Chapter Text
The world bleeds back into focus slowly like light through a threadbare jumper, Charles blinking against it until the fog clears. Doesn’t even realise it has cleared, at first—it’s dark enough in the room to feel like he’s still squinting at it through a veil. He groans, his head sodding killing him, and curls in on himself like a dead spider.
Clink.
Oh. Fuck.
Charles lurches, and there’s the sound again, complete with a cold dig into his wrists and stomach. He looks down. Chains, wrapped round his torso, lashing him soundly to a sturdy wooden chair with his hands trapped behind the back.
“Shit,” he rasps, wriggling against his chains. “Shit—how’d—? Who the fuck—?”
“All excellent questions.”
Charles isn’t exactly proud of the sound that escapes him—somewhere between a grunt and a stamped-on rubber chicken. He squints into the gloom. “Who’s there?” he demands, aiming to pitch his voice a little lower to compensate for the squawk, but there’s not much he can do about the wobble in it.
“I might ask you the same thing.” It’s a crisp, clear voice, light and not a little bit bloody posh. As Charles’ eyes adjust he makes out a shape on the other side of the… classroom? Looks like a classroom anyway, an old one. And there tucked into the opposite corner from Charles there’s another chair, another bloke, chained up about as thoroughly as Charles is. White bloke, tall, slim—probably would have been neat as a pin, if whoever had put him in that chair hadn’t roughed him up a bit first. His neat hair is escaping over his forehead and his button-up shirt is crumpled and dirtied. Good looking lad. Familiar.
Very familiar.
Charles swallows nervously. “Asked you first, didn’t I?”
“Hm. True.” Posh bloke is shifting in his chair, as if he’s testing the give of the chains. If they’re anything like Charles’, he won’t find much. “My name is Edwin. And you are?”
Charles has never met an Edwin before, but he reckons this bloke looks like one alright. “Very bloody confused is who I am.”
Even from across the room, Charles can see the eyebrow go up—Edwin has very visible eyebrows and apparently knows how to use them.
“...Charles,” he introduces himself properly, taking a moment to squint around the room. Yep, definitely a classroom. Wood panelled walls, great big chalk-scrawled blackboard, few rows of desks. Obviously not one that’s been used in ages; there’s dust everywhere and the windows are scabbed over with planks nailed in place. There’s a little weak sunlight slipping through the cracks between boards, barely enough to take the edge off the gloom, but otherwise they’re about as sealed off from the outside as they could be.
“Hello, Charles,” says Edwin, Charles’ name sounding like something fancier than it is in his mouth. “Might I ask what brings you here?”
“Fuck if I know, mate,” Charles snorts.
“You remember nothing?” Edwin prods. “I must confess, I find my memories somewhat addled as well; I was on my way to work, and then…”
“Yeah. Yeah, same,” mumbles Charles, shifting guiltily. “Well, not—was just home from work, actually. Dunno what happened after that.”
“Neither do I. But I should be very interested to find out.” Edwin’s bushy brows furrow as he wriggles against the chains. “Some range of motion wouldn’t go amiss…”
Charles rips his gaze from the strangely smooth motions of Edwin’s shifting—and deceptively broad—shoulders, squirming against his own chains. “Yeah.” He laughs. “Of all the times to be caught without a bloody lockpick, eh?”
He feels Edwin’s eyes snap to him like a magnet. “You can do that? What would you require?”
“Um—well, I’ve got tools that’re the best thing for the job. Might be able to work with a hairgrip, though, in a pinch. Or—”
“A paperclip?”
Charles considers. “S’not ideal, could break. But yeah, could give it a go.”
“I have one. In my back pocket.”
Charles grins. “Mate. You’re my new best friend.”
Edwin ducks his head, just briefly, not quite tucking his little smile away before Charles catches a glimpse of it. “Right. How do we…?”
“Only one thing to do, yeah?” says Charles, wrapping his bound hands round the back slats of the chair and bracing his feet. “Get shifting.”
Not exactly dignified, the bit that follows. Charles sort of drags himself along with a semi-continuous scrape across the floor, occasionally bashing into tables and chairs. Edwin, apparently a bit stronger than he looks, goes for picking the heavy chair up for a few seconds at a time and sort of awkwardly waddling with it, setting it down every couple of steps to catch his breath.
By the time they’ve met in the middle, Charles has desk-inflicted bruises down his arms, and Edwin’s pale face has gone an interesting shade of pink. Charles offers him the best smile he can muster before he braces himself again and hops round in a dozen small but deafening thuds of his chairlegs, ‘til he has his back to Edwin, and waits and listens as Edwin pulls the same maneuver. Soon enough, there they are—the tips of Edwin’s fingers, brushing against Charles’ own.
“Right. Let’s be having it, then,” says Charles.
“I’m afraid I cannot reach it. But perhaps you might be able to.”
“Which pocket?”
“The back right.”
Charles scoots himself sideways a bit, and gropes blindly for the right pocket. He finds it quickly enough, but it’s not all he finds.
“Ah!” Edwin half-squeaks, as Charles more or less gropes his arse in the hurry.
Charles is glad they’re back to back—he must be bright red to his bloody chest. “Sorry,” he mumbles, trying to dig around a little less eagerly. Why he thought diving right in with his hand in a sort of cupping position was a good idea…!
“That’s—that’s quite alright,” says Edwin with a clear of his throat. “It may have fallen right to the bottom, I’m afraid.”
“Comes of bein’ in a back pocket, don’t it?” Charles jokes.
Edwin sighs. “Let us crack on, shall we?”
Charles has more arse jokes he could make off the back of that one, too, but he lets it slide for now. Doesn’t wanna start this relationship off on a bum note.
art by tumblerislovetumblerislife
He digs it out, eventually—little bugger’s wormed its way right down to the seam of the pocket lining.
Once he’s got it bent into shape, though, he’s in a bit of a pickle. Because thanks to the way their chains and padlocks are arranged, it’s almost a given he’ll drop or break the paperclip if he goes for his own; he’s gonna have a way easier time of it if he picks Edwin’s lock, first. Which is fine, ‘til you consider he doesn’t know the bloke from Adam, and really who’d blame him for bolting for the door the moment he’s free, anyway, leaving Charles and his probably bent-beyond-usefulness paperclip to rot here—
“Charles?” Edwin prods, gently.
Taking a deep breath, Charles shifts again. Leap of faith, innit? Gotta give it a go now and then. “Hold still, yeah? Get you out in a tick.”
Trust falls are bloody terrifying—been a while since Charles took one without getting dropped. Edwin does glance at the door when he’s free, rubbing the feeling back into his wrists, and Charles doesn’t know whether to curse or cry.
But a glance is all that door gets. Instead, Edwin dashes to the front of the room, to the old teacher’s desk in front of the blackboard, and starts rooting around. “Perhaps there is a key somewhere,” he says, opening and closing the drawers so fast he kicks up clouds of dust. “Or something else I can use to free you. I’m afraid I haven’t your skill with a paperclip. Where in the world did you learn to do that?”
Charles laughs and shrugs, papering over his too-obvious relief with it. “Dunno, was a while ago. I think. Probably picked it up to impress someone, though.”
Edwin darts a smile up at him. A real, wild little thing, a flash of bright teeth in the dusty gloom. “Well, do consider me impressed.”
Charles’ heart thuds with a sort of too-much feeling in his chest, all sloshy and squidgy, too real and too close—like he hasn’t felt it in a long time.
Charles wasn’t actually expecting Edwin to find the keys, but he does. Tucked under a little glass pencil pot on the bookshelf.
“Dust disturbance,” says Edwin, as he slips behind Charles to undo his chains with slightly trembling hands. “Someone didn’t put the pot back exactly where they found it. Are you quite alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah, cheers, mate,” Charles mumbles, standing up and wincing as his chains fall loudly to the hardwood floor. “Be better when I’m out of this bloody room, though.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” says Edwin, straightening his clothes out with a brisk little tug. He’s got a natty little cardigan on over the rumpled shirt—Charles hadn’t noticed, it must’ve slid down his shoulders. It’s dark green and it brings out his eyes, even in the murky room. “Come along, then. Perhaps we might discuss this most peculiar meeting over tea.”
Before Charles can tease Edwin—hopefully—about asking him out, Edwin turns smartly on his heel and marches, with a bloody shocking level of unearned confidence, slap bang into the door.
Charles winces sympathetically. “Um. You alright, mate?”
Rubbing his nose, Edwin gapes at the door, looking betrayed. “I—yes, yes I’m perfectly…” He shakes his head. “Goodness. I do not know why I thought that would work.”
He shakes his head and tries the handle—it doesn’t budge.
“Door locked? Might’ve figured,” says Charles, sidling up to Edwin for a look. He frowns when he realises the keyhole has been sealed over with some kind of filler, and a shiny new keypad has been screwed to the wall. “Might have a tough job cracking that one with a paperclip, to be honest.”
“No matter. There must be a code tucked away, somewhere,” Edwin breezes, turning around to assess the room.
“Doubt it, mate—don’t make much sense leaving your prisoners with a key to get out the cell, does it?”
“Generally not, no. But they already did,” he said, gesturing to the disturbed pencil cup. “It would have been the work of a moment to take the keys to the chains away with them. No. Either whoever locked us in here is confident, which has made them careless, or they intend for us to escape. I suggest we search for a code, or anything unusual which might point us to one.”
And with no other plans and Edwin looking and sounding proper clever in that daytime telly posh detective voice, what’s Charles gonna do except agree?
“So,” says Edwin some minutes later, as he worries the edges of a moth-eaten window drape like he's hoping to find secrets concealed in the seams. “Might I ask if you know of anyone who may wish to imprison you in an old schoolroom with a man you've never met?”
Charles worries at the inside of his cheek with his tongue. Somewhere in the whole kidnapping palaver he must've bitten it; scabby, little bit of a copper tang. “Ask you the same question,” he parrots unhelpfully, yanking a drawer out of the desk and shaking it upside down, turning up nothing but dustbunnies big enough to give Bugs a run for his money.
He hears Edwin's frustrated huff from across the room. “Very well. Let us focus on the hows, shall we? The last thing I remember before everything went black was being parked under a tree. It was dark---well, apart from the flash.”
“The—the flash?” Charles mumbles.
“Yes. Peculiarly bright, there and gone in an instant. It happened before I got into my car, actually. I searched some for the culprit but never found it. I suppose I reasoned it must have been a power surge in a nearby streetlight, or a passing motorist flashing their headlights further up the road. I got into my car, and had a sip of my… tea…” He groaned. “Which I thought tasted strange—blast. Drugged, it must have been. That flash must have been a person after all, my door was open a moment, they could have slipped something into my cup while I was distracted. Careless of me.”
“Bit quick of them, innit?” Charles turns out another drawer, disturbing a very leggy spider. “Might be onto something, though. With the drugging. I'd just got home from work, had a swig of milk from the fridge—I just thought it'd gone off a bit, but…”
He shivers, sticking the empty drawer on the table to rub his arms. Whoever snatched him didn't grab him a hoodie or anything. He's still in just his vest, half undressed for sleep, and there's a right chilly draft in this old ruin. He supposes he ought to be glad he'd not got round to kicking off his jeans, too.
“Are you quite alright?”
Charles snorts. “Yeah, yeah. Bit underdressed, is all.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
Footsteps creak towards him over the old wood floors. Charles' eyes snap up—and he starts waving his hand the moment he sees Edwin start to shrug his cardy off his shoulders. “Oi, now, you don't have to—”
“Please. I insist,” says Edwin, holding it out at arm's length. His lips twitch in what might, maybe, be an awkward attempt at a smile. “I have more layers to spare.”
Charles fidgets. He doesn't exactly do charity—and the lads would proper take the mick if they saw him in a bloody cardigan. Then again, no one about to see him but Edwin, is there?
He reaches out. The bottle green wool is softer than anything his fingers have ever touched. “Cheers, mate,” he says, already feeling warmer. He glances away as he shrugs it on—and his eyes catch on something almost as interesting as the little dusting of pink on Edwin's high cheekbones. “Oh, ‘ello—notice that?”
“Notice what?”
“That clock,” says Charles, gesturing. It's hanging above the blackboard, about where you'd expect a clock in a classroom to be, but that's not what's odd about it. “Brand new, like that keypad. Spick and span, still ticking away.” He tosses Edwin a grin. “Reckon same lot who want us to get out of here want us to know what time it is, too.”
Edwin looks at him, colour high in his cheeks, something like glee in those stormy eyes. “Excellent spot, Charles.”
Bloody hell, but this posh wool's good stuff—Charles feels bright red and glowy all over already.
Charles takes a proper gander at the clock by climbing up on a wobbly chair—which Edwin steadies with both hands on the back. It’s just a clock, though, no handy hints or codes stuck behind the back of it, so they hang it back up to crack on with the search. Edwin sticks around next to the blackboard, though, clever eyes darting across the markings.
“These are new,” he says, thoughtfully, dragging the pad of his finger through a cloud of chalk. “Someone has smudged them somewhat, tried to make them look aged, but the chalk of the writing is of a different type to the older residue.”
“Know what they mean?” asks Charles, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s all Greek to me.”
“You’re off—but only by the span of the Adriatic. It’s Latin. Quite sloppy Latin, as it happens,” says Edwin, with a lip curl of distaste.
“And you can read it?” says Charles, grinning. “And you thought it was funny I could pick locks.”
“One of these skills is not generally taught in schools,” says Edwin.
“Neither of ‘em are if you didn’t go to Eton. Go on, what’s it say, then?”
“I think that it says ‘follow your heart’,” Edwin mutters, tracing the blurred letters with his finger. “Though the spelling is atrocious, and these u’s look like v’s.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, then…?” Charles mumbles, brow furrowed. “Unless…” He snaps his fingers. “Oh!”
“Oh?”
Charles plants a hand on the teacher’s desk and vaults it, making a beeline for the smaller desks all knocked out of kilter by his drag across the floor earlier. “Thought I saw… yes! Have a look!”
Edwin hurries over, joining Charles in looking down at the crude, scratched-in heart shape on the corner of the desk.
“Well observed! But what could it mean? Is there something inside this desk, or under it?”
Charles sets to checking out both of those things. Nothing inside the little lift-open desk compartment but a few more spiders—which Edwin flinches away from and then looks a bit confused and annoyed at himself about. As for underneath, pretty much what you’d expect—chewing gum, and lots of it. “Urgh,” Charles groans, snatching his hand back from the rock-solid caked-on lumps and wiping it on his jeans. “Wish I’d looked first.”
“There must be something,” Edwin muses, tracing his finger around the heart and down, past the top of the table leg. He looks down and cocks his head. “Charles. Does anything seem strange about that board to you?”
It’s hard to tell with all the dust they kicked up shuffling about on the chairs earlier, but Edwin’s right—there’s breaks in the dust coverage on the board under the table leg, mostly round the edges. Oddly similar to fingerprints.
Charles grins. “Let’s have a shufty, yeah?”
They find a lockbox under the floorboard. Edwin holds it out to Charles expectantly, eyebrows raised, and Charles preens a little bit at already being the go-to bloke in his mind to get through a tricky lock.
But the paperclip is already looking a bit flimsy, and Charles knows a shit lockbox when he sees one, so he chucks finesse out the window and whacks the thing open on the corner of a desk like a chocolate orange instead.
“I could have done that,” Edwin grumbles.
“Were you hopin’ for a show?” Charles teases.
Edwin’s eyes dart to Charles’ hands, and he clears his throat and doesn't answer. “Well, do go on. What do we have?”
Charles levers aside the dented lid and pokes through the contents. There’s not much. Just a little tape recorder, and a bottle; glass, few inches tall, full of some sort of weird green liquid so dark it’s almost black. Charles picks it up and uncorks it, taking a sniff—and immediately regretting it. “Ugh. That is rank.”
He holds it out to Edwin, who takes a much more cautious sniff. His entire face still scrunches up at the force of the whiff. “Euch. Put the stopper back, Charles, please—before the whole room becomes uninhabitable."
No arguments there. Charles plugs it up and puts it back, and picks up the tape player instead. “Right. This seems more like it.”
He presses play and holds it up, next to his ear, Edwin leaning in close to listen. There’s a few moments of crackling empty tape and then, finally, a voice. A smug, smoky purr of a voice, a bit digitally distorted.
“Well, well, well. You found my little note. Colour me impressed, boys. Hello, Edwin. Charles.”
Charles points to the player and mouths “mate of yours?”, which Edwin just shrugs at.
“Congratulations. I’m sure you’ve been frustrated for quite some time now—I can only imagine how many hours you must have wasted already in escaping your chains.”
Edwin raises his eyebrow, as Charles quietly snorts.
“So you can imagine it brings me no pleasure at all to tell you that your time is rapidly running out. Take a look around you, darlings. This is your prison, but not for much longer. At precisely six p.m. this room, this whole building, will be blown sky high. A tragic accident—the gas supply lines in these old buildings are quite the death trap, don’t you think? You have until then to escape the room you’re in; that is, if you don’t want to be buried under it.”
Edwin’s fingers light softly on Charles’ hand; which is when he realises it’s shaking.
“Very well done on making it as far as the lockbox, dear boys. I doubt you’ll make it much further. I’m sure your time is ticking away, so I won’t keep you. Before I sign off, a little word to the wise; Edwin. You find yourself cellmates with a man you do not know. But oh, he knows you.”
Charles’ blood runs cold.
“He’s a liar. Oh, I’m sure you already guessed—he has a shifty look about him, doesn’t he? I wouldn’t trust him if I were you. If he becomes too much of a bother, do avail yourself of the tincture in the bottle; I used it to fetch you here last night and it’s really quite effective at keeping someone quiet for a few hours. Best of luck to you both.”
The tape runs on, rattling like Charles’ nerves, but there’s no more voice to be heard.
Numbly, Charles clicks it off. He looks at Edwin, and Edwin looks at him, those clever eyes scouring him down to the bone.
And then he looks past Charles, over his shoulder, and nods. “Eleven thirty,” he says. “Well. Thank goodness we expedited procedures with that paperclip. Plenty of time to decode the rest, don’t you agree?”
The force of Charles’ relief almost crumples him. “Yeah. Better get a wiggle on, eh?”
“That voice give you any hints, then?” Charles asks some time later, as he’s perched on the teacher’s desk and faffing about with a Rubik’s cube. Not just for the fun of it, mind—some bastard’s scribbled on the sides and now he’s got to solve it to see what it says.
“I have my suspicions…” says Edwin, carefully, from the chair behind the desk where he’s set up shop. He’s got a load of other puzzles and trinkets they’d hunted up from around the room and he’s approaching each one with the seriousness and care of an archaeologist reconstructing ancient pottery. He doesn’t seem keen to rush through any of them—or to answer Charles’ question.
Charles bites his lip, and takes a punt. “C’mon, mate. I know we don’t exactly know each other, but. Who’re you gonna trust, eh—the other bloke who woke up in the chains or the bloke who put us both here?”
Edwin eyes him shrewdly a moment, turning over a little sliding block puzzle in his hands. He sighs, and leans back in the creaky leather chair. “I’ve been on the trail of something. I’m an investigative journalist, by trade—and I have reason to believe that a certain… prominent political figure was mixed up in something unsavoury in his university days.”
“Weren’t they all?”
“Perhaps—but I have reason to believe this one resulted in the death of another student, and I mean to get to the heart of the matter.” Edwin slides the blocks around almost without looking. “The voice on the tape had been modified, somewhat, but I suspect it to be the man I’m investigating; he has a certain manner of speaking.”
“Like a smug twat.”
“A supercilious 'smug twat’ with mixed-American heritage who seemingly cannot quite keep his rhotic R’s under wraps,” Edwin expands. “Evidently, he knows I am on his tail and he does not want what I’ve found to come to light.”
“You seem pretty calm about it,” Charles points out. “For a bloke with a government hit out on ‘im, I mean. In’t you worried?”
“On the contrary, I feel rather vindicated,” says Edwin, with a flash of that sneaky smile. “If I were barking up the wrong tree, he wouldn’t be trying to hard to get rid of me.”
It’s about that moment that Charles realises that as well as being a clever little swot, this bloke is also a dagger of a man tucked into an unassuming cardigan sheath. And considering Charles is locked in a room with him, he probably oughtn't to be grinning about that as much as he is. “You’re nobody ‘til somebody wants you dead, eh?”
“Which does, I fear, raise the question of why you are in this powder keg with me.”
Charles flinches. “Ah.”
Edwin sets aside the block puzzle—which he’s only gone and managed to almost finish. Enough to reveal the number six scrawled over the oddly depressing little cartoon image of a fish opening its mouth wide around a pointy fish hook. “Yes, I feel we’ve tiptoed around the subject long enough. Quid pro quo, Charles. I have told you why I’m here, now tell me, why are you?” He steeples those long fingers on the desk. “And why are you, supposedly, a liar?”
Can’t argue with that, much as he wishes he could. Charles sighs, setting down the Rubik’s cube—he’s got two and a half sides of that solved and all. Don’t really need to solve ‘em all at once if they just jot down what’s on each side as they go, do they? “‘Cause I already knew. ‘Bout your job.” He lets his hands dangle between his knees. “Recognised you straight off, actually. When I woke up. Saw you recently.”
Edwin looks at him levelly. “Yes. I suspected as much. It was you that I glimpsed last night, on my way to the car.”
“Yeah,” says Charles with a wince. “Dunno what I was thinking. Been doing this gig a few years now—you’d think I’d remember to turn off the flash when I’m tryna cop a sneaky shot, eh?”
“Hm. And why, might I ask, were you taking pictures of me?” He doesn’t sound angry, at least. But maybe the really well brought up posh ones don’t—maybe they learn how to be polite first, stab you in the back later.
“Nothing personal, mate. Got hired, didn’t I? Dunno who by—people who come to me don’t usually want their name attached. More of a cash in hand gig, innit. Whoever he was, he wanted me to track you for a bit. Find some dirt on you if I could.”
“You’re a private detective,” says Edwin, watching Charles curiously. Like he’s interested—like he’s impressed.
Charles fidgets. “Giving me a bit much credit there, mate. I just take snaps and try not to get caught.”
Edwin hums—Charles has never heard someone say ‘agree to disagree’ so clearly without words before—and picks up another object from the desk, this one some kind of hand-folded paper fortune teller. “Well. I hardly need to imagine why someone would come to you to dig up the dirt on me. The very same man who wants my discoveries buried probably also wants me discredited as thoroughly as possible.”
He doesn’t even seem angry, which weirdly makes Charles feel worse. Most of the time, folks he gets hired to track down are a bit sketchy. Cheaters and crooks. Makes him feel a bit better about snapping some candids to pay the rent, even if the whole job still gives him a stomachache sometimes. “Sorry, mate. Like I said, nothing personal, just… money’s been tight. Have to take what I can get, don’t I?”
Edwin looks him over, quickly and quietly, and nods. “Well… thank you for your honesty.” The corner of his lip curls in a quicksilver smile, blink-and-you-miss-it. “As well as your company. Having you here has certainly made this impromptu imprisonment more diverting.”
Charles laughs, ducking his head. “Yeah, well. You’re not a bad bloke to be in the clink with, either. And…”
Edwin looks at him questioningly. Charles shakes his head. “Nah. Nothin’. Here, pass me that thing—haven’t seen one of these since school!”
He takes the fortune teller, fingers brushing against Edwin’s, and lets the ‘you seem like a bloke I wanna be honest for’ go unspoken.
Good news is they’d found loads of little puzzles around the place, and between the two of them even got them all solved. Not bad for a day’s work, Charles reckons!
Bad news is now they have half a dozen numbers and sod all idea what order to key them in.
“We could write down all possible combinations and work through one by one,” says Edwin, like the suggestion leaves a sour taste in his mouth. “With six digits we could be looking at... well, a great many, but we might strike lucky.”
“Could do—reckon we might not wanna chance it, though. Some of these keypad whatsits have timeouts, might lock us out if we do too many wrong ones,” says Charles, squinting at the keypad. There’s something odd about it, he can’t put his finger on it…
“Hmph. Well, then. I suppose we must hunt for any indication of their order—there must be something, a riddle, a cipher…”
“Yeah…” Something weird about it for sure…
“Well? Must crack on, Charles, if we’ve any hope of absconding before we’re blown to smithereens.” Edwin’s on his feet and fretfully sweeping the room again, pulling down each dusty book from the depleted bookshelf and riffling through, glancing at the clock now and then. “We are closing in on an hour ‘til detonation, and I hesitate to trust that man to be punctual with his assassinations. Charles? Charles!”
The keypad rips away from the doorframe with a quick, no-nonsense tug, nothing behind it but glue and chipped paint.
“‘Bout that,” says Charles, slowly, turning the dummy keypad over in his hands. “Think we might be barking up the wrong tree, mate.”
Edwin takes it, terribly quiet, turning it over to inspect the utter lack of wires on the other side.
“The numbers are a distraction,” he says at last, slowly, voice suspended on a tightrope. “Just another waste of our time.”
“No key, either,” says Charles, gesturing to the sealed-off keyhole. “Bastard must’ve boarded us up in here.”
“Charles,” says Edwin, delicately, setting the pad aside with a soft click on one of the desks. “Help me with the window.”
The planks over the windows are stuck fast, nailed in good and proper—brute strength and bare hands isn’t gonna do anything. But one of the nails went in at a bit of a funny angle, and there’s just enough head showing for Charles to work it loose, pinched between the two legs of a drawing compass he finds in the pencil pot. Takes him and Edwin together to pull on the plank enough to drag it down a bit, wedging it over the one below, just enough to clear a sliver of a view out through the window. The glass is intact, spotted with age, and it looks out onto some sort of quad. Posh quad, fancy old fountain that would've been beautiful once but that’s all still, stagnant water now.
Edwin clocks the fountain, and swears a blue streak Charles would’ve thought he’d be too well brought up for.
“I am a fool,” he says, standing and pacing away from the window. “Of course. What did I think, that he’d be waiting outside to congratulate us on a cunning escape? Stupid, stupid.”
“Mate?” Charles prods, cautious.
“I was here. Last night.” Edwin gestures between them. “We were here. This is where you followed me to, I was—this isn’t a school, it is—was—a university. The university, where he—where the incident occurred. I’d obtained the keys to the old building and I meant to scour it for anything further that might build my case. Charles—on the tape, what exactly did he say would occur should we fail to escape by six o’clock?”
Charles feels ill. “‘Blown sky high’, that’s what he said.”
“Yes. You, me, this building, all of it. Remember when I said whoever put us in here was either careless or wanted us to escape? Well, it was neither. He was toying with us. We were never supposed to escape; we were supposed to burn with the rest of the evidence.”
Charles has always been the sort of bloke who gets easily bored, restless in his skin. Sort of bloke who can make an hour drag into three if he doesn’t have enough to keep his mind and hands occupied in it.
Christ, but an hour’s never felt shorter.
“There’s got to be something,” Charles mutters, shaking another book out like school bully mugging it for its pocket money.
Edwin—who was handling even these abandoned old textbooks with care and a light touch that made Charles’ skin prickle—doesn’t even scowl at the rough treatment, too busy pacing a trench in the floor. “They’ve taken everything. This was all a game. I imagine it gives him satisfaction to envision us chasing our tails, knowing it’s all for nought. I should have seen it earlier, but he knew I wouldn’t resist a puzzle…”
“Alright, yeah, so he’s played us for a couple of mugs,” says Charles, dropping that book with a thud and grabbing the next. “But he can be toying with us and careless, can’t he? I mean come on, bit slapdash, innit? There’s bound to be something he’s left behind—something he didn’t think through…” He shivers and scowls, dragging Edwin’s soft cardigan tighter round himself. “Be easier to bloody think of it wasn’t so—”
Charles stops short, and gives himself a good smack on the forehead. “Bloody hell. Now who’s the idiot!”
“Charles?”
“This door’s sealed off pretty tight, yeah? So’s the window—glass looks like it’s in one piece, too, yeah?”
“Yes, Charles, we are quite thoroughly trapped,” snaps Edwin, scowling. “To your point?”
“Then where the fuck is that draft coming from?”
Edwin stands to attention. “I—I don’t know. But I suggest we find out posthaste.”
They chuck books off shelves, tear down moth-eaten drapes. And in the end, they find it the same way Edwin found those bloody keys, the clean circle of displaced dust—’cept it’s a dark, rich rectangle of wood on the wall that’s never seen the sun, right next to the massive blackboard.
“This has been moved,” says Edwin, excitedly. “Charles! We need to get it off the wall!”
It’s been screwed back on, but not very well. Charles uses the trusty compass again; digs the screws out a bit with the point, before clamping them between the legs to turn them until there’s enough head showing for his fingers to grip. It’s too slow. He can feel each second as it slips through his fingers. He doesn’t dare look at the clock.
When he’s got the last screw just loose enough, he squares his shoulders, gives Edwin the nod, and they yank the board off the wall, revealing another few feet of untouched wall along with—
“A vent!” Edwin exclaims, pulling the wobbly chair up to get a closer look. His face immediately falls. “Damn. This cover isn’t well fastened, but I doubt I can get my head and shoulders through even if we remove it.”
He climbs down, and Charles takes his spot, sizing up the opening. He nods. “Maybe not. But reckon I can.”
“You can?”
Charles grins, shedding the bulky cardigan. “Knew being a skinny arse was gonna do me good one day. Hold this, mate. And pass us the compass again.”
The vent cover comes off without a hassle, and Charles sizes up the scramble he’s gonna have to do to get inside. Gonna be the hardest part, for sure—he’s crap at pull-ups.
“Right,” he mumbles, cracking his neck. “Wish us luck.”
A hand seizes his wrist. “Charles, wait—”
Charles looks down, and finds Edwin looking up at him, as scared as he’s looked since the moment they woke up here. Wide eyed and worried, staring at Charles like he’s never gonna see him again. Maybe he thinks he won’t. Charles could just leg it, couldn’t he? Get the fuck out of dodge before this place goes up in flames.
Charles looks at the clock. Quarter to six. He pulls his wrist from Edwin’s hand—just enough to return the squeeze.
“Loads of time left,” he says, with a wink. “Be waltzing out of here, won’t we?”
There’s something blinding about the way Edwin looks at him, then—like he’s something amazing, something bloody wonderful.
Probably won’t be looking like that when he sees Charles hauling his lanky, wheezing arse up half a wall, but at least Charles’ll have his back turned for that bit.
He falls from the squeeze of the vent into the next room like a sack of spuds, but there’s no time to waste lying around like one.
Springing to his feet, he lurches out of the room—thank fuck the door’s unlocked—and into the hall. He recognises the door he was just trapped behind immediately by the five sturdy planks nailed across it. “Edwin!” he hollers, hammering on the wood.
“Charles?” Edwin calls back, excited and muffled. “You made it!”
“Just about—door’s nailed shut, though! Hang about, I’m gonna run for something to crack it open!”
“Quickly, if you don’t mind!”
Charles grins. “Back in a flash!”
Charles bounds down the stairs four at a time and hurtles down what looks like a promising little corridor, type of place more suited to supply cupboards than classrooms and canteens.
He just needs something thin and sturdy to pry up the planks; or failing that, something heavy to bash them. How hard can that be, with a whole building to ransack? Doesn’t even have to be sneaky about it—no one here, no one keeping an eye out and making sure they don’t get out before it’s time. No bloody doors barred except the one to the room they were shut up in. Tosser who left them here must be pretty bloody confident in his plan working.
Charles throws open a cupboard door—and comes face to ticking timer with the biggest fuck-off bomb he’s ever seen.
“…Fuck,” he whispers—as if the bomb’s gonna bloody hear him.
It’s a big ‘un, alright. ‘Least he thinks so. He’s never actually seen a real one—but he’s seen enough of them on telly. Proper action hero would probably find some clever way to disarm it, but he’d be relying on what those movies showed him, and he doesn’t trust film directors that much, not even his favourite ones. Quick escape, then, that’s the ticket.
After he grabs the handy crowbar he just spotted sticking out of a toolbox on the shelf.
He’s turning round to leave, bar in hand, when another idea strikes him. Long shot, but it’ll take no time to check. There’s something there, see, stuck in his head like a catchy song. Something Edwin said, about confidence and carelessness. Something about the fucker who put them here being about the most bloody overconfident person Charles has ever come across. He crouches down, and takes a peek under the table with the bomb.
Bingo.
The last board wrenches free with a splintering crack, and Charles tosses the crowbar aside and yanks the door open.
Edwin visibly exhales, lips parted in a toothy, unfettered little smile. “Charles, I—”
“Alright, mate?” Charles picks up the cardboard box he'd salvaged and shoves it into Edwin’s arms. “Got you somethin’!”
“I—what—Charles, time is rather—”
“Everything you need in that box to nail that wanker for good, I had a look,” says Charles, brushing past Edwin to dig through the dented remains of the lockbox on the table. “Cocky bastard thought he could blow it up with the rest of the evidence.”
“He still might if we do not make haste—what in the world are you doing?”
Charles grabs the little glass bottle, pocketing it, before taking Edwin’s hand. “Got a theory. Let’s walk and talk, yeah? Well, run and talk.”
Charles couldn’t tell you when he started forming the theory. He hadn’t been trying to. Only theories he’d been interested in forming had more to do with getting him and Edwin the fuck out of this building before they got blown to bits.
But it’s the little things, innit? Strange little things that don’t ring right. Like Charles not remembering why, where, or even when he learned how to pick locks. Like Edwin trying to march, bold as brass, through a solid wooden door. Like the fact that Charles’ life is full of shit jobs and shit people he’s learned not to trust—but stick him in a room with Edwin, a bloke he’s supposedly never met, and trusting him’s easy as breathing.
And, of course, little things like the bloke who locked them up—the tosser so bloody confident in his cover-up working that he threw the rest of the evidence needed to lock him away at it.
“What’s his name?” Charles asks. “The politician bloke. You never told me.”
“Well, on the off chance you decided to stay on his payroll, I hardly wished to implicate myself in libel and slander as well as—”
“Pretty safe to say I’m not working for him after this, innit? Come on, what’s his name?”
Edwin opens his mouth, then closes it, a little furrow popping up between his brows. “Ah…”
“You don’t know, do you?”
Edwin stares at him, alarmed. “I’ve been investigating—how could I possibly—?”
“Forget his name? Easy—doesn’t have one, does he?”
The floor echoes as they jog into the lobby, the main doors in sight. Charles digs around in his pocket and pulls out the glass bottle.
“Charles…?”
There’s something there, in the dark green liquid. Something thin and wispy.
“Bloody weird thing to leave in there, innit?” Charles thinks out loud, giving it a shake. “I mean, did he really just put it in there to fuck about with us, try and get us to use it on each other?”
“It’s possible—evidently, he’s quite mad.”
“And cocky. Proper cocky.” Charles tosses the little bottle and catches it in his hand like a flipped coin. “Makes me think anything he left with us is just more shit he doesn’t want to have in his house when the coppers come knocking—or something he wants to rub our noses in.”
“Charles!” Edwin exclaims, squeezing his wrist. “Do be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” says Charles, innocently—before dropping the bottle on the floor and crushing it with the heel of his shoe.
The world lists and lurches, or maybe that’s just Charles’ stomach—he feels seasick, or like he’s been tipped upside down and shaken all around. He bends double and catches himself on his knees as the wave crashes over him and leaves him gasping for breath.
“Fuck,” he wheezes, coughing and groaning, as about thirty years of memories wedge themselves rudely into his head.
“Charles…?” Edwin croaks thinly.
Charles looks at him, and this time he sees him—Edwin Payne. ‘Course it is. Who else could it be?
“Edwin,” he rasps—and wraps his arms around him, tight as a vice.
Edwin laughs breathlessly, fingers curling awkwardly in Charles’ vest. “Excellent theory, Charles.”
“Wasn’t about to go forgetting my best mate, was I?” He pushes Edwin back by the shoulders to get a good look at him. “D’you…?”
“Yes. I remember.” Edwin shakes his head slightly. “Well, that is to say I remember you, us. Although how we got in this situation, I haven’t the faintest.”
Charles steps back, the sound of crunching glass following him. Edwin crouches down to inspect the little puddle of spilled potion under his foot. Charles can see the wispy something that was inside it, now. Hair, two little tufts of it; one straight, one curly.
“Some sort of mind alteration compound, I'd wager,” Edwin theorises, picking up a shard of glass to inspect the liquid dripping from its edge. “It would have needed pieces of us in the mixture to sustain such an intricate fiction of our lives.”
“Right. If it’s the potion’s fault, though,” says Charles, sweeping a hand around them to the building that still very much looks like a dusty old college to him. “Shouldn’t all this be gone, too?”
“We were under the potion’s influence,” says Edwin, standing up straight, and steepling his fingers. “But evidently our physical space was not. There must be more at play—do you have any recollection, Charles, of why you and I might’ve have found our way here into this surely fictitious scenario of murder plots and political skulduggery?”
“Haven’t the foggiest, mate.” Charles crouches down to pick up the crumpled cardboard box of evidence from where Edwin dropped it. “Looks like we got one case solved, though. Job officially jobbed, yeah?”
“I am not so sure,” says Edwin, ruefully. “But either way, I shall feel much better outside the radius of any possible explosions occurring in the next two to three minutes.”
“Can’t argue with that!”
So, smiling at each other like a couple of giddy kids, they scurry across the main hall, grab a door handle each, and push through it together.