I woke up in the car. In the spiked cuffs, on my side in the back seat. Totally under the influence of some kind of muscle relaxant. "Morning baby, you've been unconscious for quite a while. About 18 hours. We're almost there, how do you like my muscle-relaxing jelly? You must be feeling the effects, although it's pretty much all absorbed by now. But hey, don't worry, it won't take away your sense of touch, you'll feel everything completely. " Oh, how I felt like showing that piece of shit when I got my rage on. Let's see what's going to happen here, Salvatore. The car started to slow down. We had been driving on some sort of forest road for a while and now we were obviously there. He turned off the car and got out. He walked somewhere and was there for probably 10 minutes. I tried to get my muscles to obey but no. Then no movement at all. Then Damon came and opened the door. He took off the spiked handcuffs and licked my wrist. The wounds healed lazily and Damon smiled smugly.

He lifted me out of the car and carried me inside. This was no shed. This was a bigger building, a warehouse, or a barn of some kind. There were metal tables welded to the floor. The floor was concrete and there was a drainage system. Then there was a white shuttle, I don't know what. It was two or three meters long and seemed to be made of some kind of plastic or something. It had a hinge so you could lift up the lid of the shuttle. It looked a bit like a solarium, but this one had a curved lid. There was then one table with various stems around it with blades and probes. Sark had once had a table like that where he programmed what to do and the table worked under computer control when I was scanned. I wondered if Damon had looted this equipment from medical facilities. or gotten it. Because at no gig had we ever come across one of these mobile models. There were two other tables or shuttles and for some reason, I had no interest in getting into one of those shuttles.

Damon carried me over to one of the steel tables and put the spiked handles on. He cannulated my elbow and dripped some dark brown thick liquid into it from an IV bag that had already been placed on the rack ready to go. There was some poison green and vaguely brownish orange stuff in it but it wasn't dripped yet. Damon circled each shuttle and apparently clicked them on as they started to hum. He came over to me and crouched down. The table was pretty low. He said " Did you know baby that all these devices are connected, when I put you on the first device soon the other devices will know what you are, what to do to you, and what stage you are at to do it. I'll always tell you where we're going so you don't have to guess."

He brushed the hair from my forehead in such a familiar way and I couldn't help but shiver with disgust at how wrong it felt. He was pleased with my reaction. Once the brown glob had dripped, I didn't know what it was. Damon untied me from the table and carried me to the white shuttle. He had opened the lid. He lowered me into it. It was a metallic mesh quite sparse and I got chills as my naked skin touched the cold metal. He put my hands on the shackles and my feet as well. They didn't quite come together but they weren't wildly wide either. Then he put the lid on. The lid closed all the way and I was left in the darkness. Inside the shuttle smelled of some kind of lubricant, steel, almost ozone. I could feel the shuttle shaking under me.

Damon's voice came over the loudspeaker. "Now this machine will first scan you through and then take samples. Then it starts to test how you react to pain, for example. It will study and tell the other machines important information. Now you can scream as loud as you can in there. It's pretty well isolated." I soon felt various blades and probes sinking into me. They went into my nostrils, my ears, behind my eyes, out of the side of my eyeball. My cunt, my arse. My belly button. My buttocks. I just felt sharp pains all over my body and my head was secured by some kind of collar while the machine examined my eyes. Putting a bright light in them until it was just starting to hurt.

I endured, the pain became constant and more intense. Every minute my agony got worse and I kept trying to endure that one extra minute. Eventually, I started screaming as the pain was everywhere at once and I couldn't take it anymore. And still, it just kept getting worse. The machine did something to my throat to stop me from making any more noise. I was in a dark coffin that by now smelled of my blood, coal, metals, ozone, and oils. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. I don't know how long I was there and Damon didn't say a word the whole time. I felt my bones being drilled and my insides being twisted. I started to panic pretty badly.

Finally, the lid opened and Damon looked at me emotionlessly like a scientist bug. Without a word, he unhooked me from the machine and pulled the hose from the wall, turned on the tap, and rinsed me in the machine with ice-cold water that stung and burned the millions of wounds and scratches the machine had made. When I was clean enough, he lifted me from the machine and carried me to a metal table, securing me again in shackles. I couldn't bear to react in any way. I just let him do whatever it was he was doing. I was back on the drip and now it was the turn of the poison green jerk.

I was just thankful that the pain and torment, the darkness locked in a coffin was over. If only it had been a coffin, but the pain of doing anything from any side. When the pain exploded all over my body in so many places I couldn't stand it. I had never even experienced it. No sark, no medical facility put such overall pain and anguish on top. They always wanted to examine one part of me. Like my liver, what it could take. You could tolerate that, but when your liver, your intestines, your lungs, your kidneys, and your eyes all get the same hard treatment at the same time, you can't take it.

When the substance had dripped off, he untied me again without a word and now carried me to one of the tables with the stalks around it. He again secured me by my hands, feet, and head to the table and clicked on a switch. The stems started to move and come at me again. First, the device paralyzed my vocal cords. Then it pushed into my ears and the ungodly pain felt like it was splitting my head open. And my eyes. First, some kind of spreader came into my eyes and I felt thin needles sticking into my eyeballs and starting to spray something in there. The pressure in my eyes increased and so did the pain. I had never experienced pain as intense as the pain in my eyes now. The machine seemed to know when to stop when my eyes were about to burst. My ears were being treated all the time and the pain combined with my eyes was becoming quite too much.

Then I felt thin needles going through my cheeks looking for what I feared were the trigeminal nerves. An unbelievably hot pain spread across my face and I didn't know what I could do anymore. I felt like there was no way I could withstand or even prevent this pain and for some reason I didn't even lose consciousness. Slowly my vision started to go as the pressure in my eyes caused the retinas to be destroyed. I was just thankful that I didn't have to stare at the damn fluorescent light any longer. Then I was racked in my chest, in my heart and I knew there were probes going on there too. I started to feel pain in my liver. My spleen, my pancreas, my intestines. Eventually, I didn't know who I was anymore. Every now and then someone would move me from one place to another and the pain would change places. I always got my sight back only to lose it again.

I was lying on some kind of pallet and I was aching, in pain, sore, groggy. I was exhausted and tired. Damon came to me and crouched down. He again looked at me like a piece of meat and brushed my hair from my forehead. I got cold shivers down my spine again and sighed tiredly. Damon looked at me and took my hand, making a light scratch on it with his fingernail and licking it.

He said " Do you know why you're exhausted, tired, powerless? Let me show you." He pressed on my stomach and when he let go, a sharp pain rippled through my body. He continued " Did you feel that? Well, you're a doctor now so you know what that means. That kind of rebound pain. That's right, you have peritonitis and when I just tasted your blood, it's already in your blood, bacterial. Pretty damn nasty bug. I think it's your own gut and when it's got to the point over these weeks where it's leaking, all the germs are getting out of there, you've got peritonitis, so it's already in your blood. You have no fever, so sepsis. Now I don't know how you're even going to get out of this because you're already in pretty bad shape. I think I'm pretty happy with this .4 weeks, baby 4 fucking great weeks."

He got up and went off somewhere. I was lying on the pallet and I was just. Sepsis, peritonitis. Now the doctor inside me analyzed my condition and it was not good. I didn't know how long it would take me to even recover from sepsis and I wasn't sure if I had ever even had sepsis. Finally, Damon came and carried me wrapped in a rough blanket to the car. And drove off. I was in such a state that the time didn't matter. Even my surroundings didn't matter.

I just was. Sore, painful, cramped, achy. Eventually, the car apparently stopped and Damon lifted me up like a rug on his shoulder and carried me inside. Into Ihado's house. He left me on the couch downstairs, squatted down next to me, and said " Oh baby, now I'm going to enjoy myself, I really feel wonderful. We'll do this again sometime. Oh wow, what a feeling. What a Rush!" Then again he brushed the hair from my forehead and looked at me like a piece of meat, I just felt like I was going to smell like a wet dog and an ashtray for the rest of my life.

I was really tired, I just wanted to sleep but I knew I might start to hibernate. I still have to try to hang on. I sent my feelings via mating bond to Adam and I got his concern through loud and clear. Then Bran spoke in my head. "Little girl, where are you? Tell us. You are so weak Adam can't get through. We have Colin here ready for you. "

I thought wearily "I have sepsis, peritonitis. I was in the hell Damon Salvatore created for 4 weeks. Now I'm downstairs in Ihado's house and I don't know how long I'll last before I go to hibernate or something." Bran said in a surprisingly gentle voice now, a genuine voice. "Young lady, you will last six hours. We are coming. this is Marrok's order and you will last six hours awake, I will talk to you every now and then but now I will have Adam send you a boost through your bond."

I felt the heat, the power flowing through our bond and I grabbed it with everything I had at that moment. I didn't know that time was passing. I just felt the power and I always took it. Bran spoke to me every half hour, the concern already clear in his voice as I couldn't absorb the power so well all the time. It's ironic how absorbing the power was draining what little strength I had left. But somehow I knew I was in pretty damn bad shape.

Eventually, I heard the door open and Colin walked seemingly casually but fucking heavily charged towards me and was quite quiet as he gently patted me down. He said "Now I'm going to give you drops in your mouth. They are herbs but they are good for you. Don't swallow as you try to let them soak into your mouth. Is that clear? I will try brushing them into your mouth. Go ahead and open it." I opened my mouth and felt him brush four different substances around my mouth and lips. Then he stood up and said, "Now just rest there for a minute. Adam, take Mimi to the medbay and I'll be right there. "

Colin was on the verge of losing his temper and I knew he would want to go after Salvatore. I'd heard about Colin's reputation and I knew it was wild. Colin was a tough fighter, even a killer, just like Samuel. You don't always want to be a healer when you want to be a killer. If that's this side of Damon, the opposite of his doctor's side. If we all have that opposite. If healing isn't all we want to do, especially healing people.

Colin took Bran aside and said "Mimi is in really bad shape. Her straps are damaged badly. Now I gave her a little bit of strapping help, but if I don't get the help right, she could lose all her straps and then, then I don't know what will happen to her." Bran frowned, not knowing what the hell kind of straps Colin was talking about. Colin looked at Bran and for a moment said " Oh the straps, well straps are energy, straps bind the soul to the body. Straps a human has 100. supernaturals like you have 650 pcs. Mimi probably had something between 200-300 but at the moment 33 straps. Now if you or a human were to lose all your filaments, you would die. But Mimi. I don't know. It could be that her spirit, her soul would be loose in Lord knows where before her body would be in a condition to hold up to the straps. Witches always make an energy web just for the sake of the straps. If a witch were to lose her straps, the energy web would grab the soul and send another witch to the head. Now you don't have an energy web and I don't know then if a mating bond will help anything, but if Mimi already sort of died once then I wouldn't trust that either. So it's a tight, tight fight. Now I'd love to know what on earth Salvatore did this for." Colin's voice was dangerously soft, calculating as if he'd already imagined in his head what he'd do to Damon.

Bran said "Now go and do whatever you can to keep Mimi on her straps. I'm ready to help too. Now is not the time for revenge or questions, now is the time to help and heal. And don't say anything to Adam yet. He's so hot-headed he'll shoot after Salvatore, scraping first and asking questions later. And even so, I'm not guaranteeing Damon won't do the same to Adam." Colin nodded and walked into the medbay where Adam had already put Mimi under the electric blanket and gotten her cannulated. Adam was also studying to be a doctor. Magnum called and told Bran that he caught Salvatore almost as soon as he found him and he was on his way to Dresden.

Colin came up to me and said " You've been through some pretty rough stuff. But now you can get some rest. And don't you worry about a thing? I'll take care of you and Samuel's on his way. Damon's on his way to Dresden and he'll be fine too." I sighed. I couldn't face Damon right now, no matter how fit he was. Colin had taken a syringe and slipped the needle into my elbow. He smiled calmly as he pressed the plunger. I sank into a deep sleep and the pain went somewhere far away.