Special thank you to all of my reviewers and those who follow and fav my fic! I appreciate you people SO much! 3

I'm not particularly happy with the writing of this chapter but I honestly don't know what else to do.

Chapter 4

Silence permeated the cold sparsely furnished room. Her heart thudded in her chest as her mind focused intently on the faint shuffling on the other side of the door. After what seemed like hours, but was probably really only a few minutes, the door was pulled open and the men hurried in, arms gripped either side of a certain blonde's arms.

Serena's eyes trailed from the blondes duck tape bound hands to her face, horror draining the colour from her own at the manic expression she found there. There was blood spattered across her face, her eyes wide and unfocused as a wide toothy grin played on her lips. She looked almost possessed.

"That FUCKER broke my fucking nose!" Came a pained, nasally shout from outside the room. Bernie's head rolled in the direction of the noise, the grin becoming impossibly wider as a high pitched giggle, unlike any Serena had ever heard, left her mouth.

Footsteps grew closer with speed as the demonic laugh echoed through the corridor "That fucking bitch!"

Serena helplessly watched it all happen in impossibly slow motion. The guards swiftly released their grip on Bernie's arms as a man with blood running from his swelling nose ran at the blonde, knife at the ready. Bernie was vaguely aware of being pushed further into the room as the two men that escorted her here slammed the man with the knife backwards against the wall.

"Calm the fuck down, Akins! We fucking need this one, remember!" Spat one of the guards in the man with the knifes face.

"We'll get another! I'm gonna cut that bitch in two" he growled.

"Get him the FUCK out of here!" Yelled another man at the door.

As 'Akins' was man handled from the room, Serena's gaze moved to Bernie. The sight made stomach drop even further. Though not so toothy any more, Bernie's closed mouth still had a wide smile playing on it as she swayed on the spot, almost dancing.

As the men came back into the room, Serena's eyes were torn to the door once more. They approached Bernie as she continued to twirl on the spot like she didn't even know they were there. Just as they came to stand behind her, she suddenly stopped.

The smile dropped from her lips as she glared at the wall in front of her, her sudden mood change worrying Serena even more. Bernie slowly stretched her bound hands out in front of her and left them there for the longest second of Serena's life, before swiftly bringing her hands back to her body, her elbows gliding past her waist, the angle breaking the duck tape and freeing her hands.

In one fluid movement, she turned, her hand finding the back of one of the men's heads and she brought their face down to meet her knee on the way up. No sooner had he began to fall that she had already moved onto the next, her fist connecting with his face before being brought to his knees as Bernie's foot found his groin with brutal force. Another man approached but Bernie sidestepped him, her hand grabbing his arm as he passed, twisting it up behind his back and forcing her palm down hard on his shoulder blade. The crack echoed in the room as the man fell in pain, cradling his dislocated arm.

Bernie stood over the fallen men; a toothy smiled erupting onto her face once more as she angled her head to watch them with wide eyes.

Rough arms enclosed around Bernie and manic laughter left her mouth. The man holding her looked to the other at the door. Serena recognised him as the man who referred to her as 'Fire lady' in the van. He was leant against the doorframe with his arms folded and a smile playing on his lips.

Walking into the room towards Bernie, he chuckled to himself "3 men in the space of 3 seconds?" he whistled, "After all this is over, I could use a girl like her! Lets hope she makes as good a doctor as she does a fighter, eh?" Taking a fist full of Bernie's hair, he wrenched her head to the side and shoved another needle into her neck.

Serena jumped forward. She didn't know what she could do to save Bernie but if she was honest, she wasn't thinking. She just knew she had to stop them harming her more than they already had. Arms quickly grabbed reached out at her own and held her back "No! Stop it, what have you given her, you bastard?!"

"Now now, no need for language like that"

The laughter from Bernie suddenly stopped. Serena's eyes moved to Bernie's face. The smile was gone and she seemed almost breathless. If Serena weren't very much mistaken, she'd have said there were tears in her eyes.

Struggling against her captor and the duck tape, Serena never took her eyes off Bernie "Bernie. Bernie are you alright?!"

"Even if she could hear you, I doubt she'd respond"

Serena glared at the man. Now that she'd properly focused on his face, she found she recognised him from somewhere "Why have you brought us here? Why do you need us?" She growled.

He peered at her thoughtfully "We brought her here because we needed a surgeon" he said, jerking his shoulder in Bernie's direction. "You were an unfortunate extra, however… if you prove useful, we may keep you alive"

Panic began to rise in Serena once more as tears pricked her eyes.

"You may not have noticed, but we've been watching you. A new trauma unit with so much success doesn't just go un-noticed. She's quite talented and right now… we need that talent. There's a war coming, Fire lady… one I intend to win." He nodded to the man holding Bernie and he abruptly let her go. She immediately fell against the wall and sunk down onto her knees. He walked over to Bernie and knelt down beside her, his hand trailing over her soft blood stained cheek to reveal the heavy bruising blossoming beneath "No war is won without its soldiers and soldiers need medics, what luck that we came across a real army medic, eh?"

He quickly stood back up and turned back to Serena "Its your choice whether she helps us win alone or not."

"And if I refuse?" She said defiantly, trying to keep her voice steady.

He laughed as his gaze moved above her head. He reached down into his hoodie pocket to retrieve a handful of papers. Lowering his eyes to her once more, his expression became deadly serious. "Then you'll join the others"

He threw the papers at Serena, her hands instinctively coming up to shield her face. The arms that held her back let go and she felt cold metal slip between her wrists. It wasn't until she heard footsteps that she realised she was unbound, the duck tape slit.

"When I said earlier that she wouldn't be harmed I meant it. The drug was supposed to make her easier to deal with…" Serena froze "You see, normally people enter into a heightened state of euphoria by now… unless your friend has violent tendencies, I'd say we've been betrayed by some bastard down in the labs. No matter, I've administered an antidote, however, if we have been betrayed, who knows if it's really an antidote" He said with a gleam in his eye. "Keep her alive will you?" With that, the door slammed once again. She opened her eyes; her gaze immediately falling to the prone figure of Bernie slumped against the wall.

Sighing, she looked down to the small images now scatted at her feet. Her stomach suddenly lurched and she threw her hands to her mouth in an attempt not to be sick. There, in the pictures, were men and women, some in scrubs, lying motionless in some state of mutilation. They murdered them and took photographs of their corpses, those sick bastards!

Tears burned Serena's eyes as she back up against the wall and slid down until her knees were drawn tight to her chest. What was she going to do? She couldn't leave Elenor and Jason alone in the world, not yet. Tears fell hot and fast now as her eyes slowly trailed up the floor to land on Bernie. How was she to know that the worst was yet to come?

Just an FYI! If you find yourself in the situation where you're having your wrists duck taped, if you keep the inside of your wrists flat against each other when being tied and use Bernie's method of swiftly bringing your wrists back to your body with your elbows gliding past your waist on either side, the angle 'should' actually tear the duck tape. Or so I've been led to believe by one of the guys who taught me european sword combat.