Chapter 11

Warning, this chapter will be graphic! Thanks to juvinity, Lionnara and Suzy-Chapstick for the reviews! I've been averaging 3 reviews a chapter. Please review! I want to know what people think! Anyways, enjoy!

When I woke up I immediately remembered what had happened, feeling the open, raw wound of Aiden's missing presence. As I opened my eyes I realized that I was restrained to a chair in what looked like a storage room, as I looked up I saw Ryan standing with his hands tied to the ceiling, staring at me with worried eyes. Both of our military jackets had been removed and all we were wearing on our top halves were our white undershirts, I felt as though I would never be warm again.

'You ok?' Ryan asked 'What happened to Aiden?'

'He's gone…' I whispered 'He couldn't pass the barrier… I can't feel him.'

As Ryan considered this looking flabbergasted, three men walked into the room, I recognised the man that Aiden had possessed, and he was clearly in charge. He stepped between the two of us 'I'm not sure who you are, why you're here or what happened at the barrier, but you will tell me.' He spoke with a thick Chinese accent but was still easy to understand. I looked up at Ryan and he shook his head- no matter what we couldn't tell them anything. That was the most stressed thing during training, you could never give up valuable information, you would die first.

As one of the men approached me I knew it was up to Aiden to get me out of here, he had to get rid of the barriers blocking him from me, otherwise I saw no other way out of this.

'Who are you?' The man asked.

I said nothing.

-Whack!- the sound of the lead pipe colliding with my ribs was also accompanied by a loud crack- the crack of at least one rib breaking. I doubled over as much as I could in pain.

'Who do you work for?' The general asked, calmly.

'Fuck off.' I panted.

The man passed the pipe to his left hand and punched me across the face with his right, splitting my lip.

'Why are you here?' The general had stepped back in front of me, glaring at me.

I looked right into his eyes and glared back, we were locked in each other's gaze for a few moments before he backed up letting the goon step back in punching me just above the spot he had hit a few moments before. I felt my eye starting to swell and I shook my head, the blows getting to me.

The general steps back in front of me 'What happened at the barrier, what did you do to me?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.' I just continued to stare at him defiantly.

This continued for what seemed like hours, he would ask the same questions over and over again, I wouldn't answer or I would tell him off until I could barely keep my head up. I was beaten to a pulp and cut with a knife until the chair was sitting in a puddle of blood. My left eye had completely swollen over and my chest burned every time I breathed in. It felt like all of my ribs had been broken.

Not only had I stayed quiet but so had Ryan, quietly watching and not being able to do anything about it, I was just glad that they were still focused on me. But goddamnit where was Aiden, I couldn't help but worry the longer time went on without him showing up to help.

'I will ask you one last time.' The general said, angry that the usual torture methods weren't working.

'Who are you?!' he screamed it at me, I couldn't even answer if I wanted to, my head slumped down onto my heaving chest. He waited less than five seconds before he took a bowie knife from the man who had been torturing me and plunged it into my thigh all the way to the hilt. I screamed out with more energy than I thought I had left.

Right after he stabbed me I heard a crash followed by multiple screams and immediately felt Aiden reconnect to me. Thank god, I thought to him weakly I thought something happened to you. Please help, Aiden. They're going to kill us.

Concern and anger mixed together as I felt him racing to where we were.

The general barked out an order to the other two men in the room with us in Chinese, he looked worried. After they left he turned to Ryan and said 'Your friend was very brave, and for it we will watch her bleed out. Now what about you, do you think you can hold out as well?'

'I won't tell you anything.' I heard Ryan sneer, followed by a sudden choking. I looked up as far as I could trying to see what was happening. Through my bangs I saw Aiden choking the man who had caused me so much pain. As soon as the general dropped to the ground dead Aiden burst the ropes holding Ryan to the ceiling. He dropped to the ground and immediately ran over to me, he pulled off his own ropes and then began to work on mine, Aiden helping.

'Bella, can you hear me? I'm so sorry, I couldn't tell them.' He said to me pleading.

'I know.' I said shortly, while I didn't blame him it was hard not to feel resentful when he was able to stop my torture at any time and didn't. Aiden saw this in my head and immediately turned on him, he began to choke him when I said with as much force as he could 'Aiden stop please, we need him.' He stopped shortly after I spoke, choking him for a few extra seconds.

Ryan collapsed to the floor gasping 'Aiden I'm sorry, I couldn't tell them, they can't know any of that information.'

I heard Ryan moving around but I was too exhausted to look up to see what he was doing, I heard the sound of ripping fabric. He came over to me and crouched in front of me lifting my head up to look me in the eyes. 'Bella, I have to pull the knife out of your leg, you can't walk with it in. I'm sorry; it's really going to hurt.' I just nodded, relaxing as much as I could; I waited for him to pull it out. The knife was so long the tip poked out of the bottom of my thigh.

Knowing that counting made it so much worse, he pulled the knife out in one clean movement and I felt my vision grey. When I came back to I was being carried from the room on Ryan's shoulder.

'Stop…' I slurred 'put me down, I can walk.' Ryan gently set me on the ground and my leg buckled, he caught me before I hit the ground.

'Right.' He said pulling my left arm over his shoulders, mostly carrying me from the room. 'We need to get out of here, now.' I looked up and saw the chaos unfolding in front of me. There were entities everywhere, Aiden showed me that when he flipped the switch shutting down the barrier it also released all of the entities that they had trapped and they were wreaking havoc. I saw a man running away down the hall away from the broken wall that was pouring water into the confined space. As he ran he was grabbed from behind by a spirit and dragged down a different hallway screaming.

'Aiden… Keep us safe.' I said to him and he immediately put a shield around the three of us. I stopped, forcing Ryan to stop. 'We can't leave, we have to get to the condenser, we can't leave it open like this, they will continue to pour out of it.'

Ryan deliberated for a minute, torn between saving himself and potentially saving the world from the entities escaping from the rift. 'Fuck!' he suddenly said, his mind made up. 'Aiden, lead the way to the condenser.'

Ryan half dragged half carried me, following Aiden as he led Ryan to the condenser by breaking things in his path. He suddenly stopped in a large open room with a huge window looking onto the ocean floor. About fifty feet from the window sat a huge rift to the infraworld writhing, spewing out entities.

'Aiden, you have to destroy it.' I said as Ryan lowered me to the ground moving over to the large pool in the ground, much like the one we had emerged from in the submarine, I watched Ryan as he went over to the pool, pulled a switch and a submarine was lifted from the water. He exclaimed in triumph and began getting it set up for us to leave in.

I closed my eyes and entered Aiden's mind as he made his way to the condenser. He had three separate entities attack him on the way but he was able to fight them off pretty easily. There were three projectors that gave the rift its power, he ripped them apart one by one and by the time he got to the last one, all of the entities that had spilled out were being sucked back in, the portal was collapsing.

Ryan ran back and hauled me to my feet as an involuntary scream left my lips from the pain in my leg, he was trying to run us back, and I tried to keep up as good of a pace as I could. Ryan dropped me into the submarine as Aiden caught me, stopping me from jarring my leg any worse, I looked down and realized that Ryan had tightly wrapped my wound with the fabric he had ripped from the general's jacket. Ryan ran past me to get to the controls of the submarine and it roared to life under me.

Aiden held me in place on the floor of the walkway as Ryan pushed the submarine to its limits, trying to get as far away as we could. We were maybe a hundred feet from the surface when the portal finally collapsed on itself, sending a shockwave out so powerful that it blew out of the engines of the submarine, which shut down and stalled.

'Fuck!' I heard Ryan yell from the cockpit. A few seconds later he came running down the walkway and crouched in front of me.

'Bella, we're sinking, we have to bail out. I think that we can make it to the surface, Aiden will have to help you though.' Ryan said to me quickly.

Aiden was ready, I nodded. Ryan pulled me to my feet as Aiden blasted open the door letting in a torrent of freezing cold water and we dove out. I felt myself being pulled by Ryan at first before Aiden seized both of us and blasted us to the surface. Ryan pulled himself up on the frozen ground and then leaned over to yank me up beside him.

I don't think that I had ever been so cold, I could feel myself starting to pass out, whether from the cold or blood loss I couldn't be sure. I also felt Aiden start to panic and take off looking for something to help us, after a few minutes he returned followed by a Chinese armored military vehicle- it was Vince and Nick, they had found us. They ran out to us and loaded us up into the truck; they were draping my winter coat around me and trying to warm me up when I finally gave in to the darkness.

I've been releasing these chapters everyday so far but I don't think I'll have a chance to write the next chapter until Sunday, sorry! Please, please review! I know I'm being annoying but hearing what people have to say is a huge inspiration to keep writing. Thanks again for reading!