Alexander woke up with a pounding headache lying on the floor in a concrete room that he didn't recognize.
His first thought was that he finally got arrested for something, then he remembered that he paid an unexpected visit to the King of Narcissism. He realized that he was officially a kidnap victim.
"Fun," he muttered to himself as he sat up. The room spinning so he used the wall for balance when he stood. "Hey! Can anyone hear me?!"
"Keep your voice down! Are you trying to get yourself killed?" someone hissed from the other side of the wall. It took him a second, but Alex recognized the voice.
"Samuel?"
"Yeah, now shut up before they come back. If they see you awake, you might as well sign your death warrant, Alexander."
Sam sounded way colder than when they last talked, but that just made whatever happened there even scarier than it already was. He decided not to say anything about it.
"How long have I been here?" Alex asked quietly.
"I don't know, I don't have any windows other than those bars right there." Alexander noticed a square cut from the wall connecting the two cells. "I think that's part of their torture thing. . ."
"Torture?!"
"Not real torture, like mental torture. They're just insane. Except for Maria and John, we can trust them."
"John. John who." Hamilton remembered seeing his friend shrinking into the same couch that he'd sat on when he got too far into this. The feelings of anger and betrayal were beyond undeniable.
"Andre, I think? I-I don't actually remember too well."
Alex sighed. So Laurens wasn't a part of the group that he could trust. He wished he would have known that before he got trapped down here. Without thinking, he got up and started yelling.
"LAURENS!" he screamed. "If you can hear me I need you to come to wherever-here-is! Now!"
"Shut up! What the hell are you doing?!"
"Getting John's attention. He wouldn't do this without being blackmailed somehow, I'm going to help him out."
"We can't trust him!"
"And we trust Maria Lewis? How do you figure that, Samuel?"
Sam sighed. "Before you got down here they would bring me and the girl that was in your cell food and they'd talk to us--"
"Wait, someone else was in here?" Alex looked around the room and felt uneasiness rise in his chest. Someone else was staying in the same cell before he got taken and now she was gone. "What happened to her?"
Sam stayed quiet.
Hamilton's blood ran cold and the panic finally started setting in. Before he had a chance to start screaming again, he heard a metallic creaking and saw his door opening. He darted toward it, only to be tripped by the chain that was attaching him to the farthest wall. He fell flat on his face. The visitor helped him up.
In one last burst of panic, Hamilton ditched the game plan.
"What the hell!"
"Okay, Alex, I know you're mad--"
"I am chained. To a wall!" Hamilton motioned to the chain for emphasis. "And you want to say that I'm mad? Where even am I?"
"I can't tell you that, Ham."
"Oh no, you don't get to use that. You had something to do with the kidna-- you had something to do with the kidnappings. . ." Realization slowly fell onto him like someone cutting a rope that's holding a piano up with safety scissors.
"John. I need you to be honest right now. How did King know about Peter?"
"W-What do you mean?"
"Adams and Reynolds knew Peter's nickname for me, they knew when I found him, they knew how I found him. . . I only ever told you and Thomas that. So, I repeat, how. Did. They. Know."
Alex forgot that Samuel was even there until there was a quiet shuffling and a soft 'oh no' from the other side of the wall. John shifted uncomfortably and stayed quiet for a second. Alexander repeated the question again.
". . . I told them."
Hamilton felt like a pot of water that was being transferred from a freezer to a flame and back to the freezer. The anger that was keeping him fuming ran cold with absolute emptiness.
"You told them." Alex went over and sat on the sad excuse of a bed and ran a hand through his hair and over his face. "I trusted you with that. And you told an illegal job ring that apparently kidnaps people." He laughed the most humorless laugh possible. "Why?"
John only sighed went over and sat down next to Alex, who got up and moved away from him. He said nothing but the look he was going for was "what the actual hell is wrong with you", because when your best friend tells your worst enemies about something that could be used to ultimately destroy every sane part of your mind and render you completely helpless to anything they want, on top of helping them kidnap you and just completely destroy any respect and trust that you may have had for them, what more are you supposed to do?
"Come on, you have to listen to me, okay, I have a reason--"
"Oh great! A reason! Y'hear that, Sam, he has a reason!"
"Leave me out of it."
"Please, Laurens, tell me what was going through your mind when you decided you were going to help King and his cronies lock me in a cell, underground, with no intentions of letting me go alive. You didn't think of that, did you? That they're going to kill me."
John stayed quiet again for a few seconds. "I just. . . Maria told me what you did to Eliza Schuyler and she said we could just scare you a little. And I wanted to get you back, I guess? It wasn't supposed to go this far, Alex, I swear."
"Get me back for what?"
". . . Jefferson." John focused on picking at his nails. "I wanted to get back at you for dating Jefferson."
The pot was back on the flame. "How many times did I ask you if you were okay with that?! How many times did you tell me that it was fine!? I told you that if you weren't okay with it, then I wouldn't do anything about and you told me, and I quote, 'you should act on it if you want. If it makes you happy.' What happened to that, huh?"
"Alex, please, if you'd just let me explain!"
Hamilton sat down on the floor immediately. He kept the look on, hopefully telling John that he had one shot at the right explanation.
"Thank you," John took a breath like he was going to say something else, but Alexander assumed that he had nothing other than him being jealous of Thomas. Or maybe jealous of Hamilton himself.
Hell, for all Alex knew, John just wanted back with Jefferson.
"Get out," Hamilton growled.
"Alex. . ."
"Out."
He felt stupid asking his best friend to leave an apparent jail cell, but that's all he had at this point.
A cell that he was probably going to have to get used to being in, and anxious cell-neighbor, a bed that was probably made of wood, and that was it.
He didn't even have his best friend anymore because John was part of the reason he was in the cell to begin with.
The creaky door slammed closed as John left and immediately, Alex slid down on one of the walls. He leaned his head against once he was sitting on the floor and he took as big a breath as possibly could. Maybe to keep from crying or maybe to just take in the fact that he'd actually been kidnapped.
Maybe both, he wasn't too sure.
"Hey, Alexander?" Sam asked quietly.
"What?"
"Are you okay?"
"Ask me again when I bust us out of here."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I'm going to get us out of here as soon as I get the chance. I'm gonna go back to Jefferson, you'll go back to Lee, and that'll be it. These assclowns will be in jail."
". . .How?"
"How?"
"How are you going to get us out?"
Sam sounded like he was back to being the nervous scrawny kid that was hanging off Lee's arm. Hamilton almost smiled as he made up a story on the spot about how they were going to make it out and get back to their respective boyfriends.