Lisha did her best to clamor through the air vent with the stealth of a sniky snake..... Or at least a field mouse, but she soon remembered that crawling on any sort of surface that was hollow underneath, was sure to make a lot of noise when presented with the problem of a hundred and twenty pound sax player. Dust wafted up her nose and twice already she'd had to stop and try to muddle the sound of her sneezes -- which honestly made more spazmatic noise than the sneezes themselves probably would have.

Of all the things she could have prophesized, crawling through a seemingly endless dark vent was not how she imaged spending her... What day was it? Lisha liked to think that she had a relatively good handle on the future. Admittedly, she had felt the chill of impending doom hovering over them in the days leading up to their capture, but her life was a hailstorm of impending doom, so she thought nothing of it.

Her hands numbed against the cold metal. In a ventilation shaft that seemed to go on forever, she was finding more and more that their kidnapper didn't particularly care for central heating, or heating in general.

Just our luck.... He's probably not even trying to torture us. We got kidnapped by a freaking POLAR BEAR.

Long ago had Lisha abandoned the faint light of their draw string bulb, and yet there seemed to be no end to her blind amblings. The shaft got narrower the deeper in she traveled, until it came to a point where she was crouched down on her hands and knees, sandwiched between the floor and ceiling. Until the very moment that the leeway to her left and right narrowed down to barely an inch on both sides, Lisha was never at all aware that she was claustrophobic.

Her heart sped like a Nascar, leaving behind a trembling body with a high pitched hum of blood in its ears. Before she even realized she was breathing, she was gasping. Where was the air? She would drown in darkness before she ever saw water again. With a dizzying spin that made her stomach lurch, Lisha dropped her head down into her knees and flat out panicked until her muscles were trembling enough to close out any coherent thoughts.

She wasn't sure how long she stayed that way, or why she didn't turn back to take her chances with the reaper, but at some point she realized that she needed to 1.) Get out of there before she actually suffocated to death and 2.) Get her act together if her and her friends would ever see the light of day again.
She took it one foot at a time, secretly praying to find a convenient pile of clothes that would give her a half relevant excuse to go back. They were freezing back there, on top of everything else, especially Micheal who was still sitting around, not only void of his jacket and hoodie, but his T-shirt as well. But convenient items only showed up in Nancy Drew mysteries and bad fanfiction.

She clamored on for longer than her brain could keep track of, then stopped as a cold breath of fresh air reached out to lick her face like an excited be puppy. Not unlike said excited puppy did she rush forward to meet a grate that opened into the outside world... Or at least someone's living room. She rammed her shoulder against it, and with an unwilling screech, the grate opened up into an interior of a house.

It wasn't a bad house either, though relatively cold in comparison to what Lisha would ever deem acceptable for this time of year. Piles of books cramped every available surface and still managed to spill over onto the floor. If she didn't know better, Lisha world have said that the house belonged to a college Ancient Literature professor. A leather briefcase laid open on the coffee table and she had to take but one look to find black and white snapshots of several teenagers she had never seen before. On further investigation, she concluded that there were five of them.

He was already scouting out his next victims.

How rude...

Lisha quickly scanned the rest off the room for a phone, and some maybe shoes and a jacket, but there was nothing, but a ratty old pair of yellow flip flops which, Lisha took in good grace. Now wasn't the time to be choosy. With her back to the wall and every sense on high alert, Lisha quietly crept out of the living room to find herself in a den with a crackling fireplace, an old desktop computer in a mahogany cubby hole, and a more organized floor to ceiling bookshelf that held common young adult titles that would make any amount of book nerd fangirls scream. Star Wars. Inheritance Cycle. Hunger Games. House of Night. Percy Jackson. Kane Chronicles. Maximum Ride. John Green. Just to name a few.

Lisha officially deducing that the kidnapper would have been rather likable if he kidnapped authors instead of children, when suddenly her senses went on an instinctual overload at the long missed crackles and pops of bacon, cheese, and deep fried heaven on bread. It was coming from the kitchen. Her mouth watered as the hunger of three (how long had it been?) days resurfaced with a biting instinct for self preservation and

...well, food.

Lisha was halfway into the kitchen before she realized her mistake.

A young girl, about fourteen or fifteen, stood in front of the stove with her back to Lisha. She was laying strips of bacon on a slice of bread with cheese that made Lisha's stomach ache so bad she worried she'd throw up acid.

Her movement must have alerted the girl as she suddenly whipped around in shock, her eyes shining wide in surprise...and maybe...terror? Lisha raised her hands slowly and tried to form the words to calm down the obviously innocent younger kid, when suddenly the girl scrambled back against the counter in an apparent frenzy to find a weapon. It was a kitchen; it wouldn't take her very long.

Lisha scanned like a maniac and finally caught sight of a side door that led to the outside world. The girl was still looking for weapon, so the sax player took that as her cue to leave. The grilled cheese sandwich girl whipped back around and let out a rather inhumane sounding shriek. Lisha's legs suddenly had all the energy in the world as she caught the flash of a large kitchen knife out of the corner of her eyes.

Gods help me...

The locks fumbled under her fingers, and for a moment, it refused to open, but the anticipated slashes of cold metal somehow willed the door into understanding. It slammed open not a second too soon, and Lisha bolted, throwing the door back at the crazy girl with the knife.

It wasn't until her lungs were raw for air and the toes on her feet were bleeding, did Lisha realize that she was barreling like a mad stag through an endless plot of forbidden forest.

And that she had no idea where she was.

Why did it have to be forest?

A/N

*singing* what do you want from meeeee. Like? Yes? No? Why? Y'all need to learn how to answer compound questions for school and stuff.

I was hungry.... Sorry....

You know I had to bring Percy Jackson into this somehow.

#SnikySnake

Oh yah...and it's snowing! Yay!