Frank leaned back into his office chair bringing one foot up and resting it across the knee of his other leg. Putting his arms behind his head he eased into a stretch before settling back into the seat and staring off into the distance. He was bored. Thoroughly and mind numbingly so. Following the weeks of rest his father had insisted on, Frank had been allowed to work his way back into Hardy and Sons on a very slow and easy basis. Starting from the barest hint of paperwork and finally progressing back into the field. Into the field in the most basic sense of the term however. The bread and butter jobs of the agency. Mostly stake outs.
As much as his little brother drove him to distraction on such assignments, Frank had to concede that his unrelenting banter was one of the things which had made them bearable. Sitting alone in a car watching closed doorways for activity were some of the longest hours of his life. Joe was only at the paperwork point of the progression trail, Fenton had stressed that he was tethered to the office until he'd advanced with his physiotherapy. At least he brought some colour to the office, albeit becoming unbearable when the long hours of computer work finally sapped him of all productivity and reduced him to being no more than a six foot annoyance. However, with his father away visiting friends with their mother and Joe at the hospital he'd found himself once again alone but this time surrounded by the piles of paperwork that were the hangover of the boys taking time out to recuperate. Never ending but essential paperwork. The kind that couldn't be ignored any longer.
He rolled his shoulders some before leaning forward to grab his coffee cup. His now empty coffee cup. It was a mark of how bored he was that the task of brewing more coffee suddenly turned into a highlight of his afternoon. Standing by the machine as it chugged to life he leant over and switched on their old but trusty radio, wincing slightly as the loud, thrashing rock music of Joe's favourite station blared out into the previous silence. Turning the volume down low, he switched the dial trying to find a station playing something a little more mellow. Finally coming to a nondescript classical station, he turned the volume up a little louder so the soothing sound of some string instrument or other filled the empty silence of the room. Filling his coffee cup he crossed the floor and settled himself back into his chair, sighing a little and flexing his fingers before resting them back onto the key board.
Half an hour passed quickly without much notice as he ploughed straight into the mountain of documents all vying for attention, until his concentration was broken from the relaxation of the nothing music by the now harsh sounding voice of the station's newscaster.
"And now to the news. A breaking report this lunch time from the Bayport hospital..."
Frank flicked from being mildly annoyed by the interruption to fixing his full attention onto the reporter's voice. A slight warning light beginning to niggle the back of his mind.
"...Word from the scene of a possible hostage situation and reports of gunfire. The parking lot is filling with the evacuated patients and staff from inside the hospital. Our man on the ground Jeff Blaine is there to give us details. Jeff?"
"Thank you Stephen," Jeff's voice came in loud but broken by the noises of sirens and what sounded like a large group of people "Much confusion right now as people are attempting to subdue what remains a largely panicked crowd. Reports of possible gunfire inside the building have triggered safety precautions throughout the hospital with anyone and everyone able to move being evacuated. I'm surrounded by staff, workers and patients and their families. No one seems to know what's happening at this early time but there is a large police presence including a first response swat team who are deployed automatically whenever there is a possibility of arms at a scene. We'll try to get hold of whoever is in charge and get official word on..."
Frank didn't catch the last of the report as he grabbed his car keys from the table near the door and threw it closed behind him cutting off the sound.
Joe instinctively crouched into an easy fighter's stance as soon as the lights had gone black. The hair on his arms stood on end at Abigail's words.
"They're here."
In the confusion of screaming and noise outside of the office, she had somehow silently crossed the room and exited the door. Joe had strode to where she had been standing vigil, after her words indicated she knew something of what was going on, and found nothing but empty air.
"What the heck Doc?" he whispered to Doctor Edwards, angling his body to where he had left the frozen man standing. The physio ward was deep within the building, far away from the kiss of natural light, so when everything had gone dark it hadn't been kidding around. Waiting for his eyes to adjust, Joe's muscles tensed when he didn't hear any response.
"Doc!"
"I...I don't know," came the doctor's shaky voice from out of the darkness.
Joe let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as the blurry form of the doctor made itself known to him. Shapes began appearing from the darkness as his pupils dilated drinking in any and all sources of light, minute as they were.
"OK, first things first," Joe began, easily switching to professional mode without much thought and keeping his tone flat and even so as to wake the doctor from his stupor, "this is a hospital. Assuming whoever this is has gotten to the main system and shut down the lighting, there must be some sort of back up generator which will kick in soon right?"
"I don't..." began Doctor Edwards, before obviously shaking himself out of it "I, yes there must be. The power has never been out since I've been here but protocol is to have generators in place for emergencies."
Almost in answer to his point, there was a hum of power and the small light in the centre of the room flicked into life. It cast a cool, white, ethereal light over the room serving only to bring out even more of the paleness of the shocked doctor's face before him. His eyes were bugging out of their sockets and he had zero colour in his cheeks.
Joe shied away from the light. Even though it was a tiny amount it still seemed bright as the sun for a hot second to pupils which had adjusted to the extreme darkness. Looking back towards Doctor Edwards, he stepped forward and grasped his shoulders before pushing him firmly to the examination bed in the corner of the office.
"Sit," he said to the man who obviously needed a minute to process what was happening before striding across the room to the office door.
The loud screams and scrambling of earlier had died down to a low rumble of mumbling as people attempted to work out what was going on, interspersed with the sounds of women crying and sniffles from the crowd. Joe cracked the door slightly and scanned the room in front of him.
The ghostly light was prevalent throughout the waiting area and he had to strain his eyes through the small gap to try to figure out what was going on. A loud voice close to the door made him jump slightly as it boomed out instructions.
"SIT DOWN!" a male yelled, with the obvious twang of a New York accent "DON'T MAKE ME USE THIS."
Joe crouched lower, pushing the door closer to disguise the already tiny crack as the owner of the loud voice crossed in front of Doctor Edwards' office. Though he was mainly one dark outline against the white light, it was obvious that he was toting some sort of large, automatic weapon. Dark shapes suddenly started appearing into view as they huddled the group of people into the middle of the room onto the standard issue hospital chairs. Hot damn those were uncomfortable chairs, and Joe had spent more time than he cared to remember sitting in them over the previous months.
He shook his head to clear his wandering thoughts realising for the first time that his pulse was hammering in his ears. He forced himself to take a calming breath and felt it lessen somewhat as he cooly began taking stock of the bad guys. There seemed to be at least five beefy shadows standing around the herd of people. From their shapes in the darkness it seemed obvious that they were all carrying weapons and wearing several layers of protection.
"So this was planned," thought Joe. Mentally adding notes to a list he had began in his mind that he could consider as he scanned the room.
Suddenly one of the men who was sitting within the group of around twenty people panicked and made as if to run past one of the guards. Without much preamble the shape viciously brought the grip of his weapon down across the man's face. He hit the deck with a boneless crunch, blood streaming down onto the floor. The action brought on another wave of confusion and panic, several people yelling and screaming as they jostled to move away from the guards, the man on the floor and each other.
"ENOUGH!" the first man boomed, bringing his weapon up and loosening several shots into the ceiling raining plaster all around them. The action served to stop the jostling as the crowd instinctively froze where they were, sniffling and coughing in the dust.
"You will stay here until I say so. If anyone tries a stunt like that joker there," he motioned with his gun at the still unmoving form of the man on the floor "they'll get a bullet in the throat, understand? Good."
Taking the silence as affirmation he turned to one of the other dark shapes. Eyes adjusting to the new lighting, Joe began being able to make out more details of the captors. They seemed to all be fairly similar in build and height. Bruisers the lot of them. All but a smaller person who suddenly popped up at the back of the group of people.
Abigail. Joe thought with a jolt. No denying it now, she was definitely involved.
"I want you to start checking out each and every room, bring anyone you find out here. Let's get these sheep contained." The first guy who was now more and more apparently in charge directed one of his grunts who nodded before motioning to two of the other guards to sweep the other side of the room to where he was standing, turning and busting into an office a few doors down from where Joe was stood sentinel.
Quietly he closed the door before turning to the doctor who was still silently sitting on the bed. At least there was colour in his cheeks, Joe noted, as well as a determined light in his eyes.
"Doc, I need a way out of here," Joe said, turning on the spot the assess the room.
"There's only the door," the doctor whispered in response, motioning with his head towards where Joe was standing. "Although..."
He glanced upwards above where his computer was silently sitting. Joe followed his eye line and saw with a jolt that there was an air vent into the office. Moving silently and purposefully he stepped from the chair to the table and assessed the grate in front of him. Thankfully it was held on by fasteners and not screwed into the wall. There might just be time.
"Doc I need you to close this behind me," he said, hurriedly opening the fasteners and pulling the grating towards him trying to be as quiet as was possible. Doctor Edwards was on his feet in an instant, holding out his hands and taking the heavy metal from the young man before him.
"Oh god, be careful Joe," he said. His tone belying the worry both for the situation and his patient before him. He'd become rather fond of the fiery youth over the past months, admiring his resolve during his recovery. Knowing that the doctor was talking about more than just being careful of getting into the vent, Joe turned and sent a wink his way before pulling himself into the dark opening before him.
"Always am Doc. Keep safe and just do what they tell you to do. No heroics."
Doctor Edwards snorted at the irony of these words as he placed the grating back onto the wall behind the already retreating form of the young man in front of him. God's speed. He thought as he replaced the last fastener over the grate and stepped back down onto the floor. There was no knowing what was going on but Joe could potentially be their ace up the sleeve. He jumped and rose to his feet as the door to the office was flung open and one of the stockier captors bust into the room.
"Out with the herd," he snarled at the doctor, motioning with his deadly looking weapon and roughly pushing him out into the waiting room before slamming the door behind him.
"OK now what?" Joe thought to himself, already sweating in the stifling heat of the dead ventilation system as he crawled as silently as possible towards the faint light in front of him.
Okey doke. Round two. Sorry for the longer pause between chapters...life is very much hectic at the moment with work and what have you (and babysitting a friend's flat). I'm expecting time to concentrate on this story over the next two weeks though so it should become more regular.
Thanks for anyone who took the time to review. As always all comments and critiques are more than welcome.