Out From The Cold

Chaos Fic

A/N:

So, this is my first Chaos fic. Been a long-time reader of everything in this fandom, and figured I ought to actually participate. I claim no ownership of the characters. (If they were mine, they'd still damn well be on the air...)

Many thanks to the wonderful and talented Faye Dartmouth for being a fantastic Beta!

The first thing Casey became aware of was the cold.

He was lying on something cold, hard, and fairly smooth. Metal, something in the back of his mind noted. The air was cold too, adding a sort of sharpness to every breath.

The second thing Casey became aware of was the headache.

He opened his eyes while suppressing a groan. The side of his head was pounding, and when he reached up to touch the tender spot on the side of his forehead, his fingers came away with the flakey residue of dried blood. As consciousness reasserted itself, fragments of memory began to reassemble themselves, like puzzle pieces.

The mission had gone to hell, as an alarming number of the ODS' missions were wont to do. It wasn't even supposed to be a terribly high-risk operation; just the recruitment of an asset. Intelligence reports in Brazil had identified an underboss in one of the major drug-trafficking gangs in Rio de Janeiro who would be willing to provide intel on the cartels. Most likely, Casey had cynically pointed out during the briefing, as a method of removing the competition. So the four of them had gotten on a flight to Rio, for what was supposed to be a nice, simple, straightforward mission. Only the asset, Olivera, had spooked, and one thing had led to another and it had all broken apart. Olivera, in a bout of paranoia, had refused to meet with the ODS unless they eliminated a member of the same cartel whom he believed to be a security risk. Which had sent the mission on a whole different track, involving, at one point, a rooftop chase through one of the hillside shanty-towns.

Just another day at the office.

Of course, then they'd split up, with Michael and Rick intercepting a cocaine shipment whose route they'd just uncovered (Rick was the only one whose Portuguese was sufficiently good to pull off their swiftly-cobbled cover). Casey and Billy had been dispatched back to Rio to meet with Olivera and bring him proof of their success in exchange for his intel.

Sitting up, Casey massaged his aching head. Only when they'd arrived, Olivera hadn't been there. Well, his body had, but the man himself had shuffled off this mortal coil, as Billy had put it. The asset's boss had gotten wise to the deal, and had been less than amused. Armed goons had surrounded them, and while Billy rushed to smooth-talk them out of an increasingly dire scenario, Casey had tried to identify a battle plan that wouldn't end in him or Billy getting shot. He was having a hard time thinking of anything that would result in a significant casualty –

– and then he'd gotten whacked in the head, and he'd stopped thinking of much of anything at all.

And now he was here. Wherever here was. Blinking in the dim, fluorescent light, Casey took stock his surroundings: small room, maybe ten by twenty feet; walls lined with shelves, covered in boxes and plastic tubs; slightly odd odor, like spoiled food; no windows, no vents, no door. And really damn cold.

A walk-in freezer. Perfect.

Turning his head, ignoring the faint dizziness (minor concussion, most likely: not a severe concern), he spotted Billy, unconscious on the floor beside him. For a brief moment Casey felt a tightening in his chest, but a swift cursory examination revealed that the other operative had purely superficial injuries, and would probably wake shortly.

He had reviewed the circumstances that had led to their current position, assessed their current location and condition, and now he had one more thing to identify:

How they were going to get out of here.

Clambering to his feet, Casey went over to the door. There was a point on the wall where some mechanism had been hastily removed and torn out. Probably, he noted with a grimace, the emergency release for the door. He tried the handle anyway, though he knew what to expect.

He and Billy were locked in.

"Don't bother," Casey drawled bitterly. "It's locked. I've tried it."

Billy shrugged as he yanked on the door handle again, the mechanism giving a rattle but remaining stubbornly in place. "Can't fault a man for trying."

"In the face of obvious futility? Yes, I can. It's stupid." Casey was sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to his chest, watching Billy's pointless exertion with a mix of amusement and irritation.

Billy let go of the handle and stuck his hands in his pockets, letting the heavy strips of plastic sheeting that hung over the doorway fall back into place. "I suppose then, that you have a preferable plan in mind?" He raised an eyebrow, leaning back against the wall with a casual pose that belied the severity of the situation. He'd woken up a few minutes after Casey, similarly groggy but apparently no worse for wear, save for a few cuts and bruises and the beginnings of a black eye.

Casey scowled. "We wait."

"What's this? Casey Malick recommending a course of inaction?" Billy's surprise was only partially feigned. "Seems a bit out of character for you, mate."

"We're locked in a freezer. The walls are over half a foot thick. There's no reception in the earwigs, so we have no method of contacting Michael and Martinez, and the thing locks from the outside, so we have no way of getting out unless someone lets us out. The only thing we can do is wait for them to find us."

Silence lingered for a moment in the frigid air, the unpleasant reality of the situation and the unpleasant truth of Casey's words slowly sinking in.

"And how long do you reckon that'll take?" Billy asked after several long seconds.

Casey sighed, his breath a small puff of steam. "We were only out for about ten minutes. We've been out of radio contact for about forty minutes. That means –"

"That means another twenty minutes before they know something's wrong," Billy finished, uncharacteristically somber.

"And then however long it takes for them to find us," Casey added. "And if the regulations here are anything like what the FDA has, then this freezer is between ten and zero degrees."

"Well, that's not so bad."

"Farenheit, Collins."

"… oh. Right."

Silence again. Billy pursed his lips together, looking around the walk-in. Then he smiled faintly. "Well, you were the one complaining about how much you hated the jungle heat."

Casey snorted. "Believe me, the irony isn't lost on me."

It didn't help that they'd dressed for the warmer weather, Casey reflected. If the mission had been in Russia, for instance, they'd already be reasonably bundled up. As it was, he had on a lightweight canvas jacket over a t-shirt and jeans, and Billy wore a simple linen suit. And all of their attire had already been slightly damp with sweat from the oppressive humidity and Brazilian heat. Which meant they'd both be losing body heat, and fast. Casey bit his lip, pressing his mouth into a thin line. Already he could feel his fingers begin to ache from the cold, and he was grateful that he'd at least had the good sense to put on some decent boots, anticipating a potential hike through the rainforest.

"Well then!" Billy interjected, his usual enthusiasm reasserting itself. "Time to get busy!"

"Excuse me?"

Billy pulled a small utility knife out from his pocket (something their captors must have either missed or deemed too inconsequential to confiscate) and began to hack at the plastic curtains. Casey watched, skeptical confusion on his features. "What on earth are you doing?"

Tearing down one of the sheets of plastic, Billy threw it over to Casey. "While it wouldn't surprise me at all if your near-superhuman powers of physical discipline had enabled you to resist the cold, I would nonetheless recommend wrapping yourself up in that."

Casey blinked. "Insulation. Clever."

"If you want to help," Billy continued, tearing down a second sheet, "I'd empty out some of the boxes on the shelves. Puttin' the cardboard down will give us something to sit on that isn't a cold metal floor, and I for one would consider that a preferable alternative to literally freezing my arse off."

Casey wasn't even going to dignify that with a reply. But the galvanized steel floor was cold, and Billy's suggestion had merit. And if nothing else, the movement would keep his blood flowing, keeping him warm. The boxes were mostly of medium size, so he had to empty and break down a number of them before they'd built up enough to make a cardboard nest on the floor. Billy finished cutting down the curtains and lent his knife to Casey's boxcutting efforts, going through the other contents of the freezer in search of any other insulatory materials. He eventually turned up some small plastic bags, and while they weren't big enough to form ponchos out of, as Casey would have hoped, they would make effective – if rather stupid-looking – makeshift mittens and socks.

It all took less than twenty minutes. And then they were hunkered down on the boxes in the corner, leaning up against the shelves with their bodies wrapped in plastic curtains and their hands and feet wrapped in plastic bags.

"This sucks," Casey grumbled, pulling the collar of his jacket up as he tucked his chin down against his chest. He and Billy had sat down back to back, keeping their cores relatively close to one another as a way of sharing warmth.

"Aye, but it could be worse," Billy commented, shifting on the boxes.

"How, exactly?"

"Well. Instead of sticking us in a freezer, they could have just shot us. Quite frankly, considering the large number of munitions that were being pointed at us, I'm rather surprised they didn't."

Casey shook his head, forgetting briefly that their current arrangement meant Billy couldn't see him. "Cleaner this way. You don't leave a mess when you freeze to death, and when a body's frozen solid it becomes much easier to cut into bits without all the gore, making for a more efficient disposal."

"… For the sake of my sanity, I'm not going to dwell on how you know that."

He shrugged. "I worked with a cleaner in Singapore for a brief time. You should see the things I know how to do with industrial lye."

"Ugh, I'll take a pass, mate."

"At any rate, I'd guess we're only alive for now because Olivera's boss wants to make us disappear as tidily as possible," Casey concluded, trying to focus on something other than the way the cold just seemed to be settling into his bones.

"Heh… there for the grace of God and cleanly criminals."

"For now, at any rate." The minute Casey said it he could feel Billy's posture change, and regretted it. Not that it wasn't true, of course, and he didn't really see why Billy would react badly to the truth, but he recognized that for reasons of morale, the observation was perhaps not the most helpful. "We'll be missing the check in right now," he said, hoping to change the topic. "Michael and Rick will know something's up and start looking. That's something." Optimism didn't come naturally, but he was giving it his best shot.

"If we were only out for ten minutes, then we can only be within ten minutes of the meeting point where we were supposed to rendezvous with Olivera. Probably less," Billy added.

"And if we're in a location with a freezer, I'm thinking restaurant. Most of the food in here is past date, so it's probably closed. I'm fairly certain I remember seeing a boarded-up joint on our way in."

"Great! So we know where we are!"

"Only Michael and Rick don't."

"That… would be the problem, aye." Billy slumped a bit. "Well, they're clever enough lads. They'll work it out sooner or later. Though I would certainly appreciate it if it were sooner, given the somewhat inclement climate in here."

"You and me both," Casey mumbled, hugging his knees up to his chest.

Rationally, Casey knew that the freezer was set at a constant temperature. But it still felt like it was getting colder. The chill was settling deep, and he found himself beginning to shiver a bit. His hands and feet were beginning to ache from the cold, and through the plastic he could see the skin of his fingers turning white and waxy.

Time dragged by, the seconds each an eternity.

"This reminds me a bit of the mission in Bosnia, back in '09," Billy remarked, breaking the lull of silence. They'd been in the pattern of speaking, then falling silent, then resuming a conversation some time later. Neither of them had much to say, but words gave them something to think about other than the cold.

"As I recall, we were in a morgue, not a freezer. And we weren't locked in. Also, men were shooting at us."

"Well, see? No dead bodies and no gunfire! Already our current situation appears rosy by comparison."

Casey knew what Billy was trying to do, but forced optimism was perhaps more tragic than realistic pessimism. He sighed; reflecting back on the gunmen in the morgue in Serajevo only reminded him of the gunmen in their more recent encounter. "I should have seen it coming."

"What, Bosnia?"

"No. The ambush at the meet."

"Casey, I may be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that the entire point of an ambush is that it's something you don't see coming."

Casey shifted uncomfortably. He felt like he was having a bit of a hard time moving – like his limbs were heavier than usual. "I should have, though. I ought to have picked up on the fact that something was wrong off the bat."

"Well, if you're going to claim fault here, you at least ought to share some of the guilt. I walked right in same as you, mate," Billy retorted. "They got the drop on us. It happens. Sometimes you just have an off day."

"Off days in our line of work typically involve a body count," Casey mumbled.

"At any rate, it happened. Olivera's boss set a trap, and we were outnumbered and outgunned. Human weapon or not, fighting them would've been tantamount to suicide, given our strategic disadvantages."

"So instead of dying in the warehouse, we die here?" Casey recognized that he was angry with himself and not Billy, but couldn't help snapping.

Billy shifted. "Michael and Rick'll get here. You'll see."

Casey felt his friend shudder, but attributed it to the cold.

"I recognize that I ought to commend your resourcefulness."

"Hm?"

"With the plastic and the cardboard. For insulation," Casey iterated.

"Ach, well, not the first time I've been in a chilly situation," Billy replied.

"Oh?" Casey didn't typically prompt his colleague to share (Billy usually did that without prompting, against Casey's express wishes), but he was beginning to feel a bit stressed, and Billy's yarns were more interesting than staring at the shelving.

He felt Billy shrug. "I've had a couple missions in cold places. One time, Her Majesty's Secret Service had me out in Siberia for nigh on a fortnight."

"And you wrapped your hands and feet in trash bags?"

"Nay, that was actually a trick I picked up long 'fore then. I used to go for long walks – 'hikes' as you say across the pond–"

"You don't use the word 'hiking'?" Casey interjected.

"Well, no, we just say walking. Like, 'I went for a walk up the mountain.' But anyway, a mate and I were out for a long walk out on the moors –"

"I hesitate to inquire what 'a long walk' means."

"About a week. We were doing the West Highland Way, out over the Rannoch Moor. We decided to go in the winter season, since it wouldn't be so crowded. Anyhow, part of the trail got washed out from the rains that winter, and we took a detour. Wound up getting bloody well lost, with no gear–"

Casey frowned. "No gear?"

"Weeelll, some of us slightly lazier walkers occasionally use a service that will bus our gear on ahead to the next town on the route so we can meet up with it later. It's a common enough practice. But we never quite made it to the next town before nightfall. And where it's a wee bit of a treacherous path, we weren't too keen on walking it in the dark. So we wound up out on the highland moor, midwinter, with naught but th' clothes on our backs and what little gear we'd brought for the day."

"That was stupid."

"We were eighteen. I'm fairly sure 'stupid' was our default state of being. We had the plastic bags we'd wrapped our lunch in, and used them to keep our hands warm. Dug ourselves into the hillside and covered ourselves in heather. It started t' rain halfway through the night."

Casey shuddered – mostly from the cold. "Sounds miserable."

Billy snorted. "It's not one of my fonder memories of my homeland."

Casey took a moment to rub his hands together, sticking them under his armpits in hopes of restoring some sensation to his extremities. "So what happened?"

"When we didn't reach the check-in point in Crainlarich, a rescue team got sent out to look for us. We got found sometime around sunrise the next morning. Though I daresay they nearly missed us, covered in mud and heather as we were."

The mental image of Billy coated in mud and underbrush prompted a faint smirk on Casey's face. "Glad to know you have a track record of surviving the cold."

"I did live to walk another day," Billy replied rather distantly. "Dinnae do the West Highland Way after that, though…"

Casey couldn't feel his feet.

He'd started to shiver in earnest, his whole body trembling.

At one point, Billy turned around and looked at him, concern etched on his features. "You doin' all right, mate?"

"I'm fine," Casey growled from between clenched teeth, trying to keep them from chattering.

"You seem like you're about to shiver yourself right apart."

"Shivering is a normal physiological reaction to the cold, Collins," Casey snapped. He rubbed his numb hands against his body's core, not that it was doing much good anymore. "It's when I stop shivering that you should worry," he added beneath his breath.

"… I reckon we might be able t' preserve a bit more body heat if we change positions…"

He grimaced. "No."

"Casey."

"If I'm going to be found as a frozen popsicle of a human being, it's going to damn well be a dignified popsicle."

"You'll be a dead popsicle, you pillock." Billy retorted with uncharacteristic annoyance, though his words were oddly sluggish and slurred, his Scottish brogue thickening. "Now quit bein' daft, aye?"

And with only a minimal amount of protest (because he was too cold and too tired to put up a fight), Casey found himself pressed up against Billy, the plastic sheets wrapped around them both as they curled in around each other.

"This is humiliating," he griped, though the violence of his shivering was already beginning to abate against the warmth of Billy's body.

"But warm," Billy mused, sleepily.

"If word of this ever leaves this goddamn freezer–"

"I won't tell a soul."

"– they'll never find your body," Casey finished, letting his eyes close for just a moment.

He drifted in and out. It could have been minutes, or hours – he wasn't sure. He was shivering again, and he could feel Billy shaking against him as well. Each breath he breathed was warmth escaping in a visible puff of vapor – warmth he'd never retrieve.

During one of his more wakeful moments, watching those puffs of breath, Casey began to have a troubling thought.

"Billy?"

"Mmmnh?"

"Wake up."

"Whaa-?"

"How big do you think this room is?"

"The – huh?" Billy's eyes fluttered open and struggled to focus. "Tha room?"

"Yeah. How big?" Casey watched as Billy fought against the sluggish effects of the cold.

"I reckon… twenty feet by ten feet by eight feet? Give or take a foot?"

"So, 1,600 cubic feet of air, you'd say?"

Billy blinked again. "If you're thinking 'bout us runnin' out of oxygen, mate, I'd say tha's a secondary concern. We've got at least a half-day's worth of air in here. Not so sure 'bout a half-day's heat…"

Casey's face soured. "Oxygen isn't the gas I'm worried about."

It took a few seconds for recognition to dawn on Billy's features. "Carbon dioxide."

"We exhale 5% CO2 compared to the regular 0.05% in the atmosphere, and an 8% build-up is utterly lethal," Casey elaborated, watching Billy's lips move as he did the math.

"Well… that's not good," Billy murmured as he came to the conclusion Casey had already worked out several minutes ago.

"Dorset and Martinez had better hurry the hell up," he mumbled, trying to curl himself up tighter.

"Agreed."

And with every visible breath, Casey watched them dying…

It was hard to tell if the disorientation was from the cold, the carbon-dioxide levels, his concussion, or some combination of the three.

Time had become irrelevant. Time was the most important thing in the world. Time seemed to slow to a tick, just as everything else had slowed, including the beating of Casey's heart.

He remembered reading somewhere that all molecular movement came to a halt at absolute zero. What was it again? -459º Farenheit? Something like that. Heat death of the universe and all that. Everything would just get so cold it'd simply –

–stop.

Casey turned and looked over at Billy, though the effort it took to move seemed Herculean. The Scottish operative was shaking with cold, frost forming on his lashes and on the stubble near his mouth. His skin had turned pale and his lips blue, and if not for the shivering and the occasional blink, Casey might have taken him for a corpse.

Billy must have sensed Casey's gaze. He glanced over at him. "H-how long?"

Casey looked down at his watch, then frowned. "Not sure. My watch has stopped." The humidity from the jungle must have gotten some moisture into the mechanism, and now with the cold, that moisture must've frozen, jamming up the delicate cogs and gears.

Everything got so cold it just stopped.

Including them.

Billy closed his eyes, leaning his head back. "Soon…"

Soon Michael and Rick would be there.

Or soon, Casey and Billy wouldn't be.

Either way.

Someone was shaking him. But Casey didn't want to wake. His whole body was numb, which he supposed was nice. He didn't feel cold anymore. He didn't feel anything anymore.

He heard Billy's voice, talking to him, but he couldn't make out the words. He could picture his brain, solidifying into a mass of ice, impenetrable.

Casey groaned, or tried to, when he felt someone jostling him. He couldn't move, however, and couldn't seem to operate his mouth to protest. Somehow the signals between his mind and his muscles stalled out. Under most circumstances, this physical unresponsiveness would have driven him to distraction, but he found all annoyance at his body dampened by a sense of profound apathy.

He didn't care. He just wanted to sleep…

Someone was wrapping him in something. And words that may or may not have been an apology touched his frost-bitten ears, but before he could consider the implications, darkness gently pulled him under once more.

Noise. Why was there noise? And light. So much light. Casey squinted against it, and then wondered how it was that his eyes had come to be open in the first place. Odd. He was normally far more aware and in control of his physiological responses…

Damn.

His head hurt.

"Casey? Casey!"

He blinked. Someone was standing over him, and while there was a sense of familiarity, he couldn't seem to focus. It was… moderately frustrating.

"He's breathing! I think he's awake, but he's not responding!" Rick. That was it. The person was Rick. "Stay with me, Casey, you're gonna be fine, paramedics are on their way…"

"Rick–"

"I can't believe we got here in time–"

"Rick!"

"What?"

Rick. Michael. Rescue. Casey let his eyes slip closed again. Everything was going to be fine. Everything was going –

"–Rick, Billy hasn't got a pulse."

Billy. No. Casey tried to open his eyes, tried to sit up. But he couldn't think and he couldn't breathe and everything was reeling around him, his already unfocused vision dimming. He tried to turn his head, but the muscles in his neck seemed immobile, like a rusted hinge. Casting a glance to his side, he made out a pale and lifeless figure. He tried to focus, tried to make out some detail that would hint at life – an eyelid fluttering, or a thin coil of breath steaming in the frigid air. But Billy was utterly still, his lips blue and patterns of frost forming on his skin. And even as Casey tried to concentrate, he found his sight beginning to swim as darkness encroached on his peripheral vision. Billy…

His chest hurt and clenched. The pain in his head reached blinding levels. He could hear Rick's voice yelling, heightening in pitch even as it grew fainter and further away, until there was nothing but silence.