Author's Notes: Thanks for all of the reviews, everyone. Those of you who have read this fic at the Las Vegas: the Series forums may have noticed that I did not post this chapter there and I don't intend to, seeing as how I've pretty much left that board for my own personal reasons.

Chapter Seventeen
"Damn it!" Ed muttered in frustration as he kicked open yet another stone door to find nothing awaiting him on the other side. The gray-haired, former CIA agent had opened about 10 or more such doors so far to find the same thing waiting for him every time. He leaned against the doorframe and sighed heavily, wanting nothing more right now than to magically make his wife and daughter appear. He eventually turned and stalked back down the hallway, machete and torch still in his hands. "I'm going to kill this bastard when I find him! Then, I'm going to bring him back to life, so that I can kill him again!"

As he pushed open another wooden door on the opposite wall, a strange sight greeted Ed. The darkened room was no bigger than some of the storage closets at the Montecito, but there were no brooms or mops in here. Instead, there was a table with four black and white monitors resting on it. One was turned off, but the other three showed various scenes: the hallway he had just come from, his employees walking down the opposite hallway, and Jillian and Delinda trying to bust down a door. Seeing his wife and daughter, Ed's heart moved into his throat and gently rested his tough hands on the device, pulling it closer to him.

"That's my girls!" the proud man whispered to himself. As a new wave of determination came over him, Deline set down the monitor and sprinted farther down the hallway.

An eerie silence descended upon the group of Montecito employees as they walked down the opposite hallway from Ed. A torch-carrying Mike led the single file line and was followed by Nessa, Sam and Mary. Danny, who also carried a torch and a pistol in his other hand, followed a few paces behind the group.

"Let's see what's behind door number one, shall we?" a grinning Mike commented as the quintet came to a stop outside a wooden door. The African American man wasted no time in kicking the object down, revealing nothing but an empty chamber. "Damn!"

"It's both a blessing and a curse." Danny sighed, tucking his pistol under his belt again and running his healthy left hand through his short, brown hair. "I mean, at least the Professor didn't have goons waiting to jump us or something."

"Thank you, Captain Optimism!" Sam replied, rolling her dark eyes. "The fact that an army could appear out of nowhere and jump us makes me feel a whole lot better about this entire situation." She put a hand to her forehead. "Dee owes me big time for this!"

"Well, remind me never to count on you for a rescue." Nessa remarked, rolling her own eyes as the group continued down the hallway. The black, British woman suddenly wiped something off of her arm disgustedly. "EGH! I think that I still have some of that bloody skeleton's guts on me!"

"How are you doing?" Danny asked quietly, tapping Mary on the shoulder.

"Good." Mary replied, smiling back at him. "I'm still trying to prove to you that I am tough enough to make it through something like this, you know."

"I should have never said that you weren't." Danny shook his head.

"Yeah, you shouldn't have." Mary agreed.

A slight rumbling was suddenly heard, forcing the anxious group to stop immediately in their tracks. All five sets of eyes looked around for the source, which was soon revealed as a hidden door suddenly slid open in the rock near Danny.

"Where in the hell did that come from?" Mike questioned, looking back at the door.

"I don't know." a raring to go Danny replied, glancing at the other male in the group. "But I'm going to find out!" He walked over to the doorway and looked inside the chamber, seeing a torch-lit room in the near distance. "Weird."

"Danny, wait!" Mary exclaimed as she watched McCoy carefully step inside the chamber. The red-haired woman was almost positive that it was a trap set by the Professor and wasn't about to let her best friend since childhood go alone.

"Hang on, you guys." Mike cautioned as the last trace of Mary's red hair disappeared. "This could be a trap!"

Suddenly, the rumbling was heard again and the rock door quickly slid shut again, isolating Danny and Mary from the rest of the group. Sam just barely had enough time to see stunned looks appear on the faces of both the male and female before the thick door banished them from sight.

"Danny! Mary!" she exclaimed as Mike rushed over and tried unsuccessfully to force the door open again with his bare hands. "What in the hell are we supposed to do now?"

"Damn thing's shut tight." Mike sighed in defeat before looking at both Nessa and Sam. "Find something to pry the door open with!"

"Nothing?" the now torch-wielding Mary inquired as an exhausted Danny gave up trying to open the door from their side. Saying nothing, the brown-haired ex-Marine leaned up against the object and shook his head. "Well, now what do we do?"

"This door opened for a reason." Danny replied, looking at the red-haired special events coordinator. "Something more than one of us just accidentally stepped on a tile on the floor or something like that." His brown eyes surveyed their current surroundings; they stood in some sort of hallway that led into the much larger chamber that a statue currently blocked their view of. "Wait here. You'll be safe behind this statue."

"Be careful." Mary pleaded.

Smiling back in agreement, Danny slowly left the hiding spot and walked fully into the room. He knew that someone or something had to be there as the torches hanging on the wall wouldn't be lit if it were empty, nor would the door have slid open for them to enter.

"Jillian! Delinda!" he called hopefully, looking around the empty room.

"Guess again." the Professor's voice replied from behind him.

Just as he was about to turn around and confront the older man, two related sensations aroused Danny's senses. The crackling of electricity reached his ears, followed quickly by his back feeling as if it was literally on fire. The former Marine lieutenant cried out in pain as he slowly sank to his knees. As the burning feeling died down, McCoy fell to the floor, panting for breath.

"Danny!" he heard a worried Mary call from where he had left her, but he was in too much pain to respond and he also didn't want to give her location away.

"A taser's a handy little object, isn't it?" The Professor remarked from somewhere nearby Danny before McCoy felt the man's foot forcibly turn him over, so that he was now lying on his back. With a slight smile, the older man set his foot back down just below Danny's sternum, causing McCoy's broken and bruised ribs to cry out in agony once more. The man himself merely shut his eyes tightly and scowled his face to keep from crying out himself. "What am I going to have to do to get through to you, Danny? I thought that what I did to you in Vegas would have been enough, but you just refuse to let me be."

Still in pain, Danny was about to tell the gray and black haired man where he could go, but suddenly stopped as he noticed that Mary had come out of hiding. The red-haired woman simply stood in the doorway of the room with a horrified expression on her face and wide, brown eyes. McCoy wished that he could move his hand and gesture to her to run away, but it appeared to be too late. The Professor's head was now turned towards the woman, which seemed to amplify her horror as well as elicit a rarely seen terrified expression from Danny.

"No! Mary!" Danny exclaimed, looking up at the older man. "Leave her alone!"

"As if there's anything I can do to her that's worse than making her watch the slow, painful destruction of her knight-in-shining-armor." The Professor chuckled, now resting his full weight on his foot and subsequently on Danny. Groaning loudly, Danny shut his eyes tightly again and balled his left hand into a fist. He was too distracted by his pain to notice the older man reaching down and taking McCoy's pistol out of his belt. "Hmm. This could make things a lot more interesting."

"No!" a worried Mary shouted as tears welled up in her eyes and she outstretched a weak hand. "No! Please! Don't kill him!"

"Aw. Dry your eyes, my dear." the Professor requested with a voice full of mock sympathy. "Rest assured that killing your best friend was never on my agenda."

"It wasn't?" a surprised Danny asked, opening an eye.

"No." the Professor replied, looking back down at McCoy. "Unfortunately, Danny, I know that there is a fate that I can administer to you that you would think is worse than death." A wicked smile appeared on his face as confusion appeared in Danny's eyes. "And that would be you becoming my protégé."

"No." Mary gasped, putting both of her hands over her mouth.

"Never!" an adamant Danny shook his head. "I'll never work for you!"

"I don't recall saying that you had a choice in the matter." the Professor chuckled, aiming the pistol in his hands at Danny's leg. "Perhaps, you'll be a little bit more obedient after a stronger dose of pain."

"No!" Mary exclaimed, rushing forward and trying with all of her might to wrestle the gun out of the Professor's hands.

"Stupid girl!" the Professor growled, easily able to throw Mary off. The red-haired woman went flying backwards and collided hard with a marble pillar behind him.

"Mary." a horrified Danny found himself wanting to shout as he helplessly watched his best friend sink unconsciously to the floor. However, nothing but a whisper came out of his mouth. "No."

"I guess that will teach her to not place hero-worship where it's not due." the Professor chuckled as he turned to look at Mary. Danny could barely hear him over the pounding of his own heart, which now thumped loudly in his ears. He wanted to destroy the man standing above him! "Don't worry, Danny. We'll be taking her with us." The black and gray-haired man's laughter increased. "Not only will she be useful in keeping you in line, but I can make use of the skills she employed in her former occupation."

The reference to Mary's days as an escort was the final straw that released the anger that had been welling up inside of Danny; anger at himself for not being able to protect Mary and anger at the Professor for what he had done. Letting out a primal scream, the tall, brown-haired man jumped up and tackled the surprised older man to the ground. As the unused pistol scattered across the floor away from the two men, McCoy unleashed a flurry of uncontrolled punches on the older man. Any pleas for mercy that the Professor may have made fell upon deaf ears and a disconnected gleam appeared in Danny's brown eyes. The white plaster covering his right knuckles was quickly stained red before breaking off completely.

Finally reaching the end of the hallway without finding Jillian and Delinda, Ed readied himself for a fight as he walked up to the huge, golden door that lay at the end. The gray-haired, former CIA agent knew that his wife and daughter, the Professor, or all three probably awaited him the minute he opened the door, and he wanted to make sure that he was ready for whatever came his way. He kicked the door open forcibly, only to see five men waiting for him on the other side. Some held weapons in their hands.

"Knew this was coming." Ed sighed, letting the torch fall from his hands as the men rushed at him.

To be continued...