I didn't usually have a problem with waiting. I had a lot of patience surrounding people because I'd grown up with Connor, and I'd obviously been waiting for over 2 years when I was marooned.

You ought to call it your red adventure. Hearing Connors voice in my head made me laugh.

He looked across at me in his chair, opposite mine, at the other end of the detector. 'What?'

Smiling, I shook my head. 'Nothing.' I reached out, snagged a strawberry lace from the bag in his lap and put one end in my mouth. 'Lace race?'

He raised an eyebrow– the undefeated champion since the age of 9– like he was daring me to back down. 'Sure?' he asked. 'Hope you're ready to be humiliated.'

'Three,' I answered, starting the countdown.

He quickly reached into the bag, pulled out a lace and put the end in his mouth. 'Two,' he seconded.

'One,' I finished.

'Go!'

My technique was to just suck as hard as I could like it was a string of spaghetti. Connor's mouth moved, teeth chomping, tongue darting out to try and gather the strawberry lace up towards his mouth. I was so close, I only had an inch or two of lace left when Connor jumped up, victorious, fists pumping in the air.

I bit off the end of the remaining lace and grabbed it in my hand. 'No!' I complained. 'God damn it! How do you always beat me at that? I want a rematch.' I chewed up the lace in my mouth and swallowed, reaching for another.

'Fine by me,' he returned, 'it's always nice to see a loved one totally crushed in defeat.' He put the end of the lace in his mouth, but as soon as his lips closed around it, his eyes dropped, his head drooping with sudden realisation, and he swivelled his chair to the detector.

'Connor?' I questioned.

'I can trace her.'

'What?' I replied. 'Who?'

'Caroline,' he said. He reached up, snapped the lace off at his mouth, and chewed, 'you wanted me to get Rex back?' he called through a mouthful of strawberry lace up to where Nick was standing on the entryway, 'I can trace Caroline's mobile through the detector.' He put his hands down against his keyboard and immediately started typing. I leant forward in my chair.

'Oi, Connor! That's illegal use of government property,' Jensen yelled back at him.

Connor took no notice and typed Caroline's number into the window.

The detector zeroed in on the location. 'That's her,' I stated.

'That's where her phone is anyway,' Connor agreed.

'Come on.'

I stood up, thwacking his shoulder in a gesture for him to follow me. 'God, she better still have him.'

I found Nick up on the entryway and pointed explanatorily in the direction we were headed, 'we've found her,' I called. 'We're gonna go get Rex back.'

'I'll come with you!'

'Yeah, why not. But I'm driving.'

Something didn't feel right when we got out the car on the other end.

The building looked abandoned, and there was nothing else anywhere nearby that could have suggested that Caroline may have wanted to even drive through here.

Connor had reconfigured a P.H.D on the drive over and was now scouring the vicinity in hope for a sign of what direction to go from here.

'Are you sure about this?' Jensen asked. He folded his arms somewhat uncomfortably across his chest.

I had to agree with his sentiments. 'This doesn't look like the type of place Caroline would hang out.'

'Maybe it's a retreat,' Connor suggested, 'yoga, or something… she always was very spiritual.'

I eyed the graffiti on a broken windows. 'Meeeeh…'

'Or maybe you just messed up,' Jensen translated.

Connor looked back at the detector. 'No,' he said confidently, 'this is the place.'

I followed him across the yard towards the fire door to the old building, and as Connor pressed his face up to the glass to try and peek inside, I grabbed a hold of the door handle, pulled the door open, and glanced back at him.

The inside of the building was so dark we had to grab the torches. Connor led the pack, still following the peep of the detector and I heard the sound of it hitting the floor as he let go. As I leant around Jensen to see what he was doing, I saw him crouched on the ground over Caroline's bag.

'It's Caroline's,' Connor stated in clarification, 'her phone's here.'

'Then, where is she?' Nick replied in confusion. His attention moved off, he started quickly towards the other exit in the room, and assuming he must have heard something, I made to follow after him.

It was fast starting to feel like some sort of trap. Perhaps it was my imagination. Perhaps I'd just seen too many horror films– Saw was there all along– that I'd conditioned myself to thinking everything was some sort of clever rouse.

We only caught up to Nick just as he reached the door at the end of an adjoining hallway and threw it open. I didn't even have time to notice how my gut started to ache before all of a sudden there was a gun pointed at me as we we'd followed Nick into the room.

We weren't alone.

My eyes widened.

'Ah,' Leek crowed, 'I wondered who was going to come.' He took a gleeful step forward and poked Nick in the chest. 'And I was hoping it was going to be you.'

The guard beside me lunged forwards, swinging the butt of his gun into Nick's spine and knocking him completely unconscious instantaneously. He crumpled like paper.

I inhaled, body moving of its own accord to help him when Leek cried out again.

'Ah! No, you stay right there, Doctor,' he drawled.

I felt my fists clenched at my sides as I locked him in a glare I hoped was threatening, but I couldn't tell because I couldn't feel the air in my lungs despite the gentle inhale and exhale of my breath, and my throat felt so suddenly dry that I had to swallow.

My hand reached back instinctively–my body must have known that I was in some sort of danger– and a moment later Leek narrowed his eyes. 'That's right,' he said, 'you've got a knife.'

He nodded to the guard, I saw a flash of light before something hit the back of my head and I went down. I hit the ground, my vision fading, before my eyes finally shut.

'Anna!'

The first thing I noticed was that my whole body was cold. My skin tingled, and I could feel the goosebumps swelling along my flesh long before I opened my eyes.

I couldn't see a thing.

I wondered for a second if I had opened my eyes, so I shut them again, and reopened them.

But everything was black.

Concussion?

No. No headache, no nausea or dizziness. So it wasn't the blindness.

So it was just dark.

'Anna!'

I heard my name again, a hand reaching out to grab a hold of me, and through one dim red shadow Nick's face came into focus,

'Nick, fuck, you're okay,' I said in relief.

He nodded. 'Are you?'

I hope so. 'What's going on?'

There was a noise, a clanging somewhere above our heads and a moment later the lights came on. The white was so bright I had to snatch my eyes shut once more.

It wasn't enough. The burning quickly flooded from my eyes into my brain and I had to reach up and put a hand over them, just for a few seconds, before I could even attempt to look around again.

Soon as I did, I wished I hadn't.

Jensen and Connor were only a few feet away from me, and I barely registered my own relief that they were okay before the heavy realisation of where we were set in. We were surrounded by these big yellow frames like modern art sculptures, cross sectioned with lasers to create cages. And inside were the creatures, everything I'd seen since I'd been home.

So that's what he'd been doing.