Chapter Eleven

By His Rage

The first thing Ichigo realized when coming to consciousness was that he was in pain. His back, shoulders and legs felt like they were going to come apart. He gasped out loudly and felt like he was going to stop breathing.

"You're awake," he heard Sōsuke.

He looked and saw him standing in front of him. The room was dark. He realized why his arms and back hurt. His arms were tied around a metal rod that ran under his armpits. His arms were twisted up and around the other side and stretched far too much and secured by a series of rope loops that ran over his fingers. He swore he felt the bones in his hands being pulled apart on both sides. His legs were in pain because he was sitting in a wide W and another metal rod ran behind the small of his back. His ankles were pulled over the top of it an angle that put pressure on his knees and his hips. He felt something around his neck, a metal collar of some sort, and he realized he was bent forward with the chain attached to it connected to a ring in the floor. There was no way to move at all, and he let out a low whine. It didn't help that he was stripped naked as well.

"Good. I want you awake. You left me, Ichigo. I told you not to do that, didn't I?" Sosuke asked as he walked around him.

"Sosuke, I tried…Gin…he took me…I didn't want to go…and the Shinigami…" he gasped out.

"Don't fucking lie to me, boy. You enjoyed your time there, at least, that's what your body tells me," he said as he circled him. Ichigo swallowed. "Who was fucking you?"

Ichigo didn't respond but Sosuke put a foot up between his shoulder blades and pressed forward. He did scream out then. "Gin! Gin!" he gasped out.

The pressure let up. "Hmm, so he took you because he wanted you, did he?" Sosuke said and walked around him. "I'll let you suffer a while and think about if you've told me everything. Oh, sorry," Souske said and turned to the wall behind him. "I don't want you getting comfortable." There was a click and cold air blasted his back. "Enjoy."

Ichigo couldn't see him but he realized where he was. It was the huge freezer that was downstairs. He gasped as he started to shiver. This was too much, he couldn't stand this…

"Sosuke!" he yelled. "I love you, please don't do this!"

Sosuke smirked and walked away. Grimmjow stood and looked in the glass windows of it and then back to the door. Aizen had locked it with a padlock and taken the key. He could see the thermostat was set to -20 Celsius. He bit his lip and left to see what the fuck Szayel had done to get him back here. He knocked on the medical door and Szayel opened it. Szayel saw the look on Grimmjow's face.

"He came back," he whispered.

"Yeah, and Aizen put him in the fucking freezer and bound him up in a painful stress position. He's not going to be able to walk or fucking use his hands if Aizen keeps him like that for long."

"Come in," Szayel said and stepped back. He closed the door behind.

"How the fuck did he get him out of the Shinigami facility?" Grimmjow asked.

Szayel sat down and ran his hands through his pink hair. "The fucking implants. Aizen started this about five years ago. He'd come up with a device that could generate hormones in the body. The obvious application would be for people lacking one, like thyroid or insulin. It was an exciting discovery. Somehow, he'd managed to configure a small device…" Szayel opened the drawer and put a small square device with hair fine wires emerging from the top and bottom. It was a shiny white in color. "It takes blood and synthesizes it into the necessary hormones. He calls it the White. The outside surface is coated with another invention of his. This one is what generates these fine wires, but they aren't wires, they're nerve fibers. The fucking bastard is a genius. He managed to make something that could artificially create functional nerve fiber."

Szayel spun the small device in his fingers. "But of course, he doesn't care about the medical applications of this. Then, the fact is that his research was entirely collected by experimenting on live human subjects over ten years. The last five were when he started really working on it. His idea was that he could use this and a chemical cocktail he created to program someone. When the chemical is introduced into someone without the White, it does nothing. It has no way to do anything except maybe mess with the person briefly. However, the White, which synthesizes based on the composition of the blood, is able to take this chemical cocktail and read it. The chemical, once introduced, is eventually taken over by the body, and it becomes a normal part of their body chemistry. As long as the White is inactive, nothing happens." Szayel tossed it to Grimmjow who caught it.

"What happens when it is active?" Grimmjow asked.

"Well, for one thing, death in most the trials. Then we tried that group of Shinigami we captured, and Ichigo, of course. The results were dubious. He couldn't get the White to actually initiate any sort of programming. It just kept synthesizing the various hormones and neurotransmitters and wreaking havoc on their bodies. So we abandoned it and all the devices were removed, but Aizen left Ichigo's. The one in him was the prototype that he believed would be the eventual success. He believed that problem wasn't in the device itself, but in the programming. So he kept altering the chemical injections. He's been testing it on human subjects ever since. He handed it over to me with instructions to finish the chemical formulas a few weeks ago. I delayed as much as I could."

Grimmjow ran his fingers over the odd feeling white skin of the device. That's what it felt like, skin. "So how did he figure out how to 'program' someone like Ichigo?"

Szayel leaned back. "Before Gin left with him, Aizen had been dosing him with various chemical compositions. He monitored the device, and he realized the longer it was in Ichigo, the deeper the neural fibers integrated with his nervous system. When he was here, I took scans. The device is fully integrated and can't be removed now without killing him. The artificial fibers it created have run throughout his entire nervous system. Unfortunately, when he was gone, Aizen took the scans and with that, he figured out how to solve the last problem."

"What was that?" Grimmjow asked.

"How to transmit an actual command using the chemicals."

"How the fuck can you do that?" Grimmjow said with a shake of his head. "That doesn't make any fucking sense."

Szayel sighed. "I know it doesn't, but he basically managed to implant a set of commands into the device. Those commands are simple, of course. Since the fibers run into his brain now, they can activate different areas depending on the part of the brain. The commands are things like 'fight', 'kill', and the one he activated, 'return'. The return command is associated with a location, and the neural fibers activate the memory centers of the brain, while dampening everything else like the higher functions. Depending on the chemicals introduced by the White, one of the commands can be triggered, and the rest of the brain functions are shut down."

"What changed? Why did it work all of a sudden?"

Szayel sighed. "Time. The trials failed because he didn't give the White enough time to integrate. He had guessed that might be the case, so that was why he left his best prototype in Ichigo."

Grimmjow put the device down. "So that's it? He figured out how to create obedient soldiers. And there's no way to reverse it?"

"Well, all that has to be done is to not use it and shut off the growth functions. Unless it malfunctions, then that's a whole other set of problems. If left alone, in the growth function, the neural fibers will eventually over take the natural biological structure and kill him."

Grimmjow nodded. He sat quiet for a long time and then stood up. "I can't do this. Szayel, you never saw me today."

He got up and went out through a side exit and kept going. He went to the garage and got into his SUV. He started it and headed out of the compound. He went through the checkpoints and kept driving. He sighed as he came to the place he was looking for. It was a place he never thought he'd come to. He got out and hoped he didn't get tackled or some shit.

Immediately he was surrounded by men. He put up his hands. "Take me to Gin. It's about the kid."

He sat some time later in a conference room and waited. Gin came in with someone that surprised Grimmjow. It was Shinji, one of the captured experiment victims. A blonde man with a bucket had and a man with black hair and bit of facial hair came in with them.

"Gin," he said with a nod.

"What happened?" Gin asked as he sat down. "It must be bad, for you to leave."

The others sat down. "The kid, he came back, never seen anything like it. His eyes were all weird and he just walked right into the compound. Aizen was waiting for him. He just passed out and Aizen took him into the main building."

"Then what?" the dark haired man asked.

Grimmjow described the torturous method that Aizen had started with. "That won't be all. He said he plans to make him suffer for a long time, mostly to see how far he can push him before he breaks. No other reason. He didn't say what else he planned to do, but it isn't going to be good."

"We have to get him out," Shinji said and looked at Gin. "We can't let him stay there. I can take us back through the tunnel system that we got out through. I still remember where the entrance is from the outside."

"We don't know…" the blonde started.

"Kisuke, we have to do this. If we don't, he's going to die. If he doesn't die, he'll be better off dead by the time Aizen is done with him," Gin said softly.

"I can't stop you, especially not when you want to save my son," the dark haired man said.

Grimmjow looked at him and nodded. "I'd help you but there's no way I'll fit through those tunnels you're talking about."

"Come on, we need to get ready," Gin said as he headed out followed by Shinji.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

When the door opened again, Ichigo almost wept in relief at the warm air that rushed into it. He couldn't feel his fingers or toes anymore and he was sure that he wouldn't be able to stand even if he wanted to. He felt the chain on his neck being released. He was so glad that he didn't see who it was until he looked up and stared.

"Hey, bitch," Yammy said with a smirk. "Remember our last encounter?"

Ichigo couldn't talk because he had several of his men with him. He shook his head and stared between them.

"Well, Aizen was kind enough to send us down to warm you up a bit. I know you must be cold, huh?" he said and pulled hard on the chain at his throat. "So shall we?"

Hours later, Ichigo had no idea how many, he was lying on the floor of the freeze half conscious. The bars and ropes had been removed, and unfortunately, used for tortuous things. The drain in the freezer was stained red now. He just stared at the blood slipping away down the drain. At least it wasn't cold…

His relief was short lived as he felt himself being pulled up by his hair. He looked up at Aizen again. "Did you have a good time?"

Ichigo couldn't talk, his throat was raw from screaming. He looked at Sosuke with pleading eyes. "No, no, I'm not nearly done with you," he said. He pulled him to his feet and Ichigo saw a bench that had a chair at the end of it. He sat him heavily in the chair and Ichgio barely could stay seated. He didn't have to think long, because he wrapped ropes around him and tied him to the chair. He moved around behind him and pulled both his arms behind him, twisting them up painfully until he'd pushed his palms together and pointing upward. He screamed out as he wrapped rope around his hands to keep them in that position. The pain in his wrists was horrible as he pushed him back in the chair. He gasped as he then tied his legs down to the bench. The ropes ran down to his knees. Sosuke smiled and slid a block of wood under his calves, pushing them upward and bending his knees somewhat backward.

"There, isn't that pretty?" he said with a smirk as he walked around him.

"Stop…" he gasped out. "Please…just stop…"

"No, here, that mouth of yours is a problem," he said as he left the freezer and came back with something meatal and leather. He forced something into his mouth and pulled back on the straps and he felt his mouth pulled open until he thought he was going to dislocate his jaw.

"Hmm, there, now…" he muttered as he picked up a long rod that was leaning on the wall. "Your feet are always so sensitive, you know. Let's see how long you can handle it."

Ichigo gasped and coughed as he started whipping the soles of his feet with some sort of cane. He couldn't think how long it lasted, but it felt like hours upon hours before he stopped and put it down. It was bloody by then. He reached under the bunch and pushed another block of wood underneath his calves and Ichigo was sure he heard something crack. Sōsuke again turned to the temperature dial and Ichigo felt the cold air return again. He was going to die like this. There was no way he wasn't.

Still, though, all he could feel was a degree relief. As much pain as he was in, it was Sōsuke. He was with him. No matter what happened he was back with Sōsuke. He just had to survive it, and then Sōsuke would take him back and everything would be like it was before. In the back of his mind, Ichigo knew that that wasn't true.

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

Ichigo looked up with relief when the door opened again. It was Sōsuke again and he was smiling. "Ichigo, I have a chance for you to redeem yourself. Would you like to take it?"

Ichigo nodded furiously. Anything he had to do. Aizen nodded to Szayel who came over and started untying him. Szayel's face was pinched in some expression but Ichigo practically collapsed forward when he pulled the awful mouth gag out of him.

"You can't redeem yourself, Ichigo, if you can't walk on your own," Sōsuke said.

Ichigo looked up at him and put all his will into standing. He collapsed a few times, but eventually he got to shaking feet. He had no idea how long he'd been in here. He stopped feeling hunger or thirst while he was bound on the floor. His hands were shaking badly and he was sure his fingers and toes were frost bitten. Szayel helped him put on a yukata and he stumbled after Sosuke and into the main room. Sosuke smiled at him as he stood there shivering and shaking. He pulled a gun from his jacket and put it in Ichigo's hand. Ichigo frowned and looked up at him.

"You want to redeem yourself, right?" Sosuke asked.

"Yeah," he croaked. He felt like his jaw was loose and every muscle was slow to respond.

"Good. Bring them in."

Ichigo looked up and saw to his abject horror that two of the guards were dragging two people into the room. "No," he croaked as his hand shook harder.

Gin and Shinji both looked like they'd been beaten the hell out of. Both of them were bloody and staring at him.

"Ichigo!" Shinji gasped out. "Are you hurt? What'd he do to you?" The guard by him elbowed him in the face and pushed him to his knees.

"Kneel," the other guard growled and pushed Gin to the floor by Shinji. Gin didn't say anything he just looked at Ichigo with those piercing blue eyes.

Sosuke walked to Ichigo and put his hands on his shoulders. "Kill them, my love."

Ichigo turned and looked at him. "What?"

"Shoot them. Kill them both and I'll take you right back to our room. I'm set you in a hot bath, then I'll make us tea, then you'll be able to rest after your ordeal. Then, you'll have proven your loyalty and love to me. I'll even take away the order that you are to go to Barragan's whore house and work each month. I know it is quite generous of me, yes, love?" he whispered in his ear.

Ichigo stared at the gun that was in his shaking hand. Kill them? Kill Gin and Shinji? How could he kill them? They had shown him kindness and…love? He stumbled forward, his left arm cradled against his body. He was sure that that shoulder was out of joint, and the wrist was probably broken. He limped toward them and pointed the gun at Gin's head.

"Ichigo, don't worry," he said quietly and looked at him. "If it makes you happy, if this is what you want, do it. I don't regret anything I did. I'll die happy if it is your choice. I can't live if you stay with him, so just finish things." He smiled at him and Ichigo swallowed hard. He looked back at Sosuke.

"Please, I can't…" he said.

"If you don't, I'm taking you back down to the freezer, Ichigo. And the torture you've endured so far will be nothing compared to what I will do to you. If you though Yammy's first visit with you was bad, you have no idea what the next one will be like. I'll remove the instructions not to hurt you too severely and let them do what they want," he said with an even face. "I'll break every bone in your body before I'm done, and then I'll let you suffer. If you're lucky, I'll let you die, Ichigo. Now, kill them."

Shinji looked at him now and smiled. "Ichigo, don't worry about us. Do what you have to do," he said with a soft smile.

Ichigo held the gun up again and felt tears running down his face. He shook his head and cocked it back. There was a second, and his heart beat sound very loud and his eyes shot open. Shinji looked up to see his eyes slowly clouding over with the blood flooding into the sclera. Gin stared up at him too. Ichigo gasped and put his hand over the hollow of his shoulder. He looked back at Sosuke. He had a tablet in his hands.

"You will do it whether you want to or not, Ichigo," he said and tapped something.

Ichigo's body jerked and he fell to his knees in agony. He saw blood dripping from his eyes and felt it running from his ears. He couldn't hear and everything was blanking out in his mind.

No.

The word reverberated in his head as his body betrayed him and he stood up and held a no longer shaking hand up and placed the gun on Gin's forehead.

No.

He tilted his head to the side and shook his head again.

No more.

He felt a surge of something and his head was on fire. His finger shook over the trigger.

"No…more…no more…" he growled finally and spun around to face Sosuke, the gun still raised in his hand. Sosuke had time to try and tap in something on the tablet before Ichigo's finger pressed down on the trigger. Ichigo gasped and fell to his knees as he watched Sosuke's forehead blossom red and he slumped to the floor limply.

The whole room had gone silent. The only noise was Ichigo's ragged breathing and then the clatter of the gun falling from his hands. He swallowed and realized that the men were staring at him now. For a second he didn't know why no one had shot him. Then it dawned on him. He was Aizen's second. Even if Aizen had done it to humiliate him and mold him, he'd still told everyone that he was his second. He was still the leader of them when Aizen died.

"Go…away…" he growled. "Leave me."

The guards on Gin and Shinji nodded and walked away. The minute they left Gin and Shinji both scrambled to him. Shinji lifted his face as he panted heavily.

"Baby, baby," he whispered. "Oh gods, baby, we need to get you looked at…" he whispered.

"So the fucking whore had the stones to kill him after all," a rough voice came from behind them. Ichigo look up and froze.

Gin turned to him. "Yammy. Get the fuck out of here. This is not your concern."

"Yeah, see it is. I'm not going to let this place be taken over by a pussy boy like him. I'm taking charge now," he said as he moved toward them.

Shinji growled and Ichigo looked up and realized his eyes were turning bloody black as well. He moved faster than Yammy could counter as he spun around on the floor and swept the larger man's legs out from under him. While he was down he grabbed the gun Ichigo had dropped and stood up and pointed it at him.

Yammy laughed. "Fucking Shinigami. You can't shoot me."

Shinji flinched as a hand took the gun from him. He saw Gin standing there and he nodded toward Ichigo. Shinji knew this wasn't his fight at all. Ichigo had stood up again, holding heavily onto Gin's arm. He reached for the gun.

"I'm not a Shinigami," he whispered hoarsely and fired the entire clip into his stomach. "You'll die. Slowly. You'll suffer like I did," he whispered and let Shinji pry his fingers off the grip again.

"Come on," Gin said and wrapped an arm around his back. "You're hurt. We need to get you to a doctor."

Ichigo stopped though and dropped to the floor by Aizen. He reached out and put his hand against Sosuke's cheek. Gin and Shinji stepped back to give him the moment.

"I loved you," he whispered to him. "I really did. I just wanted you to love me as much as I loved you, but I know now that it was all fake. It, none of it, was real. But I'll miss you so much that I'll hurt inside. I know that. But…this was the only way. I think I always knew the only way out was through death. I always thought it would be mine," he said and gently closed the open and staring eyes.

Shinji and Gin helped him to his feet, each one holding him up on either side. No more words were needed as Ichigo left everything that hurt in that room. In there, he left all the pain that he had ever felt in his heart. He left it there on a bullet.