"Okay,I've had enough, where's the nearest exit? I'm ready for my one phone call and complementary mint," Tony joked wearily as Lisha blubbered with her forehead resting against the door. The joke fell flat on the air. No one wanted to laugh, and to be truthful, he wasn't exactly feeling it either.

Everything had changed so rapidly. One moment the five of them were dancing on the streets, telling scary tall tales, the next...

Tony shook his head. He couldn't even piece the words together in his head. The world zoned in and out unevenly, like a three year old had taken ahold of his mind and was shaking it around to see if it made a noise. The bleeding from his leg had subsided a little, but he was starting to fear that was because he was running out of blood to bleed. Every little movement sent the world spinning faster than the movement before that, but he didn't dare tell the others.

Abbie still wasn't awake.

Michael sat slumped in the corner, one hand curled around Abbie's, the other laid sprawled to the side like he didn't care what happened to himself anymore. Lisha drew a ragged breath that tore at the room's silence before moving to sit in the other corner next to Mike. Tony would have gotten up to join them, but he wasn't exactly in any shape for walking.

From where he sat, Abbie looked so pale, she was grey. Tony couldn't bring himself to contemplate what that could mean. It was bad. That was all he knew, yet it was still eons more than he wanted to know. His eyes traveled down across the cold grey floor until they stumbled across a smeared puddle of red he hadn't noticed earlier. He quickly forced his eyes away, like if he didn't look at it, it would all go away. Everything. The walls, the locks, the echoey that wouldn't leave his voice, and especially the bullet wounds that would permanently leave them all memories they would never be allowed to forget.

Especially him and Abbie.

Especially Abbie.

It was at that moment that Tony decided that they would all get out of there. It didn't matter what the wack job with the voice box said. None of them would die. He glanced over at Abbie. Her face had always held the shadows of trouble, but now it looked like she was battling the Titans themselves, in her forced slumber. She one of the gang -- despite the strange tendencies to spout words deeper than Hell -- and they had promised never to let anything happen to the others. They would get out. And alive.

He'd been telling himself that a lot in what felt like the last half hour. There was no clock for them to watch the time passing. He could only guess how long it's been.

Tony braced his teeth against his bottom lip in preparation, then heaved himself to the back wall where the other three were waiting in silence for something to happen. The movement sent a wall of black crashing down over his vision as he left his own blood stained smear on the floor.

"Tony,"  he heard Lisha say in alarm before his head hit the ground.

[3][2][3]

In the realm of his forced slumber; Tony dreamed.
He was in a library -- at least he was pretty sure it was a library.  Tall book shelves stretched from ceiling to floor in every direction beyond the dimly lit table where he sat. He found that if he tried to look too far past the immediate shelves, everything would disappear into a swirl of black.
Tony sat at the head of a wooden library table, the only thing in sight aside from the shelves. "Hello?" He called. "Anyone there?"

For a moment there was silence, but then.

Yeah babe, I'm in the kitchen. What a sandwich?

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. He swiveled his head around frantically in search for the noise, but there was no one to be seen. When he turned back to table, a white three ring binder sat before him on the table.

Tony eyes it warily. Someone could have been framing him by putting an album of naked girls in his possession. Or it could have been a bomb. Either way, there was no killer instinct on his side that preached the mysterious arrival as good news.

Yet somehow he couldn't stop himself from reaching out and flipping open the cover. He was relieved to find newspaper clippings in sheet protectors instead of -- anything else. The first few pages were normal things. Sports. Politics. Advertisements to get the paper online. It was the local edition of the Pennsylvania News Herald.
His heart sped up in his chest as he flipped to an article about a recent car accident. The dates were all blurred out, and he just couldn't see them no matter how hard he squinted.

...devastating car crash on interstate 43. In a shocking turn of events, witnesses claim that black ice on the freeway forced a semi-truck out of its lane and onto its side where it continued to slide for another mile, resulting in 19 deaths with countless more critically injured. We mourn the deaths of Pennsylvania's Derek Spencer, Veron Chaser, Katherine Hatch and her four year old son Christopher, Angela Preta, Michael LaMontane...

Tony couldn't breathe properly. He flipped to the next page in an attempt to push away the images.

...Ian Turner (?)  was found dead in his home Thursday afternoon...doctors sat cause of death was a brain hemorrhage due to unusual self induced stress...

Tony squeezed his eyes tight, slamming the binder shut, but it was too late, the images were already there.

Lisha Hart dead of carbon monoxide poisoning after being locked in the chemistry lab at UOP during a routine evacuation.

Abigail Richards is found hanging by her neck in her own closet.

An unidentified male body is discovered behind a local bar and grill after being brutally beaten and robbed. High levels of alcohol were reported in autopsy. Body has yet to be side identified.

[3][2][3]

Tony's eyes flew open. He sat up slowly, feeling the spin of vertigo accompanied by a hot knot that seemed to burn into his stomach. His arms felt feeble and every part of him that didn't hurt was stiff with numbness.

Lisha and Michael didn't seem to notice his movement though. They were both crouching down by Abbie, having a conversation in low whispers. His ears pricked as he caught glimmers of a third voice. He forced his eyes to focus and was met with a cool wash of relief.

Abbie was awake.