***AUTHORS NOTE***

THIS CHAPTER WILL CONTAIN GOREY DETAILS!! IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH BLOODY SCENES PLEASE SKIP AHEAD.

***END AUTHORS NOTE***

I had passed out after the second needle, which was a major blessing. However, when I woke up, my whole fucking body hurt. Any movement made me feel like my bones were going to crack in half. 

I was on the cold tile floor of another white furnitureless room and I was still naked. Fuckers didn't even give me the decency of leaving the sheet. My skin prickled from the exposure to the overpowered AC and I cried out in pain as I forced myself up into a fetal position. My arms felt like they weighed a billion pounds as I wrapped them around my knees.

There was only a door as an entry since there were no windows. A cell. I was in a cell. An empty cell without so much as a chair to sit on.

I hated that the first thing I did when I woke up back in this nightmare was cry again. You'd think that I'd run out of tears by now, but nope, the traitorous little fuckers seemingly had an endless supply. In my defense though, I was pissed off and when I'm pissed off I cry. Stupid fucking reaction if you ask me. 

Oh? You're angry? Yeah? What are you going to do about it? Are you going to do something to better your situation? Naw. We'll just cry. That'll fix the problem!

Stupid. Fucking. Reaction. 

It felt like forever as I sat there in the small room, if you could even call it a room. Probably more of a closet really. Albeit the cleanest fucking closet I've ever seen. I knew I'd loathe artificially bright places like this if I ever got out of here. I hated them before, but now that I was shivering so bad my body ached on top of aches in a tiny room after I just experienced the worst pain in my life...well, you get the idea.

The door suddenly opened and it took everything I had not to shrink back at the man who brought me here. He was still wearing his fancy uniform from the last time. His smug face and stature was to intimidate anyone around him that he had all the power. Though he wasn't a physically imposing person, the air of surety he carried was suffocating. 

"Well, well, well, Miss Reyes. It seems you have some explaining to do." He took one step into the room, eating up what little space I had between us. Another man came in behind him but simply seemed content to stare at the wall like a mindless zombie. 

"Yeah?" I asked as my teeth chattered. It's hard to sound cocky when you're naked and in a ball shivering to death, but I tried.

"That isn't some medicine your boyfriend gave you. Oh, can we still use the term 'boyfriend' for an alien species?" He turned to look back at the man behind him who didn't so much as blink, much less have a soul. "Whatever." He turned back to me.

I think he was waiting for me to just spill my guts after what I had just been through. Beg him to let me go and I'd tell him anything he wanted to know. I didn't think so. If they were willing to do this kind of stuff to me when I was a fellow human being, I would not help them get their hands on Xai'an. I would spare anyone that fate because I'd never be able to live with myself otherwise.

"Nothing you want to add?" He smirked down at me with an arched brow. 

I nodded slowly. "Yeah...how about you go fuck yourself?"

He threw back his head and laughed loud enough to echo off the walls. I was so not expecting that response. Had I not been so caught off guard I would have had time to prepare for the massive boot that crushed into my shoulder. Pain exploded and I screamed out in pain. He had aimed for where the needle went in and he did it on purpose. 

He stomped on me again while the man behind him didn't move a muscle. When he stepped back he was out of breath and my dumb ass laughed.

"Sound a bit winded there. Getting a bit too old for this line of work, eh, fat ass?" My laugh was cut off by another scream of pain when he aimed for my leg. I was internally screaming at myself for being so fucking stupid, but on the other hand...if I was going to die down here, I would not do it groveling. If Xai'an could treat me with decency and restraint being an alien species, then by God, I'd stay loyal to him over these so called human beings.

"Tell me what he did! What did he put in you? If you tell me, this will all just go away like a bad dream." He knelt down now, balancing on the balls of his feet. "Was it just because he fucked you? Hm?"

My whole body was screaming in pain and I could do nothing to control the shaking that only made it worse. I didn't understand why it was so important to them to know how it was delivered, but I wasn't going to enlighten them. If they were this desperate to ask me then they likely have been doing their own experiments and failing miserably. 

"Fuck...you." I wheezed out.

His eyes narrowed before he motioned to the man behind him. He moved out of the room, shutting the door softly behind him with a click. 

"You will tell me, Miss Reyes. Because I have something that will change your mind. And there are always more to collect." He stood up and reached for the gun on his hip that I had missed. Pain will do that to you.

When the door opened again, the man from before shoved in Danny. He had been restrained with his arms cuffed behind his back. Chains circled his legs and I could see his face was a mush of meat. They had beaten him severely to the point he couldn't even open one eye, but even with the abuse, I recognized him instantly.

"Danny-!" I rushed to hug him, but my prison ward lifted his gun, aimed and pulled the trigger. I screamed as I watched my friend's brains explode out the back of his head in meaty chunks. He fell to the ground with a massive hole between his eyes. Blood immediately began to pool under him.

I think I might have been saying something but I couldn’t hear anything after the gun going off nearly ruptured my ears. I watched helplessly as the second man pulled out his body as quickly as he pushed him in, leaving a meaty, bloody trail.

Time seemed to freeze for me then. I knew I was in shock but I just couldn't seem to process what I had just seen. He couldn't be dead. He just couldn't be. Not Danny...

Danny hadn't done anything to warrant this execution. And that's what it was. They had executed him. Point blank. Danny was a great person. A good soldier. The kind of person you could always rely on. He had a family that he had to take care of...Oh god...family that would miss him and depended on him. What would they even think now that he was dead? What would they do?

My grief turned to the emotion I was most familiar with then. Anger. But this was more. Darker. Almost an evil feeling. I was so angry...so fucking angry! How could they do this? How could they kill an innocent man who even served for our fucking country! The disgust I felt for this man had me suddenly dry heaving, but I couldn't hear it. I was still deaf. 

Hands whirled me around and I came face to face with my torturer. He was yelling something in my face, but I couldn't hear him. I didn't want to hear a damn fucking word he had to say anyway. I screamed. I know I did. My throat was raw from it.

The look on his face was priceless when I slammed my palm up his nose and I tackled him. I fought like a mad woman for me, for Danny, for whoever else they may have here, and for Xai'an. I knew my fists clocked his face more than once before he managed to hold up his arms to prevent me from doing further damage. The rage I felt greatly reduced the pain I knew that I should be feeling, but it also made my movements clumsy. I knew I had hurt him badly before the other guard managed to pistol whip me. Though I couldn't feel the pain, it did make my vision blur while he dragged me off of him.

By now I was able to hear a few muffled words as my hearing started to come back to me. "...little bitch! I'll fucking kill her before it's all through!"

It was a dull satisfaction to see his blood splattered on top of Danny's after they locked me in by myself again. I still had to look at the spot where he took his last breath. It had happened so fast I hadn't even been able to process how wide Danny's eyes grew. He had been scared and he knew he was going to die. He died because they want what I know.

For the first time I debated betraying Xai'an. The fear and grief induced side of my brain says that this will all be over if I just tell them what they want to know. But I pushed that idea aside. The asshole said it himself. They were going to kill me when I told them. I owed it to Danny to keep my fucking mouth shut. I would not let him die in vain. I would not feel bad about openly weeping this time though. I let out another raging scream so loud my throat felt raw from it. Danny deserved to be openly mourned. 

A flashing suddenly caught my attention. I turned to see a red light flashing under the door and not a moment later an alarm started going off. A stampede of feet ran past shouting something about a hostile. They sounded a bit further away though. Almost as if a room were between us.

I had to crawl using one arm to the door, because I'm pretty sure that bastard broke my other. I was careful not to drag myself into the blood and other things on the floor and leaned down to listen as best as I could. 

"What do you mean you lost contact with the first floor? Pull up the camera feeds!"

I heard the tapping of keys. That puzzled me. Surely they didn't have a computer in the hallway...did they? Or was I honest to fucking god in a mother fucking closet?

"Negative. Feeds have been taken out." Another voice said.

"Fuck! Well send a small-" the first voice said. I was 90% sure it was my prison ward and torturer. It pleased me to hear the panic in his voice.

"Sir, there's word from the second level stating it's a Predator. Seven feet tall, roughly 300lbs." The second said, his own voice sounded a bit shaky.

That couldn’t be Xai'an. He was easily over 8 feet tall. If I had to put an exact number on it I'd say 8'6. So what was a Predator doing here? Was it one of his brothers? 

Hope swelled in me and I couldn't stop it. Maybe he could tell Xai'an where I was? Would he even bother?

"Shit! Let's go! We can't let this one escape!" 

I heard a retreat of footsteps until it was just nothing but the alarms going off. When I felt I was safe, I tried the door knob. Locked. Damn it!

I slid back down with all the selfish hope in the world that Xai'an was here. I knew it risked his own safety, because if they got their hands on him or his brother, these fuckers would do terrible things to them. 

I closed my eyes and prayed again to a deity I didn't entirely believe in. Please, let me live through this. Please let Xai'an be okay. Please let anyone who's been imprisoned here get out safely and PLEASE for all things holy...let these assholes die a slow and painful death.