Chapter 6: Scowly-Eyebrows

The world was spinning again.

Alex swallowed desperately, trying to keep the nausea down, but he could feel the burn of it at the back of his throat. His hands were shaking too, just a slight tremble, but he had a feeling that it was just going to get worse from here on out.

He doubted the headache could get much worse though.

It took a long time for Alex to realize that he was already sitting up, hands held in his lap. Like someone had taken great care to situate him almost comfortably. While also foregoing to notice that he was dressed in nothing but a thin pair of pants, which provided exactly no protection against the chill of the room.

Once that observation was made though, Alex was well and truly awake. And hating the world. His head was pounding in tune with his heartbeat, sending sharp spikes of pain up and down his spine. Worse than before. His jaw hurt too, like someone had gotten him with a strong uppercut. He ran his tongue across his teeth, checking for anything out of place, but it seemed all right.

There were no sounds in the room, the air almost feeling dampened around him.

Silent.

Cold.

Alone.

Which, really, sitting in a chair with his hands no doubt cuffed meant he wasn't any sort of valued guest. If they really were military, Alex hoped he had half a chance at just getting them to contact Byrne.

He cracked an eye open – this time, there wasn't really any increase in the headache, because it was already at its maximum – and took stock of the situation. Cement brick walls, one of four overhead lights turned on, and a metal desk. He wasn't cuffed to the desk or chair, so he supposed that was an advantage. He scuffed his foot along the ground – grainy poured cement.

So, possibly a military facility, where they thought he was a person of interest. Or, they were individuals merely posing as military.

Alex leaned forward until his head rested on the table. The cool of the metal actually felt good and there was no telling how long it would be until someone bothered to come check on their guest. At one point, he might have hoped that being a teenager might work in his favor, but the past year had only been an exercise in demonstrating how well he could pass as an adult.

And it wasn't like he had had any ID on him, so unless his captors had kept meticulous records, these men – good or bad – probably had very little idea of who he was.

He breathed through his nose, once again running through the relaxation exercises. Theo had probably never thought that Alex would use the techniques in quite this situation – after all, the other main goal of the past year had been to avoid kidnapping and further paranoia at all costs.

He had done fairly well at it, up until now.

Alex closed his eyes and figured a little nap wouldn't hurt. If his new captors took long enough, maybe some of the migraine would wear off.

The door slamming open was the only warning Alex got.

He jerked upright in his chair, staring wide-eyed at the military man that strode in, then promptly lost his fight against the persistent nausea. Dry heaves – who knew when he had last had something to eat or drink – that only served to make the nausea and pain spike further.

The door slid shut again and Alex squeezed his eyes shut, trying to regulate his breathing. A soft scuff on the floor told him that there were at least two other people in the room now.

It wasn't the time for weakness.

He swallowed down the remaining bile, forced himself into a semblance of an upright position, and squinted at the men in front of him.

One by the door – guarding? Making sure he didn't try to escape? – was armed with one of the electric gun thingies.

A bad sign.

In all of Alex's experience, military men liked their regular, no frills-attached bullet-shooting guns. Whatever these alternative devices were, were either confiscated from the original bad guys – which would be incredibly irresponsible to be utilizing – or they had their own supply. And possibly just posing as military.

Alex couldn't help the wince as the lights – the rest of the lights – flooded the room and truly lit up every corner. He couldn't possibly squint any further and he didn't exactly want to be blind with unknown individuals in close contact.

The main military man dropped into the chair across from Alex, cast a scornful glance at the puddle on the floor, then scowled at him. Thus dubbed, Scowly-Eyebrows. "What was your intention with the symbiotes?"

Jumping right into things. But… symbiotes?

That was what they had called the snakes. "Well…" He drew out the word, somewhat horrified by how raspy it sounded. Like he had been screaming, but he knew he hadn't made a sound when running through the corridors. "I like to think that…" He swallowed again, trying to marshal his thoughts into order. "Trying to take out something that's trying to eat me is a pretty natural response."

His mouth was dry.

Parched.

Alex licked his lips, trying to look as innocent and clueless as possible.

Scowly-Eyebrows was unamused with the response. He leaned forward across the table, no doubt trying to look threatening – and potentially succeeding. Alex knew he had no bargaining ground here. "I'm not here to play games with you and I assure you, you don't want me to bring in backup."

Backup was spoken in an ominous tone, as if Alex should really be afraid of just who that was.

But he didn't know who any of these people were. Backup could very easily work for or against him. It could be someone with higher rank. It could be someone intent on torturing him.

Alex wasn't sure he really wanted to figure it out. "Look, I don't know who you think I—"

Scowly-Eyebrows cut him off with a sharp gesture. "We know all about the Beijing operation and the attempted implantation in Serbia."

Implantation. Alex stored that word away. Also, Beijing? Serbia? He was pretty sure he hadn't stepped foot in either of those locations in his life.

"Give us the information we're seeking and I'm sure we can all come to some sort of agreement. Find a safe place to keep you from your… masters."

Alex let his eyes slide closed, parsing thorough the phrasing. Masters. He had seen some weird things in his limited career of being a spy, but a master was a different level entirely. That spoke of some weird type of devotion – which he had to no one, thank you very much. Alex wasn't sure what expression was on his face, but whatever it was, Scowly-Eyebrows really didn't like it.

He slammed his hand down on the table, the crash causing Alex to jerk back. "No games. Tell us what we want and I might even put in a good word with the general to find you a nice hidey hole."

The general. That was at least someone with authority. And it also suggested that this was all somehow connected to a military operation – though it could still be completely illegitimate.

Alex licked his lips carefully, as if weighing his options, then regarded Scowly-Eyebrows with a narrow-eyed gaze – hoping that how much effort that took wasn't visible on his face. What he needed was more information. But seeking that out, might just very well be his undoing. If they completely bought into it… maybe he could trick them into contacting Byrne. "And just who is making this guarantee?"

Scowly-Eyebrows crossed his arms and fixed Alex with a sharp stare. "The US Air Force takes its agreements seriously."

US Air Force. Well. That was something at least. Still didn't help with deciding whether it was legitimate or not, but… it was at least an entity he was aware of. Though he wasn't sure if they were allowed to run operations on US soil. Which meant either he had been moved internationally – and with kidnapping and that electrical thingy there was no telling – or they were breaking their own mandate.

The gun holding grunt in the background had a carefully blank face, so there was no telling if Scowly-Eyebrows' threats and guarantees were pure bluff or not.

Alex wondered if anyone had ever thought to mention that they were supposed to be getting information out of him, not giving it away freely.

Also, what the hell was the Air Force into?

"Are you going to cooperate?"

Alex shrugged slightly. "Food and water would be nice. Or a shirt." He doubted anything he could say would truly satisfy them. "I'll give you the name of my handler."

Scowly-Eyebrows frowned at him, before leaning across the table into his face. "I don't think you understand. We have you now. None of your little friends are going to come to your rescue. And I can drop you in a hole so deep, no one will ever think of you again."

"You've got the wrong person."

"I don't think so. Now, what were the plans with all those symbiotes?"

Alex clenched his hands in his lap. He didn't have answers for them. And legitimate military or no, they clearly had no qualms about holding someone against their will indefinitely. "My name is Alex. My handler is Joe Byrne. His number is 202-530-1822. I suggest you contact him." Alex set his jaw, intent on answering no further questions, and hoped Scowly-Eyebrows didn't get it into his head to be more physical.

He doubted they would contact Byrne. They didn't seem the type. But it was the best he could manage until he could figure a way out.

"Your handler," Scowly-Eyebrows spat the word with disdain, "is not important here." He stood up abruptly, then paced around the table until he could lean down next to Alex's ear. A faint electric whine and the strangely shaped gun pressed against the side of his neck. "Whatever your master can do is going to pale in comparison to what we can do."

Alex swallowed hard and looked straight forward, refusing to look at the gun. "Contact Joe Byrne, 202-530-1822, he can answer your questions."

Scowly-Eyebrows snarled in his ear, before stalking back across the room, shoving the gun – or whatever it was – in a holster. He punched a code into the keypad – middle, bottom left, middle right, middle right, top left, bottom right – and waved the other guard out of the room. "Think about it. I've got plenty of time." The effect was ruined by the door shutting silently, instead of slamming for dramatic effect.

Alex let his chin fall to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut. Middle, bottom left, middle right, middle right, top left, bottom right. Six buttons. Probably digits. 516673. Not a very secure system, and they didn't even bother to cover the numbers.

He twisted his wrists in the cuffs, testing for weakness. He just needed a way out of the cuffs and he could maybe make a break for it. Then again, they were more than prepared to shoot him again, so….

He let himself slump in the chair. There would only be a chance if he got them to completely underestimate him.

Scowly-Eyebrows came back twice, with ever increasing time periods in between, and was accompanied by the same guard each time. He grew less and less accepting of Alex's absolute refusal to respond with anything other than his name or Byrne's name and number. On the up side though, physical threats hadn't progressed. Aside from threatening waving with the gun, no one had touched him yet.

No one had offered him a shirt either though, and Alex was tired of feeling cold and half naked. Literally.

The sharpest pains were receding, and he could manage to keep his eyes open for several minutes at a time before feeling nauseous again, but the lack of food or water was starting to get to him.

Maybe that was the torture?

And how long had it been?

Long enough for enough people to realize that Alex wasn't who he was supposed to be?

Long enough for Byrne to set people out hunting him down?

Scowly-Eyebrows' insistence that the US Air Force was the only one guaranteeing his safety at this point meant that someone, somewhere had signed off on their actions. Eventually, it would be escalated – but there was no telling whether Alex had that kind of time. Food, water, true rest, medical even – because he probably had a concussion, given the state of his head – were all fairly common expectations to have in prisoner situations that were in any way legitimate.

And if someone had dragged him to a CIA black ops site, well… surely Byrne would hear about it quickly.

That seemed like too much to hope for though.

The door clicked once again, his only warning that Scowly-Eyebrows was returning for more, and Alex jerked into an upright position once more. The usual guard slipped in and stepped to the side; weird gun held at the ready. He wasn't sure why they went through all the song and dance – he was handcuffed after all. Though he wasn't handcuffed to anything, so maybe the caution was warranted.

Scowly-Eyebrows looked slightly more ruffled than usual, the collar of his shirt not quite sitting flat. The
patches on his uniform had reappeared though. The name tag signified him as a 'Lt. Col. Stadler' in the air force, which so far seemed to match the story he had been told.

"Your IOA buddies are upstairs," he said, rocking his hip against the edge of the table. He was close enough that if Alex had dared try anything, he could've managed something with the element of surprise. "Or at least, your targets are. All the symbiotes in that facility were taken out, so you've got nothing to work with. It would be better for all of us if you just shared your little plan. My men tend to get bored when they're just standing around."

If that wasn't a threat… "You can contact Joe Byrne. He'll tell you all you want to know."

Scowly-Eyebrows snorted. "You think we wouldn't look up who that was? The director of the CIA? That just tells me the corruption goes even further than my superiors are willing to tell me."

Oh, god. Alex carefully schooled his expression. The man was a fanatic.

"Your master just has his snakey fingers in everyone, doesn't he? He has no power down here, though. He has no chance of even knowing you're here." Scowly-Eyebrows slouched in an almost casual manner, weird gun almost within reaching distance. "So, why don't you explain what the purpose of those symbiotes was, and why it was so important to take them all out before we got there?"

Alex stared straight forward at the table, not letting his eyes drift toward the gun. There was no way he would be fast enough to figure out how it worked.

"Or, you could just sit here forever." Scowly-Eyebrows leaned forward, until his lips were right next to Alex's ear. "No one is going to find you. I've always wondered how long one of you snakes would last."

No one is going to find you.

It settled with startling clarity in his mind – the supposed superiors had no idea Alex existed as a prisoner.

Outside of the man's team, Alex was not even a blip on the radar. And while there was no guarantee that anyone else would pay attention to Alex… he needed out. He needed to cause enough of a ruckus that someone else would notice his presence.

Or hope for a change of heart from one of the team members.

"There are—" Scowly-Eyebrows hesitated, then put a hand to his ear, as if listening. Alex couldn't make anything out, but someone was giving him bad news because the furrow in Scowly-Eyebrows' brow was just getting deeper. "Keep them in the hall." He snarled, before turning a furious expression on the gun holding grunt. "Go up to the control center and lock down levels 19 and 20. Damn scientists. Perkins and I will check level 18 for stragglers and meet you there. You." He spun back on Alex. "We are not finished."

Alex kept his face carefully blank and didn't say anything. He wasn't about to let him know that he had given potentially useful information away. Like that there were multiple levels, military scientists hiding somewhere, and a potential problem on one of the floors away from this location.

Perhaps it would even be enough to relax security in this area. Keep Scowly-Eyebrows occupied for a while.

It would be the perfect time to try to escape. To at least raise the alarm with someone else. Maybe someone else in this seemingly godforsaken complex – which to be fair, he hadn't exactly been outside of the little cell – would care that a teenager was being held illegally. Or maybe they wouldn't, but… he had to at least try.

Scowly-Eyebrows punched in the exact same code he had used earlier and the grunt followed him out. They were running before the door even shut all the way.

Alex let out a long breath, then set about making his escape. Wandering the room for a handful of minutes would be enough to figure out if someone was watching him closely. And though it would be a shame to show that he could get out of his restraints, it would tell a lot about their security systems.

He twisted his wrists, feeling the cold metal scrape against his wrist bone. Metal cuffs had some definite disadvantages for escaping, but someone had been careless and they hadn't cranked it down as tight as it could be.

It would've been nice if they had left convenient pieces of metal lying around so he could pick the lock, but they couldn't be that careless. Probably the handcuffs were low-priority though, since the room was locked. They clearly thought that he wasn't much of a threat at escaping the room.

He folded his thumb toward his palm, letting the metal bite into the flesh of his wrist. He didn't expect to make it unscathed, but then, he only needed one hand free. The loose cuffs could dangle around one wrist for all he cared. He gritted his teeth against the burning pain, felt the skin split apart as the sharp edge of metal cut into him, but this was his only chance.

One chance to escape.

If they caught him again, it would be curtains.

With one final tug, his hand slipped through the cuff, scraping off a decent layer of skin in the process. He hissed at the burn and shook his arm, as if that would do any good at making it stop hurting.

The pain wasn't important right now.

Arms free, Alex got up from the chair, steadying himself on the edge of the table for a long moment as the world spun.

Right.

Lack of food and water was probably going to take him out faster than anything Scowly-Eyebrows did at this point. He swallowed against the nausea, clenched his fists to stop the trembling, and made his way to the far side of the wall.

There were no visible cameras in the room. Unless they were hiding one within the overhead lights. He ran his still cuffed hand along the wall, looking for any out of place markings. Anything that might signify an addition to the room.

There was no noise from the corridor, nothing to suggest any alarm at the fact that he was up and about.

He would only have a handful of seconds to have the element of surprise. Best tactic would be to take someone prisoner. Or get his hands on one of those electric gun thingies. But that required someone being near enough for that to happen.

Outright sprinting wasn't likely to work well – he would probably fall flat on his face before he made it more than a couple hundred meters. There would be someone in the corridor and they had already shown they wouldn't hesitate to shoot.

Alex circled the room, drifting ever closer to the door and the keypad. Up close, it looked no different from any other reinforced door. Only a thin slot for a window. No door knob. Just the keypad.

He stopped next to the door, listening carefully for any movement. Even the scuffing of feet would give a hint as to where a guard might be located.

Aside from muffled speech though – telling him that someone was out there – he couldn't make anything out.

Cautiously, he crept closer to the window and tried to peek through.

There.

The gun holding grunt was turned away from the door, saying something to someone that was further down the hall. Alex pushed to the side, trying to get a better angle – because if Scowly-Eyebrows was back already, he didn't want to just jump out in the hall. All he got a glimpse of was someone else in a dark blue uniform – a contrast to the green uniforms he had seen all… morning? Afternoon? Evening?

Someone different.

Someone to potentially sound the alarm.

A perfect target.

Ignoring the blood trailing down his arm, Alex punched in the code for the door – middle, bottom left, middle right, middle right, top left, bottom right – and was rewarded with the door opening right under his fingertips.

"—be down here, sir."

He jumped out into the hall, grabbed the passing man around the throat, and used him as a shield. There was a conveniently placed knife on his hip and Alex mentally apologized for using the man's own knife against him.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa…" The man didn't even struggle, just cautiously put his hands up in a non-threatening manner. "No need for all this."

The grunt raised his gun – a real one, this time – at them.

"Hey!" The man shouted, seeming more panicked by the gun pointed at him than the knife at his throat. "Put that down, Marine!"

The grunt – Marine – only wavered slightly. A superior officer then.

Alex had hit the jackpot, if he could just get the man to listen to him.

"They had me trapped in there," Alex murmured, taking a careful step backward, with the man in tow, trying to suppress the trembling. "I'm not who they think I am. Don't know anything about symbiotes, or masters, of whatever else the fuck the air force is tied up in these days."

"Okay…" The man stretched out the word, as if Alex hadn't just tried to use all the key words he had learned. "Taking someone hostage isn't going to help anything either, though."

Alex glanced over his shoulder quickly, then took another couple of steps back. The hall was warmer than his cell, but only just. "Yeah, well, I didn't ask to get kidnapped." He tightened his grip on the knife, in case the man got any ideas.

"Sir—"

"Shut up, Wilkins," the man snapped. Alex could feel him swallow underneath the knife. "Now listen, I'm not a real fan of kidnapping either way," he continued in a more reasonable tone, "But it seems to me that we've got a couple of problems. Because I guarantee that Wilkins there has called for backup – and they're not going to care who you say you are since you have a hostage. Why don't we just sit down like reasonable people and talk it out?"

Alex snorted. "Are you superior to Lieutenant Colonel Stadler?"

The man paused for a moment, but kept moving backwards when Alex tugged on him. "Hmm… that could be a hiccup. You're saying he kidnapped you?"

"And his team."

"Right." He bit the word off, but it was clear that he wasn't a fan of Stadler either. "Then we can escalate to the general."

The man sounded so reasonable. So different from the insanity he had been facing with Scowly-Eyebrows and his ilk.

Alex froze in place at the telltale sound of an elevator arriving on the floor.

Time's up.

Alex pulled back further, but his heel hit the wall. They were literally backed into a corner. Nowhere to go. "You promise?"

The man huffed a laugh. "Yeah, course. Just, put the knife down."

Alex swallowed. His arm trembled. He would have to trust that the man was good on his word. That he wouldn't just turn around and forget the person who had been kidnapped against their will. He let his grip loosen on the knife, ever so slightly.

He could do it.

It had been his best shot, anyway.

Getting someone else to listen. Someone else to at least investigate his case.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, then started to pull the knife away.

And then his world erupted into icy blue electrical fire and he knew no more.

A/N: Dun, dun, dun. Questions, comments, thoughts? Moving next week, so it may be a bit hectic for the next several weeks. I'll get consistent at some point. Promise.