Note: This chapter has been revised. Nothing's new, it's just better writing.

Disclaimer: Chapter 1 please :)

The Cell

As the spots of black began to fade from my vision, I became acutely aware of the memory where I was being slammed into a table by a good-looking doctor. No, this wasn't an old memory, it was a recent one—as in, the last eight hours. I groaned as I woke, finding an annoying throbbing persisting at my head as if someone was relentlessly knocking on it. I hoped that it went away, but I was beginning to imagine the exaggerated, cartoon version of a lump on a character's head. Those things never went away easily, though Tom from "Tom and Jerry"seemed to get a lot of them in every episode.

"Madeline?" I heard someone whisper while I rose from the forced slumber. I groaned again, an involuntary response to my system trying to force itself to slip out of unconsciousness. Where the hell was I?

"Knock...knocked me out cold," I mumbled, unaware of what I was saying as I rubbed my head in a desperate attempt to soothe the migraine. "Bastard...bastard knocked me out cold."

Slowly, I opened my eyes and took in the scenery around me. The world was blurry for a moment or two, but I blinked a few times and the image sharpened. I had no desire to push myself off the floor, but nevertheless, my eyes wandered around the box I was placed in.

Box?

That's when it hit me: I was in a box, or a form of it, at least. A cell. I was in a cell—a cage! Locked up like an animal.

"What the hell?" I growled, still stationary from my lying position on the floor on my back. From beside me, I heard the same voice whisper another sentence to me.

"Are you okay? Come on, just say you're okay." I turned my head, feeling the sharp pressure of pain. The world turned for a split second, but when it stabilized, I saw Damon on the other side of the window of bars, ducking his head to see me. Our eyes met, and he studied my complexion with concern. I frowned.

"Damon?" Who the hell would lock us up in a cage, though? Oh—right, Dr. Dickfield. I groaned, having the thought remind me of how I came into the cell in the first place. "Where is he?"

"Right here, Mads." Grunting, I forced myself to roll over on my stomach and face the front of the cell. Maxfield was standing at the bars, his arms crossed with a solemn, unimpressed expression on his face. He was not grinning or basking in the glory of locking me and Damon up behind these bars, but rather he held a clipboard in his hand and remained calm.

I forced myself up to a sitting position. "What did you do?"

"You left me no choice," said Maxfield in a somewhat unapologetic tone.

"No choice?" I chuckled bitterly as I made myself stand up on my own two feet. My legs were shaky, my hair was no doubt on the wrong side of my part, but I couldn't care less. Wes didn't reply, and this only made me angry. "How dare you say that you had no choice! You had a choice! It's called not knocking me out and locking me up in a cage!" I swallowed, but barreled on. Somehow, my rambling got the best of me. "Now...Damon, I get because he spent the night torturing you but—"

"Not helping, Madeline," I heard Damon warn. I sighed.

"But," I continued, watching as the look of observation crossed Wes's features, "you need to let us out of here. I told you, we won't hurt you again."

Maybe that was a lie, but whatever. He deserved it. Wes scowled at me and refused my offer. "I had to do it, Madeline. You were protecting him."

"Well, yeah because he's..." I trailed off, trying to search for the right term to come out with. Wait a second, why did I risk my life for Damon again? Whatever. "You know what, you're an idiot. One drop of blood from me and Damon will bust out of this cage and finish you for breakfast. Guess you should've thought this one through, huh?"

Wes tsked. "Actually, I poisoned your blood, just like I poisoned his. With vervain." His voice was flat. Damn it! Not like I was actually going to let Damon feed off of me, but still. I would've done it if it were able to get us out of this mess. Dr. Maxfield smiled vindictively. "I did think this one through. Guess you're not the smartest one in the room this time."

I grimaced and crossed my arms. "Well, what if I get hungry? You gonna deprive me of food, too?"

"You'll get some. As needed."

"Something to drink?"

"Same goes."

"Well..." I trailed off, searching for an excuse to get me out of this mess. I needed to do something productive to get us out, not what Damon was doing sitting down and taking it from what I've noticed. I scrambled quickly for something to say. Suddenly, something clicked inside my head. "Well, what if I have to pee, huh? I'm not a vampire, I do have bodily functions, you know!"

Wes took a moment to reply, but eventually just pointed in the corner of my cell. "Use the bucket."

Bucket? I turned around and observed the small pail in the corner of my holding cell. You've got to be kidding me! I turned around at Wes with an unimpressed, pissed-off look on my face. I snorted, "Classy."

The doctor just gave me a challenging look before walking off in another direction, ending the conversation. Frustrated, I began to pace in my cell, biting my thumbnail deep in thought. As I was going through scenarios in my mind, I heard Damon croak on the other side of the wall, "Restroom?"

I could just imagine the painted smile on his face. "It was worth a shot." I groaned. "There has to be a way out of here. There has to!" As soon as I walked up to the cell bars, I began to rattle them and shake them, but they were unshakeable. Iron bars; weak human. They didn't go together at all. I began to kick at them, hoping for a loose bolt or something, but there was nothing. I could not pull one piece of information from my mind to get us out of this mess. "God damn it! I can't even put a dent in this thing! I'm useless!"

"You're not useless," Damon retorted, sighing. "You're just human. Those bars are supposed to be able to restrain vampires. There's no way you're going to be the one to break us down, so please. Don't die trying."

I took a deep breath. He was right, unfortunately. There was nothing I could do to those bars that would get us out of here. Admitting defeat, I sat back down on the floor and made sure I was low enough to see Damon through the bars. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling in wonder. His eyes flickered over to me when he recognized my presence, and I saw his blue eyes full of hatred and defeat. What could be so bad that he wasn't his normal, light, smug self?

Then, I remembered what Bonnie had told me, and I was a little less concerned with the defeated look on Damon's face and more concerned on why the hell I'd been spending the last month and a half fighting something that was never supposed to be fought in the first place. If I was being honest, I was being selfish. I just didn't care.

"Damon, I know." My voice was soft, and hearing the exclamation, Damon looked up to meet my gaze. The defeated look dropped and it was replaced by worry ad he turned on his stomach to face me. "Bonnie told me everything. That's why I wanted to talk to you."

"Bonnie..." Damon trailed off, trying to remember what it is that I didn't know. I was quiet, and just a few seconds after my silence he finally realized. Then, he sighed. "Jesus, Madeline, you weren't...supposed to find out from her."

"Then who was I supposed to find out from? You? Because, from what I can gather, you and my sister have been screwing each other senseless for the entire summer and I took a vacation in an alternate universe."

I didn't mean for the words to bite, but they somewhat did. I was just telling the blatant, obvious truth. The vampire looked up at me with a hard, unimpressed gaze.

"If Bonnie really told you what I think she told you, you should know why I did everything I did this summer." He squared his jaw. "I had no choice."

"You had no choice?" I practically screamed, my voice shrill. I kept it low, however, unwilling to let Dr. Dickhead think I was cracking under pressure. Which I totally was, but that was besides the point. "You had a choice, Damon! There's this little thing called, don't screw my sister! I didn't know not having sex would be so hard!"

"I had to drive you out of town," Damon explained, hissing the words. "Not only did Bonnie see you die in my arms, she saw you die in the town square. Everything I did was to protect you."

"Bullshit!" I scoffed. "You cared more about Elena—about a stupid premonition—than you did about me!"

"You would rather I let you die and live with my selfishness than perform a selfless act that would allow you to live?" he proposed harshly. I sighed.

"You're not getting it, are you, Damon? You made a choice. You chose to be selfless, even though the truth is—I wouldn't have cared." He looked at me like I was insane, but I barreled on and refused to let him interrupt me. "And your efforts were useless. I may not have died, but I did get sent to another dimension. You choosing Elena didn't really do me any good. Though I imagine it did you some."

I mumbled the last part under my breath, but Damon's sensitive hearing obviously didn't let it slide. The next thing I knew, he was short and snippy. "You think that it was easy for me to pretend to be in love with Elena over the summer? I was miserable! I couldn't stop thinking about what I could do...if I should call, if I should say 'to hell with it' and just find you anyway. But I knew that I had to keep you safe. You think I don't feel guilty that this happened to you? That I don't take the blame? I do, Madeline, but the thing is, if I didn't do what I did, you wouldn't be sitting in front of me right now."

Towards the end, Damon's voice got softer and I realized the meaning behind his words, however harsh they were. He was right, I realized, even though I disagreed with his methods and reasoning. However, who was I to tell him what was right or wrong? I wasn't God, and I had no intentions of playing him.

"So what are you going to do about it, Damon?" I asked quietly, secretly searching for the solution I begged for inside. Damon's eyes caught mine and we stared at each other for what felt like eternity before he reached out and grabbed my hand in his, taking me by a little surprise. Nevertheless, I didn't pull away.

"I don't want to talk about what I'm going to do when we get out because the first thing we've got to do is get out," he told me firmly, nodding. I studied him, but found truth and sorrow hiding behind those blue orbs. "And, when I do get us both out of here, we will talk about everything. Can you handle that?"

"You don't have to ask me." I shrugged slightly and looked up at the bars that sealed us inside. "But...how are we going to get out?"

Damon shook his head. "I don't know."

"What are we doing here, anyway? What does Wes want with us?"

"It's not what he wants with you, it's what he wants with me. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time." Convenient. Why does that always happen to me? "I have no idea what he's going to do with you, but he won't just let you go."

I paused. "So...what does he want with you, then?"

"He's a part of the Augustine, the people who get their kicks off vampire torture," he snarled.

"How do you know that?"

"I've...been here before," Damon admitted to me, looking up with slight hesitation. I looked at him with shock, basking in bewilderment.

"I...I don't—"

"Someone in my family sold me out to the Augustine in 1953," he explained. "Every day, this nut job, Dr. Whitmore, would torture us—cut into us, took our eyes out, pushed us to every limit that you can imagine." Damon swallowed thickly, his voice full of the hatred that I had seen earlier. "He had quite the imagination."

"Oh, my...God," I whispered, finding the whole situation repulsive. Vampire torture? Practically lab rats? "I'm so sorry, I didn't know—"

"You did." Damon looked up at me as he cut me off to gage my reaction, but I kept my face surprisingly blank. He nodded once. "I told you a while ago. You just don't remember." He laughed, almost finding amusement—sick amusement—in the situation.

Hesitation filled the air. "I wish I could remember." It was all I could offer him. "But you heard what Silas said."

"Yeah, well...this goddamn Universe just has a funny way of screwing things up." His dry humor in the terrifying situation we were in was concerning, and it only made me want to know more. I shrugged lightly.

"Well, you're welcome to tell me again." He stared at me, surveying my features. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks, finding some familiarity in the longing stare as well as discomfort. Clearing my throat, I began to ramble. "I mean...if you want to. Obviously, I don't expect anything or—"

"Hey." Damon laughed. "Breathe, Madeline. Relax." Taking his advice, I took in a breath, and he sighed deeply. Then, he started. "I was here for about five years."

"That long?" I widened my eyes as he agreed. "How the hell did you get through all of that? It must've been terrible!"

"Believe it or not, I had a friend."

Before Damon could continue his story that he only started, there was a sound that immediately distracted out attention. We turned our heads and found Wes dragging someone into the room with us, placing the body in the other cell across from Damon. Damon and I looked at each other once before we stood. When I saw who he put in the cage, I cursed under my breath. Shit. Dr. Maxfield turned to us, his smile sadistic.

"I just scored another vampire for experimenting."

"Come on, Elena," Damon pushed in a hushed tone. "Wake up!"

It had been a while since Dr. Maxfield's dramatic entrance with my unconscious sister on his heels, and Elena was finally waking up in front of me and Damon. She woke up groggily, of course, and looked around for just a moment before finally spotting us. Her eyes widened.

"Damon!" She gasped. "Mads! Oh, my God! Are you two—?"

"We're fine," Damon interrupted her, "Wes injected all three of us with vervain. Maybe if it wears off, we'll be able to break through these." He tried the bars again, but it wasn't working. It was useless. Damon sighed. "At the very least, Madeline's blood should make us stronger once it passes through her system."

What? "Uh, no," I corrected Damon in an offended, shocked tone. Like hell I was going to let a vampire get near me again! Not after what happened with Stefan. "Sorry, Charlie, but no vampire's getting their fangs into me today. I don't feel like spending another day on bedrest."

Damon didn't get a chance to respond when Elena breathed out, "What's going on? Why are you here? Why is Mads here—why am I here?"

I could tell he was hesitant, but he finally said, "I was explaining it to Madeline again. We're—at least, you and I, Elena—are here as vampire lab experiments. It's a part of the grand Augustine tradition—torturing vampires for the greater good of science." Venom traced every inflection in his tone.

Elena took a moment. "Wait a second, again?" She looked over at me. "Did you know about this before, Mads?"

I shook my head almost immediately, but then retracted the quick rejection. "Well...it depends on how you look at it. Apparently, he told me before I just...don't remember it," i confused.

"How long were you here?" Elena pushed, looking back at Damon.

He began to explain everything he'd started to tell me to Elena, and I lost my attention for just a few moments. It was returned, however, when he said my name.

"I made a friend. His name was Enzo, he was int he cell that Madeline's in." After hearing this, I reluctantly stood up from my position on the cold concrete, looking down at the floor with distaste. Violent images of a bloody vampire crossed my vision, but I knew it was all imaginary in my head. I visibly shuddered.

"I haven't even given a thought to the other people who've been locked up here."

"He was a soldier in Europe during World War II," Damon explained, moving past my muttered comment. Elena's eyebrows knotted.

"How did he end up here?"

"Dr. Whitmore was working in a battlefield hospital when he discovered Enzo was a vampire. So, he drugged him, locked him in a coffin, and shipped him overseas. He had been here for ten years by the time I joined the party." Damon cleared his throat. "He...taught me some things."

While Elena just sat there quietly, accepting Damon's story, I was confused. Wasn't there more? What was he hiding?

I stepped forward in my cell, even though I couldn't see Damon. "What kind of things?"

He felt silent. I was about to push him to tell me what he was keeping from us, but then, Elena looked up at him with watering eyes. "Damon...Wes knew our dad. They worked together. He said that our dad was an Augustine, too." Elena paused and found my eyes. Compassion oozed from them. "Look, Mads, we know that our dad was a vampire hunter, but he was also a doctor. He was kind and...loving. He wouldn't be a part of a place that would cut your eyes out!"

Tears pricked at the corners of Elena's eyes as she looked over at Damon with guilt. I slid down against the wall separating me and Damon with a heavy exhale.

"I'm sorry, Elena." In fact, I was unapologetic about it. Shit happens. "People are deceiving sometimes. That's how life works."

"You're only saying that because you don't remember him." She scoffed. "But Mads—"

"Elena, enough," I demanded, turning to look at her with a hard stare. She silenced, but I found no filter in my words. "If you don't know by now, there are a lot of shady people out there. People lie, people cheat, and there's absolutely nothing that another person can do about it because it's their own personal choice. It might seem harsh, but that's the way it has to be. I've suffered from a concussion...oh, I'd say about three times now? Yeah, that's about right. And I'm not in a good mood. Our dad is dead and he might've done bad things. We just have to accept that."

I hadn't realized that I had gone into full lecture mode, but there were some things that just needed to be said. Elena looked at me like I was a different person, and I realized quickly that making her feel even guilder wouldn't help anyone. Finally, I sighed and apologized for my reckless behavior.

"I'm...sorry, Elena," I whispered, shaking my head. "I just want to get out of here. We have to get out of here." I could tell, upon this declaration, that she could see where my anger and frustration had come from, but I could tell she was ways away from ignoring the whole speech I'd given. I leaned forward and shook the bars, shouting, "And we will once I can figure out how to take these damn bars apart!"

"Madeline, I told you to stop that." Damon's harsh, scolding voice sounded from the other side of our split cell, and I frowned, but listened to him upon realizing that he was right. "We'll figure out how to get out of here, but you breaking the bars apart will not be it."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it," I murmured. My arms folded across my chest and, soon, Elena asked another question towards Damon.

"How did you survive all of those years?"

He sighed. "Enzo's friendship kept me alive. He gave me a reason to hang onto my humanity. Even when I thought I'd be a prisoner forever. He...he helped me through a lot. Even took some of the torture sessions that were meant for me. I...listened to him scream all night as Dr. Whitmore tortured him."

Elena and I said nothing. By this time, I had resigned to listening, tired of running my mouth off. Elena, however, somehow had the energy to start pacing in her cage—back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It was giving me a headache.

She inhaled sharply. "Oh, my God, Damon...okay. Stefan's going to figure this out. When you don't come home and no one hears from me or Mads, he will..." She threw her hands up. "He'll find us!"

So our entire salvation rested upon a vampire with PTSD who was probably preoccupied doing something useful with his life that didn't revolve around the three of us. Great. You know, with Silas gone, Stefan probably had more important things to do—like leave.

"Points for optimism," Damon quipped. "But, unfortunately, Stefan doesn't even know this place exists."

Elena threw him a glance. "But you were here for five years!"

"Yeah. And for the first year, I thought he'd rescue me—he didn't. Once I escaped, there was no point in giving him more to feel guilty about so...I never told him what happened." He paused. "I've never told anyone but...Madeline."

Things fell awkwardly silent afterwards, and I had to admit, it was pretty damn awkward. I had tensed up and watched as Elena gave me a disappointed, jealous glance across the way. Deciding to ignore it, I broke the awkward silence and cleared my throat.

"Well, you escaped, of course," I reminded him. "So...how'd you do it?"

"They let us out of the basement once a year. Every New Year's Eve, the Augustine people had a little...cocktail party with a vampire buffet on the side. We were weak from vervain injections, half-starved from living on a glass of blood a day, chained up like animals. This whole annual shindig is where Dr. Whitmore got to show all of his Augustine friends what he'd found in his research. He let his guests drink from us to demonstrate the healing power of vampire blood." There was an unmistakeable bitterness in his tone. "But, on the plus side, that's how Enzo came up with his plan."

"Which was?" I urged.

"He said that if a vampire consumed two rations a day for every day of the year, by the time New Year's Eve came around, the vampire would be strong enough to fight their way out. We played rock, paper, scissors for it and I won. Paper covers rock."

"So did it work?" Elena questioned.

"More or less," he answered.

"How'd you get out?"

"It doesn't matter, Elena," Damon snapped. "I was strong, I got out...it wasn't pretty. All you need to know." And, just like that, Damon shut himself off and refused to finish the rest of the story. At this silence, I sighed heavily.

"When should the vervain be out of our systems?"

I expected Damon to answer, but Elena asked a question first, "How much did Wes give you?"

I didn't have an answer, but Damon did. "The vervain should be out of her system by morning. Ours should keep us a bit weaker, but if Madeline would let us feed on her, we'll be strong enough to break out."

"Well..." Damn it! Now, if I didn't risk my own health, I would be branded as a bad guy. I scrambled for an excuse and actually managed to find a legitimate one. "What if my blood turns you human? Silas said that it could be used as a cure—"

"But Stefan fed on you," Elena pointed out. I frowned.

"Yeah, but..."

"It's a risk we'll have to take," Damon cut me off harshly. I fought back a hiss.

"Right. Because I don't have a choice...like always." The two vampires were silent, almost as if they didn't care what I thought at all. But I cared. "You could kill me!"

"We won't," Elena promised. My shoulders slumped. Idiot.

"You can't assure me that," I retorted. "When was the last time you fed, huh? What...what if my blood is different? Maybe it's like a drug or something, I don't know! We can't rely on my blood to get us out of here!" Frustrated, I leaned against the wall and sat down on the ground, where another painstaking silence washed over the three of us for a long time. A while later, I sighed. "You need to tell us how we get out of here, Damon, or else we won't be getting out."

On the other side of the dungeon, Elena paced in her cell while Damon hissed, "You don't want to know, Madeline."

"I don't know if you know this, but me asking you is a form of me wanting to know."

"It's bad, okay?" he snapped. "Bad, bad."

I rolled my eyes. "I know what you're capable of. I know what Elena's capable of. That's primarily the reason that I don't want to be fed on by either of you. But if you really think that I care about how many people you had to kill in order to get out of this place, you're entirely mistaken." Another silence before I pleaded, "Tell me, Damon."

At last, he caved. "Okay. All right. The Augustine's next party was in 1958. I'd been drinking Enzo's rations for the entire year. I mean, he kept a few drops for himself so he wouldn't desiccate. And as he starved himself, I got stronger from all the extra blood, just like he said I would. Dr. Whitmore let me out and I...I killed everyone who got in my way. I tried to get Enzo out, but the bars of the cage he was in were drenched in vervain. Enzo trusted me with his life; the fire was getting out of control. I would've burned up or they would've captured me again, there was no way I would've gotten another chance to escape." He paused, thinking about his next words before he finally said them, and I knew they couldn't be good. "So I chose to save myself. And I knew, if I had to save myself, that I had to stop caring about Enzo. So I turned off my emotions and I left my friend to die. After that, everything was fine. Everything was fine."

At the end of his story, I was speechless. Elena was speechless. And the only thought that was running through my head: We're never going to get out of here.

After that, things were pretty much somber and quiet. Damon grunted, indicating that he was getting off of the floor, and a few minutes later, the door opened. Someone stepped inside, and I hoped to God that it was Wes. Maybe I could try to do something to get us out.

"What the hell is this place?" Not Wes. Aaron, the kid who looked like Wes. All right, this could be interesting.

"Aaron?" Elena asked, getting right up from the floor of her cell.

Damon groaned. "Great. Mini-Wes."

"I had no idea what Wes was doing. I didn't even know there was a basement down here," Aaron told Elena as he looked around the dungeon, studying me and Damon as well. I got up from the floor like the two vampires before me with a heavy, hopeful sigh.

"Aaron, you have to help us," Elena begged.

"I want to know the truth," he countered at her. I realized eventually that the sandy-haired human held a gun in his shaking hand and was clearly unstable. Slowly, I backed away from the bars of the cell, afraid of what he might do to us. "When you met me at Megan's memorial, you asked me a bunch of questions."

"Slick hands, cowboy." So not the time, Damon. So not the time.

"Yeah, well, I've never used a gun before!" He looked back at Elena. "And I've never killed anyone, either. Unlike you."

"What are you talking about?" Elena breathed out, but Aaron wasn't going to take any of her lies. He looked worn-out and tired, almost like he was mentally drained. Definitely unstable.

"Wes said a vampire killed Megan," he answered. Then, he raised his unstable hand and pointed the gun right at Elena. Oh crap.

"And you thought it was Elena?" Damon asked, almost scoffing at the thought.

"That or Madeline," Aaron confessed, glancing over at me. I looked at him, shocked, but didn't dare move any closer to the bars.

"I'm not a vampire!" I promised, a little offended. He turned around at me while still pointing the gun at Elena's cell. I held up my hands in defense. "Seriously! I swear it! I'm human...ish."

"No," Elena gulped, bringing the attention back to her. "Megan was inside this house. I hadn't even been invited yet, you just—"

"Wes also said that a vampire killed my parents. Maybe that was you, too."

"No." She shook her head. "Aaron, that's impossible—"

"Why else would you be so interested in me?"

While Elena stared down the barrel of the gun, Damon intervened immediately—and I realized that the whole knight-and-shining-armor thing wasn't just an act. "Calm down."

"Why else would you pretend to be my friend?" He looked over at Damon. "She's a vampire!"

"Not the one that killed your parents," Damon began slowly. "That was all me."

Aaron froze in his stance, but he lowered the gun from Elena's eyesight to meet Damon's hard stare. While Elena struggled internally with the words that came out of Damon's mouth, I froze as well and literally experienced the own shock from my mind. What?

"What did you just say?" the human whispered. Damon didn't say anything, but Aaron walked over to Damon's cell and raised the gun again, pointed at the dark-haired vampire this time. "Start talking."

"Damon, what are you doing?" Elena hissed. It was then I realized that the "knight-and-shining-armor" thing I mentioned earlier had gone too far. I snorted.

"He didn't kill your parents, Aaron. It's Damon's lame attempt to save his girlfriend. He's trying to be noble." I rolled my eyes. "It's just what he does; ignore him. No one here killed your parents."

"I'm telling the truth." Damn it, Damon, shut the hell up! I begged, but I knew he couldn't hear me—or see me for that matter, which would automatically let him know that I wanted him to stop talking. Because I was not visible to him, he blatantly defied me. "In 1958, after the fire, Enzo was dead. So I had to take on my revenge plan solo. I decided that I was going to kill all the members of the Augustine society, and then I was going to kill every member of the Whitmore family—except, I would leave one person, who would be able to grow up and start a family. And then I'd take out the generations and generations after that, leaving only one Whitmore to keep it going. And that's exactly what I did."

I held back the bile in my throat, trying to empathize with Damon. But it rocked my stomach to the very core.

"Did I know about this?" I whispered, unable to help myself. I clutched my stomach, fearful that my sickness would result in physical vomit that would reek inside of the cell.

"Nope. That part, I kept secret from you. For good reason, too."

"How many Whitmores have you killed?" Aaron choked out.

"Since 1958?" Damon asked, silent for a moment before confessing, "I lost count."

"When was the last one?" This time, the question did not come from the man holding the gun. It came from Elena, whose voice was restrained and furious. Damon was silent. "Damon, when was the last one?" she pushed.

"A few months ago," he answered, gulping. "Her name was Sara. I had to go all the way to Charleston to find her. It was a weekend trip; you didn't know."

Aaron lowered his gun in shock while Elena stared at him with disappointed, raging eyes. "But we were together a few months ago."

He nodded. "Yep."

"I had no idea," Elena breathed, almost as if she was feeling guilty for not knowing that her boyfriend was a serial killer. Surprise, surprise. Damon shrugged.

"Told you it wasn't pretty." The second he got the word out, a gunshot was fired, and I jumped ten feet into the air until finally realizing that Damon had dropped to the floor, dead.

"No!" I shouted out the second I heard the gun go off, but it was too late. Aaron was standing in front of me, the gun blazing in his hand. I looked up at him with cold eyes and stepped up to the bars, gaining courage in my feet. I pushed at the bars desperately while chastising, "Are you serious? Really? God, instead of going around shooting people, how about you help a girl out here? Let me out! Let me out!"

And then, as a result of losing hope and pushing too hard at the bars, I collapsed on the floor, panting heavily from my failed attempt at asserting myself. I spotted Damon in the other cell, a pool of blood around his head and a bullet wound on his forehead. It was just in the head, I thought, relieved. He'll be fine.

With nothing more to say, Aaron left.

I was lying on the floor, admirably disgusted by the filthy ceiling of my cell when the door to the dungeon opened again, immediately sending me to my feet. Aaron better be back with a key. I wanted out of this goddamn cage.

"Aaron," I warned, "if you don't—"

"Not Aaron." Sure enough, Wes came out and faced me with his hands elegantly crossed over his chest. I leaned against the bars, scowling at him. He looked over at Damon in the cage beside me. "But I see my nephew has made it here, hasn't he?" Nephew? "Well, I guess that makes my choice easy then, doesn't it?" He turned to Elena's cage, his back facing me now. "You're coming with me," he told her.

"Don't," I growled as he opened Elena's cage and injected her with vervain immediately after her first sign of attack. She was out in seconds from the needle injection, practically falling into the evil doctor's arms. I pushed at the bars futilely. "Let me out of here, Wes!"

Wes sighed and tossed the empty syringe on the cold cement of the cell floor. "The only way I'm letting you out of here is if you join me, Madeline." He pulled Elena into his arms. "And, considering your feelings for him"—Wes glanced at Damon, causing me to look to the side at the cement wall in defeat—"I don't think that's going to happen any time soon."

I looked back at up at Wes with a blunt stare. He was right; there was no way in hell that I would join him and his sick, sadistic effort to use science as a cover-up for torture.

"Screw you."

"That's what I figured." He shrugged and moved towards the door. Before leaving, he shot me a malicious smile. "Have a nice night, Madeline."

Then he closed the door, taking my sister as well, and I desperately tried at the bars again—only this time, there was no more hope left within me.

All right! That concludes this chapter! What'd you think? I think that the next chapter might be more exciting.

I will update ASAP, promise! :)

Love,

BellaSalvatore1918

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