrance, House found that there was a rusty pad lock holding the door closed.
He was about to break it with his cane when the Doctor stopped him. "Here, I've got this one," he said as he stepped in front of House and pulled something out of his jacket pocket.
House couldn't see what it was but he saw a strange blue light and heard a slight hum and then all of a sudden the lock popped open.
"Oh that's cool. Need to get one of those," House said.
The Doctor turned and waved the small silver cylinder as he smiled and said, "Sonic screwdriver, never leave home without it."
Then he turned and went through the door. It led down another flight of stairs. House watched as the Doctor disappeared down the darkened stairway and rolled his eyes, of course there had to be more stairs. He sighed and began his careful and painful decent into the gloomy room.
The basement was near black in light level and had very rickety wooden stair leading into it. The place was all brick and was rather cool and dank. It smelled of water and mold; not a place that House really felt like being in right then. For that matter, he couldn't figure why Wilson would want to be coming down here.
He finally reached the floor a few paces behind the Doctor. He watched as the Doctor reached up pulled on a chain that was attached to a light bulb on the ceiling. A dim flicker and then a weak light came forth from the bulb. Even the light bulb seemed to not like this basement very much.
The Doctor glanced around and all he saw was clutter and old forgotten odd and ends items. There was a large rickety wooden table in the center and piles of what could only be called junk everywhere else. He pulled out his scanner as he noticed that Dr. House was beginning to poke around in the piles of stuff.
"So, I get the impression that you didn't know why I didn't see what you wanted on the blank piece of paper," House said.
"Yeah. Truth is, never happened before," Doctor admitted. Maybe now he'd get to find out about that.
"How's it supposed to work anyway?"
"Well it's a touch psychic. I usually prompt something for the person before I show it to them and then they see what they expect. Like with Dr. Cuddy, I mentioned I was there to inspect the hospital, she saw I was from the CDC."
"Well that must be why it didn't work," House said.
"Why's that?"
"I expected whatever it was to be a lie, and so it had nothing to show me."
The Doctor paused and stared at him. This was a very intriguing human, he decided.
Just then they heard the slightest of moans and a tiny click of metal. House and the Doctor exchanged a look before the Doctor said, "Hello?"
There was the muffled moan again; it was coming from the back of the room, in the darkest corner. They peered over there but all they could see was something white. Quickly House led the way over to the object. As he got next to it, he saw that it was a white sheet draped over what appeared to be a human form. His throat went dry as he knelt down next to the sheet on his left knee and pulled the sheet off.
At first, all he could tell was that it was some human form below him. It was a man dressed rather nicely, or would have been if it wasn't for the dirt and filth and smears of blood that covered him. The arms were exposed and covered in bruises and cuts. They both were at odd angles showing that there were broken bones.
The face looked just as battered. The cheeks and jaw were all swollen and it appeared that there were bruises on top of bruises. There was a blindfold over the eyes and a gag tied around the mouth.
House was slightly horrified by the sight but quickly got over the nausea that threatened to take hold when he saw that the man was still breathing, albeit shallowly. He immediately went into doctor mode. He pulled out his cell and tossed it back to the Doctor. "Here, number 3 is the hospital. Have them send an ambulance," he instructed as he turned back to his patient. The man seemed to rouse slightly out of whatever pain induced stupor he had been in. He slightly turned his head to face the sound of House's voice.
House began to get nervous again, there was defintely something familiar about this broken body before him. He reached down and untied the blindfold, carefully removing it so as to cause as little pain as possible.
When he caught sight of the rapidly blinking eyes of the man, he nearly fell back with shock. Not possible, he thought. But there he was, the man who they were sure was sitting perfectly fine in his office back at PPTH, James Wilson.
"Wilson?" he asked breathlessly, still too shocked to do anything.
The man blinked his pain filled eyes once as a tear began to roll down his battered face.
House quickly removed the gag as he noticed that Wilson was also chained to the floor by his wrists and ankles. "It's alright buddy, help is on the way," he distantly heard himself saying as he worked the hard knot of the gag.
As soon as he got it free he heard his friend weakly croak his name as if he didn't believe that it really was him.
"Yeah Jimmy, it really me. I'm gonna get you out here. Just hold on a little longer."
The Doctor came over again after making the phone call. "They're on their way," he said. "Is that Doctor Wilson?" he asked as he looked down at the battered man.
"Yeah. How about you use your little gizmo and get these chains off of him," House said as he got out of the way for the Doctor to work.
The Doctor nodded and knelt down beside Wilson, pulling out the sonic screwdriver once again. House had moved so that he was at Wilson's head and was using his hands as a pillow for the man who had had his head lying on the cold cement floor for who knew how long.
But as the Doctor moved to release Wilson, the man tried to pull back from him, eliciting a pain fill moan with the movement.
"It's alright buddy, he's here to help. Just let him get those chains off you alright?" House said.
Wilson blinked once, in too much pain to say anything or even nod his head. House watched as his friend began to cry silently again. "I know, I know… It hurts. We're gonna get you better. Don't worry," House kept saying. He wasn't really being very articulate right now, but he was so shaken by the sight of his friend in so much pain he couldn't think what else to do.
It only took a minute for the Doctor to have the chains free and they heard the approaching sirens.
"I've got to call Rose, make sure that the other Dr. Wilson is where he should be," the Doctor said.
"How the hell can there be two of them?!" House growled.
"I can explain later, right now we need to get your friend out of here," was the reply. He got up and pulled his own phone from his jacket pocket and walked a little ways away to call Rose.
House's head was reeling. Two Wilsons? Did that mean that his friend had been down here since he noticed that Wilson was acting strange? Maybe longer? It seemed amazing that the man was even still alive. He could still hear himself muttering reassurances to the crying Wilson, but he wasn't even paying attention to his awkward words anymore. He was too busy running through what was needed to get his friend patched up.
He looked the man over and saw that not only were both arms broken, he suspect that both legs were as well. And, depending on when they were broken, they could have already begun to heal improperly. That meant surgery.
But the first thing was painkiller, and a lot. He could tell that the pain was the main thing that had him so scared. Wilson, normally a well-tempered man, seemed to almost tremble just from the light touch that House was giving. It seemed that every nerve was just on edge, raw with pain. What kind of thing would do something like this?
It was then that the paramedics arrived. House looked up at them and began to issue orders. He had just gotten through telling them to use Haldol and make sure they had a neck brace and barked out to the nearest one to give him a penlight when he noticed that all of the commotion was upsetting Wilson again.
"Hey, calm down. We're gonna get you to the hospital and fix you up, ok?"
Wilson stared at him for a minute before he visibly calmed down again. House wasn't sure what it was that had scared him, but he was obviously going to trust House to take care of him now.
One of the EMT's handed House the penlight that he had asked for as another arrived with the Haldol. House began to check for any signs of neurological damage and was relieved to see that Wilson's pupils were behaving as they should. It appeared that the pounding that he had received was not enough to give a concussion; that at least was one good thing. There were already far too many other things that they were going to have to address.
House backed away as he allowed the EMT's to get Wilson moved and strapped onto the stretcher they had brought. He heard the gasp of pain from his friend as they moved him, but he was sure that it could have been a lot more painful if they hadn't used the Haldol first. He watched as, even through the pain, Wilson began to drift off into a bit of sleep.
House and the Doctor stood together, watching them carry the man up the stairs and to the waiting ambulance.
As soon as the men were out the door, House said to the Doctor without even turning to look at him, "You mind explaining to me why my friend was just taken out of here on a stretcher after who knows how long of torture?"
The Doctor sighed before answering, "My guess would be a Gleryth," he answered.
House spun around and fixed the other man with a smoldering gaze. The Doctor had been faced by many angry and pissed off people in his day, but the strength of this man's stare nearly caused him to take a step back… nearly.
"Yes, that makes all the sense in the world to me," House barked at him. "Gleryth, oh I get it." He spun around and angrily took a few paces away before he turned back and continued his rant. "Let's pretend for a second that I am not at all familiar with your world of space travel. Let's assume that I have never heard of anything outside of this planet and have never heard of anything that could make an exact duplicate of another person while he tortured the original. Let's just pretend that I know absolutely nothing about why an alien might have shown up in my place of work and then come with me to discover that my best friend has been reduced to a broken mass of human flesh!"
The Doctor stood there calmly. He wore a grave express and simply allowed the angry man to vent. He knew that this was all a bit much for anyone to suddenly take in and was allowing House the opportunity to release some of his rage.
"Feel better?" he asked as House's rant came to an end and he stood there, breathing heavily while leaning on his cane, staring back at the Doctor. He didn't make any answer to the question, but the Doctor could see that he was at least a little more level headed now.
"I can, and will explain everything to you. But right now we have to get back to the hospital before the other Wilson finds out that he has been discovered."
House heaved a sigh before shaking his head and heading back up the steps. He hated being kept in the dark about all of this, but he saw the sense in not wasting time. He didn't want this thing to escape anymore than the Doctor did. In fact, he was hoping to get a few shots of his own in before the Doctor did whatever he was going to do with it.
They both hurried back to the hospital, hoping that the creature didn't hear about his counter part being in the ER before they got there.