Chuck Bartowski downloads the Intersect and becomes a prisoner in the same night. Who has taken him and why? Is the stranger in the facing cell a friend or a foe?

Labyrinth

Unit Ten: Run

RUN, verb intransitive preterit tense ran or run; participle passive run

1. To move or pass in almost any manner, as on the feet or on wheels.
2. To move or pass on the feet with celerity or rapidity, by leaps or long quick steps.
3. To use the legs in moving; to step; as, children run alone or run about.
4. To move in a hurry.
5. To proceed along the surface; to extend; to spread; as, the fire runs over a field or forest.
6. To rush with violence; as, a ship runs against a rock.
7. To move or pass on the water; to sail.
8. To contend in a race; as, men or horses run for a prize.
9. To flee for escape.
10. To depart privately; to steal away.
11. To flow in any manner, slowly or rapidly; to move or pass; as a fluid.
12. To emit; to let flow.
13. To be liquid or fluid.
14. To be fusible; to melt.
15. To fuse; to melt.
16. To turn; as, a wheel runs on an axis or on a pivot.
17. To pass; to proceed; as, to run through a course of business; to run through life; to run in a circle or a line; to run through all degrees of promotion.
18. To flow, as words, language or periods. The lines run smoothly.
19. To pass, as time.

The lights came on and for several seconds. It blinded Sarah. She retreated toward Chuck, blinking, straining to hear. She heard footfalls. Heavy boots, several pairs. She could not make out the exact number, but at least three.

She heard a man clear his throat.

The glare in her eyes began to subside, her eyes adjusting to the light. Before her stood a large, thickly built man in BDUs, standing in front of three others.

As she blinked, she saw the man look at her, her robe, and saw his eyes flick to Chuck, still asleep, in his robe. The man's eyes returned to her and she could see the hint of a question in them.

And then, still blinking, she knew the man. John Casey, NSA. He was her counterpart in that Agency, with his own version of her reputation.

"Agent Casey?"

"Agent Walker?"

They regarded each other for a moment. It was clear he was looking at her as she was looking at him - each a funhouse mirror of the other, NSA :: CIA, man :: woman - he was on one side of the bars, she on the other.

Casey made a grunting noise - a semi-articulate. "Looks like you - the two of you - are okay. I was afraid we would too late." He grunted again. Nice robe." He moved to the door of the cell, holding up the key so that she could see it. None of the others moved. No one had a weapon out, and Sarah noticed that two had no weapons at all. One had a medical kit, the other had what looked like a computer case.

Sarah stood combat-ready, but she nodded to Casey. He keyed the lock and the bars swung open. "You aren't in any danger now, Agent Walker - but he is." Casey stepped out of the cell doorway and turned to the man with the medical kit. "Doctor."

The man moved forward. He stopped at the cell door and glanced at Sarah. She stepped back to the bed, and stole a quick glance at Chuck. Still asleep. Still? This could not have been what he planned for - he did not seem to be pretending.

Panic grabbed her. "Come on, hurry," she said to the man who moved quickly to Chuck's side. He put a hand on Chuck's shoulder and Sarah tensed, but all he did was shake him gently.

"Mr. Bartowski. Mr. Bartowski." The man looked up at her, standing beside him, then at Casey, who had taken one step into the cell. "He's in the early stages, as we feared. I can give him the drug; it will stabilize him. Then we need to get him to the Center."

Casey nodded. He looked at her. "We need to help him. That thing in his head will make him crazy or kill him."

She felt tears sting her eyes. She wiped at them and nodded at Casey.

She saw the hint of a question in his eyes again.

"Go ahead," he said to the doctor. Sarah watched, her stomach churning, as the man pulled up the arm of Chuck's robe and gave him an injection.

The doctor looked up. "Okay, let's get him in motion."

The other man entered the room and, helped by Casey, who took the medical kit, they gathered Chuck up, put his arms around their shoulders, and they left the cell.

Sarah started after them.

"Agent Walker, where are you going?" It was Casey.

"I'm going with him."

Casey eyed her carefully. "Why? I need you to stay here and help me figure this mess out. My boss, General Beckman, needs to talk to you. In fact, she now has operational control of this site and...this whole mess, so that means that for now, at any rate, she is your boss. Stay. Orders."

The men carrying Chuck were moving slowly, about to disappear into the hallway with him.

"Where are you taking him?"

"To a team of brain doctors. That Intersect thing in his head is a time bomb."

"How do I know you are not just taking him from one hole to another?"

Casey grunted. "You'll have to believe me."

"Would you believe me if the situation was reversed?"

Casey gave her another odd expression. "What is the situation, Agent Walker?" He gave her robe a pointed look.

Sarah felt Agent Walker's face go slack, expressionless. "What do you mean?" A hint of threat bled into her question.

Casey's eyebrows rose. "Well, I find you two in this...icebox...dressed like a honeymoon couple at a cheap motel…"

Sarah stood for a moment, silent and immobile. Then she turned and ran after Chuck. She heard Casey's heavy steps behind her - but he was not running.

She ran down a long hallway. At its end there was a door, just closing. She slammed into it, into the bar used to open it, and spilled into a lit control room.

Bodies and blood were on the ground - and Bryce.

Sarah skidded to a stop, unable to quite believe what she saw. Bryce was on the floor, dead, as was a woman beside him, a brunette in glasses, and another man, face-down. Casey opened the door and walked in.

"If you'd given me a moment, I would have told you…" Casey sounded apologetic.

Sarah stood, looking at the carnage. "We didn't hear…"

Casey nodded. "I'm good at what I do. We used silencers. They did not know we were coming but we couldn't take a chance. We came in hot. It was over in seconds." Casey surveyed the scene dispassionately, then looked at Sarah. "Weren't you and...pretty boy there, weren't you partners?" Casey's inflection of the term was almost identical to Chuck's earlier.

Sarah did not respond. She ran on to the next door. It took her into a large room, computers, and equipment lining the walls, and then through another door, up a long, steep staircase and, through a final door, outside.

She threw her hands up to cover her eyes. Daylight. The sun was unbearable, far brighter than the lights inside.

Reeling in the brightness, she turned to see Casey coming through the door she had just exited. The door was an entry to what looked like a small, corrugated tin outbuilding, the camouflaged entrance to the facility they had been in. She heard a chopper's engines behind her and she whirled around. Across a field was a helicopter, its rotors beginning to pick up speed. She sprinted toward it as fast as she could run. This time, she heard Casey behind her and he was running too.

She got to the helicopter just as it was leaving the ground and she sprang into the air, into the open side, and landed on her feet, pitched forward onto her hands, but righted herself. She felt Casey jump in too, but he crashed to the floor.

"Dammit, Walker, there would have been another chopper in a minute. Agents and a clean-up team are on their way here. We could have hitched a ride without this daredevil shit."

Sarah saw Chuck on a stretcher in the rear area and she moved to him, crouching down beside him. She reached out to touch his face and it struck her: she could see him.

She let her hand settle on his cheek, then run down it. Then she reached up and ran her fingers into his curly hair. She hadn't expected that, the curls, but they pleased her, really pleased her. He personified his voice, even unconscious. He looked...good. Not in the sense of being good-looking, though he was, beautiful even, but in the sense of being good.

At the end of the stretcher, the man with the computer case had it open and was attaching electrodes to Chuck's head.

Sarah looked at him. "What are you doing?"

"We need to monitor brain activity and establish some baselines…"

Casey got into a seat and put on his harness. "Walker, get yourself fastened in. We don't need you to fall out."

Sarah moved to the seat nearest Chuck and put on the harness. She felt self-conscious about her robe. She pulled the bottom hem over her knees.

Casey was talking on a headset. He must have put it on while she adjusted her robe.

"Yes, ma'am, Agent Walker and Bartowski are okay. Unhurt anyway. Bartowski is unconscious. We are in the air, en route to the Center. ETA thirty minutes. Are you already there? Good. Yes, General."

Casey gave Sarah a look. "The team is ready, waiting for him."

Sarah nodded. "Where are we?"

"West Virginia - not too far from DC. An old CIA facility, shut down years ago, but of late a functioning Fulcrum base."

Sarah thought for a second. "So, they flew Chuck from LA to West Virginia?"

Casey nodded once and she saw one eyebrow go up at her use of 'Chuck'. "Yes, I'll explain once we are on the ground." He pursed his lips. "Or, General Beckman will."

Sarah reached out and took Chuck's hand, ignoring Casey's interrogative grunt.

Chuck did not regain consciousness on the flight and Sarah's panic increased. The doctor checked him twice and reassured her. Her heart was in her throat as the helicopter touched down on the helipad of a tall building on the very edge of DC.

The men got Chuck off the helicopter and onto a gurney two other men had ready. Standing off to the side was a short woman, middle-aged, with reddish hair. She was in uniform. Sarah would have known her anyway: General Beckman. They had never met, but Sarah recognized the head of the NSA.

Beckman watched as they carted Chuck to the door of an elevator. Sarah started to follow but Casey caught her arm. She turned to him, ready to attack him. He let go instantly. "You can catch up with him, Walker. You'll just be in the way. We need to talk to the General."

Beckman had stepped to them, standing between Sarah and the elevator.

Sarah slumped a bit. She saw the elevator doors close.

Beckman looked at Sarah's concerned face. "What happened between you two, Agent Walker?" Sarah heard Casey's interested, echoing grunt.

Before Sarah could decide what to say, the helicopter started again and the noise was deafening. Beckman waved at Sarah and Casey as she ducked down and headed to the elevator. Sarah and Casey ducked down too and followed. After a moment, the elevator doors opened. The elevator was empty. The three of them got on and Beckman hit the button for the second floor.

Beckman did not restart the conversation in the elevator. The three of them stood there in awkward silence. The elevator stopped and Beckman led them off it.

Sarah glanced around. They were walking down a gleaming hallway in what looked like a hospital, except that it was silent and orderly, the men and women in scrubs were at the desks or who walked past them all had an obvious military bearing.

Beckman arrived at an open door some distance from the elevator and she went in. Sarah followed her and Casey came in last, shutting the door behind them.

"Have a seat, Agents." Beckman sat down behind a large wooden desk. Chairs in front of it were the ones Beckman had in mind for Sarah and Casey. It was a nice but bare office.

Sarah sat down, again self-conscious about her robe. She had forgotten it again until she sat down. The General noticed. She picked up a phone from the desk. "Send me in a set of scrubs for a woman, tall, 5' 9" or so, thin. And can you come up with shoes? Size?"

She gave Sarah a questioning look. Sarah answered. "Nine and a half."

Beckman reported the size and hung up the phone. "They'll have something for you in a minute. You can change in the next room. Better than a robe."

Sarah nodded her agreement. She realized that she no longer felt cold, but she also no longer felt the particular warmth she felt near Chuck.

Beckman scrutinized Sarah. "I asked you a question upstairs, but I will wait for an answer; I think I understand.

"Let me tell you a little bit about what has been going on." Beckman blew out a weary breath, and only then did Sarah see the exhaustion in the woman's face, the dark around her eyes. "It's been the strangest few days in American intelligence history, I think."

Sarah glanced at Casey in the chair beside hers but his face seemed cut from stone, statuary.

"What do you mean?"

"Your Director, Langston Graham, is in custody, although the public has no knowledge of it yet. He was Fulcrum - he is, he was, Fulcrum's leader. And your partner, your former partner, Bryce Larkin, was his right-hand man."

The image of Bryce on the floor came back to Sarah's mind.

Beckman blew out another breath. She inhaled. "Let me explain from the beginning."

There was a knock on the door. Casey jumped up and opened it. A woman stood at the door, folded scrubs in her hands, topped by a pair of tennis shoes. Casey took the pile in two hands and shut the door with his foot. He handed the clothes and shoes to Sarah. She glanced up at Beckman, who waved to a door on the side of the office.

Sarah took the things, shut the door, and changed. She finished tying the shoes - not a bad fit - and went back into the office. Beckman was on the phone.

"Thanks for the update. That is encouraging."

Sarah took her seat again.

"That was the doctor. Mr. Bartowski is stable."

"I want to see him, General. Please."

"You will, soon enough. If there's any change, good or bad, they will call. Let me tell you what I need to tell you and ask you what I need to ask you." Beckman rubbed her face. "This all started because of a mission of yours, a mission to Budapest. I assume you remember."

The panic Sarah was already fighting down, her panic for Chuck, doubled, panic added for Molly, the little girl Sarah had left with her mother. Did Beckman know? Had Molly been found?

Beckman frowned. "I suppose that's not quite the way to put this. This all started because of your handler in Budapest, Ryker. He came back from that mission and soon began contacting various people we have atop our Watch Lists, bad people. We might never have noticed it if he had been careful about it, slower, more methodical, but he was in a rush. He had photographs, one of you, Agent Walker, the other of a...child.

"He was trying to find you, trying to enlist help, throwing money and weight around as much as he could. I put Major Casey in the field to follow him and I put a team of the best analysts to work on Ryker's record.

"They didn't have to dig for long before it became clear that Budapest was…off. The mission he sent you on was unsanctioned, some kind of deal worked out between Graham and Ryker.

"But now I need to back up again. Agent Walker, I have been suspicious of Langston Graham for some time, mainly because of the Intersect. Although he, like me, claimed to want it, he never seemed as willing to invest resources in finding it as I was. That puzzled me, because the whole idea seemed crazy to me, and I have never shared Graham's peculiar fantasy of superagents. I suppose that may be because I spent actual time in the field, whereas Graham rose in the ranks of the CIA never leaving a desk. I know something about the stresses and strains of life...out there...in the dark."

Sarah thought she saw a flash of empathy in Beckman's eyes. "Anyway, I did my best to keep tabs on Graham, to watch what he was up to. One thing that puzzled me was why he refused, even when I once asked him point-blank, to use his best agent to find Fulcrum's Intersect, his Enforcer."

"He was cagey, always claiming that you were already on a mission, that it was not the best use of your skillset. He was always very hush-hush about you, proprietary even, as if you belonged to him and not the agency. Later, I found out that he teamed you up with Bryce Larkin and I asked again, this time about the two of you going after the Intersect, but he told me you were already on a mission, somewhere in South America."

"Back to Ryker. Casey followed Ryker. He contacted several of his own sources but seemed to be spinning his wheels. My team of analysts came up with what I needed. They discovered buried back-channel communications between Ryker and Graham. The communications clarified that the Budapest mission had two purposes.

"One, they wanted the package," Beckman made eye contact with Sarah but left the phrase in place, "because of the money it would bring them, and, two, they were testing you. He intended the mission to end with you joining Fulcrum, to become a double-agent."

Sarah made a huffing sound and Beckman nodded.

"Sarah, Langston and I had a heart-to-truth-serum-heart talk, and I know all about it. You were for a long time a crucial part of Graham's cover. His use of you, his eradication of the CIA's most high-profile targets, made him seem above suspicion, ruthless but loyal.

"But he was playing a long game. Cultivating you for Fulcrum by using you for the CIA. He did not want to approach you about Fulcrum until he was sure. Graham brought Bryce Larkin in when Graham thought you were most approachable, had been made approachable, after a long series of one-woman deep cover assignments, and they intended to use your…loyalty to Graham and your...relationship with Bryce to bring you over to Fulcrum. But it was not working, or not working as fast as Bryce had led Graham to believe it would. As he would.

"Bryce left you to oversee Fulcrum's work on the Intersect. Fulcrum never perfected the Intersect, not even close, not like chatter made it seem as they had. It turns out that within a few days, every Fulcrum agent who volunteered or got conscripted into downloading it was deranged or dead…"

Sarah jumped up. "Chuck!"

"He is still okay, Agent Walker. Let me explain. What I just said is true, but it needs more explanation. It turns out that the ones who went crazy or who died did so after multiple downloads."

"Multiple? Why? Updates?"

"No. It turns out that the Intersect will not...well, I don't understand the technical stuff they have told me, let's just say that it...evaporates. It works for a time and then it fades away.

"Fulcrum thought it was still workable, so their idea was to make it portable enough for the agent to take it with him or her, to refresh it when necessary, about every twenty-four hours. But it turns out that multiple downloads damage the brain, causing psychosis or death. We don't think Chuck has had but the one download, the original one in Burbank…"

Sarah sat down but on the edge of her chair. "How long has it been since he downloaded it?"

"Over three days."

"But it was still working until a few hours ago. He told me. He said that it worked like a lie detector…"

"Yes, a flaw in the device. It turns out it works to detect lies in both the person heard and the person with it. Fulcrum's scientists could not figure out how to get it to do the first without doing the second, but they were loathe to give up on the feature, for obvious reasons.

But, yes, Chuck has held onto the Intersect for longer than anyone has so far. That is why Bryce sent it to him after sending a Fulcrum team to collect him once he downloaded it. We're waiting for him to wake up to find out where things stand…"

At that moment, the phone rang. Beckman picked it up. "Yes, Beckman. He's awake? Okay, I will be right down." Beckman hung up the phone. "Come with me. Mr. Bartowski is conscious." Beckman rose and, without looking back, led Sarah and Casey out of the room. They got on the elevator again and Beckman pushed the button for the basement. She turned to Sarah.

"Ryker is dead. Casey killed him yesterday. He would not be taken. He never found the package." Beckman again gave Sarah a significant look. Sarah nodded.

The elevator opened on another long, gleaming hallway, this one nearly deserted. But there were two soldiers, armed, who watched them get off the elevator. They went down the hallway to a room where another soldier stood. He stepped aside and Beckman opened the door. Sarah followed her in, Casey trailing behind her.

A team of doctors was standing in a group a distance from the bed. Chuck was on the bed, peering intently at the group, but he turned to face Sarah as they entered. She felt tremendous relief and excitement. Beckman walked to the bed.

"Mr. Bartowski, I fear you have been the victim of a rogue faction of spies known as Fulcrum. The Intersect was theirs, they engineered your download of it and your kidnapping. I'm General Diane Beckman, I oversee the NSA."

She put out her hand. Chuck took it and shook it, but looked dazed, lost.

"Oh. Um...Okay. Where am I?"

"In a top-secret hospital near DC."

Chuck got a funny look on his face. "As in Washington, DC?"

"Yes. Let me talk to your doctors, then we can talk more." Beckman walked into the group. They had stopped whispering and been listening to the exchange.

Sarah took Beckman's place at Chuck's side. "Chuck, thank God you are okay!" She put her arms around him as best she could and hugged him against her. He did not hug her back. She let go and backed up a step. "Chuck?"

"Um...Hi!" He gave her a weak, confused smile, his face and eyes otherwise blank. "Do I know you?"

...

Sarah entered her dark apartment heartbroken.

She did not bother to turn on the lights. She crossed to her couch and threw herself on it and cried the tears that had been darkening her vision since she ran, bolted, from Chuck's room.

As she cried, she thought about her final conversation with Beckman.

Bryce took Sarah and put her in the dark cell with Chuck. He and Graham had decided to test her again, to see if they could get her to come over to Fulcrum. Bryce thought she would do what they wanted, and that once she had, she would be easy to convince. Bryce had expected her to seduce Chuck, to save him, or to save herself if nothing else, and then they had hoped to use her having done so as leverage to force her to join them and to get her to become Chuck's Fulcrum handler. What had not happened in Budapest, Graham and Bryce expected to happen in DC, in the dark.

They kept Chuck in the dark for the reason Chuck thought: he would have known where they were; the facility was in the stolen CIA records that were part of the Intersect's data. But the worry was not so much that he would escape as that he would become unwilling to help if he suspected what was really happening. Fulcrum had not had time to prep another facility, although they were doing so and intended to move Chuck there.

The cold and the near-nakedness were to hasten the seduction, to break them both down. Fulcrum had discovered that the Intersect could not be forced to function; doing so would speed its fading. They needed Chuck willingly to help, so they needed Sarah to gain power over him - by any means necessary. She was to get him to want to help her, and the CIA, though he would have been helping her and Fulcrum. If Fulcrum could not use the Intersect to make super-agents, they would use it to make themselves a super-analyst - Chuck.

Bryce, though, was banking on Chuck being able to keep the Intersect, on it not fading, and part of the whole set-up was to see if that was right. Bryce had reason since college to think Chuck was a promising host for the Intersect.

Sarah had called to their captors just moments after Casey and his team, following information provided by Graham, raided the facility.

Sarah had heard it all in a daze of pain and hopelessness. Maybe she had not heard it right or understood it all. Everything Beckman had told her - from the beginning, really - had seemed jumbled to her; it was as if she could not adjust to the return of ordinary time, the return of light. All she knew was that she had reached the light but had then been consigned to the dark.

She felt like she had run into the dark and fused with it.

Before she left the Center, she grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from a nurse and scribbled a resignation letter, shoving it in Beckman's hand. When she left the facility - Casey drove her home - she was no longer an agent.

She had no conception of what she would do with herself, beyond crying.

When she got out of Casey's car, he leaned over toward her before she shut the door.

"I don't know what happened down there, but it meant something to you, and I guess it must have meant something to Bartowski before he...forgot. Sorry, Sarah; this job sucks so often I have no answer for why I keep doing it." He grunted sympathetically and she shut the door.

She did not leave the apartment for the next four days. She barely ate, barely slept, barely breathed. She just sat on her couch, the curtains drawn tight, and waited for the abyss to come and take her. She was void of will and she was willing to be void.

Voided.

On the fourth night, she showered. She could not abide her own odor any longer. The warm water made her cry again. She stood in it until it she could stand it no more, then she got out. She dried herself and crawled, naked, into her bed.

She had spent the previous nights in a ball on her couch.

She turned out the light on her nightstand. For a moment in the resulting dark, she pretended she was still in that freezing cell, still with Chuck, on their bed.

But then she heard a sound. She thought of her comment to Chuck - once an assassin, always an assassin. Had someone come for her so soon?

She started to move her hand to the gun beneath her pillow, always there, but she stopped. She had been ready to die for a long time. Why not now? She moved her hand away from the gun.

She heard her apartment door click shut. Footsteps moved in the dark, and she saw a beam of light. The footsteps reached her bedroom door. She had pushed it halfway closed before she took her clothes off to shower.

She heard it being pushed open.

Her feet were cold, she noticed, absurdly. She would have liked to die with warm feet. Blowing out a breath soundlessly, she relaxed, waiting.

The overhead light clicked on.

Sarah blinked.

Chuck was standing there, a half-smile on his face.

"I admit, Sarah, I didn't think I would get this far. I spent some time one summer in college working with a locksmith but I'm rusty. I expected you to end me at the door."

Her mouth fell open. "Chuck? You know me?"

"How could I forget you, Sarah Walker?"

"But at the Center..."

"At the Center, I came to before the doctors realized I did. I heard them talking, debating, theorizing. I realized the only way out of this was to make them think it was gone, the Intersect."

"You mean it's not?'

The other half of his smile joined the earlier half, and he tapped his temple. "Nope, still here, but, as far as I can tell, functioning fine now. Rebooted, I guess. So, yeah, I'm good. No pain, unless I tell a lie."

She shook her head, almost dizzy. "But you've been telling lies for...days."

His smile weakened a bit. "Yeah, I know." He held out his hands. Even across the room, she could see a host of small, half-moon-shaped wounds on his palms.

He gave her a pained look. "I'm so sorry I hurt you, but for them to believe it, the most important thing was that you did."

"I had to dig my nails into my hands to keep from giving it away, but, hey, it turns out I should have stayed in that theater class at Stanford. I've got talent. They're done with me, the government. I'm free. Turns out you really can't force the Intersect to work."

Sarah grinned, though she did not understand what he was talking about as far as Stanford went. Theater?

All she knew was that her feet were warm. She was warm. She felt all over. Her four-day numbness was gone.

She looked at Chuck and saw him studying her, her face, and then the outline of her body beneath her thin sheet. Her temperature shot up more.

"I hear you are no longer an agent."

She nodded, letting it all sink in. "I hear you are no longer a government asset."

He nodded. "So, what next?"

"I'd like to move someplace warm, maybe...Burbank?"

"That could be arranged, I dare say. What would you do?"

"Well, I have enough money for a while. And for a while, I would want to do nothing except spend time with my boyfriend."

He looked crestfallen. He had acting talent. But she could see the gleam in his brown eyes. "So, you already have a boyfriend in California?"

"Yes, but he's in DC at the moment."

Chuck looked at her under the sheet again and shook his head. "He's one lucky man."

Sarah frowned just a little, but happily. "I don't know, I'm a project, a puzzle. It won't be easy."

"That's okay, Sarah, I love to work puzzles - and I'm fantastic at it."

"Is that so? Why don't you come here and work on one of mine right now?" She could hear the upsurge of husky desire in her voice, a match for what she saw in his eyes.

"Really?"

"Really."

He put out his hand to turn off the light.

"No, Chuck. Leave it on."

THE END

Labyrinth

"Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about." -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 203

A/N: Many thanks to Beckster1213 for pre-reading.

An odd little novella, no doubt. As I hope was obvious to everyone, the what mattered more here than the why: what happened between them in the dark was the story's foreground, its salient feature, why (and how) they ended up there mattered far less. Interesting story to write.

Any final thoughts? So long, folks!

Zettel