Deal With It - Sidemen Fanfiction

Chapter 18 - Familiar Faces and Familiar Situations

He took in the sorry sight of all of us; the dripping clothes, blood stained fabric and sunken expressions. His eyes came to rest on me, my head supported by Simon's shoulder as he held the rest of my still shivering body in his arms. His own expression of confusion was met with five of our own, each wondering what the other had been doing. Tobi, surprisingly was the one to make assumptions first.

"You better not have got yourselves involved in this McGinley," he warned, stepping in front of our dysfunctional group with an uncharacteristic glint of anger in his eyes. Cal held his hands up, a genuine look of innocence plastered to his frown as he continued to stare in bewilderment.

"I just came to collect a couple of boxes of merch," he stuttered slightly, distracted, "You were in the room I'd been selling in with JJ. I overheard what he was saying and just assumed it was all a prank or something. I'd seen the cameras already, you see, proper CCTV in every room."

"And you didn't think to help us when we all got dragged away into creepy basements?" Harry, the closest to Cal, interrogated, standing away from our group protectively. The boy shook his head slowly, as confused as I was, even without the short term memory loss to contend with.

"It's like I said," he promised earnestly, "I saw the cameras and assumed it was just another JJ video. If I'm honest I didn't notice anything suspicious at the time. Then you all turned up and I'm guessing from the state of you that this is more than a joke." Tobi let out a short, unamused laugh in agreement, stepping forward to gingerly hug Cal, his arms looping around him widely to keep him dry. Callum returned the gesture gratefully, a deep look of relief clear on his face.

"What now?" he finally asked, pulling away, "Where's Ethan?" I frowned for a moment before remembering our predicament once more, fragments of memory returning in their usual misshapen way. I experienced the now familiar pang of fear as I saw Simon before firmly reminding my feuding brain that we had had that conversation enough times previously to know that he could be trusted again. Vikk eventually broke the long silence, all of us reluctant to admit our neglect of the missing boy.

"We still need to rescue him," he told the disoriented boy with a grimace, "But we don't know where he was taken to in the first place." Cal frowned softly, searching his memory for a shred of evidence that could set us on his trail, eventually coming up with something that he appeared to see as problematic, not helpful.

"Surely you want them to think they still have you captured," he spoke nonetheless, "There's a room, I saw it down the hall. All of the cameras they've set up come back to a single central system; every feed, every corner of this building can be seen from that one room." I frowned at the thought as Simon began to celebrate, calling it the easiest way to find Ethan quickly.

"They'll know we've got out," I muttered tiredly, only reaching Simon's attentive ears, "We have to wipe the footage of this corridor so they aren't on high alert. Knowing Joe, Ethan will be out of here before we've taken another step down this hallway if he knows Harry and I aren't in that basement anymore." The blonde boy nodded in disgruntlement, a small sigh escaping his tightly pressed lips in exasperation.

"When is good news really going to be good?" He questioned softly, frustration clouding his concerned face as he glanced up at the nearby camera, propped up against a wall. Callum followed his gaze, his eyes suddenly lighting with inspiration.

"These things aren't to hard to loop are they?" he asked, his Harry-esque adventurous streak showing in full force, "Provided they don't know already." Tobi was quick to agree, leaving us with only a distraction to create.