Note: Thanks for the feedback and support so far :) This journey is nearing its end, I should be posting the final chapters for this story soon and the sequel is almost done. Remember, feedback feeds the muse and speeds up the whole process :)

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Chapter 10

Brennan awoke to the worst hangover of her life. Except she didn't remember getting drunk or high.

Hannah! She opened her eyes too quickly and although the artificial lighting was dimmed, her eyes still sent very painful signals of discomfort to her brain. "Ow," she moaned, closing her eyes again and letting her head drop.

"Aufwachen!" A male voice shouted at her. A hand pushed against a sore spot on her head, and she groaned.

"Ich spreche nicht Deutsches!" she protested in broken German, informing her captors, as well as she could, that she did not speak German. She was only fluent in English but she knew enough of at least 15 languages, and several dialects, to get her around the world; her head, however, was hurting too much to hold even a basic conversation in any other language.

"Very well, Dr. Brennan," a second man, wearing a corporate suit, spoke. Squinting, she was able to make him out as well as a third and fourth occupants. "Where is the child?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she lied. The feeling in her legs and arms was slowly returning in the shape of pins and needles. She could see she was properly restrained with heavy duty tape and it didn't take her long to figure that the chair she sat on was permanently fixed to the floor.

Something in German was said and before she could attempt to translate it, a fist connected with her jaw. "I wouldn't recommend lying to us, Dr. Brennan, you saw what happened to Hannah Oloff."

Her jaw throbbed, but she felt welcome adrenaline rushing through her veins. "You killed eighty people," she protested. "Entire families, reduced to burnt remains. You don't care about the truth."

"The lady has a valid point," the man conceded. "You are a smart woman. You know we have too much to lose by letting you live; but if you tell us where the child is, we won't go after your loved ones. How does that sound?"

Nothing like a condescending bad guy. "Tempting, but no. Because after you kill me, my friends will find out who you are, and you will go down."

The man let out a chilling laugh. He approached her and she got a good look into his empty eyes. "We'll just have to make sure they never find your remains," he threatened.

When he moved back, she saw a man walking towards her with some kind of surgical tray. "What are you doing?" she asked, even though she'd seen the autopsy report on Hannah Oloff.

"The first cuts aren't so bad, Dr. Brennan. We wouldn't want you to bleed to death too soon. Superficial cuts, then muscles, then tendons – if you're lucky, you'll be unconscious by the time we file your fingerprints off. But don't worry, we'll wake you up for the grand finale."

Her broken rib – possibly ribs - pushed against her diaphragm and kept her from struggling too much. A scalpel touched her thigh through her jeans, tapping the fabric slowly. She wished they would just do it, but she understood that making a victim beg for her life was the pinnacle of torture, and making her beg for her death was a close second. So she waited, unable to take a deep breath, unable to watch as the perverse scalpel traveled up to her stomach. The bald man yielding the instrument seemed to like the spot because he cut her there through her shirt, a mock replication of a c-section cut, though not nearly as deep. It didn't even touch the muscles there, but she felt the blood rushing to the area.

Her left forearm was next, a long superficial cut above her ulna; this guy must not be a doctor, because this time he nicked the muscle. She could tell it wasn't part of the plan, because as soon as her fingers contracted, he pulled back and looked towards the man with the empty eyes.

"Where is she, Dr. Brennan?"

"I don't know!" She shouted at the man as blood ran down her arm and onto her thigh. She feared for Hannah; she knew the child was safe, but what would happen to the infant if she died? At that moment, she realized she was completely in love with that baby, and she would do whatever possible to survive and give the child the best life she could.

Another blow to her head, this time her left eye. It swelled up instantly, and now she couldn't even cry.

"You're not going to get away with this!" she yelled.

"We'll see."