The Undesired Second Chance

Chapter 34: The Gray Room

Kidnapped.

Axel hadn't been tied up, granted, but there wasn't really any other way to interpret his having woken up in an empty room wholly unfamiliar to him after having been knocked out. Though he did—very, very briefly—entertain the idea that he had actually been insane for the past year, imagined everything, and was only just now coming to his senses in a mental asylum.

But, unfortunately or not, that wasn't the case.

He had been kidnapped, plain and simple.

This couldn't be real.

Closing his eyes tight, Axel held his breath for a long minute. Held it until his lungs burned, his throat ached, and then he slowly exhaled. He was breathing, and alive, and more than a little scared. That was fine. Natural, even.

Axel let himself panic for a bit.

Inhaled.

Exhaled.

And then, head still aching, Axel made himself slowly look around the plain gray room again. It was small and unfurnished, save for the thin cot he was on and what he guessed was a chamber pot in one of the corners. The whole space was completely lit with harsh cold light, but he couldn't really figure out how.

Also, the room quite distinctly lacked a door.

That, certainly, was not a good sign.

As he processed this new situation—doing his best to keep his breathing steady and abate the rising twist of panic in his gut, just pushing through—he shifted off the cot and put his feet on the cold ground.

His shoes were gone.

Of course they were.

It should have been expected, even if they had left him in his own clothes, because taking shoes was such a simple thing to do to discourage escape. But they were his shoes: a pair he'd found at a store in München, and had worn all around Japan. He only used them as house shoes these days, to try and keep them in good-ish condition.

He breathed.

They were just shoes, after all—no matter how sentimental—and not nearly the most pressing thing about this entire kidnapping situation.

Standing somewhat unsteadily, Axel paced around the room. Trailing a hand along the walls as he walked, he found nearly invisible seams on the wall opposite from where he had woken; he only noticed them when his fingernails caught on the tiny ridges.

Following the seam up as far as he could reach, he traced out what he was fairly sure must be the door. It didn't really help him in any way to do so, but knowing that there was an exit, no matter how inaccessible, was still strangely reassuring.

Not very reassuring, granted, but at least it was something.

After circuiting the room two more times and finding nothing new—no surprise—Axel folded against one of the chill walls and set his head in his hands.

Kidnapped.

What in the name of all that was real (or fictional) was he supposed to do now?

Answer: not much.

There wasn't much he could do, obviously. The door was really more of a wall, and the room only had the bed and toilet. Both of which, he discovered after a few strong tugs, were quite thoroughly bound to the floor somehow.

So he sat.

And he thought.

The more sardonic part of his brain had to wonder what he had done that led his life to spiral so thoroughly into the realm of craziness he'd been living with for the past several months; he had no idea what kind of metaphorical domino he had knocked over that led to crashing into a fictional dimension and now being kidnapped by ninja, but it must have been a doozy.