Chapter Text
With his pistol taken from him, the raw burning of his lungs as they tried to pull enough oxygen to sustain life, and the sounds of his captors in the tunnel behind him, Troy couldn't see many ways for this to end. His only hopes were for a hiding place to sit secure until the German soldiers had passed by, although if there was anything to be thankful for it was that their most recent altercation had left Dietrich as unarmed as himself. All the other soldiers in pursuit were still too far behind to shoot him in the back.
The sandy floor of the abandoned mine stifled his footsteps to little thumps of sound as heavy and swift as his heartbeat, but if the Germans behind him came much closer they were sure to trail him on sight alone, like dogs bringing down a rabbit. Rabbits were more fortunate for never having been threatened with the S.S.
Before him, three passageways gaped in the semi-darkness, and he dragged to a halt in indecision, hearing the whistle of his own breathing in his ears and the shouts of soldiers in the tunnel behind. Dangerous to go so far into the mine shafts, he thought, and might have stayed frozen there until Dietrich came upon him but for the flash of movement which caught his attention just within the middle way. For an instant, he saw a man in uniform running into the inky blackness with the singular determination of someone who knows exactly where he's going and intends to get there on time. Without stopping to think about it, Troy dove in after him, forcing his protesting muscles back into the feverish work they had been doing a moment before.
His legs felt heavier than the rest of him put together, almost seeming to cling stubbornly to the ground as he ran deeper into the passage. The air was hot and dry, the darkness so thick it was like a blanket over the sergeant's eyes, but he pushed on at what speed he could still manage, turning a corner in time to again catch a glimpse of the retreating form ahead of him.
The passage he had chosen made several sharp turns, his own momentum nearly sending him flying into the wall on more than one occasion, but the sand of the floor was even and didn't catch at his feet to trip him. Thus, there was no warning before the ground gave out beneath him, just one moment of smooth sand under him and the next of emptiness. His body fell forward into the hole, but everything inside of him seemed to be rushing upward at the same time, filling his chest with a tightness that would not be relieved. He might have been violently sick, if he had been given the time to think about it, but after the first jolt of instinctual terror he discovered that the fall was more of a gentle, downward glide which showed no signs of coming to a sudden stop.
He tried to see what he was falling to, but it was pitch-black above and below; a mine shaft, he thought dimly. If so, it was a very deep mine shaft, as he kept going down at a steady pace but never seemed to come to anything but more emptiness. Perhaps that depth accounted for the feeling of a cushion of air underneath of him, slowing his fall so that he forgot his worry about hitting the bottom. At the speed he was moving, it certainly couldn't be any worse than being shot.
The fall continued, so Troy took the time to look around and realized with a shock that there were things hung up on the walls: full bookshelves, cabinets with clustered jars just visible inside doors left ajar, faded pictures held up with tacks, even several maps of countries he didn't recognize. Everything set up as if someone regularly came through here and used the space. He wondered how they reached, or if they rearranged things as they fell past.
Now there was a thought Moffitt would have a field day with. The British sergeant would probably take one look at him and have him put in a locked and padded room for the rest of the war. After all, how could anyone have gotten such things on the wall in the first place, and if they had, how could they reach them again...?
How could they?
But the dawning worry for his own sanity was cut short by a sudden 'crunch' as he landed in the midst of a great many twigs and crackling leaves. The landing was soft as he had expected, so he rolled quickly to his feet and assessed the area, fearing what he might see. Another dark tunnel stretched out ahead of him, and he barely caught a glimpse of the soldier disappearing down its length and around the corner.
Irrationally, it occurred to Troy that the man must know where they were and how to get back to the surface, so he took off along the corridor at the limping trot which was now the best he could manage. A tremendous cramp had descended on his side, sending slivers of pain shooting into his chest whenever he drew a breath.
"Wait!" Troy gasped out, but the sound of his voice came weak and oddly muffled. He ignored his burning lungs and aching side, forcing himself on around the sharp turn in the tunnel, but when he came past it the soldier was no longer in sight.
The room he found himself in was long, its low ceiling lined with the lamps which lit the place. A little glass table sat in the center. Rows of doors ran along the walls, and he guessed that the man he was following had gone through one of these, but as he was about to start checking them he became aware of a presence behind him which had approached unseen and unheard. He spun around, clutching at the empty holster at his hip, but Dietrich's attention was on the room beyond and he barely spared a glance for Troy.
Although Dietrich's expression was steady, the first words he spoke were in German and he had to go back and translate. "What is this?" he said.
"How should I know?" said Troy harshly, nursing the stitch in his side. "I thought you dug these mines during the assault here."
The German slanted a look at him. "Not personally, I assure you, Sergeant. The engineers who excavated this place are long gone on to other work, and I have no knowledge of anything of this kind having been done here. Defense, yes. But this is a hall."
Troy had no answer to this, and after a moment Dietrich walked over to the nearest door and twisted the knob experimentally. It proved to be locked, so he moved on to the next one, and so on down the left side of the long room. He reached the end and turned back, checking the right-hand doors along the way, but none of them would open either. When he had finished, the German came back to Troy and stood in front of him, frowning at the whistling sound issuing from the sergeant's lungs.
"Are you well?" he asked, without even the decency to look winded himself. Oh, certainly he had been breathing heavily when he first came in, but that was a bare courtesy when it was considered that he had been running nearly as long, and quite as hard, as Troy.
"I'll be fine in a minute," growled Troy. He cupped a hand over his mouth and waited for the gasping to ease a little. "I'd be better if you hadn't chased me, but it doesn't seem to have bothered you."
"Not in the least, Sergeant," said Dietrich honestly. "However, your physical situation is worse than mine because I took shortcuts through several of the places you went around."
"And because your legs are longer."
"Yes. Do you have any ideas of how we might get out of here?"
"No," said Troy. The cramp in his side had eased, and he straightened carefully with one hand pressed to his ribs. No fresh pain was forthcoming, but he did notice something lying on the glass table. "What's that?" he asked, pointing.
Dietrich went to the table and picked the tiny thing up, holding it so Troy could see. "A key."
"Then doesn't it--?"
"No. It is far too small to fit any of these locks," said Dietrich. He swept a look around the room. "But surely it must fit something," he said, already moving to do a second thorough search of the room.
Troy watched from the doorway as the German paced along the wall, studying the smooth lines carefully and testing each door knob again. There was a curtain hanging to one side of the long wall which Dietrich had passed by the last time through, but this time he pushed it aside, and behind it was a little door. It couldn't have been more than a foot high, but when Dietrich crouched and tried the lock with the tiny, golden key, it gave and swung meekly open on its hinges.
"That's it?" said Troy. He walked over to where Dietrich was sitting and leaned down to look through the open door, being careful to keep an eye on the other man at the same time. An expanse of rich grass and well-tended flower beds was visible, along with the rim of one tall fountain and the clear sounds of several others somewhere nearby. Beside him, Dietrich rose and retreated a few steps, his tone doubtful.
"No one in the desert would waste water that way. But there is water enough there to keep flowers healthy; even the grass has not been allowed to wither."
"Strange," Troy agreed, staring at the flowers.
"Perhaps it doesn't matter. That way would only lead us deeper into the mine."
"Maybe. But - as I was coming in, I saw another soldier ahead of me. That's why I came this way in the first place, he looked like he knew where he was going. He was headed down this way."
"A soldier alone down here?" Dietrich sounded even more skeptical. "If he was, he must have had a key to one of these doors. We cannot follow without a key of our own."
"Yeah, but the only key we've got is this one. And there's no way that we could fit through here," said Troy. "Unless you've got some way to slither through."
"It is said that rats can slip through tiny spaces. Perhaps you would like to demonstrate," retorted Dietrich crisply.
"That would leave you stuck in here, wouldn't it?"
Only silence in reply, and he turned suspiciously to face Dietrich, but the German's attention was focused on the glass table and the bottle that was now sitting on top of it. That bottle hadn't been there the last time that Troy looked, and from Dietrich's expression he hadn't seen it before either.
"Hey," he said sharply, and Dietrich glanced over at him. "Where did that come from?"
"I don't know, Sergeant. These mines may have been dug by Germans, but they do not answer to me. Wherever it came from, I am certain that it was not there a moment ago, and no one else has been here."
The bottle sat smugly in the center of the tabletop, taking no notice of their fixed attention. Troy was the first to approach it, cautiously, as though it was about to explode. There was nothing to say that it wasn't.
"It's just a bottle with a paper on it," he said, after a careful inspection. "There's some kind of liquid inside." There was no lid on the bottle, and he peered down the neck at the clear fluid inside.
"What does the paper say?" said a deep voice from somewhere in the vicinity of his left shoulder, making him flinch away in shock. Dietrich gave him a strange look, but Troy was becoming distinctly uneasy about the disappearance of his own sharper senses. He wondered uncomfortably if the German had also lost his, or if it was just him.
"It says: 'Drink Me'. It looks like water, but there's no way to know," said Troy.
"Except for drinking it," said Dietrich. He tossed the gold key to Troy and brushed past, beginning to explore the room yet again. He showed no signs of expecting Troy to actually test the liquid, so the American decided to hold his silence. For a while.
Dietrich did another thorough sweep of the room while Troy stood staring down at the mysterious bottle, then the German disappeared back into the hall which had led them both there in the first place. He didn't come back for such a long time that it crossed Troy's mind that he might have found a way back out.
Troy had decided early on that the substance in the bottle was either water or something very similar, but considering the number of deadly poisons which could look similar, that was small comfort. Still, neither one of them had seen anyone put it there on the table, and there was nowhere for anyone with ill intent to hide themselves before or after placing the bottle. What sort of assassin wrote 'Drink Me' on a poison bottle anyway? The liquid didn't smell like anything in particular or look like anything except water. Maybe it was just water.
He shifted against the table as he set the key down, sloshing the liquid in its vessel, and was surprised by a wave of thirst so strong that he almost lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank. Of course, he realized, he had been running hard in the middle of the desert, and the ripple of the fountains was still in his head even though the door was closed. He should have expected such a reaction sooner or later. Now if only the liquid was water, he could drink...
"There is no way out, except for the locked doors," said Dietrich, materializing in front of Troy and nearly giving him a heart attack.
"So we're trapped here," said Troy, when he had regained his composure enough to formulate a coherent sentence of inoffensive words. "No food, no water..."
They both looked down at the bottle, and Dietrich frowned. He seemed about to say something several times, but broke off each time, so Troy was surprised at the harmless question he finally asked. "Are you thirsty, Sergeant?"
Harmless as it was, it made him suspicious. "I'm getting there," he said warily. "Why, are you thirsty enough to try it out?" He indicated the bottle.
"It looks like water," observed the German, ignoring the new question. He held very still for a long moment, studying the level of the liquid closely with the look of a man talking himself into something dangerous, possibly deadly. Troy hoped that it had nothing to do with killing him, or causing him any physical damage, an endeavor which could only end in failure on both sides.
But when it came, the action proved mild. Dietrich picked up the bottle and tipped it up over one cupped hand, letting a few drops fall into his palm, then set the bottle back on the table and licked the droplets away. Possibly deadly.
Troy watched him closely for any signs of poisoning, but the first thing that showed was a grimace of disgust. Dietrich brought a hand up and covered his mouth, looking much like he wanted to spit it out, a thing you did not do in the desert. It was likely that instinct that kept him from following through on the urge which showed so clearly on his face. After a while, he lowered the hand from his mouth and swallowed hard, wincing.
"Alright?" asked Troy, not certain what to make of the strange reaction. Poison, or just something extremely unpleasant? There was actually no real way to know, because it could be slow-acting poison, which wouldn't kill them until long after they had consumed the whole thing.
"A very strange poison," muttered Dietrich, not looking at Troy. He coughed and wiped his mouth, then held out the bottle to the American. "Here. Be careful of the taste."
"What?"
"It is sweet, Sergeant. Somewhat like... Just drink it."
Troy hesitated, raised the bottle in a salute and took a quick sip before he could change his mind. If not for the warning, he would have gagged on the rich, sweet flavor on his tongue, satisfying in spite of its heaviness. It was like too many different things to be compared to any one of them, but the first one that came to his bewildered mind was warm cherries.
He handed the bottle back, glancing up at the German briefly as the exchange took place and noticing with surprise how much taller the man actually was. It had never come up before, except in relation to body mass.
Dietrich took a sip as well, clearly not enjoying the flavor, but it was refreshing enough to ease their thirst and neither one of them could argue that. As a result, they began to drink more deeply of it each time it came around. A person could only die of poisoning once, after all.
"How do you feel?" asked Troy after the third round. He was surprised by the steadiness of his voice as compared to the way his body felt, which was quite a bit heavier than it had been a while earlier.
Giving him an odd look, Dietrich drank a little and handed the bottle to him again. "How do I feel?" Troy noted with satisfaction that the German's voice was not as steady as his own. "Heavy. My head is..."
"Mixed up?" offered Troy, when the appropriate word continued to evade Dietrich. A slight nod was the only answer.
They drank some more in silence, then Dietrich suddenly broke it with: "You are smaller than before, Sergeant."
This would have been offensive if Troy hadn't already suspected as much. The little table now rose well past his hip and every drink seemed to increase the difference. His mind felt too muddled to bother arguing the point, so he agreed more readily than he might have done otherwise.
"I am as well," Dietrich added, with unexpected charity. This was also true, although Troy would never have seen it if it hadn't been brought to his attention.
"So, we're getting smaller," said Troy. He turned the bottle in his hands before drinking, and didn't hand it back this time. "I'm sure that'll make it a lot easier if we die down here."
"If we were small enough, we could go through the littlest door and try to find your Soldat." Dietrich paused and corrected himself carefully. "Soldier. The man you say you saw."
"I did see him," Troy said irritably, taking another thoughtless drink. The liquid was really almost addictive, but his head felt as light as his body did heavy and it was getting hard to concentrate.
"Then perhaps he might know the way out of here. Sergeant!" The table had reached Troy's jawline, while it was still on a level with Dietrich's hip. Snatching the bottle from Troy, the German held it impatiently up and took a deep drink. He lowered it, looked critically at their relative heights, took another small sip, and then gave it back to Troy. "Drink."
Troy drank more deeply than was advisable and ended up barely waist-height on the German, barely able to lift the bottle. Dietrich evened them out again with a series of sips, then drained half of what was in the enormous bottle and shoved it into Troy's arms with a nod to finish it quickly.
In a moment, the tabletop had risen far above them and the fog in their minds was sifting away.
"Let's try the door," suggested Troy, already moving toward it and not bothering to listen for Dietrich following him. Still, they came upon it together and Dietrich was the first to guess their error when he touched the closed and locked door.
"Sergeant," said Dietrich tightly, "what did you do with the key?"
"Nothing," said Troy. "You had it."
"I gave it to you when I went to search for a way out. I threw it to you, Sergeant, tell me you did not put it on the table!"
Wracking his memory, Troy came up with the wrong answer and looked away from the German's narrowed eyes. He growled a curse at the thought of such futility, and received a long string of foreign words in return. If they had sounded the least bit insulting, Troy would probably have reacted very badly indeed, but the tone was more resigned than anything else, and Dietrich turned away to pad silently over under the table's shade. He stood there underneath it, gazing up through the glass where he would be able to see the key lying on top, now far out of their reach.
Troy stayed where he was, cursing himself and the bizarre situation he found himself in. He glared at the door, but it didn't seem to notice, so after a time he slumped back against it and closed his eyes against the sight of Dietrich still standing beneath the table. Weariness from the excitement of earlier crept quietly up on him and he allowed it. If Dietrich wanted to kill him, now would be as good an opportunity as any; he wondered if the German would take it. What a way to go. His thoughts drifted and sank to a fitful haze.
Something murmured softly at the edges of his consciousness, but it made no sense so he paid it only passing attention. The murmuring rose to a crest and lowered again, rose and fell, rose and fell. Like waves in the ocean, lapping at the beach.
"Sergeant Troy!"
The muffled shout jerked him into wakefulness and his legs gave out under him, dropping him to the floor. Dietrich was nowhere in sight, but wherever he was he must have realized that Troy was paying attention, because his voice lowered slightly.
"Sergeant, I've found a way out. Come with me."
"Where are you?"
"Here," offered Dietrich's voice from somewhere on the left side of the room. "Left side, third door down from the entrance. You can slide underneath of the door if you work at it very hard."
"Underneath?" repeated Troy doubtfully, but he got up and walked over to the door that had been mentioned, kneeling down by it and tilting his head to peer beneath to the other side. There did indeed appear to be just enough space for him to slip through with some effort.
"Do you see?" A hand slid under the door and cupped in welcome before withdrawing again. "It is clear. There is nothing to harm you out here except for myself, and I have nothing to gain by killing you at the moment, Sergeant."
That much was true, although it didn't say anything about what might come after they found their way out of this place. If they ever did.
"Alright, I'm coming through." He hesitated a while, trying to figure the best way to go about this, then decided there wasn't one and just started to wriggle under the vast line of the door's height. Halfway through, he realized that Dietrich had been completely serious about having to work at it, and had to fight down a wave of claustrophobia.
"Sergeant?" said Dietrich, his voice coming from a place far above Troy's head.
"I'm fine," Troy muttered, resting on his stomach. "Are you sure about this?"
"Of course. Give me your hand, I'll help you."
"What do you mean 'help'?"
An exasperated sigh. "Sergeant... Never mind."
Troy found himself grabbed unceremoniously by both wrists and stretched until he could feel his shoulders straining against the pressure.
"Stop! You're going to--" He shut himself up quickly, wisely choosing to save his breath for the struggle to free his shoulders and hips of the door before something pulled free of its socket. Something strained painfully in his side, starting a dull ache in his hip. The pressure became nearly unbearable, then eased suddenly as he wriggled out into a bed of sweet-smelling leaves and Dietrich let go of him.
Troy lay silently assessing his limbs and their connections to his body. They seemed to be intact, but his shoulders and wrists were complaining bitterly of the treatment they had been made to suffer.
"Shall we go, Sergeant? The longer we wait, the harder it will be to find that soldier," said Dietrich, offering no explanation for having nearly dislocated Troy's shoulders.
"Yeah, but finding him would be easier with both my arms still attached," Troy said irritably. He rose to his feet and scowled at the German, not even looking around at the surroundings, but Dietrich held his gaze only briefly before shaking his head and turning away.
"You are welcome, Sergeant."