Other People Stop Looking 4/5

Chapter Three

Sam lay on his back, staring unseeingly at the ceiling. He couldn't stop the twitching in his limbs and each time a spasm hit it jerked the chains so that they bit into his already mangled wrists, but Sam barely felt it.

Ankle shackles had been added after he'd kicked the old man the first time they'd tried to shoot him up, and he supposed that pretty soon his ankles would be in the same state as his wrists, but he barely cared.

He wondered vaguely where Dean was but even his brother's face was hard to bring to mind, drowned out by images of terror and death. It had been so long since Sam had last seen him...

"Why don't you... zap him or something?"

Sam let his head fall to the side. Huh. How long had Damien been there? He didn't remember hearing him come in. Maybe he hadn't left since bringing Sam back to the cage. Whatever. Sam didn't want to deal with him right then. He just wanted to lie there until it stopped hurting or he stopped existing, whichever came first.

"What?" he asked anyway, because having Damien there, talking to him, was better than being alone and choking on the silence.

"Jacob," Damien explained, glancing furtively towards the door, "Can't you use your powers on him?"

Sam turned his gaze back to the ceiling. It was white, clean, no strange marks to study. "I don't have powers."

"You have visions," Damien's voice helpfully informed him.

"That's not powers," Sam said flatly, "That's... a curse."

He sensed Damien straightening. "I don't think you're evil." He made it sound almost like an accusation.

Sam huffed out a small, humourless laugh, "Thanks."

Damien deflated. Sam caught a glimpse of him gnawing on his lower lip and had a sudden flash of Dean that made his chest hurt.

"There's nothing I can do," Damien worried. "Jacob wont stop. He's obsessed with you... uh..."

Damien's stuttering over what to call him struck Sam as funny, in a morbid kind of way. Sam shook his head helplessly, the image of his brother fading.

"I don't expect you to do anything."

XXX

Everglade Hall was huge. Dean and Bobby had gone over and over the plans of the estate, searching for weak spots, planning ways in and ways out, trying to memorize the layout. Now they sat in the Impala, down the road from the looming mansion, and prepared themselves.

"I think you should wait here."

Bobby raised his eyebrows. "Boy-"

"Bobby," Dean cut him off, "You said this guy's dangerous, and smart. The less people we have going in the less chance we have of being noticed. I can get in, find Sam and get him back here."

"Jacob is dangerous. All the more reason to have me there as back up. Not stuck out here playing getaway driver."

Dean kept his eyes on the dark house. It looked more like a prison in the gloom than anything else. Sam was in there. He was close. He knew it.

"He's my brother, Bobby."

Bobby glowered at him, "You ain't the only one who cares about that kid."

Dean let some of the stiffness leave his shoulders but couldn't quite look Bobby in the eye. "I have to do this," he said quietly, "I have to get him out of there."

Bobby was quiet for a long moment. Dean shifted impatiently.

"You got one hour," the older hunter finally acquiesced, his voice gruff. "Then I'm coming in after you."

Dean nodded, felt his pockets, checked he had all his supplies, and reached for the door handle. "I'll be back with Sam."

The back of the house seemed to be his best bet. There were no flood lights that lit up at his movement, no cameras that he could see, and one of the windows was loose. A little bit of jimmying would have him in soon enough...

It was fast approaching a week since Sam had vanished and Dean had no doubt that time was running out. His stomach was tied up in knots, anxious about what he'd find. Despite Bobby's theory that Jacob took his time, Dean was far from reassured.

He'd just managed to pry the window open, with a small smirk of success, when the back of his head exploded, stars burst in front of his eyes, and everything went black.

XXX

When Dean came to, he was being unceremoniously dragged through hallways. It took several moments for him to reorientate himself around the bashing his head had just received and remember where he was, and by the time he managed to get his feet under him he'd been pulled to a stop outside a pair of large intricately carved wooden doors.

His captors were two men. One was in his fifties, his beard greying, his eyes hard. The younger man couldn't have been much older than Dean himself, his face turned away as he removed one of his hands to knock on the wooden doors. A deep voice permitted entrance and the door was pushed open.

The room was a mix of a study and a library. Books lined two of the walls from floor to ceiling, all neatly stacked in order of size, and behind a large ornate desk sat a man with a beefy neck and bushy eyebrows. He looked up expectantly and, upon taking in the sight before him, closed the folder he'd been looking over and stood.

"Ah, Dean, isn't it? I was wondering when you'd show up."

Dean glared. "Where's Sam?"

The man – Jacob, he assumed – looked at him with vague disinterest. "Is that what you call it?"

Dean clenched his teeth against the rage building up in him, attempted to wrench himself out of the hold of Jacob's two lackeys, but the men were strong, gripping him hard enough to leave bruises.

"Where is he?" he demanded again, low and deadly.

Jacob glanced at his wristwatch, "Actually, I was just about to begin another round of tests. You can watch."

Jacob led the way. The men moved fast, Dean stumbling as he tried to keep his feet under him, the grips on his biceps unyielding.

Jacob's base of operations was as big on the inside as the outside suggested, with elegant furniture and ancient portraits on the walls, but the guy was in serious need of a housekeeper. The place smelt musty, like earth and decay, layers of dust on the surfaces. Even the carpet puffed out small mushroom clouds as their feet tromped down the long hallways.

"What have-" Dean was cut off by an elbow ramming into his side, knocking the air out of him. He was dragged a few feet before he managed to collect himself, and by the time he finished gasping and coughing, they had stopped.

Jacob produced a key and slipped it into the lock of a single door, carved much the same as the one to his office.

The room beyond the door was pitch black. The light that flowed in from the hallway illuminated a few meters but showed only wooden floorboards of a seemingly empty room. There was no scuffle of movement from the depths.

Dean opened his mouth to demand answers but, with a flick of Jacob's wrist, fluorescent lights lit up the room and Dean's words died in his mouth.

In the far right corner, in a damn cage, a figure – curled on the floor, dark haired and clad in only boxers and a t-shirt – shifted a chained arm over it's face to block out the harsh lighting.

Momentarily forgetting his captors – forgetting everything, everything but Sam – Dean tried to move forward but was jerked back immediately by the firm hands that held him. His vision tunnelled, staining a wrathful red on the outskirts of his brother.

"You let him go or I swear to God-"

"Dean," Jacob cut him off, his tone suggesting that he was being entirely rational and Dean was over-reacting. "You need to wake up. That thing's not your brother. Hasn't been since Azazel claimed it as a baby."

"If you've hurt him-"

"Be reasonable, Dean. I've seen what it can do. It's not natural. It's just another soldier in Azazel's war-"

"Sam's not an it!"

Jacob huffed an exaggerated sigh, and retrieved a small vial from his pocket, a syringe from his other, and plunged the needle through the soft cork, into the murky brown liquid.

"Figured this little concoction out with the last one we had." Jacob sounded pleased with himself. "Very complicated, and deadly if you're not careful, but it works."

Jacob approached the cage.

"God damn it, if you touch him I'll rip your lungs out!" Dean growled.

"Not in much of a position to be making threats there, Dean."

Jacob entered the cage – Dean kicking and fighting the whole way – and crouched down next to Sam, pulling his arm away from his face. Sam moaned, turning his head into the wooden floor, but made no attempt that Dean could see to reclaim his limb, even as Jacob stuck the needle in – Dean caught a flash of bruised skin – and depressed the plunger, quickly backing out of the cage and locking it behind him when he was done.

Dean was so angry he couldn't see straight, rage mixed in with terror at seeing Sam so motionless, apparently unable to defend himself in the slightest. Through the swirl of emotions, he could sense the shift in atmosphere in the men, all now on higher alert and he could tell without looking that all three had their gazes trained on his brother.

For a moment nothing happened. Sam lay prone in the same position and everyone waited. Then Sam gasped, back arching just a little before settling, his eyes flew open but were focussed on something Dean couldn't see.

"Talk!" Jacob commanded.

Sam's voice barely reached Dean's ears, all wispy and broken words, and all thoughts of how good it would be to simply hear Sam speak again went out the window.

"...it's a... poltergeist, maybe... the kitchen cupboards are... he's screaming..."

One of the men holding Dean – the older one – shifted impatiently. "Why don't we just kill it? It never says anything useful."

Dean growled, low and threatening, in the back of his throat, as fear gripped his stomach, but Jacob dismissed the man's opinion with a wave of his hand.

"It might eventually. I still have more experiments for it."

"He's not an it!" Dean snarled furiously.

This drew Jacob's attention away from the cage, and his attentive expression turned hard and cold. He strode the few steps to Dean and leant in close to his face, encroaching his personal space.

"You may think that's your brother in there, but that thing is no better than the rest that you hunt. It needs to be studied, so we can find out how to kill the rest of them."

Rage was reaching breaking point, even as a small voice in the back of his mind fruitlessly insisted that he stay clear-headed. Dean tried to jerk forwards but his captors help firm.

"I'm gonna kill you!" he spat.

Jacob just looked at him contemptuously, then spun on his heel and headed for the door.

"Put him in the cage," he ordered over his shoulder.

Dean didn't fight it. He let the men manhandle him over to the cage and shove him inside, then watched as they retreated. With a thud, they shut the door behind them.

Dean turned back to his brother, crawled the distance between them until he knelt at Sam's side, hands ghosting over him, almost afraid to touch.

"Sam?" he murmured softly, "Can you hear me?"

Sam's eyes moved but they weren't following his voice. They were tracking something he couldn't see, lost in someone else's nightmare.

"A girl... running... she can hear it in the trees... it's so close..."

"Sammy?" Dean leant over so his face was touching the ground, right in front of Sam, but Sam just looked through him.

"...it's tearing her apart..."

Dean shook his shoulder lightly, "Come on, Sam, snap out of it."

It was no use. Dean recognised the blank glaze of a vision and knew that Sam wasn't with him, but somewhere else, watching someone else. There was a moment of silence, punctuated only by Sam's ragged breathing, before he moved on to the next scene.

"A lake..."

Dean sat up straight, letting out a helpless sigh, and worked his arms out of his jacket. Carefully, he lay it over Sam's trembling form, tucking it around his shoulders. He gazed at him for another moment, taking a deep breath to steady himself, before turning his back on Sam and scuttling over to the cage door.

"Gonna get you outta here, Sammy," he muttered, even though he was certain that Sam couldn't hear him.

He searched his pockets and came up empty. Damn. They must have frisked him after that vicious whack to the head. At least he still had his clothes, because apparently these men weren't above taking those either.

Dean inspected the lock. It looked like it would be easy enough to pick but no matter how many times he checked his pockets, his boots, searched the small cage, a lock-pick showed no sign of miraculously appearing.

So, plan B. Dean planted his butt on the ground, leaning back and bracing his hands on the smooth floorboards. He pulled his leg up to his chest, aimed, concentrated, and kicked out, hitting the lock dead centre with his heel. The metal didn't so much as groan, although the muscles in his leg did. He tried a few more times until both legs were aching and he finally clued in to the fact that, even if he got the door open, he'd still have to find a way to get Sam out of the chains that shackled him to the bars.

They were so screwed.

XXX

An hour or so later – although Dean couldn't be sure because his watch had been confiscated – Sam had quietened. No more visions tortured him, but he lay still, his face creased with the lines of a major headache.

"Sam?" Dean placed a hand on his brother's shoulder, "Sammy, it's me. Can you hear me?"

Sam had an arm draped over his eyes and didn't respond. Dean felt woefully impotent, sitting so close to his little brother but unable to ease his suffering, unable to free him. Hell, he didn't even know if Sam realised he was there, and he wished the kid would just wake the hell up already and stop worrying him so damn much.

Plus, sitting in a cage in an empty room? Boring as hell. He'd been trying to loosen the same bar – the one the chains looped around – for at least half an hour now and he was getting no where.

Frustrated, he wiped the palms of his hands on his jeans. He was getting blisters. He sighed, falling back against the bars and letting a hand drop onto Sam's head, absently smoothing the sweat-damp strands of hair. Sam was in desperate need of a shower. He smelt like days-old perspiration with a tang of vomit and blood and sickly sweet chemicals leeching out of his pores.

"It's going to be okay, Sammy," he murmured in the stifling silence of the room. "Don't worry, kid, we're gonna get you out of here."

He wondered what Bobby was doing.

XXX

Bobby was fretting. The hour was almost up and there was no sign of Dean or Sam. Of course, that might not mean anything, just that Dean was being careful, taking his time to do this right and get Sam out safely.

Except that this was Dean, and nothing about that damn kid was careful or slow when his brother was on the line. Nope, it made much more sense to assume that something had gone wrong.

Winchesters; they had the worst luck of any hunter Bobby had met and yet, somehow, they managed to pull it off, often by the skin of their teeth, or sometimes, with a little help from their friends.

Bobby glanced up at the looming hulk of Everglade Hall. There were very few lights on, only a couple on the first floor and, despite this, the house gave off the illusion of cold emptiness, of a history stagnated, for once it must have been a grand manor, and though Jacob must have had money to buy the place – and Bobby could guess where the cold-hearted bastard got that money – it had fallen into disrepair and disregard, so now it stood, huge and threatening, at the top of the hill.

Or maybe it was simply the darkness that made it appear so malevolent, the shadows and the black deeds being carried out by its occupants.

Either way, Bobby was going in.

XXX

Dean heard the key turn in the lock and was on his feet in front of Sam, his stance strong and threatening – well, as much as it could be considering the lacking height of the cage meant he had to hunch over – before the door had even begun to swing open.

Jacob entered, looking unimpressed, with the old man by his side.

"Still haven't come to your senses, I see."

"Go to hell," Dean replied, with as much vigour as he could muster.

Jacob's lips flattened into a thin line, "I'm not the bad guy here, Dean. I'm trying to save people, to get information about this new threat so we can stamp it out before innocent people get hurt."

"You're insane," Dean spat, and then his muscles suddenly locked, his breath stuck in his throat and his lungs froze. Thousands of fire ants crackled over his skin and lightening flashed through his bloodstream. By the time his short-circuiting brain came to the conclusion 'Tazer' he was on the ground and Jacob had Sam.

"Hey!" he tried to yell but all that came out was an inarticulate grunt and all his limbs had decided to pack up and go on holiday, making his attempts to rise clumsy and uncoordinated. "Sam!"

The cage door slammed and the jingling of keys told him it had been locked, but Sam was on the other side of the bars, being dragged towards the door by Jacob.

Dean watched through blurred vision as Sam came alive with panic, struggling and twisting, trying to pull away and pry Jacob's hands off his arms, bare feet tripping and sliding on the floorboards, pleas tumbling out of his mouth. "No, no, no, please, no, please..."

But Dean could only lie there, twitching, and watch as his brother was taken away.

XXX

It took maybe fifteen minutes before Dean managed to drag himself off the floor and into a sitting position, all his muscles burning in protest, but one of the men – the youngest one – had come into the room and damned if he was going to stay curled in the foetal position in front of any of those sicko's.

"Where's Sam?" he growled through clenched teeth.

The man shifted uncomfortably, glancing over his shoulder at the door as if he was worried someone would catch him there, then he knelt down in front of the cage door.

"Listen carefully-"

"And why the hell should I listen to you?" Dean ground out.

The man shot him a look of pure annoyance and impatience. "Because I'm trying to help Sam," he hissed, glancing again at the door.

Dean did a double take, stunned, but before he could comment the man pressed on.

"Now listen, when you get out of this room, go right, then take your second left and keep going until you see a white door. It wont be locked, and there are stairs behind it. It goes to the basement. That's where your brother is."

Now he was shoving a key into the lock, trying to twist it and swearing when it wouldn't work, pulling it out and trying another. His hands were shaking. Dean could only imagine the wrath that betrayal would incur in Jacob.

"Why are you doing this?" Dean asked cautiously.

The man stopped his fumbling and looked up. "Because I hunt monsters." He met Dean's eye. "And Sam's not a monster, no matter what Jacob says."

He went back to the keys, tried a different one, and the cage door swung open.

"Go fast."

XXX

The room wouldn't stop spinning, flashes of death and gore intertwining with reality in a sickening whirl of blank eyes and leather straps.

He wanted to throw up, or scream, or maybe just curl up in a ball and will the world away. He wanted Dean back, but he wasn't sure whether Dean had actually been there or if he'd imagined him. He knew that Dean wasn't there now.

"Where is Azazel?"

Sam gazed at Jacob blearily through his eyelashes, "I don' know."

Fire. It burned over every inch of his skin, flashed through his insides and seared in his lungs and up his throat. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move, and just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. He sagged back against the table he hadn't realised he was arching away from, gasping cool air down his singed throat.

"Where is the demon?" Jacob's voice demanded from his right.

Sam couldn't answer. He didn't know, to say so would get him shocked again and he didn't think he could make his mouth form words anyway. The silence stretched.

This time he heard the charge before it hit, heard it sizzle through the air and leap into his chest. His teeth clenched so hard he thought they might shatter. He felt his heart skip a beat, then the next one, and then the lightening was gone again.

Hands gripped either side of his face and Jacob's cold slash of a mouth loomed above him.

"Where is it? What is it planning?"

Sam moaned, tried to turn his head away but Jacob wouldn't let him. "Don't know. I swear, I don't know. Please..."

It was begging that was beneath him, that went against everything he'd been taught as a Winchester, but he'd been in this house forever, been with these people forever. Certainly long enough to understand that they didn't care if he died during their interrogations, and long enough to know that killing him was their eventual goal.

"Up the charge," Jacob ordered, and for a moment Sam couldn't make sense of it, until he realised that the hunter wasn't talking to him but to the older man at the controls. Panic simply made reality hazier, made drawing breath next to impossible. Sam waited for the inevitable.

"You touch him again and I'll ram my fist so far down your throat..."

Sam missed the rest of the threat. He was too busy trying to stay conscious, thinking dizzily that there might be something to that; Dean being inevitable. At the very least, it was a comforting thought.

Sam couldn't find the energy to lift his head and see what was happening, but his foggy mind registered the sounds of a fight, muffled thuds, curses, something glass shattering. The noise washed over him, swelling and ebbing like the ocean. He almost lost himself in the metaphor and it took him a moment to notice when the sounds stopped.

He waited for a voice, for someone to tell him who had won and who had lost, waited for Dean to free him or for Jacob to kill him.

He held his breath...

"You are far more trouble than you're worth."

Sam deflated, his breath escaping in a sob. Wrong voice. It was Jacob, sounding slightly breathless, and pissed.

"You could've been smart, Dean. Could've joined us." Sam could picture the unhinged hunter shaking his head in mock disappointment. "Now you're forcing my hand. It is... regrettable."

Jacob paused, then gave the order in a flat, dismissive voice. "Kill him."

Sam wanted to scream but he couldn't breathe and he waited and pleaded with God to do something, do anything, save Dean, please, God, save Dean -

And the gunshot was deafening. It felt like it had blown him apart at the atoms and Jacob's following command was just as loud.

"Dispose of the body."

TBC...

Chapter Four