~ At the bottom of the stairs the man leading Jaden pushed him around two more corners; one to the left and one to the right. He heard a door creaking and people murmuring in hushed tones and then the blindfold was jerked down off his eyes. Jaden blinked at the sudden bright light surrounding him and winced back as the fourth man approached him.
The man holding Jaden, whom he'd begun to think of fondly in his mind as "Tiny", held him firmly in place. Before the fourth man reached him Jaden took a quick, frantic scan of his surroundings, looking for his teammates. They were nowhere to be seen. He was standing in a brightly lit hallway, facing the open doorway of what was obviously a cell.
"You're going to be staying here for a while," the fourth man told him in a taunting sing-song. "We can't have you making all kind of noise though, now can we?" From behind his back he produced a gag and shoved it into Jaden's mouth while Tiny held him. After the gag was tied in place, the zip tie was cut off of Jaden's wrists and replaced by a set of cold, metal manacles. When that was done, he was shoved forward into the cell without further preamble.
He stumbled against the far wall, unable to catch his balance with his hands chained behind his back, and turned just in time to see the solid door bang shut. The sound of a bolt being slammed home resounded in the small cell and he heard the men walking away down the hall.
The very first thing that Jaden did was quickly scan his tiny cell for openings, weaknesses, cameras, anything. Meanwhile he tried to free himself of the gag and cuffs; and he was unsuccessful on both counts. After a couple of minutes of futile struggling, Jaden moved to the door and stood completely still to listen. The hall seemed to be silent.
Jaden turned back to the room and took a moment to evaluate his surroundings once more, this time being a bit more thorough. Against one wall a thin pallet stood, and above that Jaden spied a small vent. He clambered awkwardly up onto the bed and turned halfway around to run his fingertips around the edges of the vent. The cover was held on securely, but when one of Jaden's cuffs clinked against the metal, he decided to take a long shot.
With the edge of the metal cuff Jaden carefully rapped on the vent cover, with pauses between. Three short, three long, three short. The old Morse code sequence for SOS. If Andrew could somehow hear it, Jaden was sure he would understand who it was from.
He stood still on the bed, holding his breath, offering up a silent prayer that his shot in the dark would work. ~
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