Thank you ItsLiz, NightlyRowenTree, TheForgottenSheikah, Ari Goddess of Night and Sailor Pandabear for reviewing! :D

"Kidman? Are you alright? Can you hear me? Juli!"

The doctor raised her hand but, before the appendage could touch Juli's shoulder, the world around her grew absolutely dark and the floor shifted beneath her feet.

Next thing she knew, she was standing in the living room of her parents' house.

Sofia analysed every centimetre of the room. The unlit fireplace right in front of her and the wide leather couch behind, the glass doors to the backyard at her right and the wide doorway at her left, the crystal chandelier above her head and the Persian carpet beneath her feet… it was all exactly as she remembered.

If not for the baby toys strewn all over the carpet.

Somehow, I doubt I'd find this mess in my real home. Sofia thought as she bent the knee to pick up a colourful stacking block. Mother wouldn't allow it.

The woman pursed her lips as a sudden wave of sadness hit her hard in the chest. Julian, her brother, was almost three years old already and still she hadn't met him.

A couple of times she had returned to Raccoon City, determined to walk up to her parents' door and knock on it, and all but demand they allow her to enter their house so they could talk and she could meet her brother.

But she never dared to leave her rented car.

Sofia just stood there, parked outside the house in which she had lived most of her life, staring longingly through the windows in the hopes she'd catch a glimpse of her family. But the curtains were always drawn and all she could see was their blue and undulating fabric mocking her for her lack of courage.

"Next time I won't bail." Sofia swore. "If I leave this place alive, I promise I'll go back and knock on that door. And I won't leave until they let me in."

"You came back."

Startled, Sofia jumped back to her feet and turned around to the direction from which Nurse Tatiana's bored voice had come from. The apparition was standing right beneath the doorway at her left, staring at her with unfeeling eyes.

"I had no choice." Sofia responded as she so she could take some steps towards the woman.

"You always have a choice."

Sofia's steps halted for a moment when those words hit her eardrums, just long enough so the doctor could regard Tatiana's figure with a curious stare before resuming her march towards her.

I didn't program The Hub's keeper to respond so specifically to the guests' ramblings. This is good… it means the STEM is adapting itself to my mind instead of the other way around; at least to some degree.

Not stopping her steps, Sofia pursed her lips and looked down at her left palm. The skin was as flawless as ever, with no signs of an orbitoclast's image being carved into it.

I just hope it'll be enough to keep me sane until I manage to get myself and Leslie out of here.

"Please, follow me."

Sofia followed in silence as Nurse Tatiana led her through the familiar corridors of her parents' home until they were standing in the kitchen, facing the backdoor. Sofia opened her mouth to ask why they were standing there but as soon as a whisper of a word made to leave her lips, the nurse turned around and took purposeful steps to one of the kitchen's top cabinets, reaching inside it to retrieve a small wooden case.

"This is for you." Nurse Tatiana announced, opening the case in front of the doctor, offering its contents to her. "You should find it useful."

Sofia's eyes widened when she found Ruben's scalpel staring back at her, laying gently on a very familiar scarlet silken handkerchief.

Has Ruvik breached into my Hub?

"I can't take this… It's not mine."

"All the contents in this house are yours." The nurse insisted, pushing the small case closer to Sofia. "This will help you. Take it."

The doctor stared at the potential weapon being offered to her with wary eyes, as if expecting it to leap of the small case and plunge itself into her throat. If Ruvik had truly breached into her Hub, that wasn't such a far-fetched possibility.

However, minutes passed and nothing happened so, after much debating, she raised trembling hands to take the scalpel and the handkerchief in her hands and gently involved the first with the later before safely storing it in her pants' front pocket.

"Good." Nurse Tatiana spoke, softly closing the case in her hands before settling it back inside the cabinet. "Now, this way please."

The Hub's keeper returned to her place in front of the kitchen's exit and pushed the door open, revealing a dark void to Sofia, who couldn't help but take a step back at seeing it.

"You don't expect me to walk through this door, do you?"

"You can come back whenever you need to."

Sofia pursed her lips as she stared at the stoic nurse. Those words weren't exactly reassuring, since she still didn't understand the mechanism that had brought her to The Hub both times and, because of that, wasn't capable of returning "whenever she needed to" as she had claimed.

The doctor then moved her distrustful eyes to the dark void before her, as if urging it to light up into a safe path for her to follow.

Ironically, the void seemed to grow even darker as it reached out to her, growing shadowy tentacles that slowly involved the woman's body. Strangely though, the image of shadows slowly crawling all over her form and gradually obscuring her vision didn't unsettle the doctor; in her subconscious, she knew they were merely taking her to the place she was supposed to be. Those shadows were safe.

The place they'd take her, not so much.

When light reached Sofia once again, it was warm and tinted orange.

…And it allowed her to realize she was laying down inside an open casket, staring up at the dawning sky.

Frankly disturbed by her situation, the woman jumped to her feet, taking clumsy steps back from the recipient for death she had just occupied, noticing it was laying inside a broken-down house.

A house that was standing right at the entrance of a cemetery.

Sofia instinctively reached inside her pants' pockets to hold the handkerchief-enveloped scalpel in her hand for a moment, using the knowledge she wasn't completely defenceless to help her build enough courage to continue walking forwards.

I can't stop. I have to find Leslie.

With that in mind, Sofia started to march forwards into the cemetery and immediately pursed her lips in disgust at finding she'd have to go through what seemed to be a swamp, filled with gravestones and bodies that, she hoped, wouldn't start moving as soon as she set foot on the watery ground.

Just in case the Haunted moved though, she discarded her low-heeled shoes so they wouldn't get stuck in something she couldn't see beneath the murky water and keep her from outrunning them.

That proved to be a very good decision for, while not one of the bodies raised from the flooded ground while she walked across it, as soon as she got close to the iron gates on the other side, the ground sunk beneath her feet and if she had been wearing her shoes, she'd have most likely fallen to her knees, instead of just wobbling a bit.

And if she had fallen, she wouldn't have been able to break into a sprint when then the splashing sound of a body jumping into the swamp-like area right behind her reached her ears, followed by the tell-tale rattling of a chain being thrown over a shoulder.

Sofia didn't as much as spare a glance behind her to confirm it was the Chain Man whom had jumped in the swampy floor behind her. She didn't need to; she'd recognize that foreboding rattling anywhere.

She ran.

Not minding the painful stings of sharp stones digging into her feet, the woman ran forward as fast as she could, desperately contouring obstacles and following without thought the way the stonewalls showed her. She knew that later she'd suffer a lot due to the wounds her feet were receiving, but at the moment she couldn't be more thankful for being barefooted; the uneven stone floor beneath her would never provide enough security for her to run in heeled shoes without falling to the ground.

After agonizing seconds that had felt like hours, Sofia came across a strange statue that had a hole large enough to fit her in its rectangular base. Without a second thought, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled into the hole, noticing it followed all the way to the other side, forming a passage from one end to the other.

Good. If he finds me, I'll manage to crawl out through the other side. Sofia thought as she curled around herself as tightly as possible right in the middle of the passage.

Soon enough, sounds started to approach from a distance and the woman felt her blood run cold at noticing they didn't originate solely from a chain being dragged on the ground; they also included violent and pained groans and gurgles.

There were other Haunted alongside the Chain Man and they could very well frustrate her escape route.

I need to get out of here before they spot me. Maybe if-

Sofia was startled out of her train of thought and almost screamed at the violent sound of a body being cruelly thrown on the ground, right in front of one of her potential exits. The fright was so great that, to keep herself from screaming and alerting the other monsters of her location, the doctor slammed her hands over her own mouth.

Eyes wide and full of dread watched the Haunted groan and sputter blood before slowly push its upper body from the ground. And all the while, the woman trembled and pleaded in her mind that somehow the creature wouldn't notice her presence there.

Maybe, if she thought hard enough, she could influence STEM into granting her this small favour.

However, before the machine could as much as hear her plea, a thin and cold hand holding a blood red rose grabbed one of her ankles, making the flower's thorns dig painfully into her flesh as the appendage roughly pulled her out of her precious hiding place.

Sofia let out a blood-curling scream of fear and pain when her captor violently raised her body in an upside-down position the air, making her hit her head on the stone floor beneath her in the process.

The blow was more than strong enough to stun the doctor and make her senses and brain fail her.

With her now blurred vision Sofia could only see blotches of the Chain Man's black pants, covered in white chalk and dried blood, his dirty-covered bare feet and his blood-tinted chain dangling close to her face.

Still a bit disoriented and feeling strangely detached from her own body, the doctor accompanied the blurred movement of the chain slowly being raised from the ground, not fully comprehending what it was that her captor intended to do with it. Holding her like that would make it difficult for him to deliver a fatal blow.

The woman's thoughts halted when another blurred figure, much larger than any Haunted she had seen so far, started to approach them at an alarming speed, charging at them as an angry rhino.

More out of instinct than actual planning, Sofia pulled her chin to her chest and raised her arms to the back of her head, holding the back of her skull with her hands and using her arms as an improvised sort of helmet.

Just as the doctor had finished performing said action, the savage sound of a large body of mass hitting another reached her ears and before she knew it, her ankle had been released and she had fallen back on the cold stone ground, limp as a ragdoll. The sleeves of her blouse ended up thorn and the back of her hands were scrapped bloody by the fall as the air was pushed out of her lungs, making it impossible for the already slow-functioning woman to take any sort of action for minutes she didn't even notice passed her by.

During those minutes all she could see was the dawning sky, and all she could hear was the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones around her.

Then it all turned black for a couple of minutes.

As her brain slowly rebooted and the air returned to her lungs, Sofia's vision also re-focused, allowing her to finally stand up on trembling legs as her wide eyes took in all the potential threats around her.

Only to find none.

The Haunted who had accompanied the Chain Man to her hiding place were torn into pieces that were lying all around her, and her personal tormentor was nowhere to be seen.

There was a large monster too… Where is it?

As if to answer her question, a roar came from behind a stonewall a few feet in front of her and, before Sofia could react, the Chain Man's body had been launched from that place, hitting the wall opposed to it and falling to the ground as a sack of bricks.

Frozen still by the scene unfolding before her, Sofia could only watch as a giant marched away from behind that wall and stopped to stare back at her. How he seemed to know where she was standing was a mystery, because a strange sort of leather mask that belonged in a S&M pornographic movie covered both of his eyes and ears.

But still he stared at her for seemingly-endless moments. And Sofia didn't dare to move for fear it would trigger some sort of violence towards herself as well. She wouldn't be able to survive the slightest fickle of that creature's fingers.

Only when the Chain Man grunted and started to get up from his place did the giant resume his march, hands fisted and seemingly ready to dig her tormentor his very own grave in this cold cemetery.

Taking that as her chance, Sofia turned around, finding a flight of stairs and an unlocked iron gate waiting for her.

She spared one last look at the giant from over her shoulder and couldn't help but cringe at finding him pulling the Chain Man's bloodied body from the ground by the hair. She didn't pity the suffering monster or anything of the sort, but still… it was a gruesome scene.

Not bearing to stare at it any longer, Sofia turned her face away and tumbled up the stairs, towards an enormous, gothic cathedral.

From her place sitting on one of the front pews inside the church, Sofia allowed herself to drop her guard and stare at the empty altar with unseeing eyes as the recent events replayed inside her head. Her muscles were tired, her breathing was heavy, her feet and hands were burning and her head was throbbing.

But her thoughts were occupied by something else, entirely different from her pains.

That giant… it saved me.

As a scientist, Sofia didn't believe in luck. She believed in logic, and trial and error; in repeating experiments time and time again in the search of that one variable that when changed would give her the results she so desired. That was why she doubted that the giant appearing at the exact moment the Chain Man had captured her was a coincidence. Such a perfectly timed event couldn't have happened by itself; something in the STEM must've triggered it somehow.

While she was quite hopeful that her unconscious influence over STEM could be part of the reason she was transported to The Hub every now and then, she didn't think it'd be possible for her to actually influence the monsters who inhabited this place. Those were Ruvik's, in the most absolute sense.

That could only mean that Ruvik was the one behind the giant's attack on the Chain Man. That he was, somehow, protecting her.

Automatically, Sofia reached inside her pocket to retrieve Ruvik's scalpel, letting out a relieved sigh at finding it hadn't been lost during the commotion. Tenderly – lovingly even – the woman unfolded the red handkerchief, revealing the shinning silver of the blade.

Ruben… is there something of you left in here?

The rough sound of rusted iron doors opening snapped Sofia back to "reality", prompting her to jump to her feet in alert, ready to flee from whatever Haunted it was that had come after her.

To her surprise and absolute joy, it was Leslie who walked through that door, followed by a very tense-looking and now armed Juli Kidman.

"Leslie! Juli!" The doctor exclaimed as she put her scalpel away and took a step towards the boy with a wide and relieved smile gracing her lips. Just seeing Leslie again made every bad thing she went through completely worth it. "I'm so happy you're-"

"What do you want with me?!"

Sofia's smile died and she halted her steps completely as the demand was thrown at her in a loud and almost violent voice by none other than Juli Kidman. The agent had put herself between her and Leslie and was now pointing her gun at the doctor's face.

"What is happening, Kidman?" The doctor asked in a firm voice, eyes flickering between the agent and Leslie. "Calm yourself and put down your gun. No one here will hurt you. We're just going to talk, alright?"

"Back up!" Kidman yelled, pushing Leslie behind her in a protective manner. "He's coming with me!"

Sofia pursed her lips at the positively cornered look on Juli's face. She had seen that look many times before, in the faces of her patients in Beacon, whenever they lost touch with the reality around them.

It's not me she's seeing.

"Kidman, please." The doctor spoke in an even firmer voice, but not daring to make any sort of movements. "You need to snap out of it. It's me, Sofia. I'm not going to hurt you, much less Leslie. Please, lower your gun."

Still not recognizing Sofia or her voice, Kidman retreated slowly from her, hitting her back on Leslie's hunched form. The contact was brief and gentle, but it startled both of them into taking hasty steps in opposite directions.

"Leslie." Sofia called, not daring to move her eyes from Kidman, who was now staring at the boy as if he was some sort of mutant. "Come here."

But the boy didn't obey. His only movements were the fidgeting of his feet and hands as he murmured "Beacon… Beacon… The light…" in a loop.

"Ruvik…?" Juli spoke, just loud enough so Sofia could hear and it made the doctor's blood freeze in her veins. For the agent was still looking at Leslie when that name left her lips.

"Leslie, please!" There was a hint of desperation in the doctor's voice now. "Come here!"

Finally, the boy turned his blue eyes in Sofia's direction and they widened in happy recognition, as if he had just spotted her there. In small and clumsy steps, his feet started to lead him in the doctor's direction as whispers of her name escaped his lips.

Sofia would've allowed herself to sigh in relief, if not for Kidman's forceful voice once again echoing all around the church.

"Stop it! Let him go!"

Frightened, Leslie stopped walking towards her and all Sofia could do was stare with attentive eyes as Kidman pointed her gun at Leslie, then back at her… then back at him again.

It was clear that only words wouldn't be able to make Juli see she was safe; the doctor would have to take physical measures if she wanted the agent to stop pointing her gun at Leslie.

However, Sofia would have to wait for just the right opportunity to take action; she was smaller than Kidman and much less prepared to deal with such situations. As such, the doctor's victory depended solely on the element of surprise. She needed an opening.

That opening came when Kidman settled on Leslie as her target and cocked her gun, ready to shoot.

Without thinking, Sofia ran towards the agent and pushed her gun up so it was pointing at the ceiling of the church. Automatically, the doctor shut her eyes in anticipation of the exploding sound of the gun going off close to her ears.

The sound never came.

Sofia opened her eyes to find herself alone in the cathedral, but before she could wonder what had happened the world started to spin around her and she couldn't help but close her eyes again as the lights blurred before her.

When she opened her eyes again she was no longer inside the church. She was standing in the front doors of the Victoriano mansion, and Leslie was nowhere to be found.

"No! No no no no!" The woman cried out in despair, tears blurring her vision as she frantically turned her body around, examining her surroundings with an almost predatory attention. "LESLIE!"

Once again, Leslie had been taken from her.

I hope you all enjoyed the chapter and that Sofia's encounter with the Chain Man wasn't too confusing. =.=

And what did you think about the scene in the cathedral? :)

Kisses,

RedVoid

PS: this chapter's title is the name of a song by Voltaire. I think you might like it. ;)