Hey guys! Thank you for the follows! Please enjoy chapter two, and if you feel so inclined I love getting feedback! I'm still so not sure how long this is gonna go for, but it's gonna be pretty long. EDIT: I am dedicated to my whump being as accurate as possible within the realm of the world I'm playing in. Therefore Adam's heart-stop scene has been adjusted. Thanks!

When Adam woke up he was strapped to a table, the cold of the metal biting into his bare back. He must not have been there for very long. They'd left his pants on, but that was it. His boots, his gear, everything else was gone, and the heavy roiling of an EMP field pressed aggressively against his shielding. He could feel the generator somewhere near the small of his back and he jerked, gritting his teeth as his prosthetics shot pain signals into his brain. He was clamped down tight. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. His HUD kept flickering spasmodically as the varying EMP messed with his shielding, so he retracted his glasses and blinked hazily. His vision was still blurred from the tranquilizer.

Adam lifted his head, his muscles aching as he finally managed to make some sense of his surroundings. He was in a small, harshly lit room and there was a camera pointed at him. All the light was artificial, so he had no real sense of how long he'd been out for or what time of day it was. He swallowed, debating his options. The EMP field hadn't breached his defenses yet, but if the people in charge of the whole operation kept messing with it and deprived him of food, as he was sure they would, then he could end up vulnerable. The plus side of organic to energy convertors in his digestive system was that he didn't have to plug in like some kind of robot. The negative side was that if he was starved, malnourished, or lost a lot of blood his augments slowed down along with the rest of his body. Malik made fun of him for the Cyberboost bars and cereal, but the bars were vital surges of highly concentrated vitamins and proteins, and he could eat three bowls of cereal in the time it took to leave the house for Thai.

"He's awake."

"Good. Have you locked her frequency?"

"Yes, patching through now. She should be back to her craft by now and her signals should be open. They've been gone long enough."

Chinese. They hadn't gotten far then, they were probably still in the pits of lower Hengsha. Adam tried to look groggier than he felt in the hope that it might give him an edge should either one of the men try something. One, the man with the camera, was heavily augmented. His knee was tightly wrapped and Adam noted with some satisfaction that he limped when he moved. David had cracked him pretty good. The other man was only augmented in one eye. He adjusted a tray of syringes and other nasty-looking tools before turning and facing Adam. When he spoke, his English was almost as good as his Chinese. An international LIMB clinic doctor then.

"Hello. Good to see you're awake. We were afraid for a while that we misjudged your dose," he said, one eyebrow raised as he pulled a monitor around and began threading leads from it. The doctor didn't sound like he'd been worried at all. "We could have done our work with a dead body, of course, but I think our antagonistic friend will get the message so much clearer if she sees you die first—don't you agree?"

Adam grit his jaw, jerking away as much as he could as the doctor's cold hands pressed the sensor leads to his chest. There was no pain, just the sudden blipping of a cardiac and oxygen monitor that was just out of Adam's line of sight. The doctor reached behind Adam's head and clicked the monitor to silent.

"What do you want with me?" Adam asked finally, choosing his words carefully. He didn't want to give away anything that might put him or David, if he was alive, in more danger.

"Oh, this is nothing to do with me. I just work for him," the doctor said, turning dials and taking notes. His stance was far too casual, and Jensen took notice. The more relaxed they were, the more change he had at getting out. They thought he was completely neutralized. If he could figure out a way to slip that restraint they'd be down before they realized he'd twitched a muscle.

"It's just business Mr…." he flipped a notepad over, pulling out Adam's passport and holding it up to the light. "Jensen." He looked up with a stiff smile, patting Adam's cheek. Adam grit his teeth and jerked his head away. "Do not take it personally, please. I have a living to make, just like you. And unfortunately a stint you pulled during one of your previous visits has jeopardized that living."

"Yeah, criminal activity tends to get interrupted around me. Sorry for the inconvenience."

"I should have known you'd be one with a sense of humor," he said mildly, flicking at a syringe. Adam didn't let himself tense up. He wasn't going to show any kind of fear. "After what you did to the Hive."

Adam's brows drew together and he tried to think. He'd done a lot at the Hive—to the Hive. He'd guess at first that this was Tong's doing, but neither man looked like a Harvester and the last time Adam had been in contact with Tong they were square. They were far from liking each other, but this just wasn't Tong's style. If Tong wanted revenge on Adam, he would have had him killed and then proudly sported his augments, or maybe mounted them on his office wall like a trophy. Adam just couldn't imagine Tong as a torturer.

"You'll have to jog my memory," Adam said, fisting his hands up and turning his wrists against the restraints. The sharp metal cut into the sensors of his dermal plating and Adam could feel one of the coolant hoses straining.

"No need," the doctor said, turning to the camera as the sudden static of a radio link filled the room. It sounded like there were two speakers behind the camera, and in moments the bright flash of holographic projectors called up a partial image. "Ask her why you're here."

Adam's eyebrows shot up as the image of Malik was projected behind the camera. Her expression was puzzled at first, and she was leaning forward, probably fiddling with controls on the VTOL. When the augmented man clicked on the camera Malik gasped and jumped back a little. "Adam?"

Her incredulous voice almost echoed in the room. "What happened to you? You've been gone for hours—where's"

He shook his head before she could continue, pressing his lips together and trying to send her a silent message. They don't know who he is, don't let them know.

She swallowed, color draining from her face as her eyes flit over his restrained form. The doctor stepped up so that Malik could see him as well, and as he talked he worked a set of brass knuckles onto his hand, running his thumb over the heavy curves like they were helping him think.

"Hello, Faridah."

"Who are you?" Malik demanded, her voice angry. "What do you want? A ransom?"

"Oh no, nothing like that," the doctor said, glancing back at Adam. "My name is Doctor Wen, Ms. Malik. I work for someone I think you may be familiar with—a Mr. Lee Hong?"

Malik's eyes went hard and Adam could see her jaw clench. "No way that little brat has this kind of influence from prison. What do you really want?"

"Oh, Lee Jr. is indeed in prison, and clearly not intelligent to orchestrate anything from there. No, this is Lee Hong Sr. You see, your stint with the hack at the Hive may have cost Lee Jr. his freedom, but it cost Lee Sr. quite a lot of money. His reputation and family have been disgraced, and that means his inhibitions are down. He knew it was only a matter of time before you were destined to return to Hengsha—it's merely a stroke of luck that you came with your attack dog as well." Wen smiled impishly, patting Adam's chest. Adam jerked, nostrils flaring as he fought back the pain. He'd done some serious straining in his lower augments and the locks on the table still hadn't budged.

"Adam has nothing to do with this," Malik said stiffly. "He was a tool, nothing more. I disgraced Hong, I hacked into the Hive. Tell me where you are and I'll turn myself in."

"A very nice try, Ms. Malik, but Mr. Hong was very specific. Mr. Jensen here was seen at the club. He's recognized as the one who exposed Lee's indiscretion. How would it look to the public if Mr. Hong let Adam here walk free? No, what you're going to do, Ms. Malik, is come here and beg. You will come here and maybe, maybe we can convince Hong to let Adam off with a warning." He held up the syringe, depressing the plunger a little so that a spurt of foul-smelling liquid glittered in the studio lights.

"Leave me Malik," Adam said, glancing up at Wen, who was slowly placing the syringe back down. "Get out of here and get back to Detroit."

"Oh yes, you could do that. But then Mr. Jensen here, and the man we found with him, will certainly die. And you'll never be able to set foot outside of Detroit again. Mr. Hong gives you his personal guarantee that if you run now, you will never be able to stop running."

"Ignore him Malik!" Adam said desperately, the anger roiling his voice. "He can't have that much reach, just get out of here and don't look back."

Malik shook her head, swallowing visibly. "He can, Adam. He does. Why do you think he was able to cover up that murder for so long? Lee has ties in Belltower and LIMB, and with all the anti-augmentation hype he's only gotten more dangerous. I have to do this." She shifted her gaze onto Wen, her shoulders squared. "Where are you?"

"I'll leave that up to you to figure out," Wen said mildly, adjusting the brass knuckles. "I'll leave this broadcasting, and with any luck you can hack the signal and trace it back to us." He smiled, turning and throwing a hard punch into the side of Adam's head. There was a sickening crack.

"Adam!" Malik cried out before she could help herself. Wen turned back around, casually wiping blood off of the gold metal. Behind him Adam was breathing heavy, blood dripping from around his damaged optical augment. The metal was too soundly embedded into Adam's skull to come loose without surgical damage, but the pressure had torn the long healed skin just under it. Adam sneered, clicking his shades closed, sizing up every last bit of data he could on the doctor.

"Just don't try and call for any help. We're monitoring your every move. You even utter the word "help" and…well." He shrugged, turning back and nailing Adam again, this time aiming for the glass over his right eye. Adam let out a growl of pain as the high-impact glass shattered, leaving nothing but the uneven shards wedged into their base. He could feel blood seep from his brow and into his eye.

Malik's entire frame was tense with fury, but she said nothing else. She turned away from the feed and the last thing Adam heard before the needle plunged into his neck was the rapid-fire clicking of Malik's VTOL control board.

"Adam, son."

He was aware of David's voice, recognized it even through the distortion caused by his grogginess, but he couldn't move yet. They'd hit him with another massive dose of that tranq, and all he could do was groan as the cardioverter tucked near his heart sent another shock lacing through him—temporarily stopping his heart in an effort to get the tired organ to remember how to beat properly. He was laying face down on a cold floor and he arched his back weakly, trying to get up. He felt David's hand on him, pulling with a surprising amount of strength until Adam stumbled and collapsed onto a cot of some kind. He felt David's hand leave his shoulder and then fingers pressed gently into his throat. That's when he managed to open his eyes finally. He blinked, David coming into a sickeningly unsteady focus. Adam had never seen his boss look so worried, though it was difficult to really tell because the breaks he'd inflicted were so swollen.

"Your pulse is leveling out, though I'm worried about how slow your Sentinel is filtering this stuff out of your system," David told him, resting his hand on Adam's collarbone. Adam blinked, swallowing.

"Malik's coming," he managed.

"You were able to contact her?"

He shook his head and winced, swallowing back some of the pain. It wasn't as severe as earlier, but his head was throbbing and he knew there was only so much his sentinel could do without extra power.

"They contacted her. They want to punish her, and me. For exposing Lee Hong as a murderer…" he coughed wetly, turning on his side as he spit up blood. David's expression only grew more worried and he helped hold Adam steady as he trembled.

"They still haven't figured out who I am," David said quietly, rubbing Adam's back and helping him sit back as much as he could with only one arm to work with. "It was good thinking on your part, taking away my two most recognizable features, but I wish you could have warned me a bit first." There was an attempt at teasing in his tone, but it was overshadowed by worry. "I'm probably going to have to have my eye-socket reconstructed if I'm going to keep my charm. And the engraving on that arm cost half a fortune, shame we couldn't have salvaged it. You did your job a little too well."

"Didn't know why they wanted us, but I figured out in the middle of the attack that they weren't after you. Figured I'd do what I could to keep them from realizing they have a bigger bargaining chip," Adam managed, laying back and praying that his Sentinel would do something. With the way his chest and torso hurt they must have beat him while he was unconscious and then thrown him unceremoniously into the cell with David.

"Well you managed that, though I'm not sure what they could get out of me at this point—other than forcing me to fork what's left of the company over."

"You've still got influence boss," Adam said roughly, feeling exhausted but needing to think, needing to plan on how to get them out before Faridah showed up.

David sighed. "Not like I used to. At this point Sarif'll be lucky if I can keep it afloat for another five years."

Adam looked at David, incredulous. This wasn't like his boss at all. "Hey, these laws won't stop augmentation all together. It's too much a part of our culture. Tai Young isn't going to make it, but I know you, David. You'll die before letting Sarif go under completely."

"I may not have a choice, Adam. The company's biggest investment is now illegal. Even the defense contracts we had are shying away, trying to find early ways out. The army's facing an astounding amount of heat for packing augmented soldiers, and it's all coming back on me. No matter how many press conferences I host to explain that we aren't making super soldiers, headlines about the army, or the Illuminati are undermining my every word." He dropped his head into his hand, rubbing at one of the only un-swollen spots. "I didn't want to tell you. Not like this, but I poured the last of Sarif's lifeblood into you, Adam." He glanced up, the one eye he could still open creased with pain. "The company doesn't have much left. After Sarif goes under I know you'll keep going, keep moving to set things right where no-one else will go. I hoped that outfitting you with everything I had left would give you a better shot. Someone's gotta be equipped to handle what's coming, Adam. I wouldn't feel safe with that tech in anyone else's hands."

Adam swallowed, trying to process what David was telling him. He really had given up. David Sarif never gave up. David reached out, placing a hand on Adam's shoulder.

"Don't worry about me, son. Don't worry about any of this. Just lie still for a while and I'll see if I can get that LIMB traitor to get me some diagnostic equipment. He clearly doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to hardware like yours and they clearly want you alive. I might be able to make you more comfortable. You took quite a beating and your Sentinel must be running low on power or you wouldn't be taking this long to heal. I hope it wasn't damaged…"

"There was a pretty high-res EMP field under the table they had me on," Adam said. "It's possible that they drained my batteries through my shielding."

"That would be a better scenario than damage to the Sentinel, so let's hope. The least they can do is give you some water."

"Don't push it, boss. They want to punish me and Malik—letting us out of here alive isn't their priority at all. They know Malik's coming one way or another, and they can punish her just as well with my dead body as they can with keeping me alive."

David paused, his back to Adam, his hand on his hip as he faced the cell door. His head ducked and his shoulders were slumping. "Adam," he said quietly "I've seen torture before. It's something I will never, ever forget or ever fully heal from. If Malik gets here and finds your body—it'll be bad. She'll grieve you, she'll be heartbroken. But if she has to keep on watching them torture you—" David glanced back over his shoulder, his eye earnest. "It'll break her. She'll never escape your screams for the rest of her life. For all our sakes, we're doing everything we can to get out of here, and right now getting you some help is our best bet. So…just lie still, all right?"

Adam swallowed and nodded.

Almost three hours later David had finally convinced the LIMB doctor to allow him one diagnostic pad and a glass of water for Adam. David grimaced as he carried the dated tech back to Adam, who was blinking back the light doze he'd managed. He hurt, but he no longer felt groggy and his muscles were no sorer than they would have been after a hard day at work.

"The Sentinel is working, just not as quickly as I'd like it to," Adam said, sitting up and leaning his back against the cold wall. His skin shivered in protest but he just adjusted his position and sat quietly as David sat next to him.

"Yeah, that's good but I still need to run tests—see if there's a power leak or if the tranquilizer is what did it. Sorry about this, but they've got some pretty ancient tech here—no scanners. Just needles."

Adam nodded, bracing himself as David pulled out the long, sharp edge of a silver needle laced with gold circuitry. David tucked the needle between two fingers so it was out of the way and then traced down Adam's sternum, measuring in his head.

"Okay, you'll have to brace yourself since I don't have another hand to keep you from jerking."

Another curt nod and Sarif swiftly drove the needle between two ribs, just left of Adam's heart. Jensen sucked in a breath and his hands clenched, but he managed to keep still.

"Sorry, son," David apologized quietly, settling the pad on his knee and scrolling through it. He hummed, his fingers brushing against each other nervously as he read. Adam shifted carefully, reaching for the bottle of water. It wasn't until he began drinking it down that he realized how dehydrated he was.

"I'm running some secondary diagnostics that will take a few minutes to process," Sarif said, setting the pad to the side and massaging the back of his neck. "Just try not to move, that needle is right next to your heart."

"Great. Not the first time I've had someone just stab me there without warning," Adam muttered, tossing the empty bottle onto the thin sheet.

"Well, stashing tech in the chest-cavity might be risky but it's also practical. There's not much room in the human body to add things to begin with—and lining the ribcage with tech means your natural armor can protect the augments right along with your organs. This is part of the reason home-maintenance with early augmentation experiments went so badly and now there are laws against it—if you don't know what you're doing it's easy to put yourself under. LIMB clinics largely sprung up as a result of home care laws and insistence that augmented people have pre and post-surgical counseling."

Adam was listening, but he didn't comment. He knew David was talking because he was worried and that was how he handled things. It had probably been a long time since David had had to be in a hands-on situation rather than a corporate verbal battle. All things considered he was working remarkably well with only one arm and no real chance of escape.

"Good news is you were right, the Sentinel is intact," David said, jolting Adam out of another near doze. The CEO didn't miss Adam's violent reaction and he looked up, pressing his lips together. "Just a little longer, then I'll remove the needle and you can sleep, okay son? You're suffering from a pretty massive energy drain so sleep is probably the best thing you can do right now. Whatever was in that tranq was designed to do more than knock you out. It put your body in a state of hyper alert and used your augmentations against you. Now you're running on empty."

"Wonderful. I missed living on the edge. Things have been too quiet lately," Adam quipped, gritting his teeth as David reached forward and slid the needle out. He pressed his palm against the puncture and lay back down, closing his eyes. He could feel David watching him.

"Lucky for you you've got pretty exceptional power reserves, and the latest bio-conversion on the planet. You're not going to feel great but the energy drain won't kill you either."

"Best news so far," Adam muttered.

Malik had been scrambling to crack their code for hours, desperate to find Adam and David before it was too late. Every time she managed to focus a flash of that room came back to her and all she could think about was how bloodied Adam had looked. She sat down in the back of the VTOL, trembling, trying to get her tears under control. At first she'd been furious, then she'd been worried, then back to furious, and then everything pile on top of her and she just felt helpless. She wasn't the hacker—Pritchard was. Adam was by proxy. They clearly thought she'd pulled off more of the Hive hack by herself than she actually had, and now Adam and David were going to die for it. She buried her head in her hands.

"I'm so sorry spy boy," she whispered. Her throat ached with weariness and she threaded her fingers through her short hair, tugging gently. She took in a shaky sigh and looked up. She'd muted the video feed, but there was movement again for the first time since the first transmission. She scrambled to her feet and stumbled over to the console, slamming her palm into the mute button.

"This is what happens, when you strip away inhibitions," Wen said, brandishing a modified taser. His Chinese reverberated in the small room and Malik felt her heart crack when Adam flinched. "I hope your revenge was worth it. Worth your peace. Worth this man's life," he said, pointing. "Because his blood, his needless death, is on your hands, Faridah Malik."

Malik's cry stuck in her throat and she grabbed uselessly at the monitor as Wen drove the taser sharply into Adam's side, amping up the voltage as the cyborg arched against his bonds. The metal scraping against Adam's wrists and ankles made a horrible sound like shrieking steel. Electricity arched between the ports in his chest and ran down his arms, lacing his fingers like living creatures.

Faridah covered her mouth with her hand, tears standing in her eyes as she watched, her eyes darting between Adam's agonized expression and the chaos of jagged peaks above his head where the monitor recorded what was left of his heartbeat.

Doctor Wen looked into the camera and flipped a switch on the taser, meeting Malik's eyes. She shook her head, felt herself plead, right before Wen turned and plunged the prongs harshly into Adam's sternum. His force was so sudden Adam couldn't arch against it and in seconds the tension left his body as the line ran flat on the vital monitor behind his head.

The cameraman panned in closer, fixing his film on the blank stare of Adam's open eye where the lenses were shifting spasmodically, thrown into a dead chaos by the residual electricity, and Malik felt her own heart stop. There was a harsh jerk on the monitor as Wen re-adjusted the camera so that both he and Adam's body where visible.

"Do you want to know the best part, Faridah Malik?" Wen asked nastily, turning his body to the side so that the garish green of the flat line was fully visible. He went forward, slowly lifted a syringe from the tray, and squirted some of the contents into the empty air. He flicked it a few times and then slid the needle into a vein near Adam's collarbone. Carefully, almost tenderly, he laced his fingers together and performed ten quick compressions against Adam's breastbone. He glanced at the camera, then back at Adam's body. There was a jostle as he detached the camera from its stand and carried it over to the table, panning it slowly over Adam's still body until all Malik could see was the top of his head down to his shoulders. She stifled her sobs, choking back fury and grief and guilt in a bitter cocktail.

She tried to look away from Adam's empty gaze but she couldn't. The twitching of his lenses had stopped, leaving his eyes completely dead, his head tilted at an angle, evidence of how he'd been gasping for his last breath. Suddenly there was a whir and the lens in Adam's eye retracted sharply, making his pupil a crazed pinprick. His shoulders jerked back and he gasped, and when he blinked and turned his head weakly, Malik could see there was still intelligence, still life behind his eyes. She choked, gasping as she pressed her hand to her chest. Wen turned the camera back on his own face, Adam's steadying vitals ticking once again across the screen behind him.

"The best part is that Mr. Jensen here has been outfitted with a cardioverter. It is capable on one charge of re-starting the human heart up to eighty times, so long as that heart still wants to beat. A little epinephrine, a little help, and if his heart is in any kind of rhythm at all the cardioverter will stimulate it back into one that will keep him alive. So I can keep on killing him, and each time as long as I do not breach his body or damage the structural integrity of his inner organs to do it he'll come back. Weaker each time, with more chance of heart damage each time, but he'll come back. His heart may withstand being shocked and stopped over and over, but his spirit won't. And every time he dies there's more chance that it will take more to bring him back. That's precious seconds his brain goes without oxygen. Tell me, Ms. Faridah, how much of Adam's mind do you think will be left by the time you reach him?"

Malik flattened her hand against the screen, wanting to gather Adam up and take him away from everything, wishing she could turn his head towards her so she could make absolutely sure that he wasn't already damaged, that he knew who he was and who she was. She shuddered back another breath when something on the edge of the camera's focus caught her attention. All at once the fury roiled back up and she clenched her hand on the rim of the screen.

"All of him will be left," she said harshly. "You should be worried about how much of you they'll be able to send back for burial."

Before he could say anything Malik cut the feed and rounded on the back of the craft, jerking open the emergency weapons and armor cache.