Hidden In Plain Sight Ch. 5 "The Box"
A/N: Thank you or the reviews! I am answering you with a new chapter, because this story really has me in its grip! And this chapter gave me fits, because it is so "What?"
I am basing this kitten off a real one I knew many years ago, who I dearly loved, but who is over the rainbow bridge now. Her name was Bug. She got an infection while still a kitten, and the vet could not cure her, so I never got to see her grow up. I promise you, this fictional kitten gets to grow up and be happy.
The whole situation for Danny is basically insane, but there it is.
Disclaimer: CBS owns Hawaii Five-0.
Chapter 5 "The Box"
"OhmyGod, ohmyGod." Danny whispered it over and over, while his brain struggled to return to coherency. It was the panic of claustrophobia, being stuck in a metal box with no door or window. But it was so much more. It was the mind's complete rejection of a reality that simply could not be. "I've been drugged. That has to be it. This is not real. If I sleep it off, I will wake up and it will be gone."
But he had already done that. He remembered from before. He'd felt so sleepy, and when he woke up, feeling what had been more or less human, even if the kitten was still there and nothing made sense, he had turned around and known things were so wrong, it was incomprehensible. His reaction had been entirely justified. His situation was insane.
Maybe he had lost it. Maybe he was insane. How or why did not really matter. This could not be real. There was no way this could be real.
He remembered being home, with Steve, because they had casework to finish discussing, plus the upcoming Christmas holiday. The Big Party, where to hide the presents. Kono already had hidden the electronic BB8 droid for Grace and Charlie. It was at her and Adam's house, because the kids didn't go there often. Rachel, his ex-wife, had called and wanted to stop by, to make sure the gifts she had bought that afternoon were okay, and she had been nice, having tea with Danny and Steve. She had almost forgotten to leave for the airport in time to get Stan, because they had been discussing her pregnancy. Which Danny was not nearly as thrilled about as he acted like he was.
But that was another matter. So when she took her teacup out to the kitchen and then hustled them out to the car to see the bear she had gotten Charlie, Danny had been quiet, but effusive over the bear, which was twice as big a Charlie. He would love it.
Rachel left, and Steve had noticed Danny's "fake happy" mood, and had started to ask him about it. He had started to stall, as they sat down and finished their tea, which had gotten cold and a little bitter. Danny had gotten bottles of water from the fridge, and they drank from those, and it was as if a switch had been flipped. He remembered drinking water, and then he woke up in the box, with a kitten.
What about Steve? Where was Steve? His head snapped up, and all he could think of was Steve. He pounded on the wall, which scared the kitten, but he had frankly forgotten about the kitten. Danny was panicking again, full blown. He pounded, and yelled. "STEVE! STEVE!" He did not turn around because he knew what was across the room, so he kept his face to the wall and kept yelling and pounding.
No response but echoes. He slid down the wall finally, spent, a little dizzy. Maybe he had lost his mind. Maybe he was sick, delirious, and this was what his fevered brain had cooked up? He hoped so. Because this could not be real. He just hoped it was delirium, and that Steve wasn't locked in a similar rusty metal box, with a different kitten, and the word COFFIN painted in black on the wall across from him, way too close, way too big in such a small space.
He began another repetition of "OhmyGod, ohmyGod," adding "Please can I wake up and be home again?"
Wait. He wasn't holding the kitten. Where had it gone? Danny opened his eyes, frantically, because if the kitten could disappear, maybe he could follow it. Had it found a door? Was there a door?
There was no door. The kitten was patting something in a pile by other things … the small space was crammed with stuff, very visible with the light from the glow stick. Then little cat ran back to Danny and hopped up on his knees and meowed in such a keening way in his face.
Danny suddenly knew what it was trying to tell him. "You want food."
Meowww!
If it was a hallucination, he still felt he should see if there was anything to feed the little furry monster. After all, it was stuck in the box too. He got up, holding the cat, which promptly began to purr, and realized immediately that he his feet were bare. He looked down, and then dropped the kitten in shock. It hissed, but he ignored it as he dropped to a crouch and looked at the length of chain padlocked just shy of painfully tight around his right ankle. The padlock was the heavy kind used to lock storage units.
His clothes were all wrong. He was in a thin, fabric coverall, like mechanics wore. It was blue, and the pant legs had been messily hacked shorter to fit his length of leg. The sleeves were cut off to be short. All he had underneath the coverall was his boxers. His dress shirt and slacks and belt, socks and shoes were gone. The coverall pockets were empty.
Danny was starting to think it was not a hallucination or delirium. He was too aware of the details. Were people aware of details in hallucinations? He had no idea.
He studied the chain. It was thick and wrapped so that it came close to cutting off the circulation. There would be no way to slip out of it. It would take a bolt cutter to cut through it. He was pretty sure there was no bolt cutter laying around in the box. He saw that it ran to a corner of the room, where it was locked to a heavy ring bolted to the floor with a ridiculously overkill 4 heavy-duty bolts.
He stepped back until the chain was fully stretched out; it did not extend to the far wall, so that meant it was only about 8 feet long. He could reach the wall with his arms and left foot, but not his right. He flipped up the huge padlock, to see if there was any way at all he might be able to pick it if he could find something to use to make a lock pick.
Something hard and shiny filled the keyhole. Epoxy, or superglue, or something like that. Even the key would be useless to unlock it. It too would take a bolt cutter to remove the padlock.
Danny knew he was really stuck then. Someone was not going to let him escape from the box. If Steve was in the same fix he was, they were in trouble. Real trouble. Chin and Kono were going to have to find them fast.
Panic was just at the edge, about to hit full force, when the kitten came back and meowed pitifully in hunger. Danny petted the tiny thing, because it was what one did to comfort a fellow prisoner. Immediate purring. He stroked the kitten, amazed that he was doing that, since he was not fond at all of cats. He thought of them as just a step above vermin, and the service they provided to society was to rid it of rats. Pets? They had way too many sharp claws, and fangs, and ignored people, and scratched them, ruined furniture and curtains, and could not play fetch or walk on leashes. Useless as pets. Dogs made good pets. Cats stayed outside and caught rats.
But this one was just a baby, and even Danny had to admit it was cute, because all babies were cute. He guessed it was maybe eight weeks old. And it was stuck in the box too, with no rats to catch. He had to take care of it. People take care of baby things. It was civilized. "Okay, let's see if there's food."
He sure hoped there was food. One side of the room was piled with water bottles, so maybe there was food. Maybe there was even food for him. He sure hoped so, or this would be an incredibly miserable captivity. Panic reared again, but he shut it down. "Think about the hungry baby cat." Besides, Steve would be building something to get out of his box, using the stuff in his box, so the least Danny could do was think positive and do what he could to stave off panic. Chin and Kono would find them, or Steve would manage to get out of his box, which basically put Danny in competition mode. He was not going to be caught lounging around, waiting for rescue, while Steve was super-SEAL-ing a way out.
But first, the hungry cat needed food.
He took three steps to the stuff, the ankle chain scratching on the floor, and was relieved and unsettled both at once. There was human food, water, cat food in soft pouches, and even little paper plates to put it on. He'd take inventory after the hungry little … he checked, and it was a girl kitten ...was fed. And given water. There was a little dish for that, plastic and useless for anything but a water bowl, and the 5-gallon water bottles had spigots. Okay, great. Feed and water the cat. Wonder why there is clay cat litter and a little pressed paper catbox. Even a cheap scoop for the litter box.
"What kind of prison is this?"
He opened the plates as carefully as he could. The kitten was now in a frenzy of meowing, recognizing that it was going to be fed. "You are so skinny! How long has it been, huh?" He managed to extricate just one plate. Then he tore open one pouch of food, and emptied it on the plate while the kitten jumped all over him and whapped at his hands, eating from the plate as soon as a morsel hit it.
"Have some manners, you little wretch. I'll get you water, too. I don't see any milk."
So he put water in the bowl, and as soon as the kitten had scarfed down all the food, she lapped up quite a bit of the water. Danny realized it had been awhile since she had been cared for.
That was ominous.
After the kitten had stuffed itself, leaving no crumb uneaten, she came back to Danny and looked up at him with huge blue-green eyes. He bent down and picked her up, feeling the bulge in the belly where the food had gone. He slid down the wall till he was sitting, and made a nest with his arms for the tiny thing, and she purred and rubbed his face and then gave herself a bath, sitting on his lap.
Danny watched her, pleased at how she seemed to know that a clean cat was a good cat. He looked around the box, and didn't quite panic instantly. He would catalogue the supplies later, after girlcat had a nap, which seemed to be where all this bathing was leading.
He settled, pet the kitten, and finally noticed the covered drain hole that apparently was his own latrine. Great. All the comforts of home.
Which instantly set off his panic reaction, so he focused on the kitten, his fellow prisoner.
She jumped up onto his shoulder and began to purr in his ear. She was small enough to perch there. He reached up to pet her, and in so doing he touched his own head.
And froze. His head felt wrong. Very very wrong.
He was bald.
His head had been shaved. With a razor. His hair was all gone.
And that made him furious. FURIOUS. He wasn't feeling panic now, but fury. How dare someone do this to him? Shave his head, lock him in a box, with an innocent baby cat.
He would find a way out. Somehow. And then he would figure out who had done this to him, and he would put them in prison forever, if he could keep himself from killing them. If Steve didn't kill them first.
He wasn't alone. He tried to ease the tightness of the chain around his ankle, and got nowhere, but he would figure something out. He was not going to die in a metal box 8 feet wide, ten feet long, and ten feet high. And neither was the kitten. But whoever had done this to them would die in prison. He would see to it. He. Would. See. To. It.