A/N: Hey, guys, this is a new story that I recently started and I hope you'll like. Basically, Elena is a student at Whitmore, just a regular girl by day and a vampire torturer by night. She helps her father, who is a part of the Augustine society and her hatred for all vampires is what fuels her desire to torture them. That is until Stefan gets captured and changes things. I would very much appreciate your reviews since I don't know if I should continue.

Elena's POV

I feel someone shaking my shoulder in not-so-gentle manner and I tuck my blanket even closer to my chin. I don't even know what time it is, but I'm sure it's way past midnight and the only reason someone was trying to wake me right now, was probably because my father needed my help.

I refused to get up and deal with another one of his vampires, that he has probably just captured and is most definitely fascinated by them, just because I wanted to sleep. Medical school was not an easy thing to go through and with all the extra work at the secret Augustine society where we experimented on vampires and practically tortured them, I was lacking sleep and energy. I needed a weekend to myself, in order not to party, but to study for the upcoming exams, and yet my father with his sweet stubbornness and passion to explore refused to give it to me.

"Elena, come on, please!" I hear Matt's gentle voice from behind me and I'm pretty sure that if he's here, then Caroline my roommate is already up and taking a shower in the bathroom, ready to join me downstairs where the cells were.

"No….way" I just mumbled and covered my head with the pillow, though even that didn't prevent me from hearing Matt sigh annoyed with my behavior "I'm not getting up."

"You have to" he said seriously.

Matt was always so uptight, that guy was born to be a cop or a soldier or something of the sort. He's the most disciplined person I've ever met and he quite frankly annoys me in times like this, even though he is one of my oldest childhood friends

"Your father had an urgent business back in Mystic Falls and the guys brought a new vampire, we have to take care of him." he explains and I roll my eyes, though still refusing to open them.

By "the guys" Matt means the hunters. The Augustine society had their own little hunter's army, who traveled in the area and the nearest states and hunt vampires, who they later brought here unless something went wrong on their way back and they had to kill them.

My father liked to examine vampires who are not just simple creatures of the night-he liked the strange cases of those who kill mercilessly or are different in another way and his colleague , doctor Whitmore often praised him for his work.

I liked helping my father with that. It was interesting to examine the vampires, to observe them, but he would rarely let me torture them myself-he said it's too early for that, even though I was a second year in Medschool and have participated in different kinds of surgeries already.

What was so different about a vampire? Their heart isn't even beating, they are animals, monsters, they have lost their souls the moment they turned, so I couldn't get why my father wouldn't let me at least try. He allowed me to watch sometimes and I admit, after that, I couldn't get rid of the sound of their screams for days, but I tried hard to ignore it-vampires were a threat to our world, yet they could also help us develop a cure for deathly diseases and that is what I wanted to succeed in one day.

For it to happen, however, I need to lift my ass up.

I hear someone open the bathroom door and Caroline's cheerful voice fills the room.

"I can't get her up" Matt protests and Caroline sighs annoyed

"Clear the way, I'll deal with her" she announces and I squeeze my eyes shut, knowing well enough that she's the only one who can get me up and succeed in waking me "Elena, get your ass up before your dad has come back and figured we haven't managed to deal with one single vampire and make sure he doesn't cause any problems during his first night!" she scolds as she puts the blanket off of me and I finally turn around with a very sad expression on "Oh, no, don't give me that shit! Get up!"

"Coffee?" I mumble with a hoarse voice and she smiles at me

"I already made some, so move your skinny butt and let's get down to the cells. Matt, I'm sure you wouldn't mind giving her some space in order to change?" she turns to our best friend who blushes and I notice it even in the cold dark room. He makes his way out and promises that he'll wait outside while Care helps me get up and tosses clothes in my direction. "You seriously need to get your shit together, Elena."

"Me? Why are those stupid hunters bringing a vampire back in the middle of the night? Can't they keep him in the van till morning?"

"You know that's dangerous. They can escape and kill half the people who are peacefully sleeping in the dorms and I'm sure you don't want that" she points out and I sigh annoyed as I put on my jeans and the shirt she gave me, which I wasn't even sure is mine, but I trusted Care. I haven't exactly been myself lately. I actually haven't been myself since my mother passed away a year ago, but I was strongly trying to neglect the fact that this was the reason why I had no motivation to do anything anymore.

When I'm finally ready, I glance at the clock-it's half past three and they must've woken me ten minutes earlier, for which I hate them, but I don't even have time to think about any of it as Caroline drags me down the stairs while Matt walks long before us in order to open the locked doors.

My father trusted him with those things, he was something like a guard and he helped a lot when the vampires had to be taken out of their cells. He wasn't of any particularly famous or rich family-on the contrary, his mother has abandoned him and his sister years ago and he never knew his father. My dad has taken pity on him and since he's such a good boy, who is a great student and perfects in every field, he thought we could use him here.

"Hey, you guys!" I hear my brother's cheerful voice as we finally get down where most of the hallways leading to different type of cells were. He comes out of the back entrance, some blood on his shoulder, staining his plaid shirt.

"Jeremy, what the hell?" I raise my voice right away "Did you go out hunting again?" he gives me a childish smile, but I shake my head and furrow my eyebrows "You know, that dad is going to kill you for it!" my father is the one who made the hunters start my little brother's preparation to join the league of vampire killers, but he refused to let him on the field yet after a few weeks back he came from a hunting trip with his neck bleeding and a few ribs crushed-it scared me out of my mind.

"Relax, sis, it's alright!" he tries to calm me down while taking a bloody stake from his back pocket and tosses it in the nearest bucket where they kept all sorts of weapons in case some of the vampires tried to play hero and escaped from the cells. Which only happened once and then they killed the said vampire. "This one is not that troublesome and he's kind of weak if you ask me." he states and in the same moment the door behind my brother opens and the hunters Jake and Tom bring in the vampire.

I can't see him good since the light here isn't exactly great, so I turn around and order them to bring him to the examination room so I can take his measures and sign him in, give him a number and all that before taking him to his cell.

I can hear him struggling behind us, but I refuse to turn around quite frankly because I'm annoyed by it-I've seen this happen so many times. My brother yells at them to stop for a short moment when he gets uncontrollable and I hear him break one of his bones, most probably a leg so that he can't give so much trouble.

"I need him whole, Jeremy!" I yell from upfront as I start unlocking one of the doors after Matt hands me the keys. " Did you give him vervain?" I ask confused as I push the door open and turn the lights on, waiting for them to get in.

I don't turn around right away, I see what a mess it is on dad's desk and stretch out to find a new file, which would be the vampire's. There is a metal medical table in the middle of the room with straps which we tight around their hands and ankles, as well as many drawers full of scalpels, syringes and stakes-different types of torture or experimental devices that my father and doctor Whitmore either invented or bought.

I hear them grunting behind me and when I finally turn around I see them dragging the vampire. He's dressed in a nice blue shirt and dark jeans, the mask they've put on his face, so he wouldn't bite them was hiding half of it, but still as I saw him…I gasped-he was exceptionally beautiful and his green groggy eyes scanned the room in confusion.

"We gave him two shots and he's still pulling up a fight the bastard" Jake huffs out annoyed and tries to bring the vampire back to his feet, but his leg, the one that my brother broke, still surprisingly hasn't healed and he's a pain in their asses.

Something in me breaks when I look at the vampire-he's struggling, trying hard to free himself, but the vervain ropes and the hunter's strong grip limit his movement. He is no older than seventeen or so he looks like. I wonder when he turned and what happened to him. There's something so tortured in his look-I've never seen it with the other vampires-he's mad, but the sadness inside him seems so deep, it's like is rooting him to the ground.

"Elena?" my brother brings me back to earth. The moment the vampire stills and looks at me his eyes widen in shock and when I approach him, he tries to pull away from me.

"Take his mask off!" I nod at my brother and he obliges. The vampire has stopped trying to get away. His blond messy hair is bloody-I assume they've hit the back of his head in order to shake him off a bit and then staked him. I can see the holes in his chest, which are starting to heal, though the vervain in his system is probably slowing down the process. He doesn't seem that strong to me, yet he has pulled up some fight since Jake's eye is blue and kind of swollen. I'm glad he hasn't hurt my brother but even the thought of it makes my inside burn with hatred. When his jaw is free, his vampire teeth immediately stuck out and he speaks up

"Katherine!" he gasps in my direction with his eyes still widen. He looks like a mad man-there's swear on his forehead and he's very pale-paler than any of the killers they've brought before.

"Great, we've got a crazy one!" Jeremy exhales, but the vampire's eyes are still on me "Hey, stop looking at her like that!" my brother gets angrier and Matt approaches him, in case he needs to intervene

"Katherine?" he whispers again and his green eyes glimmer with confusion. He is obviously mistaking me for someone else, but the way he looks at me, makes my heart clench. Whatever this girl Katherine did to him-it obviously broke his heart. He looks like he's going to collapse any minute now, so I hurry to get back to work-I can't deal with his craziness right now. My father would most probably want to start experimenting on him in a few days when he calms down and stops trying to get away

"Bring him up to his feet" I order and the hunters raise him up. He yelps in pain and shakes his head, but he manages to stand still even with his leg still not completely healed. I take his height and his weight with enormous difficulties-he shivers every time I get close to him and the boys make fun of me. There's something so strange about him.

"What is this place? Who are you? Let me go!" the usual questions follow and my brother and Matt have to keep him down. They entertain themselves while I file the report and take turns to kick him in the stomach. A couple of times when they approach him, his vampire teeth come out, but he hides his face himself and goes back to normal-I've never seen a vampire do that.

"What's your name?" I ask him, but he refuses to respond

"She asked you a question!" Matt grunts in his face, grabs his hair and pulls him back

"Fuck you!" he yells out instead and I shake my head as I pass Care the file and let her finish writing while I check his pupils and tease him until his vampire teeth prop back out-he seems to be in a good condition and it really surprises me that he hasn't collapsed after the second vervain shot.

"It doesn't matter if you don't tell me your name." I say while I check out how the wounds are healing and tortured him by sticking my finger in one of them, just to get a reaction out of him, he has suddenly grown so calm, it was very unusual l "From now on you're just a number" I grant him a devilish smirk and he clenches his jaw. "I would however love to tell me when you turned into this monster."

He laughs out

"You know when I turned, Katherine" he still considers me to be someone else "You were there."

"That's strange" I say to myself as I scratch the back of my neck "The vervain is making him delusional, but he's still conscious" Care shrugs, we haven't seen that before, but it's quite interesting

"I'm sure your father will love this one" my best friend points out and I agree, but there's something so confusing about this vampire's green eyes.

They look at me with so much pain and sorrow.

It's like he's human.

Stefan's POV

I never thought, that this hunting trip in the forest will turn out the way it did. Or maybe, I knew it deep down, but I didn't really bother to be careful. I haven't felt fear for years-I was after all the Ripper of Monterey and even though I didn't lead this lifestyle anymore, it didn't mean that I couldn't take care of someone who's after me.

Those people, however, they came out of nowhere. I didn't hear them at all, I didn't recognize the sound of their beating hearts. It might've also been because I haven't fed that good lately, but still…something didn't seem right about them. Maybe they had their methods of sneaking around vampires, leading them into traps, because that's what happened.

I was hunting deer in the forest, but after I lost track of them, I noticed a dead rabbit lying near a tree. I stopped confused-it didn't seem logical for the animal to be here and it looked as if has been just killed. Maybe there were other hunters in the forest-I decided. Maybe they've killed it soon, but then forgot it here, or didn't even know where to find it. I was stupid, I wasn't thinking-I was just lead by my hunger, I haven't eaten in more than a day, so I grabbed the rabbit and started drinking its blood.

And then I felt someone hitting my head so hard, I lost balance right away. I tried to turn around and I saw the first guy-he had a rifle in one hand and a steak in the other-that's how I knew they weren't just regular hunters and I immediately regretted my decision to eat the abandoned animal. I tried to flee, but before I knew what was happening, another one was staking my back. I fell to my knees and saw a third approaching me with a shot of what must've been vervain-he looked young, no more than a sixteen year old kid-I used to kill people like him.

I still don't give up, I get back on my feet and try to run, but the first one uses his rifle and shoots me five times in the back-I am weak, I've been on animal blood for years now, hiding in the shadows, hunting as peacefully as I could-I even slit the animal's throats with a knife, refusing to use my teeth to rip them out.

I've given up the life of the ripper after Lexi helped me get myself back together all those years ago. The memory of my best friend flashes through and I smile sadly as I hit the ground-I wish she was here, she could've helped me escape. I feel them injecting me with two vervain shots, but I've been trained to resist it. Ten years after I've turned, Lexi has helped me build that resistance, she would give me a few drops a day at first, then I would drink half a glass and stay on my feet without flinching. It was a hard process, but it was important to have the ability to stay in your right mind when hunters decide to catch you. I feel them raising me up and putting a mask to prevent me from using my teeth and that's when I realize that those are the hunters they've warned me about-some kind of society or whatever that captured vampires for some crazy reason. Lexi has been warning me about them in the past year, but I've shrugged it off. I've stopped caring about certain things a very long time ago.

Which is why I feel so numb as they get me in their van and drive me to some forgotten place. I don't lose consciousness and I hear them talk about something, but I refuse to let the words sink in.

I refuse to acknowledge what's happening to me until they take me to some hallway, break my leg when I struggle to get away from them and shove me to some basement room which is cold and honestly quite scary-I can see all the scalpels and other torture devices on the metal counters glued to the stone walls-this place is hell.

But when I see her, I lose my mind.

I'm high on vervain and I'm trying to resist it with all the strength I'm left with-the bullets are still in my back and they are killing me, but I am sure that this girl before me is Katherine.

They laugh at me, the boys even torture me and kick me-they love to play with the monster or so it seems, but I can't take my eyes off her.

When she asks me when I turned, I feel my anger built up in me and I want to free myself from the hunter's tight grips and pin her to the wall.

Until I realize she has a heartbeat.

Which means she can't be Katherine. There's no way for a vampire to turn into a human. Least of all a dead vampire-the first love of my life hasn't been around for more than a 160 years. It's impossible that this is her.

When I look closer, I realize that I was wrong-even though the similarity is stunning, there are differences. This girl's brown eyes are somehow softer, kinder and even though I can see how much she hates me, I can say that under this hardcore composure, there's just a girl, no more than 20 years old. She's in her best years, the peak of her young vulnerable human life-maybe she's compassionate, maybe she is good, but she choses to show me her dark side.

I'm stunned by her beauty, but I forbid my heart to feel-I'm trapped, they are going to shove me in some cell any minute now, God knows when I'll get the chance to run or what will happen to me-this girl is probably going to be the reason for all my problems from now on.

She can't be beautiful.

And she can't see.

She's a monster in disguise. All of them are-the boys, the hunters, the blond female who must be the girl's age-they are those who torture and attack, not me. I haven't drunk people's blood in ages. I haven't captured or tortured one. I might've been a ripper before, but I've chosen a different life for myself now, I have lost and found myself more times than I can count, but those people before me-they are someone's kids and their parents had made them hate my species and for a good reason, we were monsters.

But some of us also carried a soul. And that made us human.

The girl they call Elena, orders them to drag me to the cells and soon I'm being pushed to a dark hallway and lead to the end of it. She joins the hunters while the youngest boy and the blond girl remain in that examination room. She opens the door for the hunters and they take me in another hallway, this time, however, there are cells on both sides and I can hear noises of cages being rattled and curious heads trying to catch a glimpse of me. I soon realize those must be other vampires imprisoned here, but my vision is starting to blur after the third shot of vervain and no matter how hard I try, I know that I'll soon lose consciousness.

They shove me in the first cell on the right and Elena gets in too.

"No, not to the wall" she interrupts them when they hurry to pin me to the cold wall against the door "Tie him up, I want him hanging from the ceiling!" her voice is cold and ruthless and even though the hunters don't really want to oblige since they seem tired to me, they follow her orders and drag me to the middle of the cell.

I keep staring at her and for a moment I feel like she won't look away, but then I finally make her uncomfortable and she looks down until she remembers that it's her job to torture me, not the other way around.

"Why are you still awake, huh?" she asks, but she doesn't really expect an answer for me and I watch her cross her hands on her chest and watch them tie my hands and tighten the rope. They start pulling back and soon they raise me up-I hang from the ceiling, my feet are a few inches above the ground and the soles of my shoes are almost touching it, but the pain is excruciating and she sees it.

Moreover, she seems to be enjoying it.

"Should we take the bullets off his back or no?" one of the hunters asks and she gives him a confused look

"He has some in him?" she asks and I feel the surprise cradle in her voice. The hunter obviously nods and then she looks back up at me "You're hurt and after three vervain shots, you're still awake? Who are you exactly?" she keeps wondering and seems quite satisfied with my threshold for pain.

I've been tortured before, alright, and what they are doing now is not something I haven't been through, but I have the feeling that it's going to only get worse.

"Keep them there. I want to see how long he can stay awake with this kind of pain" she is clearly confused by my ability to remain conscious even now and honestly, so am I.

I have been off human blood in a long time and that was making me weaker, yet somehow-maybe it was the pain or just my own stubbornness-I was fighting back. I silently thanked Lexi for helping me all those years ago. She has taught me so many things, yet somehow I was careless enough to let them capture me tonight. That didn't mean, I won't find a chance to get away. I only needed them to move me. Once I was untied and they tried to do whatever it is they wanted from me, I could figure out a way to escape. There had to be one, or so I hoped. It's not like I didn't deserve this-I've taken many lives and no matter how much good I've tried to do, I couldn't get them back-I might not have been a monster but I was a killer.

The girl remains in the cell for a while, waiting for me to lose consciousness and I feel my eyelids getting heavier with every passing minute, but she obviously isn't done. She asks one of the hunters for a knife and rips my shirt off with her small, but strong hands. My chest is exposed to her and for a moment I feel like she's actually admiring my strong body until she lifts the knife and drags it across my chest. She draws a big line and the blood starts dripping down-it colors the floor.

Yet I bite my tongue and swallow my yells.

I won't let her see me weak.

And that pisses her off.