Disclaimer:Don't own X-Men, just Haris and Thymes.

Summary: The destination is reached, and there are but a few precious hours the Brotherhood is left alone before the spirit breaking begins...

A/N: Just a warning. There WILL be lots of blood shed and abusive scenes. Hey, we are talking about Mutant Control. I will try my best too keep from going into too much detail about the spirit breaking process. That will be the bloodiest, and yes, the brotherhood will get hurt. And to add into the chaos, yes, Thymes is a little insane. That will be proven in the spirit breaking scenes.

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As they were being lead through the dark, damp, dungeon-like holding room; Pietro had to use every bit of will not to limp. The guards at his sides wouldn't allow him to limp, or even look behind them to insure that the others were still being brought in the same direction. He had tried once, and got rapped on his temple by the butt of a rifle. The spot was gashed open, blood flowed down the side of his face, dripping off his chin or continuing to trickle down into his shirt. His eyes were swimming, Pietro himself was trying furiously to keep his vison in focus. He was suddenly shoved sideways, coming into contact with a wall. He let out a low growl, looking towards the guards and trying to focus his eyes in on them. He could just barely make them out in the darkness, they were busy locking the chain pads into place on the walls and floor. Pietro counted the number of chain pads in his mind, shaking his head a little. There were too many for just him. He glanced around, making out three other silhouettes in the same cell. He let out a soft sigh, and closed his eyes. The pain throbbing against the sides of his skull were becoming increasingly more difficult to bear. But he made himself stay awake. He couldn't afford to sleep yet, not while the others were still under the influence of the drugs. He forced his azure eyes to open again, and glared out of the cell, even though he couldn't tell at what.

Haris and Thymes continued to walk into a well lit corridor after the newest mutnats had been safely locked away. Thymes stopped suddenly in front of a closed door, Haris nearly running into him. Pulling a large ring of keys from his pocket, Thymes thumbed through a dozen or more before giving a small grin and inserting the selected key into the lock. Haris looked above the door for a sign to where they were going, but there was no indicator as to what lay behind the door. Odd, since most every room had a sign above it, that this one was so secretive that it remained unnamed. Thymes heard the soft 'click' of the lock giving way to the key, and opened the door, ushering Haris in and closing the door behind them. The room was pitch black, at least until Thymes switched on the light. The room was huge, possibly bigger than the labs. The walls were lined with consoles of buttons and monitors, huge computers and other highly sensitive equipment. Haris felt his jaw drop slightly at the simplew awe of it all, but noticed Thymes wicked smirk and turned to his squad leader. His eyes widened and heart sank when he saw the wall behind Thymes. Whips, spiked maces, deadly looking things, most caked with blood and covered in fine pointed spikes. Thymes near black eyes seemed even more demonic as he looked over the arsenal of torture devices.

"Welcome to my favorite room in this entire facility Rookie....the Operations Room. And these...these beautiful things right here, are why it is my favorite room. Everything on this wall has been tested, and the best of the best were brought here. The perfect breaking weapons...things that will really make the freaks scream. And to see the floor covered in their poisoned blood, there's no feeling like it in the world..."

Haris felt a lump begin to grow in his throat. In his mind, he could see the near death that each weapon had caused... Thymes turned back to him, stepping to one side.

"Choose your weapon Rookie, we've got muties to break."

Haris couldn't make himself move for a moment, his eyes scanned the wall futily for a weapon without the fine pointed spikes or vices...something as close to harmless as he could come. He found none, and looked to Thymes.

"Maybe I'll just stand back...you know....watch the master the first time."

His voice was heavy with his inner pain. He knew that the 'watch the master' ploy would only work for so long before he would have to take one of the weapons in hand and use it. Thyme's stared hard at him for a moment, then shrugged.

"Guess it won't hurt."

He muttered, seeming slightly disappointed, but as he turned back to the wall, his eyes caught the wicked gleam in them again. Row by row, his deep brown eyes scanned the arsenal, finally coming to rest on a weapon straight from an old book. A mace; steel and stained with old blood. The end weighed at least 8 pounds, the way it took Thymes a few minutes to adjust to holding it. The weighted end had needle point spikes on it, as well as welted in shards of glass.

"This little baby will break the weak ones easy. So, for the tough ones, you could say we're starting out easy...."

The middle of the handle had a section of metal that overlapped, and Thymes twisted it, pulling them apart to reveal a thick, spike covered chain. Noting the surprised look on Haris's face, the twisted smirk grew.

"Incase the mutie thinks we've run out of trick."

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Lance slowly began to stir, looking around in the near pitch black light outside the cell. Inside, there was a main light hanging from high above on the ceiling, and a couple video cameras as well. The bottom three feet of the cell was concrete, from there to the ceiling where thick steel bars. He blinked a few times, then slowly sat up, expecting a mesh net to hold him down. But it had been removed and exchanged for shackles just slightly above and slightly below his elbows, so he could barely bend his arms. He grimaced, knowing exactly why they would have put them there to begin with. The serum...they weren't about to let him regain any control over his earth manipulating powers. He looked around him, finding that he was in the far left corner of the cell. Wanda was in the front of the cell in the left corner, Pietro across from her. But Pietro was closest to the door, for what reason Lance could only guess. Freddy was in the back of the cell too, still to drugged to even have stirred slightly. Wanda was beginning to wake up, but Lance knew that Pietro had already discovered that himself. The white haired boy was watching her carefully, having not noticed that Lance was awake. Leaning back against the cold concrete, Lance just watched the twins as Wanda slowly woke up. Her breathing had increased now that she was able to feel the full pain of her broken collar bone. It was when her eyes shot open that Lance braced himself for what would follow.

In her dreams, Wanda had seen everything that had happened, and knew that there was supposed to be pain...yet she could feel none. It was when the drugs wore off that she felt it...slowly at first, like nothing more than a bee sting. Then it grew rapidly, from being hit to suddenly being right beside a detonating bomb. It was then that her eyes shot open. Without having control over her usual ability to find pain, she uttered a sharp scream for a moment, laying back on the floor so she wouldn't have to look at anyone. She had for a brief moment seen Lance, cringing a little at the shrillness, then Pietro. But she closed her eyes, face twisted into a raged snarling look. The pain, it had no words vile enough to even begin describing it. She closed her eyes when she saw the sympathy coming from the two boys, she didn't want to even know they were there just yet.

Pietro watched his sister in silence, though his eyes spoke volumes. He knew how she felt, but could only guess at how much pain she was in. He said nothing to her, even though the threat of being hexed was no longer there. He looked over at Lance once the rock tumbler thought it safe to relax. Lance remained silent too, then looked up at one of the camera's. It had moved to focus on Wanda when she had screamed, so he figured the were programed to follow out-of-the ordinary sounds. Pietro looked up at it too, raised his upper lip into a snarl, then looked away. His claustrophobic nature was beginning to set in, he was surprised he had even made it here without freaking out. The chains seemed to get heavier, like they were trying to pin him flat against the ground, and the walls seemed to be inching closer inwards, towards him, cutting off all hope of escape... He cringed and closed his eyes, Lance took note of it.

"Alright?"

Was all he said, for he seemed to know the irony in the question. Of course nothing was 'alright' now, everything was a nightmare. Pietro shook his head.

"What do you think?"

Lance shrugged a little, looking around and dropping the subject. His eyes were caught by something creeping over the wall in the next cell at the left.

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Two small, pale pink objects slowly made their way to the top of the wall, then there was a pause. Lance strained his eyes, recognizing the objects as hands...very small hands compaired to his. He didn't mention them to Pietro or Wanda, just sat and watched. Slowly, a face appeared through the bars, the face of a small girl. Her hair was dark brown, with natural light blonde highlight in it. Her face was a little moon shaped, like an eskimo, her eyes held a familiar kind of oriental narrowness to them. The color of her eyes was what gave her mutation away. Her pupils were a sapphire blue, fading into icy blue iris's without a distinctive line to separate the two. Her bangs were longer than the rest of her hair, which was cut at the base of her skull, while her bangs where parted to either side of her face and hit just below her shoulder, or so Lance guessed. He could tell that she wasn't that tall, because her fingers dug into the concrete so that she would have an anchor to pull herself up to see over the wall. When she saw him staring at her with his slightly confused deep brown eyes, she dropped back down to the floor of her cell with a small 'thump'. He waited for a minute, to see if she would come back over the wall, but she never did. He sighed a little, leaning back against the concrete again.

Pietro never looked up, his head was hung, his eyes closed. Blood continued to drip idoly from his face and onto the concrete floor, but he made no move to stop it. There was a throbbing in his skull that he couldn't surpress, and it was becoming so bad that he almost wished that the agent had missed his leg and hit his heart instead. Anything to be kept from this kind of pain.

From her cell, Fiona; better known to the rest in the cages as Venom, just sat and listened to the others beside her. She had been here ever since she could remember, her grandfather had brought her here when she had started to grow scales and her lips had started to bow. She loved her grandpa Barson very much, he had promised her that they would find a cure so that she could go outside again. The scientists had never seemed to like her much, but they had found a way to delay the changes occuring. Now 9 years old, she had forgotten what outside looked like. Slowly, she got back to her feet, standing on tip toe and looking over at the four mutants beside her. Her blue eyes held much sorrow. She had seen others like her treated badly, but they had brutalized these four. The sounds of footsteps made her jump back down. Looking out the bars of her cage, she saw Thymes walking. Grimacing when he ripped open the other mutants door, she watched him grab the white haired boy. She bowed her head. She couldn't watch the violence. She knew what was happening...

Pietro struck out at Thymes as he tugged roughly on the chain around the collar on his neck, Pietro's fist connected with the larger mans jaw. But Thymes only smiled wider.

"I'm gonna enjoy breaking you."

He snarled, then grabbed Pietro by the throat and lifted him off the ground. His hand wrapped almost all the way around the younger boys throat, constricting so tightly that Pietro could hardly breathe. Without warning, Thymes slung him at the bars of the cage next to him. Pietro hit the wall with his back, his head slamming into the bars. For a moment he stood there quivering, holding onto the top of the wall to steady himself. To his surprise, there came a small voice behind him.

"Please don't act tough. If you do, he'll only kill you trying to break you..."

Pietro was only able to get a glance and the oriental girl that was speaking to him before he felt the collar on his neck lurch forwards and felt himself jerked off of his feet by the force. Without waiting to give Pietro the oppertunity to get up, Thymes began walking, dragging Pietro along the ground as the white haired boy grappled with the collar, trying to keep it from cutting through hihs throat.

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Lance and Wanda watched in horror as Pietro was drug away to God knows where. They exchanged glances, then heard a door slam and knew that they were gone. Lance struggled up to his knees, looking into the next cage. He had heard the girl talking to Pietro.

"What do you know about surviving in this place."

Lance growled at the girl. Wanda had refused to move. She had found a spot that didn't send fire shooting through her chest and neck, and she was staying there as long as she could. Lance narrowed his eyes when he saw the child. The way she looked told him that her age was still a single digit, and the lack of chains on her made him suspicious. She had to know something they didn't. Her continual blue eyes stared up at him, fearfully for a moment. She obviously wasn't used to being spoken too.

"Well?"

He snarled again, but this time his snarl was met by Wanda's.

"Who the hell are you talking to?"

"This kid over here."

Wanda turned her eyes towards Lance, and scoffed.

"Ok smart one, ask a little kid. But your not going to get much out of her I'll bet."

"We'll see about that..."

Lance reached through the bars as far as his chains would allow and grabbed at the girl. She jumped back, and to his surprise emitted a serpentine hiss.

"What the hell..."

He withdrew his hand.

"What's the matter Lance, afraid of a little kid?"

Wanda scoffed. There was no sarcasm in her voice, only anger, annoyance and pain. Lance looked towards the scarlet clad form.

"She...hissed at me..."

Wanda closed her eyes, looking as if she might have considered laughing.

"Well, you are a genius, aren't you? This is only a Mutant Control lab, now why would there be more mutants than just us here?"

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Pietro reluctantly followed Thymes down the winding halls, past more empty cages, some occupied by half dead mutants. A few had been so badly mutalated that they were no more than blobs of flesh with what seemed to be limbs. Pietro forced himself to focus on the back of Thymes head, wishing at that moment that he had Summer's powers so he could fry the agents brains out.

Haris listened to the approaching sounds of foot steps, horror reflecting from his eyes. Thymes was mad, fit to be in the mutants place...he would kill the teen if Haris wasn't there. His eyes flickered up to the heavy iron door as Thymes strode inside the thick steel walls of the room. Pietro limped along behind him, a snarl plasted on his face. Haris hung his head slightly, wishing the boy would give it up. He would only get himself killed. The smirk on Thymes face was only magnified now, greater by far than the deadly smirk he had worn in the weapons room. Haris watched as he chained Pietro to the middle of the room, right below where the only light was, before slinking silently into the shadows where Haris was.

"Watch and learn Rookie."

Thymes hissed, and began stalking around in a tight circle around the mutant, just out of the lights reach.

"You are here to be...re-educated. First lesson, repeat after me. 'I am a freak'."

Pietro stared at the ground, trying to listen to where the voice was coming from. But it was no use...the ceiling was domed, making the voice echo. Pietro ignored the girls warning. He wasn't going to give them the pleasure of thinking he had been broken. He wasn't a God damn slave, not to anyone.

"Sorry, never did like school."

He scoffed, and soon realized why the child had warned him. Out of the shadows, Thymes sprung like a panther, smacking Pietro across the chest with the end of the mace and springing backwards again.

Pietro gasped for breath, sinking slightly as he attempted to regain his composure and control over his lungs. He did dare look down at the huge gashes left where the mace had struck, he could feel his stomach coated in his own blood already. From all around him, Thymes voice echoed.

"Wrong answer, mutie. Lets try again, shall we? 'I am a freak.'"

"Go to hell."

Again, Thymes sprung at him, this time from behind, raking the mace along Pietro's back.

"Wrong again. Unless your trying to see how much blood you have to loose to die. Which by all means is fine with me. Seeing you dead will only make your friends cave in more..."

Without warning, the mace flew at Pietro again, knocking his legs out from under him. He hit the ground hard, coughing up blood when he finally felt that he could move at all. Thymes stood over him, smirking.

"One more time...'I am a freak'."

"Yeah, you are."

The mace came down hard on Pietro's shoulder, making him finally scream out in pain. Thymes eyes were blood thirsty, his tongue rolled over his lips. Haris's eyes widened. Thymes was insane...he had to be. Stepping out from the shadows, Haris stared at Thymes.

"The boss wants them all alive...remember?"

Thymes shot Haris a deadly glare, for he had dared remind him. Reaching down and grabbing Pietro by the back of the neck, Thymes pulled him into the air. Giving a swift flick of his wrist, the mace opened up, and he dropped Pietro at the same time grabbed the other end of the mace. Before Pietro could react, the chain was tight around his neck. He felt himself suffocating.

"I'm not going to ask you to repeat again. 'I am a freak'."

Gasping for breath, Pietro finally caved in a little. He couldn't take it any more, he could feel his blood draining from his body...like feeling himself die....Then everything went black, and Pietro passed out.

Thymes released the chain, cursing loudly. He glared over at Haris, and he slowly smirked.

"Never broke him...more fun for next round. Take him back..."

Then Thymes stormed out of the room. Haris looked at the crumbled body of Pietro, removing the chain pads from the floor and slowly dragging the teen back. He cringed though, for the fact that he had to increase the cruelty by doing this. But the other worker would know that he had done the merciful act of carrying Pietro back from the blood stains that would be left. He grimaced also at the thought that he would be the one dishing out the pain next time...

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A/N: *heavy sigh* I think that sucked. But my friends who have read it said it was good. I don't know...I just am not in much of a writing mood right now, so everything I write, I say it sucks. So, it's all up to you, dear reviewers. Please, no horrible flames though. Just tell me if it needs improving or not. If so, I'll go back and work on it. So, please R&R...*sinks into 'un-happy place'*

~Dragonmistriss