Behind closed doors

The Sound of...

Summary:
What better place to hide a super-thief than in a storage crate running out of air?

3/3 chapters included
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"Carmen." A strained voice hits the wall and echos, bursting into multiple tiny whispers that vibrate across impenetrable walls. Shaking minimally against the metal and fluttering back into her head. The voice evaporates steadily yet to leave her with nothing but silence... silence, an empty space for her to go mad. Grooves are lined across the walls, pushing into her back. Indents that either took or gave more air, she didn't know.

Storage chambers were used to move stock and artefacts with little to no security about what you're moving; especially not for a global "import export" company. So no one cared to check this particular washed out cargo hold. And since she'd landed in whatever new part of the world, Carmen's cell hadn't moved. There was never anybody around her, no one that knew her and no one that could hear her. Her screams for help had long since punctured a gaping hole in the breathable air she had left.

So she'd retired to waiting the situation out. Breathing for one second and holding as long as she could, then to exhale and resist her brain's screams for her to take more, to gasp for air, to treat herself like she'd been doing all her life. Like everyone was doing all their lives... her team, VILE, they can breathe. But she can't. Carmen opens her eyes again, refusing herself another minute of rest lest she never stir from it again. It's been days, she doesn't know how many; the only signals in her dark little void were whether her small corner of the box was cold or hot, that by assumption told her if the sun or moon were hitting it. It's cold now. It's been cold for a while... and the assumption that she's changed time zones didn't help her case. She holds down yawns as best she can, but between her half-lidded eyes and screaming senses it was growing more difficult. And who knew how much air she was taking while she was asleep... she couldn't keep up, and it's not like VILE ever told her how many hours she'd had to begin with.

VILE...

VILE weren't coming back, they'd spared her at least that sliver of info; they had no idea where her crate was headed, or where it was now. Just that they were glad to see it leave.

Hours ago Carmen felt another crate being lowered on top of hers (and god if she didn't feel suffocated enough then) and now swears that the roof was still caving— something in her heart flipping in terror she had to repress for oxygen... because she really wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. And Carmen knew it was a stupid to speak, let alone calling out her own name, it stole whatever unknown quantity of oxygen she had left... but it gave back to her something human. Something that was fleeting— a name that as the better days passed had felt more and more like her own. And now she may never hear it again... because to say it twice is to give in to her solace, that Carmen was her only company and only hope. The last thing she would hear was the sound of her own voice. She was about to die alone as her young self used to cry about as she'd throw back the end of another morbid storybook to Shadowsan begging him to not let that happen to her, or even him... and now it was coming true.

Carmen drops her head back against the wall and dreads. The thumping of her skull echos. This was far from bleeding lambs and battered wolfs in a teens novel fed to her at seven. With nothing else to do, Carmen stared at the old crusted walls of a faded red shipping container that was starting to look a lot like her heart. Scratches around the edges from where smaller crates must have bumped it around, and that one spot Carmen kicking in her earlier defiances. Abandoned spiderwebs wrap the darkest corners together. The enclosure ignited only by the questionable battery lightbulb hung from the ceiling. It seems to fade as Carmen does, a battery that probably had more left in it than her. Whenever the container moved the bulb would sway, at some particular loading docks it had been smacked against the roof and cracked, bleeding broken glass around the corners that Carmen had since been... violently acquainted with. Her screams had been louder than the glass at that stage, unaware that the loading crew around her's lowest priority was taking the time out of their days to hear her out. VILE must have paid them off. The rattling of glass was now her main source for knowing the container was moving, but for now the clear fragments have drifted to places she can't find, nor can she bear to.