Fandom & Random

When the trunk opened, blinding him with midafternoon sunlight, they popped a bag on his head and hauled him out. None of his wild, adrenaline-powered thrashing did any good. They’d have to take the bag off his if they were going to shoot him in the head, otherwise it would leave residue–not that anyone was likely to look all that closely, he realized. Certainly not when the whole “kidnapping” was probably happening in Vitez’s jurisdiction. She’d only need it to look right on the surface, not the microscopic level.

They didn’t shoot him. They handed him off to another group of thugs, and for a bit, Jack figured that was a good thing. He didn't know them, didn’t even recognize their accents. They would probably underestimate him. He’d find a way out. He still knew the call-in numbers for Phoenix, and even if his own call-in code was advice, he knew Mac’s. He just needed a phone and five minutes to bring Vitez’s whole criminal enterprise tumbling down.

They were keeping him alone in a dim room at that time, hands and feet bound, a gag in his mouth, which was all unfortunately effective in preventing him from escaping or fighting back. Maybe Mac would’ve found a way to turn a metal shaving into a lockpick, but not Jack. It was mind numbingly free from lights or sounds or mental stimulation, so every time he heard footsteps, he was expecting he was expecting it to be hauled up and taken to the scene of his death.

Somehow, it kept not happening. For days, or weeks, or months–he swiftly became too disoriented to be sure. Eventually they did come for him, hauling him up on stiff legs, laughing and cursing while he stumbled and wobbled, shoving him to an awkward belly flop onto the ground that his knees had never stopped complaining about afterward. He’d scraped himself all up–skinned knees, abrasions on his arms and face, a leaking pain along his jaw where he’d split his own skin when his chin touched the ground.

They put him in a truck, and then on a plane. He wasn’t entirely sure who “they” were, since none of the people hauling him around were familiar faces. The flight ended somewhere hot and dry. He later realized it was northern Africa, alone in another cell. This one was well lit, although  by the time he got there, every light seemed like far too much. 

He stayed alone in the cell for fifty-two days. He couldn’t see much from inside, but the sun rose in the morning, baking his cell like an oven, and set in the evening, and in between Jack struggled through creeping lethargy and perpetual hunger to figure out some way to escape.

He never did. 

He marked the day with a dab of mud on the wall. He exercised, he recited dialog from movies, he sang, every day at first, until the malnutrition began to drag on him. He hadn’t seen a fruit since before Vitez betrayed him. His diet was an unpredictable supply of watery rice and unleavened bread, the occasional suspicious green thing that he sincerely hoped was vegetable and not fungi, and now and then a chunk of meat. If he was especially lucky, the water didn’t waste of dirt.

He had been held against his will before, but never for longer than a few days. Never long enough to worry about serious health effects. 

This was different. If he’d known how long it would last, he could have predicted it all–the lack of potable water, lack of nutrition, lack of exercise, lack of sanitation. Aching teeth, scrapes and bruises that stubbornly refused to heal, the razor-thin edge between his nightmares and his waking moments.