Uh... Hi everyone.

Okay so I am SO sorry about the wait but I've been kinda busy and I was taking a mental health retreat and there was some writer's block but, yeah. Sorry. I do feel really bad about the wait but I hope this super long chapter will help those who had to wait.

Again, a very big thank you to my editor, Dani, and her very speedy edits and thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter.

Enjoy!

"…here it is," Winry said quietly as she stopped in her tracks.

Edward, Ling, and Lan Fan all stopped and followed Winry's eyes and saw a small house. The house appeared to be made out of concrete bricks, making it much harder for the thick tropical vegetation to overtake it. Most of the outside of the building was covered in green vegetation, blending it in with the rest of the forest. Winry lead them forwards; no one spoke.

They had been traveling for several days now and they had finally found their supposed safe house. Edward nearly broke down and cried when he saw it; his shoulder and his knee hurt so badly, but he hardly ever asked for rest stops anymore. Now, hopefully, he could sit for a while without having to move around again.

Winry forced the heavy metal door open with his shoulder and went inside. Everything in the small building was covered in a thick layer of dust and from what Edward could see, there seemed to be very little furniture in the small house, if it could be called a house. It was one room, probably ten feet by ten feet, and held what appeared to be a small table in the center of the room with one of its two chairs knocked on its side, and a small stove in the corner. There were two dusty and cracked windows with one on either side of the house, and underneath all of the dust, the floor was made of concrete.

"Well, no one seems to be here," Ed commented before he sneezed.

"Maybe," Winry muttered as she got onto her hands and knees and began moving the dust aside.

"Um, what are you doing?" Ed asked as the three watched Winry.

"I'm looking…for…" Winry's eyes lit up as she brushed aside some dust and began pulling at something, causing a horrible screeching sound. "For the door that leads to the cellar."

Ed rushed forwards to help her lift the metal door and was instantly covered in a shower of rust. Once the door was up, Winry let out a huff and wiped her face on her bandana.

"Well, I guess we really are the first ones here," Winry sighed, sitting back. "Not with all this rust and dust here."

"What's down there?" Ling asked, peering down into the dark underground.

"Um, let me think," Winry muttered, pausing to wipe her face with her bandana. "I think there's a well or something you can get clean water from. Not much else from what I can remember."

"Should we go down there?" Lan Fan asked.

"Yeah. I think it's a little cooler."

And the heat was rather oppressive in the house.

Winry felt around the edge of the opening until her fingers caught something and unlatched the swing-down stairs. Ed studied them and even thought they were made of metal, they seemed to be a rather rusty and he wasn't sure if they would hold his weight. Ed looked up at Winry and sighed.

"Ladies first?" He asked with a hint of a smile.

"Fine, you baby," Winry muttered before she began to lower herself down into the dark depths of the basement.

Ed shot her an annoyed look before she had disappeared, to which she smirked at. Things seemed to have mellowed a bit between the two blonds ever since Winry's one and only moment of weakness. Winry seemed to be less of a drill sergeant and Ed tended to hold back some of his harder comments when they fought. Truth be told, he was happier now that they weren't at each other's throats anymore. Their cease-fire also helped Ed remember how he felt when he first saw her…

"Well, isn't this place just a palace," Ling muttered sarcastically as he looked around the gloomy, dirty basement. "I better not touch anything or else I'll get a staff infection or something."

"Quit whining," Winry growled half-heartedly as she felt around the dusty walls of the dark room. "I know there's a lantern somewhere…"

The three stood huddled together at the base of the ladder while Winry looked around for the lantern. After a minute of groping around in the dark, there was the hiss of a gas lamp and a small ball of light came out of the far right corner.

"It's not much, but make yourselves at home," she said as she hung the lantern from the ceiling with a length of rope.

While Winry moved around, lighting another lamp, Ed looked around the cellar. It was larger than the small house above; nearly twice as large. On the opposite wall from the ladder, there was a rusty facet with a metal trough underneath it. The floor seemed to be merely a dirt floor dug from the earth but after some close inspection, Ed found something hard and sturdy underneath the dirt. The walls were made out of large blocks of stone and there were three small windows at the very top of the room that Winry unlatched, letting in some fresh air and light.

"That's a little better, don't you think?" she asked as she peered out of the three-inch wide window. "We'll have to close them when it rains but for right now they'll help."

"Yeah," Ed agreed. "This place is in some need of fresh air. When was the last time someone came down here?"

"I honestly couldn't tell you," Winry said with a shrug. "My best guess would be maybe eighteen, nineteen years ago. I know my parents haven't been here in that long but maybe someone else has since then. I've never been here though. My parents only gave me the general idea of what was here."

"Who else knows where this place is?" Ling asked as he walked around the cellar.

"My parents. My grandmother. Um… some of the guys from the Automail Bunker probably. If they didn't know where this place was, they were given coordinates."

"Do you think anyone will be here soon?" Lan Fan asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. All of the groups probably had at least one automail patient with them and I doubt any of them were as persistent as Captain Grumpy over here."

Winry grinned at Ed, who scowled. He would love to yell how he was only pushing himself because Winry had looked so pathetic as she worried about her parents but he held it in. He had promised not to tell the others about her meltdown but sometimes when she was be especially snotty he had just wished that he could blurt it out.

"Anyways, it could be a few days before anyone gets here," Winry said before she moved towards the water spout and brushed away some spider webs. "This water should be safe to drink.

At first, the water came out an unappealing rust color but after a minute of clearing out the pipes, the water ran clear and only tasted mildly of rust.

"So, do you guys want to stay down here or go back up?"

"It's cooler down here," Ed said with a sigh as he leaned against the cold, slightly damp wall.

"Yeah, and the water's down here," Ling said as he filled up one of his water bottles.

"Well then, let's set up camp and wait," Winry said as she began pulling things from her pack. "This could take a while."

As their truck sped through the streets of Central, Alphonse, Russell, Fletcher, and Mei were greeted with hisses and boos from the citizens. They knew that this truck was filled with runners. With every passing minute, everyone's pulse seemed to increase, no one spoke anymore. Whenever the truck would slow down or stop, Al's heart always sunk, thinking that they were finally at the laboratory but the truck would always move after a moment and his stomach would unclench slightly. But after twenty minutes of this, the truck made its way through some heavy metal gates and Al knew that they had finally arrived.

"Heh, looks like it's the end of the line for you cowards," one of the men chortled from the front seat.

Al set his jaw and glared at the air in front of him. In his opinion, these men were the real cowards. Low-lives who managed to get into good grace with people high above and who managed to save their own neck by turning in people who didn't want to fight in some pointless war. Because really, this war and most of the wars Amestris has had were indeed pointless. People hardly even knew what this war was about. Probably some Aerugan noble sneezed on an Amestrian without saying sorry.

This countries existence is nothing but one long and never ending war, Al though miserably as the truck came to a halt. And how stable is a country built up on perpetual wars?

Al would have loved to ask what Russell and Fletcher thought about this but at that moment, he heard the doors slam shut and footsteps moving around the side of the van. A few seconds later, the men arrived, leering at them. One held a gun that was pointed into the back while the other two held handcuffs.

"Now, we're gonna handcuff ya and then take you inside. If you resist, I shoot ya. Got it?" said the man with the gun, who appeared to be the leader. He them motioned to the other two with his head. "Get in there and cuff 'em."

A large man who had horrible body odor and a very thin man who seemed incapable of standing completely still moved into the back and quickly hand-cuffed all of them. The thin man paused for a minute after he had cuffed Mei and smiled lecherously at her while he twirled one of her numerous braids around a dirty finger a nail. He moved his dirty, unshaven face close to hers before he spoke.

"Ya sure are perdy," he muttered before grabbing onto his face. "I should do hope they don't mess ya up too bad. I'd like to get some fun out of ya first."

Mei cringed visibly and tried to get her face out of the man's hand.

"Let go of me!" she cried, trying desperately to get out of his grip. "You will not treat me like this! I am royalty!"

"Oh really?" asked the man. "Well then maybe we can sells ya and get a pretty penny in return. I wonder how much a man would pay for someone clamin' to be royalty?"

"No price would be high enough for me," she said quietly as tears sparkled in the very corners of her eyes.

"Really? Cuz I gots a lot of money, little lady," he whispered as he moved his other hand to her upper thigh. "I bet'cha I could meet your price."

Mei turned and gave him a look of utmost loathing.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not into bestiality," she said scathingly. "I would never sleep with a pig."

SLAP!

The man had removed his hand from her face and leg and slapped her. The force of the slap had knocked her to the ground and a loud noise resonated afterwards. Before he knew what he was doing, Al was pushing himself up and rammed into the man with his head. The man, caught off guard, fell to the ground next to Mei, who was still in shock slightly.

Al ignored the shouts from the other people but glared at the man as he pushed himself from the ground. The man wiped the blood from his lip, which had split due to the force of falling on his face, before he slugged Al right in the jaw. Al turned to see the man getting ready to hit him again when a shot rang out from behind them.

At first, Al had though that the man had shot someone, probably him, but when he felt no pain or heard no screams from the other occupants of the truck, he realized that no one was hurt. The man had in fact shot into the air to break up the fight, surprising Al.

"Vince," the man barked. "Quit playing with your food and get out here."

The man, Vince, glared at Al before spitting on him and then jumped out of the truck.

"Lawrence," the fatter man turned to look at the man, "Go run up to the lab and tell them the rats have arrived."

"Yes, sir," he said in a low voice before he crawled out of the truck and began waddling out of view.

"Now, Blondie," the man turned his eyes to Al and pointed his gun lazily at him. "Since you seem so ken to spill your blood, you'll be going first."

Al felt his stomach drop to his shoes but he kept his face set and continued to glare at the man. In the back of his mind, he felt he knew what his brother would say if he had seen this scene: There's a time and place for chivalry and this was not it, dumbass!

And by the looks on Russell and Fletcher's faces, he felt that they would say the same thing. Trying to stay calm, Al turned his head and looked at Mei, who had sat up but was still looking quite dazed.

"Are you alright?" he asked, eyeing the large red mark on her left cheek.

Mei's face grew redder and her eyes, now as large as dinner plates, were shinning with what he assumed were unshed tears. She brought her shoulders up in an attempt to hide her face before she nodded.

"Come on now," the leader growled before he moved and grabbed tightly onto Al's upped arm and began pulling. "You're wasting time, rat!"

Al looked at Russell and Fletcher, who both were wearing unreadable expressions, and looked pleadingly at them. It was his fault that they were here and it would haunt him for the rest of his life, even though his life might not last much longer…

"So Edward, what were you doing before you were forced into this hell-hole?" Winry asked an hour later as they ate a meager meal.

"Working," he muttered through a mouthful of cheese and crackers. "At a store. With some friends."

"No school or anything?" Winry asked, surprised.

"Nope."

"That's quite the shock," she said before she sunk her teeth into an apple.

"Well, it's not like it was my first choice," Ed said with a small sigh.

"What do you mean by that?" Ling asked.

"Well… this war, the people in Central who do lots of experiments and shit for the war, they were always looking for people to help."

Ed took a long sip of water before he continued.

"They took my dad when I was eleven," he said. "I haven't seen him since then."

Ling and Lan Fan gave looks of sympathy while Winry continued to eat her apple, staring at him with curiosity.

"But my dad told me that they would be looking for more people and if this war didn't continue for long, there would probably be another war soon after it. But he said that the people would be looking at me and my brother, to see if we would be as useful as he was. So… to protect myself, I just laid low. Didn't show my full potential. I allowed my brother, Al, to go further his education as long as he was careful…"

Ed paused while his thoughts drifted to Al and the other two blond boys. Had they made it to Xing yet? Or were they still battling through the desert? Had they even made it to the desert? Were they captured, rotting in some jail somewhere? If Al was caught… Ed didn't know what he would do. It was just so much easier to see him lying low in Xing, even if it wasn't the most realistic view.

"But it didn't matter in the end anyhow," Ed said, bringing himself back to reality. "I still got caught up in this dumb war and Al is running for his life out there."

No one spoke for several minutes while they all though over what Ed had just said. The first person to speak was Winry, who had finished her apple and now tossed the core into the corner.

"You're brother… is he as stubborn and bull-head as you?" Winry asked before she began guzzling down a water bottle.

Ed scowled and glared slightly at her before answering.

"Stubborn, yes. Bull-headed, no," Ed said before letting a small smile come to his face. "Al was always way more level headed than me."

"Well then I'm sure he's fine," she said confidently.

"How so?"

"Because," she said with a roll of her eyes. "If you managed to survive a war and escape then I'm sure your more level headed brother can travel a desert. I'm sure he's fine."

Ed stared at her for a moment as he tried to understand the blond girl. One moment, she's at his throat, calling him a complete idiot and then the next, she trying to comfort him. He would never understand her.

"Right," he said with a nod, willing himself to believe in the words. "I'm sure Al's lying in the sun somewhere in Xing, drinking a smoothie or something."

If only those words could be true.

The man, who Al later found out was name Wilkes, had walked him into the dim building and down a hallway before he reached a pair of metal double doors which were flanked with two guards. He told them fresh meat before he handed him off to one of the guards and told him to take him to lab room B9. Now Al was being lead down a pristine white hallway, a doorway popping up every couple of feet. None of the doors had windows but all were labeled with a letter and number: A1…A2…A3… Every now and again, a wail of pain would come from one of the rooms. He tried not to think about how that could be him in a matter of minutes.

The guard pushed him on to a lift and pressed the number two button before they moved upwards. The second floor was just the same as the last except now all the rooms started with the letter B. It would take him less than a minute for them to reach his designated room. His heart hammered against his chest, as if it were trying to escape from its prison before the pain came.

Finally, they had reached the room B9. The guard pulled out a ring of keys and took a moment to find the right key while his other hand gripped onto Al's wrists. In no time at all, it seemed, the man had selected the right key and opened the door.

"Welcome to your new home," he said emotionlessly as he pushed Al inside.

While the guard locked the door, Al looked around his room, desperate to maybe find a way out. Like everything else, it was white. White walls, white floors, white examination table with white restraints. He noticed that under the table, lay a drain. He didn't want to think of why they would need a drain in a room. There was no window, no other door. The only way out was currently being locked securely behind him.

"Get on the bed, rat," the guard said in a bored voice, jabbing a gun barrel into the small of his back.

Doing as he was told, Al pulled himself onto the bed, trying his best not the shake like a leaf, even though he knew he was failing miserably. The guard then began to tie the restraints, around his chest, his waist, and his knees, all one notch too tight, making sure that their rat would stay good and stuck in its place.

"Stay put," the guard mumbled as he moved towards the door, as if moving was an option. "You'll be seen to in a moment."

The door opened and then closed, leaving Al all alone, waiting for his torturer to come. There was no clock in the room, so he had no idea if he had lain there for mere seconds, or maybe minutes or possibly even hours. But eventually, he heard the audible click the lock on the other side of the door before it opened. The table was turned away from the door so it was impossible to see who had entered.

Al continued to lie there, waiting for the person to say something, do anything. But they didn't. The person continued to stand where he couldn't see and it unnerved him greatly. Finally, Al had had enough and spoke in a voice that sounded much more courageous than he felt.

"Show yourself, you coward!"

"…Alphonse."

Al blinked, confused. The voice had sounded not only calm, if not a little surprised, but vaguely familiar. The man, he knew it was a man now from the voice, took a deep breath and began to take agonizingly slow steps towards him. The man stood behind him for a moment, making it impossible for Al to see him, for a moment before he moved into a spot where he could see.

A small involuntary gasp came out of his mouth at the site of the man. The man he had not seen in seven years but would know anywhere. With his long, gold locks pulled back into a low pony tail, tawny eyes hidden behind rectangular spectacles, and his tall, sturdy build covered up in long white lab coat.

"Alphonse," he repeated, his voice slightly breathless. "You've gotten so big…"

Al didn't know what to say, for he seemed to lose his inability to string words together. But after a few moments spent struggling to comprehend what was going on, one word finally formed in his brain and made it out of his mouth.

"Dad."

MWAH-AH-AH! God I love this chapter. I think I love it so much because it's reminiscent to Brotherhood (oh I miss you, you lovely story...) But yeah, awesome cliff hanger- for me. Horrible cliffhanger for you. Sorry but that's the way my evil mind works.

Hopefully I'll be able to update way earlier than two months but who knows. In like, a week and half I'm starting school and I've never been this busy. Honestly, I'll have three days a week where I don't have anything to do after school until November and then I'll probably have to get a job. So yeah... gonna be busy. Sucks.

Enough ranting, please send a review my way and I hope you like it. :)

-FSK