Dark. The funny thing was that for the first few seconds he had found the darkness comforting, even though there was a voice in his brain screaming that something was wrong. The voice was growing louder by the second, rushing towards his conscious thoughts like a racing train. Yet, for the first few precious seconds he was not afraid.
Light. The fear when it came was blinding, the sensation of being slammed in the chest by a white wall of terror. Finally the fear slowly receded from the edges, his mind clearing as the panic ebbed away and heavy dread settled in its place like molten lead. His hands flexed, testing the strength of the bond that held them and he blinked, trying to speed up the adjustment of his eyes to the darkness. He needed to know where he was, what was happening, before the dread crawled up into his throat and strangled him.
Quick. The images were dizzying if he thought about it too hard. Relaxing and letting the story come to him brought flashes of the car, of the accident in the driving rain, of being dragged bodily from the vehicle with the seatbelt still tangled around his shoulder. Of the taste of iron and copper in his mouth and the way the world began to dip and sway and dim even as he struggled. The images flitted rapidly through his brain, sometimes in order and sometimes fragmented like a half remembered nightmare. He shied away from them, closing his eyes although he knew it would do no good. He drifted back to sleep again, shutting himself away for a few more precious hours.
Slow. The second time he awoke it was much more slowly, because he knew what was waiting for him on the other side of his eyelids. He raised himself up reluctantly, using the leverage of his bound hands and noted in passing that it was brighter in the room, although the light had the dirty grey tinge of a covered window. The last of the panic had gone; the images receded to the back of his mind. He was left with the determination and the dread and he concentrated on one to avoid the other. The room had seemed cavernous in the dark but was actually much smaller than he had imagined, lined with empty, dusty shelves like the backroom of a store. There was a single wooden door in the wall opposite him, the door would inevitably be locked but he tried it anyway. His shoulders were aching from where his arms were held behind his back and he sat back down with a bump, his brief exploration at an end. He realised that for now he might as well sit, until he knew where he was and why he was here. He stretched his arms out as far as he could, willing the blood back into his shoulders. Counting his own breaths, he waited.
Open. The door had been opened six times by his count. Assuming they were feeding him twice a day that meant he had spent three days in this room. It seemed an impossibly long period, but time had become stretched and fluid to him. The light level in the room barely changed and he slept when the urge came upon him, which was often. They had untied his hands, once they realised he wasn't going to offer much resistance and settled for handcuffing one arm to the shelving units. Brief exertion the first time they had done this had assured him that the shelves were bolted to the wall. He felt strangely guilty for his inactivity, as if he should be trying every second to escape, even though logic told him there was probably a man with a gun less than a foot from the only exit and he wouldn't get much further than that without a bullet in his back. His captors almost seemed wary of him, edging into the room and backing towards the door as if they were afraid any second he might break loose and attack him. He assumed they thought he was some superhero CSI rather than a lowly technician, a misapprehension he could only blame on the lack of light. They gave him water, fed him more regularly than some conference hotels he had stayed in and in his blacker moments he felt he couldn't complain that much. There had been no demands; they didn't really seem to know what to do with him. That thought both reassured and worried him, so he found it better to concentrate on the logic of the situation. He particularly avoided thinking about people, it was a talent he had been nurturing for years and although it had grown rusty in the last few months he resurrected the wall around himself without too much difficulty. As long as he didn't think of people, didn't dwell on him too much, the pain and the hope were contained in the back of his mind and he could think clearly, make decisions based on facts and not on a fantasy of rescue by his own knight in shining armour. He used the same escape he always had when he wanted to forget his own thoughts; he let music roll through his head, unwinding to cover everything else as it went. He'd once told Greg, although he winced to even think of his name, that the only way to truly know a piece of music was to play it, to pick it apart and examine it from the inside out. Now his fingers twitched with useless movements as he worked through the imaginary scores, studied long enough to be etched into his mind and comforting in their familiarity. The imaginary sounds were old familiar friends and he shut his eyes, ignored reality, and listened.
Closed. By what his unpredictable counting system told him was the fifth day, most of his wounds had begun to close and heal. He had become aware, slowly, that the cut above his eye must be infected. Gingerly he touched the skin around it and found it warm and tender, his fingers trying to gauge the size and shape of it as he wished desperately for a mirror. The last time he had poked at it he came away with pus on his fingers and he had suddenly stopped, acutely worried by how bad it was. Knowledge came rushing up from the depths of his memory; the most likely type of infection, the typical indications of the immune response and the likelihood of the infection crossing into his blood. Images of septicaemia he had seen at college flashed back at him and knowing the chance was tiny was no help when that also meant you knew it was possible. He hunkered down with his head bowed and tried fruitlessly to think of something else, his brain now a minefield of the thoughts he was avoiding. The door suddenly banged open and he looked up to find a man staring at him, holding a gun. Bizarrely he was grateful for the interruption, even including the firearm.
"Come." The man spoke with a clipped tone. David stood up and then gestured to the handcuffs. The man unlocked it, using the free end to handcuff both his hands together, and then gestured with a nod of his head. "Come." He repeated. David allowed himself to be led, confusion more than fear making him compliant. As he passed through the door, he saw he had been right about his likely chances of escape. There was a chair on the other side and the man sitting in it grinned at him wolfishly and tapped his gun against his knee. The man leading David jerked him sharply forward and he stumbled, raising a snort of laughter from the man in the chair. The room appeared to be a deserted shop, the front boarded up with shafts of sunlight peaking through the cracks, he could see at least that it was daylight. He was led sideways past the covered bulk he took to be the counter and through a door into another room. There was an uncovered window here and the dust in the air glinted in the sunbeams. Roughly he was shoved towards a table and he contacted with it sharply, unable to put his hands out to stop himself. The impact sent a spike of pain from his hip to his brain and he stumbled back.
"Look." The man spoke sharply and pointed to the table. Its surface was littered with what David had initially taken to be trash, but as he looked more closely he realised everything on the table bore familiar bags and tags. This was the evidence from the car he had been driving, his first thought was that this was the last time he did a CSI a favour. He looked up at the man standing next to him; to his surprise he looked a little guilty. "We were expecting you to stop somewhere." It was the longest sentence David had heard for days and he surprised himself by opening his mouth to reply.
"But I didn't." He said, his voice sounding odd to his own ears. The man shook his head.
"You didn't." He agreed. 'You took me too.' David thought as he turned back to the table. 'You wanted this but you had to take me too. I'm an accidental hostage.' He thought for a moment longer. 'Why didn't you shoot me?' He wondered. 'Why haven't you shot me?' The man spoke again, the guilt gone from his voice and replaced with overdone harshness, as if he were compensating. He gestured to the table.
"What will they do with this?" He asked. David cocked his head, musing on the best way to answer.
"Well they'll process it." He said finally. "Look for things linking you to the crime; trace, fingerprints, DNA, the fact you stole it all from a moving vehicle." He hadn't really meant to let the last part slip out, but apparently he wasn't able to shut up even under pressure. Fortunately his captor, who he was already beginning to suspect wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, didn't seem to have noticed.
"Destroy it." The man said.
"What?" David asked, confused.
"Destroy the things that can link us to the crime." The man repeated, the menacing tone returning.
"Couldn't you just burn it?" David asked, cursing his inability to keep quiet.
"Yes." The man's tone was different; he spoke softly as if afraid to be overheard. "But if I tell them to burn it," he said, leaning close to David "what do we need you for?" He undid one of David's handcuffs and chained him to the leg of the table. "Destroy it." He repeated, and left.
"Go." It was lucky that he happened to be chained underneath the window that morning. It was the seventh day, a day and a half since he had spent the afternoon pouring random substances onto the evidence and trying to gauge the reactions of his captors, hoping they believed he was doing the job properly. To be honest, by the end of it he wasn't sure what he had done, other than make a lot of pseudoscientific comments loud enough for them to hear. All other thoughts from then until now had been erased by the constant question of what would happen next, if his apparent protector had found a good reason for them not to kill him today. It took him a second to realise that the noise he had just heard was external to his own head, a soft sound permeating through the window and the wall. A comforting, familiar noise.
"Go." He heard it again; slightly louder, like a harsh stage whisper. The next sounds he heard were deafening; a crash and a thud, sharp cracks like lightning snapping in the air. He sunk downwards and covered his head with his arms as best he could, squeezing his eyes shut and huddling next to the metal frame he was chained to. The world seemed suddenly deafeningly alive with sound compared to the silence he had become used to. He wanted it to stop, to recede like the last time he had heard noises this loud, but it seemed to be getting ever closer. He could make out voices under the sounds now, some familiar and some unknown. He wanted to call out to them but his throat seemed to have closed up, choking his voice. A second or two passed and then the door to the room burst inwards, a chunk of wood tearing away and remaining attached to the wall. David lifted his head a fraction and saw a mass of black fabric, resolving itself into a forest of legs heading in his direction. Instinctively he ducked his head down again and remained rigid even as gentle hands began to probe at him.
"Dave." The voice was soft and breaking, more familiar than his own name. He lifted his head again and was caught full in the face by the glare of a flashlight. He flinched and looked away.
"Keys!" The call came from someone in the distance. A second later hands were working near his bound wrist and he heard the click of the handcuff releasing. He was hauled away from the metal shelving and he uncurled involuntarily, his back scraping along the concrete floor. Gloved hands began the feel the edges of his face and he begun to struggle, disorientated.
"Please, please let them help you." The voice came from near his head, the tone almost pleading with him. Gentle hands gripped his shoulders and he relaxed slightly, his brain just beginning to process that this was real. He could catch glimpses of the people around him if he rolled his eyes upwards, but it hurt to do so. One of the hands that had been on his shoulder had moved to his head, stroking his hair comfortingly, the achingly familiar voice muttering a soothing mantra of nonsense in his ear. He relaxed a little further and gave in to the temptation to close his eyes. It was dark again.