Chapter Text
Erin
Prison Cell
21:38pm | October 27
"… Charlie?"
Erin froze as an ungodly shiver ran down her spine because Jamie hadn't just said their dead boss' name like he was actually there. She, Mark and Kate all rushed into the tiny cell room and sure enough, there was Charlie curled up on a cot bed looking scruffy, tired, surprised and caged but very much alive to everybody's amazement. Erin couldn't – just couldn't. Her stomach lurched causing her to double over by the canisters retching and coughing, but fortunately there wasn't anything in her stomach to bring up which was one small mercy she supposed morosely.
"Charlie's … alive?" Mark questioned the air as he just stared at the older man inside his cell.
Slowly, Charlie set the book down and stepped up to the bars with just as much shock on his face as his former crew displayed. Erin gave him several short glances, her retching and guilt meant she couldn't look at him for more than a few seconds at a time. He was pale with a scruffy blond beard speckled with gray and dressed in tennis shoes, sweatpants and a faded white t-shirt that had a couple of holes here and there. The cell may have been small but there were a few books lined up on a rickety shelf above the cot, a tiny table with a single chair – atop the table was an empty plate and bottle of water – and even a toilet; admittedly the toilet was about 2 feet from the cot, but at least Du'Met hadn't left poor old Charlie with a bucket. Guilt hurt Erin's heart. She'd caused this captivity, she'd thought she'd killed him and now it turned out she'd given him up as Du'Met's play thing for a whole year.
"Charlie, how are you alive?" Asked Kate, amazement clear in her tone. "Have you been here the whole time?"
The blond's brow furrowed deeply. "I thought you'd all gotten away. He told me you all got away."
"Have you been here since the lighthouse?" Mark asked as he yanked on the cell door to free a man he'd previously betrayed. "Guys, we gotta get him outta here."
Charlie thrust an arm through the cell bars to point at two small hooks by the door, one with a key dangling from it and another with a black leash and collar which none of them had noticed. The blond informed them it was where Du'Met kept the key. Kate rushed to grab it and tossed it to Mark who finally freed there old boss. As soon as he was out Mark hugged him tight and Charlie clung to him.
Finally able to stand without feeling like she was about to throw her lungs up, words poured out of Erin.
"Charlie, I – oh my God, I don't even know how to tell you how sorry I am. I'm so sorry. Du'Met made me think – and I believed him and we tied you to that fence. I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm so sorry. I thought he'd killed you. My God, I'm so fucking sorry."
Erin's desperate apologies only ended when Kate lifted an eyebrow at him suspiciously. "Charlie, Mark makes a damn good point: how are you alive? Du'Met kills everybody he's ever met, so why are you in a cell?"
"You don't have to fucking interrogate the man, Kate. Jesus. Shit, you're probably already planning a new angle to get that book, ain't ya?"
Kate glared at the lighting tech. "You know what, fuck you, Jamie."
"Well, fuck you too."
"Shut up!" Mark urged then gestured to Charlie. "How about we let the man talk?"
That thankfully shut both women up and four sets of confused eyes turned to Charlie while Erin did her best not to cry. Unusually for Charlie, he didn't seem to want to talk. They'd all half-expected him to start yelling at them but he instead glanced down at his feet like a dog who'd been kicked one too many times, and when he finally did speak it was without his usual bravado or wit.
" … I em – I was tied to the fence … for a long time, so long I fell asleep. When I woke up he was dragging me. This isn't the same hotel, he – he has more than one. He made me help him move boxes and when we were done he locked me in here."
"And you've been in here ever since?" Asked Kate incredulously.
"Sometimes he has me help move heavy things and, if I'm good, he walks me."
"Walks you?!" Erin's eyebrows shot up. "Like a dog?"
Charlie shrugged. "What do you think the leash is for?"
Those four sets of eyes glanced behind them to the second hook as if confirming there was indeed a leash and collar there. Erin wanted to double over again, she'd turned Charlie into a pet.
"I'm so sorry, Charlie." Said the horrified girl once again and, when Charlie looked at her, he couldn't quite hide his hate. Part of Erin just wanted to stay quiet in a corner, another part wanted to lash out defensively and go on about how she couldn't have known and hadn't ever wanted this, while a third part of her urged to beg for forgiveness; the latter won out. "Please, Charlie, I didn't mean for this. I'm so sorry, please forgive me."
"There'll be time for this later." Announced Kate abruptly. "He kept Charlie alive for a reason and he brought us all fucking back into his toybox for a reason. He wants fucking revenge. He's a pathetic psycho who can't accept we beat him, so he's planned all of this out to build his fragile ego back up and feel all powerful again. He wants to prove to himself he isn't a scared asshole."
"He's not scared." Said Charlie a little too quickly but nobody really took notice, especially not Kate because she just carried on talking.
"He wants us to play his games again, so let's fucking play. Let's play his rematch and beat him again."
"You're the only one making this sound like a game." Mark pointed out. "You're right though, we have to do something or there's no getting outta here." Dark eyes turned to Charlie. "And this time we're not leaving you. I'm – I'm sorry we ever even considered you were involved."
"You'll forgive me if I don't accept right away." He grumbled which had Mark nodding.
"Yeah, I don't blame you."
With the whole gang back together, they left the cell behind and started looking for a way out, fully aware Du'Met would be watching. They'd gone in blind the first time but that had been then and this was now, they knew Du'Met's games and wouldn't let him have the revenge he wanted. Quickly attention turned from Charlie to an escape because they all knew there had to be one, but it was Charlie who went straight to it. He called them all over to a section of brick wall over in a corner of the storage room and patted his hand on it as he explained it was actually a secret doorway and the way he was always led outside for his walks.
"That means you know how to get outside!" Kate almost yelled. "You know the way out. How do we get the door open? You have to know that. You can guide us through this shit box."
Erin stepped forward. "Kate, calm down. We all want to get out but you shouldn't just scream at Charlie. He's been through so much, so give the guy a minute."
At first Erin had thought Kate to actually be rather nice, she'd treated the new girl well and been quite helpful. She'd not really seen why the others had all disliked Kate so much, but then, after they'd escaped, Erin had finally seen it. Kate's ambition would often cause her to step on those around her. She wasn't an innately bad person; Kate could be kind, brave and selfless when she wanted to be, but if she saw a chance to get her way she'd rush at it uncaring who got hurt along the way. She couldn't accept responsibility for her own emotions and trauma so just blamed everybody else for it; especially Mark. Then there was what had happened to poor Shelby. When Erin and Jamie had first learned about it while the press were having their field day, she'd felt so sorry for the redhead, but when Kate had spoken about it herself, Erin's opinion had changed a little. Erin just hadn't been able to shake the feeling that Kate had made Shelby's death all about her and it seemed … opportunistic and egocentric. Erin didn't want to dislike Kate, but over the last year she'd steadily shifted more towards Jamie's way of thinking.
"Well we need a fucking way out and Charlie is our only one."
Charlie nodded. "I think I can." All eyes turned to the blond. "This passage comes out on – I think it's the second floor. It's not a short walk but I think I can get us to that side door he uses. I know outside too since he makes me help him sometimes, I can probably navigate around his traps to the dock."
"Charlie, you're fantastic!"
"It's not that simple, Mark. It's not like I have the whole hotel in my head and he knows that I know. What if he's moved the walls around?"
"We deal with that when we get there." Jamie shrugged.
"You've been here a year, Charles, you should know the route by now."
Charlie's eye twitched as he snapped at the redhead he never should have hired. "Next time I'm kidnapped and held hostage for a motherfucking year, I'll ask for a fucking tour of the goddamn place before I'm tossed in a cell."
Much to everybody's pleasure, Kate actually had the decency to look somewhat ashamed of herself and stayed quiet rather than turning her bitch dial up any further.
Since all of Du'Met's toys and tricks were controlled from that insane nerve centre of his, they'd been at a loss for how to get the door open until Jamie had remembered Du'Met had escaped when she, Erin and Kate had tried to trap him, which meant there had to be a manual release somewhere. It took almost ten minutes but Mark eventually found a hidden switch on the wall behind a load of boxes on one of the storage shelves. The wall had slid open revealing a dark staircase, but instead of horror the team felt elated because this was just the first step of them beating Du'Met again.
They all rushed up the stairs, Charlie first while Mark and Jamie brought up the rear, uncaring about the dark abyss they'd found themselves in. The stairs were exceptionally long, steep and veered off to the right at one point, but, eventually, they reached a door and Charlie pushed it open cautiously. The crew stepped out into hotel hallways they'd have rather never seen again only for the door to slam shut causing Erin to jump towards her girlfriend.
"We know you're watching, asshole!" Jamie yelled out for any and all cameras. "You couldn't get us once and you're not doing it this time. We know your tricks and Charlie knows your little playground. Fuck you, we're leaving!"
For a few seconds they all just stood there listening to silence as though they expected Du'Met to come running, but he wasn't that easily provoked.
"Come on." With little other choice, they all followed Charlie as he made his way through the hotel of horrors, his movements were slow and calculated, sometimes he paused at an intersection as if trying to recall which way to go next, and even Kate kept her mouth shut when he doubled back on himself having gone the wrong way. "How did you guys even get here? I asked him if you'd escaped and he nodded. He told me you'd gotten away."
Mark sighed. "We had. We'd gone back to our lives and thought this was all just a nightmare. I don't know how he did it. All I can remember is going to bed and then waking up here."
"That's how it was for us. Erin was in the shower and I was getting ready for bed. Wait, I think – I think someone grabbed me from behind." Jamie snarled. "That fucker was in our apartment."
Erin opened her mouth intent on comforting Jamie, or at least easing her rage, but the walls suddenly started closing behind them and they all just took off running. Charlie, being at the head of the group, guided them through the maze with Kate and Erin hot on his heels while Jamie and Mark brought up the rear. Had Erin been paying attention rather than panicking, she'd have noticed the way Charlie managed to expertly take them around and around in circles without making it look like that was what he was doing: they'd gone passed the same accent table with a vase and lamp on it twice. Just as they passed a rather large window with a pretty view of the night sky, yet another wall rolled shut separating Mark and Jamie from the rest of the group. Erin had two choices: keep running with the others, or try to use a candlestick sitting on a side table to force the wall back open. She thought about it a split second but something about the placement of the candlestick looked suspicious and Erin knew she'd never stand a chance of forcing the wall back open, so she ran passing a strange figure in a brown trench coat as she went: he smiled, pleased with her choice.
The running had to end eventually, and it did when a wall closed just ahead of Charlie causing him to bounce off it onto the ground.
"Fuck!" He screamed and slammed a fist down on the floor as the two women skidded to a stop beside him.
"He split us up. Jamie and Mark got blocked off."
Kate spun around hoping Erin was mistaken, but cameraman nor lighting tech were anywhere to be seen. Defeated, she slumped against the wall and rested her head in her hands.
Charlie stood. "I don't think we're getting out of here."
Erin's dark eyes snapped to the Englishman. "Don't say that! Kate's right, we beat him before and we can do it again. We just need to-"
"What, Erin?" Kate demanded. "We need to what? Charlie was our only real chance of getting out and that's gone up in fucking smoke. Mark and Jamie are fuck knows where and now we're all just stood in a hall waiting for axe-happy Du'Met to pick us off."
"The control room. If we find that then we'll know where the others are. If we're in there we can try blocking him in again or setting one of his own traps on him. In there we'd have a map."
"Swanning passed Sherman's room and to the centre of the web doesn't seem like the sort of thing Du'Met will let happen twice."
Erin sighed; part of her wanted to reassure Charlie that everything would be okay, that they'd not leave him behind this time, but another part wanted to snap at him for his pessimism and that side won. Something also quietly wanted to question how Charlie knew where Sherman's animatronic was kept.
"Well we have to do something, Charlie. Your getting outside thing didn't work so we need a plan B."
"She's right, Charlie." Kate pushed off from the wall. "He had rooms hidden behind the mirrors in the last place, probably the same here. Start yanking doors open."
With that Erin headed a little distance down the hall they'd just run through to tug on doorhandles, while Kate did the same.
Charlie
2ND Floor Corridors
22:54pm | October 27
Charlie though, he vanished down the only other hallway with purpose. As soon as he rounded the corner out of sight he bounced off something solid and familiar: Du'Met. In an instant the serial killer had Charlie by the collar and captured his lips in a fierce kiss which Charlie melted into. The blond's fingers soon found the lapels of Du'Met's waistcoat as their tongues intermingled and, just for a second, the crew were forgotten about. A comforting scent of sandalwood clung to Du'Met and soothed the blond's dark soul and, when their lips finally parted, the two rested their foreheads together.
"I don't like pretending I hate you." Du'Met breathed out a laugh, short and muted as he gathered Charlie closer and petted his blond locks. "I love you." They shared another kiss, one much more loving and gentle than people would have thought possible from a hedonistic serial killer and borderline narcissistic sociopath. "Why are we doing this? Pretending I'm one of them?"
As had become their standard form of communication, Du'Met tapped Morse code against his lover's hip and Charlie nodded in understanding. For the murderer this was all sport, a warm up before the game began properly, for Charlie it was the opening to his film with Du'Met as the leading man and himself the director making a cameo appearance. They had a deal to offer what had once been the crew of Lonnit Entertainment, but there wasn't any point offering it until the adrenaline had been pumping a while.
Du'Met produced a tablet then and the two men separated to stare at the screen. It was camera twenty-nine, Charlie knew that for a fact since he'd memorized where each and every camera in, on and under the complex was. Hell, Du'Met had shifted and re-angled ninety percent of them all just to make the director happy: that was true love right there. Together they watched as Jamie and Mark moved through the shot pulling on doorknobs and swearing when the doors didn't cave to their will; he remembered when he'd done the same with Jamie a year ago, that was how he'd ended up inside an incinerator. In Charlie's opinion Jamie was by far the most competent of his team, she was the quick-thinking one who always had a workaround for everything: smart and hard to corner, that was Jamie Tiergan. Mark was good-natured and, though he'd stopped waiting for everybody else to tell him what to do, remained indecisive. Yes, Jamie would need to do most of the work while they were alone in the dark depths. The blond took the proffered tablet from his murderous lover, brought up the menu and unlocked one of the doors which led down to the maintenance tunnels. Took their prey a few moments to notice but, once they had, the pair begrudgingly headed down, down, down into a section of the hotel Du'Met had taken great pride in perfecting.
"There," said Charlie as he returned the tablet to the older man's big hands. "Let them wander a while and see my footage for themselves."
Shortly after Charlie had requested to hook a projector up down in the tunnels to play his documentaries for their victims, Du'Met had purchased the best projector money could buy and installed it for his gleeful phoenix. It was a need for Charlie to have people see the fruits of his labor and, since it added an extra layer of fear to the game, Du'Met had gone along with it without complaint. For so very long Du'Met had only cared about himself, but when his adored director was happy he found the world wasn't quite as bleak as he thought.
"Hey, Charlie, all of these are locked!" Erin called distantly but neither man took any notice.
Du'Met tucked the tablet away and yanked Charlie in for another kiss by his faded t-shirt collar. The beard he'd grown had started to irritate the Brit, but the charade would be up soon and it could be shaved off by his tall lover's skilled hands.
"I love you."
Footsteps approached then and Du'Met instantly backed through the door he'd emerged from just as Erin came around the corner, a second sooner and she'd have seen Charlie pull the door shut.
"What are you doing?" She questioned curiously when she spotted Charlie just stood in the hall with his hand on the doorknob.
He made a show of wrestling with the locked door. "Trying to find an open fucking door in this hell hole." Charlie fell against the wall opposite the door and slid down it to the ground. "Do you know how long I prayed for somebody to find me? To let me out of that cell? Neither do I." Blue eyes remained locked on the floor while Erin's expression turned concerned and guilty again. "Every time he showed up I wondered if he'd kill me, if he'd finally gotten bored. Suppose I should be thankful I'm a pet instead of spare parts."
Erin crouched down beside her former boss to rest a comforting hand atop his exposed forearm. She worried her lip clearly wasn't quite sure what to say.
"It's all okay now, Charlie."
"No it's not." Blue eyes snapped up to the sound engineer. "Someone did finally come for me, but it's the people I thought me being locked up had saved. Now, I can't even get us out because that madman is busy playing God."
She paused a moment to really look at Charlie: he wasn't the same man she'd worked for, that was for damn sure.
"What was that Churchill thing you always told us when we were complaining about a shoot being a nightmare? You know, the one about Hell?"
Charlie hid a smirk, he'd mostly quoted that to annoy Kate and appear wise.
" 'If you're going through Hell, keep going'."
"That's it." Smiled Erin. "We just need to keep going. Kate is right, we proved we could beat him once, so let's keep going."
Her attempts to console him were pathetically adorable. She could have him quote Churchill all she wanted but, as he sat there using his increasingly powerful manipulation, he couldn't help wondering if the old 'be careful who you trust, for even the Devil was once an angel' saying would have served her better.
Charlie smiled to let her think she'd succeeded in comforting him then accepted her kind assistance in standing just as Kate screamed down the hall that she'd found an open door – of course she had, this was all part of the plan.