Pain burst in Mark's shoulder as he hit the ground and rolled away from the people who had thrown him. He was extremely disoriented but he knew enough about what had happened so that he awkwardly jumped to his feet and tried to rush at the men in the doorway. They merely pushed him back like flicking a fly and slammed the barred door shut.
He rushed forward and grabbed onto the door, his eyes darting wildly around the large, dimly lit warehouse-like room. In the gloom he could make out several other cells like the one he was in. In the one across from him he saw Kitchie slowly sitting up. "Kitchie!" he cried. Kitchie looked towards him and Mark saw him force a smile. The gesture made something like hope flutter in his chest.
That hope died when he realized the size of Kitchie's cell, it looked even smaller than the boxes they had been put in during Mark's first training session at the Institute. He whirled around to see the inside of his own cell and his knees buckled. He felt the walls start to close in on him and there suddenly wasn't enough air…
"Mark? Look at me Mark!"
Kitchie's voice rose above the sounds of his gasping and he turned, eager to see something that would draw him out of his nightmare.
"Don't worry Mark, they'll come find us, they'll get us out, you just need to breathe and everything will be ok, alright? I'm here and I'm not going anywhere and as long as you don't look behind you you'll be fine." He smiled. "Everything will work out Mark."
Mark swallowed and tried to stem his rising terror. "Alright," was all he could say. "Alright."
He knew he was lying, he knew that he'd cave sooner rather than later, but if it made Kitchie feel better to think that he'd be ok then he'd make him think that. If he couldn't deal with this experience he'd do all that he could to help Kitchie. Both of them had been shaken enough by the initial attack. They had gone back to the mansion at the very beginning of lunch so that Mark could grab some homework he had forgotten. They had stayed a few minutes later than originally planned to see how Kitty, who had stayed home sick, was feeling. Rogue had come home to change after getting her lunch tipped on her and Wolfsbane was also picking up some forgotten homework.
They had all simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Wolfsbane had been the first to sense the strangers and she had been halfway up the stairs to alert the others when the men burst in with their tranquillizer guns raised. Mark had seen Wolfsbane drop on the stairs, unable to help her quick enough, but he was able to slow his own capture by turning their next round against them. He didn't wait around to see how many he had dropped as he sprinted back to warn Kitchie and Kitty. He would have warned Rogue but there hadn't been enough time, he had already heard her cry out from down the hall.
Kitty had gotten the three of them downstairs and they were just about to slip into the garage when she slumped against Mark's shoulder, a tranquillizer dart sticking out from her arm. In a second Kitchie had fallen to the floor and Mark wasn't going to let the men take them without him, so he let them put two darts in his right calf.
He didn't know if anyone else had been taken, and that was another thing that was going to drive him crazy besides the fact that he hadn't been able to save three of his friends. Did the people who had taken them take some of the others from school or on their way to school or on their way back to the mansion during lunch? He knew that these thoughts would plague him almost as much as his claustrophobia would.
He swallowed and gripped the bars on his door tighter, wishing that he knew what had happened to the others and wishing that he had fought more for his and his friend's freedom.