Portraying a character's "gut instinct"?

[Ireth]

I'm having a bit of trouble with a story/RP I'm working on. Casper, the protagonist, has been kidnapped, and his family and friends are trying to find him. Casper is being held in what was once a laboratory disguised as a ranger station in the Black Forest (the real one in Germany). Three years prior, Casper's son Jason was kidnapped by the lab/ranger station's previous inhabitants (scientists, of course) and experimented on before being rescued by his father, boyfriend and other friends. Currently the building is a base for a group of Nazis: Heinrich, their leader, wants revenge on Casper on behalf of his father, whom Casper's father had killed during WW2.

Now, Jason and his family have long since discovered that Casper has been kidnapped, but they have nothing but guesswork to lead them to the culprit. They are fairly sure of who did it and why, but they have no idea where Heinrich is keeping Casper. I want Jason to suspect that the old lab/ranger station is involved somehow, since he'd remember his own kidnapping and think it would make a good secret place for the Nazis to hide now that the scientists are gone. I just can't figure out how to portray his "gut instinct" as being believably correct. Help?

[The Din]

I'd say a dream sequence would suffice, as in a nightmare of his own imprisonment. It could come to him every night since the kidnapping, or he might dwell on it during the day/be reminded of it by every day objects, etc. You could make it more believable by having him find clues, (as in footprints in the forest or some item he remembered from the lab) which would convince him to believe his dreams.

[Ireth]

Nightmare sequences seems like a good option -- I could mix things up a bit and have memories of Jason's own imprisonment jumbled up with images of his father's captor, whom Jason and his family have been researching extensively in an attempt to find where he's keeping Casper. I don't think they'd be able to find any physical clues though; they've searched the spot where Casper was taken and found nothing, and searching the forest or the lab would be impossible. Jason and his family live in Nuremberg, a good three-hour drive away from the Black Forest. They're only going to actually go there when Jason finally gets fed up with sitting around and says they have to get out there and start actually looking for his father NOW, for multiple reasons.* As it is, Jason's gut instinct will be the only lead they have to Casper's location at all.

*Reason one: the police can't find anything either, and three weeks go by between the kidnapping and the escape/rescue which has yet to be written. Reason two: Casper was recently bitten by a werewolf, and he has until the next full moon before the curse is complete. He was kidnapped a week after the bite, leaving him with three weeks to spare before the next full moon and his first transformation. They need to free him before the full moon so they can hopefully cure him before he changes. The escape/rescue happens the night before the full moon, which means there's no time to cure him. And no, I don't want him to be cured at all.

[Penpilot]

One thing you can do is seed the idea of "Like father like son" earlier in the story. You have a pair of father/son sets so I don't think it would be a shoe horn. All you'd need is a couple of lines. With that set up all you have to do is get Jason to have the thought that Heinrich is just like his father. He walks like is father, he talks like his father, he thinks..... And I think that should get you where you want to be. Jason can now suspect the ranger station.

[Jon_Chong]

I second Penpilot's idea. Dreams scream too much of deus ex machina here. By giving a series of clues that lets the readers and Jason work it out, you're not only giving the reader some interactivity, you're also grounding it in something the readers can understand.

[Ireth]

@Penpilot: Your choice of words is rather confusing; I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. When you say "have Jason think that Heinrich is just like his father," do you mean "his father" to be Jason's father Casper, or Heinrich's father? I really hope it's the latter, since Casper and Heinrich are really nothing alike at ALL, physically or mentally. Though I'm not quite sure how to pull that off either, since neither Casper nor Jason ever knew Heinrich's father personally, and all they'd have is stories that Casper's father would have told about the war. I'm not even sure if Casper's father is still alive to ask.

@Jon: Good point, but I don't really have any "readers" per se. It's a private roleplay between a friend and me, and I doubt anyone actually reads it but us. There is interactivity, but it's just between the players, and we're plotting it out together anyway.

[Christopher Wright]

A thought I have:

At some point in Jason's capture I assume people were looking for him, and for a while did not find him because the place where he was hidden away either wasn't in the area people thought was best to look, or because it had properties that hid it away so well.

If a similar search is under way for Casper, with the same results (i.e. "we can't find him!") then that would surely strike a chord with Jason's own experience, leading to "well have you looked in the place where I was held three years ago?"

I think that would be a pretty natural assumption to make on his part. It would require, however, that other people be involved in the search, and based on your description it appears only the family knows.

[Ireth]

One of the main reasons Jason's rescue came so quickly was because he was able to get in contact with his family by phone and let them know exactly where he was after they'd tried and failed to find him for three days. He was able to do that with help from a fellow captive who distracted the scientists long enough for him to escape his cell, but it still proved very dangerous for both of them, as the scientists caught Jason in mid-phone call and dragged him away kicking and screaming, and the other captive was similarly subdued.

As for Casper's current state, he has no such luxury of being able to get to a phone, as the Nazis have him working himself to exhaustion 18 hours every day under close supervision, and he spends the remaining 6 hours asleep. Jason has suggested to his family that maybe Casper was taken by the same scientists who took Jason, which would lead them to exactly the right place, but that idea was shot down since the scientists in question have disbanded long since.

[Christopher Wright]

That gives you an in! If his suggestion was shot down, have him be ornery and disgruntled that it was dismissed so quickly, and that no one is considering it at all. That way it's not just instinct that's driving him. It's a possibility that's being ignored, so even if he's not absolutely sure he might want to check it out so he can feel comfort that it's not being overlooked. Or he could do it out of defiance and anger towards the people who wouldn't even consider it.

[Ireth]

That's very true. I still need an excuse for him not to speak up about it sooner -- at this point it's been about a week since Casper was kidnapped. I don't want the rescue to happen for another two weeks yet, so he can't get too disgruntled yet or else my whole plot is blown. But I need to at least establish that that's Jason's mindset, and have the idea nibble and gnaw away at him until he finally gets fed up and explodes. THAT is my main trouble.