Chapter 23

There

Then

"Blind?" Jack asked. He waved his hand in front of Spencer's face. Spencer saw a dark blur in front of the light blur. "Fuck."

"Not that blind. It's not black but everything is so blurry it might as well be." Spencer said. He stood up to try to move...somewhere, but he had to hold his hands out in front of him. "I can see light and shadow and color, or I could if there was any in here." His foot caught on something and he nearly went down.

Thankfully Jack caught him. "Okay, just hold on here. What did they do?"

"I don't know. Alice yelled at me to close my eyes so I didn't see anything. It felt like claws raking my face." Spencer leaned on Jack heavily as they started moving, he assumed toward his bed.

"So you have no idea what they did? I'm telling you, she's working with them somehow."

"They used a velvet wand on his face." Said that soft, female voice behind him. Spencer felt her presence on his other side, her arms also going around to help. "Let's take him into the bathroom."

"And closing his eyes was supposed to help with that?' Jack asked.

"Hopefully closing his eyes kept the arc from actually burning his eyeballs."

"And that was the best you could do?"

"Yes."

"I still don't believe that." A soft cry from one of the others called Jack away.

Spencer felt them settle him on the closed toilet seat. It was brighter in the bathroom, the bare bulb easy to locate. "It's not you." Spencer said when he sensed that they were along. "Transference."

"What?" Alice asked. "Tip your head up." She gently touched under his chin.

"Transference. He's angry at them, but he can't be angry at them or they'll take it out on Mikey. He can't be angry at the other men because they're wounded. You're relatively healthy and can't hurt the others. That makes you a safe target for his anger so he's transferring it to you." He felt her delicate fingers on his eyelids, pulling them open, and then darkness blotted out the light. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for obvious burns. I don't see any."

But when she got close enough the iris of her eye came into sharp focus. "Do that again but turn into the light." Yes, when she got within about two inches of his eyeball he could focus clearly. "Myopia."

"What?"

"I've always been nearsighted, I have a clear depth of field from four to six inches away, no more. I think this shortened that somehow, and made it much worse. On the plus side it's treatable."

"With what we have here?"

What they had there wasn't much. "No. But it shouldn't get worse."

"Oh. What's the downhill side?"

"I could still have burns too small to see, or I could develop cataracts."

"We'll hope not." She stepped back, leaving nothing but soft clouds of light around him. Without thinking he reached out and grabbed her hand. "You're going to need help getting around, want me to move your bedroll over with the others?"

"No. Um, would you be willing to move it next to yours?"

"Next to mine?"

"Yes, Jack has his hands full with the others and, um...I've always found women more comforting."

He swore for a moment he could feel her smile. "All right then. Wait here."

It didn't take long. A few minutes later she was leading him out of the bathroom. "I need to feel the way." He said. "So I know where I'm going and how to get back."

"All right." For the next few minutes she showed him out to ease his way around the space by hugging the walls. Once he had a good feel for it he dropped onto his bed roll. "Dinner?"

"Please." This was going to suck for a very long time.

The truth was, he was terrified. "I've never done this before." He admitted later.

He'd been overtaken with a bout of shivering right around bedtime, which was likely some form of shock. To help him stay warm Alice had pulled the bedrolls together, tossed the combined blankets over both and nestled quite close to warm him. "Never done what before?" She asked.

Now that he said it he wasn't sure he could tell her. "Tried to profile blind." He said. "One of my specialties is reading people's body language and facial expressions. Now I can't even see their faces."

"Does it really matter here?"

"A good profile is the best weapon we have. That's what my mentor used to say. But maybe it doesn't matter now." Maybe all that mattered was the team getting to him, and quickly. "I've never done that either." It slipped out before he could think.

"Done what?"

"That...with a woman. Or with anyone."

"Oh. Oh Spencer." He could feel her turning to look at him. She was quiet a long moment. "You know, neither have I really."

"Really?" That was hard to believe.

"Not directly, no. But I've watched a lot of people and...what they're doing here isn't anything like that. Love makes a huge difference."

"Does it?"

"Yes, it's enormous. Add in that you'll be looking for a woman and these are all men...no matter what happens here you'll still have that to look forward to."

"You sound like you believe that."

"I do."

They were quiet a long moment more before he admitted... "I do kind of wish I had my teddy bear..." Because tomorrow was quite likely to be horrible and it might help him sleep just one more night.

"Teddy bear?"

"Um...I..."

But before he could say anything she was tucking into his arms, pulling him into a hug. "Best I can do here."

Oh, that felt lovely. "The teddy bear thing doesn't...doesn't bother you?" He was a grown man, an FBI agent, but sometimes the nights were so lonely...

"I have a large stuffed hedgehog waiting for me on my pillow. Good night, Spencer."

The next day things got...interesting.

"We have run into a bit of a problem." Voice #1 said.

Spencer had been dragged from the holding cell back through the maze of hallways. Once in this space his hands were cuffed in front of him and attached to something that pulled them up over his head. At least he had his feet on the floor. In front of him was a neutral grey space, leaving him effectively blind.

"What's that?" Voice #2 asked.

"Half the fun is watching these little fuckers freak out when they see what's coming to them. But agent doctor here can't see anymore. I thought about bringing Queenie in to describe things for him but some of the guys said having her on the floor would kill the mood."

"Not being able to get it up in front of a woman is called being gay." Jack said from somewhere in the room. A moment later Spencer heard him groan as he heard the sound of a fist sinking in to a stomach.

"Just for being a smart ass you get to go first." Voice #1 said. "Anyway I realized technology could solve the problem for us." Spencer felt the heat of someone stepping in quite close, someone fiddling with the chains that held his arms overhead, someone attaching something to his finger, and then someone pressed something familiar into and around his ear. "You've worked with an earwig before, haven't you agent doctor?"

"Yes,sir." Spencer replied. He clicked the switch in his hand to activate the microphone that curved around his jaw. "Alice?"

"Yes...I..." There were a few odd sounds as Alice settled the equipment into place. They hooked the transmitting box to the chain, he thought, so it was out of their way. "Spencer? Can you hear me?"

"I can." He replied. He couldn't sense them close to him so he dared to keep talking, even as he kept his voice down. "Where are you?"

"In this little room in the center of things. I can see each of the torture rooms through the windows in the walls. I think there are mirrors on the other side of the windows."

Set up like an interrogation room, Spencer thought. "Where are they in relation to me?"

"On the other side of the room. They're putting Jack in the stocks."

"Okay, I want you to tell me everything that's going on..."