Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
Warnings: Implied/vague sexual content. Also, do not take anything portrayed here as accurate. I do my best to get close to accuracy, but I'm not a professional in most areas, so it won't be perfect. I've also never been to China, so I don't know what, exactly, Chengdu is like.
Other than that, enjoy this extra long chapter!
The sun was setting when their plane finally took off. In the hours before hand, all Dean could think of was Liu's business. All he could hope was that they'd still get there in time before Liu sold him for…
Dean couldn't finish those thoughts.
He ran his hands over his face and barely registered the turbulence when it would normally leave him clutching the armrests of his seat.
"Hey, Dad?"
"What?"
"If what 14710 said is true, then Sam probably won't be very comfortable on a plane. It'd kill his back," Dean said.
If two hours was unpleasant for Dean, he couldn't imagine what the ride all the way back to America would feel like for an injured Sam.
"We'll make sure he's comfortable," John said. "Find a flight without too many stops. Give him some sleeping pills if we need to. Pain killers, too."
"What if he's not in any shape to travel?" Dean asked.
"We could stay in China, but I don't think he'd want to after all of this. It would probably be best to get him to Pastor Jim's as soon as we can. Someplace familiar and comforting for him to heal up at. But if he wants to stay and wait until he's more healed, then we'll stay."
Dean nodded.
"Does Jim know we're gonna be heading there?" Dean asked.
"Yeah," John said. "I called and filled him in once I realized that this was going to be worse than I first thought. He'll have everything set up for us to stay as long as we need. Said that he'll keep Sammy in his prayers, of course."
Dean let the silence stretch between them, wondering how much a prayer was worth if Sam was still stuck in this mess. Did God even care about the kid?
Caleb fell asleep, and Dean couldn't even guess how a ferry ride made him throw up, but a plane that shook in the air above the clouds could lull him to sleep.
Dean knew the routine by now. Once they reached cruising altitude, the flight attendants walked up and down the aisle to give out drinks and a little snack (nothing big on such a short flight).
The flight attendant for their section stopped for a second and attempted flirting with Dean, but he couldn't bring himself to even try returning the gesture. He might become a monk at this rate, turning down all the pretty girls, but nothing felt right when he knew Sam was in danger. When he knew Sam was hidden away in some sleazy nightclub that sold people for a few hours at a time.
And one of those paper bags to help prevent hyperventilation would be fantastic right about now.
Whatever they gave him started to wear off, and Sam's vision slowly cleared. He still felt too tightly strung to fall asleep, no matter how his tired body protested, and he wasn't sure if that was due entirely to the drugs or to his overuse of his power.
Task masters entered as a pair, one with a fire extinguisher, the other with incense and an unlabeled prescription bottle filled with green tablets that had a 'V' shape cut out of the middle.
The fire extinguisher was set down and Sam's hands were untied from when they tried to tame him while the other drug sent his power haywire. Sam figured they couldn't know that they wouldn't be needing the fire extinguisher. He was so drained from using his power, he didn't know how long it would be before he could tap into it again. But maybe they had an idea from how pathetic he must look if they were willing to untie his hands.
The other task master set the prescription bottle on the little nightstand in his room along with the incense. He started burning the incense, and it didn't take long for its scent to fill Sam's room. Earthy and pungent. Something that would leave him with a pounding headache in a matter of minutes.
Finished with their tasks, they left the room while Liu walked in. His hand had a tight hold on the bicep of a young girl, dressed in less than Sam and around his age. The biggest thing about Liu was his ego, and he wasn't an extraordinary man in any sense that Sam saw, but the tips of his fingers touched his thumb when wrapped around the girl's arm. Force-feeding, he figured, could only do so much for so long, and it left him wondering how long she'd been held in the club. How long she'd been suffering.
She was too thin. Her hair clean, but messy. The lines marring her face made her look double the age she must have been.
He caught sight of the tattoo on the inside of her forearm when Liu stepped closer, pulling her along.
55943.
She must have been from an area that hosted a lot of auctions to have a number that high.
Liu sat on the edge of his bed, the weight pulling Sam those few centimeters closer. 55943 sat beside Liu, still in his grasp and staring intently at the floor.
"I'm regretting my decision to stop Davies from gutting you to sell your organs and leave you in a ditch somewhere," he said. "But I also refuse to believe that you're unreasonable, given the stories I've heard. You took punishment for a little girl so that she could eat. You pulled a boy from a collapsing machine, and ruined a lot to do it. I know. I know it all."
Sam felt the constricting collar around his neck more prominently than ever before, stopping words before he could think of forming them with a promise of pain. When he wanted to summon his fire the most, it was out of reach. He used all he could for the time being. He needed to recharge, but how was it that Liu was always absent when he could set fire at will?
It was Liu's flesh that he wanted to smell burning. It was Liu's screams that he wanted to hear.
"So I have a bit of a proposition for you," Liu said. "Since you like playing hero so much."
And wasn't that what got him into this mess in the first place?
"Obey and cooperate, let my clients have their good times."
Sam fixed his best glare on Liu, unable to do much else.
"Don't hurt them. Hell, you don't have to do much other than lay," Liu said. "But you listen to me and my task masters, and every night you obey is a night that this sweet girl here will be given a break. Not a single client will enter her room. She can rest to her heart's content. Off limits, for all purposes."
Liu must have seen a shift in his expression because a serpentine grin spread across his face. "An offer you can't refuse, isn't it?"
Sam looked at 55943, who removed her gaze from the floor to watch him with an inkling of hope in her near-dead eyes. Grey eyes, like someone pricked them with a needle and drained their color.
Liu was right, and they both knew it. He would take that offer.
He would offer himself up to spare an already miserable girl more horrible memories.
Sam nodded. 55943's eyes brightened, and while Sam knew he was doing the right thing, he wasn't sure he was doing the best thing.
Liu grinned and gave him a few quick pats on his cheek with an icy hand. "I knew you could be reasonable. Davies just doesn't understand," he said. "He doesn't know the complexities. He can't see them."
Liu grabbed the bottle from the nightstand and popped it open, pouring out two tablets onto the palm of his hand. He held them out to Sam.
Sam let them drop into his own palm and stared for a second. They didn't have the overwhelming and sickly-sweet stench of chocolate rolling off of them like the last tablet that was forced down his throat. They look innocuous enough, but Sam knew that the truth was different.
Liu pressed a glass of water into Sam's free hand, not bothering to offer an explanation of what the tablets were for. Rather, he was wordlessly giving the order for him to swallow them.
Sam glanced at 55943 again, even if just to remind himself why he was doing this while his subconscious cried out that it was a bad idea. That he shouldn't be swallowing mystery drugs given to him by a stranger who wanted to use him.
But Sam let them pass through his lips and chased them down with water. Either they didn't have a taste, or he downed them fast enough that it didn't register.
Either way, Liu nodded at him, then took 55943 and left.
All Sam could do was wait for the effects to start kicking in and let them usher him into the next chapter of his waking nightmare.
When the plane touched down, Dean wanted to crack open the emergency exit and get moving. Instead, he was stuck while they waited for their gate at the airport to be free because another plane was still there. Still being boarded.
"Shouldn't they have planned it better?" Dean asked.
John grunted an answer.
Caleb shrugged. "Guess it just shows that hunting isn't the only profession full of bad planners."
"Hey, some hunters are great planners," Dean said.
"Name one."
"Sammy." The name slipped out before Dean could stop it, and the almost smiles on his and Caleb's faces fell.
In truth, he didn't understand why they tried joking when Sam was somewhere suffering in ways that they couldn't imagine, despite the glimpses they got from the traffickers, buyers, and even other slaves. Dean, especially, felt undeserving of their attempts to cheer him up. It was his fault that Sam wasn't there with them, and he would never forgive himself for it.
The only solace was that they were so close to Sam now, and Dean could finally begin to right his mistakes, though he knew they could never be fully righted.
Caleb tried to salvage the moment, and Dean appreciated it, but he didn't need to hear Caleb say, "Yeah, kid's always seen thirty steps ahead of anyone else."
Dean knew that. He knew that Sam might not be the biggest lover of hunting, but he was damn good at it.
They waited another thirty minutes in silence before they even had the chance to shove their way through the passengers grabbing their luggage from overhead and getting into the airport.
The only luggage Dean had was a stash of candy bars (probably half-melted by now) in his pockets from their stop at a Gas 'n Sip so long ago. The candy bars he took with the intention to give them to Sam when they found him.
Dean wasn't sure there was anything else he needed for luggage.
Step one, getting off the plane, was completed, but as they walked through the airport, Dean realized that this wasn't going to be as easy as he originally thought.
"How the hell are we supposed to find this place?" he asked.
The sun set at the start of their flight and wrapped the world in nighttime. Which meant that the library and their access to the internet and the ability to search for directions was greatly inhibited with the library being more than likely closed.
"It's not like we can just ask around about it and not look like perverts, right?" Dean asked. "Is it even under the same name as his locations in Hong Kong?"
"We could ask around about the nightlife of the city," Caleb suggested. "I'm pretty sure there's a fair amount of tourism here, so it wouldn't be uncommon for a bunch of clueless bastards to be asking for help finding their way around."
John gave a small, humorless laugh at that. "I might be a bit old to be asking about the club scene."
"The club we're looking for isn't exactly normal. Hell, there are probably plenty of creeps your age willing to pay for a few hours of…" Dean couldn't finish his own sentence. He hadn't meant to say that much, but once he started speaking, he couldn't seem to stop soon enough.
Caleb flagged down an airport employee just stepping away from the ground transportation information desk.
"What are the popular clubs of Chengdu?" Caleb asked. "Preferably those on the more exotic side."
The poor woman looked like she was afraid Caleb would drag her somewhere and beat her judging by the expression on her face, no matter how charming of a smile Caleb tried to plaster on. But she rattled off a quick list of popular nightclubs in Chengdu for the not-so-normal crowds before darting away with a mumbled excuse.
"She probably thinks you're a pervert, Caleb," Dean said. "Scared her away."
Caleb ignored Dean's comment and said, "She did mention one that matches Liu's club names, but I couldn't exactly ask her where it's at since she took off."
"It's a start," John said. "Go out and ask the locals for directions. Someone has to know how to get there from here. It should be open and full of business right now."
For Sam's sake, Dean hoped it wasn't.
The drugs kicked in quickly, and left Sam facing a new warped reality. Only this time, he struggled to keep his eyes open. He felt like he was submerged in water and every movement was weighted by the added density of the atmosphere.
Density is represent by the Greek letter 'rho', he remembered. He wasn't sure why that thought slipped into his head, but it left as abruptly as it arrived.
The scent of earthy incense still enveloped him, but he didn't have the headache he was sure it'd bring. He didn't feel much at all, when he thought about it. Just drained and disconnected. Sluggish, maybe.
There was music coming from above him. It sounded distorted again, like it had the last time mystery drugs were shoved down his throat. It was so far away, but he knew that it couldn't be. It was right above him. People danced right over his head without a clue of what laid beneath them.
Couldn't they feel the suffering contained within the hidden rooms? Couldn't they feel the fear or hear the cries?
If they did, they probably chalked it up to alcohol playing with their senses.
His eyes couldn't focus on one thing for too long, asking him to keep them open was already pushing his capabilities, but he found himself glancing at the door more than anything else.
He found himself hoping for Dean to bust in at any moment and take him away. Take him home.
But he never did.
His awareness came and went. The rest of the time he wasn't sure if he was even awake. It was like chunks of his memory were just ripped away and he was left wondering.
The constant presence of pounding music left him believing that the missing time from his memory wasn't a significant gap. It was a series of tiny gaps instead.
He felt warm breath against his cheek, laced with the scent of alcohol. He thought maybe someone was talking, but he couldn't tell for sure.
A few times he remembered uncoordinated struggles with his body barely able to respond to his brain's commands and being weighed down. He felt skin against his skin. Felt the touch infecting him like a disease.
At some point, the music was gone and he was alone in his room with a strange taste laced with hints of alcohol in his mouth. Worse than the morning taste that came after dinner being Dean's special we're-moving-and-have-to-get-rid-of-the-remaining-food meal that Sam could sometimes barely keep in his stomach. He drank the glass of water left on his nightstand, but it didn't feel like enough. He could drink a gallon, and it wouldn't have felt like enough.
A thick fog remained in his head and he was sore, but he made it into the attached bathroom and got the water running. The shower shelves were filled with bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash of all different scents.
Liu at least wanted them kept clean. Or at least give them the means to feel as clean as they could in such a dirty place. That probably worked to his advantage, Sam thought, having his 'workers' wanting to keep themselves clean and simply giving them the means. Less work for him, and probably a higher price to sell them at.
In the spray of steaming water, he barely felt the heat or the sting from his cuts (which he wondered if they'd reopened during any of his struggles, remembered or not). As an afterthought, he was glad that the collar on his neck seemed waterproof. The idea of dying didn't bother him as much as it should, but he didn't exactly want to go out via electrocution either. He wondered if he held out in the bathroom long enough, they would leave him alone or write him off as a lost cause.
He could guess at the answer, but also at the fact that Liu would be more likely to use that broken girl against him again. Threaten to hurt her in some way to get him back under his control, and he had to remind himself that he was doing this for her. He was letting them stuff him full of drugs and let strangers into his room.
He was glad that his memories were fuzzy at best and hoped that if he ignored them, they'd never surface and make him face them.
A few times, he swayed in the shower, but he never fell. A task master might have been there, keeping him upright and preventing him from letting water touch the cuts on his back, which were missing the bandages that were once wrapped around them, but Sam couldn't tell with certainty if he was alone or not.
So he scrubbed his skin with fumbling hands until it was bright red, and he still didn't feel any cleaner for his efforts. There was an invisible layer on his skin that he just couldn't wash off.
No matter what he did, he lost and Liu won.
Dean felt like he pulled aside ten people by now for directions to Liu's club, but it seemed like each new set of directions left him more lost. Maybe John and Caleb were having better luck, but he couldn't get any matching instructions.
One said it's blocks to the east, another said it's in the north side of the city. And Dean had no idea if any of them were right.
They had a matter of hours until the sun came up and the club, presumably, closed. Dean thought that making a stop to get some guns from somewhere wouldn't be a bad idea. They'd been able to smuggle small knives onto the plane (security hadn't been gold standard), but guns would have been impossible to get on board.
He flagged down his dad.
"Any luck?" he asked.
John shook his head. "Seems like no one can agree on where this place is, if they even know in the first place."
"Yeah," Dean said. "That's what I've gotten, too. It's like…"
Dean trailed off, but then blurted out, "It's like there's more than one of them in this city."
"That's a possibility. Then the hard part becomes finding out which one Sam is at."
"I've gotten a split between it being to the east, and it being at the north side of the city. What about you?"
"The same. The eastern one is closer, but that doesn't change the likelihood of Sam being there. It's a fifty-fifty shot," he said.
Dean and John regrouped with Caleb, who was beyond frustrated with the mix of directions he'd gotten.
They started with the eastern club, simply because it was closest. With no cash money for a cab or bus ride and no idea where the nearest car rental was (or if John could pull off the 'I can totally drive here' routine again), they had to walk. Dean wished he could hot wire a car, but there were too many people around that could see him.
Once they got closer, it seemed like every building was a buzzing part of the nightlife. By Dean's opinion, it took too long to walk to the area in the first place, and now they had to play Where's Sammy with the bare minimum of clues to help them.
And they had to do it before the club closed for the day.
None of them knew an inkling of Chinese, so they had to rely on strangers again and hope that they managed to find someone who could understand and help them.
Dean was pretty sure they found the right place, but he didn't know what to do beyond that. It looked like any other club, if a bit more out of the ordinary in the decoration department.
He glanced over and saw John and Caleb looking as lost as he felt.
"Where would he be?" Dean asked.
"Well, not in the open," John said. "There has to be some place hidden. Like a speakeasy. Say the password, be allowed in."
"Not like we have any better plan," Caleb said.
Through the use of his patented charm, Dean managed to find the security guard standing near the back entrance. The security guard who stood between average club-goers, and those who wanted a little something extra.
He didn't have money, but he had a silver tongue and his fists. So Dean negotiated a price with the man for a few hours behind the scenes of the club by saying that he was Davies' cousin and the guard must know how he and Liu are buddy-buddy, so it would be best if he cut the crap because Dean knew that he was guarding a little more than the club's back door. He felt like a run-of-the-mill ball of sleaze pervert getting in, but he reminded himself it was for Sam. That the way he felt couldn't be anywhere near the way Sam felt.
The guard tried to get the money from Dean, but a quick couple of punches left him unconscious on the ground while Dean slipped around him and found the door hidden in the wall.
The hallway it led down to left him with a chill. It was like a never-ending prank hallway from a fake haunted house attraction or a low budget horror film.
The only problem was that it was real. The lighting wasn't meant to trick his eyes. The sounds from behind the doors weren't faked. He knew, then, that he needed to get the slaves out of that place. He needed to find Sam, first, though. No matter how much his self-sacrificing brother would have insisted upon waiting until the other kids were taken care of before him, Dean refused to make that trade. Never again would he put the lives of strange kids before that of his own brother.
He realized quickly that the numbers on the doors weren't in any particular order (after barging into a few and startling away customers that he wished he had a gun to kill who left him with new images for his nightmares and shook the promise of his refusal to take a minute and help them before heading to Sam) and seemed random at first. Then, it clicked. Each number was composed of five numbers.
14710, tattooed on the arm of the man who pulled Sam out of a burning building. Five numbers long.
These were slave numbers.
That would have disturbed him a lot more, if it didn't also give him a better idea of what he was looking for. He didn't need to kick down every door, just look for the one labeled '18166'. Sam's number.
He stalked the hall, twisting his neck so quickly to look between doors he nearly gave himself whiplash once or twice.
Then, he turned around and repeated the process. He looked at every single door. He looked at all of them twice, but one thing was becoming more clear than he would have liked.
Sam's number wasn't there.
"Shit, shit, shit," Dean mumbled under his breath.
The guard would probably wake up soon enough. Dean knew that he needed to get out of the hidden hallway before that happened and the guard could call in back-up, but he also knew that there were over a dozen slaves living in Hell behind those doors.
He made his decision and left the hallway to find his dad.
"I found the place, but Sam's not here," Dean said.
John cursed and started to turn away, but Dean grabbed his arm. "Dad," he said. "We have to do something. Some of those slaves are just kids. We have to get them out of here."
"We have to find Sam, Dean. I know you want to help them. I want to help them, but it's going to take too much time and it's not exactly like we could sneak them out unseen. This place is packed."
"Call the emergency line," Dean said. "I don't think it's '911' here, but they have to have something. We can get the police here and let them take care of it."
Just like we should have let them take care of the missing kids in Massachusetts a lifetime ago.
"I mean," Dean added. "We know where Sam is now. He has to be at the other club. We can get the police here, show them the hallway, then head over there. If it's closed, we'll pick the lock or something."
John sighed, looking world-weary and an extra year older for each day Sam had been gone.
It was a tough decision on both of them to delay getting to Sam, but Dean knew that he wouldn't be able to forgive himself if he left them after seeing them… like that. He hadn't needed to mention the specifics to his dad, assumed his dad already knew.
It ended up being a decision Dean regretted, and then hated himself for regretting.
They got one of the clubbers to call emergency services with the excuse that Caleb got mugged in the alley nearby. It was a thin lie, but the woman was too drunk to question it and helped out. Dean was just glad that she knew English, and made a mental note that learning another language might not be the worst idea (a language other than Latin).
Unfortunately, after getting the kids out, there were too many questions for Dean and John. So many, that they were dragged to the police station. Not quite at criminal status, but not cleared of suspicion either.
John had found the time to tell Caleb to round up some guns because they'd be going after Sam the second they got out of the station.
Dean wanted to pound his head against the little metal table in front of him. The officer asked the same series of questions over and over in broken English.
Dean expected it, or he should have, but his judgment had been clouded by the need to both save the slaves at that club and then rush to bust Sam out. He didn't stop and think about the consequences of calling the police and sticking around to show them the hidden hallway in the club.
He imagined that John got out after just a few questions and wished that he could've told him to go on and get Sam without him. But a selfish part of him didn't want John and Caleb to be the only ones there. Dean wanted to be the one to get Sam out of his slavery. Dean needed to be the one who got him out.
It was only fair since he got Sam into it.
They kept him at the station for hours, even long after the sun rose, and all Dean could do was sit and watch the analog clock on the wall tick off every second so slowly, reminding him that he was letting time waste away when Sam needed him a month ago.
Dean could tell from the way they looked at him that they wanted him to be their criminal. They wanted to toss him into jail, because being in the right place at the right time to save some kids was too suspicious.
They could think whatever they wanted about him, as long as they let him go before the sunset again. As long as he could get to Sam before the club reopened and he could become a victim before Dean got there.
Sam felt like he was living in a dream that kept changing every time he got used to it. Every time he thought he learned its nonsensical rules, they changed and he couldn't keep up.
It would only be a matter of time before the music came back and he was trapped in darkness again. Sometimes chilled. Sometimes too warm.
There were a lot of bits of memories trying to force themselves to the forefront of his mind, but he couldn't make any sense of them.
More drugs were forced into his mouth. He didn't even remember seeing a person in his room to do it, but the feel of them on his tongue and the way the missing section in the middle felt more prominent than the rest of the tablets.
He wasn't sure what they were, but it seemed like too much. Maybe they were going to get what use they could out of him while they overdosed him slowly.
His room was dark and the music was back before he realized that time passed. His arms were high over his head, and each pull to move them down was met by resistance and a metallic rattling sound.
He wasn't sure when he last ate, but vaguely remembers someone pouring water into his mouth one sip at a time. It didn't matter, though. He wasn't all that hungry lately anyway.
He wasn't sure what made him look towards the door, but he knew that someone was in the room with him already, he felt their hands on him and the weight keeping him down no matter how much he feebly struggled with uncooperative limbs, so it shouldn't have opened.
But it did. The door swung open.
Dean was released from the police station way too late for his tastes, but he didn't dare to ask them for a ride to the other branch of the exact same club he busted in the middle of the night. Somehow, he didn't see that going over well. He didn't want them to even think about the fact that the club had another location in the same city. The last thing he needed was for them to be involved again and try to keep him separated from Sam.
He met up with John and Caleb, both looking more than ready to finally be done with the events of the past month. Everything led to that night, since they would not be making it before sunset to the other club, courtesy of the justice system.
Caleb handed him a pistol, and it was more than he could ask for. With a gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans, he felt ready to put a bullet between the eyes of anyone who would dare to keep him from Sam that night. He didn't care how Caleb got a hold of it.
They headed out, finding the club a little easier, but still arriving after nightfall because of the long walk (buses weren't happy to take credit cards, real or fake) and their difficulties navigating in a foreign country.
It was abuzz with the same atmosphere of light-hearted, ignorant party-goers as the last one had been.
Dean knew exactly where to go this time, and John and Caleb stood around the door on the other side after Dean couldn't promise that there would not be gunshots that might draw attention from the people orchestrating it all.
He had the gun from Caleb in his hands now, its weight giving him the feeling of security that a favorite blanket gave a child.
He passed an open door, the inside of the room behind it painted black with the obvious markings of a fire. He didn't know what happened there, and didn't care at the moment, because there was no number on the door. All he needed was to see Sam's number.
"18166," he mumbled to himself under his breath. "18166."
He finally found the door he wanted near the end of the hallway on the left.
18166.
He took a deep breath to steady his hands and pushed the door open.
Author's Note: And it's the reunion you've all been wai-Oh, wait. No, it's not. That's a cliffhanger. Stay tuned for next chapter to find out what Dean sees behind Door Number 18166!
In the meantime, thank you so much to everyone who reads, reviews, follows, and favorites. The support for this story has been amazing and really helped me crank through some tough chapters. Take a second to leave a review and let me know how I'm doing in these last few chapters!
Side note: Sam's memories of sensitive topics are going to be fairly vague for now, but might resurface clearer in the sequel. Again, I will do my best with the warnings at the beginning of each chapter.