Author Notes:
Once more, any feedback would be appreciated, it'd be nice to know someone's taking the time and effort to actually read my story. If you can guess the song that Wreythe sings (yes… sings) later on, I'll give you a pet llama, and don't search it up to cheat!

Revenge was all Aimee could think about now.

It was the morning after her terrifying ordeal, and Aimee wanted nothing more to take her pickaxe and cleave the sicko's head in two. Doctor Silencioux was his name, a sick, twisted freak of a man who was paid by the Council to inflict the worst mind-boggling horrors on his subjects, who took utter delight in the screams, who craved the perverted thoughts rushing through his brain as shoved a needle into the unwilling skin, watching the tip break the skin and enter the body. He loved the thrashing, the kicking, the slackening of the muscles and the eventual spasms of the nervous system. What he loved last night the most was how Aimee's violet eyes seemed to be an unrelenting torrent of tears, her small, innocent body being touched in places no other human had touched, how her breasts heaved with dread when the Doctor had unleashed the whip.

It had been a bad night.

Aimee had been brought back to her cot, along with Katrina, sometime before dawn after most of the night in the Doctor's care, having him treat to every depraving act that her body could take. It was little wonder that the people who left the Department never wanted to speak of their experiences, for Aimee could never imagine telling anyone about what had happened last night. For as long as she lived, she was sure she'd never forget what had happened, and prayed that a similar fate should never befall anyone else.

Getting up from her cot, the aches and bruises caused by last night's session causing her to twinge with each spasm of pain, Aimee looked up to the top cot, nestled in its darkness. She hadn't even seen Kat since they had both been dragged back unconscious, and hoped she was okay. She had a newfound respect for her new friend, a friend who faced this same punishment week after week, for the past half year. "How can she stand it," whispered Aimee aloud, climbing up the ladder to gaze out the dozing beauty lying there.

"Takes a hell of a lot of work, girl," replied the not-so-sleeping former model, opening her eyes and smiling sadly, the bruising around her cheek a dark blue from a particularly hard slap. "You get kind of used to it after a while, and then they have to amp it up."

Aimee hadn't seen what Kat was put through during the session, as her own senses were running amok from the pain and agony, she couldn't even attempt to see what they were doing to her friend. But she still heard Kat's screams echoing her own. "I guess the only benefit is that we don't need to go to work today, on account of us staying up late," continued Kat. "So get back down there and have a rest… unless you have the urge to climb in with me?" But Kat couldn't keep a straight face and laughed hysterically at the shocked look on Aimee's face, and bid her goodnight. But there was no way Aimee could fall asleep again.

Jorge was extremely worried. He lost the girls to the guards and he had no idea what had happened to them, and whether they were alright or not. He had asked some other inmates if they knew where the girls were and what was happening to them, but all he received were shrugs and apologies. He hadn't slept a wink all night, and had stayed up, wandering the complex, hoping for sleep to overcome him somehow.
It was only at six in the morning did Jorge spy a pair of guards dragging two unconscious forms back into a cot-room, dumping them before heading off to breakfast. Jorge crept into the cot-room and found both Aimee and Katrina completely naked. Starkers. In the buff. Totally kit-less.
Jorge had grabbed two pairs of the identical green jumpsuits and tried to dress both the girls, wincing when he saw the ugly red welts going down their backs, and the horrible bruising on Katrina's face.
And all the blood.
He blanked when he saw the dried blood all over Aimee's chin and chest, and nearly tore out of the room in a rage, but he calmed himself down and went about his task, ripping off the sleeves of his own jumpsuit and wetting them at a tap in the corner, before carefully wiping the blood and muck off the girls.
Jorge was angry. He was enraged beyond all belief, but he kept his head.
After placing both girls in their cots and leaving to let them rest, Jorge ate his breakfast in silence, just staring down at his bowl of cereal, his thoughts wild and confused.
She saved me before, and now, when she needed saving, I couldn't do anything.
He dropped his spoon into the bowl, watching as it sunk under the milk, like a giant liner sinking into the ocean water. It really tore at Jorge, the helplessness that he felt as the girls were taken away, how he was left in the cot-room, cradling his damaged ego in his hands and wondering why Katrina had stopped him. He remembered looking up, and finding Aimee gone, and even after leaving the room and searching for hours in the warehouse, the only conclusion he came to was that Aimee had gone upstairs. He remembered bounding up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, hoping he wasn't too late.
Anything could have happened to her, and I wasn't strong enough to stop it.
He didn't see Aimee, but he heard her sobbing. At the top of the stairs he had found a locked door, but before he could open it a guard had come outside, pointing a shotgun at his head, telling him to just turn around and keep walking. He still felt the lump on his head where the guard had clobbered him when he had refused, and he was pretty sure at least two of his ribs were broken when he tumbled down the stairs.
Jorge stood, his taller-then-average frame dwarfing the chair he had just sat on, and stalked out of the mess, his hands in his pockets, and a dark deed on his mind.

Jorge reported to work early, and was pleased to note that the guards didn't accompany the early shift down to the mines, as they were too busy waking up and drinking coffee to care. So he and a few other early-risers went towards the exit, and began trekking down the sloping corridors to the mines.
Reaching the dugout area, Jorge began watching for his opportunity; there were far fewer guards this early in the morning, but there was also less of a crowd to hide behind, so Jorge had to play his cards right. At last, coming to an intersection between three tunnels, Jorge put his plan into action.

Stationed at the intersection were a single guard, more brawns then brains, who was too busy drinking from his thermos to notice the young man sneak up behind him, a look of pure hatred masking his face. Jorge's light brown hair whipped across his face as he raised his pickaxe and brought it crashing against the support beam right above the guard's head, splitting the timber and bringing the support and a bit of dirt down upon his head. But the guard was only fazed for a second, and tried to shout for help, but a second blow of the pickaxe tore a gaping hole into the ceiling, and with a quick scream the guard was silenced.

Jorge motioned to the rest of the miners near him to move on, and try to distract any guards who may have heard the commotion. Moving over to one of the portable light units, Jorge quickly undid the back panel and sifted through the cobbled together electrics until he found what he was looking for and pulled out a battery cell, then replaced it on the floor, before bringing his pickaxe down upon it; with luck, the guards wouldn't notice the missing battery, and would assume a falling piece of the support had gutted the unit. The battery cell was fairly basic and weak, but Jorge was sure that it was more then ample for what he needed it for. He then moved over to the mountain of dirt, and began to dig. After a few feet, he felt the still body of the guard, and dug him out. The man was dead, having suffocated underneath the massive pile of dirt and rocks.

Jorge hoped that no one was coming down the tunnels, and quickly stripped off his sweaty jumpsuit and then stripped the guard of his own uniform, including his baton and semi-automatic handgun. He tried on the guard's clothes, finding them to only be a little too big, the guard having been bigger then even Jorge, and replaced the gun and baton on his own belt, where several small pouches hung, but Jorge would check them later. He then dressed the dead man in his own clothes. Now came the sick part.

Jorge leaned down and proceeded to beat the man's face into a pulp, demolishing his cheekbones and flattening his nose, pounding at his face until his baton came up bloodily. Dragging the man back to the pile, he pushed him inside the hole he had made, then half-covered him up, pickaxe and all. If everything went to plan, the guards would find the cave-in and the dead miner, and would assume that the miner, being a giant simpleton of a man, had done something very stupid indeed, and Jorge, dressed in the navy blue colors of the security guards and wearing a Kevlar vest, would be able to report the incident and hopefully infiltrate the guards by pretending to be a new recruit.

Sure enough, after using his new short-range radio to broadcast the accident up to the office, several guards came down to check out what happened, and handed Jorge his relieve from duty, which ordered him, "Mr. Wilson Wells", to report in.
Now equipped with his new gear and uniform, and a giant grin plastered on his face, Jorge made his way back up to the Department, ignoring the confused looks on the descending miners who had recognized him. Only one or two people actually stopped and tried to him, but the guards lining the walls quickly came and knocked those miners about with their rifle butts, telling them to move faster and stop being pests, and although Jorge was fairly upset at this treatment, he was glad that his disguise had fooled all the guards so far, but he knew eventually his luck wouldn't last. The guards all slept in a barracks, and when his bunk mate's noticed Jorge sleeping in Wilson Well's spot, questions would be asked, and so Jorge had to make today count. He made a quick trip to the medical lounge before heading to the office.

Knocking on the door to the administration, Jorge was ushered into a pristine, neat office, adorned with several bookshelves, all packed with books on medicine and anatomy, and a large, polished mahogany desk sitting in the centre of the room. Jorge was impressed, the only mahogany furniture were those which had been taken down into Undercity back when the bombs had dropped, and to own one was a sign of high status. Sitting behind the desk was a scrawny man wearing a lab coat, which looked up at Jorge as he came in, before looking down at his work again. The man's face was horribly scared, and his hair seemed like needles.
"Wilson Wells, reporting for duty, sir!"
The man looked up once more, and clasped both skeletal hands together. He was staring at Jorge with a deeply scrutinizing look, before finally responding in a low voice. "…Wilson, was it? Do you mind if I call you Wilson?" He waited for a brief second before continuing. "Wilson, a report came up to my office, I was hoping you could clarify a few details for me."

"Of course sir," answered Jorge, slightly confused.
"I'll begin from the start then. At 0730 hours, you were stationed at Intersection Forty-Three, correct? Your shift required to be patrolling between there and Forty-Nine, correct? Now, in the report sent to me, it details how you were standing at the intersection, when an inmate came up behind you and struck at you, but missed, hitting the support beams instead. You then struck the inmate in the face with your baton, before he took another wild swing, taking down half the room with a single swing and burying him. You then radioed for help, which came.
Now, this report was filed by Officer McGrady, and he felt that something was lacking in what you told him, so he dug out the inmate and secured the area during his investigation.
He claims that the body found had a face looking like a plate of mashed potatoes, and although matched the description of an inmate we currently have in custody, there was no tattoo on his arm."

The words sunk into Jorge's skull, and immediately knew he was screwed.

"Now, of course every inmate has a tattoo, so do you mind telling me what you think had happened to his tattoo?" smiled the man. Jorge thought quickly, his mind thinking up excuse after excuse, replaying a scenario in his head where he surrendered and was executed, or where he pulled out the gun and took out as many people as he could before being shot, but a wild thought came to him, one that he hoped wouldn't sound too insane.

"The reason that the prisoner had no tattoo sir, was because he had removed it," lied Jorge. "As you are no doubt aware, there are a lot of people down here who have gone a bit… peculiar, and I'm sure that this prisoner was no exception. He probably just took a knife from the kitchen, and being absolutely crazy, ripped apart the skin on his arm, taking off the tattoo."
Jorge had never been that good at lying before, but he felt that this one deserved a medal; it was possible, and had probably happened many times before, because suddenly the man stood up and hit the intercom.
"Check the inmate's body for scar tissue on his right arm!" he had shouted.
"I'm sorry Doctor Silencioux, but the body has already been cremated, as per regulation," answered the man on the intercom. The doctor let out an annoyed exclamation, and sat back in his chair, watching Jorge with a very angry expression.
"Pull up your sleeves, show me your arms," ordered the doctor. But when Jorge did that, the doctor let out yet another annoyed grunt, and stared daggers at Jorge. Jorge had picked up surgical casts and plastered his arms and torso, in hopes of making it seem like he had been injured, and of course his ribs had been aching, so the trip had been even more worthwhile. The doctor just kicked his desk and glared at Jorge, then ordered him to leave his sight.
It was only after Jorge left had the doctor begun to laugh, laughing with such a passion that his secretary had thought him loony. On the doctor's display on his desk was a photograph of a man with a strong jaw-line and small, beady eyes, and the name 'Wilson Wells' printed next to it.

Leaving the room, Jorge had quickly run down to the warehouse, stopped by his cot-room for a moment before locating Katrina and Aimee's cot-room. Upon his entry, Aimee had shot up from her bed and started whimpering, but that whimpering had turned to a look of confusion as she recognized Jorge. "What the hell?"
Jorge almost laughed at the puzzle going through her head, and explained all what he had done today so far. Aimee's eyes flickered when Jorge had explained how he had come to find them, and had been given a clobbering for his troubles. When he started to tell her how he took care of her and Katrina after finding them naked, Aimee's face grew slightly red and she whispered a thank you. But when he told her of the death of the guard, Aimee grinned.
Jorge pulled out his gun and baton and laid them upon the dresser, then pulled off his security outfit and re-dressed in the green jumpsuit he had taken from his own dresser. He opened the pouches and spilled their contents on the dresser, then pulled out the pager and the battery he had stolen. Inside the pouches was over a week's worth of ration sticks, a few flares, the dead guard's ID card, a screwdriver and a few clips of ammunition for the handgun. Taking the screwdriver, Jorge worked on the pager while Aimee woke Katrina and let her take in the scene before her. Surprisingly, Katrina just shrugged and rolled back over. "It's not like we can leave anyways, if we break out, back into the Undercity, we'll just be captured again."
"But we can tell people, they'll help us, there's no way they'll let the Council get away with this," argued Aimee, almost pleadingly. "There's no way…"
"Aimee, the Council controls everything; they've got the entire security force on their side, with enough guns and ammunition to kill us all ten time over."
But a beeping noise interrupted whatever Aimee was going to say, and the two girls looked over to Jorge, who was grinning back at them, the pager in his hand displaying a message which he read out.
"Yo, ths is A, need sum hlp?" read the short message on the screen. The girls both squealed, even the normally composed Katrina, and they jumped down to gather around Jorge, who was busy writing a message back. "Need help, killed a guard, guards think I'm dead, Cot-Room 76."
The three waited anxiously, not daring to say a word until a response came back.
"Come to the message of freedom within the next ten minutes," was all it said, but immediately the trio gathered up the supplies Jorge had, and wrapped it all in a jumpsuit, before making their way to cot-room 146.

Upon reaching the cot-room, Jorge had a sudden idea.
"You two stay here, in front of the cot-room," ordered Jorge.
"Why?"
"Because how do we know it's not a trap? If it's safe, I'll whistle." With that, Jorge took a deep breath, and slid between the cot-room and the next cot-room, and paused. If it was a trap set by the guards to catch inmates trying to escape, he'd not be punished, but because he had revealed that he had killed a guard, he's be executed immediately. Taking another deep breath, he slid around the corner, and nearly died from shock.
"What's wrong, surprised?"
"Y-Yes! Of course!" answered Jorge as he jumped forward, giving the tall, dark-skinned beauty a massive hug. Adrienne pulled away from him, and looked around quickly, her hawk-like perception taking in everything around her. She was just as Jorge remembered her from those few weeks ago, even dressed in her usual white lab coat and mini-skirt. "What are you doing here?"
Adrienne pulled out a packet of cigarettes before answering, offering Jorge one, which he accepted.
"I was once a prisoner down here in the Department. I had been sent down here because of my favorite past-time, which was considered unappealing and detrimental to the Greater Good.," explained Adrienne, breathing out some smoke.
"I was told that my 'sluttish' behavior was to be cured, and that I would return to society a new woman, and that if I ever spoke of my time down here I'd be staked. I was down here for less then four weeks before I found a way to escape; I'd found the delivery tube for the packages of jumpsuits sent down here from the upper floors, and climbed up the chute, one cramped and air-tight foot at a time. I was nearly dead when I finally emerged from a fabrication shop on floor eight, but I was lucky it was already closed for the day. It was then I realized where I was, and what it meant."
Jorge was confused at this last bit. "Where were you?" But Adrienne shook her head. "Where are we now?"
"The Department of Forced Will."
"Yes, but on which Floor of Undercity are we?"
The realization hit Jorge like a bullet.

He was officially beneath Floor 7.

Adrienne explained how the true disasters had all occurred below Floor 4, but Floors 5 and 6 were still safe. The Council used the rumour that it was also dangerous in order to keep out any interlopers, and had converted the largest warehouse on Floor 6 for their purposes. The miners were actually traveling through cordoned-off sections of Floors 5 in order to reach their tunnels.
"But where do the tunnels go?" asked Jorge.
"The tunnels go in a spiral shape, slowly slanting further and further down around the perimeter of Undercity. The Council is hoping to tunnel all the way down to Floor 1."
"But isn't it dangerous, with flooded chambers and nuclear breaches?"
"Floor 1 isn't connected directly to the rest of Undercity," replied Adrienne, lighting another cigarette. "Floor 1 is actually located another half-mile below Floor 2, and contains the emergency lift."
"Emergency lift?"
"Jesus kid, your stupid sometimes; the lift to the surface!"
While Jorge just stood there with a stunned look on his face, suddenly a pair of bodies collided with him from behind, making the cramped space even more cramped.
"Hi," said Aimee, breathlessly.
"Hi," echoed Katrina, sheepishly.
"Hey," answered Adrienne, amused.
Jorge introduced all three girls to each other, and allowed Adrienne to repeat everything she had said to the duo, until finally they too were as confused as Jorge was when the emergency lift was mentioned.
"So you help people escape?"
"Now and then, normally we just pick up supplies," answered Adrienne. "Me and a few people live on this floor, on the opposite side of Undercity. We have our own warehouse set up there, where we stock rations and weapons in preparation, but it's a hard life, and we can only enter Undercity proper after we've picked up false IDs from our mole in the Council's Administrative sector. I took a huge risk in coming to see you, Jorge, for your trial. Normally I stay on Floor 7, but I knew you'd be sent down here to the Department, so I thought you could do with some comforting. And look at you now, quite the player, aren't you?" teased Adrienne, gesturing to both Aimee and Katrina. Aimee blushed furiously, but Katrina just laughed.
"So what do we do now?" asked Aimee, crossing her arms, trying to regain some dignity.
"Well, we could kill you," answered Adrienne, with a devilish grin on her face.

One hour later cot-room 76 exploded into fire, completely incinerated within seconds, the empty cot-rooms nearby also catching flame, but was quickly put out by the now-activated sprinkler system. Amongst the wreckage, the guards and the evil doctor had picked through the remains, and found two hideously burnt corpses; bones turned to ash and only a few pieces of extremely charred flesh remaining. Underneath, the guards had found a burst gas line, and it was deduced that the gas line has malfunctioned, and had burst under the pressure. The two inhabitants who had been living there, Ms. Aimee Radchenkov and Ms. Katrina Realer joined Jorge Orwell in the list of the recently deceased.
At the same time, the real Aimee, Jorge and Katrina were climbing up a rope Adrienne had thrown down the jumpsuit supply chute, and were now climbing up, covered in grease, helping them squeeze up the tight chute while Adrienne shimmied up the rope quickly.
"She's a bleeding monkey," grunted Katrina, panting from the strenuous exercise, and Jorge couldn't help but agree.

Dyson Wreythe was bored.
He was so bored, he was actually singing. The plane crash had taken his only true love away from him: his iPod. He'd been carrying that iPod as long as he could remember, packed fully of music of a past age, and it was gone.
Gone.

"I had your number quite some time ago,
Back when we were young,
But I had to go.
Ten thousand years I've searched it seems and now,
Got to get to you,
Won't you tell me how?"

So he had to sing to alleviate the boredom now, something Wreythe found quite disturbing.
He was on the edge of Los Angeles, as he had been over a year ago, and was once more scanning the crater-filled valley for any signs of life. He had once described Los Angeles as being the worst place on Earth, more like Hell then ruins, and his opinion still stood.
Honestly, he didn't know why he had bothered. It had taken him the whole afternoon to get here, and a good part of the evening after he decided he'd had enough flying. Stealing the Boeing 747 was a good idea, filling it with fuel was a good idea, changing the song on his iPod just as he was about to jump from the emergency hatch was definitely not a good idea. Wreythe didn't know how to cope anymore. But it was the sound of a rifle being cocked that made him remember.
"Oh my god… is that you, Dy?"
A waterfall of red-brown hair filled his vision as the young woman slammed into him, dropping him to the ground and hugging him tight. Wreythe looked straight into her grey eyes, which were starting to tear up, and immediately pressed his lips into hers, passionately kissing her, as if Satan's own go-kart was on his tail. They lay there for a few minutes, Wreythe finding this both very amusing, but very comforting.

Wreythe pulled back for a moment, brushing her long hair with one hand. "Do you feel the need to eat my tonsils or something?" he asked kiddingly.
"Were you singing about me? I heard you."
"How's it going, Lance-Corporal Munroe?"

Rain Munroe slugged Wreythe kiddingly, her dark-red leather armor creaking from the movement. "That's Lieutenant Munroe now, you know that, you're the one who helped me get my promotion in the first place," and then she added in as an afterthought, "And call me Rain!"
"Alright girl, so what's going on? How'd you know I was here?"
Rain grinned, before kissing Wreythe once more and standing up, dusting herself off. "You couldn't have made a more dramatic entrance actually."
"What do you mean, I walked here."
"Yeah, maybe the last five hundred yards, that damn plane scared the crap outta' us back in NCR. Our scouts saw it as far as the border, barely traveling above the ground; we knew for sure it was you, after that stunt you pulled last time."
Wreythe couldn't stop grinning.
"And uh, I didn't want to mention this too much, especially it won't matter soon, but did you need new clothes?" asked Rain, eyeing him up and down. Wreythe looked down; his favorite black, tattered greatcoat was hanging in shreds, his boots were almost demolished and his shirt was almost non-existent, it'd be far easier to simply say he wasn't wearing a shirt at all. "What do you mean by 'it won't matter soon'?"
Rain grinned again, and ran her hands down his chest, a single finger trailing down his chiseled abs.

Wreythe woke up from a particularly nice dream involving Rain and a swimming pool full of raspberry jelly, and screwed his eyes tight against the sunlight filtering through the threadbare curtains. It had been two days since he had arrived back in the West Coast, and two nights spent in the company of Sergeant Rain Munroe. Two bliss-filled nights. Rolling out of bed and shrugging on some trousers and a shirt, Wreythe noticed that, once again, Rain had already left. He put on his belt with the M1911 hanging off it, and slipped on some sneakers Rain had found for him.
Rain. Wreythe hadn't seen Rain for about a year, and the young woman was even more beautiful then he remembered, and far more sure of herself. When he had first met her, Wreythe could have probably snapped her will like a twig, but now she was a Lieutenant, quite the upgrade from snot-nosed Lance-Corporal.
Leaving the sanctuary, Wreythe once more stood in the heart of the New California Republic; Shady Sands. The world's first artificial city made after the nuclear war, Shady Sands had begun as a tiny village, started up by settlers migrating from across the ocean, until it had become the sprawling metropolis that it was now. Brick homes ran up and down the streets, peppered with the occasional wooden ore even stone building. Great tents had been set up, merchants trying to sell whatever goods they had gathered or stolen over their travels, kids ran through the street playing with basketballs and miniature cars while a flag depicting a two-headed bear in front of the red letters 'NCR' hung from flag poles at regular intervals. Civilization in all its glory, the last remaining bastion in the West Coast, where a person was measured by the skill they possessed rather than any misguided code of honor or their ability to hack off limbs. Wreythe was back in the New California Republic, and for now, he was home.