Nalan: Thanks :D

halfcent: Heh, thanks ;) As for Nadia...give it another two or three chapters and you'll find out for certain :P

It is often said (or it was when I was seven and petitioning the nuns for a TV in the bathroom) that water and electricity do not mix.

This, as any scientist will tell you, is not true. Water and electricity mix beautifully, just like water and potassium.

With that in mind, I was not happy to see the dangling electrical cables in the next room. None of them were sparking, but any doubts I might have had about their lethality were squashed the moment I saw the body lying face down on the floor.

I stared at it and said without thinking, "Who's that?"

"Is?" Decker echoed.

I glared at him. "Will you cut that out! It wasn't funny the first time and it's not funny now!"

Decker shrugged but didn't answer. I think even he was starting to tire. More than that, I think baiting me about things like this had lost all its appeal. He'd been acting a little oddly ever since the beam incident. Not for the first time, I thought I'd give my right arm to know what it was he'd seen there.

I knew I'd never find out, though. Not unless he decided to confide in me, and let's face it, that really wasn't gonna happen any time soon. I guess I couldn't blame the guy. I wouldn't trust him with my secrets either. Actually, I wouldn't trust anybody with my secrets; there are things I've never even told Hannibal. Good things, most of them – a guy's got to have some treasures – but still, I really wouldn't pick Decker as a confidant.

We stood there, growing colder by the second. This room was freezing, so much so that I wondered if we'd somehow come in a complete circle and ended up above the freezer room, and being soaked in cold water hadn't helped. If the electricity didn't kill us, the hypothermia would.

You know, people laugh at things like hypothermia and, on the other end of the scale, dehydration, but believe me; on a severe scale they're killers, and it doesn't take much to tip that scale either. I remembered an incident in Nam, when one of our boys collapsed with dehydration and since I was the only one who wasn't burdened by extra equipment, injuries or other wounded soldiers, I'd had to carry him back. (Alright, I didn't have to, but even allowing for the screwed up kid I'd been back then, I wasn't cold-blooded enough to abandon another soldier without a much better reason than Well, Colonel, I didn't really want to carry him).

Anyway, we made it back and Hannibal was standing there, waiting. He always did that; waited to check us in personally rather than stay shut up in his ivory hooch like many other officers. I think that was part of the reason why so many soldiers were willing to follow him. He asked what had happened to the guy I was carrying, and when I told him that the medic assigned to our patrol claimed it was dehydration, Hannibal went through the roof. It's not something he does very often, which is probably why it stuck out in my mind so much. The reason? The soldier who had collapsed with dehydration still had a full canteen. He just hadn't realized how bad things were getting.

I've never seen anyone with severe hypothermia, although Hannibal says he saw several cases in Korea. I always thought all countries in that part of the world were nothing but steamy hot jungles and elephants, but apparently not. Turns out Korea has some pretty nasty winters and virtually no jungle at all. Go figure.

"Peck!"

I blinked and glanced over at Decker. The whole memory had passed through my mind in less than a few seconds, although my mind had apparently decided to go wandering for a little longer, which worried me.

"Yeah? What?"

Decker nodded toward a fuse box. Someone had thoughtfully left it open, and I could make out about a dozen switches inside. This would have been a lot more useful if I knew which switch corresponded to which dangling cable, and if, of course, the fuse box hadn't been on the other side of the room.

I looked at it, then I looked back at Decker.

"Think you could work your magic with the baseball again?" I asked.

Decker shot me a sharp look, then appeared to decide I wasn't making fun of him.

"Peck, I could hit any switch in that fuse box you'd care to point at, but that wouldn't do us any good. Even if you picked the right one out of twelve, hitting the switch with a baseball isn't likely to trip it, and what if we need to use more than one?"

I folded my arms. I believed him – at least, the part about his throwing aim; I'd seen enough evidence of that in the water room and with those acid sprinklers – but that didn't mean I had to like it.

"Alright then, you come up with a better idea! One which doesn't involve crawling under those." I waved my hand in the direction of the cables for emphasis, then said, "Or at least, one which doesn't involve me crawling under those."

"Those cables aren't dangling all the way to the floor, Peck," Decker pointed out. "In fact, most of them are about two feet above it."

"Okay. You crawl under them."

I hadn't meant for him to take me seriously, but he did; as soon as the words were out of my mouth, Decker gave me a cold look, then lowered himself to the ground and started moving while I stood there and shivered. It was, if anything, getting even colder.

I turned around, looking for Nadia, and saw her leaning against the wall, hugging herself tightly.

"You okay?" I asked.

She glanced at me and managed a wan nod, coupled with something that I think she intended for a reassuring smile and which didn't fool me for a second. I noticed she wasn't shivering as badly as I was, and that worried me. If she was too cold to shiver, she was really in a bad way. I guess I could've held her, tried to warm her with my body heat, but to be honest, I doubted I would make much of a difference after being soaked in cold water.

"It'll work out," I told her, although my voice wasn't as smooth and confident as usual. Must have been the cold. "Sure, Decker's not the nicest guy you could ever meet, but he knows what he's doing."

Nadia shrugged. "He thinks I'm involved with this," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I don't understand why."

To be honest, neither did I. Nadia had had plenty of chances to kill us. If that was her aim, why hadn't she asked me to come on the beam with her and pushed me off? Why hadn't she pushed me into the barbwire room and slammed the door behind me, or kept me talking until the gas kicked in and I was dead?

I turned around, just in time to see things going wrong. Decker had misjudged the distance between himself and the most recent cable and was straightening up too soon. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, but it was already too late; the back of his neck had brushed against one of the cables. There was a crack that made my ears whimper, then Decker was thrown halfway across the room. Without thinking, I dropped to the ground and wriggled on my belly under the cables until I reached him and fumbled at his wrist, hunting for a pulse.

Nothing. However much electricity was racing through those damn cables, I'd been right when I said it was a bad idea to touch any of them. A really bad idea.

However bad it was, it was rapidly supplanted by an even worse realization: that if I wanted Decker out of here (and I did; I'd already decided that I wasn't going to let whoever was behind this win that easily) then I was going to have to...do something.

"Face!" Nadia called from behind me. "Is he okay?"

I twisted around to look at her as best I could and answered, "Not really. Uh. Do you know any kind of resuscitation?"

She shook her head. "No. I thought you did."

I did, but the thought of giving it to Decker was making my toes curl. I know I said I wanted to help him out of here, but even so...!

"You could just leave him, you know," Nadia added.

"Don't be an idiot, I'm not going to abandon him here." I hesitated only a second or two longer before lacing my fingers together over Decker's chest and beginning.

Several seconds went by before there was any reaction; Decker drew in a long, shuddering breath and began coughing violently.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Decker," I greeted him. "Such as it is."

It took him some time before he managed to get control over his lungs. When he did, he glared at me and said in a hoarse voice, "I think you broke one of my ribs."

I wasn't having that, not after I'd gone to so much trouble to bring the ungrateful jerk back from the dead, and so I glared right back at him.

"Oh, well, excuse me, Decker! It wasn't exactly a picnic for me either, you know, and if you ever mention it to anyone, either of you," I added, turning to include Nadia, "I'll deny everything!" I hesitated, then decided to risk another question. "You, uh, didn't happen to see any bright lights while you were gone, did you?" I asked, trying to keep my tone and face as neutral as possible. "Any long tunnels?"

Decker turned the glare up a few degrees, but that didn't bother me. Once you've been glared at by BA, all other glares hold no fear for you. Believe me.

Nadia cleared her throat and said delicately, "What about all the switches?"

I looked at her, then at the switches. If Decker and I had been fictional characters in a story, chances are that the electricity which blew Decker across the room would also have blown him to within conveniently easy reach of the fuse box, and then all any of us would have needed to do was reach up and flick all the switches.

Since we were real people and this was real life, however, the electricity had blasted him in completely the wrong direction and we were now staring at the box from the opposite wall and further away from it than ever.

I glanced at my companions and said resignedly, "Alright. I guess it's my turn."

Well, I couldn't ask Nadia to do it, and Decker had been dead a few minutes ago. That only left me. I turned and started crawling under the cables again, keeping as low as I could. There was a faint, very low buzzing from over my head, an endless reminder of what would happen if I forgot where I was. The worst part was when I had to move the body aside. I could guess what had happened to him easily enough; he'd become too eager when he was getting close to the fuse box, jumped to his feet and hit one of the cables. I felt a little sorry for him, whoever he'd been; if he'd woken up in the same room I had and followed the same route, then he'd come a long way.

Pressing my body against the wall, I craned my head back and pushed myself up as slowly as I could, until I was standing next to the fuse box. Without bothering to look (there were four cables dangling dangerously close to the box) I reached around and pulled down every switch I could feel.

The low hum of electricity died away. Cautiously, I poked the nearest cable with the very tip of my finger.

Nothing happened. I tried gripping it. Still nothing. It looked like it was safe, and so I made my way back to Decker and Nadia, pushing through the cables as though they were paper streamers.

"I thought you were going to crawl to the door," Decker said.

"If the room was electrified, Decker, there's a good chance the door was as well." I brushed the cables aside and helped him to his feet. "Let's go, before the ceiling collapses or the floor falls out from under us or something."

Decker winced as I pulled him upright – I guess he wasn't kidding about the broken rib – and followed Nadia and me over to the door.

I put my hand on the handle. When it failed to kill me, I tried turning it. The door opened, swinging inward without a sound.

"Another dark room." Nadia peered around me, squinting as she tried to see inside.

"Naturally," Decker interjected. "Peck just cut the power to every light in the building except the one above our heads."

This was probably true, but I sure as hell wasn't going to go back and experiment with those switches.

"Well, whatever's in there," I said, "I hope it includes a nice, hot towel. Let's go."

Alright, so most of you guessed what was in this room (after all, with the water, there were only a few things it could have been) ;) Still, hope you enjoyed it and if you read, please review! More next Monday!