Fic: Wide Open Spaces
Jun. 3rd, 2011 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thelibraniniquity posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tli_productionsTitle: Wide Open Spaces
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Summary: Steve wakes up in a box.
Characters: Steve, Danny, Chin, Kono; references to others.
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~10,000
Betas:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
explodedpen and wihluta
Warnings: A few swear words and references to violence.
Author's Notes: Set during the second half of season 1, though no major spoilers. Huge, huge, thanks toexplodedpen, lady_drace and wihluta for all of the help, calming of my nerves and generally being awesome.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Steve wakes up in a box. Technically he comes to slowly, a dull ache at the back of his head suggesting blunt force trauma, but he's aware of the pitch blackness immediately. There's no way it's natural, and he distinctly remembers going to bed last night, collapsing on top of the covers with moonlight streaming in through the windows and the sound of waves as an auditory backdrop. Neither stimulus is here, and the surface underneath him is hard, though not cold to the touch.
He pats himself down. He thinks he's still wearing the same Navy t-shirt and pyjama bottoms he went to bed in, but it's hard to tell without being able to see. Prodding further, he finds the holes in the back hem of the shirt and the loose threads on the pyjama's in-seams. His feet and wrists are bare. The air temperature is moderate and aside from a slight musty smell, nothing distinctive. Nothing at all.
Steve takes a deep breath, listening to the sound of the exhale. The chances are he's being held somewhere; he needs to know what he's up against. He uses his feet first, sweeping his legs out slowly, scooting himself in a straight line until his left foot brushes up against something hard.
Instantly he freezes, and moves his foot back. It's a wall, which he confirms with his hands, noting the right-angled corner, and the same smooth surface running vertically as horizontally. Cool to the touch, and slightly rough, like sandpaper, but more likely a metal alloy. Very solid.
For the first time he tries to stand up. Again he moves slowly, keeping one hand on the wall and using the other for balance. He's still acutely aware of the ache at the back of his head and knows he can't risk another trauma, at least not until he knows more about this new environment. It takes a while; his leg muscles are stiff, but not overly so (suggesting he hasn't been immobile longer than a few hours), but eventually he's stood upright. One hand still on the wall in front of him, Steve uses the other to reach upward. His elbow's still crooked when he brushes the ceiling, and again it's the same sandpapery surface as the wall and floor, and there's no give when he pushes harder. He runs his fingers along the corner between the wall and ceiling. No hinges, no join that he can feel – and no light.
Wherever this is – whatever it is – it seems like he's completely sealed in.
Like a tomb. Steve squashes the thought ruthlessly and focuses on the task at hand. So far he's found a wall and a ceiling. He keeps one hand on the wall and starts shuffling to his right, small equidistant steps until he hits another wall, which lends credence to the box theory. He turns and follows that wall down its full width, this time counting his steps carefully. At seven he hits another wall, and again, and again. Everything he's felt so far are right angles, which means he's in a four-walled cell – six if you count the floor and ceiling, which Steve does – with no windows and no obvious light or ventilation. His breathing and pulse are the only things he can hear.
It appears to be a perfect, seemingly self-contained cube. And Steve has no idea how he got here, who could have pulled something like this off without him knowing, or how long he's got in terms of air supply. That thought refuses to go away, no matter how hard Steve tries.
He rests his forehead against the wall and tries to think. Including time spent unconscious, he's been here for a few hours at the very least. It had gone 0200 by the time he'd finally made it to bed. That means it has to be mid-morning, or thereabouts, so the team has to have realised by now that he's missing.
Steve can picture it perfectly in his mind: Danny and Chin Ho and Kono bouncing off each other to solve the mystery. Danny talking non-stop at anyone who gets in his way, Chin and Kono working more silently but no more or less efficiently. They're a good team, the best – they're his team, and that's what Steve chooses to focus on.
He forces his breathing to slow down again, and waits for his pulse to match. He's going to achieve even less than what little he has so far by panicking, and if the cube really is sealed he's working on a very finite amount of breathable air, and he can't afford to waste any of it.
Then, from behind him, he's assaulted by a bright light and loud music, cacophonous after only the sound of his own breathing. Steve turns around and shields his eyes, trying to identify the intruder.
It's his cellphone, sitting there on the floor, the screen flashing and the ringtone blaring loud enough that it feels like his eardrums are bursting.
Steve drops to his knees and crawls closer to the phone. The light gives him one advantage – he's in a two metre by two metre cube and his initial findings were correct. There's no obvious door or opening mechanism anywhere.
He hovers over the phone's screen, and squints. The caller ID says Danny Williams, and Steve reaches out to accept the call.
“Hello?”
“McGarrett? Steve, is that you? Man, where the hell are you? We have tried -”
Steve sucks in air. “Danny,” he says. “I don't know.”
“You don't know? What do you mean, you don't know?”
“I don't know,” Steve repeats slowly. “I woke up in a box.”
“Box? What kind of box?”There's a pause, and Steve can hear Danny calling for Chin and Kono to get the hell over here. “I'm putting you on speaker. There. Go.”
“I woke up in a box,” Steve says. He closes his eyes and touches the sore spot on the back of his head. “It's a two metre cube, some kind of metal. And it's sealed.”
“Sealed?” It's Chin.
“Sealed.” The repetition is starting to annoy Steve, but right now it's probably the least of his problems. “Probably airtight. I don't know where I am, or how I got here. I can't see or hear anything from outside. The last thing I remember is going to bed.”
“Have you got anything else besides your cellphone?” Chin asks.
That's a very good question. Steve pushes a button on the side of the phone, and uses the dim light to look around again. “No.”
“Okay.” It's Danny again. “Okay, listen to me Steve. We are going to find you, okay? We are going to find you, get you the hell out of there, and then find the bastard who did this to you. Just – just sit tight, okay?”
“Sure.” As reassurances go, he's heard more convincing ones, but he'll take what he can right now – and anyway, it's not like Steve was planning on going anywhere. He reaches out to the phone again, and just as the light snaps out again, he notices the tiniest tremor in his hand.
He hangs up on Danny.
The sudden silence is deafening. A few seconds later he's blind again.
Steve closes his eyes, presses his hands against his face and counts to ten. Then he takes a mental check. He has his cell phone. That either demonstrates a spectacular moment of stupidity on the part of whoever did this to him, or a moment of brilliance – Steve could die in this box and if he did his team would have to live and deal with the fact they'd known and failed to find him in time. He tries to think – a two by two metre cube is eight cubic metres of air, which would give him... less than a day? And that depended on how long he'd been in the box before waking up.
Whoever's responsible for this is a smart son of a bitch. The plan is perfect in its simplicity.
Almost a shame that's not going to be how it happens. Steve won't let it, and neither will his team.
In the meantime, though, he does have that cellphone. He reaches forward and finds it on his first sweep, and only fumbles a little as he looks for the button to switch the back light on. At the last second he remembers to angle the phone away from his eyes. He smirks as the inside of the box is lit up. Time to scope the territory.
He angles the phone upward, and carefully checks each inch of the join between the wall and ceiling, moving along each side in turn. There really are no signs of a functional opening mechanism anywhere, nor along any of the other corners, which means one of two likely scenarios. Either the top of the box was somehow winched into place once Steve had been put inside, or the entire thing has been built around him. Of the two, the former explanation is the most expedient, but he won't be placing bets any time soon.
The air still has the same musty feel to it, and Steve can't feel any indication of air vents no matter where in the box he stands. The box is almost certainly airtight. He's not just locked in – he's on a countdown.
Steve shuffles backwards until he's leaning against a wall, and slides down to a sitting position, keeping the phone in his left hand, tilting his head back as well. He closes his eyes, not that it makes any difference, physically or mentally. He's undergone enough sensory deprivation training in his time that he could navigate most assault courses blindfolded with just an NCO's voice to guide him. This is still different, though. The complete lack of anything is unsettling, and more pervasive than anything he can remember experiencing. Doesn't matter how much he's used to being alone in his head with just his training and instincts for company. There's always been something to do, some way of not feeling completely and utterly useless –
A sudden flaring pain in his right hand, and Steve realises he's just punched the floor. His breathing is rushed, and audibly shallow, and he has to focus to get it back down again. Finite air supply, he reminds himself. Finite, meaning limited, meaning no stupid stunts like giving into emotional responses or physical exertions.
He thinks about who could have done this to him. The resources needed to break into his home, kidnap and transport him to a secondary location – and get him into this box – without him being aware of any of it. Wo Fat is the obvious candidate, for the obvious reasons, but even Steve can see the psychology is all wrong. None of this fits what little he knows of the elusive, reclusive criminal mastermind responsible for the deaths of his parents among countless other crimes. There are other ways to kill Steve, both easier and more complex than this – and this is such a very specific, very contrived way of attempting to kill someone. Steve's in this box, with only his cell phone, for a reason.
If Danny and the others can figure out that reason, they can find him.
It's something the team should know, on the chance they haven't come to the same conclusion already. This time he's prepared for the bright light as he pulls up the keypad and, for the first time, takes note of what else is on the screen.
The clock reads 10:17, and although Steve's not ruling out tampering he commits it to memory anyway. The phone's back light brightens when he pulls up the main screen and he shields his eyes again, flipping through the contacts list until he gets to Danny Williams and presses the call button.
It goes straight to voice mail, and Steve tries not to think about the lump that's appeared in his throat, stopping him from breathing. He forcibly exhales and, his hand again exhibiting that tiny tremor, tries again. Kono Kalakaua.
She picks up on the second ring, and relief floods Steve's senses. “Boss? You okay?”
“Still here,” Steve replies. “How long ago did Danny call?” It's frustrating that he can't remember, but he needs to know.
“Uh... maybe forty minutes,” is Kono's reply.
“I tried to call him. He didn't pick up.”
“He's following a lead. Probably just somewhere with bad cell reception.” She's trying to placate him, and Steve wants to appreciate the thought, he really does, but there isn't exactly time for that right now.
Instead of admonish her for something that isn't her fault, he instead says: “Unlike me.”
He can almost hear her frown. “Boss?”
Steve deliberately takes a deep breath and tries to reorganise his thoughts – he'd lost forty minutes in his own head? – so there's a chance they'll make sense to someone who isn't him.
“I have cell reception,” he explains. “And this whole set up – it's deliberate, it -”
“It's too specific to be a random attack,” Kono finishes. “Yeah, we came to the same conclusion about two minutes after you and Danny spoke. And we checked – we can't get a GPS fix on your phone. Looks like it was disabled on your end.”
Okay. Okay. “What lead is Danny following?”
“Some traffic cams picked up unusual activity in your neighbourhood between midnight and morning rush hour. Since we don't know exactly when you were taken, we're checking up on everything.”
“And you need to check Five-0's case history,” Steve says.
“For a pathology that matches this,” Kono replies. “Chin's all over it.”
“And what about you?”
“I just got a call from Danny; one of the drivers on our list is on the other side of town from where he is.”
Steve processes this. “Don't let me stop you.”
“You're not. I just got to the car park.” And sure enough, in the background Steve can make out the sounds of other people and traffic.
“Okay.”
“Hey, Boss?” Kono's concern is practically radiating through the phone. “We are going to find you – before you run out of air.”
“I know.”
“Good.” Now it's determination coming through in spades, which in any other circumstance would make him want to smile.
“Just...” Steve hates the helplessness, but – well, he can't help it. However much he keeps reminding himself. “Keep me posted.”
“Of course. Hang in there.”
“Will do.”
Steve hangs up again, and this time closes his eyes and braces himself for the light to go off. He stays crouched and tries to process the conversation. Danny's already following up leads, Kono's out in the field with him and Chin's doing his thing with the task force's case history. And his phone's been tampered with – Steve hadn't even thought about the GPS angle, for all they've used it to track down criminals before. But the team had, and had already ruled the simplest possible means of finding him out, so that's good, in a twisted way.
Tampering. His phone was tampered with before he was put in the box. That right there is something Steve can investigate – something he can do. He reaches forward for the phone, and then moves backwards to lean against the wall again.
He turns the phone over in his hands in the darkness. It feels like his phone, no obvious parts missing or added while he was unconscious. Bracing himself yet again, Steve turns on the phone's back light. He has to angle the screen away from his direct line of sight, but eventually he gets it into a position where he can read what's on the screen without causing too much strain on his eyes.
The menus all seem to be where they should be – his contacts list is intact, and so are his call and text message histories. The picture and sound files are where they're supposed to be. The battery power's about mid-level, but that's not an immediate concern.
The apps are missing, though. Steve only had a few in the first place, ones that qualified as tools, plus a couple more frivolous ones that he's sure Danny or Grace snuck on there when he wasn't looking. He's not sure what the significance of removing the apps is – until he remembers that at least two of them are capable of pinpointing exact geographical locations. He thinks he could just re-download the right apps, but when he checks the options to connect him to the internet are also missing. Whoever took him probably wiped all of the apps as well as removing the GPS component to prevent any chance of Steve utilising his phone to help in the search for him.
That speaks to an extra layer of forethought in the plan, and Steve shivers before he can stop himself. He touches the source of the trauma on the back of his head, much more gingerly this time, checking for lumps. It's even more difficult in this environment to tell for sure, but there's a very real chance he's got a concussion. It would explain, or at least contribute to, his relatively disjointed thought processes, and the fact he'd managed to lose forty minutes between the calls with Danny and Kono.
Steve shifts position, keeping the phone gripped tightly in one hand. There's a slight numbness running down his right leg, and now that he thinks about it, he's feeling hungry and thirsty. Those are easier urges to keep in check, but he's going to need some way of keeping saliva production in his mouth up in order to prevent dehydration from setting in too quickly. A quick run around of the pyjama's waist reveals a distinct lack of buttons, and while Steve's inner SEAL baulks at the idea of sucking his thumb like an infant, he files away the action for possible future use. He's estimated and rechecked a few times that he's got anywhere between twelve and twenty hours of breathable air – the longer this situation lasts, the lower down the list of his priorities dignity is going to be, even if the only witness to anything inside the box is Steve himself.
Mary Ann. Vivid images of his sister come to mind quicker than Steve can banish them. She's still in L.A., at least she was the last time they spoke. Steve's still not great at the communication thing, but he's been trying, consciously making the effort not to push Mary away emotionally the way he had before. He wonders what she's doing right at this very moment, trying to take into account time zones and his limited knowledge of her admittedly sporadic habits. Whether she knows what's happening – what she would do if Steve called her right now and tried to tell her that he might not live to midnight. She'd freak out, he realises. She'd panic and freak and maybe even hate Steve for leaving her like this, whether he calls her or not.
That idea alone is enough to intensify his headache, and Steve drops the phone into his lap and presses the palms of both his hands against his forehead, trying to block out the pain as well as Mary's possible reactions to what's happening.
He won't call her – not yet. Later, maybe, if it comes down to the wire and the probability of him not being found in time becomes too high to ignore – then he'll call her and try to tell her the things he's never been able to find the words for before. Steve's a man of action, always has been, but actions are worth fuck all when you're slowly suffocating in a sealed box God only knows where.
Steve exhales loudly, and starts stretching his legs slowly, trying to ease the numbness without overstimulating blood flow. It's something he can make himself concentrate totally on, and this time it's maybe a couple of minutes before he feels calmer inside his own skin again.
His throat's starting to dry out, and Steve swallows spit a couple of times before giving in and sucking his thumb. He makes a mental note to start sewing spare buttons into all his clothing, to pre-empt this from happening the next time he gets kidnapped. Instantly Danny's voice reverberates in his head: Steven, the point is to pre-empt there being a next time instead of coming up with contingency plans for it actually happening. I don't know what they taught you in the Army, but clearly personal security was not on the curriculum!
It's enough to make his stomach clench, and with his free hand Steve fumbles for the phone and wraps his fingers around it, holding it against his stomach. His throat appropriately moistened for the moment, he wipes his thumb on a pant leg. He'd much rather do that periodically than there be a mental image of him curled up inside the box, sucking his thumb. He's not going to let whoever did this gain that psychological advantage, even if the battle is being waged entirely inside his own mind. He's played mind games before; he knows how they're won and lost.
The thumb-sucking is going to be a short term solution at best. Human skin is porous enough that he's not going to be able to get as much saliva going as he would by sucking on something harder – like a button. Steve vows to make the spare buttons thing a top priority if he gets out of here.
When. When he gets out of here.
As if on cue, the cell phone goes off again. Steve's eyes take a moment to adjust before he can read the name Chin Ho Kelly.
“Hey, Chin.”
“Are you all right? Your voice -”
“Dry throat,” Steve interrupts.
“Oh.”
“How's the case going?” Steve asks, even though Chin had been the one to call him.
“Danny and Kono are still following leads from the traffic cams. All dead ends so far, just nocturnal truckers. HPD forensics went over your house with a fine tooth comb, but there are no clues as to who did this.”
“Yeah, I got nothing either.” Steve lets his head fall back against the wall again. “My phone's been tampered with. I can call and text, but that's about it.”
“That makes sense,” Chin tells him. “I've been going over recent Five-0 cases, and trying to profile the person who could have pulled this off.”
“Money, means and a hell of a grudge,” Steve offers, because it's all he can do from here.
“How do you figure?”
It occurs to Steve that Chin probably has these answers already, and more besides. It also occurs to him that he doesn't care. “The box is made of thick, solid metal. No visible hinges means the top was probably winched on after I was put inside. You need privacy and money to pull off something like that without arousing attention or suspicion.”
“And Oahu is one fine piece of real estate,” Chin agrees with an audible smirk.
“Assuming I'm still on the island.”
“No, brah. Not enough time to get you anywhere else, especially unnoticed.” Chin sounds confident on this point, so Steve lets it slide. “We haven't narrowed the time frame by much, but you're still on the same island as us. It would fit the guy's M.O., that's for sure.”
A meticulous strategist with means and motive. Right now Steve wants nothing more than to shoot his kidnapper in the face. He suspects his team harbour similar sentiments, and it's almost enough to make him smirk.
“Hey – how are you holding up in there?” Chin's voice cuts through the fantasies of grievous bodily harm and hits Steve right where he wasn't expecting it.
“Honestly?”
“That might be a good place to start,” Chin says dryly.
This time Steve lets himself smile. “I can't see or hear anything outside the box. Blood flow in my legs gets restricted if I stay still longer than a couple of minutes, but it's hard to measure time because I might have a concussion and yeah, there's a clock on my phone but the light hurts my eyes. I've got less than twenty hours before hypoxia shuts down my respiratory system, and I haven't eaten in more than a day.”
“Eighteen hours.” Chin's voice is much quieter now. “From when the box was first sealed, and assuming there are no ventilation cracks anywhere – one person in a two metre cube gets a maximum of eighteen hours' breathable air.”
Steve tries to think back to when he first tried thinking about how long he'd been in here. “There are no ventilation cracks that I could find. Which means we could be looking at twelve hours left.”
“It's not going to come to...”
Steve waits, but Chin doesn't finish the sentence. “What? What is it?”
“I think I found something.”
Every nerve in Steve's body jumps to high alert, numb leg and dry throat be damned. “What did you find?”
“Does the name Oscar Doko mean anything to you?”
Nothing comes to mind. “No. Who is he?”
“An old school drug baron. We've been making inroads into his island operations over the last few months. Mostly taking out his deputies. The middle men.”
Which explains why Steve can't remember the man's name off the bat. He opens his mouth to say something, something about Danny and HPD back up and a half dozen other things that means he really did pay attention every time the subject of police procedure was ranted upon, but Chin gets there first.
“I have to call Danny.” He sounds apologetic.
“Okay.”
“Someone will call you back in another hour or so, unless something comes up in the meantime.”
Steve processes this statement, and frowns. “It's been an hour since I talked to Kono?”
“Just under.” Chin pauses, probably to frown and contemplate the implications of the question. It's an easy, familiar mental picture. “Think that could be the concussion?”
He's not sure, but it occurs to Steve that he should check for puncture marks when this conversation is finished. “Go. Call Danny, get things moving. Whatever you gotta do.”
“Later, brah.” Chin hangs up.
Steve takes some deep breaths, just because he can even though he probably shouldn't. He breathes out through his mouth just so he can hear the exhale, and gets on with the business of looking for possible puncture marks. He's suffered enough head traumas before that he knows how his mind and body reacts to various grades of concussion, and he can't shake the feeling that a whack to the back of the head and the psychological effects of total solitary confinement shouldn't be enough cause him to experience time slips like this. Even the kind of looped thinking and introspection he's found himself capable of in the last few hours don't take that long to play themselves out.
He likes to think he's only complex when it matters.
The back of his head and neck are the obvious places for him to have been injected, given the ongoing headache, but his fingers can't find anywhere a needle might have gone recently. He weighs the pros and cons of checking as much of the rest of his body as he can reach or see, and decides against it. Assuming he was drugged before being moved, a needle is the most dangerous way of introducing something into his system. There could just as easily have been something slipped into his food or drink – or the water supply in his house. Another thing to add to the list of things to do when he gets out of here – test for contaminants in the plumbing.
The numbness in his right leg has turned into an ache, so Steve moves to lever himself to his feet. He's been in the same basic position for longer than he should have been but the stiffness in his limbs takes him by surprise. He keeps the phone gripped tight in one hand, and starts stretching, first his legs, then arms and torso. And because certain detectives keep telling him variety is the spice of life, Steve paces around the cube a few times, keeping his free hand trailing along the nearest wall and eventually sits down on the opposite side from where he'd started.
His throat's dry again, but Steve tries not to think about that.
Instead he thinks about Mom.
One of the clearest memories he has of her is from when he was ten, and home from school with an infection. She'd taken time off work to look after him, and they'd spent an entire morning sitting out on the lanai, staring out at the sea. Steve remembers snuggling into her side while they watched a tourist boat way off in the distance, and her arm wrapped around him, keeping him secure. Grounded. Safe.
The image blurs, and now Steve's standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The salt air is fresh and cold, and there's nothing on the horizon but a few distant storm clouds. The deck vibrates, a constant low sound that's as reassuring as the ocean in front of him. He smiles. This is his environment.
Then the picture starts to dim, fading inward from the edges, and Steve wakes up in pitch black surrounded by six solid metal walls and an invisible clock hanging over his head.
He checks the time on the phone. 12:41. And there's a missed call from Danny Williams. Danny had called and he hadn't heard the ringtone?
Steve's not sure whether he's still dreaming or not, but he calls Danny back anyway.
He picks up on the fourth ring. “Detective Williams.”
“Danny,” Steve wants to say, but it comes out as a raspy noise right at the back of his throat. He swallows a couple of times, coughs, and tries again. “Danny.”
“Steve! Thank God, I was getting worried ab – hey! I've got right of way here, jackhole, and you know why? Because I am a cop and my partner's life is on the line! Move it, move it! Idiot islanders, why they gotta be in a hurry to get everywhere in this tiny godforsaken -”
“Danny,” Steve says again.
“I hate van drivers,” is Danny's unrepentant explanation. Then: “You didn't pick up when I called you.”
Well versed by now in Danno-as-a-foreign-language, Steve answers the unspoken question. “I was asleep. I think.”
“You think?”
Steve shakes his head, not that Danny can see that. “I was standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier,” he says, because he knows mentioning Mom would make Danny stop and ask more questions, and now isn't the time for that.
“Whatever floats your – I'm not going to finish that sentence.”
Steve coughs again, and tries to get more saliva flowing. “You get road rage driving on your own, now?”
“It turns out that driving my own car is an unusual and scary enough experience that I will yell at anything that does not obey the exact letter of the state's traffic laws.” Danny sucks in a loud breath. “Chin told you about Oscar Doko.”
“Name and one sentence job description. What else have you got?”
“Turns out Oscar Doko had a son. 'Had' being the correct verb tense. Oscar Junior was Daddy's second in command in the family smuggling business, and after our merry little band busted him, he was sent to super-max for an extended stay. The short story is that he got knifed and was left to bleed out in solitary confinement. Now, I hear that story and I have to ask myself: does that remind me of anything that has happened lately to the head of the task force responsible for sending the late Oscar Junior to prison in the first place?” There's a pause, and a screech of tires, and the sound of someone yelling from a distance. “Chin thinks that Daddy Dearest is our guy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go channel my inner freak ninja SEAL and try to scare the crap out of someone who may have actually put my freak ninja SEAL in a box and left him there to – well. If it turns out he has, then Oscar Senior is in for a bad day, because we are going to scupper his plans. Steve?”
“Yeah, Danno?”
“We're coming for you.” Danny hangs up, and Steve has to blink back a sudden swell of emotion. It's Danny's conviction – and Danny's conviction alone – that proves he didn't just dream that conversation.
Steve wonders what it says about himself that that's what cements it for him, or that he can still be surprised by Danny's loyalty, not just to the team, but to him. Later, he'll blame that on the concussion. Now, he just takes it as a reassurance, not that he can take it as much else.
He thinks about what Danny has told him. That Chin's hunch from the case files has apparently paid off is promising, and it's easy to imagine what will happen next. Danny, Chin and Kono will locate and apprehend Oscar Doko, or someone who can get them to Oscar Doko, and they will do whatever it takes to get Steve's location out of him.
Steve knows that just by charging in all guns blazing, Doko will immediately have the psychological advantage. It'll make him harder to break, not that it would have been easy under any other circumstances. Steve's on edge now just thinking about the many possible ways this could go, because he's dealt with guys like Doko before, not just since accepting the Governor's job offer but everywhere he's been with the SEALs there have been guys like Doko. It's possible to break them – it's possible to break anyone given enough time and pressure. Time is the one thing Steve doesn't have right now.
He fumbles for the phone before he can stop himself, and texts Danny. He doesn't trust himself to have another conversation right now, not with memories of classified ops and sanctioned violence running through his head, but he thinks Danny will understand the message.
Don't give Doko the edge.
There's no reply, which could mean one of any number of things. Steve forces himself to take some deep breaths and get his pulse back down again. Then he scoots himself forward so he can lie flat on the floor of the box, legs outstretched without touching the sides, and folds his hands across his chest, phone tucked safely into the waistband of his pyjamas.
And he waits.
It goes against everything he's ever been taught, either by Dad or the Navy; it feels wrong at every level, but Steve forces himself to remain still, to focus on an invisible point in complete darkness and wait. His life is no longer in his hands. It's something he hasn't experienced in a long time, but he can accept that, even work within its parameters.
He counts off five minute increments in his head, and uses each marker to change position. He does simple warm up stretches, alternates them with either sitting or lying in a fixed position. He paces the box's perimeter, and tries again, futilely, to find any give in the sides or top of the box. By his estimation he spends forty minutes determinedly not thinking about anything but the blood flow to major muscle groups and the approximate ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide based on what he and Chin had calculated. Then he has to think about something that isn't Chin, because that leads to Danny and Kono and their attempts to find Doko and use him to find Steve and...
Anyone other than Steve would be panicking right about now, but Steve has no intention of giving into panic because he has faith in his team. He also has a slight itch on the back of his right knee, and he'd quite happily kill for a coffee and a malasada.
None of this is helping him, though. Neither is the absolute darkness or the absence of sound outside the box – and for the first time it occurs to Steve that he might be underground. That the reason he can't hear anything is because he's surrounded by compacted dirt and rocks, or maybe water. He could be in a self-contained body of water or even the ocean.
The lump in his throat reappears, and Steve has to cough a few times to dislodge it. His throat rasps, which makes him cough some more. It helps, and the brief moment of panic is over, and he can think more rationally. He can't be underwater, or very far underground, otherwise he wouldn't have cell reception – and Steve's still working on that being a key part of whatever this is.
He turns the cell phone over in his hands and wrestles the urge to call someone – anyone – just to hear another human voice. He tries to think. Catherine's out on her aircraft carrier, not that she and Steve ever have conversations that extend beyond transport from base to his house, and postponed dinner plans. He could call Mary, but he still doesn't know what he could say to her. He hasn't spoken to most of his SEAL buddies since transferring to the Reserves, except to pass on news of Bullfrog's fate.
In the end the decision of who to call is taken out of his hands. The phone explodes in a wave of light and noise and Steve doesn't pause to check who's calling before answering. “McGarrett,” he tries to say, but again it comes out as a hoarse whisper.
“McGarrett? Steve?” It's Chin, but Steve is too busy trying to moisten his throat.
“Yeah,” he says after far too long a gap. It's not much better than the rasp, but at least it resembles actual speech.
Chin takes the delay to reply in his stride. “We've got Doko in custody.”
Steve's mind races, calculating and recalculating “Is it him?”
“Judging by the way he looks completely self-satisfied, yeah, I'd say it's him.” Chin's voice is hard. In the background Steve can hear sirens and someone yelling in a Jersey accent. “Danny got the text you sent before we went in, but it wouldn't have made any difference.”
Yeah – just the fact of having three-fourths of Five-0 show up on his doorstep, pissed off and guns raised would have been enough to tell Doko he was winning, at least for the moment.
“Kono's running off a list of every piece of real estate and smallholding associated with Doko or any of his shell corporations,” Chin continues. “She thinks we should start with isolated properties and patches of undeveloped land.”
“Sounds good,” Steve says automatically. Then something occurs to him. “Look for construction sites, anything that's involved heavy duty machinery. He had to have built this box without anyone noticing, and moving it once it was built wouldn't be easy.”
“And who pays attention when it's the boss skimming off the top of the supplies?” Chin finishes the thought process. “Hey, cuz!” he calls out. “Add construction sites to the list!”
“Yeah!” Steve hears Kono call back.
Steve rests a hand against the nearest wall and leans on it slightly. He should be out there, should be the one kicking in doors and manhandling the bad guys and getting the information himself because that's the only way he knows how to do things. His breathing intensifies and a muscle in his right leg twitches.
“Hey,” Chin says. “Steve? Are you there? Just breathe, brah.”
And Steve does. Deep, perfectly measured breaths until he can't hear them any more. He rests his forehead against the wall and moves his free hand to rub the back of his neck. He shouldn't have to keep doing this, he reminds himself. He should be better at controlling his physiological reactions, has done so a dozen or more times in more dangerous situations than this – only it doesn't get more dangerous than being on a literal countdown and reliant on the actions of others to save him.
“I'm here,” Steve says eventually. He can almost believe it, too. “I'm here.”
In the background he can hear Chin murmuring something to someone, but he can't make out the words.
“Your friend in Naval Intelligence has already swept the island, but there's nothing we can use yet. We've got HPD on high alert, and the Governor's ready to pistol-whip every other law enforcement agency on the island if she has to,” Chin says – and Steve realises this is directed at him. “And Danny's 'chatting' to Doko as we speak. As soon as we get something, we'll let you know.”
It's Chin-speak for 'I have to put the phone down now so I can actively contribute to the search for you'. Steve's good with that – and this time he doesn't even have to convince himself of it.
“Okay,” he says, because he can't really say anything else, then hangs up. He's already processing the conversation. Your friend in Naval Intelligence, Chin had said, which means Catherine, which means the team told her about Steve being in the box, because she's reluctant enough when Steve calls her for help with a case. They're a long way from being boyfriend and girlfriend, but Steve still wonders if she's worried about him, whether...
He thinks this waiting game was easier when he didn't know what was going on outside the box. But it's difficult – difficult focusing on anything trivial when all he can think about is his dwindling air supply and yeah, the team's making solid progress on finding him, but what if it's not enough? What if, what if, what if? He's been thinking what if? more and more over the last few months, since Five-0 – since Dad – and even though it never leads anywhere good he can't stop himself.
And he really can't stop himself. There's a warm sensation spreading down the inside of his thighs, and Steve realises he's just urinated. Not much – there hadn't been much fluid in his system before he'd gone to bed last night, but... enough. He slides down the wall into a sitting position and buries his head in the crook of an arm. Images and sensations from the dream flash through his mind, and even though Steve closes his eyes tightly and tries to think about police procedure, fighting off the panic and humiliation rising in his chest.
Police procedure. He knows more about civilian police procedure than he generally lets on – after realising that Five-0 was going to be more than just a vengeance run against Hesse, Steve had invested in legal literature and police manuals. He only reads them sporadically, usually as reference for reports or when he specifically plans to use terminology to counter someone – usually Danny.
None of that's going to help him now, though. Danny's already said he's got to act more like Steve to break Doko, and all the understanding of warrant law or Miranda rights in the world, or the most expedient means of entering a building and subduing half a dozen armed insurgents – none of that is going to stop Steve from suffocating if his team doesn't find him in time.
Steve stops himself again, this time with a deliberately loud exhale. He keeps thinking it, but it doesn't make it any more or less true – he hates feeling this impotent, this helpless. On a whim he checks the time on the phone.
16:28. The most conservative estimate takes him up to approximately the twelve hour mark – and leaves him with approximately six hours of air. He wonders if the team had a more accurate time frame, whether they'd been able to pinpoint when he'd been taken from the interviews based off the footage from the traffic cams. If they have, nobody told him. Steve knows the adage ignorance is bliss, but in this case he thinks he'd rather know the parameters of his own mortality.
The urine on his pyjamas is drying, and it's starting to smell. It occurs to Steve that at least he hasn't had to shit or fart, and the thought is so absurd he laughs – it comes out as a dry wheeze, making him cough again, but he shakes with silent laughter for far longer than he would normally.
He prods the back of his right knee, remembering the ache from earlier, but there are no extraneous sensations anywhere around the joint or major muscles. Likewise with the back of his head. Steve reasons that there's been enough other things demanding his focus that the headache has simply faded away, at least until he knocks it again. The logic pans out in his head, enough for him to accept it for now and be able to think about something else.
Before he can decide what, the phone flashes and beeps in his hand. Steve whips the screen around instantly, anticipating a call or a message, something wild and immediate in his mind that the team are here, they've found him.
But they're not. There's no call or message – just the phone telling him that there's 10% battery remaining. Steve stares at the numbers, frowning and not comprehending. A tenth of the battery means it's on the verge of dying – bad choice of words, McGarrett, seriously! – and no. No, that's not supposed to happen. That can't be happening; Steve could have sworn he'd plugged the phone into charge at some point yesterday, but he can't have done because otherwise the phone wouldn't be nearly depleted now, when Steve needs it more than he's ever needed a portable communications device in his entire life.
He's dimly aware that he's beginning to panic. He's mostly aware that he doesn't care.
Six hours. A dying phone. His team on the way but no guarantee they'll find him in time. And the psychosomatic smell of salt air intermingled with fuzzy memories of his mom, soft and warm and telling him, “Everything's going to be okay, Stevie.”
Steve kind of hates his mind right now. He's not too keen on his body, either. The twinge in his knee reappears, and he walks a few circuits of the box, deliberately putting extra weight onto his right knee. After the second time around the twinge is gone. He sits down again, carefully this time, and doesn't think about the way he can feel the tremors in his fingers when he switches the phone's back light on again and starts to scroll through his short list of contacts.
Mary picks up on the fifth ring.
“Steve?”
“Hey,” Steve says. His voice is hoarse, but he's capable of forming sounds without having to cough. “I, uh...”
“Is everything all right?”
Steve wheezes. “No.”
There's a pause, and when she speaks again Mary's worry is obvious. “What's wrong? You have to use words, Steve, I can't see your face over the phone.”
“I...” Steve exhales loudly. “Something's going on right now and... I might not get out of this one.”
“Get out of this one... Steve, get out of what?”
“I'm trapped in a sealed box,” Steve says, because the facts are easiest to deal with – for him, at least. “I'm on a finite amount of breathable air and I've been here for approximately twelve hours already.”
There's silence on the line. Then: “How much longer have you got left?”
“Six hours, give or take. But my team – they're out there, looking for me. They've got solid leads and every chance of -”
“- and what, you thought you'd call me, and...” Mary trails off. There's a sound like she's choking on something. “Jesus, Steve.”
“I'm sorry,” Steve says automatically. “I just...”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”
“They're going to get to me in time.”
“They'd better.”
Steve smiles. That sounds more like the Mary he's been trying to get to know again.
“I just – I just wanted you to know,” he tells her. “From me, not an officer on your doorstep.”
There's the choking sound again. “It's not going to come to that – Steve, don't you dare let it come to that. Ever!”
“No promises -”
“- just what you can,” Mary finishes. “I remember Dad's speeches too.”
Steve shuts his eyes tightly. Those speeches had been drilled into them a long time ago.
“So,” Mary continues, a sudden bright tone in her voice. “Who do I complain to about you being in this situation in the first place?”
“That would be Detective Danny Williams,” Steve answers immediately. Danny can give her more accurate intel than he could hope to right now.
“I remember him – short blond thing with the Jersey motor mouth.”
“The one and only.”
“I'll get right on that...” Mary tapers off. Steve thinks he knows what's supposed to come next, but the McGarrett children are as bad as each other when it comes to talking about their feelings. Or talking about anything.
“When they get you out of there,” Mary says, breaking the silence, “you call me.”
“Mary...”
“Don't Steve, just – don't. Okay?”
“Okay,” Steve repeats. “I'll call you.”
“Promise me.”
Steve swallows. “I promise.”
Mary hangs up.
Steve switches the phone's light off instead of waiting for it to go out, and just sits there. He doesn't process the conversation like he has all of the others, or think about what he and Mary hadn't said to each other.
He's tired. The psychological warfare of containing him inside a pitch black box... it's starting to become too much, even for him. All he can think about are the eight cubic metres he's confined to, the ever dwindling oxygen to carbon dioxide ratio, and that all he can do is hope – pray – that Danny and the others find him in time.
It's the waiting game, he decides. That and the constantly repetitive thoughts in his head, born from a near-complete lack of sensory input and the fragments of intel his team have been giving him. From an objective standpoint Steve understands their decision to limit the information he's exposed to, and would do exactly the same himself if it was someone else in the box and Steve taking point. But as much as he can control his breathing and heart rate the majority of the time, he can't stop the other things; the swell of apprehension and nerves each time he gets a situation report, and the dizzying feeling of helplessness every time he's left alone once again.
Steve imagines how the conversation between Mary and Danny might go; an angry beginning followed by a plea for information and the demand from Mary that Danny find Steve, no matter what it takes. Danny will know the words to pacify her, at least for the duration of the search; will know the most effective means of helping Mary understand what's happening without patronising her or giving her false hope or a reason to grieve prematurely.
He counts off a minute and then begins another series of warm-up exercises. During a round of press-ups, the phone beeps again, telling Steve with lights and sounds that the battery level is low. Steve squashes the sudden urge to throw the phone against the far wall, and doesn't resume the exercises.
Instead he turns himself over until he's sat cross-legged and hands splayed on his thighs. He closes his eyes and forces himself to wait.
In his mind he's standing at the shoreline of his beach. His feet are bare, toes curling into the sand, and the water's cold. The smell of salt in the air is both overwhelming and familiar at the same time. There's nothing out on the water's surface, or in the sky and as long as he keeps his back to the beach there's nothing behind him, either. He's completely alone and completely at peace.
The silence is broken by electronic music, and Steve looks around for the intruder. His cell phone is on the ground behind him, its flashing lights muted by the bright sunlight. Slowly Steve moves to pick it up.
In the box, blinded by the phone's light, Steve picks out the words Danny Williams on the screen. Dazed, he presses the 'answer' button.
“Did I interrupt another nap?”
“Maybe,” Steve says. His voice is rough still, and his throat aches with every syllable, but it's not a lost cause just yet.
Danny makes a noise that could be laughter, but could also be a huff, like the noises he makes when Steve does something he considers crazy. “Time to start making a noise, Steve.”
Steve frowns. “What?”
“A noise, Steven.” Danny's tone is understandable now. He's impatient and on edge and a little bit scared. “We've cross-referenced Catherine's data with Doko's properties, and we are here.”
Steve stares up at the ceiling. “Am I underground?”
“For God's sake, McGarrett,” Danny grinds out. “Make some fucking noise!”
Finally, Steve understands. He climbs to his feet, keeping the phone against his ear, and starts pounding the ceiling with his free hand. After a couple of hits he forms a fist, which makes a much louder noise, at least to him. “Can you hear that?”
“Spread out!” he hears Danny yell. Then, what Steve assumes is directed to him. “Again! Keep going!”
Steve places the phone on the ground between his feet, ignoring the warning messages about the dying battery, adopts a solid stance and starts pounding the ceiling with two fists.
He hears voices erupting through the cell phone, indecipherable without the speaker function engaged but – more importantly, more amazingly – Steve can hear voices from above him. He keeps pounding the metal surface, ignores the pain building in his hands, just keeps hitting.
He hears the muffled sound of something that could be an engine, something large and heavy, and Steve keeps hitting the ceiling, doesn't stop, doesn't even let up. Two, maybe three minutes later the entire box starts to vibrate, and the ceiling begins to move. Steve instantly drops to a crouch, grabbing the phone. Light floods into the box, and it's too much for Steve to handle, so he covers himself and closes his eyes tightly.
Steve hears and feels people jumping down into the box beside him, and hands pressing against his arms and back and head.
“Steve? Steve?” The voice isn't coming through the phone – it's quiet and urgent and it's there and Steve eventually loosens his grip around his head and opens his eyes and looks up and it's Danny. Danny crouched there in a kevlar vest and white shirt and a ridiculous Windsor knot poking out at the base of his neck and it's possibly the most amazing thing Steve has ever seen in his life.
He stares at Danny and it latently occurs to him that he can breathe, and he does, gulping in cold, fresh air, leaning on the floor and into Danny when he offers support.
“Hey,” Danny says, “easy there, big guy, we've got you. It's okay, it's over now...” The words are repetitive and quiet, and Steve doesn't hear all of them but he knows what they mean.
He's alive. And he's getting out of the box.
He lets Danny take charge, directing Chin on the other side of him to attach Steve to a winch that is attached to something else that lifts him up and out of the box and into the waiting arms of people who look and sound like paramedics. He squints a lot, and drinks the water that is offered to him and grips the edge of the stretcher like it's going to disappear if he lets go of it.
He looks up and around and sees HPD scattered across a field with raised grey-black squares at regular intervals, and dimly realises what Danny meant when he told Steve to make a noise so they could find him. One of the squares is diagonal to the others, completely out of place, and Steve realises it was the top of the box he'd been in. A little way behind that is a forklift truck, and when he squints some more Steve can see Kono wearing a hard hat, climbing down from behind the wheel and bounding over to the top of the open box, where Chin and Danny are climbing out.
“Here you go, sir,” one of the paramedics says, offering Steve a shock blanket when he starts to shiver. He wraps it around him carefully, covering as much of his arms and torso as he can and watches his team.
Kono helps to pull Danny out of the box, and they and Chin come over to Steve's stretcher. They look fraught and tired and the hysterical kind of happy that comes from pulling off a last minute rescue. Steve musters up the energy to smile when they grin at him, then stretches out on the thin mattress and closes his eyes.
He's asleep within seconds.
o o o o o
Two days later, Steve stands at the shoreline of his beach. He knows it's not a dream because there are clouds in the sky, the sun is beginning to set and he can hear tourists in the distance, and birds and traffic much closer than that. He hasn't slept much since being released from the hospital. From past experience he knows that it will take time, but it will rectify itself. In the meantime he's content to stand out here and take in the horizon.
“Hey.” Danny approaches from behind, mindful of warning Steve of his presence.
Steve turns away from the ocean and takes in Danny's appearance. His tie is loosened and the shirt sleeves are crumpled, and he looks as tired as Steve thinks he himself should be feeling.
“Hey,” Steve echoes.
“Chin's about to order some takeaway, so if there's something you feel more inclined to have, now would be the time to make your preferences known.”
“Pizza,” Steve decides. “With -”
“- pineapples, yeah.” Danny knows a dozen or more rants about the evils of pineapples, but he lets it slide this time, as much as it visibly pains him to do so. Steve smirks, and turns back to the ocean. Danny comes over to stand beside him. The silence is companionable, and it's enough for Steve that Danny is there.
“You know,” Danny says, as if the easy silence isn't easy enough for him, “if you want to talk about what happened -”
“No.”
“If you want to talk about what happened,” Danny repeats. “If, not when. If you wanted to talk about it, you know where to find me.”
“On my couch, eating my food and watching my sports subscriptions.” Steve doesn't mean anything by that; his whole team's been camped out in his house for the last couple of days. They haven't pushed him to do or say or feel or think anything that he hasn't been ready to do already. They've just been there, and Steve appreciates that more than he knows how to say. He thinks they know that.
“That's us,” Danny agrees. “Five-0, crack crime-solving squad by day, unrepentant scroungers by night. I'll go relay your dinner order to Chin,” he adds, and walks out of Steve's sight line, back towards the house.
“I'll be right in,” Steve calls back over his shoulder. He doesn't take his eyes off the horizon.
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Summary: Steve wakes up in a box.
Characters: Steve, Danny, Chin, Kono; references to others.
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~10,000
Betas:
explodedpen and wihlutaWarnings: A few swear words and references to violence.
Author's Notes: Set during the second half of season 1, though no major spoilers. Huge, huge, thanks to
explodedpen, lady_drace and wihluta for all of the help, calming of my nerves and generally being awesome.Steve wakes up in a box. Technically he comes to slowly, a dull ache at the back of his head suggesting blunt force trauma, but he's aware of the pitch blackness immediately. There's no way it's natural, and he distinctly remembers going to bed last night, collapsing on top of the covers with moonlight streaming in through the windows and the sound of waves as an auditory backdrop. Neither stimulus is here, and the surface underneath him is hard, though not cold to the touch.
He pats himself down. He thinks he's still wearing the same Navy t-shirt and pyjama bottoms he went to bed in, but it's hard to tell without being able to see. Prodding further, he finds the holes in the back hem of the shirt and the loose threads on the pyjama's in-seams. His feet and wrists are bare. The air temperature is moderate and aside from a slight musty smell, nothing distinctive. Nothing at all.
Steve takes a deep breath, listening to the sound of the exhale. The chances are he's being held somewhere; he needs to know what he's up against. He uses his feet first, sweeping his legs out slowly, scooting himself in a straight line until his left foot brushes up against something hard.
Instantly he freezes, and moves his foot back. It's a wall, which he confirms with his hands, noting the right-angled corner, and the same smooth surface running vertically as horizontally. Cool to the touch, and slightly rough, like sandpaper, but more likely a metal alloy. Very solid.
For the first time he tries to stand up. Again he moves slowly, keeping one hand on the wall and using the other for balance. He's still acutely aware of the ache at the back of his head and knows he can't risk another trauma, at least not until he knows more about this new environment. It takes a while; his leg muscles are stiff, but not overly so (suggesting he hasn't been immobile longer than a few hours), but eventually he's stood upright. One hand still on the wall in front of him, Steve uses the other to reach upward. His elbow's still crooked when he brushes the ceiling, and again it's the same sandpapery surface as the wall and floor, and there's no give when he pushes harder. He runs his fingers along the corner between the wall and ceiling. No hinges, no join that he can feel – and no light.
Wherever this is – whatever it is – it seems like he's completely sealed in.
Like a tomb. Steve squashes the thought ruthlessly and focuses on the task at hand. So far he's found a wall and a ceiling. He keeps one hand on the wall and starts shuffling to his right, small equidistant steps until he hits another wall, which lends credence to the box theory. He turns and follows that wall down its full width, this time counting his steps carefully. At seven he hits another wall, and again, and again. Everything he's felt so far are right angles, which means he's in a four-walled cell – six if you count the floor and ceiling, which Steve does – with no windows and no obvious light or ventilation. His breathing and pulse are the only things he can hear.
It appears to be a perfect, seemingly self-contained cube. And Steve has no idea how he got here, who could have pulled something like this off without him knowing, or how long he's got in terms of air supply. That thought refuses to go away, no matter how hard Steve tries.
He rests his forehead against the wall and tries to think. Including time spent unconscious, he's been here for a few hours at the very least. It had gone 0200 by the time he'd finally made it to bed. That means it has to be mid-morning, or thereabouts, so the team has to have realised by now that he's missing.
Steve can picture it perfectly in his mind: Danny and Chin Ho and Kono bouncing off each other to solve the mystery. Danny talking non-stop at anyone who gets in his way, Chin and Kono working more silently but no more or less efficiently. They're a good team, the best – they're his team, and that's what Steve chooses to focus on.
He forces his breathing to slow down again, and waits for his pulse to match. He's going to achieve even less than what little he has so far by panicking, and if the cube really is sealed he's working on a very finite amount of breathable air, and he can't afford to waste any of it.
Then, from behind him, he's assaulted by a bright light and loud music, cacophonous after only the sound of his own breathing. Steve turns around and shields his eyes, trying to identify the intruder.
It's his cellphone, sitting there on the floor, the screen flashing and the ringtone blaring loud enough that it feels like his eardrums are bursting.
Steve drops to his knees and crawls closer to the phone. The light gives him one advantage – he's in a two metre by two metre cube and his initial findings were correct. There's no obvious door or opening mechanism anywhere.
He hovers over the phone's screen, and squints. The caller ID says Danny Williams, and Steve reaches out to accept the call.
“Hello?”
“McGarrett? Steve, is that you? Man, where the hell are you? We have tried -”
Steve sucks in air. “Danny,” he says. “I don't know.”
“You don't know? What do you mean, you don't know?”
“I don't know,” Steve repeats slowly. “I woke up in a box.”
“Box? What kind of box?”There's a pause, and Steve can hear Danny calling for Chin and Kono to get the hell over here. “I'm putting you on speaker. There. Go.”
“I woke up in a box,” Steve says. He closes his eyes and touches the sore spot on the back of his head. “It's a two metre cube, some kind of metal. And it's sealed.”
“Sealed?” It's Chin.
“Sealed.” The repetition is starting to annoy Steve, but right now it's probably the least of his problems. “Probably airtight. I don't know where I am, or how I got here. I can't see or hear anything from outside. The last thing I remember is going to bed.”
“Have you got anything else besides your cellphone?” Chin asks.
That's a very good question. Steve pushes a button on the side of the phone, and uses the dim light to look around again. “No.”
“Okay.” It's Danny again. “Okay, listen to me Steve. We are going to find you, okay? We are going to find you, get you the hell out of there, and then find the bastard who did this to you. Just – just sit tight, okay?”
“Sure.” As reassurances go, he's heard more convincing ones, but he'll take what he can right now – and anyway, it's not like Steve was planning on going anywhere. He reaches out to the phone again, and just as the light snaps out again, he notices the tiniest tremor in his hand.
He hangs up on Danny.
The sudden silence is deafening. A few seconds later he's blind again.
Steve closes his eyes, presses his hands against his face and counts to ten. Then he takes a mental check. He has his cell phone. That either demonstrates a spectacular moment of stupidity on the part of whoever did this to him, or a moment of brilliance – Steve could die in this box and if he did his team would have to live and deal with the fact they'd known and failed to find him in time. He tries to think – a two by two metre cube is eight cubic metres of air, which would give him... less than a day? And that depended on how long he'd been in the box before waking up.
Whoever's responsible for this is a smart son of a bitch. The plan is perfect in its simplicity.
Almost a shame that's not going to be how it happens. Steve won't let it, and neither will his team.
In the meantime, though, he does have that cellphone. He reaches forward and finds it on his first sweep, and only fumbles a little as he looks for the button to switch the back light on. At the last second he remembers to angle the phone away from his eyes. He smirks as the inside of the box is lit up. Time to scope the territory.
He angles the phone upward, and carefully checks each inch of the join between the wall and ceiling, moving along each side in turn. There really are no signs of a functional opening mechanism anywhere, nor along any of the other corners, which means one of two likely scenarios. Either the top of the box was somehow winched into place once Steve had been put inside, or the entire thing has been built around him. Of the two, the former explanation is the most expedient, but he won't be placing bets any time soon.
The air still has the same musty feel to it, and Steve can't feel any indication of air vents no matter where in the box he stands. The box is almost certainly airtight. He's not just locked in – he's on a countdown.
Steve shuffles backwards until he's leaning against a wall, and slides down to a sitting position, keeping the phone in his left hand, tilting his head back as well. He closes his eyes, not that it makes any difference, physically or mentally. He's undergone enough sensory deprivation training in his time that he could navigate most assault courses blindfolded with just an NCO's voice to guide him. This is still different, though. The complete lack of anything is unsettling, and more pervasive than anything he can remember experiencing. Doesn't matter how much he's used to being alone in his head with just his training and instincts for company. There's always been something to do, some way of not feeling completely and utterly useless –
A sudden flaring pain in his right hand, and Steve realises he's just punched the floor. His breathing is rushed, and audibly shallow, and he has to focus to get it back down again. Finite air supply, he reminds himself. Finite, meaning limited, meaning no stupid stunts like giving into emotional responses or physical exertions.
He thinks about who could have done this to him. The resources needed to break into his home, kidnap and transport him to a secondary location – and get him into this box – without him being aware of any of it. Wo Fat is the obvious candidate, for the obvious reasons, but even Steve can see the psychology is all wrong. None of this fits what little he knows of the elusive, reclusive criminal mastermind responsible for the deaths of his parents among countless other crimes. There are other ways to kill Steve, both easier and more complex than this – and this is such a very specific, very contrived way of attempting to kill someone. Steve's in this box, with only his cell phone, for a reason.
If Danny and the others can figure out that reason, they can find him.
It's something the team should know, on the chance they haven't come to the same conclusion already. This time he's prepared for the bright light as he pulls up the keypad and, for the first time, takes note of what else is on the screen.
The clock reads 10:17, and although Steve's not ruling out tampering he commits it to memory anyway. The phone's back light brightens when he pulls up the main screen and he shields his eyes again, flipping through the contacts list until he gets to Danny Williams and presses the call button.
It goes straight to voice mail, and Steve tries not to think about the lump that's appeared in his throat, stopping him from breathing. He forcibly exhales and, his hand again exhibiting that tiny tremor, tries again. Kono Kalakaua.
She picks up on the second ring, and relief floods Steve's senses. “Boss? You okay?”
“Still here,” Steve replies. “How long ago did Danny call?” It's frustrating that he can't remember, but he needs to know.
“Uh... maybe forty minutes,” is Kono's reply.
“I tried to call him. He didn't pick up.”
“He's following a lead. Probably just somewhere with bad cell reception.” She's trying to placate him, and Steve wants to appreciate the thought, he really does, but there isn't exactly time for that right now.
Instead of admonish her for something that isn't her fault, he instead says: “Unlike me.”
He can almost hear her frown. “Boss?”
Steve deliberately takes a deep breath and tries to reorganise his thoughts – he'd lost forty minutes in his own head? – so there's a chance they'll make sense to someone who isn't him.
“I have cell reception,” he explains. “And this whole set up – it's deliberate, it -”
“It's too specific to be a random attack,” Kono finishes. “Yeah, we came to the same conclusion about two minutes after you and Danny spoke. And we checked – we can't get a GPS fix on your phone. Looks like it was disabled on your end.”
Okay. Okay. “What lead is Danny following?”
“Some traffic cams picked up unusual activity in your neighbourhood between midnight and morning rush hour. Since we don't know exactly when you were taken, we're checking up on everything.”
“And you need to check Five-0's case history,” Steve says.
“For a pathology that matches this,” Kono replies. “Chin's all over it.”
“And what about you?”
“I just got a call from Danny; one of the drivers on our list is on the other side of town from where he is.”
Steve processes this. “Don't let me stop you.”
“You're not. I just got to the car park.” And sure enough, in the background Steve can make out the sounds of other people and traffic.
“Okay.”
“Hey, Boss?” Kono's concern is practically radiating through the phone. “We are going to find you – before you run out of air.”
“I know.”
“Good.” Now it's determination coming through in spades, which in any other circumstance would make him want to smile.
“Just...” Steve hates the helplessness, but – well, he can't help it. However much he keeps reminding himself. “Keep me posted.”
“Of course. Hang in there.”
“Will do.”
Steve hangs up again, and this time closes his eyes and braces himself for the light to go off. He stays crouched and tries to process the conversation. Danny's already following up leads, Kono's out in the field with him and Chin's doing his thing with the task force's case history. And his phone's been tampered with – Steve hadn't even thought about the GPS angle, for all they've used it to track down criminals before. But the team had, and had already ruled the simplest possible means of finding him out, so that's good, in a twisted way.
Tampering. His phone was tampered with before he was put in the box. That right there is something Steve can investigate – something he can do. He reaches forward for the phone, and then moves backwards to lean against the wall again.
He turns the phone over in his hands in the darkness. It feels like his phone, no obvious parts missing or added while he was unconscious. Bracing himself yet again, Steve turns on the phone's back light. He has to angle the screen away from his direct line of sight, but eventually he gets it into a position where he can read what's on the screen without causing too much strain on his eyes.
The menus all seem to be where they should be – his contacts list is intact, and so are his call and text message histories. The picture and sound files are where they're supposed to be. The battery power's about mid-level, but that's not an immediate concern.
The apps are missing, though. Steve only had a few in the first place, ones that qualified as tools, plus a couple more frivolous ones that he's sure Danny or Grace snuck on there when he wasn't looking. He's not sure what the significance of removing the apps is – until he remembers that at least two of them are capable of pinpointing exact geographical locations. He thinks he could just re-download the right apps, but when he checks the options to connect him to the internet are also missing. Whoever took him probably wiped all of the apps as well as removing the GPS component to prevent any chance of Steve utilising his phone to help in the search for him.
That speaks to an extra layer of forethought in the plan, and Steve shivers before he can stop himself. He touches the source of the trauma on the back of his head, much more gingerly this time, checking for lumps. It's even more difficult in this environment to tell for sure, but there's a very real chance he's got a concussion. It would explain, or at least contribute to, his relatively disjointed thought processes, and the fact he'd managed to lose forty minutes between the calls with Danny and Kono.
Steve shifts position, keeping the phone gripped tightly in one hand. There's a slight numbness running down his right leg, and now that he thinks about it, he's feeling hungry and thirsty. Those are easier urges to keep in check, but he's going to need some way of keeping saliva production in his mouth up in order to prevent dehydration from setting in too quickly. A quick run around of the pyjama's waist reveals a distinct lack of buttons, and while Steve's inner SEAL baulks at the idea of sucking his thumb like an infant, he files away the action for possible future use. He's estimated and rechecked a few times that he's got anywhere between twelve and twenty hours of breathable air – the longer this situation lasts, the lower down the list of his priorities dignity is going to be, even if the only witness to anything inside the box is Steve himself.
Mary Ann. Vivid images of his sister come to mind quicker than Steve can banish them. She's still in L.A., at least she was the last time they spoke. Steve's still not great at the communication thing, but he's been trying, consciously making the effort not to push Mary away emotionally the way he had before. He wonders what she's doing right at this very moment, trying to take into account time zones and his limited knowledge of her admittedly sporadic habits. Whether she knows what's happening – what she would do if Steve called her right now and tried to tell her that he might not live to midnight. She'd freak out, he realises. She'd panic and freak and maybe even hate Steve for leaving her like this, whether he calls her or not.
That idea alone is enough to intensify his headache, and Steve drops the phone into his lap and presses the palms of both his hands against his forehead, trying to block out the pain as well as Mary's possible reactions to what's happening.
He won't call her – not yet. Later, maybe, if it comes down to the wire and the probability of him not being found in time becomes too high to ignore – then he'll call her and try to tell her the things he's never been able to find the words for before. Steve's a man of action, always has been, but actions are worth fuck all when you're slowly suffocating in a sealed box God only knows where.
Steve exhales loudly, and starts stretching his legs slowly, trying to ease the numbness without overstimulating blood flow. It's something he can make himself concentrate totally on, and this time it's maybe a couple of minutes before he feels calmer inside his own skin again.
His throat's starting to dry out, and Steve swallows spit a couple of times before giving in and sucking his thumb. He makes a mental note to start sewing spare buttons into all his clothing, to pre-empt this from happening the next time he gets kidnapped. Instantly Danny's voice reverberates in his head: Steven, the point is to pre-empt there being a next time instead of coming up with contingency plans for it actually happening. I don't know what they taught you in the Army, but clearly personal security was not on the curriculum!
It's enough to make his stomach clench, and with his free hand Steve fumbles for the phone and wraps his fingers around it, holding it against his stomach. His throat appropriately moistened for the moment, he wipes his thumb on a pant leg. He'd much rather do that periodically than there be a mental image of him curled up inside the box, sucking his thumb. He's not going to let whoever did this gain that psychological advantage, even if the battle is being waged entirely inside his own mind. He's played mind games before; he knows how they're won and lost.
The thumb-sucking is going to be a short term solution at best. Human skin is porous enough that he's not going to be able to get as much saliva going as he would by sucking on something harder – like a button. Steve vows to make the spare buttons thing a top priority if he gets out of here.
When. When he gets out of here.
As if on cue, the cell phone goes off again. Steve's eyes take a moment to adjust before he can read the name Chin Ho Kelly.
“Hey, Chin.”
“Are you all right? Your voice -”
“Dry throat,” Steve interrupts.
“Oh.”
“How's the case going?” Steve asks, even though Chin had been the one to call him.
“Danny and Kono are still following leads from the traffic cams. All dead ends so far, just nocturnal truckers. HPD forensics went over your house with a fine tooth comb, but there are no clues as to who did this.”
“Yeah, I got nothing either.” Steve lets his head fall back against the wall again. “My phone's been tampered with. I can call and text, but that's about it.”
“That makes sense,” Chin tells him. “I've been going over recent Five-0 cases, and trying to profile the person who could have pulled this off.”
“Money, means and a hell of a grudge,” Steve offers, because it's all he can do from here.
“How do you figure?”
It occurs to Steve that Chin probably has these answers already, and more besides. It also occurs to him that he doesn't care. “The box is made of thick, solid metal. No visible hinges means the top was probably winched on after I was put inside. You need privacy and money to pull off something like that without arousing attention or suspicion.”
“And Oahu is one fine piece of real estate,” Chin agrees with an audible smirk.
“Assuming I'm still on the island.”
“No, brah. Not enough time to get you anywhere else, especially unnoticed.” Chin sounds confident on this point, so Steve lets it slide. “We haven't narrowed the time frame by much, but you're still on the same island as us. It would fit the guy's M.O., that's for sure.”
A meticulous strategist with means and motive. Right now Steve wants nothing more than to shoot his kidnapper in the face. He suspects his team harbour similar sentiments, and it's almost enough to make him smirk.
“Hey – how are you holding up in there?” Chin's voice cuts through the fantasies of grievous bodily harm and hits Steve right where he wasn't expecting it.
“Honestly?”
“That might be a good place to start,” Chin says dryly.
This time Steve lets himself smile. “I can't see or hear anything outside the box. Blood flow in my legs gets restricted if I stay still longer than a couple of minutes, but it's hard to measure time because I might have a concussion and yeah, there's a clock on my phone but the light hurts my eyes. I've got less than twenty hours before hypoxia shuts down my respiratory system, and I haven't eaten in more than a day.”
“Eighteen hours.” Chin's voice is much quieter now. “From when the box was first sealed, and assuming there are no ventilation cracks anywhere – one person in a two metre cube gets a maximum of eighteen hours' breathable air.”
Steve tries to think back to when he first tried thinking about how long he'd been in here. “There are no ventilation cracks that I could find. Which means we could be looking at twelve hours left.”
“It's not going to come to...”
Steve waits, but Chin doesn't finish the sentence. “What? What is it?”
“I think I found something.”
Every nerve in Steve's body jumps to high alert, numb leg and dry throat be damned. “What did you find?”
“Does the name Oscar Doko mean anything to you?”
Nothing comes to mind. “No. Who is he?”
“An old school drug baron. We've been making inroads into his island operations over the last few months. Mostly taking out his deputies. The middle men.”
Which explains why Steve can't remember the man's name off the bat. He opens his mouth to say something, something about Danny and HPD back up and a half dozen other things that means he really did pay attention every time the subject of police procedure was ranted upon, but Chin gets there first.
“I have to call Danny.” He sounds apologetic.
“Okay.”
“Someone will call you back in another hour or so, unless something comes up in the meantime.”
Steve processes this statement, and frowns. “It's been an hour since I talked to Kono?”
“Just under.” Chin pauses, probably to frown and contemplate the implications of the question. It's an easy, familiar mental picture. “Think that could be the concussion?”
He's not sure, but it occurs to Steve that he should check for puncture marks when this conversation is finished. “Go. Call Danny, get things moving. Whatever you gotta do.”
“Later, brah.” Chin hangs up.
Steve takes some deep breaths, just because he can even though he probably shouldn't. He breathes out through his mouth just so he can hear the exhale, and gets on with the business of looking for possible puncture marks. He's suffered enough head traumas before that he knows how his mind and body reacts to various grades of concussion, and he can't shake the feeling that a whack to the back of the head and the psychological effects of total solitary confinement shouldn't be enough cause him to experience time slips like this. Even the kind of looped thinking and introspection he's found himself capable of in the last few hours don't take that long to play themselves out.
He likes to think he's only complex when it matters.
The back of his head and neck are the obvious places for him to have been injected, given the ongoing headache, but his fingers can't find anywhere a needle might have gone recently. He weighs the pros and cons of checking as much of the rest of his body as he can reach or see, and decides against it. Assuming he was drugged before being moved, a needle is the most dangerous way of introducing something into his system. There could just as easily have been something slipped into his food or drink – or the water supply in his house. Another thing to add to the list of things to do when he gets out of here – test for contaminants in the plumbing.
The numbness in his right leg has turned into an ache, so Steve moves to lever himself to his feet. He's been in the same basic position for longer than he should have been but the stiffness in his limbs takes him by surprise. He keeps the phone gripped tight in one hand, and starts stretching, first his legs, then arms and torso. And because certain detectives keep telling him variety is the spice of life, Steve paces around the cube a few times, keeping his free hand trailing along the nearest wall and eventually sits down on the opposite side from where he'd started.
His throat's dry again, but Steve tries not to think about that.
Instead he thinks about Mom.
One of the clearest memories he has of her is from when he was ten, and home from school with an infection. She'd taken time off work to look after him, and they'd spent an entire morning sitting out on the lanai, staring out at the sea. Steve remembers snuggling into her side while they watched a tourist boat way off in the distance, and her arm wrapped around him, keeping him secure. Grounded. Safe.
The image blurs, and now Steve's standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The salt air is fresh and cold, and there's nothing on the horizon but a few distant storm clouds. The deck vibrates, a constant low sound that's as reassuring as the ocean in front of him. He smiles. This is his environment.
Then the picture starts to dim, fading inward from the edges, and Steve wakes up in pitch black surrounded by six solid metal walls and an invisible clock hanging over his head.
He checks the time on the phone. 12:41. And there's a missed call from Danny Williams. Danny had called and he hadn't heard the ringtone?
Steve's not sure whether he's still dreaming or not, but he calls Danny back anyway.
He picks up on the fourth ring. “Detective Williams.”
“Danny,” Steve wants to say, but it comes out as a raspy noise right at the back of his throat. He swallows a couple of times, coughs, and tries again. “Danny.”
“Steve! Thank God, I was getting worried ab – hey! I've got right of way here, jackhole, and you know why? Because I am a cop and my partner's life is on the line! Move it, move it! Idiot islanders, why they gotta be in a hurry to get everywhere in this tiny godforsaken -”
“Danny,” Steve says again.
“I hate van drivers,” is Danny's unrepentant explanation. Then: “You didn't pick up when I called you.”
Well versed by now in Danno-as-a-foreign-language, Steve answers the unspoken question. “I was asleep. I think.”
“You think?”
Steve shakes his head, not that Danny can see that. “I was standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier,” he says, because he knows mentioning Mom would make Danny stop and ask more questions, and now isn't the time for that.
“Whatever floats your – I'm not going to finish that sentence.”
Steve coughs again, and tries to get more saliva flowing. “You get road rage driving on your own, now?”
“It turns out that driving my own car is an unusual and scary enough experience that I will yell at anything that does not obey the exact letter of the state's traffic laws.” Danny sucks in a loud breath. “Chin told you about Oscar Doko.”
“Name and one sentence job description. What else have you got?”
“Turns out Oscar Doko had a son. 'Had' being the correct verb tense. Oscar Junior was Daddy's second in command in the family smuggling business, and after our merry little band busted him, he was sent to super-max for an extended stay. The short story is that he got knifed and was left to bleed out in solitary confinement. Now, I hear that story and I have to ask myself: does that remind me of anything that has happened lately to the head of the task force responsible for sending the late Oscar Junior to prison in the first place?” There's a pause, and a screech of tires, and the sound of someone yelling from a distance. “Chin thinks that Daddy Dearest is our guy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go channel my inner freak ninja SEAL and try to scare the crap out of someone who may have actually put my freak ninja SEAL in a box and left him there to – well. If it turns out he has, then Oscar Senior is in for a bad day, because we are going to scupper his plans. Steve?”
“Yeah, Danno?”
“We're coming for you.” Danny hangs up, and Steve has to blink back a sudden swell of emotion. It's Danny's conviction – and Danny's conviction alone – that proves he didn't just dream that conversation.
Steve wonders what it says about himself that that's what cements it for him, or that he can still be surprised by Danny's loyalty, not just to the team, but to him. Later, he'll blame that on the concussion. Now, he just takes it as a reassurance, not that he can take it as much else.
He thinks about what Danny has told him. That Chin's hunch from the case files has apparently paid off is promising, and it's easy to imagine what will happen next. Danny, Chin and Kono will locate and apprehend Oscar Doko, or someone who can get them to Oscar Doko, and they will do whatever it takes to get Steve's location out of him.
Steve knows that just by charging in all guns blazing, Doko will immediately have the psychological advantage. It'll make him harder to break, not that it would have been easy under any other circumstances. Steve's on edge now just thinking about the many possible ways this could go, because he's dealt with guys like Doko before, not just since accepting the Governor's job offer but everywhere he's been with the SEALs there have been guys like Doko. It's possible to break them – it's possible to break anyone given enough time and pressure. Time is the one thing Steve doesn't have right now.
He fumbles for the phone before he can stop himself, and texts Danny. He doesn't trust himself to have another conversation right now, not with memories of classified ops and sanctioned violence running through his head, but he thinks Danny will understand the message.
Don't give Doko the edge.
There's no reply, which could mean one of any number of things. Steve forces himself to take some deep breaths and get his pulse back down again. Then he scoots himself forward so he can lie flat on the floor of the box, legs outstretched without touching the sides, and folds his hands across his chest, phone tucked safely into the waistband of his pyjamas.
And he waits.
It goes against everything he's ever been taught, either by Dad or the Navy; it feels wrong at every level, but Steve forces himself to remain still, to focus on an invisible point in complete darkness and wait. His life is no longer in his hands. It's something he hasn't experienced in a long time, but he can accept that, even work within its parameters.
He counts off five minute increments in his head, and uses each marker to change position. He does simple warm up stretches, alternates them with either sitting or lying in a fixed position. He paces the box's perimeter, and tries again, futilely, to find any give in the sides or top of the box. By his estimation he spends forty minutes determinedly not thinking about anything but the blood flow to major muscle groups and the approximate ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide based on what he and Chin had calculated. Then he has to think about something that isn't Chin, because that leads to Danny and Kono and their attempts to find Doko and use him to find Steve and...
Anyone other than Steve would be panicking right about now, but Steve has no intention of giving into panic because he has faith in his team. He also has a slight itch on the back of his right knee, and he'd quite happily kill for a coffee and a malasada.
None of this is helping him, though. Neither is the absolute darkness or the absence of sound outside the box – and for the first time it occurs to Steve that he might be underground. That the reason he can't hear anything is because he's surrounded by compacted dirt and rocks, or maybe water. He could be in a self-contained body of water or even the ocean.
The lump in his throat reappears, and Steve has to cough a few times to dislodge it. His throat rasps, which makes him cough some more. It helps, and the brief moment of panic is over, and he can think more rationally. He can't be underwater, or very far underground, otherwise he wouldn't have cell reception – and Steve's still working on that being a key part of whatever this is.
He turns the cell phone over in his hands and wrestles the urge to call someone – anyone – just to hear another human voice. He tries to think. Catherine's out on her aircraft carrier, not that she and Steve ever have conversations that extend beyond transport from base to his house, and postponed dinner plans. He could call Mary, but he still doesn't know what he could say to her. He hasn't spoken to most of his SEAL buddies since transferring to the Reserves, except to pass on news of Bullfrog's fate.
In the end the decision of who to call is taken out of his hands. The phone explodes in a wave of light and noise and Steve doesn't pause to check who's calling before answering. “McGarrett,” he tries to say, but again it comes out as a hoarse whisper.
“McGarrett? Steve?” It's Chin, but Steve is too busy trying to moisten his throat.
“Yeah,” he says after far too long a gap. It's not much better than the rasp, but at least it resembles actual speech.
Chin takes the delay to reply in his stride. “We've got Doko in custody.”
Steve's mind races, calculating and recalculating “Is it him?”
“Judging by the way he looks completely self-satisfied, yeah, I'd say it's him.” Chin's voice is hard. In the background Steve can hear sirens and someone yelling in a Jersey accent. “Danny got the text you sent before we went in, but it wouldn't have made any difference.”
Yeah – just the fact of having three-fourths of Five-0 show up on his doorstep, pissed off and guns raised would have been enough to tell Doko he was winning, at least for the moment.
“Kono's running off a list of every piece of real estate and smallholding associated with Doko or any of his shell corporations,” Chin continues. “She thinks we should start with isolated properties and patches of undeveloped land.”
“Sounds good,” Steve says automatically. Then something occurs to him. “Look for construction sites, anything that's involved heavy duty machinery. He had to have built this box without anyone noticing, and moving it once it was built wouldn't be easy.”
“And who pays attention when it's the boss skimming off the top of the supplies?” Chin finishes the thought process. “Hey, cuz!” he calls out. “Add construction sites to the list!”
“Yeah!” Steve hears Kono call back.
Steve rests a hand against the nearest wall and leans on it slightly. He should be out there, should be the one kicking in doors and manhandling the bad guys and getting the information himself because that's the only way he knows how to do things. His breathing intensifies and a muscle in his right leg twitches.
“Hey,” Chin says. “Steve? Are you there? Just breathe, brah.”
And Steve does. Deep, perfectly measured breaths until he can't hear them any more. He rests his forehead against the wall and moves his free hand to rub the back of his neck. He shouldn't have to keep doing this, he reminds himself. He should be better at controlling his physiological reactions, has done so a dozen or more times in more dangerous situations than this – only it doesn't get more dangerous than being on a literal countdown and reliant on the actions of others to save him.
“I'm here,” Steve says eventually. He can almost believe it, too. “I'm here.”
In the background he can hear Chin murmuring something to someone, but he can't make out the words.
“Your friend in Naval Intelligence has already swept the island, but there's nothing we can use yet. We've got HPD on high alert, and the Governor's ready to pistol-whip every other law enforcement agency on the island if she has to,” Chin says – and Steve realises this is directed at him. “And Danny's 'chatting' to Doko as we speak. As soon as we get something, we'll let you know.”
It's Chin-speak for 'I have to put the phone down now so I can actively contribute to the search for you'. Steve's good with that – and this time he doesn't even have to convince himself of it.
“Okay,” he says, because he can't really say anything else, then hangs up. He's already processing the conversation. Your friend in Naval Intelligence, Chin had said, which means Catherine, which means the team told her about Steve being in the box, because she's reluctant enough when Steve calls her for help with a case. They're a long way from being boyfriend and girlfriend, but Steve still wonders if she's worried about him, whether...
He thinks this waiting game was easier when he didn't know what was going on outside the box. But it's difficult – difficult focusing on anything trivial when all he can think about is his dwindling air supply and yeah, the team's making solid progress on finding him, but what if it's not enough? What if, what if, what if? He's been thinking what if? more and more over the last few months, since Five-0 – since Dad – and even though it never leads anywhere good he can't stop himself.
And he really can't stop himself. There's a warm sensation spreading down the inside of his thighs, and Steve realises he's just urinated. Not much – there hadn't been much fluid in his system before he'd gone to bed last night, but... enough. He slides down the wall into a sitting position and buries his head in the crook of an arm. Images and sensations from the dream flash through his mind, and even though Steve closes his eyes tightly and tries to think about police procedure, fighting off the panic and humiliation rising in his chest.
Police procedure. He knows more about civilian police procedure than he generally lets on – after realising that Five-0 was going to be more than just a vengeance run against Hesse, Steve had invested in legal literature and police manuals. He only reads them sporadically, usually as reference for reports or when he specifically plans to use terminology to counter someone – usually Danny.
None of that's going to help him now, though. Danny's already said he's got to act more like Steve to break Doko, and all the understanding of warrant law or Miranda rights in the world, or the most expedient means of entering a building and subduing half a dozen armed insurgents – none of that is going to stop Steve from suffocating if his team doesn't find him in time.
Steve stops himself again, this time with a deliberately loud exhale. He keeps thinking it, but it doesn't make it any more or less true – he hates feeling this impotent, this helpless. On a whim he checks the time on the phone.
16:28. The most conservative estimate takes him up to approximately the twelve hour mark – and leaves him with approximately six hours of air. He wonders if the team had a more accurate time frame, whether they'd been able to pinpoint when he'd been taken from the interviews based off the footage from the traffic cams. If they have, nobody told him. Steve knows the adage ignorance is bliss, but in this case he thinks he'd rather know the parameters of his own mortality.
The urine on his pyjamas is drying, and it's starting to smell. It occurs to Steve that at least he hasn't had to shit or fart, and the thought is so absurd he laughs – it comes out as a dry wheeze, making him cough again, but he shakes with silent laughter for far longer than he would normally.
He prods the back of his right knee, remembering the ache from earlier, but there are no extraneous sensations anywhere around the joint or major muscles. Likewise with the back of his head. Steve reasons that there's been enough other things demanding his focus that the headache has simply faded away, at least until he knocks it again. The logic pans out in his head, enough for him to accept it for now and be able to think about something else.
Before he can decide what, the phone flashes and beeps in his hand. Steve whips the screen around instantly, anticipating a call or a message, something wild and immediate in his mind that the team are here, they've found him.
But they're not. There's no call or message – just the phone telling him that there's 10% battery remaining. Steve stares at the numbers, frowning and not comprehending. A tenth of the battery means it's on the verge of dying – bad choice of words, McGarrett, seriously! – and no. No, that's not supposed to happen. That can't be happening; Steve could have sworn he'd plugged the phone into charge at some point yesterday, but he can't have done because otherwise the phone wouldn't be nearly depleted now, when Steve needs it more than he's ever needed a portable communications device in his entire life.
He's dimly aware that he's beginning to panic. He's mostly aware that he doesn't care.
Six hours. A dying phone. His team on the way but no guarantee they'll find him in time. And the psychosomatic smell of salt air intermingled with fuzzy memories of his mom, soft and warm and telling him, “Everything's going to be okay, Stevie.”
Steve kind of hates his mind right now. He's not too keen on his body, either. The twinge in his knee reappears, and he walks a few circuits of the box, deliberately putting extra weight onto his right knee. After the second time around the twinge is gone. He sits down again, carefully this time, and doesn't think about the way he can feel the tremors in his fingers when he switches the phone's back light on again and starts to scroll through his short list of contacts.
Mary picks up on the fifth ring.
“Steve?”
“Hey,” Steve says. His voice is hoarse, but he's capable of forming sounds without having to cough. “I, uh...”
“Is everything all right?”
Steve wheezes. “No.”
There's a pause, and when she speaks again Mary's worry is obvious. “What's wrong? You have to use words, Steve, I can't see your face over the phone.”
“I...” Steve exhales loudly. “Something's going on right now and... I might not get out of this one.”
“Get out of this one... Steve, get out of what?”
“I'm trapped in a sealed box,” Steve says, because the facts are easiest to deal with – for him, at least. “I'm on a finite amount of breathable air and I've been here for approximately twelve hours already.”
There's silence on the line. Then: “How much longer have you got left?”
“Six hours, give or take. But my team – they're out there, looking for me. They've got solid leads and every chance of -”
“- and what, you thought you'd call me, and...” Mary trails off. There's a sound like she's choking on something. “Jesus, Steve.”
“I'm sorry,” Steve says automatically. “I just...”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”
“They're going to get to me in time.”
“They'd better.”
Steve smiles. That sounds more like the Mary he's been trying to get to know again.
“I just – I just wanted you to know,” he tells her. “From me, not an officer on your doorstep.”
There's the choking sound again. “It's not going to come to that – Steve, don't you dare let it come to that. Ever!”
“No promises -”
“- just what you can,” Mary finishes. “I remember Dad's speeches too.”
Steve shuts his eyes tightly. Those speeches had been drilled into them a long time ago.
“So,” Mary continues, a sudden bright tone in her voice. “Who do I complain to about you being in this situation in the first place?”
“That would be Detective Danny Williams,” Steve answers immediately. Danny can give her more accurate intel than he could hope to right now.
“I remember him – short blond thing with the Jersey motor mouth.”
“The one and only.”
“I'll get right on that...” Mary tapers off. Steve thinks he knows what's supposed to come next, but the McGarrett children are as bad as each other when it comes to talking about their feelings. Or talking about anything.
“When they get you out of there,” Mary says, breaking the silence, “you call me.”
“Mary...”
“Don't Steve, just – don't. Okay?”
“Okay,” Steve repeats. “I'll call you.”
“Promise me.”
Steve swallows. “I promise.”
Mary hangs up.
Steve switches the phone's light off instead of waiting for it to go out, and just sits there. He doesn't process the conversation like he has all of the others, or think about what he and Mary hadn't said to each other.
He's tired. The psychological warfare of containing him inside a pitch black box... it's starting to become too much, even for him. All he can think about are the eight cubic metres he's confined to, the ever dwindling oxygen to carbon dioxide ratio, and that all he can do is hope – pray – that Danny and the others find him in time.
It's the waiting game, he decides. That and the constantly repetitive thoughts in his head, born from a near-complete lack of sensory input and the fragments of intel his team have been giving him. From an objective standpoint Steve understands their decision to limit the information he's exposed to, and would do exactly the same himself if it was someone else in the box and Steve taking point. But as much as he can control his breathing and heart rate the majority of the time, he can't stop the other things; the swell of apprehension and nerves each time he gets a situation report, and the dizzying feeling of helplessness every time he's left alone once again.
Steve imagines how the conversation between Mary and Danny might go; an angry beginning followed by a plea for information and the demand from Mary that Danny find Steve, no matter what it takes. Danny will know the words to pacify her, at least for the duration of the search; will know the most effective means of helping Mary understand what's happening without patronising her or giving her false hope or a reason to grieve prematurely.
He counts off a minute and then begins another series of warm-up exercises. During a round of press-ups, the phone beeps again, telling Steve with lights and sounds that the battery level is low. Steve squashes the sudden urge to throw the phone against the far wall, and doesn't resume the exercises.
Instead he turns himself over until he's sat cross-legged and hands splayed on his thighs. He closes his eyes and forces himself to wait.
In his mind he's standing at the shoreline of his beach. His feet are bare, toes curling into the sand, and the water's cold. The smell of salt in the air is both overwhelming and familiar at the same time. There's nothing out on the water's surface, or in the sky and as long as he keeps his back to the beach there's nothing behind him, either. He's completely alone and completely at peace.
The silence is broken by electronic music, and Steve looks around for the intruder. His cell phone is on the ground behind him, its flashing lights muted by the bright sunlight. Slowly Steve moves to pick it up.
In the box, blinded by the phone's light, Steve picks out the words Danny Williams on the screen. Dazed, he presses the 'answer' button.
“Did I interrupt another nap?”
“Maybe,” Steve says. His voice is rough still, and his throat aches with every syllable, but it's not a lost cause just yet.
Danny makes a noise that could be laughter, but could also be a huff, like the noises he makes when Steve does something he considers crazy. “Time to start making a noise, Steve.”
Steve frowns. “What?”
“A noise, Steven.” Danny's tone is understandable now. He's impatient and on edge and a little bit scared. “We've cross-referenced Catherine's data with Doko's properties, and we are here.”
Steve stares up at the ceiling. “Am I underground?”
“For God's sake, McGarrett,” Danny grinds out. “Make some fucking noise!”
Finally, Steve understands. He climbs to his feet, keeping the phone against his ear, and starts pounding the ceiling with his free hand. After a couple of hits he forms a fist, which makes a much louder noise, at least to him. “Can you hear that?”
“Spread out!” he hears Danny yell. Then, what Steve assumes is directed to him. “Again! Keep going!”
Steve places the phone on the ground between his feet, ignoring the warning messages about the dying battery, adopts a solid stance and starts pounding the ceiling with two fists.
He hears voices erupting through the cell phone, indecipherable without the speaker function engaged but – more importantly, more amazingly – Steve can hear voices from above him. He keeps pounding the metal surface, ignores the pain building in his hands, just keeps hitting.
He hears the muffled sound of something that could be an engine, something large and heavy, and Steve keeps hitting the ceiling, doesn't stop, doesn't even let up. Two, maybe three minutes later the entire box starts to vibrate, and the ceiling begins to move. Steve instantly drops to a crouch, grabbing the phone. Light floods into the box, and it's too much for Steve to handle, so he covers himself and closes his eyes tightly.
Steve hears and feels people jumping down into the box beside him, and hands pressing against his arms and back and head.
“Steve? Steve?” The voice isn't coming through the phone – it's quiet and urgent and it's there and Steve eventually loosens his grip around his head and opens his eyes and looks up and it's Danny. Danny crouched there in a kevlar vest and white shirt and a ridiculous Windsor knot poking out at the base of his neck and it's possibly the most amazing thing Steve has ever seen in his life.
He stares at Danny and it latently occurs to him that he can breathe, and he does, gulping in cold, fresh air, leaning on the floor and into Danny when he offers support.
“Hey,” Danny says, “easy there, big guy, we've got you. It's okay, it's over now...” The words are repetitive and quiet, and Steve doesn't hear all of them but he knows what they mean.
He's alive. And he's getting out of the box.
He lets Danny take charge, directing Chin on the other side of him to attach Steve to a winch that is attached to something else that lifts him up and out of the box and into the waiting arms of people who look and sound like paramedics. He squints a lot, and drinks the water that is offered to him and grips the edge of the stretcher like it's going to disappear if he lets go of it.
He looks up and around and sees HPD scattered across a field with raised grey-black squares at regular intervals, and dimly realises what Danny meant when he told Steve to make a noise so they could find him. One of the squares is diagonal to the others, completely out of place, and Steve realises it was the top of the box he'd been in. A little way behind that is a forklift truck, and when he squints some more Steve can see Kono wearing a hard hat, climbing down from behind the wheel and bounding over to the top of the open box, where Chin and Danny are climbing out.
“Here you go, sir,” one of the paramedics says, offering Steve a shock blanket when he starts to shiver. He wraps it around him carefully, covering as much of his arms and torso as he can and watches his team.
Kono helps to pull Danny out of the box, and they and Chin come over to Steve's stretcher. They look fraught and tired and the hysterical kind of happy that comes from pulling off a last minute rescue. Steve musters up the energy to smile when they grin at him, then stretches out on the thin mattress and closes his eyes.
He's asleep within seconds.
Two days later, Steve stands at the shoreline of his beach. He knows it's not a dream because there are clouds in the sky, the sun is beginning to set and he can hear tourists in the distance, and birds and traffic much closer than that. He hasn't slept much since being released from the hospital. From past experience he knows that it will take time, but it will rectify itself. In the meantime he's content to stand out here and take in the horizon.
“Hey.” Danny approaches from behind, mindful of warning Steve of his presence.
Steve turns away from the ocean and takes in Danny's appearance. His tie is loosened and the shirt sleeves are crumpled, and he looks as tired as Steve thinks he himself should be feeling.
“Hey,” Steve echoes.
“Chin's about to order some takeaway, so if there's something you feel more inclined to have, now would be the time to make your preferences known.”
“Pizza,” Steve decides. “With -”
“- pineapples, yeah.” Danny knows a dozen or more rants about the evils of pineapples, but he lets it slide this time, as much as it visibly pains him to do so. Steve smirks, and turns back to the ocean. Danny comes over to stand beside him. The silence is companionable, and it's enough for Steve that Danny is there.
“You know,” Danny says, as if the easy silence isn't easy enough for him, “if you want to talk about what happened -”
“No.”
“If you want to talk about what happened,” Danny repeats. “If, not when. If you wanted to talk about it, you know where to find me.”
“On my couch, eating my food and watching my sports subscriptions.” Steve doesn't mean anything by that; his whole team's been camped out in his house for the last couple of days. They haven't pushed him to do or say or feel or think anything that he hasn't been ready to do already. They've just been there, and Steve appreciates that more than he knows how to say. He thinks they know that.
“That's us,” Danny agrees. “Five-0, crack crime-solving squad by day, unrepentant scroungers by night. I'll go relay your dinner order to Chin,” he adds, and walks out of Steve's sight line, back towards the house.
“I'll be right in,” Steve calls back over his shoulder. He doesn't take his eyes off the horizon.
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-06-04 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 01:12 am (UTC)I especially liked the way Steve handles being in a position of helplessness and how he trusts his team (who are *awesome*) to get him out of it. Great work, really well done.
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Date: 2011-06-04 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 03:47 am (UTC)Five-0, crack crime-solving squad by day, unrepentant scroungers by night.
That's just a great line!
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Date: 2011-06-04 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-06-04 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 04:35 pm (UTC)Such an awesome, awesome, awesome fic!
I love Steve's POV! I love to hear his thoughts, his fears, his panic, his trust in his team - ♥
I love how realistic you wrote everything - from Steve being rational and relying on his training to him panicking as the time goes by and that he lost control over his bladder and all the little aches of staying in one position for too long - perfect!
All of your voices - I could hear the Team speaking in my mind. It's as I've just seen an episode...
Thank you so, so, so much for this fic!
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Date: 2011-06-04 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 07:18 pm (UTC)thanks
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Date: 2011-06-04 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-06-05 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 09:56 pm (UTC)I guess all that hairpulling and and bunny-choking was worth something, huh?
*falls over* Damn. What a ride...
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Date: 2011-06-06 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 01:30 am (UTC)Hope to see more of your writing in the fandom!
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Date: 2011-06-07 08:35 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-06-12 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-17 12:43 am (UTC)your fic Wide Open Spaces has been recced HERE (http://h50-rec-room.livejournal.com/18371.html)
at
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Date: 2011-07-13 02:01 pm (UTC)