And I'm back, with the long awaited sequel! Or should it be fivequel? And yes, I know I said I'd post this last week, but apparently you need internet to do that ...

If you've only just joined us, let me first welcome you to my series! Then let me tell you that the reading order (so that you're not completely lost) is:

1) Not for the Faint Hearted

(OPTIONAL) The Evening Jog

2) What Doesn't Kill You Will Inevitably Try Again

3) Fearless

4) Not Every Story Ends Happily Ever After

(OPTIONAL THE SECOND) A Christmas Story

5) This one – ie, In The Name of Love

Okay, now that that's settled, please remember to leave some reviews! Constructive Criticism would also be highly appreciated! Xox

Something else I'd like to add; OMFG I JUST REALISED DESSI HAS THE SAME LAST NAME AS A CERTAIN CHARACTER FROM A CERTAIN TWILIGHT SAGA! Is it too late to change her last name?

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Title – In The Name of Love

Summary – Unbeknownst to them, all their past adventures had been leading to this point. Because it wasn't fate that brought them together. It was something else. A secret so big that those who protect it would kill just to keep it hidden. And so came the big question; how far would you go in the name of love?

Warning – I'm planning for this story to be a lot darker than my previous ones (*all my readers start rolling around in fits of laughter*). The reason is that this is set several years later, so everyone has matured. Of course, it will probably not turn out the way I want, but I want to try writing something darker...

Disclaimer – I own nothing that you recognise. Nothing.

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Chapter 1 – How It All Began Again

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The Orphan

Gregory Rider had never been a normal boy. As an infant, he had never cried. As a child, he had never asked for that which wasn't his. Never had he complained about the unfairness of his life.

This was a boy who seemed to take everything in his stride, be it good or bad, and carry on with his head held high.

Currently, Gregory Rider was lazing about under the shade of a massive oak tree.

Today marked the fourteenth anniversary of his stay at the orphanage. Fourteen years since the day he was found on the doorstep of With Open Arms (WOA).

People often asked if he hated his parents, like a lot of orphaned kids did. But he always replied with a firm "no". After all, the orphanage had told him about the circumstances around his becoming orphaned. How could he hate his parents, if they had been shot dead because of something beyond their control?

In actual fact, he was rather grateful to them. After all, they must've done something to protect him if they were gone and he was alive. Or at least, that's how he preferred to think of it.

Greg sighed, looking out over the lawn at the younger orphans, who were involved in a very fast-paced game of soccer. He was fourteen now. Had been for two months. And the further he went into teenage-hood, the slimmer his changes of being adopted became.

Not that he didn't like it at WOA – as far as orphanages went, it was a pretty decent place to have grown up in. It was just, as selfish as it may sound, he wanted his own family. He wanted a brother to play with, and a sister to protect. Cousins to bully, grandparents to dote on his every breath. A father he could look up to, someone to give him strength. To work, so he wouldn't have to. To help him understand the mindset of the female population.

But most of all, he wanted a mother. He wanted delicious home cooked meals, and to be told to clean up his room. He wanted some to look after him when he was sick, to worry about each tiny, inconsequential scratch. Someone to embarrass him in front of all his friends when she gave him another kiss. He wanted the safety of a mother's embrace, and the soft words telling him that everything would be okay.

Greg snorted, amused at his delusional fantasies. God, the changes of him being adopted were almost as high as getting a kiss from Emily Marsh.

In other words, next to none.

"Gregoryyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

The fourteen year old looked up to see one of the younger orphans beckoning frantically at him.

"We need a new centre forward! Can you fill the spot? Pleeeeeeeeeaase?"

Greg smiled. "You even had to ask?"

Despite his daydreams, he knew he lived a good life. The younger orphaned children adored him – they saw him as the only fixed pillar in their constantly changing lives. This was especially true for the fostered kids, ninety percent of whom were dumped back at the orphanage before being re-fostered, and then dumped back again.

Heck, he even had adopted kids coming back to him, just for a friend to talk to.

After being in the orphanage for fourteen years, he now got along with the staff extremely well. In particular, a really pretty woman named Sandy Phillips, who volunteered at the orphanage to "pay off her debt to society". Not that she really needed to – the woman was an emergency-room medic. She'd probably saved more lives than he could count.

It was too bad she was thirty-four and married, really.

Despite all this, Greg had never wasted an opportunity to wish for a real family.

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The Prisoner

Only five people in the world had ever known the exact location of the island. One, the luckiest, had died a natural death. Two had been assassinated; each had been shot through the knee, then the gut, then the heart, and finally the head. They had both died screaming.

The two left had been brothers. Cold, vicious, cruel, they possessed an unmatched level of blood-lust and greed. Together, they were unstoppable. However, as the last two bearers of the secret, they had turned against each other in a fit of jealousy. What followed had been arguably the most violent battle of the underworld. Weeks passed, bringing with it innocent bloodshed and the never ending roar of guns.

Until finally, only one was left standing.

Michaelis Menten smiled a cold, merciless smile as he remembered the remains of his late brother. Around him, his mindless followers and bodyguards exchanged glances, fidgeting nervously at the expression on their Boss's face.

The original owner of the small island had been the only one to die a natural death. He'd known of the closeness of his demise, and had thus passed the secret onto his four most trusted protégées, knowing that by the time he was gone from the world, only one would be left with the secret.

The island was like an impregnable fortress. Communications going into or out of the island were scrambled to thousands of locations across the world, bouncing around faster than the blink of an eye, making it almost impossible for anyone to even try and trace the central location.

Only a handful of people had ever set foot on the island, and they had all been handpicked by Menten as followers who would follow him into hell and beyond without question.

However, not even they knew all of which the sinister island possessed.

"The prisoner, sir," one of the guards said, breaking into Menten's thoughts.

"Ah yes, how is he doing?" Menten asked, cold-hearted glee lacing his voice.

The guard pulled up live footage from the camera installed in the prisoner's cell.

"Leave me," Menten ordered, his eyes trained on the prisoner slumped in the corner of his cell.

Quietly the guards filed out, and Menten was once more alone in the dark surveillance room.

He observed the prisoner with a kind of sadistic pleasure. That was all my doing, he thought, a colds smile twitching on his lips, all me.

The prisoner stayed slumped in his cell. Long dirty blond hair fell into the prisoner's closed eyes. Rags that may once have had colour, hung torn and bloodied around the prisoner's limp form. Skeletal hands, the result of years of starvation, lay uselessly on the cold concrete floor, the energy required to move them having long been drained.

Menten zoomed the live feed closer to the prone shape. The prisoner was shivering. Rags were not enough to keep anyone warm, especially not when they'd been kept in subzero temperatures for God-knows how long.

Suddenly, almost as if he knew he was being watched, the prisoner opened his tired eyes for the first time in a week. The too-thin face turned until it was staring right into the camera. Menten stared right back, smirking at the hollow eyes.

A flash of pride, of honour, of defiance, crossed those brown eyes, before they flickered shut.

Anger crossed Menten's face as he watched the prisoner's head slump back against the wall.

"Just you wait," he snarled, "Just you wait. I'll break you yet, Alex Rider."

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How it all began again...

It was a quiet evening. Too quiet.

For Lisa Bee, one of the hospital's top psychiatrists, this was rather unusual. She'd worked with these patients long enough to know that they were never quiet, not even at night. They had too many nightmares. Too many painful memories.

Lisa frowned in thought as she made her final round for the night, peering through the Spy Window of each room to make sure her patients were in still there. So far, each of them were fast asleep, tucked soundly into their beds. That in itself was strange; they almost never went to sleep when they were told.

With a sense of foreboding, she reached the last room. Unlike other rooms, this one had no Spy Window. It had been ruled that the patient was so feeble that they wouldn't need to keep a constant eye on her. This room was special; it held the very patient on whom she had written her PhD thesis eleven years ago, the one that had propelled her into instant fame within the medical world.

Lisa's thesis, 'The Power of the Human Brain', examined the many phenomenal things the brain could do, before going in depth into a case study. She'd spent many futile months trying to find an example, before she'd stumbled upon her favourite patient.

Des S's mind had fragmented itself into a million pieces. Lisa had only heard of the phenomenon in textbooks from sixty odd years ago. But right there, right in front of her, had been a live example.

She was still unsure about what her patient's real name was. Des S was the only thing her patient could remember. That was the amazing thing about Des; the fact that she was living proof of the instinct of self-survival.

After fourteen years with the patient, Lisa was sure that her brain had fragmented due to a need to protect some vital piece of information. All of Des's thoughts and memories had been scrambled, leaving her a feeble, dependent mess. Whatever information she needed to conceal was still there, somewhere in her mind.

She just needed to put the puzzle back together.

Lisa could usually hear some form of noise coming from Des's room. But now...nothing.
Almost against her will, Lisa drew out her keys and unlocked the door. Slowly, the psychiatrist pushed the door open, and tiptoed inside.

"Des? It's me. I'm just checking up on –" Lisa stopped rather abruptly, staring around the empty room for a full minute before her eyes found the open window that one of the junior nurses must've forgotten to lock.

With dread, she approached the window, before looking outside.

There was a tall tree with its branches growing very close to the window. It wouldn't take much of an effort for someone to jump from the window onto the branch, and climb down from there. The hospital wasn't secured outside - lack of funding meant that they'd had to wait for a fence to be built.

Well, they were going to pay for it now, weren't they?

Lisa stayed there for quite a long time before her head cleared enough for the psychiatrist to sound the alarm. By the next morning, the entire country would be on the lookout for the escaped patient.

But the good people of Australia weren't the only ones who would be alerted. Even as the news was reported on televisions country-wide, high ranking officials around the world had already been warned. They were on the lookout now, ready to deal with this once and for all.

The war had started. It was only a matter of time before the stakes were made clear.

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Dun dun dun!

I thought it was an appropriate way to start ;)

Please REVEIW!