Sedatives threw me into a winding, lethargic river of darkness. I despondently floated between consciousness and slumber. Moments of comprehension were fleeting, but I knew my blood had been drawn from my arm, the pinch of a rubber tourniquet, and the annoying prick of the needle were easy to piece together. Although I knew when it was happening, I was groggy and powerless to stop it. All I could do was sit there and whine wordlessly like an upset child, giving out high, keening cries of discomfort. But not even those lasted long, washed away by the starless night of chemicals in my system. Words trickled in between the wake and sleep cycles, though it was hard to pick out the words at times, the sedatives leaving even my cognitive skills mushy and next to useless.

"...not in the system.."

"...genetic...DNA..."

"...scanned...no data..."

"...familiar?"

I couldn't hang onto full sentences, each one fell away from me like pearls from a string. I was too out of it to even be annoyed at myself. All I knew was that I wanted to wake up. I wanted to wake up in my hammock with Blue Eyes snoring beside me and my twins stirring in their own hammocks. I wanted all of this to be a bad dream. But of course, given the lack of available stars as well as my inability to open my eyes, I had nothing to wish on. I fell inside the black once more, and had no way to tell how much time had passed. Though I was relatively sure I was dreaming when I saw an octopus with its long, dexterous tentacles wrapped around a big Galapagos tortoise's shell, which seemed to have strawberries duct taped to its gargantuan telltale shell.

When the sedation finally started wearing off, I found myself in a hospital bed. I looked around, sitting up slightly. A cool air drifted in the atmosphere, and at the goosebumps that arose from the colder temperature, I looked down to see my clothes were completely different. Whoever changed them, I didn't want to know, for the notions that ran through my head made me shudder. I wore a white tank top, and with a lift of the scratchy blankets, I found I was also wearing a pair of thin, papery feeling sweatpants. I sat up a little more, hugging my arms and rubbing my biceps to try to generate extra heat through friction.

I wasn't hooked up to any machines, thank god, but there was no lack of machines and other metallic instruments. My heart beat picked up, and I felt my breath begin feel labored as I looked around and seen the various tools and objects I knew the uses for all too well. The strongly alcoholic smelling liquid bottles told me that they were being either prepared for use, or were being cleaned from previous use. My mouth went dry, and I ran my tongue over my lips. A shaky breath raked through my body. I had to get out of here. But right as I went to flip the blanket off of my legs, a man walked in through the door I hadn't noticed. He wore a lab coat, and a black beanie that was a bit too small for him, in all honesty I thought it looked a bit like an oversized Yakama. The man also wheeled a silvery cart behind him. He had dark stubble thickly covering his jaw and cheeks. He didn't look that old but his age was much harder to pinpoint under all that hair.

"Hey, Jane Doe. Welcome to the un-doped up world." He smiled, his voice youthful.

"Where am I? Who are you?" I backed up against the crap quality pillows, recoiling as far as I could from this stranger.

"Calm down. My name is Milo Maximus. People call me either Dr. Milo or Dr. Max, take your pick. You're in the East wing, I was sent to get you prepped for surgery." He smiled at me again. "Don't worry, I'm the best anesthetist OSIRIS has left. This'll be easy, no problems."

"Surgery? No, no, what kind of surgery?" I gaped, before my eyes narrowed. "You stay the hell away from me."

He gave a bit of a cringe. "You've got yourself in a real mess, huh Janie girl? No one knows who the hell you are, or where you came from. You know, you look a helluva lot like a favorite patient of mine. That is what stumps me."

Dr. Milo came forward and crouched by the foot of the bed, squinting at me. "So, you gonna tell me your name or are you gonna make me keep calling you Jane Doe?"

I shied away from him, my only reply a disdainful frown.

"I'll take that as a no then. You don't really seem like much of a talker, you seem like one of those more verbally reserved girls. Am I right or..?" He quirked his head at the last part. I held my silence.

He sighed. "Okay, don't say anything. You seem like a nice girl, even if you're scared, and I don't want anything to happen to you. But you got yourself into this, and I don't know what you'll be like when you get out of it, so I'm gonna make your last moments as yourself as easy as possible.
Just cooperate and everything will be fine."

I bit the inside of my lip. He didn't seem like the other people here, he seemed out of place here.
His demeanor was loose, and he seemed to be sincere with his words, but he was still of OSIRIS, and I couldn't trust him, no matter how well intending he might seem. Cooperate, my ass.

Dr. Max moved forward, pulling the cart with him. My hands shot out and anchored to the bed beneath me, my legs pulling up to my chest. "Stay away!" I snapped.

"Don't worry, it's not gonna hurt." He said. "Is this your first operation?"

"Don't touch me!" I yelled when he moved to the head of the bed, a bulky oxygen mask in hand.

"Hey! Come on, this isn't helping anyone." He replied, reaching for my hands.

"No! Stop it! Get away!" I screamed, struggling in his grip. I wriggled and tried to kick out, but I was horrified to find that my feet were tied down with leather bounds, long enough and padded around the ankle cuffs to go unnoticed up until now.

"Hey! Janie, quit it!" He grunted, reaching to get both my wrists clenched tightly into his fist. "You're forcing me to do this!"

"Blue! Help!" Was the last shout I could get out before Dr. Max slapped the clunky mask over my face, and pinned my hands over my head. I sucked in a breath and held it, struggling ruthlessly. The bearded man shushed me, trying to soothe me.

"Just breathe, everything will be fine." He said, trying not to pant from the sudden outburst of activity. I couldn't answer aloud, so I lifted my right middle finger toward him.

"Come on, I know you're scared but fighting it is bad for you." He sighed at the sight. Then he seemed to quirk up with a frown, as if receiving a thought. "How long can you hold your breath?"

I didn't answer.

"Shit," he sighed. "I hate doing this. Why are making me do this? Okay, you forced my hand."

I didn't get any time to feel confused, before the man placed his hand right on my belly and pressed down. It got increasingly hard not to exhale, but then he pushed down harder, hard enough to make me gasp, hard enough to hurt. Before I gasped though, all the air was blown, or should I say pushed, right out of my body. But I did make the mistake of inhaling again, and once I started, I knew it was futile to stop again. So I decided to keep my breath and use it to get away. So, I started screaming again, shaking around and fighting hard enough to bruise my own skin to try to get away from his grip.

But I was thrashing too much and I needed too much oxygen and I was breathing in too much anesthesia. I could feel it starting to take over me, my movements starting to become jerky and erratic, my brain became foggy. It was as if I was a pane of glass someone fogged up with their breath, but the fog wouldn't clear with air exposure. It was like frost creeping its way over a window, getting thicker and thicker as the temperature continued to drop. It was getting harder and harder to move, harder to force myself to strain against my binds. But those binds weren't even human anymore, my arms had fallen to my sides and I was still fighting to stay awake. My eyelids drooped heavily enough that I felt the feather-light tickle of my lashes on my cheeks. My body was betraying me and I wanted to cry fat, hot tears of frustration, but I couldn't even do that.

Fuck... The last lethargic, coherent thought I could manage before I felt myself slipping away.

I was already gone, and the last thing I heard was the bang of a door slamming open before the stalking predator of blackness pounced, and swamped my mind in darkness.

A few minutes earlier

Scraps of a voice traveled through the wall in the form of an echo, and at Malcolm's call, they halted. The sound caused the fur on Blue Eyes' shoulders and neck to stand on end. Something about it alarmed him. It was how familiar the voice had been, and how defensive it sounded.

"It was her." Blue Eyes murmured, and in the silence that ensued as the rest of the rescue team waited for another sound, they turned to look at him.

"Are you sure?" Graham said. "It could have been some other subject, these walls can distort-"

"I know her voice." He stopped himself just short of a hiss, but he couldn't keep the intensity out of his tone. "It was her."

"It came from further down this way..." Leah muttered.

"Then let's go." Alexander said grimly, exchanging a glance with the ape heir. The group got moving again, and within minutes, another call was heard, closer, louder, audible.

"No! Stop it! Get away!"

"Rain!" Blue Eyes, Alexander, and the majority of the group all gasped at the same time. A moment of stillness marked the calm before the storm before they all scrambled to find the nearest exit. Graham and Malcolm forced them to stop and wait to check for any OSIRIS personnel before entering once they found one, much to Blue Eyes' annoyance. He understood rationality was severely important, but his Rain needed him and it was all he could do to not openly fidget from foot to foot like a child as the sensation of ants crawled under his fur. He needed to get to his wife.

His instincts hadn't stopped screaming at him for a moment, but in the very back of his mind he was proud of how well he was keeping himself in check. He'd gotten good at that very quickly after he'd met Rain, and it was a good thing too, because he knew that things would probably have been really awkward between them if he hadn't learned how to control himself, what with when he was not being used to the effect Rain had on him, especially its suddenness and potency from when they'd fresh met. There had been a bit of a...tension, between the two of them at first, neither really knowing how to feel about the other, but luckily it quickly turned into friendship, and then, much to Blue Eyes' elation, into much more.

The scarred ape knew that women in a way that no one else did. He knew all the mannerisms she had, he knew every faint, nearly invisible scar that lined her skin, her only physical token of her past. He knew every contour and curve of her body, knew all her tastes and laughs and smiles. The simian prince knew her favorite things to eat, the trail ride routes she liked best, every underlying sentence left for discovery under her lashes. He knew where she had worked for money when she was younger, still city rooted, and he knew exactly how she had gotten each and every one of the marks on her body.

Physical and material things weren't the only thing he'd gained knowledge of, though he could easily map out all the details of her body with his eyes closed. He knew just how damaged she had really been when she first came to the forest, and he had to say, she'd been holding herself up well. The girl's self image and self esteem had been so low for so long that a good part of her had thought that it was normal for her to be singled out and abused. But, luckily, with Ash's help and a few others, Blue Eyes had managed to change that. Everyday he made sure to let her know how beautiful she was, how breathtaking she was to him as a person, and while it made her smile and her eyes twinkle beautifully with happiness, he knew she was too modest to really believe him. That didn't stop him from keeping it up.

The exit they'd found was inside a storage room of some sort, and with a few uttered words from Leah, Blue Eyes found that this was where subjects' original belongings were kept. The room was full of shelves and categorical sticky-labels. As they waited for the all clear from Malcolm, Blue Eyes' glacial irises scanned the shelves listlessly, hating the waiting from deep in his belly. It was only a moment after the thought came to him, when he picked up a scent. Just as he recognized it, Astrid started growling quietly. Liam turned to the dog, asking her what she'd found. Blue Eyes already knew what she'd found. The same thing as him. His namesake orbs pinpointed and locked on to the source of the familiar smell. On a shelf just below eye level, was a short, slender piece of wood and string, beside it a long, leather pouch with a hole punched sash attached. Both lay on top of a t-shirt, jacket and jeans, beside a pair of worn boots.

Rain's clothes and archery set.

The chimp's blood ran cold and then simmering hot in a single second. His wife was somewhere in this place, without her weapons, and without her clothes. He knew she would never take off her clothes in a place like this, she would never take them off unless she was in a place of comfort and safety. These walls fit none of those criteria. So that meant that Rain didn't willingly remove them. Blue Eyes' jaw clenched tightly to keep the anger rising up in his chest contained at the thought of someone's hands anywhere on his mate's body.

And she was without any way to protect herself.

With stiff limbs, he grabbed the contents from the shelf, showing his findings to the team. He didn't dare say anything aloud, not trusting himself not to express his anger. He didn't need to risk scaring them again, especially the boy.

"This is Rain's stuff. They took her bow." Alex said, brows raising at the unexpected discovery.

"And her clothes." Malcolm growled.

Lana reached out, silently asking for the things, and the ape handed them to her without a word. Blue Eyes felt a tug on his clenched fist, and looked down, his first instinct taking him to his two small children, but the child he saw when he looked down was not his. It was his nephew.

"We have to go now." The boy said urgently, still tugging on the ape's wrist. "Please."

"Okay, okay." Blue Eyes was able to keep his emotions out of his voice. He managed to unclench his fist and lay his hand on top of the boy's head in an attempt to offer solace for his anxiety.

"Is it clear yet?" Blue Eyes asked, wanting to get moving just as much as the boy did.

Graham took another peek outside the door. Blue Eyes gave a relieved huff when the accented man nodded. "Yes. It is."

"Blue! Help!" The scream tore down the hall, ripped inside the a-jarred door.

The group jumped into action, Blue Eyes somehow getting himself to the front of the group. Veering to the right, they barreled down the hall in pursuit of the voice. Down on his hands and knuckles, Blue Eyes propelled himself over the smooth, traction-less tiles. His fur was bristling and his fangs were fighting to lift his lips. The sound of Rain's terrified call echoed in his brain. She was afraid. Someone was doing something to her. She was being hurt, and she had called for him.

The anger coursed through his body, fueling him to get to his mate. But this place was full of nothing but stark whiteness and everything smelled the same, scents overpowered by that infuriating alcohol smell. They came to a fork in the hallway, and the ape skidded to a halt and got back on his feet, unsure of which way to go. A moment later, the group caught up with him, panting and without their bearings.

"Which way?" Blue Eyes growled, his light hues switching from left to right to straight ahead.

"It's that way! It's that way!" Leone's voice whined imperatively. When Blue Eyes turned, he saw the child kicking his legs urgently in his mother's arms, pointing down the right hallway.

The group exchanged glances, no one knowing what to do. Believe the child and hope he's somehow correct or go off a random decision and see where that takes them? Blue Eyes clenched his teeth and his fingers tightly. He didn't have time for this, he had to get to Rain!

"If Leo says she's that way, then she's that way." Lana said, giving no one any time to reply before she darted down in the direction her son had pointed them in. Too impatient to wait and think of another plan, Blue Eyes dashed after the woman.

He heard the hard footfalls of the human team running after them. The hall was filled with doors, but it wasn't barren of humans. Two guards had been walking down the hallway, likely on patrol, and when they seen the strange group barreling down towards them, they scrambled to get their hands on their guns. A growl left the ape's throat, feeling extremely annoyed at all of these inconveniences. As the two men cocked their weapons, Blue Eyes pushed his knuckles into the ground harder, using his arms to propel himself faster towards them. When he was close enough, he flung himself into the air and aimed for the guards. His palms slammed into each of their heads and he brought them down with him, rolling with the impact and using their skulls as cushions.

The collision knocked the two out, and Blue Eyes was on his feet again, running beside the rest of the team. Alexander puffed out a smirking praise between breathes. Blue Eyes didn't answer, appreciating his brother's words but in no mood to return any friendly banter, not until his Rain was back by his side.

"That door, that door!" Leone shouted.

Liam sprinted to get to the head of the group, and once he confirmed the door, the OSIRIS traitor swiped his badge and kicked the door open, the action reminding Blue Eyes for a moment of the time he had watched Rain's brother Dax kick down a door to gain access to the dam, years ago. The prince pushed the thought aside, now wasn't the time for nostalgia.

Somehow, Malcolm managed to get past all of them and was the first inside. Blue Eyes slipped in after him to see the older man take a strange human male by the shirt and punch him right in the jaw. A loud, muted smack sounded from the collision of Malcolm's fist to the man's face. Lana then darted in, Leone gone from her arms, and got between the man and Malcolm.

"Wait, wait, don't! He's a friend. He's not gonna hurt anyone!" She panted.

Blue Eyes stopped paying attention, he knew that Malcolm had the threat taken care of, and turned to the bed sitting in the room. Laying under white covers was the most beautiful creature ever to grace Blue Eyes with her presence. But a bulky, turquoise green and white mask-like object covered most of her face, and he frowned at the sight. Graham and Alexander joined him at her side as Blue Eyes lifted the mask away, his wife sleeping underneath. The ape's eyes narrowed. Just a minute ago he had heard her screaming his name in terror, how could she be asleep now? He knew it had something to do with the mask on her face, and he knew that the man facing Malcolm's wrath was the reason it was there.

"She's been anesthetized." Graham muttered.

Lana's voice piped up at the sound of that. "Why'd you put her to sleep? What are they gonna do with her?"

"She was put in for corrective procedures, that's all I know." The man answered. "Who is she? Who're the rest of them?"

"You mean alteration surgery." Alexander snapped before anyone could say anything more.

Lana held a hand for Alexander's silence as she sighed. "She's my daughter."

"That's the girl you told me about?" The man gapped, then scoffed. "I shoulda known. She's just like you."

Lana dismissed him, and Blue Eyes felt a seedling of confusion bloom. The stranger had heard of Rain before?

Graham chose that moment to butt in, up until this moment the bespectacled man had been shuffling around the room, looking for things. "Exactly how much anesthesia did you give her?"

"Somehow enough. The chick just wouldn't cooperate, she held her breath, wouldn't breathe in the anesthesia. I had to force her to breathe it with force."

A growled forced its way through Blue Eyes' clenched canines before he could do anything to gulp it down. His eyes found the stranger's, and he fit his most intense, most piercing gaze on the man. The ape only got one step in toward him before Alexander was behind him, squeezing his shoulders.

"Don't." The young man murmured. "You can kick his ass later, now's not the time." The chimp rotated his jaw once, clenching his fists hard enough to crack his knuckles. But he backed down, and placed his hands on the rail beside the bed.

To distract himself from everything that pissed him off, Blue Eyes focused his gaze back on Rain. Her hair was disheveled and free from the hair band that had been holding up her hair. Her lips were pouting, and he noticed her lashes were gleaming with unshed tears in the bright lighting. He sighed at the sight, leaning down and resting his head on an arm as he reached out to stroke her hair, indulging in the fact that his mate was close again, though he wished he could have her in his arms.

"You didn't answer my question." Graham snipped, tapping a syringe to a glass bottle.

The man answered his question before adding, "why?"

"I need to know so I give her the right amount of Ritalin." The Brit answered.

"Ritalin? But that's still only experimental." Leah said softly, worry smoothing over the edges of her voice.

"Everyone reacts differently. If my calculations are correct, it shouldn't take all that much to wake her up again." The man poked the top of an upturned bottle, and the glass cylinder filled with a clear liquid. "She'll be up-and-at-'em in no time. It should be just like an adrenaline shot to her brain."

"Should?" Blue Eyes echoed, fighting not to bristle again. He didn't like anything about this situation.

"How experimental is it? What have you tested it on?" Alexander asked.

"It's been tested on rats and a few primate species here." Graham said, ripping open a small square packet while holding the syringe in his other fingers. A fresh bloom of strong alcohol scent filled the air, and Blue Eyes' nose twitched at the stinging smell. He took out a small, square shaped cloth, soaked in some sort of alcohol. He straightened out Rain's bare arm and started tapping for a vein. It was then that Blue Eyes noticed what she was wearing. He was unsure of what she was wearing over her legs, but her torso was fitted with a white tank top, much like the ones she wore at home.

After wiping her skin, Graham injected the needle into Rain's skin, and pushed the liquid into her body. Blue Eyes' grip on the railing tightened, hating the sight, never minding the fact that he knew it was meant to help. All throughout his childhood he had heard and eavesdropped on many human horror stories of apes being stuck with needles and then feeling terribly sick or unable to breathe or unable to stop their hearts from beating out of their chests. He'd also heard stories of apes being forced to breathe in chemicals with masks and tubes like the one that had been on Rain's face.

He wanted her out of this place. Right now.

"Graham. You need to see this."

The scarred ape's attention turned to Leah, who stood in front of one of the many machines in the room. He vaguely recognized it as a computer, having seen a few laptops from human visitors in the village. Leah was staring at it, and Blue Eyes found he was unable to deduce her countenance, but he knew whatever she was seeing, it wasn't good. That expression caused his fur to begin to bristle.

"They took some of her blood. These are the results." Leah continued speaking. Graham hadn't moved, he'd been disposing of the needle and was now standing frozen, his gaze on the computer. "Come here. Now." She snapped, her voice suddenly hard.

The British man snapped out of his immobility and quickly crossed the floor to the blond woman's side. Blue Eyes glanced down at Rain, but she showed no signs of stirring. Yet. He kept a hand woven into her hair, massaging her skull to try and remedy any anxieties she might have at waking up in a strange place. He turned back to the two scientists, watching whatever played out without ceasing his ministrations.

Graham scanned the screen, and suddenly, his whole body stiffened to the point where Blue Eyes wondered if he'd fall down. "Oh my god..."

"What?" Malcolm asked.

"Do you think the blood was contaminated?" Leah asked the Brit, ignoring everyone else.

"No." Graham shook his head. "Zaius would never allow such a mistake to take place in his facility."

"But it makes no sense. How could this be correct? That girl has never stepped foot in this place before!" Leah hissed.

"Tell us what it says, dammit!" Lana suddenly snapped. "Don't talk about it as if we're not here."

The two scientists exchanged a glance. Graham's Adam's Apple bobbed once before he spoke again. "She... This test is saying that Rain is not purely human."

I have no clue how this kind of anesthesia works, I've only ever experienced the kind that numbs an area of the body, not the one that puts you to sleep. Forgive me if I got something wrong. I hope you liked it, I'll get the next one out as soon as I can. :)