Numb3rs fic: "Need-To-Know" (Amita/Penfield pre-het, PG-13)
I finished this in kind of a rush and in the middle of Starbucks, so if you spot any typos, etc., please don't hesitate to let me know! (I mean... not that you ever need to hesitate, even for a fic I spend a million years writing, but you know.)
Title: Need-To-Know
Author: sororcula
Pairing/Characters: Amita Ramanujan/Marshall Penfield, OMCs
Rating/Category: PG-13 / Het (or... kind of, pre-het, really)
Summary: Fifteen minutes later the door closes again and two men walk downstairs and as she sinks down onto her bed, she knows. There's someone else.
Word Count: 2000
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Abduction, violence, minor swearing.
Story Notes: AU in which Amita and Penfield are graduate students. Charlie is not in the picture.
Author Notes: Unbetaed. Doesn't really fulfill the prompt (I'm sorry! I tried. It turns out schmoopy gothic fanfiction is not my forte!). A million thank-yous to elysium1996 for her ideas and cheerleading. ♥
Prompt: Gothic (Horror & Romance) for Team Schmoop in the Genre challenge at numb3rswriteoff
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, nor do I profit from their use here. This is only for fun.
This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff. After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how schmoopy the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff. Thank you!
The Visitor
She wakes to the sound of a knock at the front door, heavy and loud. She strains to hear from her room in the back of the house, to make out the words spoken by deep male voices downstairs.
It's the first time she's heard a visitor since she was brought here. Her heart races with fear, and a flicker of hope she barely dares to feel rises inside her. She feels sick, dizzy. The polished wood of her bedroom door is cool against the side of her face as she presses her ear to it, listening, lungs burning as she holds her breath. Silence.
After a moment the voice she recognizes says a few words and then chuckles, making her stomach twist. Footsteps up the stairs, three men, and she hears, "...your room..." as they pass, then a door opening down the hall. Fifteen minutes later the door closes again and two men walk downstairs and as she sinks down onto her bed, she knows.
There's someone else.
The Beginning
The men who appeared at her office were tall and broad-shouldered, commanding. They flashed NSA badges at her and explained the vital importance of her help with a project relating to national security.
"We need people with your intelligence, your knowledge, to help us uphold the great American values of liberty and freedom. We need you, Dr. Ramanujan, to help us wage the War on Terror," Agent Johnson told her.
"Of course!" she said, wide-eyed with patriotic enthusiasm.
Johnson lowered his voice. "This is very sensitive material, you understand. It requires absolute discretion."
"Of course," she agreed, discreetly.
"We have a secure facility where you'll be working. You have the rest of the day to go home and pack a bag, and then we'll leave tonight," Agent Peterson said.
"Tonight! Wow, okay, well... Of course I want to help, but can I get some more information first, maybe a little more time to decide...?" Amita trailed off, uncertain, as she watched the unmoving faces towering sternly over her.
"Tonight," Peterson said firmly.
The Discovery
She doesn't see the new prisoner. If she hadn't heard him come she wouldn't have any clue of his presence in the house. After a week, she starts to wonder if she imagined it, if the isolation has finally made her crazy.
It scares her, the thought of falling into insanity. Desperate to keep it at bay, every night she takes inventory of her room, determined to remain grounded in reality.
The twin bed, covered in cheap sheets and a thin comforter. The wardrobe, filled with a set of identical, plain, white dresses. The little bathroom, stocked with the barest essentials. No razors. No window. No phone.
It's been two months. She wonders if anyone is looking for her, if there's any chance they'd even find her given the identity of her captors. She wonders what will happen to her when the project is finished. If she'll be considered valuable enough to keep around. Alive.
A key turns in the lock. They took her watch from her and there's no clock in the room, but she can keep track of the time by these routine intrusions. The man who keeps her here, whose name she has never been told but which she imagines to be Smith or Jones like the rest of them, opens the door but doesn't enter. He glances around the room, checking up on her, and then nods for her to get up.
"Come on," he grunts. "Math time."
He follows her to the room next door, which is equipped with blackboards and whiteboards and a computer, though she hasn't been able to use it for anything useful, more because of the constant supervision than the firewalls set on it. She could hack those, she's certain, if she had the time.
Smith-Jones settles into a chair by the door and Amita crosses to one of the whiteboards, still half-covered in equations from her work yesterday. She picks up a marker absently and plays her eyes along the numbers, getting her mind back into it so she can begin again.
She freezes. Her breath catches in her throat. Behind her, Smith-Jones says, "What?" and she forces herself to relax and speak normally. "Nothing," she answers. "I thought I made a mistake for a second."
"Hm."
She's relatively sure her guard doesn't understand anything on the board. "I thought that I'd put the dependent variable where--"
He's not interested in the details. "Okay, okay. It's fixed now?"
"Yeah," she says. "It's fine." She feels giddy, almost lightheaded with the effort it takes not to laugh out loud in pleasure.
Right in the middle of her work, camouflaged by the math around it, is a false equation: 8 + 5 + 12 + 12 + 15 = 13.16. It takes a few seconds for her brain to translate the cypher.
H + E + L + L + O = M.P.
The Trip
Agents Johnson and Peterson were extremely persuasive, and Amita went to her apartment to pack a bag. They were vague on the time commitment. "Pack for a week," Johnson said. "If you need anything once you're there, we can get it for you."
"And where is this place, exactly?"
His serious face shifted into what she assumed was as close to a smile as he could manage. "That's classified."
They headed east on a private plane and upon landing at a small, rural airport, insisted on blindfolding her for the car ride.
"Is that really necessary?" she asked unhappily.
"Yes," Peterson said. "It's for your safety as much as ours."
They drove for about an hour, then guided her out of the car. When they finally removed the cloth wrapped around her eyes, she was standing in the foyer of a comfortable, richly-furnished house.
"Oh, this is nice."
"Your room is upstairs," Johnson said. He led her up to the second floor and partway down a hallway, and held open a door for her. She stepped inside, feeling for a light switch along the wall, and as she flicked it on the door shut behind her and locked with a click.
The Plan
His name is Marshall (13 1 18 19 8 1 12 12) and he's a graduate student at Princeton (16 18 9 14 3 5 20 15 14). Their messages to each other are brief, inconspicuous, so she doesn't know much more about him. It seems they've been put on opposite sleeping schedules, so that they can work without encountering each other.
It makes her feel brave, defiant, to write hidden messages in her math. To know that she's not alone here. She starts to contemplate more seriously a topic always at the back of her mind, and after a week she leaves a note that includes the word 5 19 3 1 16 5 (E S C A P E).
Do you have a plan? he asks her.
She thinks about it all day, while she's working. Considers the tools at her disposal. Finally, when the guard tells her to start wrapping up, she grips the marker tight and writes, Tomorrow when I'm in here. Be ready.
The Escape
She wakes up with her heart pounding, her stomach churning, her body anticipating the afternoon's events before her mind even remembers the details of her plan. All morning she considers it, tries to improve upon it. It's not a foolproof plan, by any means. It's not even really a good plan. But she doesn't have a lot to work with.
When Smith-Jones escorts her into the workroom, Amita goes to work as usual, convincing her body to relax and her breathing to normalize. She uses the blackboard, gathering the broken pieces of chalk littered along the shelf at the bottom. She tucks them into her palm and after a few minutes goes to sit at the computer. She only has a minute, because her guard pays more attention when she uses such dangerous technology, so as soon as she sits down she rests one hand in her lap and starts quietly crushing the collected chalk.
"I think there's something wrong with the computer," she says, trying to sound concerned. As Smith-Jones gets up to examine the problem, she stands and steps out of his way, to stand behind the desktop. He sits in the desk chair.
"The mouse wasn't responding..." she says. Her pulse is racing with a shot of adrenaline; this is her only chance. As soon as he turns his attention to the computer, she shoves her hand forward, aiming the powdered, dusty chalk at his mouth and eyes, and in the split second of distraction it gives her, she picks up the heavy, boxy computer monitor and smashes it into his head as hard as she can.
He falls back, dazed, and she hits him again, knocking him to the floor. Before he can recover enough to move, she yanks the computer cord out of the wall and ties it tightly around his wrists, trapping them behind his back. Having immobilized him, she hits him over the head once more with the chair, knocking him out.
She doesn't know if there are more guards downstairs, or how much time she has before she's caught, so she proceeds, quietly and quickly, to remove his keys from his pocket and the gun from his hip, happily relieving him of the hundred dollars she discovers in his wallet as well.
She glances at him once before she leaves the room, shocked at the crimson blood pooling under his head, at the brutality on display. She feels simultaneously horrified and liberated, and she tries to shake it off as she sneaks down the hall to the next door. Focuses on the next step.
She tries two keys before one fits, anxiety building by the second. Finally the door opens and she sees Marshall for the first time.
He's standing in the doorway, waiting for her. He has soft, narrow features and a short beard, a plain t-shirt and elastic-waisted cotton pants. He looks nervous.
"Hi," she whispers. His eyes widen. "Hi," he says. "What did you...?"
"I knocked out the guard," she tells him, letting a hint of triumph slip into her voice. He gives her half a smile.
"So now we..."
"Leave."
He follows her down the hall, pausing to glance into the work room. "Goddamn," he says. "Did you kill him?"
"I--" She takes a breath, calming herself. "I don't know. Have you seen anyone other than him since you got here?"
"No."
"I don't know if there's anybody downstairs," she tells him. "But I grabbed this." She gestures to the handgun.
"Jesus." He laughs a little, hysterical. "Do you know how to use it?"
"In theory," she offers.
They tiptoe down the stairs, into the foyer of the house. It's deserted, and the rest of the house is quiet, but they don't waste any time exploring, just silently cross to the front door. It's locked, no key, and for a second Amita feels her heart stop, before the weight of the keyring in her hand brings her back and she sets to work finding the door key. Key number seven turns and she reaches a shaking hand to grasp the knob.
Outside is a narrow path that leads straight into a thick line of trees. They head down it, looking around for signs of life or security, and spot nothing, but as soon as they pass into the trees an alarm sounds and they break into a run. Marshall's longer legs take him out in front, and Amita wonders if he'll leave her behind, every man for himself--she resigns herself to it, because logically they should split up, and there's nothing tying them to each other--but he reaches his hand back and she grabs it and runs faster than she has in her life, alarm blasting behind them.
They run, hand in hand, into the forest.
Title: Need-To-Know
Author: sororcula
Pairing/Characters: Amita Ramanujan/Marshall Penfield, OMCs
Rating/Category: PG-13 / Het (or... kind of, pre-het, really)
Summary: Fifteen minutes later the door closes again and two men walk downstairs and as she sinks down onto her bed, she knows. There's someone else.
Word Count: 2000
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Abduction, violence, minor swearing.
Story Notes: AU in which Amita and Penfield are graduate students. Charlie is not in the picture.
Author Notes: Unbetaed. Doesn't really fulfill the prompt (I'm sorry! I tried. It turns out schmoopy gothic fanfiction is not my forte!). A million thank-yous to elysium1996 for her ideas and cheerleading. ♥
Prompt: Gothic (Horror & Romance) for Team Schmoop in the Genre challenge at numb3rswriteoff
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, nor do I profit from their use here. This is only for fun.
This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff. After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how schmoopy the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff. Thank you!
The Visitor
She wakes to the sound of a knock at the front door, heavy and loud. She strains to hear from her room in the back of the house, to make out the words spoken by deep male voices downstairs.
It's the first time she's heard a visitor since she was brought here. Her heart races with fear, and a flicker of hope she barely dares to feel rises inside her. She feels sick, dizzy. The polished wood of her bedroom door is cool against the side of her face as she presses her ear to it, listening, lungs burning as she holds her breath. Silence.
After a moment the voice she recognizes says a few words and then chuckles, making her stomach twist. Footsteps up the stairs, three men, and she hears, "...your room..." as they pass, then a door opening down the hall. Fifteen minutes later the door closes again and two men walk downstairs and as she sinks down onto her bed, she knows.
There's someone else.
The Beginning
The men who appeared at her office were tall and broad-shouldered, commanding. They flashed NSA badges at her and explained the vital importance of her help with a project relating to national security.
"We need people with your intelligence, your knowledge, to help us uphold the great American values of liberty and freedom. We need you, Dr. Ramanujan, to help us wage the War on Terror," Agent Johnson told her.
"Of course!" she said, wide-eyed with patriotic enthusiasm.
Johnson lowered his voice. "This is very sensitive material, you understand. It requires absolute discretion."
"Of course," she agreed, discreetly.
"We have a secure facility where you'll be working. You have the rest of the day to go home and pack a bag, and then we'll leave tonight," Agent Peterson said.
"Tonight! Wow, okay, well... Of course I want to help, but can I get some more information first, maybe a little more time to decide...?" Amita trailed off, uncertain, as she watched the unmoving faces towering sternly over her.
"Tonight," Peterson said firmly.
The Discovery
She doesn't see the new prisoner. If she hadn't heard him come she wouldn't have any clue of his presence in the house. After a week, she starts to wonder if she imagined it, if the isolation has finally made her crazy.
It scares her, the thought of falling into insanity. Desperate to keep it at bay, every night she takes inventory of her room, determined to remain grounded in reality.
The twin bed, covered in cheap sheets and a thin comforter. The wardrobe, filled with a set of identical, plain, white dresses. The little bathroom, stocked with the barest essentials. No razors. No window. No phone.
It's been two months. She wonders if anyone is looking for her, if there's any chance they'd even find her given the identity of her captors. She wonders what will happen to her when the project is finished. If she'll be considered valuable enough to keep around. Alive.
A key turns in the lock. They took her watch from her and there's no clock in the room, but she can keep track of the time by these routine intrusions. The man who keeps her here, whose name she has never been told but which she imagines to be Smith or Jones like the rest of them, opens the door but doesn't enter. He glances around the room, checking up on her, and then nods for her to get up.
"Come on," he grunts. "Math time."
He follows her to the room next door, which is equipped with blackboards and whiteboards and a computer, though she hasn't been able to use it for anything useful, more because of the constant supervision than the firewalls set on it. She could hack those, she's certain, if she had the time.
Smith-Jones settles into a chair by the door and Amita crosses to one of the whiteboards, still half-covered in equations from her work yesterday. She picks up a marker absently and plays her eyes along the numbers, getting her mind back into it so she can begin again.
She freezes. Her breath catches in her throat. Behind her, Smith-Jones says, "What?" and she forces herself to relax and speak normally. "Nothing," she answers. "I thought I made a mistake for a second."
"Hm."
She's relatively sure her guard doesn't understand anything on the board. "I thought that I'd put the dependent variable where--"
He's not interested in the details. "Okay, okay. It's fixed now?"
"Yeah," she says. "It's fine." She feels giddy, almost lightheaded with the effort it takes not to laugh out loud in pleasure.
Right in the middle of her work, camouflaged by the math around it, is a false equation: 8 + 5 + 12 + 12 + 15 = 13.16. It takes a few seconds for her brain to translate the cypher.
H + E + L + L + O = M.P.
The Trip
Agents Johnson and Peterson were extremely persuasive, and Amita went to her apartment to pack a bag. They were vague on the time commitment. "Pack for a week," Johnson said. "If you need anything once you're there, we can get it for you."
"And where is this place, exactly?"
His serious face shifted into what she assumed was as close to a smile as he could manage. "That's classified."
They headed east on a private plane and upon landing at a small, rural airport, insisted on blindfolding her for the car ride.
"Is that really necessary?" she asked unhappily.
"Yes," Peterson said. "It's for your safety as much as ours."
They drove for about an hour, then guided her out of the car. When they finally removed the cloth wrapped around her eyes, she was standing in the foyer of a comfortable, richly-furnished house.
"Oh, this is nice."
"Your room is upstairs," Johnson said. He led her up to the second floor and partway down a hallway, and held open a door for her. She stepped inside, feeling for a light switch along the wall, and as she flicked it on the door shut behind her and locked with a click.
The Plan
His name is Marshall (13 1 18 19 8 1 12 12) and he's a graduate student at Princeton (16 18 9 14 3 5 20 15 14). Their messages to each other are brief, inconspicuous, so she doesn't know much more about him. It seems they've been put on opposite sleeping schedules, so that they can work without encountering each other.
It makes her feel brave, defiant, to write hidden messages in her math. To know that she's not alone here. She starts to contemplate more seriously a topic always at the back of her mind, and after a week she leaves a note that includes the word 5 19 3 1 16 5 (E S C A P E).
Do you have a plan? he asks her.
She thinks about it all day, while she's working. Considers the tools at her disposal. Finally, when the guard tells her to start wrapping up, she grips the marker tight and writes, Tomorrow when I'm in here. Be ready.
The Escape
She wakes up with her heart pounding, her stomach churning, her body anticipating the afternoon's events before her mind even remembers the details of her plan. All morning she considers it, tries to improve upon it. It's not a foolproof plan, by any means. It's not even really a good plan. But she doesn't have a lot to work with.
When Smith-Jones escorts her into the workroom, Amita goes to work as usual, convincing her body to relax and her breathing to normalize. She uses the blackboard, gathering the broken pieces of chalk littered along the shelf at the bottom. She tucks them into her palm and after a few minutes goes to sit at the computer. She only has a minute, because her guard pays more attention when she uses such dangerous technology, so as soon as she sits down she rests one hand in her lap and starts quietly crushing the collected chalk.
"I think there's something wrong with the computer," she says, trying to sound concerned. As Smith-Jones gets up to examine the problem, she stands and steps out of his way, to stand behind the desktop. He sits in the desk chair.
"The mouse wasn't responding..." she says. Her pulse is racing with a shot of adrenaline; this is her only chance. As soon as he turns his attention to the computer, she shoves her hand forward, aiming the powdered, dusty chalk at his mouth and eyes, and in the split second of distraction it gives her, she picks up the heavy, boxy computer monitor and smashes it into his head as hard as she can.
He falls back, dazed, and she hits him again, knocking him to the floor. Before he can recover enough to move, she yanks the computer cord out of the wall and ties it tightly around his wrists, trapping them behind his back. Having immobilized him, she hits him over the head once more with the chair, knocking him out.
She doesn't know if there are more guards downstairs, or how much time she has before she's caught, so she proceeds, quietly and quickly, to remove his keys from his pocket and the gun from his hip, happily relieving him of the hundred dollars she discovers in his wallet as well.
She glances at him once before she leaves the room, shocked at the crimson blood pooling under his head, at the brutality on display. She feels simultaneously horrified and liberated, and she tries to shake it off as she sneaks down the hall to the next door. Focuses on the next step.
She tries two keys before one fits, anxiety building by the second. Finally the door opens and she sees Marshall for the first time.
He's standing in the doorway, waiting for her. He has soft, narrow features and a short beard, a plain t-shirt and elastic-waisted cotton pants. He looks nervous.
"Hi," she whispers. His eyes widen. "Hi," he says. "What did you...?"
"I knocked out the guard," she tells him, letting a hint of triumph slip into her voice. He gives her half a smile.
"So now we..."
"Leave."
He follows her down the hall, pausing to glance into the work room. "Goddamn," he says. "Did you kill him?"
"I--" She takes a breath, calming herself. "I don't know. Have you seen anyone other than him since you got here?"
"No."
"I don't know if there's anybody downstairs," she tells him. "But I grabbed this." She gestures to the handgun.
"Jesus." He laughs a little, hysterical. "Do you know how to use it?"
"In theory," she offers.
They tiptoe down the stairs, into the foyer of the house. It's deserted, and the rest of the house is quiet, but they don't waste any time exploring, just silently cross to the front door. It's locked, no key, and for a second Amita feels her heart stop, before the weight of the keyring in her hand brings her back and she sets to work finding the door key. Key number seven turns and she reaches a shaking hand to grasp the knob.
Outside is a narrow path that leads straight into a thick line of trees. They head down it, looking around for signs of life or security, and spot nothing, but as soon as they pass into the trees an alarm sounds and they break into a run. Marshall's longer legs take him out in front, and Amita wonders if he'll leave her behind, every man for himself--she resigns herself to it, because logically they should split up, and there's nothing tying them to each other--but he reaches his hand back and she grabs it and runs faster than she has in her life, alarm blasting behind them.
They run, hand in hand, into the forest.