Chapter 10

Cyborg exploded around the corner with a strength and speed that surprised me, considering he had been inactive all those years. He shot point-blank blasts at each of the unfortunate guards we had come upon, killing each of them instantly.

I took out the final one with a series of kicks. When each of them had been taken down, we began dragging their bodies back to the storage room.

As we pulled the last of them inside and shut the door, I reflected that touching their dead bodies hadn't even phased me. A few years ago, I would have been horrified. Not any more. I had seen so much death and carnage, a few more dead didn't mean anything anymore.

I looked back at the closed door, hoping that no one would discover their bodies for some time. We would need all the time we could get.

We continued as silently as we could down the hallway, searching for the others.

Metallic. Cold. Lethal. Those were the words that sprung to mind as we crept through the unchanging hallways. Nothing seemed to change. The flicker of lights cast a harsh contrast of shadow and light intersecting across the floor.

The doors all looked the same. The hallways twisted and curved. It was hard to say how long we crept undetected through the bowels of Slade's stronghold. Hard to know in a place that never changes.

We snuck around the guards that we could. Took out the ones we couldn't. Hide their bodies. Kept going. Hours, minutes. No telling how long it went on.

A scream.

It wrenched through the silence as skillfully as if someone had stabbed us.

We leapt, turned, jerked around, searching to see if we had been discovered. Nothing. No one on either side of us. Silence. Cold and deafening surrounded us once again. Then...

Another scream.

The sound hit me with a jolt. Only one other time had I heard a noise so terrible.

I had been on a routine mission, searching out an abandoned site. It had already been evacuated and we were searching the rubble. It was quiet.

And then the scream. It sounded as horrible as the one that had sliced the silence moments before.

We had all drawn our weapons and gone searching for the source. An Atlantian as it turned out.

His leg was pinned beneath the rubble. His unearthly shriek continued as we tried to free him. His heart pounding, eyes terrified. In order to release him, we were finally ordered to tranquilize him.

He didn't survive the trip back to the base. He refused to eat, and his sleep was wracked with nightmares beyond imagining. He wouldn't even let anyone touch him. We, his own people, who would no more hurt him than injure ourselves.

Later we found out that he had been a member of an spy team sent to infiltrate the building and make it vulnerable to attack. We also learned that they had been discovered and captured. They had all been presumed dead.

But their fate had been much worse. Slade's methods of interrogation only existed in the deepest, darkest nightmares of the foulest creatures to ever cross the earth.

They didn't kill their victims- but they made them wish they had.

Another scream. This one weaker than the last. It spurred us into action.

Abandoning stealth in our desperation to save whatever was in such agony, we slammed the door open, and raced inside in a haze of fury.

Screams, cannon blasts, the thud of flesh hitting flesh.

The room was a blur of color. Our bodies and minds were on auto-pilot, desperately destroying anything that got in our way in an attempt to stay alive.

Finally, the haze lifted and I looked around to see the havoc we had wreaked.

Desks were overturned on the floor, the papers that had once sat upon them so orderly were scattered across the room. Bodies lay everywhere. There were more of them than I had first expected. Blood covered the floor, seeping from the open wounds in the bodies.

I winced, noticing for the first time that I was injured. A steady trickle of blood rolled down my arm from a deep cut near the shoulder.

I ignored it for the moment, focusing instead on finding the source of the whimpering sobs that continued somewhere in the room.

Cyborg was frozen beside me, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere in the corner of the room. Following his line of sight, I looked over to see...

"Raven..." I breathed, desperately wishing I wasn't seeing what I was. Raven lay huddled against the corner, making no move to escape, though the door was only a few feet from her and wide open.

Her eyes were wide. Terror, stark and unchanging flickered in their depths. I took one step toward her, unable to help myself. She gave a single, shrill shriek of terror and curled into herself.

"Oh god..." I dropped to my knees, unable to cope with the horror of what I was witnessing.

"Damnitt!" Cyborg yelled suddenly. "What the hell did those fuckers do to her?!"

When I didn't answer, he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and slammed me against one of the machines that hadn't been overturned during our initial attack.

"What in the hell happened to Raven?!"

"They... broke her." I said numbly, unable to tear my eyes away from the fragile creature who curled, trembling into a corner.

"Broke her?" Cyborg repeated, dropping me back to the ground with a frozen look on his face.

I sat, staring at Raven for a few more moments before the sting of my wound brought me back to myself. We would all die here if we didn't get moving. I leaned over and ripped the hem of a jacket on the scientist, torturer, nearest me. Ignoring the blood stains, I wrapped it around my arm, stopping the bleeding, at least temporarily.

I stood and grabbed my bag off the floor, reaching inside to grab the tiny gun inside. I yanked it out and checked the capsules inside before clicking off the safety and pointing it at Raven.

Cyborg launched himself at me just as I pulled the trigger, sending my first shot wild and causing Raven to begin screaming again.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

I wrenched away, shoving him off me. "I have to tranquilize her you idiot! We'll never get her out of here in the state she's in! She won't even let us touch her anymore! The only way we're going to get her out of here is to drug her for the time being. If I thought I could get close enough to do this with a needle I would, but she's so terrified that would probably make things worse."

Cyborg's eyes dulled, the anguish showing in every line of his face. "I'm sorry. You're right."

I nodded, excepting the apology and carefully aimed the gun at Raven once again, trying hard not to notice the look of terror in her eyes and face. I shot her in the shoulder. Her body jerked once before she slumped to the floor unconscious.

As I replaced the gun in my bag, Cyborg scooped Raven off the floor, cradling her like a child. She looked so small. She had changed as well. My worry for her had kept me from noticing before.

Her hair was longer now, reaching past her shoulders. Her cloak was a dull gray color, and her skin was milky white. She was taller, and she had grown into a young women rather than the awkward teen she had been.

Cyborg shifted her, still being extremely careful with the fragile creature that Raven had become. "Let's go."

I nodded, and we stepped out into the hall. We looked both ways and Cyborg set off down the hall. I stopped and placed a small silver capsule in the doorway of the destroyed lab.

The capsule glowed faintly, then a door seemed to spring up from nowhere, covering the hole our abrupt entrance had made.

The holographic door wouldn't stand up to close inspection, it was only light being projected from the capsule, your hand would pass directly through it- but it would work if no one bothered to look at it too closely, and it might buy us a few minutes.

I stood, hurrying to rejoin Cyborg before I lost him and Raven in the never-ending hallways.

OOOOO

Author's Notes: I really don't mean to be so morbid. I just start typing and I get so serious... But I really do want to make it seem like the Titans were going through hell before they were rescued. So, slowly but surely, Aqualad is saving each of them. The reason I didn't make Cyborg all traumatized, the way Raven is, is because he's been shut down these last few years. He didn't have to go through what the others did. He was just there. Nothing really happened to him after they deactivated him. I hope you enjoyed the newest chapter- this story is going to take a while. I hope no one gets too bored by me before this is over.

And, as always, my review responses: BubbleBean022 (I hope this chapter was long enough to satisfy your curiosity! Don't forget to keep reviewing! I love constructive criticsm!), VashTheStampede7123 (It's nice to have a new reviewer once in a while! It's nice to get some new opinions!), Blowfish the Monkey Tamer (Wow! I'm glad you think so highly of this story! I worry a bit that I'm getting too serious sometimes...), StarfireRobin (Thanks for the comnstant support! You know I'll always value your opinion!), VeryUnique(!) (I know you don't like the Raven&Beast Boy thing, but deal- because that's the way it's gonna' be!)

MysteryMaiden7