Chapter 2

Terra Incognito

On the whole, this had not been one of Winry's better days. It had started nicely, no doubt, but had taken a sharp nosedive when she'd passed the market. Hearing a child cry out – in terror and pain, not excitement – she'd made her way into a back-alley, ready to shout for help or wrench someone; whichever seemed more appropriate.

She'd found a man carrying an unconscious child slung over one arm, a hypodermic needle in the other hand as he opened the back doors to a large van.

Winry hadn't even thought about it: she'd rushed forward in an attempt to wrest the child from his arms and delay his escape as she shrieked 'kidnap!' at the top of her lungs.

She'd been so focused on the child that she'd missed him dropping the needle and seizing a piece of piping from among the effluvia in the alley. She'd only noticed he had something big and metal in his grasp when he clubbed her over the head with it.

Things became hazy after that. She vaguely recalled her body giving out on her, remembered pitching forward and her head encountering the hard paving stones of the street, the second blow apparently sending her into unconsciousness. At least, that was the only reason she could think of to explain the fact that she had closed her eyes for what seemed like a few moments only, only to open them and find her surroundings a lot different from those she remembered, with no memory of being in transit.

Winry could tell she was lying on a wooden floor, her legs curled to her stomach, her arms tucked under her chin and bound at the wrist with thin cords. There was complete blackness around her, so it was either after dark or she was being held somewhere that had no windows.

She assumed she was alone, as she couldn't hear anyone else...although she knew it would be hard to concentrate on anything over the persistent, throbbing ache in her skull. It felt as though someone were trying to split it apart down the middle.

As it was, it seemed to take a long time for Winry to register all this; her mind felt strangely disconnected to her body, the blockade between thought and action a yawning chasm where there had once been barely any gap at all.

'Concussion...' she told herself, blinking fuzzily in the darkness. 'At least. Skull fracture can't be ruled out.'

Winry tried to turn over and get her arms underneath her, but the world spun sickeningly and bile rose in her throat. She let herself sink back the floor, pressing her lips together and hoping she wasn't about to throw up.

"That wasn't a good idea..." she muttered to herself. Her vision was swimming in a rather unsettling way, and when she saw it going grey around the edges she wondered if she was going to pass out.

"...you...okay...?" the voice seemed to come from far away. But some part of her mind recognised the high note to it – a note few adults would be able to hit. The speaker was a child.

She tried to reply, but her tongue wouldn't listen to her, and all she managed to do was make some incoherent mumbling sounds.

"She talks funny..."

"Is the pretty lady okay?"

Winry tried to reach out toward the voices, but her body didn't obey. Fuzzy colours swam in front of her eyes, and she could tell she was passing out again. She could feel her heart slamming painfully against her ribs in a last desperate attempt to circulate oxygen and energy to her brain, but it made no difference. The pain in her head grew distant and unreal, and Winry felt her eyes slipping closed again, unconsciousness snatching her back in the grasp she had so recently escaped.

-xxx-

When Winry woke next, it was to a burning pain in her back. She was face down on a hard, cool, rough surface – cement or some kind of stone, she deduced. She could hear children crying out in fear around her...and something sharp and cold was slicing into her back.

The mechanic whimpered, trying to twist away, but her movements were sow and sluggish, and a hard hand came down on the back of her neck to keep her in place. She tried to lift her arms, but all she managed to do was flap her hands weakly against the floor.

The blade – she guessed it was a blade – came down again, carving through her flesh. Winry cried out, again and again, each time she felt the harsh whip of pain slice through her as the blade parted her flesh. What was he doing? It felt like he was carving her back up like raw meat.

When it was over, Winry was gasping, her breathing uneven and ragged as her flesh burned and stung in the cold air.

Now that her mind wasn't blinded by pain, she realised she was resting on what looked like some kind of transmutation circle that had been cut deeply into the floor beneath her. So deeply that the lines were more like troughs, and were filled with a thick red liquid she couldn't identify.

Winry felt like she had been punched in the gut when she realised the man was going to perform alchemy on her.

Her shoulders were grasped roughly and she was turned over, dragging another cry from her throat as the open, bleeding wounds on her back came into contact with the red liquid. It stung and burned like a seething mass of acid.

Then the world lit up in bright, flashing light, the kind that always accompanied a transmutation.

And then her blood seemed to boil in her veins.

Winry screamed as she felt the red liquid heave and froth beneath her, sliding over her back and plunging into her body through the gashes in her flesh, the crimson fluid siphoning into her as though being sucked up through a straw.

Some part of her mind wondered how it could be happening. There was a lot of liquid in the lines of the circle...how could it be drawn into her body without bursting her blood vessels?

Then the pain began to recede – not much, but enough so she could think and breathe and see again – and Winry became aware that something had gone wrong.

She wasn't in the basement anymore – instead, she was sprawled in front of a pair of doors that seemed to be hanging in limbo.

Winry didn't know much about alchemy, but something told her this wasn't meant to happen.

Her ill-feeling was more than confirmed when the doors burst open and a myriad of black tentacles wrapped around her body, dragging her through the gateway. The mechanic thrashed, but no amount of struggling seemed to dislodge their grip. They didn't feel quite solid, but at the same time, their hold on her was undeniable and unbreakable.

They skittered across her flesh...and at once, the lines on her back began to burn, searing and swelling, as though something were being forced out through them...

And then Winry was lying on cool stone once more, breathless and wracked with pain, blood running down her back, her mind reeling.

But she wasn't lying in the basement. There was cold stone underneath her, yes...but she seemed to be in some sort of large underground hall, surrounded by people in dark robes.

Winry's first feeling was one of relief. Ignoring the way her back was still stinging sharply, she scrambled to her feet, reaching pleading for the one closest to her.

"Please – I need help! I was kidnapped – there were these children there, too..."

But the blonde's voice died in her throat when the circle around her seemed to draw back, as though in awe.

But that wasn't what scared her – it was what they spoke. Their voices were loud, sounding both frightened and exhilarated...but the words hadn't been spoken in English.

Winry's throat closed tight. She had never heard of alchemy being used to transport someone before...but then, she didn't know much about alchemy. Next to nothing, really.

Someone snatched at the shredded remnants of her shirt and the blonde leapt away like a skittish horse. Some part of her mind dimly noted that the fuzziness and disorientation from the concussion had vanished, but that thought vanished into confusion and panic as the hooded figures closed in around her.

Winry kicked out, knowing she could never do anything, but she was feeling the fighting instincts of the trapped animal rising with her. One of them stumbled back, but hard fingers closed over her shoulders and practically threw her to the side.

She stumbled and fell heavily on her side, the impact with the cold stone knocking the wind out of her. While some lucid part of her mind noted that the floor she was lying on had lines painted on it – lines that looked rather like a transmutation circle – the rest of her brain was busy screaming in panic.

Winry had just made a move to roll to her feet and try to get some sort of handle on this situation, when the world suddenly lit up in front of her eyes as the circle beneath her flared like the sun.

Pain bloomed between her shoulder blades and down her back, racing across her skin like a river of fire.

She thought she might have screamed, but she couldn't be sure. All she knew was that when the light died her cheeks were wet with tears, her muscles were quivering as though she'd just been electrocuted, and the blood running down her back seemed to have increased its flow.

And it seemed that a statue had grown out of the middle of the stone floor.

Winry's mind was reeling so badly she didn't dare try to stand – at the moment, she had a feeling even hands and knees might be a bit too ambitious for her. But she could hear the people around her exclaiming in shock, some crowding around to touch the statue or stare at her in awe.

'It's almost like they've never seen alchemy before,' was Winry's dazed thought before the world began to swim away from her again.

It seemed she and unconsciousness were fast becoming close friends.

-xxx-

Winry huddled in the corner of her cell, her mind still trying to make sense of it all even though she knew she must have been here for days.

From what she could gather, she was the prisoner of a cult-like group that seemed devoted purely to alchemy. It seemed kind of stupid – alchemy was just a skill, like any other you could learn. Why make such a fuss over it?

She hadn't met one person who spoke English, so Winry thought she could either assume she wasn't in Amestris anymore, or that her captors deliberately spoke in some sort of secret language to confuse her.

She had seen very little of...wherever it was she was being held; just the small, windowless, cellar-like room she was kept in, and the large room they took her into when they were performing alchemy. Winry didn't know why, but she now seemed to be an integral part of their weird alchemical rituals. It might have had something to do with the way alchemy had transported her here – at least, she assumed alchemy had transported her here; that or she'd remained unconscious for a very, very long time and simply hallucinated the light and the strange doors and the grasping, shadowy hands.

Come to think of it...that had looked very similar to that strange Gate-thing that she'd seen a year ago in Central...

Winry shook her head, firmly telling herself to stop speculating. She didn't know a thing about alchemy (except that Equivalent Exchange thing Ed was always harping about), so it was pointless to torture herself with possibilities.

Not when the one thing she knew for certain was that there was something wrong with her.

Winry didn't know what had happened when her initial kidnapper – and what had her life sunk to, now that she needed to distinguish between former and current captors? – had thrown her on the transmutation circle and cut up her back, but she fairly certain it had altered her in some fundamental, intrinsic way.

Her first clue had been that when she awoke in the cell, and could find no gashes on her back. Her shirt was still torn, there were flakes of crisp, dried blood on her skin...but no injury. Instead, her fingers had encountered raised, strangely-smooth skin – rather like scar tissue.

That hadn't been the end of it. Winry might have written it off as a strange, one-time side-effect of the transmutation...except it kept happening. The next time they'd dragged her into the stone hall, the transmutation hadn't been performed – nothing had happened when the robed figures touched their hands to the circle. There had been some kind of hurried, internal conference during which Winry had tried to make a break for it, but had ended with her being held down on the stone while one of them re-opened her previous injuries with a small blade.

At some point, Winry had passed out...and awoken back in her cell, with no wounds on her body.

Since then, she had discovered that her blood had somehow become a vital part of their ritual. For some reason, these people seemed to be using a kind of alchemy that couldn't function without blood as part of the transmutation. It seemed that every time they tried to perform alchemy, Winry would be dragged from her cell and made to bleed.

She couldn't remember Ed and Al ever mentioning this branch of alchemy, but then again, she couldn't picture them using this kind of alchemy.

And the injuries always healed, much faster than they should have.

But it didn't stop there. Winry hadn't had anything to eat since she'd been kidnapped...yet she was still in perfect health. She was sitting in a dark stone room that she knew was cold, yet she didn't actually feel as though she were freezing, even considering the light clothes she was dressed in.

Winry knew there was definitely something wrong with her – the transmutation had probably changed her somehow.

The door opened, light slicing into the darkness like a blade. Winry tensed, pressing herself against the wall, ready to make good her escape.

She knew was being confined in a cellar, because they had to lead her up some stairs before they emerged into a corridor with a large glass window that made it obvious that floor was on ground level. That corridor then led to the room where they performed their strange rituals, but it was the window Winry had focused on. Every time they dragged her from the cell, she'd struggled in the corridor – struggled so violently that she and her captors were repeatedly sent careening into the walls...and the window.

Glass was much tougher than people thought, but the last time she'd been brought up, Winry's plans had finally born fruit; she had felt the glass crack a little beneath the heavy impact of her shoulder.

If she threw herself at it now...Winry hoped it would shatter, sending her through it and onto the ground, where she could hopefully make a run for it. She wouldn't have risked it if it was a second-story window (the resulting injuries would make escape difficult) but since there was barely a distance of a metre between the windowsill and the ground...Winry felt she could take the risk.

So when she was unceremoniously yanked to her feet and muscled up the stairs, Winry waited until they were level with the window, before throwing all her weight to the side, tearing her from her escort's grip and leaving her to impact the window with every particle of force she could muster.

The glass shattered and Winry went reeling through it to collapse on the cold grass outside. Her forehead, hip and shoulder burned and throbbed where they'd caught on jagged pieces of glass still hanging tenaciously in the frame, but there was no time to dwell on the pain.

Winry rolled over, scrambling to her feet and bolting away from the house like a frightened horse, feeling grateful that it was night and the darkness soon swallowed her up even as shouts and cries began to echo through the house behind her.

She gritted her teeth against the urge to yelp every time her movements pulled on the gash in her side, pressing her hands against it to try to stem the flow of blood. The light from the house soon disappeared, and while it was good that those in the house couldn't see her...it meant that Winry was left reeling blind through a landscape as strange as that from another planet.

She only barely managed to stifle a cry of shock as her foot caught the edge of a muddy ditch and slipped from beneath her, sending her lurching forwards before she managed to catch herself, her heart thundering so hard she could feel its beat in every part of her body.

She could still hear shouts behind her, and determinedly resumed her pace, feeling the cold air sting the back of her throat and warm blood drip down her side and face, a smaller stream warming her arm. Winry hoped she wasn't losing too much blood.

The blonde was forced to bend nearly double to mount a steep hill, her muscles burning, her wounds throbbing with knifing pain and her breath sobbing in her throat. Normally, she would have been forced to stop and catch her breath by now, but the adrenaline pumping through her body didn't allow her to even think of slowing down. All she had to do was remember the circle of robed figures and the shining blade to know that giving up was not an option.

-xxx-

AN: Thanks to LaughingAsatrael for beta-ing this chapter and suggesting the title for it when I was stumped.