geeky_agent | OOM: The Rescue

OOM: The Rescue

She stepped through the half-open door, her movements cautious and precise. The darkness fell like a veil around her and made it difficult to seperate ground from sky.

Once outside, Chris looked for Tony and had to follow the sound of his voice to find him. He was standing over a map and talking on the satphone, he glanced up for a second before his attention was directed to the map again.

"The mine is right across from us," she told the men behind her. There was no need to point it out to them, it was impossible to miss.

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Chase moves ahead, moving quietly as possible, paying close attention to the voices down the corridor.

Carefully, he peers into each cell, hoping that one of them will contain Jack.

Please, need to find him for Kim and Angela, need to find him...

But none of them do, and he moves down the corridor gradually, listening.

There's a row of doors lining each side of the tunnel, some open and some closed. They approach the open ones carefully, staying close to the wall before looking through, guns pointed into the empty rooms.

Chris comes onto a closed door and pushes open the slot that's just above eye-level. As she does a voice comes from inside the cell, pleading with her in Chinese.

She closes the slot quickly but quietly, heart pounding.

The noise startles Chase, and his teeth clench, heart pounding.

Shit!

Chase hurries forward, gesturing for Chris and Tony to follow, looking around for somewhere to get out of the way of anyone coming.

A litany of prayers and curses runs through Chris mind, she ducks into one of the empty cells, Tony almost pushing her inside.

For several long moments it's completely silent. The man from the cell has gone quiet (thankfully) but so have the voices from down the hall.

Chase dashes in, and they stay quiet for a while, until their hearts stop pounding and their breath slows down.

And then Chase nods and motions for them to start down the corridor again.

Tony and Chris follow him, fanning out into the dark tunnel. They go back to looking through the rooms and she starts wondering if they're ever going to find Jack, if he was even here. Maybe their intel had been wrong, maybe he'd been moved...

Maybe we're too late.

Chris hears a sound, maybe someone whispering and she startles. She looks at Chase and follows his gaze to Tony now standing by one closed cell door.

With the ghost of a smile on his face, Tony nods.

In the dead silence of the mine, even the softest noises tend to break through the mental fog Jack is wrapped in most of the time. But few noises are ever soft; maybe the movement of a rat through the tunnel, a solitary bat that's lost its way. Human noises are louder; the guards don't bother hiding their footsteps as they want their prisoners to hear them coming.

But the noises that pull him out of his haze don't fit that mold. They're soft, but not animal. It takes him a moment, but these sound like footsteps, deliberately muffled.

Jack tenses, unable to keep from letting out a soft note of pain as he attempts to move back as much as he can, buy himself some time if they come in. Trying to peer through the darkness with eyes that won't focus, he braces himself to face whatever unknown is outside his door.

Tony opens the door and Chase and Chris head inside.

Jack looks...well, awful, and Chase swallows when he sees him. "Jack, we're gonna get you out of here," he whispers, looking over at Chris.

"Jack? It's me," Chris whispers, her voice almost breaking. He was bruised and bloody, his left arm in a crude splint and she'd swear he had lost weight.

She talks a breath, trying to keep her voice as even and calm as possible. "Chase and I are going to get you out of here, Jack."

At first he has to think that he's slipped into another hallucination, because Chris and Chase can't possibly be here. They seem real, but he's almost frightened to reach out and see for certain; whether because they'll melt away or because they'll stay, implying that he's gone deep into some fantasy world, he's not sure.

But he can't not reach out to the people he's been thinking of for so long, using his memories of them to help him cling to sanity by his fingernails.

He reaches out to her with one shaking hand as she fades in and out of focus, praying that this isn't a hallucination brought on by another round of psychotropic drugs.

"Chris? Chase?"

"It's us." She reaches out to touch his face with her fingertips and she can't keep from crying now. "We're here."

There's a sudden noise from the corridor that sends a chill down her spine. She whips her head around and can hear voices and footsteps approaching.

"Jack, can you stand up?"

At the noise, Chase leans down to to offer Jack his shoulder to hold on to, putting his arms around him.

"Jack, you gotta stand, we've got to hurry."

"Come on, we've got to go," another voice says from just outside the doorway, and it dimly registers as Tony's voice before Jack's hauled to his feet, the room spinning.

Jack lets out a soft moan as his weight rests on his left leg, his knee screaming in pain as nausea sweeps over him, but he grits his teeth, trying to move past it. He puts his arm around Chase's shoulders, but it's clear that Chase is holding onto him more than he's holding onto Chase.

A gunshot breaks through the night, followed by several more.

"You try to get him out, Tony and I will provide cover," she says, racing towards the doorway. Flattened against the wall, she can see the guards approaching and mouth tightens into a thin line.

We're so close. We just have to get out of here. So close.

Jack jumps at the gunshot, trying to turn and look, but it only make his head swim even more than it already is. Oh God, no, they can't get caught, they have to get out of here!

"No, leave me here, get out--" he says weakly, trying to break from Chase's grasp.

But Chase just holds on and tries to get Jack out, so many things rushing through his head, only knowing that they have to get out, but knowing in the back of his mind that it's going to take a miracle...

Chris switches over to the otherside of the doorframe so she has the guards right in her sights.

"Chase! Hurry!

She can almost make out Tony across the hall, in another doorway. The hallway lights up with gunshots and it's then she gets clear glimpses of him...

...And another figure coming up behind her.

Before she can turn around, there's a gun against her neck. "Drop the gun."

Nonononono.

"Drop the gun!" He pushes it into her neck. One of the guards has a flashlight and shines it in her eyes. Chris squints but she's seen enough to know that they're surrounded.

She drops the gun.

With a quick movement of her hand, she tries to hit the transponder on her watch but a guard catches her arm, twisting it around her back and pushing her against the wall.

There's a flash of blue light near her face, burning against her neck, then her world goes dark.

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OOM: The Rescue

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