Tonight was a particularly cold night. It was nearly the end of winter and yet the temperatures still dropped quite spectacularly during the night. Tonight, however, was probably the coldest since Christmas. It was raining quite heavily and the rain drops kept hitting the windows loudly.
The downpour had been going on for a few hours now and Thomas was sure there would be ice everywhere the next day, making it impossible to walk the streets without slipping and falling. He grumbled at the mere thought and stood up to fetch himself a warm drink when the lights went out on him, leaving him in darkness.
A heavy, exhausted sigh left his lips and he turned away from his initial direction and walked towards the door to the basement. He never went there. He had a hatred for basements and usually let his roommate, Minho, go into the basement for him if he ever needed anything from down there. He had had a few bad experiences with basements in the past and was not about to have a remake. But tonight, Minho had gone to one of his good friend's house and had yet to come back home which meant he had no choice but to go into the basement to try and find flashlights and possibly candles for the night.
Thomas reached the door to the basement and opened it, staring into the even darker staircase and sighed, cursing the heavens that he had to go down there. The brunette gathered his courage, taking his phone out and using the small flashlight to guide himself down and avoid falling down. He nearly grunted when each step down he took would make a horrible wood creaking sound straight out of horror movies.
The stairs seemed to go on for hours and he nearly turned back around when he finally reached the end of it. To the right, was a second door which this time led directly into the basement and Thomas stood there for a minute, pondering if he should go in or not before rolling his eyes at himself and twisting the knob, tugging the door open and walking inside.
Not wasting any time, Thomas immediately started to search for candles and flashlights, not wanting to spend more time down there than he truly needed to. Fate had other plans, it seemed as a small clickety sound was heard to the brunette's left. Thomas snapped his head to the side, his body unmoving, waiting to hear it again but nothing was heard. Putting it on his fatigue, Thomas went back to his search when he heard the sound again, this time clearer.
Metal against metal.
That was the sound he had heard.
He snapped his head to the side again, this time bringing the light to the source of the noise quickly to not miss whatever it was which had made that sound and for a moment he found nothing. Thomas stepped slowly away from the box he had been searching in for the past five minutes and ventured closer to the place he had heard the sound. His light kept going from side to side, lighting up every corner to find something, anything but yet there wasn't anything.
The brunette was about to turn around when it was heard again followed by what sounded scaringly close to a whimper. Bewildered by what he had just heard, Thomas froze in place, still not seeing anything before his eyes caught a recess in the wall, hidden by a mountain of boxes piled up to create a hidden place. Confused by it, the brunette walked towards it, hearing what he determined to be heavy breathing the more he approached it and as he walked around it, the sight left him speechless.
There, sitting down on the hard cold ground, handcuffed to a thick metal pole, was a boy. He looked to be around Thomas' age and was visibly starved. The brunette was shining his light on the boy and the blond was unable to see who was there so he whimpered, his voice muffled by the rag over his mouth and he turned his face away from the light.
Baffled, Thomas stood unable to do anything for a while before walking quickly to the boy. The blond heard the footsteps approaching quickly and he whimpered again, looking to the light to see what was going on before panicking when he saw a hand reach for him. The brunette put the phone down, the light shining on both their faces now and he raised his hands in surrender.
