Dipper's chest was heavy. It was cold below him. It was cold all around, but against his shoulders and the backs of his knees, definitely. His breath was shallow when he shifted (bones popping into place like set concrete) on his side- eyes shut- to drag naked skin against metal flooring.

Naked?

He pried his eyes open, resistant against the debris glued to his lashes. Dark, like the bottomless pit, and twice as infinite. A terrible pounding in his head wielded the full-force of a carousel; merely tilting his skull side-to-side came with it a nausea so intense, it knocked the breath out of him. Vines pierced through his system, digging into his core and forcing a violent convulsion throughout the body. Dipper stilled quickly, taking deep, ragged breaths that both soothed and wrecked him; bare knuckles clenched between his teeth until the nausea subsided into a passive warning.

The pain was like a tightly clamped fist, slowly unclenching itself to free coursing blood. An expansive kind of ache. Much like the throbbing of a hangover, though it lacked the bitter after-taste of hops and yeast, made more obvious by a dry, desert-like coarseness in his throat; he was amazingly thirsty.

Dipper groaned, urging himself on all fours. Chills shot through his spine. He lifted his head; the heels of Atlas digging into hard, firm soil, straining for rest. In his position came the odd dip of his stomach and once again, his sides convulsed. The boy lurched. He let out a pained, guttural noise like being stabbed, curling on his elbows before swallowing down bile.

A pulse through his ears, and then voices.

"...A dog, an elephant, a ferret, a gorilla, and-."

His throat clenched. He hissed when trying to swallow resulted in a rug burn-sting, rather than alleviation. Dipper's arms jittered beneath him, making him huff at his straining muscles. He felt remarkably weak; weak as the time he found himself trapped between planes of existence, and nearly scattered his soul amongst the cosmos by mistake.

This was only thirst, he reminded himself, despite his skin tingling on high-alert.

"...A bear, a chameleon, a dog, an elephant-."

His eyes strained against darkness, searching for some kind of podium to help him up. Dipper reached out and felt cool, curved metal against his fingertips. His hands wrapped easily around the slim, solid bar, and he was grateful for it, though- while fighting to stand- couldn't help but wonder why it was there.

He got as far as uncurling his torso before knocking his head upside the roof of his cage.

"Ow!" Dipper yelped, tightening around himself; his hand shot up to ward away the high bump of his skull. Sure enough, a slight knot was already beginning to form.

There was a hush, the shuffling of shins, flesh thumping metal. Dipper went still. He seated himself back on his haunches despite the tweak of his back muscles begging him to lay, as well as a sudden lightening strike of pain, pinching at his... Nether Regions.

One voice whispered to the other. The other whispered back. Dipper was hesitant to say anything at all. In a room he couldn't recall entering, with two tones he'd never heard, wearing nothing. He rode his arms out, his only source of information, shocked to find not only a roof, but four sets of bars and a floor closing him in. Enough to lie down flat, and high enough to stretch his legs if he really needed to. Like a large kennel. A giant kennel, but certainly not for humans.

His hands, quietly as he could, smeared the outer and inner walls of his cage, but he couldn't locate a lock, if there even was a lock. Dipper's fingers trembled. He returned them around the bar, feeling less and less grateful for its presence, and thickness, and just how hard he could pull without it so much as creaking under the force. He sucked in a breath- yanked. It was solid; tilted his bones before he so much as made a dent. He shifted, pulling at another one. And, another. Another, and another, and another, until he was only checking over the same few.

"Hey. New guy. " Called a young, male voice. Dipper jumped, inadvertently banging his elbow against one of the bars. He bit back a hiss, heart in his throat, skin like goose-flesh, hoping to god he hadn't just given his position away in all that darkness. Far as he knew, being unseen and conscious of the other's presence only gave him the upper hand.

"Don't scare him." Reprimanded another. Male again, and perhaps an ounce younger, by ways of his prepubescent voice.

"He's already scared." A pause. Dipper curled in on himself with a hiss; they'd already caught onto him. "You're not gonna find a key if that's what you're looking for."

"W-h-t?" Dipper rode a hand up, clutching his throat worriedly at the croak he let out. Lapping his lips, which were chipped dry and tugging at skin like a cat's tongue. How long had he been out? His pulse accelerated at the possibilities, made worse when that young, second voice chimed in.

"See? He's confused." He said, to which the other grunted.

"H-... H-ey!" Dipper tried, communicating more as torn fabric or wrecked vinyl than any kind of voice. He sounded wild and unreal.

"Whoa, calm down guy. We're right here." Dipper's hands were suddenly scrambling about, wading aimlessly through darkness in search of a lock; some kind of puzzle. He was good at puzzles. Grunkle Stan taught him how to pick-lock car doors, and master locks, and safes; he needed practice, but the basics were all down.

Frustration overcame him, finding the creased line of a hatch- to feel the weight of bolts holding it in place- but no lock.

"Wh-r-... W-he-re-?" His throat burned, and his hands shook. It was dark.

"I can't understand you." The first explained. "Follow my voice; there's a thing of water in front of your cage."

Dipper didn't move. Or say anything, for that matter.

They were kids, surely. Somewhere around his age; a little older. A little younger. But, what did it matter? They spoke like people outside of cages. They spoke like simple, friendly boys. In his circumstance, that might not be such a good thing.

Dipper was only a mesh of vague lights. Green pastures, turned to sky-lines, turned to ocean shores. There were only so many memories. Dipper smelled, that was for sure. Like sweat. Sweat, and blood, and this one cheap brand of body-spray he only ever wore once. That'd been years back. He felt crusted mud under his nails; in the crease of his knees. He smacked his lips, and tasted the gross smolder of tobacco; Dipper once snuck a shot of Grunkle Stan's beer can while he wasn't watching. He knew what snuff was.

"He's scared."

"I know. I know." Dipper pulled from the voices, easing himself into one of the far corners. "Are your eyes adjusted? Can you see anything?" He bit his tongue; there was a rise of bruising against his hip, the innermost of his thigh, and either wrist. A copper taste to his tongue. A flash of memory bubbled up, instantly battled away; large, overcast fingertips with the width of pennies. He buried the image under questions that kept him in the present, out of hypothetical fever-dreams.

"Hello?" Called the voice.

Dipper remained silent, trying to calm the rapid thrust of his breathing.

In the nose.

Out the mouth.

"He stopped talking." The other remarked plainly, almost disappointedly.

"Yes. Thank you, Darwin." Dipper tried rewinding his memory, but every thought either trailed into an empty corner, or some dark, winding staircase he couldn't bear peering down. "Hey. Guy? You still with me?" The voice whispered softly, which only grated on Dipper's nerves. Where else was he expected to be? He eased off his knees, leaning on his palms.

"Okay. I'm gonna need you to listen carefully. It's really simple: Not even a few inches away, there's a small zip-lock bag of water, just for you. I'm sure your parents told you not to drink mysterious bags of liquid in someone else's cellar, and they're totally right, but this is the exception, okay?"

Dipper's throat clicked with a swallow. The pain was like ripping nails through flesh when the sides of his esophagus rubbed against each other, dry as sandpaper. There was silence again. Dipper sat; a deer in headlights.

Never before had he thought so plainly, he was dying of thirst. The temptation was strong- the voice prodding him on, young like his, and unparched. He resisted it, though his tongue once again dragged across his lips.

The voice went on, softer than before.

"You're probably really thirsty right about now; I was too, when I first woke up here."

It caught Dipper's attention, his ears perking at the statement. An elusive "I'm like you. I'm caged" hidden between his words. It required trust. Trust Dipper wasn't yet ready to relinquish, though he rationed, whatever reason they might have for gaining it, would therefore require giving real, nourishing water.

Dipper pulled in his lower lip, stalking along his cage's floor in tight, hesitant motions until he was angled in the direction of which the voice rang out. He paused only a moment before darting his arm through the bars, sweeping his palm frantically. His fingers brushed across what felt like plastic, and before he could second-guess himself, yanked it back with him.

Sure enough, water packaged in a sandwich bag. He dug his teeth into a corner and drank from it. It wasn't enough. Not even close, but his throat felt less like leather, making him sigh roughly.

"Good, right?" The voice went, a smile in his tone. Dipper coughed once the bag was empty, tossing it through his bars.

"Where am I?" The clear crack of his voice caused the other two to jolt, made apparent by a low thump of flesh to metal.

"Whoa. Alright, slow your roll. I'm Kaleb. That's Darwin over there." The first voice, known as Kaleb, introduced himself. Through darkness, he gestured ahead at the boy opposite him, though Dipper couldn't yet make out more than a slight glint of separate cages. "If you're looking for specifics, I couldn't tell you. My guess? About a thousand miles from wherever you were last seen."

"What-? What is this place? Why am I here?" Dipper sputtered, double-taking through darkness. He clutched onto the bars at the rampant rise in his chest; obviously, he wasn't home, but to think he was so far away made his head spin. It was a long ways from Gravity Falls for the boy without so much as a bicycle.

"Hey, hey. Don't panic." Kaleb soothed, noting the stammer in Dipper's voice. "What do you remember?"

Dipper combed a hand through his hair, trying to ease his trembling. "I don't know. I don't know. It was Saturday. I was hanging with my sister."

He remembered bits and pieces. He did. He remembered walking home. It rained. He was cold. He remembered headlights, and rinsing his hands in the sink, and ordering a cheeseburger. He remembered- things. Things that weren't real. Things he could make not-real, but felt so real that parts of his body ached with the sensation. Dipper's throat grew tight.

He never made it back.

"We were celebrating with a friend. It-. It gets foggy, I don't know."

"Do you remember anyone approaching you?"

Dipper crumbled. "No."

"Do you remember-?"

"I don't kn-ow." He strained, cracking over what he hoped weren't tears. This wasn't the worst thing to ever happen to him. It wasn't. Naked and in a cage, far away from home, was hardly the tip of the ice-burg for a guy who'd been abducted by aliens lord knows how many times. But, something in his gut told him this was different. This non-supernatural, abrupt kidnapping was going to take him away, and it was going to disfigure him. He already felt unrecognizable in his skin.

"Does it still hurt? You know... Down there?" Darwin piped up suddenly. When he blurted it out, Dipper went silent.

He remembered things.

So many things.

"It's okay if you don't remember. You're still loopy from the pills." Kaleb assured, shifting from where he'd been lounging on his back, onto his side, like a lion in the sub-Saharan. Silence faded in and out.

"What do they want?" Dipper asked lowly, clutching and unclutching his fists.

"It'll come back to you." Kaleb waved quickly. "Hey, there should be an apple to your left-."

"What do they want?" He persisted, and this time, Kaleb was the one to fall silent. He tugged in a shaky breath before peering at Dipper through darkness; an outline of subtle, shaded features, lined in white.

"Don't make me say it." He replied, beaten and slow. A shock rode up Dipper's back, cutting through his windpipes. The pain was a solid, permanent room inside him, where there wasn't nearly enough space to expand his chest in level breaths. Heat seared in the ankles. His bones eased their way out of skin, making him limp and formless; nothing but jelly-muscles and a topsy-turvy gut. He choked on a laugh, mindlessly knocking his forehead against a set of bars, letting his neck rest.

"Shit ..." He shook, remembering only a portion. His skin was hot as a frying pan where those bruises lay. Dipper could smell the man on him. A hand went to his throat, then his chest, the innermost of his thigh, and his hip. His lips went hard, eyes trained on empty space.

Kaleb grabbed his attention. "First time in a cage?" he asked in a hesitant, light voice. Dipper's gaze, glazed over, flickered at the tone.

"...no." He mouthed weakly.

"No? Oh, wow. Okay." Kaleb whistled. "What were you? A side-show?"

"I just-. Got into trouble." Dipper blinked twice, scrunching his features. In the nose. Out the mouth. He lifted his head slowly, trying to pull himself together. "Like this, I guess."

"So, you're a delinquent? That's cool."

"Not that kind of trouble." Dipper started, only to stop himself. He needed to concentrate. "It doesn't matter." He assured, leaning back on his feet. He rose as far as he could, until his back came in contact with cool metal, at which he clung to the bars overhead and pushed up. It didn't budge. Not that he expected it to. He was only looking for weak points.

Dipper sat back down, and with clumsy, sweaty hands, knocked each of every bar, hoping to discern some kind of difference amongst frequencies. High, abrasive "twings'' rang throughout the room like waves on a still pond.

Kaleb hissed, shushing Dipper. "Hey; quiet! If there's one thing 8-Ball hates, it's noise." There was a grumble; a low "You're not the first kid in that cage." Dipper stilled. Kaleb went on. "Darwin?" He called out.

"8-Ball's still snoring." Darwin assured after a beat of silence. Though Dipper couldn't see either of the boys, Kaleb caught his expression of confusion. He shrugged, gesturing once more at Darwin.

"Darwin has enhanced hearing. He can't see too well." Kaleb explained. Darwin let out a snort.

"He's being polite; I'm blind." The boy added. "Probably how they got me so easily."

"We all got got, somehow." Kaleb shifted again, this time onto his stomach, head cradled in his palms. "I was running away from home. What about you, guy?"

Dipper's lips twitched at the question, invasive and flippant. They talked like he was only a new-comer. They talked like it was routine.

"...I was trying to get back." He eased into the statement, words mournful and pliant. Slack in his throat. Dipper's eyes stung with salt, and when he blinked, it only flushed his cheeks. Mabel was probably worried sick, wondering where he'd run off to. Earth was miles and miles of roads on highways in towns in cities in states in countries on continents. No two were alike. The thought petrified him in the same light one might realize they left the stove on.

A small, flickering flame that could so easily engulf a home. He didn't doubt people were searching for him. He didn't doubt they were losing sleep.

"God. They're probably freaking out." Dipper's spirits sank at the thought, and how it might worry Ford, who had a history of heart-failure, and Stan, who wasn't rightfully in touch with his emotions, and his sister, who had only ever been half of his whole, and vice-versa. To think he was someplace unreachable made him stir like an uncovered corpse, laden in murder and conspiracy, though lacking a voice to say so.

"It's gonna be okay." Darwin assured. Dipper sucked in a breath.

"How long have you two been here?"

"Time flies. It's hard to tell in all this darkness." Kaleb sat back up, hunched into a criss-cross position, hands folded in his lap. When he cleared his throat, it was full of hesitation. "Darwin hears fireworks sometimes; we don't really keep track of how often."

"You two've... never left." Dipper gaped at the thought. He couldn't imagine a life without wide pastures, or hot Cali sun, or the expanse of a lake. To think they'd gone so long without it, and seemed almost compliant to their circumstances made him antsy. His cage was amazingly large for an animal; amazingly small for a human.

There was a sudden shift in mood. Kaleb picked his nails, rolling his other hand across the floor, not saying a word. No matter how Dipper lay, the base of his cage felt abrasive under his palms, knees and rear growing sore. He paid mind to the subtle creaking of his prison, though found the bars equally distributed weight. When Kaleb spoke again, it was with the added unease of a cough.

"Do you know how to play "Zoo?" It's a memory game." The boy explained. His voice was hopeful and pitchy, to which Dipper only starred in his direction, clenched-jaw. "It's easy to learn-."

"Has anyone ever escaped?" Dipper pressed. There was a stammer, then a drop. Kaleb said nothing.

Darwin eased up, leaning against the barrier of his cage.

"Ethan... got pretty far. Made a break for it while a man was..." He trailed off in a hesitant, small voice. Dipper's tilted head rose to the admission. He clung closely to the bars, drumming his fingers on the cool metal, made hyper-aware of slight motions in the dark. He thought he could make out the silhouette of a thin boy. "The basement door was unlocked, and so was the front. From what I could hear, he made it outside."

"Then, what happened?" Dipper persisted eagerly. His skin rang with it.

"Asthma attack." Kaleb supplied after a moment of pause. He sighed. "He freaked out; it triggered. 8-Ball was on him, and-." A sharp intake; the riding of hands. "You don't get second-chances here. If he even thinks you're trying to break out, it's over."

"I don't have asthma." Dipper shot back. A beat of hope.

"8-Ball started locking all the doors, at least from what Darwin tells me."

"Three doors. Three locks. He double-checks the windows, too." Darwin confirmed with a nod.

In the contemplative berth of their silence, Dipper mulled over the severity of their words. He wasn't so naïve as to hope and wait for someone to find him, especially in his current predicament. It was all dark cages, whispers, and cheap body spray between his legs. There wasn't room for optimism. His family was already late to prevent what had become of his... virginity. It was only one nightmare, though. Dipper couldn't let himself grow pliant. He couldn't grow complacent.

"That's not gonna stop me..." Dipper spoke out, hands curled to fists. It was only one of many misadventures; stranded in space, dragged through the pits of hell, lost among the plains of Pohjola. He wasn't out of his element yet. "I'm not letting that happen again."

Kaleb let out a snort.

"I used to say that. I still say that."

"I mean it. I won't let them-." Dipper tore at his lips, easing a hand down his arm. In the nose. Out the mouth. "I've been in worse places."

It gave Kaleb turn, who'd only before entertained the boy and his eagerness to escape. Everyone always was, and always so certain they'd be the first to break free, and always so devastated to find their attempts fell flat. They were all pink-faced, pudgy-stomach, wide-eyes and the like, with romantic ideals on good prevailing, and final destinations, and whatever other flowery hope they clung to. It only ever dwindled away as time rolled on. Hope turned to dread. Love became resentment. Pudgy, baby fingers clung to bars and shriveled to bone, until they were no more desirable, and hauled to the backyard; they dug their own graves with shovels and cups.

Kaleb peered through darkness; outlines of white, shadows and naked limbs. Dipper was a limber shape, thin shoulders and nimble hands. He crept about his cage like a wild animal, with the intuitive curiosity of one six times his age. Every touch was intentional. His gaze shone through black, endless space, and there lie something he didn't see in many: Perseverance. The boy was terrified. The boy was intelligent.

It might not be enough.

"What's your name?" Kaleb asked. Dipper stared through darkness, searching for a face. He replied slowly, and with a questionable nick to his tone, which Kaleb laughed at. He thought "Dipper" was an eccentric name, and called him a liar for it. The bars before him were solid, even as Dipper persistently leaned ahead, forcing the full-weight of his torso against them. He felt an imprint press on his skin before slowly- tiredly- he drew his hands back.

The room was dark.