A/N: I'm so horribly sorry, you guys. I know many of you have been waiting months! Literal months! But please believe me when I say that I have very little time for continuing this story, much as I love it. Please bear with me, and thank you so much for your incredible patience.

This chapter is sort of on the short side – I wanted it to be longer, but I thought that it would be better if I published something soon, rather than much later. But I feel so bad! Because this chapter doesn't really reveal as much as I wanted to.

Again, many many many apologies! I'll try to work harder, and get the rest of the story out to you!!

Chapter 7: Torture

Bella's POV

She gasped in agony and clutched her arms tightly around herself; she barely felt the additional, shallow pain as her nails bit into her skin, leaving long thin gashes. She gnawed savagely at her lip and, slipping desperately in and out of consciousness, she only noticed that her teeth had broken through when her mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. Somewhere, filling the air around her, she could hear horrible, gasping wails, and the noise pierced through her already pounding forehead. Vaguely, she wondered where the sound was coming from, but the thought was almost instantly snatched away, only half-formed, when a wave of pain pulsed up along her spine and curled sickeningly in the pit of her stomach.

Ice was crawling through her bones and her mind shuddered away from the unbearable pain. She slid limply to the ground, pressed against the cold tiles, and only seconds later, jerked upright again, maddened by the river of acid that was eating away at her body.

The wails of pain abruptly stopped, only to be replaced by ragged breathing and sobs, and she realized that they were coming from her own groaning mouth.

No. No. It has to stop. It had to be Edward. Edward should have changed me. Not. Not. Them. Not them. Not… She couldn't straighten out her thoughts. Couldn't keep them focused.

Edward…Please please please end it end it, it has to end. I'm not strong enough. Can't take it. Please just make it stop, stop, stop, any way you can. Even through the pain, she was suddenly horrified with herself. No, I do want this. Because then I can love. Love Edward for. For all. Eternity. But still, nothing in the world had prepared her for such agony. Not even the hideous preview that James's lingering bite had left on her hand.

Abruptly, the pain changed. It didn't stop, but instead of waves of white-hot pain sizzling through her body, she felt like she was being twisted and pulled. Like two people had grabbed her and each were pulling at her for possession. Like her skin might rip and come apart with the pressure. She curled into a ball, trying to keep her body from falling apart.

Edward…

Her spinal cord shattered. Or at least, that's what it felt like. Terrible bolts of pain were shooting through her shoulders and back, and with a scream, Bella unknowingly slammed herself into the wall beside her. The thudding sound it made against the cement barely filtered through her head. She only had space in her pain-crazed mind for one thing. One person.

Edward! Please. Please. Save me. She grabbed for something in the distance that she couldn't see, and when she failed in her intentions, the cry of despair caught in her throat, ravaged by screaming.

I love you.

For a moment, she could see his eyes, his beautiful golden eyes, burning in her retinas. Then they faded to a wild, fathomless black. She could feel herself teetering on the edge of those empty black irises, and with blood trickling from her bitten lip and sweat dripping from her pale-as-death face, she welcomed the fall. To continue to take the pain would be to flirt with insanity. Already slightly demented with terror, she smiled a little as she released her tentative hold on consciousness, and leapt into the darkness of his eyes. And fell.

Feels like I'm flying…

She blacked out. The pain was still there, rippling on the surface of her unconsciousness, but it was deadened somewhat.

Tears trickled out from under her twitching eyelids, and they ran down the sides of her clammy face. There they collected, in a puddle around her, their purity ruined, as they mingled with her blood.

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Fang's POV

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

You know what? Screw that.

If only the Flock could see me now. Where flying acrobatics had once been second nature, remembering to breathe was now a difficulty. Actually, not breathing just might have been a pleasant distraction. Who needs breathing? Slumped in an undignified heap against the wall, I clenched my fists tightly together. My knuckles were white with straining. I tried to open my eyes, but they were forced shut again as another flare of fire burst through me, radiating out from the spot where Ari had plunged in the syringe.

The School had been my waking nightmare. For almost ten years I'd been there. I'd been forced to run laps until I passed out. Starved and kept in cages meant only for wild animals. Trapped in mazes like a lab rat. Stabbed by syringes and scalpel knives. Mauled by Erasers to test my pain resistance and fighting abilities. Prodded by psychologists until my mind snapped.

But never had I been tortured over a blazing fire.

But I didn't back down then, and I wouldn't now. I'd only ever surrender for one person, and even though she'd never let me live it down, if I had to let go of my pride to save her…I would.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

I clenched my hands to my temples, tried to lose myself in the safety of fighting tactics and flying techniques, of logic. Not that logic has ever really been on my side. You know. With all the wings and being able to fly crap. And having a dysfunctional family that still hasn't gotten itself blown up or massacred by Erasers. And all the minor things, like having a mind reader and a talking dog and knowing that our genetic material just might be unraveling. Little things like that.

We were lucky, not logical.

But logic's all I have left now. The pain had to end sometime. I gritted my teeth. The blaze of fire had reached my shoulders. I half expected my skin to fall away in a layer of ash and blackened flesh. I was a hotdog on a grill. Fried Fang. Fang-on-a-stick.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

My face twisted slightly with each stab of explosive pain that seemed to stab through my chest, once, twice, three times. Vaguely I heard a thudding sound against the wall opposite the one I was slumped against. It sounded like a body had been thrown against it. But the thought barely connected in my brain as a trickle of fire slid slowly and tortuously through my blood vessels.

Max always told me that I was good at hiding my feelings. I'd always been able to hide my pain behind a layer of thought and rationality. I had this freaky little talent for becoming an invisible shadow, albeit one with a crappy attitude problem. Her words, not mine.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

The tiniest moan escaped me as the pain turned into agony. I'd never be able cook my meat over a campfire ever again. My Thumper eating days were over. I was being immersed in a vat of boiling acid, skinned alive, pricked by dozens of knives…

I tried to pretend that I hadn't moaned. In all reality, there was no reason for me to be this masochistic – like there was anyone else in the room to see me. It wasn't like I had to prove anything to anyone.

But to get out of this alive, and get back to Max and the Flock, I'd have to prove that I could survive. I'd be damned if I let her down again.

As if it had heard me, the fire suddenly leapt up with all the manic rage of a caged animal and enveloped me in agony. I glared defiance, but defiance can only get you so far.

The darkness swallowed me up, and I welcomed it. I'd been there before. Many times.

Darkness has always been a better friend to me than the light has ever been, or ever will be.

XXXXXXXXX

Jeb's POV

I winced as the faint sound of the new girl's agonized screams reached my ears, even through the thick walls of her room. The walls doubled as hidden, one-sided mirrors, and I was treated to a full view of her pain and delirium. My stomach lurched with pity and sadness.

The new girl. I laughed hollowly, disgusted by such an ironic euphemism (A/N: Euphemism is like a nicer way of saying something, like "passed away" is a "nicer" way of saying "died"). Such a phrase should be used only for trivial, everyday situations. The new girl at school. The new girl in the neighborhood. Not, the new girl-soon-to-be-inhuman-creature. She wouldn't even truly be a girl anymore, once her ordeal was over.

I sat stiffly in the chair in the observation room, holding my clipboard with white fingers. Framed in the observation window before me was the new girl herself, shuddering as she underwent her painful transformation. My laboratory superior had instructed me to record changes in the girl's appearance as time passed, but there didn't seem to be words to describe such unending pain.

What shocked me the most, deeply shocked me, was the fact that, irrational as it was, the girl had chosen her own fate.

She'd never truly had a choice, since I would have administered the shot whatever her opinion. But her mind had been set. She hadn't resisted.

Why?

I continued to watch the twitching girl, but soon, my mind was wandering and my eyes were seeing something far different from the scene before me…

Max has always been full of both bravado and real bravery, and in whatever situation, she has almost always known how to conceal her fear. It's a skill she was born with and it's what has brought her this far. But I'd known her when she hadn't always been so careful with her emotions. Max had been much younger then. Not small, but young. Old enough to think on her own, but not old enough to understand the world around her. Or so I'd thought. I learned later that she had understood it all too well. She didn't know me, and didn't quite trust me either. But sometimes I could make her smile, as much as she might not want to. I'd known her from her birth after all, helped to rearrange her genetic material. To this day, I still feel like a smaller man for the crimes I have committed in the name of science.

I should have known that I could have taken a much different path.

It took me fourteen years, and one beautiful, bright-eyed girl, to realize that the only crimes worth committing are the ones that protect the ones you care about.

It had been a routine avian check-up. Two shots, one to immunize the body against sickness, the other to inject tracking radiation in order to prepare for the MRI session scheduled for later that day. One injected in the arm, the other to the largest vein in the wrist. We were still unsure how long these bird specimens could be expected to live. Everyone was hoping that this time, the human-avian recombinant project would succeed. Otherwise, we would have four more bodies on our hands. Two girls and two boys, fairly close in age, though one of the girls was several years younger. They were all very similar in structure, beautifully built, with delicate bones and small, not fully developed wings. All very much alike, and quite similar to the past avian-children who had failed to survive. But infinitely stronger. Stronger in body and stronger in heart.

But only the girl with a challenge in her name had ever really mattered to me. Maximum Ride.

The girl had looked up at me, from where she sat on the lab table, cringing violently as I administered the necessary shots. Her eyes were hollow, surrounded my gray circles and deep bags. Empty of hope.

She was only six years old.

I did my best to seem cheerful. Despite the work that I had done throughout my life, I was not a heartless man. Something in me felt deeply uncomfortable, as I looked at her, and so I tried to cover the discomfort with kindness.

"Sweetheart, you need to cooperate. It's important that you get these shots. You don't want to get sick, do you?"

"If getting sick means that I will die, and if dying means that I can escape, then let the sickness come. I'm not stopping it." Her hard, cold eyes watched me, and I jerked away slightly, alarmed not only by her statement, but by the knowing attitude behind it. Too knowing. The words seemed alien, as they tumbled coldly out of the mouth of a girl only 4 feet tall.

"Maximum, getting sick is nothing to joke about. Getting sick brings pain. Do you want that?"

She looked at me again with that same hollow, hopeless expression.

"You can't want what you already have." Unconsciously she lightly touched the deep purple bruise on her cheekbone, inflicted upon her as a punishment during her daily training session. It was already yellowing at the edges.

Hiding my discomfort, I said. "It'll all be over soon, Max. If you'll just coopera–"

She narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean, it'll all be over soon?" I was thrown off by her question.

"I meant that this check-up will soon be over and you can return to your…room." For some reason, this just didn't seem like the right time to speak the truth, Max's terrible reality. She'd never had a room of her own. Only a cage. A cage meant for animals.

But she wasn't so inclined to slip quietly around awkward situations; quite the contrary, she rushed headlong into this one with the grim determination of a hawk. Or maybe a suicide bomber. She snorted scathingly, the derision twisting her features. "My room? Like that's such a privilege. I'd love to go back to my cage. I'm just dying to get back." At this statement, she raised her eyebrows at me defiantly. Continuing with her angry confrontation, she spit her next words at me, like somehow she hoped that if she loaded them with enough venom and enough hatred, she could inflict real pain. It saddened me that this was her way of thinking. But I couldn't truly blame her.

"I think that when you say it'll be all over soon, you say that my time is up. That I've outlived my usefulness in this place and pretty soon I'm either going to fall apart or you're going to feed me to those uncoordinated dolts you call Erasers." But despite her bravado, a flicker of fear flashed across her face, and then was gone.

I turned away to disguise the sudden weariness in my face. I was halfway out the door when I heard the tiny sniffle behind me. I looked back sharply.

A single tear slid down Max's sunken cheek. She hurriedly wiped it away and resumed her expression of indifferent neutrality. But in that moment I saw exactly how terrified she really was. And just how hard she had to work to hide that fact. Suddenly, she seemed very small, and very young. Like the child she could have been.

I came back, and knelt before her. She refused to look at me. It was several minutes before she finally spoke, in a miserable whisper.

"I never had a choice."

"None of us ever have a choice sweetheart. No one ever has a choice about being born."

"But I was born a monster. I'm not even really human, and I'll never, ever be." She looked up at me then, finally. "If I'd been given a choice, I'd never, never in a million years, have chosen to be born with wings. I'd rather have been born chained to the ground like everyone else, if it meant that every time I looked at my reflection, I wouldn't have to see the animal in me."

"Max, you're not an animal. And this…none of this, is your fault."

"I don't care whose fault it is. I have wings. Wings! I need to be free, Jeb. And freedom means having a choice. I've never been allowed to make my own choices. So I was doomed from the moment I was born."

Another tear ran down her cheek, and this time she didn't bother to wipe it away. So I reached out and dabbed at it with a finger.

"Max."

She turned her head away.

Gently, I took hold of her face with both hands and turned her to face me.

"Max."

"What?" Her rebellion and her brave face was back in place, filling up the vulnerable cracks in her armor.

"I'll find a way to give you that choice. Someday. Trust me on that."

Her face was anything but trusting, but she nodded her head.

A thought occurred to me. I smiled slightly. "Max, there's someone that I'd like you to meet."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "What?"

"His name is Fang."

A/N: How was it? Please review and let me know if there's anything you'd especially like to see, any suggestions you'd like to make, or if you just wanna say hi :)