Castaway

The Big Come Down

Chapter Notes

Thanks so much everyone for the feedback! Chapter title credit goes to Nine Inch 

Nails. Enjoy!

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Cutting a plastic bottle into a workable lock shim is a lot harder than she thought it would be, and she almost ruins the entire bottle in the process of working out the technical details. It takes her four tries to wrestle the plastic into the shape she wants — a bit of an M with a rounded, cylinder- shaped middle instead of a triangular one — and another three tries after that to get that middle prong of the M to be just the right width to fit her prison's lock. Finally, though, she manages to jam her makeshift shim into the fitment.

Clenching her teeth, she pulls so hard on the shim's tabs that her biceps shake. 

With a click, the lock pops open.

"Yes!" she exclaims on the coattails of a relieved exhalation. "Yes, yes, yes!"

She bursts out of the cell like a stampeding bull and skids to a stop beside the table, her heart stuck in her throat. Chasing the intravenous line to its terminus at the back of Lucifer's hand, she picks off with her fingernail the surgical tape holding the line in place, and then gently pulls the plastic cannula out of his vein.

A bright-red ooze of blood snakes down his wrist and drips onto the the table with a quiet pat, pat, pat. She presses her thumb to the tiny wound to apply pressure, inspecting the handcuffs at the same time.

The cuffs consist of three rings all smooshed on top of each other — two large, thick rings that encompass his wrists, and a tiny eyelet on top where a chain might pass through, though there's no chain attached, now. The cuffs are metal-colored like steel, but they gleam as if they're an independent light source. The surface of the metal is inscribed with all manner of strange, looping red scribblings, and there are no weld points or keyholes that she can discern. It's as though the cuffs were molded directly to Lucifer's wrists from a molten state.

What on earth? How? More magic, maybe?

She tugs on the cuffs experimentally with her free hand. His bruised, abraded wrists flop with each tug, but the cuffs themselves don't budge or creak or show any signs of structural weakness. Shit. She has no idea how she's going to get them off.

With a stressed glance at the door, she takes a breath. 

Later.

The cuffs, they can deal with later. They can deal with everything later, except the escaping part.

The escaping part needs to happen now.

"Lucifer," she says, giving him a rough shake.

He's still out cold, though, and her ministrations only serve to roll him flat onto his back, his body limp and unresponsive. Another shake, and his mouth lolls open, revealing the white tips of his teeth and his pale, slack tongue. The odd angle of his throat causes his breathing to whistle out through his incisors instead of his nose.

"Lucifer?" 

Nothing.

She heads to the little fridge by the door, giving Lucifer a moment to burn off the sedatives. She yanks the remaining four water bottles from the fridge, grasping them as a singular unit by the plastic rings binding them together, and then sets the bottles on top of the fridge to be grabbed on the way out.