Author's Note: Sorry it's taken so long to update, finals are next week (we're in trimesters) so our teachers have decided that giving homework this week will make it easier for us next week. Except they all decided that :P

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Chapter Twelve: Pain

"You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened." –Jorge Luis Borges

Melly

After running for what felt like forever, Melly forced herself to come to a stop. She couldn't remember exactly why it was she was running, just that there was a terrible pain in her abdominal region.

Pulling to a stop, she leaned against a post, trying not to double over from the pain. She winced and held her stomach.

She had left that strange man. The Doctor. He had been so nice to her and now he was gone. Why would she leave him? She regretted leaving the warmth of his strange house if nothing else, and absentmindedly hugged her arms to conserve heat.

That's when she saw it. On the back of her hand, something was wrong. Five tally marks were frantically scratched into the skin, blood caking at the edges.

Silence. The word hit her like a slap. She stood there, stunned, finally realizing what was wrong. She would never be able to remember everything of what had happened in the past half hour or so, the Silence always made things hazy, like a dream. The more she tried to remember, the farther away the memory seemed to be.

She closed her eyes and let herself relax, using a technique Kovarian had taught her. She hadn't been able to conjure full-on memories from Silence encounters yet, but she was fairly good at being able to remember her general thoughts and emotions. The one thing that stood out distinctly was her resolve to keep the Doctor safe. She puzzled over this choice in her head, wondering why exactly she had made a decision with such heavy repercussions, for surely it meant a life on the run from the Silence, and another round of brainwashing and torture if she was caught. Still, the decision had been made and she guessed she had already provoked the Silence. Why else would she have been running?

Knowing as much as she could fish out about her lost memories, she opened her eyes. That was another thing she hated about the Silence. Her memories had so many holes in it. Kovarian had told her that once she killed the Doctor, she would award her with all of the moments in life she had lost. Melly doubted if this was even possible, and wasn't sure if she wanted to remember. What kind of things had happened to her when she was under their hypnosis? What kind of things had she done?

Melly shuddered at the thought, pushing the post to stand up straight. She needed to keep moving. She stumbled at first, now realizing her stomach pain must have come from the Silence. Her bare feet- where had her shoes gone?- shuffled on the cold wet pavement. She hunched her shoulders, her body trying to compensate for the cold.

A faint rumbling noise made Melly turn her head. She never remembered what the Silence sounded like, or if they even made noises, so everything was making her jumpy. However, it was just a white van turning on to the street. She returned to her labored walking, trudging along little by little. She had to find a place to sleep for the night, and soon. Her body was giving out on her, succumbing to exhaustion.

Just then, a strange thing happened. Time seemed to slow as the seemingly inconspicuous van pulled to a screeching halt next to Melly. She turned to see the back doors slide open, revealing masked men. As they started to climb out of the vehicle, Melly realized what was happening, seeing a glint of a knife in one man's hand. She took off at a run, feet pounding on the ground. She could hear the heavy thud of boots behind her, but they seemed muffled, as if she was underwater.

Suddenly she felt a jarring pain. Her head flew back as someone grabbed on to her long hair and pulled it towards them. She let out a cry of agony, then grabbed behind her, finding the man's body and using momentum to fling him over her back, on to the ground. He gasped as the wind was knocked out of him. She winced as her side protested in pain, knowing that her flight option had been removed. That left her with one choice: to fight.

She whirled around, thrusting her foot out to contact with another man's chest. He was fairly light and the force of her leg caused him to fall back on to his butt. Had she not been in so much danger, she would have laughed. Instead, she ducked as a third man threw a punch at her, looping her leg around his and pulling it into her chest, causing his knees to buckle. She jumped back, careful to not let the falling man land on her. She took a gasp of breath as her side seemed to scream out in pain. Not letting the pain paralyze her, she ran forward and brought the last man's skull to her knee. It made a sickening sound, and he crumpled. The men in front of her incapacitated, she turned around to run again.

Instead she was met with a large hand pressing into her face. Surprised, it took her a moment to react. The hand held some kind of soaked rag. She tried to pull back away from it, but the man's other hand had snaked around her head and held it in place. She hadn't realized how large he was when she had first flipped him.

She lashed out, trying to move his arms but they stayed in place. Attempting to get away from his grips, she pulled all of her body weight toward the ground, but still the cloth stayed in front of her mouth and nose. Now frantically flailing, Melly realized her vision was starting to blur and her limbs didn't pack as much punch. Her brain seemed to slow and she found it was a struggle to keep awake. Even the pain in her side seemed to dull, and with one last kick to the man's face, she felt her legs give way underneath her, buckling.

The man threw her over his shoulder and ran to the back of the van. She considered thrashing and screaming, but found that her brain could no longer command her limbs. Then she was falling backwards, being tossed into the back of the car. Her head hit the floor and everything went dark.