DAY 2: solitary confinement
Character: Gordon
Warning: Held Hostage
Ugh. This sucked. This sucked big time.
Maybe he should open his eyes. Yeah, good idea, Gordon. Open your eyes. Open. Open them.
They opened.
They closed.
Nope. That was not better. Not by a long shot.
Maybe this was just one of those dreams.
He pinched himself.
And opened his eyes again.
Oh. Oh no. Not a dream then.
Well s***.
Gordon sighed and opened his eyes.
Not the bright sunlight of the island. Not much light at all. There was the pale sickly glow of one of their glowsticks but that was all.
He was half relieved that there wasn't a blinding light to compound his minor – no, moderate concussion, but he was half concerned what the absence of light meant.
It meant that he wasn't somewhere comfortable. Beyond the light of the glowstick the area was grey. If he didn't know better he'd have thought he was back on a ship – it wasn't called Battleship Grey for no reason – but there was a complete absence of movement.
Ok, Tracy, time to take stock.
Movement made his head explode and Gordon considered upgrading his concussion from moderate to severe, but after some careful breathing and some even more careful moving it seemed to settle and Gordon kept it at moderate.
That explosion in his head also helped highlight several other injuries, not the least was bruised ribs and a potentially broken wrist, although it could just be badly sprained. He'd need to be careful of that if he could.
The rest was just bruising. Gordon couldn't remember being in a fight – damn this concussion – but he knew himself well enough to know he wouldn't have gone down quietly. Some of the sore spots also told him that maybe his 'going down' was facilitated by a knockout dart or two – there was at least one pinprick mark in his upper arm and possibly one in the back of his thigh judging from that itchy feeling that kind of dart left.
Whoever had taken him was serious, that much was clear. Gordon only wished he could remember what he had been doing. Had he been alone when he'd been attacked? An unusual occurrence these days but not unheard of. Had he been with one of hi…OH GOD!
He'd been with Penny.
Memories flooded him, a little patchy in places but coherent enough for him to remember.
He'd been with Penny at some kind of function but he thought that the evening was over. Pen had been called away and he'd carried on walking. It had been a lovely night, the skies were clear and the stars numerous. He couldn't remember being jumped but it must have been then. At least Gordon was now sure Penny was safe.
How long ago was that now?
Gordon walked the small room he was in. It wasn't really a room, there were three walls that were just rock and the wall in front was some kind of brick. The door was metal and cold to the touch. Come to think about it the air was chilled, the kind of feeling when there wasn't natural airflow and the damp feel of 'underground'.
His aches told him at least 24 hours. The scratch of stubble on his face agreed with that, maybe closer to the 30-hour mark. His stomach suddenly agreed with this assessment, so Gordon moved to the door and banged hard, shouting for attention.
He banged until his fists were raw and his voice hoarse. No one came. There wasn't a sound that didn't come from him.
Gordon shivered.
He'd never been claustrophobic – living and working on submarines soon cured you of that, and even being buried under a ton of rock twice in Four hadn't changed that – but something about this solitary confinement was beginning to get to him. He supposed it was because he truly alone. Before he'd had his brothers with him. Even on the only occasion he'd been in solitary in the brig he'd never been alone, the sounds of the ship keeping him company when the crew could not.
But this place, carved out of rock and as grey as grey could get, was starting to get to him. How on earth Scott had survived in a cell a fifth of this size was beyond him. Still, Gordon was a Tracy and coping with the hand Life had dealt you was nothing new.
He sat on the floor, crossed his legs and breathed in deeply. Gordon closed his eyes and began to regulate his breathing, using the grounding techniques they had all learned to help Scott when he first came home.
At some point Gordon must have fallen asleep because he woke up stiff and sore. He was still in his tux trousers and the pale pink shirt with pale orange squids dotted around that Penny had declared awful but he knew that she loved it really. The clothes were not designed to be warm and he didn't realise how cold he was until he woke up that second time. Well, he could do something about that. He stripped off his shirt and began to jog around the room, interspacing the jogging with jumping jacks and burpees and other jumps he remembered from his WASP days.
Time passed.
Gordon repeated the same procedures, trying to keep warm. He found his hope dwindling. All the tracking systems they have were in the jackets and shoes and cuffs, all of which were missing. Gordon was beginning to think that John was right when he said about tagging Scott with a subdural tracker.
He thought today was day four. His hunger and thirst were gone, and that worried him. 3-4 days without food and water, they were the figures. Gordon huddled down and hugged himself tightly.
'Where are you guys?'
And then the ground moved.
And the walls.
And hope blossomed in Gordon's heart.