Feared

Forty-Nine: Imprisoned

Charlotte peeled open her eyes. Her head hurt. Darkness pressed against her, stealing her vision. With each inhale her body shook. She was hunched over on the ground, the cold, damp stone of the floor pressed against her cheek. Coarse rope fastened her hands and ankles tight together. She pinched her eyes shut again and tried to steady her breathing. An aching sob was growing in her chest, an overwhelming ache that threatened to knock the air from her lungs. Visions of James swam before her, too much hurt, too much confusion. She pressed her lips together and fought to hold her panic at bay.

"It's just a game," she whispered. "Just a game..." She opened her eyes to the darkness and pushed herself up into a seated position. As she grew accustomed to the dull light, she could just make out another shadow - a person, lying in a heap on the floor. Charlotte strained against her ropes, feeling them slicing into her skin. She tried to still her racing heart. She tried to still her whirring thoughts. She inhaled deeply counting to five and then exhaled. She focused on her breath. She had to focus on her breath. She was trained for this...

"If this was Kingston – a training exercise..." she frowned, glancing around the small room. It was dark and cold. The floors and walls were stone lined and Charlotte didn't need light to know this was a cell similar to where she had been kept when under Nicholls' care. The scar on her arm seemed to itch instinctively. The only escape was through the heavy wooden door behind her. And she knew from experience that it was impenetrable without outside help.

She opened her eyes and fixed her sights on the body in front of her. "Can you hear me?" she hissed. She couldn't move any closer. She didn't even know if the person she was talking to was alive or not. "Please... answer me! Can you hear me?" Charlotte exhaled, but there was still no reply. She frowned closing her eyes. She would have to do this the hard way. She released her alteration and it went straight for the figure slumped on the ground.

Wisps of thought floated in his head. Dreams, shades of dreams. She could see he was unconscious, that his brain would offer her nothing, but she recognised the little visible there. She recognised in them Matt and she knew what Matt feared more than anything without having to search his mind.

"I'm sorry, Matt," she murmured, "but I need you to wake up".

She filled his unconscious mind with pictures of Freddie, ones she had witnessed herself and others. Images of Rhian crying, the doctors, the pain... Freddie asking for Matt, desperate for his brother to come home to help him. Freddie dying. Rhian alone. Pain and grief and heartache...

Matt bolted up, before careening to the side, clutching his head. Charlotte reined in her alteration, her bound hands trembling. For a moment she thought he was about to be sick. His broad shoulders trembled as he hunched over the ground, heaving. Though whether they were heaved retches or sobs she could hardly tell.

"Matt, Matt... I'm so sorry... I didn't want to," she rushed. "It wasn't real... just a dream... just a dream..."

His dark eyes met hers, the whites ghostly in the gloom of their cell. "Just a dream?" he groaned, burying his head in his hands.

"Just a dream," she breathed. "I needed to wake you up".

Only his uneven, broken gasps filled the silence of the cell. Fear seeped from him, flooding her senses, drowning her. "Where are we?" he finally whispered, not looking at her.

"In the basement... locked away".

There was a long pregnant pause. Charlotte's head pounded, the pain aided by her now restless alteration. Her wrists ached, her muscles screamed with the tension radiating her body. Matt shifted his weight, his shoulders sinking. He glanced up at her, his thick eyebrows knotted together in a confused frown. "Charlotte... before – was that... James?"