Yes, it's back! Sorry for the long delay in update here, but...truth be told, I have had a massively awful time of it the last year+, and frankly, writing at all hasn't been happening much. I did get into a new fandom (see the Brutal Legend fic I'm writing), and over some time, tooling around with that has given me back some of my love to write, and thus helped me get to a point where I could finally pick this back up. I'm so, so so sorry for the long delay, but I promise I am going to do what I can to get this thing running and finished...I WANT to finish it, it deserves to be finished. So, you know, sorry again...and also sorry this chapter is a bit short and ends awkwardly, but hey, I'll get my rhythm back soon :)

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Cena kept struggling as best he could from where he was laying, but the two men on top of him were remarkably strong in their own right and had a superior position that was keeping him from getting loose. He could sense more than see Beth and Chavo on either side of him trying to work their way free as well, and Morrison was pinned down but not able to struggle, seeming to be already exhausted from a fight he and Jeff had already been through. And Jeff...well, Jeff wasn't going to be any assistance to them anytime soon at all.

The woman who had introduced herself as Dr. Bettler had moved from Jeff's side over to crouch next to Alexander's body, checking him over before standing and apparently dismissing him casually. "It's a loss, he was handy for several of our needs, but we can get others. We'll have to reinforce all our Class D personnel's mental blocks if he was able to go rogue on us this way."

"Let me go!" Beth snarled from behind him, but there was a grunt and an involuntary squeak of pain that caused a spike of new rage to rise in Cena, and he started squirming and kicking furiously again.

"Don't waste your strength, Mr. Cena," Bettler said, smiling in a strangely warm fashion. "Even if you can break their hold, you've been programmed to drop at a word. You would barely have time to get to your feet before I could stop you."

"You psycho bitch!" he growled. "This has all been your doing, all this, all the bullshit you've done, everything you've put us through, put Rey through, put all those people through, and for nothing!"

"I realize how it must seem to you, Mr. Cena, but this is not 'for nothing' as you so eloquently put it." Bettler frowned, going over to crouch next to Jeff again as he began wheezing more loudly. "Call ahead to have a recovery room prepared for him, he'll need to be in a sustainable condition if we're going to keep him useable."

"What are you talking about?" Morrison asked, managing to get his head turned enough to stare at her. "Keep him useable for what?"

Before Bettler could answer, there was a commotion out in the hall, and a few gunshots went off, but there were no shouts of pain, only a fight, and then the door flung open and Batista was shoved violently inside by several more of the prisoner guards, with Keith being pulled along behind, both of them thrown to the ground and held down just as their allies were already.

"And there are my two best workers from the Essex division," Bettler said, smiling slightly. "David, Keith, I'm truly sorry that things went this far for the two of you."

Batista glared towards her. "So you're the bitch."

"I'm afraid that is how it seems now," Bettler said, what sounded like almost genuine sorrow in her voice. "And it's true, I do wish things could be different. But unfortunately, my work is far too important and the cost is not too high."

"The justification of every psychotic bastard in history!" Chavo snarled. "Your work isn't important, isn't necessary, you're just doing it to stroke your own ego, make a name for yourself!"

"My work could be the most important breakthrough in recovery psychology that there is, my friend," Bettler responded, voice a little cool. "It could ultimately be an improvement of lifestyle for all humanity, a way for stresses and horrors of the past to become completely archaic."

"You can't keep stresses and horrors from happening by making people forget about them! And you can't make people be better by taking away all their problems!" Chavo shouted.

Bettler considered him a moment, then looked to Keith. "I see you were telling them all about what our experiment is about." She waved a hand dismissively. "It doesn't make a difference, I suppose. We're going to have to wipe all this out of them anyway. So far as I'm concerned, this segment of the experiment is over."

"What?" Cena whipped his head up and stared at her. "Experiment? What experiment?"

"Your test run, of course, John," Bettler responded almost cheerfully. "You and your friends, anyway."

"Test run for what? What the hell are you talking about?"

Bettler smiled slightly. "You see, while the testing of the false memories was our primary motivation, it wasn't our only one. There were several different tests being carried out in the course of this matter." She looked to the guards again. "I want Mr. Cena and Mr. Hardy transported to our nearest available facility, and Mr. Hardy will need to be taken care of until he's recovered. The rest of them will need to be erased and reprogrammed so that the last couple of days are replaced."

"Wait, what do you mean? Why are you taking John and Jeff?" Batista asked, turning his head as much as he could to glare at her.

Bettler sighed slightly, clasping her hands together and tucking them under her chin, looking thoughtful for a moment. "We had many, many different people in our program, Dave, from a variety of cultures...policemen, military, scientists, librarians, construction workers...all over the mark. We made note of the different reactions that were gauged from our subjects, and discovered a few aberrations. The very vast majority of them reacted within the parameters we determined...no changes, no damage to the memories, nothing. But a few people...out of our three thousand subjects, perhaps 20 people...showed a resistance to the drugs and the programming. And not only that, when an acquaintance from the same walk of life was introduced in some of our cases, most of them kept their heads down and did what they were told, regardless of what it was, simply due to the human nature to give in to the orders of authority. But certain professions showed a tendency to buck against that authority...and those professions were the same people who showed the greatest resistance to our experiment. And all those professions involved combat...soldiers, police, one boxer...and one professional wrestler. We are still trying to determine why that is...and the best way to do that is to gather more people from the same areas and continue to study them."

Cena's eyes widened. "You're putting us into the program. You want to do to me and Jeff what you've been doing to Rey all this time!"

"One individual from your walk of life does not allow for a proper sampling. We want to expand the experiment to test whether or not you will all share similar reactions, so as to have more information to work with. Science has to be thorough. Even three people is not quite enough, but it will do...for the time being."

Batista snarled, trying to buck off the gray-suited men holding him down. "I'm going to gut you, you fucking bitch! I'm not going to let you get away with this!"

Bettler simply smiled, turning away and motioning to one of the khakied scientists, who brought over what looked like a large blue lunchbox, setting it down and opening it, revealing several vials of a blood red liquid. "Start working on the others," she said, gesturing. "They'll need the last few days replaced...come up with something to explain their running away from their show and where they've been. We'll have to arrange for two replacement bodies for Mr. Cena and Mr. Hardy and find some way to align both stories." She glanced back again, frowning. "Tie David into this. Unfortunately, he knows too much for us to readily erase it away."

"Fuck you, you whore!" Batista snarled. "When I get loose from this, I'm going to snap your neck!"

"Yes, I'm sure that's what you want to do." She turned away, looking out the large window along the wall, sighing. "It's such a shame, Dave. You were a very good worker, but you just can't see the bigger picture."

"Joke's on you," he shot back. "Rey's long gone from here, and you'll never find him again, and everything's going to get broken wide open!"

"We are going to find him, very soon, but even if we don't...what is he going to tell people, Dave?" She looked over her shoulder at him. "He's been driven insane by your meddling in the experiment. He'll never be able to tell anyone where he's been for the last five years, what's happened to him, aside from that you and some of the others were involved. In fact..." Bettler snapped her fingers, glancing to one of her fellow scientists. "Work that into the scenario. Make some sort of evidence to make it look as though David there had ties to Rey. Even if we never get him back into the system, it can be played off as though he were simply the victim of a deranged kidnapper."

"He is the victim of a deranged kidnapper!" Chavo growled.

Bettler turned away, then whirled on the door when from down the hall, there was a sound of a scuffle and loud protests, and within a minute, the door opened, two of the grey-suited thugs dragging along D'Amore, flinging him to the ground. "We found him running around the parking lot, but no sign of the subject or the other rescuer," one of the men gruffed out.

"And I'd have gotten away with it too, if not for you meddling kids," Scott grumbled, sitting up and rubbing his head, taking in the scene around him with no small amount of trepidation, before settling his eyes on Bettler. "Well, hello there, ma'am, I think I should inform you that you're trespassing on private property."

"We'll be out of your way soon enough." She shook her head slightly. "Where is Rey? I know you were involved in trying to sneak him out of here."

"I'm not sure, you know?" Scott said, shrugging a shoulder. "I feel like I would have remembered, if a couple of nutheads hadn't bashed me in the skull on the way here, but eh, what are you gonna do, you know?"

"Drug him," she said without hesitation, nodding to the man with the blood red vials. "We'll get the truth out of him that way."

"Hey, whoa, come on, winners don't do drugs, am I right?" Scott got to his feet, grinning a bit sheepishly. "Chill out now, lady, we can talk about this."

"Then talk."

"Okay...well...see...thing is...Eddie and Rey are long gone, ma'am. Eddie popped a car and they bolted. They're probably halfway to Kalamazoo by now. I'm actually just stalling for time to let the two of them get further away. This is going to sound racist, but considering all the other retardedly amazing schemes he can pull off, I'm going to bet that Eddie knows how to sneak across a border and get back to the States, annnnnd you're not gonna be able to find him if he doesn't want you to. Soooo, you're all kind of fucked so far as that goes."

"Then you're officially useless to me." She waved a hand. "Wipe him with the rest."

"Hey, I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"And why wouldn't you?"

"Because of the squad of highly trained ninja assassins crawling through the roof right now and waiting to drop in and beat the hell out of all of you the second I say the magic word."

Cena and Beth managed to meet each other's eyes at this point, trading incredulous looks. Scott hadn't been nearly this put together at all since they'd arrived, and now he was not only blatantly insulting the mad doctor, but he wasn't even breaking a sweat to do it. What was he doing?

Bettler gave Scott a look of pure withering contempt. "I'm beginning to understand why some of the others in the program didn't want wrestler involvement. I think you all have more severe issues than even my abilities could repair."

"Aw, you're right, I'm...I'm just messing with you." He grinned. "They aren't ninjas at all."