Britain Boys, Part 7/10
Aug. 29th, 2011 07:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyxelestiaAt first their plan worked perfectly. Merlin was, unknown to Collins, already awake. Arthur had been careful to prop Merlin up and facing away from where the cameras seemed to be, ostensibly to give him water and in reality to talk to him. When Collins came in, Merlin moved the key from Collins’ pocket, enough that Arthur could grab it without Collins noticing it even moving.
Key safely hidden in his own pocket and covered by his jumper, Arthur stayed close to Merlin for the collar being put back on, for the photograph, and afterwards stood between Merlin and Collins, saying, “He’s fine! Better off without the sedatives!” And Merlin ‘struggled’ to sit up a little.
Collins just rolled his eyes. “You keep thinking that, then. Don’t blame me if he becomes worse thanks to you.”
Arthur paled at the thought, even if he remembered this was just an act, and stood his ground as Collins left the room.
Immediately, Arthur whirled around and pulled Merlin close to him. He was fairly certain there were a few other people in the building from Collins’ comments, and it wouldn’t do for them to see him freeing Merlin and alerting Collins.
But just as they managed to get the collar off, Merlin gasping, for the first time conscious while this happened, they heard a roar of anger from down the corridor outside the door.
They shared a look before scrambling up, just in time for Collins to barge in, eyes bulging at the sight of Merlin without his collar.
“You fucking little brats-”
He ran forward, charging at them, but this time, Merlin held out his hand, crying out from pain even as his eyes glowed gold, and threw Collins aside headfirst into a wall. His gun clattered to the floor, as well as a phone and the collar and some gum of all things, and Merlin stared in shock as the man woozily started trying to push himself up.
Arthur didn’t let him.
He ran forward, vaguely noting Merlin’s gold eyes when he shoved Collins into the wall again, and before Collins could even realize it Arthur grabbed his hair, screamed, “Who’s not so high and mighty now?!” and slammed his head into the wall.
“Arthur!” Merlin shouted, but Arthur ignored him, pulling back on the barely-moving man and hitting his head on the wall again, and when the man got enough leverage to push him away, turning them both and slamming them against the wall, and Arthur screamed when he heard a crack and felt sharp agony radiate from his chest. But Collins was still attacking, and he kicked the man right in the groin, and managed a punch in the neck, putting Collins back against the wall. He saw Merlin’s eyes go gold again, and aided by the magic, he slammed Collins’ head into the wall one last time, letting go when he saw a splotch of blood on the wall, and Collins fell limp and unconscious to the ground.
“Is he…?” Merlin asked.
“…he’s still breathing, I think,” Arthur said, though he couldn’t really see Collins chest moving much, if at all, before shaking his head and moving to the door. “Doesn’t matter. Grab the phone and let’s go.”
Merlin nodded, swallowing and looking around the room.
“Come on!” Arthur snapped.
Merlin grabbed the phone with his good hand and ran out of the room after Arthur.
~*~
The hallways were all drab gray – like an abandoned office building, rather than an abandoned warehouse like Merlin was sure it was.
“Where do we go?” Merlin asked, choking on his words, throat still sticking to itself from being nearly strangled. “Do you remember anything from when we were brought in?”
“Um…” Arthur shut his eyes for a moment, then said, “Left!”
They ran to their left, down the corridor, and then right, then left again. They headed down two flights of stairs and seven corridors, footsteps fading and coming and fading again.
When they heard footsteps behind them – the other two men Tom Collins said were in the building – they detoured. Arthur tried to run further, but Merlin knew that no matter how fast they were, a bunch of angry grown-ups would be faster.
Instead, he pulled Arthur into the first unlocked door they found – a cleaner’s cupboard and utility cupboard.
Merlin was gasping with pain – they had the little splints for their fingers but still no painkillers. He pressed the fist of his good hand – still clutching onto the phone – to his mouth to stifle himself and his breathing, and beside him, Arthur was doing the same, one hand against his mouth, the other against his fractured rib.
The footsteps slowed as they approached the door outside, and panicking, Merlin grabbed Arthur and pushed them back, back, back, behind some boxes, out of the way of the single small utility light in the corner.
“They’re just two kids, how can they evade us?” a rather large-sounding man said.
In the utility light, Arthur, his breathing under control, mouthed driver, and Merlin realized the man who talked was the bloke who’d driven them here in the first place.
The footsteps slowed, but didn’t stop, going past the door to their cupboard, then continuing on down the hall.
“All right, go into all the crosshalls, start back-checking the rooms, offices, cupboards, anything with a door on it. They’re two little kids, it won’t be hard to find them…”
The man’s voice faded and his footsteps followed.
Merlin slowly lowered his hand, trying not to cry at the pain of his burning lungs, getting barely enough air through his swollen throat.
“Give me the phone,” Arthur said. “We need to switch it off for now. Or – you can do it.”
“What do you plan to do?” Merlin asked, pulling out the phone from his pocket and squinting at the little buttons in the low light.
“Think,” Arthur said.
“…we’re doomed,” Merlin muttered.
“Thank you, Emrys, for your great show of faith.” A pause, and Merlin finished silencing the phone, before switching it off all together.
“Oh, hell – we’re in a cleaner’s cupboard. Tools, supplies…” Arthur started groping around. “First, we need a torch of some sort-”
Arthur gasped as the room was suddenly flooded with a blue-white light, and Merlin smirked, taking his hand away from the little ball of light he made (and he tried not to wince as his magic screeched at having to do even this much this soon).
“You could’ve asked,” he said instead.
Arthur gulped as he stared at the light, and Merlin realized that this was the first time Arthur had ever clearly seen him using magic, save their fight against Collins just moments before. With the exception of the little bit he half-used during their first fight, Merlin had never used magic in front of him – all their meetings had been in public, and Merlin wasn’t supposed to use magic in public.
And when they finally met in private, Merlin was already collared.
“…g-good,” Arthur said, before turning back to start looking through things again. “Look for…anything useful. Probably not cleaning supplies.”
“Right…” Merlin said, and the two started looking around. He created another ball of light to follow Arthur, and took his own around as he started shuffling through the boxes.
“There!”
Merlin frowned to where Arthur was pointing. “You can move the light, just poke the center of the ball.”
“Er…you do it,” Arthur said, looking hesitantly at the ball.
Glaring at Arthur, he poked it with his finger instead of his magic, and moved it to where Arthur was pointing – near a vent between two shelves.
“A vent?”
“The size,” Arthur said.
“What about it?” Merlin asked.
“We can fit, right?” Arthur asked.
“Er, yeah?”
“But what about them?” he asked, jerking his head towards the door. “All of them are really big. They wouldn’t fit at all, or they wouldn’t have room to move if they did.”
Merlin’s eyes widened as he took in this information.
“We’d be practically blind if we went that way – we’d have no idea where we’re going,” Merlin said. Out here, at least they could clearly see their direction and quickly move.
“They won’t have any idea, either,” Arthur said.
“…we’d have to be really quiet,” Merlin said. “The vents would echo and they would be able to hear us from rooms away. I can muffle some of it with my magic, but we still need to be as quiet as possible, just in case.”
“Okay,” Arthur said. “So let’s get as far as we can on foot before we resort to the vents.”
They continued searching around for anything that even looked useful. Arthur found some sort of pocket tool set and jammed that into his torn trouser pocket. Merlin found some duct tape, and wrapped it around Arthur’s chest to splint his ribs.
“I feel like we’re in a spy film,” Merlin said, finishing up taping all over Arthur’s chest as Arthur tugged his shirt back on. “It’s a lot scarier than the movies make it look.”
“If we’re a James Bond film, I’m James Bond,” Arthur said.
“Why are you James Bond?!” Merlin protested.
“Why not?” Arthur said. “It can be like the World Is Not Enough! The first Bond girl in that is a sorceress. You can be my Bond girl.”
“I’m not a girl!” Merlin said. “Besides, she turned traitor, remember?” He looked over to his ball of light. “Sorcerers are almost never good in movies.”
“There was…The Sword in the Stone?”
Merlin snorted. “That was a cartoon. And it wasn’t even real magic, that kind of stuff doesn’t exist.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “You can cry about sorcerers in the media later.”
“…I want to be James Bond,” Merlin said. “Or maybe not. Really scary.”
“Well James Bond had training, didn’t he?” Arthur said. “You could train up…well not you, you’re too scrawny-”
“I can too!” Merlin said. “Or I would, if sorcerers were allowed in the army.”
Arthur smirked. “It’s not just army stuff, you know.”
“I can sneak about and things,” Merlin said, shuffling through more boxes, as though he was fairly certain they had anything they could get some use out of.
“You?!” Arthur said incredulously.
“I got us this far, didn’t I?” Merlin demanded. “And we’re not dead yet.”
Arthur’s face abruptly fell, and he turned to continue looking through the boxes as reality came back to them both. “Yeah, well…let’s keep it that way.”
Merlin nodded. This wasn’t a James Bond film because this was real life – no matter how much he wished otherwise.
“We should call someone for help,” Merlin said. “When we can.”
“Was there a signal in here?”
Merlin remembered the phone just before he switched it off and shook his head. “No. I think we need to be near the offices or something.”
“There was another office someplace down the hall from where we were,” Arthur said. “If there are any building plans or anything useful, we can look there. And they won’t expect us to go back – they’ll be searching outward and away from there, probably. I think. I hope.”
I hope so, too, Merlin thought.
“So that’s settled, then?” Merlin asked. “Other office, call, look for a way out?”
Arthur nodded, pressing his ear to the door. “Put out the lights.”
Merlin did so. “Anything?” he asked.
Arthur shook his head, and opened the door. “Come on.”
~*~
It took them half an hour to go back the distance they ran in five minutes. Every few minutes they would hear distant – and sometimes not so distant – footsteps and hide, sometimes going back, once receding down a whole flight of stairs.
But they made it to that other office unseen and unscathed. Once they reached the floor the office was on, they heard and saw no one – Arthur was right.
Merlin shut the door behind them once they reached the office that looked to be their captors’ headquarters, a sparse room with a lot of tables and desks and filing cabinets but only three folding chairs, and he immediately switched on the phone.
“There’s a signal!” Merlin said. “Only one bar, but it’s there…no, two bars! Two bars!”
“Call your mum,” Arthur said. “I’ll start looking around for anything useful.”
Merlin nodded as he put the phone on speaker and started dialing. After weeks of being a hostage, it felt weird to just be calling her as if it were any other day.
But if anything could get them rescued and get them home, it was this.
“Hello?” Mum answered. “Who is this, and how did you get this number-”
“Mum?”
There was a beat of silence, then, “MERLIN?!”
Merlin winced a little at the volume even as he could hear a flurry of movement in the background of his mother’s voice.
“Merlin, sweetie, are you all right? Where are you? How-”
“No time, Mum,” Merlin said. “We’re in a factory or office building or something – we got out of the room we were being held in, but we’re still in the building – and so are the people who took us.”
“Oh, god, how – never mind, Merlin. Is Prince Arthur with you?”
“Hello, Mrs. Emrys,” Arthur called out. Merlin put the phone on speaker.
“Hello, Prince Arthur,” she said. Someone said something in the background, and she said, “They’re calling your father and they will patch him through soon.”
“Aha!” Arthur muttered, and Merlin saw him holding up what appeared to be a map of the building. There was also a map of where the building was. “We’re in Wales, somewhere. Tell her we’re in Wales somewhere!”
“I heard,” Mum said. “And so did the tech team, they’re all listening, right now.” A pause. “Are you boys all right? How are you? We saw your fingers were broken, is anything else hurt?”
“Hi, tech team. Arthur broke a rib or something, and I got that collar off but my throat is swollen from that and from Collins – he was the guy holding us – trying to strangle me-”
“Trying to WHAT?!” she shouted.
“-but we’re fine! We’re fine! We can both breathe okay and we’re getting by. We’re in the building’s main office to look for a way out.”
He heard her sniffle and realized she was crying.
“We’re in Anglesey, somewhere,” Arthur said. “In the middle.”
“Anglesey?” Merlin said.
“I found stationery!” Arthur said. “We’re in some place called ‘623 Astolat Road’…and this building used to be some sort of appliance company headquarters from the looks of it. And it…it’s a note saying to call someone named Bob and it’s dated thirty years ago!”
“They’re looking it up now,” Mum said. “They say that the signal is being scrambled or hidden or something like that, it’s getting difficult to trace your exact coordinates with the call. Is there any information on the Blesseds? Have you found a way out?”
“Still looking,” Arthur called out again. “Merlin, can you unlock the filing cabinets?”
Merlin did so.
“They found the location the Prince gave. They know where you are!” Hunith said.
“Good,” Merlin said.
Then there was a beep, then another, from her end.
“Arthur,” Hunith said. “They’re patching your father through.”
Arthur, eyes wide, abandoned his search and huddled next to Merlin.
There was a series of beeps, then King Uther’s voice saying, “Arthur?”
“Father!” Arthur cried out, sounding just as relieved and anxious as Merlin felt as he grabbed at the phone and brought it close in front of his face as if it could somehow bring him closer to his dad.
“Arthur,” Uther breathed out with a sigh of relief. “How are you?”
“Okay,” Arthur said. “I could be better.”
“Can you boys get outside?” Uther asked. “Or somewhere safe?”
Phone taken away from him, Merlin went over to the desk. “We’re looking for a way…out…”
His eye was caught by the sight of the old computer, extremely old, and he wondered just how Arthur had missed this.
“Merlin?” Arthur asked, frowning. Merlin pointed at the computer. “What? It’s an old computer, from whoever last owned the place-”
“But there’s no dust on it,” Merlin said. “And the casing – it’s all off. And…and there’s a cable – like one that can connect to the camera Tom Collins was using.”
Arthur stared, eyes widening as realization hit him.
“Are you saying the computer is new?” Arthur asked.
“What’s going on, boys?” Mum asked.
“We found a computer, we think the Blesseds might be using it,” Arthur said.
“Can you open it?” Uther asked.
Merlin shrugged, then remembered he was on a phone. “Maybe.”
“Pull off the top,” Arthur said, and Merlin held out his hand, and let the scraps of magic he could feel willing to listen to him, despite leftover fear of the collar, come together to lift off the front of the casing, then the top.
The casings of the ridiculously old computer were the outsides of a box, completely hollow inside – and thus filled with a laptop, a camera, and multiple modern-looking wires and cables. Even an iPod!
“There’s a laptop!” Arthur said.
“Can you get into it?” Uther asked. “Try. We have tech teams on both of our ends here to help. If there’s any information that can help you escape, it’ll be in there.”
For five minutes, Merlin and Arthur both tried – mostly Merlin, because Arthur was apparently terrible with computers – before they both related dejected, “We can’t.”
“Maybe we can at least carry it with us?” Arthur said. “To give to them once we get out of here?”
“Carry a laptop, Arthur?” Merlin asked. “There’s no way we can, not if we want to move fast.”
He heard furious background talking on the phone, then a moment later Mum said, “Merlin, you need to focus on getting out of there!”
“But this is important,” Merlin said.
“You don’t have time, sweetheart,” she said.
“But no one knows anything about them, and we want them to be caught...we need them to be caught! We’ll never be at rest again, otherwise!” Merlin insisted, already fiddling with the laptop.
“...be quick,” she said, sounding ready to start crying again. “And remember, escaping comes first.”
“Arthur,” Uther’s voice commanded. “You need to keep looking around the office, find something, a map or plans of the building, to get you out of there and somewhere safe. Getting information on the Blesseds is good but your number one priority is getting out of there. Merlin, we have a computer expert to help you.”
Merlin magicked open all the locks on all the filing cabinets for Arthur to search through, before plopping down with the laptop in his lap and listening to the technician’s careful descriptions of what to do with the laptop to open it and get out the hard-drive.
Soon enough, the hard-drive was out, and small enough for Merlin to jam in his pocket, and Arthur was laying out multiple building plans and maps across the floor, before zeroing in on one that showed blue vent-maintenance lines along with the building plans.
“Can you get out?” Uther asked.
“Yeah,” Arthur said, already tracing paths with the pencil Merlin found him. “There are two ways we can walk out of here and if we go through the vent system it will be difficult going downstairs but-”
Merlin heard something in the distance, and said suddenly, “Shh!”
Arthur frowned, but when he saw the panicked look on Merlin’s face, he fell silent.
Silent enough to hear a door being opened and closed in the distance.
“They’re coming!” Merlin hissed into the phone.
“What?!” Mum called out.
“We’ve got to go,” Arthur said, panicking.
“Good luck, Arthur,” Uther said. “Stay strong.”
“Of course we will,” Arthur said. “We’re the Britain Boys.”
Both their parents choked out a laugh.
“I love you, Merlin,” Mum said. Merlin could hear her tears.
“I love you too, Mum,” Merlin said, on the verge of crying, himself.
Without another word, Arthur hung up and switched off the phone.
“We need to make it look like we were never here,” Arthur said calmly, and Merlin promptly let his magic loose shoving everything back where they found it – even replacing the hard-drive of the laptop, hoping desperately they didn’t look too closely and see the small scratches in the black matte from where Merlin had been nervous getting it out and back in.
Arthur shut all the filing cabinets, looking down at the one map they had written on, wincing at the sounds it made as he tried to fold it, and then shoved it behind one of the other filing cabinets, where it remained completely hidden.
Both boys gasped when they heard a door opening and closing down the corridor on their floor.
They wouldn’t get out without being seen.
“We’re trapped,” Merlin whispered.
“Temporarily,” Arthur said, before yanking Merlin with him towards the back corner of the room, where two filing cabinets made an almost-corner with a small table. Arthur dropped to the floor and crawled in backwards, pulling Merlin in so he was sitting in the V of Arthur’s legs.
He leaned back, trying to get as far away from the opening of the almost-corner as he could, before Arthur gasped in pain as Merlin pressed up right against his ribs.
“Sorry!” Merlin hissed.
Abruptly, Arthur’s hand was over his mouth.
“Pull your legs in and keep quiet!” Arthur whispered low and sharp in his ear.
Merlin had just enough time to comply before the door opened, and two men burst in.
He flinched as one man slammed a chair into the desk at the front of the room in what sounded like a fit of frustration, before the other one yanked it back out and dropped into it with a furious sigh as the first one started pacing around the room. Merlin pulled his legs in tighter in fear.
“They’re two fucking kids,” the ‘driver’ said, pacing. “How the hell did they get out in the first place?”
“Because we put Tom in charge of them, that’s why,” the desk-guy said.
Merlin heard the sound of him pulling apart the ‘computer’ and pulling out the laptop, and was immensely glad to have replaced the hard-drive just moments before.
“Higher-ups are not going to be happy about this,” desk-guy said. “Damnit, we should have outfitted the whole building with cameras!”
“You’re not seriously going to tell them, are you?” the driver asked.
“Tom needs to be seen to, and they’re going to need to know the plan’s been compromised,” the desk-guy said.
“We need more time, we can find these kids! They’re going to kill us – maybe even literally! – if they find out we lost two stupid kids.”
“We need back-up,” the desk-guy said. “I’ll send it in an e-mail, encrypted. It’ll allow for at least a minute or two of delay before they call, and for me to explain the situation before they do.”
The driver whirled around and kicked a filing cabinet in frustration – the one next to the one behind which they were hiding. Merlin felt himself and Arthur both flinch away from the vibrations, Arthur’s hand tightening over Merlin’s mouth as desk-guy typed and typed and typed, before clicking the mouse-pad a few times.
“..e-mail’s sent out,” the man said.
“And?”
“And now we wait.”
The men fell into discussion about how to relay the situations while making themselves look as not-bad as possible.
Merlin slowed his breathing to make it even more inaudible than it already was, and behind him, he felt Arthur do the same, though less so – he was already holding himself oddly due to his ribs.
Arthur was warm, his chest at Merlin’s back, his legs around Merlin’s arms, his hand on Merlin’s face. Merlin could feel Arthur’s heartbeat against his own, and felt abruptly grateful for the hand over his mouth. Had it ever been any other time, Merlin would have been indignant and even furious at being silenced. But right now, it was comforting, reassuring, helping to make sure they weren’t caught.
Like when Merlin flinched again as the still silence was sharply broken by the shrill ring of the man’s mobile phone.
“Yeah?” the desk-guy answered.
Merlin heard the faintest sound of voices over the phone – meaning whoever it was on the other end of the line, they were shouting at computer guy.
“Yeah, well – it was Tom! I know, I know, I – no…but! …yes, ma’am. Yes ma’am!”
And so it went, for several more minutes, before the guy grunted affirmatively one last time, ended with “Yes, ma’am, and thank you,” and hung up.
A moment, then he said to the driver, “We’ve got to lock down the building, lock all doors and windows, starting from the ground up – they’ll probably try to get out the same way they came in. Back-up will be here in less than an hour.”
The driver just sighed, deflated from his earlier tension. “Right, then – let’s go.”
The worst moment came next when both men got up, to the sound of shuffling papers and the laptop being booted down and put away. If either of them just took a few steps over and looked down…
But they didn’t.
The two men left, the driver grumbling all the way, and once Merlin could no longer hear their footsteps even in the distance, both boys sighed in relief.
Crawling out from their hiding place, Merlin said, “If they’re locking down the building, how are we supposed to get out?”
“That…get out the map.”
Merlin used his magic, more scraps coming back to him now, to get the map from behind the filing cabinet, and as Arthur started looking it over he pulled out the laptop again and used his magic to pull out the screws and yet again pull out the hard-drive.
“Damnit,” Arthur said. “They’re ahead of us – the ground floor will already be locked down by the time we could get there without being seen or heard.”
“…they said ground-up, right?” Merlin asked, as he replaced the laptop where it was, it and the computer-casing looking untouched as he jammed the hard-drive in his pocket again. “Is there a way to get to the roof?”
“There…there is!”
“Through the vents?” Merlin asked. “Because they’ll be back up here soon to lock down the doors and things.”
“Yeah, yeah, there’s a way,” Arthur said, tracing his finger over the new path. “It’s simpler than trying to get down, too, easier to remember. Call our parents again, tell them to tell the rescue team to land on the roof for us.”
Merlin pulled out the phone, switched it on, and made the call.
It barely even rang once before Mum answered.
“Hello?” she asked, voice nervous as she greeted them, as a beep sounded in.
“Mum,” Merlin said. “Can you get the rescue team to land on the roof?”
“The roof?” Uther’s voice cut in, apparently automatically patched through.
“They’re locking down the building from the ground up, so we’re going even further up,” Arthur said, urgency in his voice as he and Merlin both looked at the door, towards the outside where the two men were.
“We have to go, as fast as possible,” Merlin said.
“The SAS is already being contacted,” Mum said.
“We can go directly from here,” Arthur said, pointing to the far wall where the vent opening was just above one of the filing cabinets. “Pull the grating off.”
Merlin did so, magic quickly unscrewing all four of the screws holding it in at once, and then levitating it down carefully, putting most of his magic into trying to stifle the noise.
“The SAS have been contacted and informed,” Uther said.
“Good, because we really have to go,” Arthur said. “Goodbye, Father.”
“Goodbye,” Uther said, voice thick. “Good luck.”
“I love you, Merlin,” Mum said. “Please come back to me in one piece.”
“Will do, Mum,” Merlin said, and then ended the call, chest clenching as he cut off the communication and switched off the phone, as Arthur folded the small map and clenched it in his hand.
Arthur climbed onto the table, and then the filing cabinet, and peered into the shaft. “It’s small but manageable. And filthy. Can you clear the air in it ahead of us so we’re not breathing that in and getting poisoned or whatever.
“Yeah, yeah,” Merlin said, having climbed up after him, magicking up a light wind to clear the air in the shafts without causing too much attention. “I can muffle some noise, but not all of it. We still have to be as quiet as possible. And with all that metal I can only use a little bit of light, or it might reflect too much and they’ll notice.”
“If we hear them, stop,” Arthur added as he crawled into the vent. The shaft was running perpendicular to the opening, so as he crawled in he turned to the left, and Merlin, a moment later, scooted so he was on the right side and behind Arthur.
The vent shaft was tight – Merlin couldn’t even stay on his hands and knees completely, needing to be in a somewhat-position for push-ups, barely two inches of space around his shoulders. It was claustrophobic, and the smells were horrific, dust and something like death. But they could move. He conjured up a tiny ball of light and made it float ahead of Arthur, and he tried not to grimace at just how filthy it was inside here.
He slithered back so that his head was by the opening, just in time to hear the door down the corridor open again.
“Quickly!” Arthur snapped, and Merlin levitated the grating up and convinced the screws to go back in, and moved so he wasn’t in front of the opening in the shaft, then stilled just in time for the footsteps to reach the office door – then go past it.
He and Arthur were completely silent for a moment, frozen with fear.
Then Arthur started moving, slowly, so slowly, but quietly, and Merlin copied him exactly, keeping only the tips of his shoes against the metal, knees as leverage, pushing forward on them and using his arms to slowly pull forward, resting on his stomach each pause before using those muscles, that motion, again. Arthur whimpered every now and then, the actions harsh on his ribs, and Merlin tried to brace Arthur’s rib with his magic, but it was difficult, and there was still only so much he could do. He wasn’t a Healer sorcerer by any means, but suddenly wished he’d paid more attention to Gaius’s ramblings during tutoring sessions.
They would hear voices in the distances from various directions and freeze, then they would continue once they faded again, though Merlin always felt like they should be hearing his heartbeat, pounding in fear of being caught, found, and trapped in this vent shaft when they were, this tiny and narrow space where they wouldn’t be able to move or even breathe properly.
But inexplicably, they made it. They had turned through multiple junctions, then reached one that, instead of branching off to the side, branched upwards into much larger shaft, narrow maintenance rungs jutting out of one side. At the top, they could see the faintest beams of light - the firs sunlight either of them have seen in a month.
They paused one last time, listening carefully for the sounds of voices, footsteps, doors, anything. But they had taken long enough that the men had apparently gone back downstairs to look for them again – or at least, they weren’t by any nearby openings to this part of the vent shaft, which was good enough.
The time Merlin spent hanging from a few rungs as he worked at the vertical grating at the top of this shaft, grating with low sunlight coming through the slates, was possibly one of the most terrifying times of his life, Arthur directly below him, the sounds possibly making their way across this floor through the vent shaft, and having to focus on so many pieces at once as he unscrewed the grating and pushed it out, his palms sweating and threatening to drop them both to their doom every moment.
When Merlin spilled out of the opening and onto the floor of the roof, he was crying – with relief. He squinted and had to close his eyes and blink owlishly in the bright afternoon sunlight, but still he turned his face up and into the warmth and brightness they’d been deprived of for so long. Beside him, Arthur was giggling in victory, and Merlin broke out laughing in relief. They weren’t out of danger yet, but this close to home, having gone this far...
“It shouldn’t be long, now,” Arthur said, leaning against the top bit of the shaft and clutching at his ribs as Merlin refit the grating back in, just in case. “And they’ll be here – and we’ll be safe.”
“Not long, now,” Merlin agreed.
And it wasn’t.
~*~
Part 8
Key safely hidden in his own pocket and covered by his jumper, Arthur stayed close to Merlin for the collar being put back on, for the photograph, and afterwards stood between Merlin and Collins, saying, “He’s fine! Better off without the sedatives!” And Merlin ‘struggled’ to sit up a little.
Collins just rolled his eyes. “You keep thinking that, then. Don’t blame me if he becomes worse thanks to you.”
Arthur paled at the thought, even if he remembered this was just an act, and stood his ground as Collins left the room.
Immediately, Arthur whirled around and pulled Merlin close to him. He was fairly certain there were a few other people in the building from Collins’ comments, and it wouldn’t do for them to see him freeing Merlin and alerting Collins.
But just as they managed to get the collar off, Merlin gasping, for the first time conscious while this happened, they heard a roar of anger from down the corridor outside the door.
They shared a look before scrambling up, just in time for Collins to barge in, eyes bulging at the sight of Merlin without his collar.
“You fucking little brats-”
He ran forward, charging at them, but this time, Merlin held out his hand, crying out from pain even as his eyes glowed gold, and threw Collins aside headfirst into a wall. His gun clattered to the floor, as well as a phone and the collar and some gum of all things, and Merlin stared in shock as the man woozily started trying to push himself up.
Arthur didn’t let him.
He ran forward, vaguely noting Merlin’s gold eyes when he shoved Collins into the wall again, and before Collins could even realize it Arthur grabbed his hair, screamed, “Who’s not so high and mighty now?!” and slammed his head into the wall.
“Arthur!” Merlin shouted, but Arthur ignored him, pulling back on the barely-moving man and hitting his head on the wall again, and when the man got enough leverage to push him away, turning them both and slamming them against the wall, and Arthur screamed when he heard a crack and felt sharp agony radiate from his chest. But Collins was still attacking, and he kicked the man right in the groin, and managed a punch in the neck, putting Collins back against the wall. He saw Merlin’s eyes go gold again, and aided by the magic, he slammed Collins’ head into the wall one last time, letting go when he saw a splotch of blood on the wall, and Collins fell limp and unconscious to the ground.
“Is he…?” Merlin asked.
“…he’s still breathing, I think,” Arthur said, though he couldn’t really see Collins chest moving much, if at all, before shaking his head and moving to the door. “Doesn’t matter. Grab the phone and let’s go.”
Merlin nodded, swallowing and looking around the room.
“Come on!” Arthur snapped.
Merlin grabbed the phone with his good hand and ran out of the room after Arthur.
The hallways were all drab gray – like an abandoned office building, rather than an abandoned warehouse like Merlin was sure it was.
“Where do we go?” Merlin asked, choking on his words, throat still sticking to itself from being nearly strangled. “Do you remember anything from when we were brought in?”
“Um…” Arthur shut his eyes for a moment, then said, “Left!”
They ran to their left, down the corridor, and then right, then left again. They headed down two flights of stairs and seven corridors, footsteps fading and coming and fading again.
When they heard footsteps behind them – the other two men Tom Collins said were in the building – they detoured. Arthur tried to run further, but Merlin knew that no matter how fast they were, a bunch of angry grown-ups would be faster.
Instead, he pulled Arthur into the first unlocked door they found – a cleaner’s cupboard and utility cupboard.
Merlin was gasping with pain – they had the little splints for their fingers but still no painkillers. He pressed the fist of his good hand – still clutching onto the phone – to his mouth to stifle himself and his breathing, and beside him, Arthur was doing the same, one hand against his mouth, the other against his fractured rib.
The footsteps slowed as they approached the door outside, and panicking, Merlin grabbed Arthur and pushed them back, back, back, behind some boxes, out of the way of the single small utility light in the corner.
“They’re just two kids, how can they evade us?” a rather large-sounding man said.
In the utility light, Arthur, his breathing under control, mouthed driver, and Merlin realized the man who talked was the bloke who’d driven them here in the first place.
The footsteps slowed, but didn’t stop, going past the door to their cupboard, then continuing on down the hall.
“All right, go into all the crosshalls, start back-checking the rooms, offices, cupboards, anything with a door on it. They’re two little kids, it won’t be hard to find them…”
The man’s voice faded and his footsteps followed.
Merlin slowly lowered his hand, trying not to cry at the pain of his burning lungs, getting barely enough air through his swollen throat.
“Give me the phone,” Arthur said. “We need to switch it off for now. Or – you can do it.”
“What do you plan to do?” Merlin asked, pulling out the phone from his pocket and squinting at the little buttons in the low light.
“Think,” Arthur said.
“…we’re doomed,” Merlin muttered.
“Thank you, Emrys, for your great show of faith.” A pause, and Merlin finished silencing the phone, before switching it off all together.
“Oh, hell – we’re in a cleaner’s cupboard. Tools, supplies…” Arthur started groping around. “First, we need a torch of some sort-”
Arthur gasped as the room was suddenly flooded with a blue-white light, and Merlin smirked, taking his hand away from the little ball of light he made (and he tried not to wince as his magic screeched at having to do even this much this soon).
“You could’ve asked,” he said instead.
Arthur gulped as he stared at the light, and Merlin realized that this was the first time Arthur had ever clearly seen him using magic, save their fight against Collins just moments before. With the exception of the little bit he half-used during their first fight, Merlin had never used magic in front of him – all their meetings had been in public, and Merlin wasn’t supposed to use magic in public.
And when they finally met in private, Merlin was already collared.
“…g-good,” Arthur said, before turning back to start looking through things again. “Look for…anything useful. Probably not cleaning supplies.”
“Right…” Merlin said, and the two started looking around. He created another ball of light to follow Arthur, and took his own around as he started shuffling through the boxes.
“There!”
Merlin frowned to where Arthur was pointing. “You can move the light, just poke the center of the ball.”
“Er…you do it,” Arthur said, looking hesitantly at the ball.
Glaring at Arthur, he poked it with his finger instead of his magic, and moved it to where Arthur was pointing – near a vent between two shelves.
“A vent?”
“The size,” Arthur said.
“What about it?” Merlin asked.
“We can fit, right?” Arthur asked.
“Er, yeah?”
“But what about them?” he asked, jerking his head towards the door. “All of them are really big. They wouldn’t fit at all, or they wouldn’t have room to move if they did.”
Merlin’s eyes widened as he took in this information.
“We’d be practically blind if we went that way – we’d have no idea where we’re going,” Merlin said. Out here, at least they could clearly see their direction and quickly move.
“They won’t have any idea, either,” Arthur said.
“…we’d have to be really quiet,” Merlin said. “The vents would echo and they would be able to hear us from rooms away. I can muffle some of it with my magic, but we still need to be as quiet as possible, just in case.”
“Okay,” Arthur said. “So let’s get as far as we can on foot before we resort to the vents.”
They continued searching around for anything that even looked useful. Arthur found some sort of pocket tool set and jammed that into his torn trouser pocket. Merlin found some duct tape, and wrapped it around Arthur’s chest to splint his ribs.
“I feel like we’re in a spy film,” Merlin said, finishing up taping all over Arthur’s chest as Arthur tugged his shirt back on. “It’s a lot scarier than the movies make it look.”
“If we’re a James Bond film, I’m James Bond,” Arthur said.
“Why are you James Bond?!” Merlin protested.
“Why not?” Arthur said. “It can be like the World Is Not Enough! The first Bond girl in that is a sorceress. You can be my Bond girl.”
“I’m not a girl!” Merlin said. “Besides, she turned traitor, remember?” He looked over to his ball of light. “Sorcerers are almost never good in movies.”
“There was…The Sword in the Stone?”
Merlin snorted. “That was a cartoon. And it wasn’t even real magic, that kind of stuff doesn’t exist.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “You can cry about sorcerers in the media later.”
“…I want to be James Bond,” Merlin said. “Or maybe not. Really scary.”
“Well James Bond had training, didn’t he?” Arthur said. “You could train up…well not you, you’re too scrawny-”
“I can too!” Merlin said. “Or I would, if sorcerers were allowed in the army.”
Arthur smirked. “It’s not just army stuff, you know.”
“I can sneak about and things,” Merlin said, shuffling through more boxes, as though he was fairly certain they had anything they could get some use out of.
“You?!” Arthur said incredulously.
“I got us this far, didn’t I?” Merlin demanded. “And we’re not dead yet.”
Arthur’s face abruptly fell, and he turned to continue looking through the boxes as reality came back to them both. “Yeah, well…let’s keep it that way.”
Merlin nodded. This wasn’t a James Bond film because this was real life – no matter how much he wished otherwise.
“We should call someone for help,” Merlin said. “When we can.”
“Was there a signal in here?”
Merlin remembered the phone just before he switched it off and shook his head. “No. I think we need to be near the offices or something.”
“There was another office someplace down the hall from where we were,” Arthur said. “If there are any building plans or anything useful, we can look there. And they won’t expect us to go back – they’ll be searching outward and away from there, probably. I think. I hope.”
I hope so, too, Merlin thought.
“So that’s settled, then?” Merlin asked. “Other office, call, look for a way out?”
Arthur nodded, pressing his ear to the door. “Put out the lights.”
Merlin did so. “Anything?” he asked.
Arthur shook his head, and opened the door. “Come on.”
It took them half an hour to go back the distance they ran in five minutes. Every few minutes they would hear distant – and sometimes not so distant – footsteps and hide, sometimes going back, once receding down a whole flight of stairs.
But they made it to that other office unseen and unscathed. Once they reached the floor the office was on, they heard and saw no one – Arthur was right.
Merlin shut the door behind them once they reached the office that looked to be their captors’ headquarters, a sparse room with a lot of tables and desks and filing cabinets but only three folding chairs, and he immediately switched on the phone.
“There’s a signal!” Merlin said. “Only one bar, but it’s there…no, two bars! Two bars!”
“Call your mum,” Arthur said. “I’ll start looking around for anything useful.”
Merlin nodded as he put the phone on speaker and started dialing. After weeks of being a hostage, it felt weird to just be calling her as if it were any other day.
But if anything could get them rescued and get them home, it was this.
“Hello?” Mum answered. “Who is this, and how did you get this number-”
“Mum?”
There was a beat of silence, then, “MERLIN?!”
Merlin winced a little at the volume even as he could hear a flurry of movement in the background of his mother’s voice.
“Merlin, sweetie, are you all right? Where are you? How-”
“No time, Mum,” Merlin said. “We’re in a factory or office building or something – we got out of the room we were being held in, but we’re still in the building – and so are the people who took us.”
“Oh, god, how – never mind, Merlin. Is Prince Arthur with you?”
“Hello, Mrs. Emrys,” Arthur called out. Merlin put the phone on speaker.
“Hello, Prince Arthur,” she said. Someone said something in the background, and she said, “They’re calling your father and they will patch him through soon.”
“Aha!” Arthur muttered, and Merlin saw him holding up what appeared to be a map of the building. There was also a map of where the building was. “We’re in Wales, somewhere. Tell her we’re in Wales somewhere!”
“I heard,” Mum said. “And so did the tech team, they’re all listening, right now.” A pause. “Are you boys all right? How are you? We saw your fingers were broken, is anything else hurt?”
“Hi, tech team. Arthur broke a rib or something, and I got that collar off but my throat is swollen from that and from Collins – he was the guy holding us – trying to strangle me-”
“Trying to WHAT?!” she shouted.
“-but we’re fine! We’re fine! We can both breathe okay and we’re getting by. We’re in the building’s main office to look for a way out.”
He heard her sniffle and realized she was crying.
“We’re in Anglesey, somewhere,” Arthur said. “In the middle.”
“Anglesey?” Merlin said.
“I found stationery!” Arthur said. “We’re in some place called ‘623 Astolat Road’…and this building used to be some sort of appliance company headquarters from the looks of it. And it…it’s a note saying to call someone named Bob and it’s dated thirty years ago!”
“They’re looking it up now,” Mum said. “They say that the signal is being scrambled or hidden or something like that, it’s getting difficult to trace your exact coordinates with the call. Is there any information on the Blesseds? Have you found a way out?”
“Still looking,” Arthur called out again. “Merlin, can you unlock the filing cabinets?”
Merlin did so.
“They found the location the Prince gave. They know where you are!” Hunith said.
“Good,” Merlin said.
Then there was a beep, then another, from her end.
“Arthur,” Hunith said. “They’re patching your father through.”
Arthur, eyes wide, abandoned his search and huddled next to Merlin.
There was a series of beeps, then King Uther’s voice saying, “Arthur?”
“Father!” Arthur cried out, sounding just as relieved and anxious as Merlin felt as he grabbed at the phone and brought it close in front of his face as if it could somehow bring him closer to his dad.
“Arthur,” Uther breathed out with a sigh of relief. “How are you?”
“Okay,” Arthur said. “I could be better.”
“Can you boys get outside?” Uther asked. “Or somewhere safe?”
Phone taken away from him, Merlin went over to the desk. “We’re looking for a way…out…”
His eye was caught by the sight of the old computer, extremely old, and he wondered just how Arthur had missed this.
“Merlin?” Arthur asked, frowning. Merlin pointed at the computer. “What? It’s an old computer, from whoever last owned the place-”
“But there’s no dust on it,” Merlin said. “And the casing – it’s all off. And…and there’s a cable – like one that can connect to the camera Tom Collins was using.”
Arthur stared, eyes widening as realization hit him.
“Are you saying the computer is new?” Arthur asked.
“What’s going on, boys?” Mum asked.
“We found a computer, we think the Blesseds might be using it,” Arthur said.
“Can you open it?” Uther asked.
Merlin shrugged, then remembered he was on a phone. “Maybe.”
“Pull off the top,” Arthur said, and Merlin held out his hand, and let the scraps of magic he could feel willing to listen to him, despite leftover fear of the collar, come together to lift off the front of the casing, then the top.
The casings of the ridiculously old computer were the outsides of a box, completely hollow inside – and thus filled with a laptop, a camera, and multiple modern-looking wires and cables. Even an iPod!
“There’s a laptop!” Arthur said.
“Can you get into it?” Uther asked. “Try. We have tech teams on both of our ends here to help. If there’s any information that can help you escape, it’ll be in there.”
For five minutes, Merlin and Arthur both tried – mostly Merlin, because Arthur was apparently terrible with computers – before they both related dejected, “We can’t.”
“Maybe we can at least carry it with us?” Arthur said. “To give to them once we get out of here?”
“Carry a laptop, Arthur?” Merlin asked. “There’s no way we can, not if we want to move fast.”
He heard furious background talking on the phone, then a moment later Mum said, “Merlin, you need to focus on getting out of there!”
“But this is important,” Merlin said.
“You don’t have time, sweetheart,” she said.
“But no one knows anything about them, and we want them to be caught...we need them to be caught! We’ll never be at rest again, otherwise!” Merlin insisted, already fiddling with the laptop.
“...be quick,” she said, sounding ready to start crying again. “And remember, escaping comes first.”
“Arthur,” Uther’s voice commanded. “You need to keep looking around the office, find something, a map or plans of the building, to get you out of there and somewhere safe. Getting information on the Blesseds is good but your number one priority is getting out of there. Merlin, we have a computer expert to help you.”
Merlin magicked open all the locks on all the filing cabinets for Arthur to search through, before plopping down with the laptop in his lap and listening to the technician’s careful descriptions of what to do with the laptop to open it and get out the hard-drive.
Soon enough, the hard-drive was out, and small enough for Merlin to jam in his pocket, and Arthur was laying out multiple building plans and maps across the floor, before zeroing in on one that showed blue vent-maintenance lines along with the building plans.
“Can you get out?” Uther asked.
“Yeah,” Arthur said, already tracing paths with the pencil Merlin found him. “There are two ways we can walk out of here and if we go through the vent system it will be difficult going downstairs but-”
Merlin heard something in the distance, and said suddenly, “Shh!”
Arthur frowned, but when he saw the panicked look on Merlin’s face, he fell silent.
Silent enough to hear a door being opened and closed in the distance.
“They’re coming!” Merlin hissed into the phone.
“What?!” Mum called out.
“We’ve got to go,” Arthur said, panicking.
“Good luck, Arthur,” Uther said. “Stay strong.”
“Of course we will,” Arthur said. “We’re the Britain Boys.”
Both their parents choked out a laugh.
“I love you, Merlin,” Mum said. Merlin could hear her tears.
“I love you too, Mum,” Merlin said, on the verge of crying, himself.
Without another word, Arthur hung up and switched off the phone.
“We need to make it look like we were never here,” Arthur said calmly, and Merlin promptly let his magic loose shoving everything back where they found it – even replacing the hard-drive of the laptop, hoping desperately they didn’t look too closely and see the small scratches in the black matte from where Merlin had been nervous getting it out and back in.
Arthur shut all the filing cabinets, looking down at the one map they had written on, wincing at the sounds it made as he tried to fold it, and then shoved it behind one of the other filing cabinets, where it remained completely hidden.
Both boys gasped when they heard a door opening and closing down the corridor on their floor.
They wouldn’t get out without being seen.
“We’re trapped,” Merlin whispered.
“Temporarily,” Arthur said, before yanking Merlin with him towards the back corner of the room, where two filing cabinets made an almost-corner with a small table. Arthur dropped to the floor and crawled in backwards, pulling Merlin in so he was sitting in the V of Arthur’s legs.
He leaned back, trying to get as far away from the opening of the almost-corner as he could, before Arthur gasped in pain as Merlin pressed up right against his ribs.
“Sorry!” Merlin hissed.
Abruptly, Arthur’s hand was over his mouth.
“Pull your legs in and keep quiet!” Arthur whispered low and sharp in his ear.
Merlin had just enough time to comply before the door opened, and two men burst in.
He flinched as one man slammed a chair into the desk at the front of the room in what sounded like a fit of frustration, before the other one yanked it back out and dropped into it with a furious sigh as the first one started pacing around the room. Merlin pulled his legs in tighter in fear.
“They’re two fucking kids,” the ‘driver’ said, pacing. “How the hell did they get out in the first place?”
“Because we put Tom in charge of them, that’s why,” the desk-guy said.
Merlin heard the sound of him pulling apart the ‘computer’ and pulling out the laptop, and was immensely glad to have replaced the hard-drive just moments before.
“Higher-ups are not going to be happy about this,” desk-guy said. “Damnit, we should have outfitted the whole building with cameras!”
“You’re not seriously going to tell them, are you?” the driver asked.
“Tom needs to be seen to, and they’re going to need to know the plan’s been compromised,” the desk-guy said.
“We need more time, we can find these kids! They’re going to kill us – maybe even literally! – if they find out we lost two stupid kids.”
“We need back-up,” the desk-guy said. “I’ll send it in an e-mail, encrypted. It’ll allow for at least a minute or two of delay before they call, and for me to explain the situation before they do.”
The driver whirled around and kicked a filing cabinet in frustration – the one next to the one behind which they were hiding. Merlin felt himself and Arthur both flinch away from the vibrations, Arthur’s hand tightening over Merlin’s mouth as desk-guy typed and typed and typed, before clicking the mouse-pad a few times.
“..e-mail’s sent out,” the man said.
“And?”
“And now we wait.”
The men fell into discussion about how to relay the situations while making themselves look as not-bad as possible.
Merlin slowed his breathing to make it even more inaudible than it already was, and behind him, he felt Arthur do the same, though less so – he was already holding himself oddly due to his ribs.
Arthur was warm, his chest at Merlin’s back, his legs around Merlin’s arms, his hand on Merlin’s face. Merlin could feel Arthur’s heartbeat against his own, and felt abruptly grateful for the hand over his mouth. Had it ever been any other time, Merlin would have been indignant and even furious at being silenced. But right now, it was comforting, reassuring, helping to make sure they weren’t caught.
Like when Merlin flinched again as the still silence was sharply broken by the shrill ring of the man’s mobile phone.
“Yeah?” the desk-guy answered.
Merlin heard the faintest sound of voices over the phone – meaning whoever it was on the other end of the line, they were shouting at computer guy.
“Yeah, well – it was Tom! I know, I know, I – no…but! …yes, ma’am. Yes ma’am!”
And so it went, for several more minutes, before the guy grunted affirmatively one last time, ended with “Yes, ma’am, and thank you,” and hung up.
A moment, then he said to the driver, “We’ve got to lock down the building, lock all doors and windows, starting from the ground up – they’ll probably try to get out the same way they came in. Back-up will be here in less than an hour.”
The driver just sighed, deflated from his earlier tension. “Right, then – let’s go.”
The worst moment came next when both men got up, to the sound of shuffling papers and the laptop being booted down and put away. If either of them just took a few steps over and looked down…
But they didn’t.
The two men left, the driver grumbling all the way, and once Merlin could no longer hear their footsteps even in the distance, both boys sighed in relief.
Crawling out from their hiding place, Merlin said, “If they’re locking down the building, how are we supposed to get out?”
“That…get out the map.”
Merlin used his magic, more scraps coming back to him now, to get the map from behind the filing cabinet, and as Arthur started looking it over he pulled out the laptop again and used his magic to pull out the screws and yet again pull out the hard-drive.
“Damnit,” Arthur said. “They’re ahead of us – the ground floor will already be locked down by the time we could get there without being seen or heard.”
“…they said ground-up, right?” Merlin asked, as he replaced the laptop where it was, it and the computer-casing looking untouched as he jammed the hard-drive in his pocket again. “Is there a way to get to the roof?”
“There…there is!”
“Through the vents?” Merlin asked. “Because they’ll be back up here soon to lock down the doors and things.”
“Yeah, yeah, there’s a way,” Arthur said, tracing his finger over the new path. “It’s simpler than trying to get down, too, easier to remember. Call our parents again, tell them to tell the rescue team to land on the roof for us.”
Merlin pulled out the phone, switched it on, and made the call.
It barely even rang once before Mum answered.
“Hello?” she asked, voice nervous as she greeted them, as a beep sounded in.
“Mum,” Merlin said. “Can you get the rescue team to land on the roof?”
“The roof?” Uther’s voice cut in, apparently automatically patched through.
“They’re locking down the building from the ground up, so we’re going even further up,” Arthur said, urgency in his voice as he and Merlin both looked at the door, towards the outside where the two men were.
“We have to go, as fast as possible,” Merlin said.
“The SAS is already being contacted,” Mum said.
“We can go directly from here,” Arthur said, pointing to the far wall where the vent opening was just above one of the filing cabinets. “Pull the grating off.”
Merlin did so, magic quickly unscrewing all four of the screws holding it in at once, and then levitating it down carefully, putting most of his magic into trying to stifle the noise.
“The SAS have been contacted and informed,” Uther said.
“Good, because we really have to go,” Arthur said. “Goodbye, Father.”
“Goodbye,” Uther said, voice thick. “Good luck.”
“I love you, Merlin,” Mum said. “Please come back to me in one piece.”
“Will do, Mum,” Merlin said, and then ended the call, chest clenching as he cut off the communication and switched off the phone, as Arthur folded the small map and clenched it in his hand.
Arthur climbed onto the table, and then the filing cabinet, and peered into the shaft. “It’s small but manageable. And filthy. Can you clear the air in it ahead of us so we’re not breathing that in and getting poisoned or whatever.
“Yeah, yeah,” Merlin said, having climbed up after him, magicking up a light wind to clear the air in the shafts without causing too much attention. “I can muffle some noise, but not all of it. We still have to be as quiet as possible. And with all that metal I can only use a little bit of light, or it might reflect too much and they’ll notice.”
“If we hear them, stop,” Arthur added as he crawled into the vent. The shaft was running perpendicular to the opening, so as he crawled in he turned to the left, and Merlin, a moment later, scooted so he was on the right side and behind Arthur.
The vent shaft was tight – Merlin couldn’t even stay on his hands and knees completely, needing to be in a somewhat-position for push-ups, barely two inches of space around his shoulders. It was claustrophobic, and the smells were horrific, dust and something like death. But they could move. He conjured up a tiny ball of light and made it float ahead of Arthur, and he tried not to grimace at just how filthy it was inside here.
He slithered back so that his head was by the opening, just in time to hear the door down the corridor open again.
“Quickly!” Arthur snapped, and Merlin levitated the grating up and convinced the screws to go back in, and moved so he wasn’t in front of the opening in the shaft, then stilled just in time for the footsteps to reach the office door – then go past it.
He and Arthur were completely silent for a moment, frozen with fear.
Then Arthur started moving, slowly, so slowly, but quietly, and Merlin copied him exactly, keeping only the tips of his shoes against the metal, knees as leverage, pushing forward on them and using his arms to slowly pull forward, resting on his stomach each pause before using those muscles, that motion, again. Arthur whimpered every now and then, the actions harsh on his ribs, and Merlin tried to brace Arthur’s rib with his magic, but it was difficult, and there was still only so much he could do. He wasn’t a Healer sorcerer by any means, but suddenly wished he’d paid more attention to Gaius’s ramblings during tutoring sessions.
They would hear voices in the distances from various directions and freeze, then they would continue once they faded again, though Merlin always felt like they should be hearing his heartbeat, pounding in fear of being caught, found, and trapped in this vent shaft when they were, this tiny and narrow space where they wouldn’t be able to move or even breathe properly.
But inexplicably, they made it. They had turned through multiple junctions, then reached one that, instead of branching off to the side, branched upwards into much larger shaft, narrow maintenance rungs jutting out of one side. At the top, they could see the faintest beams of light - the firs sunlight either of them have seen in a month.
They paused one last time, listening carefully for the sounds of voices, footsteps, doors, anything. But they had taken long enough that the men had apparently gone back downstairs to look for them again – or at least, they weren’t by any nearby openings to this part of the vent shaft, which was good enough.
The time Merlin spent hanging from a few rungs as he worked at the vertical grating at the top of this shaft, grating with low sunlight coming through the slates, was possibly one of the most terrifying times of his life, Arthur directly below him, the sounds possibly making their way across this floor through the vent shaft, and having to focus on so many pieces at once as he unscrewed the grating and pushed it out, his palms sweating and threatening to drop them both to their doom every moment.
When Merlin spilled out of the opening and onto the floor of the roof, he was crying – with relief. He squinted and had to close his eyes and blink owlishly in the bright afternoon sunlight, but still he turned his face up and into the warmth and brightness they’d been deprived of for so long. Beside him, Arthur was giggling in victory, and Merlin broke out laughing in relief. They weren’t out of danger yet, but this close to home, having gone this far...
“It shouldn’t be long, now,” Arthur said, leaning against the top bit of the shaft and clutching at his ribs as Merlin refit the grating back in, just in case. “And they’ll be here – and we’ll be safe.”
“Not long, now,” Merlin agreed.
And it wasn’t.
Part 8
