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“You take the front, I’ll go ‘round back.”
Dean flicked his head towards the abandoned warehouse, and before Sam could reply, his older brother started to slink down the docks.
Arms crossed and raised with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, Sam puffed out a frustrated sigh and started towards the seaside storage facility’s main entrance. The dock’s briny wooden panelling groaned under the hunter’s feet as he carefully padded forward, eyes scanning the darkness for hidden figures.
Dusk was an exceptionally tricky time to hunt. Something about the light made monsters of inanimate objects and harmless shadows, to the point where Sam found it hard to trust his peripheral vision.
At times like these, it was better to be quick than to be certain. Sam promptly cleared his way to the nearest set of double doors.
Before barging into the seemingly decommissioned warehouse he pressed an ear against the cold, rusted metal.
Nothing moving inside.
Sam sucked in a breath and pulled at the salt-crusted door handle, blinking in surprise when it clicked and gave way. He wrinkled his nose at the smell that followed - aged ship oil and sea salt - and opted to hold his breath. Sam supposed the building must’ve been used for fuel storage, perhaps for the boats in the neighbouring marina.
The theory was more or less confirmed as Sam soon came across several flats of large, ribbed barrels and smaller, more portable fuel canisters. He couldn’t tell if any of the containers were still full or not, and he wasn’t about check.
Salt deposits clung to the building, a gift from storm winds and high tides.
'So we can probably rule out paranormal activity, ghosts and the like.'
Gun poised and at the ready, Sam followed the confident beam of his flashlight through the maze-like, largely unorganized warehouse. A strange fog, heavy with the smell of iron and a scent he couldn’t quite place spilled out from behind the messy stacks of ship supplies. Sam fought to see through the haze.
With four disappearances of local fishermen within the last week alone, Sam’s case algorithm deemed the smalltown, westcoast marina worthy of investigation. What Sam expected to find, he couldn’t say. Any number of things, monsters and humans alike, could be responsible for the alleged kidnappings.
Something clattered in the murky distance, further than Sam’s light could reach, and he startled. In a practiced movement the hunter froze, his limbs buzzing with excitatory hormones, breath full and ready in his lungs. Nothing. Sam carefully stepped forward, rolling the balls of his feet with every footstep.
As he traced the noise back to its origin, through half-empty storage racks and spilled canisters, Sam quietly hoped that the wind was responsible. Or a stray cat. Or Dean, who at this point was probably investigating the main storage bay as well.
No such luck. As Sam approached where he thought the jarring noise had come from, something changed. At first, it seemed a trick of the light. The grey brick walls seemed to bloat and warp, shifting like the tide. The stained floors followed suit and Sam fought to keep his balance,as if the room around him was tilting on an axis independent of his own.
Sam staggered, fell to his knees. Nausea settled in the hollow of his gut and slowly crawled up his throat. He gritted his teeth.
“D-Dean?!” Sam called out, hoping his brother was somewhere close by. He tried to take a hand off the floor, to call Dean by phone, but his balance was so far gone that he knew if he so much as moved he’d go down like a bag of bricks.
Sam yelled out his brother’s name again, fighting vertigo.
Spell? Hex bag? Angels? Demons? Poison? Drugs?
'Shit, maybe I’ve been drugged.'
Fine motor skills abandoned, Sam simply resorted to yelling. His fingernails nug rawly into the concrete floor, desperate for purchase. Forcing himself to open his eyes, Sam tried to scan the warehouse for a sign of life but the fog obscured anything over a few metres away.
The fog!
'Maybe the fog was hallucinogenic, or toxic, or magic, or-'
Suddenly Sam’s vision cut out, like a shorted circuit, and he crumpled. He felt rough hands gripping him, his shoulders, rolling him over and dragging him up. Something wrapped painfully around his wrists, pulled his arms so tight they burned.
Any voices Sam might’ve heard to indicate who was taking him faded away, as if he was sinking underwater.
He blacked out.
***
By the time Dean heard his brother’s voice, it was already to late. When the older Winchester came bursting into the main storage bay, gun cocked and at the ready, Sam was already gone.
“Sammy?” Dean scanned the room, looking for any signs of struggle. He paused when his eyes locked into his brother’s flashlight, abandoned on the floor, the beam still on. Sam’s gun was nowhere in sight.
“Dammit.”
Before Dean could even begin to look for more clues, his cell rang. It was Sam’s number.
“...Sam?” Dean swallowed, eyebrows pinched together in distrust. “Hello?”
Someone tsked on the other end of the line.
“Dean Winchester,” A feathery voice replied. “You don’t know me, but I know you."
“Cut the crap. You have my brother, I want him back.” Dean bit out, pacing in circles beside Sam’s flashlight. “So how’s this gonna go down?”
“Ideally? With you and your brother buried six feet under.” The voice chuckled darkly. “But, out of the kindness of my heart, I’ll settle for fifty grand instead.”
“Oh yeah, you’re a real saint.” Dean muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I mean, I could always just slit Sam’s throat over the phone and call it a day. I wonder if you’d be able to hear him choking on his own blood-"
Dean flinched as he heard a muffled grunt in the background of the call. Sam.
“If you hurt him-"
“Oh, I’ll hurt him regardless. Question is, will I kill him, or will you pay up?”
“How ‘bout I kill you?” Dean barked back.
No reply. Something soft and lapping played in the background. Waves? Then a heavy thud, followed by Sam crying out in pain.
“Sammy!” Dean yelled. Horror sank deep into his gut. “Fine, yes, I’ll pay up! When and where, asshat?”
“In the marina, noon tomorrow.”
Before Dean could get another word in, Sam’s abductor hung up. Shit. The hunter recovered the flashlight from the dusty floor and stormed out of the warehouse.
When he got back to Impala, parked haphazardly at a nearby beach access, Dean made a call.
“Cas?” He prayed. “Cas I fucked up. Somebody took Sam and it’s all my goddamn fault-"
A flutter of beating wings, and Cas was beside him.
“Who?” The angel asked, frowning.
“I’ve got no friggin’ clue, but I bet it’s the same assholes who’ve been abducting the fishermen ‘round here.” Dean sighed and slid into his car. “And they wanted money?”
“Do you know where they’re holding him?”
“I’ve got a hunch. Hop in.”
***
Sam spat blood to the floor, sick of the iron tang collecting in his mouth. His nose was busted, his cheeks stung like hell, and his head rang with a gutting headache. He was on a boat, tethered to the seafloor a hundred or so metres from the main docks.
Zip-tied to the deck railing, Sam slumped against the briny deck in silence. Dawn sat on the horizon and set the ocean flickering with light. There were two men on guard duty, they paced around the ship with a practiced balance.
They’d lost interest in beating him after the first hour, though the morning was still young and ripe with painful possibility. Sam groaned as he shifted into a sitting position, favouring his left side.
There was a rusted screw at the base of the nearest railing post that he’d noticed some time ago. Now he just needed to wait for the right moment to reach over with his free hand and twist it out, then use it to saw through his bindings.
By some stroke of luck, the guards were suddenly distracted by something on the shoreline, and Sam got his chance. As fast as his numbed fingers would allow, he freed the bolt from the railing and started whittling away at the zipties. Sam heard one of the guard shouting something, but the hunter was too focused on getting himself loose to make sense of it.
“Over there!”
The guards started firing. Sam shuddered as he paused to watch their automatic weapons unload into the docks before he finally wrenched his arm free of his restraints. The skin around his wrists and forearm was an angry, bloodied mess and the wounds stung as they were hugged by the cold ocean air.
Sam didn’t care to watch the aftermath of the shootout and opted instead to book it off the boat. He dove into the oily water and swam towards the shoreline as quickly as his battered body would allow, hoping his kidnappers were too preoccupied to notice his absence.
“Sammy!”
Sam coughed on seaspray and tuned his ears to the familiar voice. Dean was on the docks, Cas at his side. And there was the Impala, parked on the boardwalk next to the commercial ships blaring ACDC. Sam made as to laugh but his ribs protested the movement, so he resigned himself to closing the distance from his friends. Mere feet from the rescue ladder, something bit into Sam’s shoulder.
A bullet.
Sam shouted in pain and accidentally invited water into his mouth. Sputtering, he grasped the ladder and let Dean haul him up and out onto dryland. Blood spilled from Sam’s gunshot wound and painted the wooden boardwalk red.
“Hell of an entrance.” Sam stated through gritted teeth, clenching his shoulder tightly with his uninjured arm.
“Figured they were camping out here somewhere, I heard the ocean over the phone. All it took was a little Brian Johnson to get there attention.” Dean chuckled and helped Sam to his feet. The boat engine flared to life in the distance. “They’ll be coming now. Let’s motor.”
“I’ll heal you once we’re on the road, Sam" Cas reassured, and took the younger Winchester’s weight so Dean could start the car.
“Sounds good to me.” Sam grimaced, and hauled himself into backseat. “Dean...who were they? I couldn’t get a read on those guys - they never even monologued.”
“No clue. Apparently they know us. Or...me, anyway.” Dean carefully weaved the Impala out of the marina and back onto the main road. “I’m sorry, Sam. It’s my fault they took you-"
“Dean, if it’s anyone’s fault it’s theirs, not yours. I’ll be fine.” Sam interrupted, glaring at his brother through the rearview mirror. “Besides, I’m sure they’ll catch up with us eventually, we can get more info then. For now let’s just get out of here."
Dean simply nodded, kept his eyes on the road.
Later, Sam kept the blood between his teeth while hissing in discomfort, trying not to cringe away as Cas started to sew his atoms back together. There was a long drive ahead.
Dean kept the radio on.