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Okay guys, first off let me apologize. I promised you guys chapter 4 by Saturday if I got at least 5 reviews. Which I did get, and I had about three paragraphs to go before I posted it...and then I got called into work early and I just couldn't post it in the shape that it was, you guys would have been infuriated. So as soon as I got home I hammered out the rest. So I'm staying true to my word, it's a little bit late but I hope you'll forgive me. I tried to make this chapter extra interesting to make up for it.

I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed, as always, you make it worth while. Thank you Alana O'Connor, Greenpineaple, Necromancer93, matt (how the hell did you get that user name?)

and the several guest readers who reviewed as well. You guys are amazing, hope this chapter lives up to your expectations.

WARNING: This chapter contains content that is darker and more violent than my previous chapters. It is definitely macabre soif you are easily disturbed or very young I suggest you refrain from reading this chapter.

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There is controversy over weather or not the unconscious can dream. Some say that they remember nothing, passing out and waking were no different to them than blinking, interjected perhaps by a lapse of darkness. Others, however, claim to dream so vividly that they believe they are living in the conscious world, and have no knowledge of their condition until the moment they awake.

Artemis was dreaming of a bright pulsing light that penetrated his closed eyelids, sending blotches of red across his vision. There was a faint hum some where behind him, possibly a generator of some sort. Wherever he was it was warm, almost humid. There was a denseness to the air that he could not place. Artemis opened his eyes and was met with a gray, mildew encrusted concrete ceiling, a row of fluorescent lights above him flickered on and off incessantly, alternating between blinding him and plunging him into a thick darkness that lasted only moments. Squinting up at the irritating display, he noted his position on the equally mildew covered concrete floor and the damp soaking into his clothing. He tried to sit up but a grinding pain shot through his chest, reaching his throat and making almost impossible to breath. He fell back to his position on the floor with a surprised grunt. What the hell had happened?

The boy allowed his body to relax, he was not bound nor was he mortally injured, there was a way out of this. He focused on recalling how he had gotten here but his mind would not allow him to reach that information, providing instead a few fuzzy fragments of memory before blanking out entirely. Just minutes past before a heavy door was opened and the sound of determined footsteps echoed across the room on the far side from where he was laying.

Someone spoke. The voice was soft but undeniably commanding, tinged with a steely air that betrayed no sign of hesitance as he instructed the second set of foot steps to preform a series of unpleasant tasks. Artemis' breath caught at the man's clipped tone, his heart lurched and a mixture of admiration, great relief and fear settled in the bottom of his stomach. That was the voice of his father. Unmistakably.

Artemis had to force himself to stay where he was, it took every bit of his will power not to open his mouth and call out to him. Instead, he listened intently to the conversation developing across the room.

"Make sure he doesn't rattle about this time, its tiring to watch and entirely unnecessary. The noise is loud enough without him wrenching the table across the floor." Artemis Sr.'s tone was curt as he gave the final orders to his partner for the evening. The man shuffled a bit, picking up something metal and sliding it into place with a smooth click. He repeated the process several times and when he was done he let out a slight grunt of satisfaction.

"Don't worry, he isn't going to be moving much." He gave an amused chuckle. "It should be over rather quickly, he's already half dead. If we hadn't had to stop it would have been over in less than ten minutes." He let out a slight sigh of irritation.

"Obviously." Artemis could almost hear the rolling of his father's eyes at the older sounding man's comment. "This is his first time, I knew there would be a reaction but I didn't anticipate...that." The last word was wrought with disgust. "I must apologize on his behalf but I do believe he truly learned something here today."

And even though Artemis could not see his father and hadn't in about two years, he knew that he had ended that last quip with a crooked smirk, the familiar gesture clear in his mind.

"He better have, nearly ruined everything, that one. You'd better keep a tight leash on him. He's a tad bit young to be so..." The man searched his mind for the right word, not wanting to insult the head of a criminal empire. "Unmanageable." He finished, with what Artemis imagined to be disapproving expression.

Who is my father associated with that he must control so forcibly?

Artemis strained to listen as a brief silence filled the room punctuated by the sound of water dripping onto a metal surface. Then the man working for his father fiddled with something involving a long power chord. A generator. Metal clipping metal...

Suddenly a small sound emanated from across the room, it rasped and grated before finally becoming something sickeningly similar to a human voice. But it couldn't be, because no one sounded like that. That was the sound of air squeezing through something dry and cracked. Artemis almost dismissed the noise as wind sneaking in from outside until the atrocious sound that was not, could not, be the voice of a living human being formed four short words.

"I..." He stopped to take what little breath he could, his scorched lungs crackled like embers in a bon fire. "Will...never...forget." His voice was somehow both guttural and wispy as it grated from his throat, and beneath the sound of death there was a strange truth to his words that he wielded like a threat.

The effort to speak was immense. He released the breath in a retching wheeze ending in a pained splutter of blood. The liquid, having nowhere to go, and the man, having no air in his scorched lungs to project it from his throat, began to choke. The two men allowed this to continue in an utterly grotesque display of cruelty, watching as he squirmed in his bonds, gargling sickly until someone slapped the back of the man's head, effectively stopping him from drowning. The blood splattered loudly to the concrete.

Across the room, Artemis fought the urge to vomit.

"No" His father answered the dying man in a tone as cold as the ocean that was supposed to be his grave. "I don't believe you will." He turned to the other man, and spoke with a swift finality. "Do it."

There was the sound of a lever or switch, then the high pitched whir of vicious electricity being conducted. The sound echoed in Artemis' mind and some deep primal instinct told him to get up, to run. But he didn't...he had been here before and...he knew what was coming. He kept his eyes locked straight ahead, expression vacant as he waited for the inevitable.

The lights directly above him began to flicker more wildly and then surged with power. They grew blindingly bright and a few exploded with an excited pop, raining burning shards of glass down on him like fragmented lightning. He didn't move to brush them away.

And then the room was plunged into what Artemis thought, was surely some dimension of hell. The charge reached the man and slammed into his chest, convulsions wracked his body. His skin, already blackened over the length of his torso began to crack open, the smell of burning flesh hit Artemis violently. He knew the smell, he was no stranger to this dream but each time...it never got any easier. He shuffled backwards, away from the smell, the sound of flesh as it began to crackle. He pushed himself in the corner of the room, a hand clasped over his mouth to keep him from screaming. But then the man's voice keened out of his burnt lips, stretched back in the agony of death. The sound was unbearable, inhuman...animalistic.

And then Artemis began to scream, and he didn't stop. He clamped his hands over his ears in an attempt to ward of the grotesque sounds twisting around him. Sounds that he would never be able to escape.

He knelt down, shutting his eyes to the flickering lights that were, one by one, dying and plunging him further into darkness...in this room that was about to go still with real death and possibly even worse...what comes after. He prayed the only words that his mind could process.

Wake up. WAKE UP.

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If you are really really confused feel free to message me if you have any questions.

Honestly, to me, this is not that bad in terms of the violence but I felt that I should give everyone a heads up just in case.

Also, just so ya know. This story is a prequel to my next, much longer and infinitely more revealing Post TLG fic that I will be posting when this one is finished. It's also going to be a very dark story and it ties up the loose ends of this fic. I'll keep you posted on that.

FIVE REVIEWS=NEXT CHAPTER BY THE END OF THE WEEK.

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