Chapter One It's the only way to stay alive

Mina was walking down the hallway when Serena came tearing past, a group of guardians chasing after her. She flattened herself against the wall and watched with horror as the guardians caught Serena and started beating her into submission.

Serena's screams filled the hallway and she fought with everything she had. Her Blond hair hung in her face as she thrashed about, aiming to connect with anything that would hurt. She looked towards Mina, cowering against the wall and screamed out to her to help.

Her name was being screamed over and over again. Serena's screams filled her ears and tormented her conscience. She wasn't strong enough to be any use; the guardians would just brush her off. She couldn't help Serena, even though she desperately wanted too, she just couldn't.

One Guardian had her by the arm and another had just got a grip on her hair. She knew that she couldn't get away, but she wasn't going to stop now. She would rather die than go back into that room. She looked towards Mina, silently begging her for her help.

She would never know how she got up the courage to push away from that wall and sprint towards where Serena was being held. She clawed at the back of a guardian, tearing shreds of his shirt from his back with her fingernails. She reached skin and kept going, adrenaline pumping through her veins, draining her fear. She got past that one and started in on another, dodging the hands that tried to grab her as she methodically attacked the guardians holding Serena down.

Serena saw Mina attack the guardians and renewed her attack with more force, hope driving her to fight hard and move more swiftly. She was just throwing a right hook when she felt the back of her shirt grabbed and she was lifted off the ground by a massive, muscled arm. She saw a huge man creeping up behind Mina, who was occupied with an agile guardian, and tried to call out a warning, before her head was smashed against a wall and she lost consciousness.

" She fights like a wild animal!" The Keeper said.

" Yes but it was methodical at the same time. I would say she's been taught to fight before. Possibly by her parents." Dr Grivock replied.

" She should have been exterminated with her parents."

" Perhaps! But then we would never know how much her parents knew, or who they told." Grivock said.

" We don't know that now!"

"True, but that doesn't mean that we won't. Given time."

" How much time do you need? It's been nearly four and a half years."

" The Lords have said give her one more year to remember what it is she's forgotten!"

"Then what?"

" She all yours. To do with what you like."

" Can I at least flog her today for her little act of defiance?"

" Have it your own way, but leave me enough to examine for clues as to what her parents used to make her forget. Mainly the wrists. The back is all yours, I've already checked that bit out."

" As well as a preliminary check of the rest of her little body?" The Keeper sneered.

" Naturally, that's what I'm hired to do. I wouldn't be human if I didn't satisfy some of the...... curiosity that festers in all of us." Dr Grivock said.

Serena opened her eyes, knowing instinctively where she was going to be. What she hadn't been expecting was to be tied up. She thought the Keeper would have tormented her by leaving her unbound, so that she could throw herself against the door in a vain attempt to smash it open. She looked over at her bound wrist and saw what she was attached to, at the same time feeling the hard contours of the table against her back. " Oh Please No! Not this table, not like this. Please God, get me out of here, take me away from this place and this nightmare." She moaned.

"Serena?" a voice asked, a hand brushing back her hair from her face. She instinctively tried to recoil from that touch, but the chains holding her to the table prevented the movement.

" I'm sorry Sere, it's me, Mina, I didn't mean to alarm you." Mina said, coming round the table so Serena could see her.

" Your face!" Serena said. " I got pretty beaten up by the guardians, but it's not that bad." Mina said.

" Not that bad! Mina you look like a dogs torn at your face!"

And she did. A ragged cut stretched from the corner of her right eye, to half way down her cheek. Both eyes were black and puffy, the left almost swollen cut. Her nose was crooked, leaning heavily to the right, and her lips were cut in several places. Another cut was just visible on her left temple, stretching back into her hairline and out of view.

" Well at least I know I did at least as much damage to the guardians as they did to me." Mina said, aiming at cheerfulness.

" I'm sorry I got you into this." Serena sighed.

" I'm not." Mina said meaningfully.

" Why?" " Because I've known something's been wrong since a couple of days after I got here. You got called to the Keepers office while everyone was having breakfast the first day I was here. I thought it was because you were in trouble and I didn't want to get myself in trouble either so I decided I was going to stay away from you. I noticed in the next few days that you were constantly watched. But then the next month on almost exactly one month from the last time, the keeper called you again, this time as you were coming into the breakfast hall. And the next month the same, and the same this month. I figured out the second month that it was the same week you were due for your period, because you have yours at the same time I have mine, and I thought you probably had some trouble with it, but you were gone so long. And Tory, who has heaps of trouble with hers wasn't seen by anybody either."

"Why didn't you say something?"

" Because I was scared of what you might say." Mina said, dropping her head.

" Has anybody been in while I was unconscious?"

" No, I woke up almost immediately after they dumped us in here, I was awake when they put those things on you" she said, indicating the chains " No one's been in since."

" That's not to say no one's going to come." Serena said.

" Mina you have to look like you have distanced yourself from me after what happened to you."

" Why?"

"Because that's the only way you are going to get out of this alive."