Chapter Text
Sam leaned back against a tree and sighed. There was something of a fundamental flaw with this game of hide&seek that they were playing: the process of winning was exceptionally boring. He'd made most of his strategic decisions the night before by picking a station to flee to, bypassing his original choice of Winterthur for a town he thought would be more obscure. For some unfathomable reason, Ben and Adam had beelined straight for the area he'd chosen, leading him to his second and more successful decision: hiding in the woods. Excellent choice for cover, as they were nowhere near locating him yet, but painful for the prospect of sitting still among the rocks and branches for hours on end with absolutely nothing to do. At least it was a frigid Swiss winter so it was unlikely that any creature would pop up and try to take a bite out of him. Any creature other than Ben, at least.
He pulled up the map on his phone to check the seeker locations again. Ben and Adam were in the woods, but the wrong woods. They'd gone down to the area around the lake. It was undoubtedly more picturesque, which was why he hadn't chosen it. Ever since they'd gotten proof that he was in this zone and in nature somewhere, they hadn't dared to ask him any more questions. How long would they waste poking at the wrong bushes before they convinced themselves to look elsewhere? He might still have a shot at a decent runtime.
Of course, he would have had a much better shot if they hadn't zeroed in on his zone so quickly. How had they managed that? Was it just Sam's notoriously terrible luck striking again, or was it because they worked so well as a team, they could efficiently optimise their actions in a way that they couldn't when he was involved? Ben and Adam were close to each other in a way that he could never be with either of them. They were a closed circuit, a molecule unto themselves. No one was going to bring Sam a present when they found him, like Adam had for Ben with the gummy worms. They just didn't work that way and they never could.
With Adam, especially, Sam could not risk letting his professional boundaries slip. Adam was his very first hire, the foundation of Wendover as a proper business. Sam had been barely out of high school at the time, full of plans and ambition and also doubts that he, a baby-faced kid with a head full of facts, could escape his destiny. They'd both been younger then, of course, but Adam was the older and at that age, it mattered. Adam was clean-cut and respectably dressed and a Yale boy and possibly smarter than Sam, though he would never in his life admit it. Adam looked like company president material in a way Sam couldn't. It was crucial to establish the pecking order right from the beginning, to make it clear that he and Adam were not friends, that they were not goofing around together on some fun little hobby project. They were not co-founders. Sam was the leader and Adam was just an employee with targets to meet. It was that firm hierarchy that stood as proof of Sam's adulthood. Adam was the longest-serving member of Wendover and probably the one Sam trusted the most, but it was crucial that he was not Sam's equal. If Sam treated Adam as any more of a friend than he already did, he risked people seeing Adam as the official second-in-command and coming to Adam for support instead of Sam, and then the whole house of cards would collapse. Yes, if something happened to Sam, Adam was the best situated to pick up the pieces and carry on, and Sam had made some quiet arrangements to that effect in his will, but he'd never told Adam about it. It could change the balance between them, and that balance could not be changed. Becoming equals would unravel Sam's entire sense of self, turn him back to that young and frightened kid he'd been.
With Ben, it was a different story. Sam had been firmly established as the boss by the time that he met Ben. Ben came to him as a supplicant pleading for acceptance and that dynamic was always the first thing they saw in each other. Even when Ben teased him or rebelled against his orders, he did it from the perspective of Sam being the authority figure, the teacher whose approval he needed. A favorite teacher who might let him get away with the most ridiculous shit, but a teacher always. Sam could never get too close to Ben because they were both always aware of the power Sam held over him. Equals just wasn't an option.
On a team, Sam and Adam butted heads constantly. On a team, Sam and Ben never knew how much to give each other.
It didn't matter. Sam had other friends. Ben and Adam were his writers. They all worked well enough together in the roles they had established. That was the way of things.
Sam looked down at the tracking symbols on the map. Still the wrong woods, closer to the lake now, but - were their symbols overlapping? He could only see Adam's little circle on the display, not Ben's. Sam swiped at the screen, zooming in and out to try and make them separate, but it wasn't working. Ben's icon was gone. Had his phone glitched out and lost signal? Maybe he'd had to reset the phone for some reason. Adam was right there with him, so even if Ben's phone had failed, it wouldn't create a problem for the game.
A particularly harsh breeze made Sam shiver and tighten the hood around his face. It wasn't like he was a stranger to cold weather. He loved winter sports. But that was the thing, he loved sports. Usually when he was outdoors in the winter, he was being active, skiing or climbing or running. Not sitting still with roots and rocks under his butt. If he wasn't careful his knees might lock up or something. His legs already felt stiff. At least the ground wasn't snowy, that would have really sucked over time. Ben was the only one of them who'd brought fully waterproof pants. On the other hand, it might have been warmer if it had been snowing. The clear sky made the world feel stripped-down, exposed. Even with his coat, he could feel the cold in his bones. Not that he was worried about it - the temperature wasn't that low and he had chemical handwarmers in his backpack if he really needed them. But he definitely did not love sitting on his butt in a cold forest with nothing to do but wait, even if waiting was the only way to win the game.
He tapped his back against the tree and closed his eyes, running through lists in his mind to pass the time. It was soothing.
An unknown time later, the phone in his hand buzzed with an incoming call. Sam opened his eyes, blinking, and saw Adam's icon bouncing on the screen for attention. Maybe the problem with Ben's phone had turned out to be more serious than anticipated. He quickly swiped to accept. "Hello?"
"Sam, can you hear me?" The voice sounded stressed, which would be normal for Adam, but that wasn't Adam's voice at all. Was that Ben?
"Yes, I'm here," Sam said.
"Emergency abort," said Ben.
Sam was on his feet almost immediately, scrambling his way up with the tree behind his back for balance. Ben was a chaos gremlin who would say anything for a laugh, but he would never joke about team safety. "What happened? Where are you? Where's Adam?"
"We fell in the lake," Ben started. "I'm okay, but Adam's really cold. He got soaked through, he's not doing so good."
In Switzerland in December? Hypothermia was a very real possibility, especially for someone as slimly-built as Adam Chase. Sam quickly switched the phone to speaker mode so that he could keep talking to Ben while also looking at a map for the best route from his position "Ben, listen to me. You need to get Adam dry and out of the wind as soon as possible."
"Did that," Ben replied. "We're in an abandoned shack or something. The door was unlocked, but there's no power or heat, there's no blankets, and it's still freezing. I need to get Adam to a hotel but I don't know an address for where we are so I can't call an Uber. We're not on a road, we're still in the woods, and we've only got one phone -" Ben's voice rose and caught, betraying his fear. "Should I try to find a road to flag someone down to help?"
"No. You have to stay with Adam, no matter what. He needs you." It was a basic first aid principle: never leave a casualty alone. "Stay put. I will come and I will find you. You need to get Adam warm. Do you have any - "
The call suddenly disconnected.
Crap. Adam's icon had just vanished from the map as well. Sam tried to call Ben back, but unsurprisingly, no one answered. The phone must have died.
Well, he'd seen roughly where they were before the trackers failed. He just had to get down there and look for a wilderness hut or other shelter. This wasn't hide and seek any more, they wanted to be found, and Sam was not going to let them down.
His friends needed him.