Wow, I've not updated this fic in awhile and if you'd been reading it, I'm sorry that its taken me so long… so here's chapter 5! Enjoy. (Oh yeah I don't own Parasite Eve 1 or 2, it'd be freakin' awesome if I did though!)

Aya stared, bored, out of the tinted windows of the black sedan, not really seeing the trees that the car was passing along the side of the interstate. She couldn't help going over the events of the past couple days in her mind. Being asked to join the FBI, someone ransacking her apartment, her random decision to just up and leave Manhattan. She recalled the conversation she'd had with Daniel just before she'd left. He'd been livid after she'd turned in her papers detailing her resignation from the NYPD.

"What do you mean 'you're leaving'?" He asked. They were standing inside her now empty apartment, and she was afraid he might start shouting.

"I mean I'm leaving Daniel. I'm not sure where I'm going." She lied, not knowing why she wasn't going to tell him the truth. Because he worries too much, she thought to herself.

"You know Baker was going to promote you?" Daniel asked and Aya knew he was casting around for something to make her stay. She sighed.

"I know, he told me when I went to his office to resign. I think he was rather upset." She grimaced, feeling a strong urge to explain herself. "I just… It's just that I don't want to stay here anymore Daniel. It's not the same anymore." She looked up at him and saw that he was staring intently back. "None of it's the same anymore."

He watched her for awhile as she looked out of the window of her apartment, staring at the street full of cars below. Everything that had happened to the city; to her. It seemed everyone else had been able to move on…except for her.

"I know I haven't known you for very long Aya." Daniel said bringing her out of her reverie. "But I never knew you to run from something."

The words had stung but she knew they were true. Of course she hadn't told Daniel the truth that she was going to something that, in her mind, was decidedly more dangerous than anything in Manhattan at the moment. Maybe not the memories though.

She looked at the man seated next to her, driving the car. Rupert Broderick had almost laughed when she'd asked if they'd be taking a plane to L.A., which happened to be where MIST headquarters was to be situated. He'd stated that they needed to keep a low profile, apparently whoever had gone through her apartment was still following them. Aya was still suspicious of the fact that Broderick wasn't at all specific when it came to details about the person or persons responsible for bringing chaos to her neatly organized apartment, but she couldn't help trusting him.

Aya turned slightly to look at Pierce Carridine, who was currently asleep in the back seat of the car, his sunglasses askew as the side of his face was pressed against the far window, his mouth slightly open. It quickly reminded her of her lack asleep.

Aya hadn't slept in two days, having not forgotten the recent nightmare that had visited her the other night. She was so tired, wishing only to sleep as unconcernedly as Pierce at the moment but to be honest she was too afraid. Aya sighed, she hated long car trips, they always made her think of things that she would otherwise wish to leave forgotten in the back of her mind.

She returned to staring back out of the window, she did so just in time to see a big blue sign. "The State of Ohio Welcomes You".

"Ten hours from Manhattan to the Ohio border. We're making good time." Broderick said from the driver's seat.

Ten hours, Aya thought, more like twenty.

They drove for another five hours, deciding to stop just outside of Cincinnati for the night. Aya got a room to herself next door to the double bedded room that Broderick and

Carradine were sharing for the night.

She began to empty the small overnight bag she had brought into the hotel with her onto the bed. She placed her loaded nine-millimeter pistol on the bedside table next to the alarm clock. She ended up taking a long shower, letting the hot water relax her muscles which were stiff from the long trip in the car. After the shower she changed into some comfortable clothes and turned off the lights before slipping between the sheets of the lumpy motel mattress.

She lay there staring at the ceiling, watching the lights from the outside parking lot faintly dance across the ceiling as they shined weakly through the curtains. This caused the small room to be bathed in an eerie green light, and exhausted as she was, Aya found that she couldn't sleep.

She rolled over to face the side of the room with the window only to gasp. There was a silhouette of a man against the curtains. Slowly Aya reached up to grabbed her pistol, noiselessly slipping off the safety, as she did so there was a soft scratching along the outside of her door, but the shadow outside the window never moved.

There's at least two of them. She thought, preparing herself for fight. Catlike she rolled off the far side of the bed and crept towards the corner of the room in which the bathroom was situated, here she had a clear view of the doorway and the window where the first shadowy figure had yet to move.

There was a thump on the door and Aya aimed her gun at the door. Then with an almighty bang the door splintered and burst off its hinges. There in the doorway stood a man, or so Aya thought. He was dressed in military fatigues, his face was covered in a grotesque mask.

Aya was frozen for only a moment before she proceeded to empty her clip into the man who hadn't yet moved from the doorway. She didn't' have to ask to know he held ill intentions towards her. The gun clicked empty and she cursed at herself for having not brought an extra clip into the room with her. The man in the doorway looked as if the eighteen bullets she had just loaded into his chest hadn't even fazed him. He began to cackle insanely as something grabbed Aya around the neck from behind.

She didn't even have the time to scream 'What the Hell?' before the air was choked from her lungs. The invisible something lifted her off her feet as her vision started to blur. The air in front of her shimmered and a large soldier (it too was wearing a mask) appeared, along with its arm which was currently clamped tightly around her neck.

This bastard isn't going to kill me, she thought as she focused her mitochondria and unleashed a blast of fire into the thing in front of her causing it to drop her and stagger backwards into the bed. As the thing recovered several shots from behind tore through its chest, blood splattering on the wall, and Aya looked over to see Rupert Broderick standing in the doorway holding a high powered magnum.

"There were two of them!" Aya gasped her voice a little raspy.

"He got away." Broderick answered, helping Aya to her feet. "Any idea who it was?" He asked her, turning to look at the bullet ridden and charred remains of the second attacker.

"I was going to ask you the same thing. Where's Pierce by the way?" Aya asked having not seen the other man since they'd gotten to the hotel earlier. Broderick laughed.

"Outside and unconscious on the pavement. The other guy hit him around the head before running for it, and damn he was fast too." He answered sounding slightly amused. His face turned serious though. "We should probably leave now. It wouldn't be to safe to hang around here tonight."

He then checked outside the open door to make sure no one was outside before bending over to pull the mask of the attacker they had taken down. Instead of the human face both Broderick and Aya had been expecting, they found themselves staring at a mass of steel, wire, and cables.

"A robot?" Aya said hardly daring to believe it. As she said this Broderick flipped the mask over to see the inside and etched between the eyeholes in minuscule lettering was the word Golem.

"Golem?" Broderick said, staring intently at the mask. He looked up at Aya and they both shared a moment of true confusion. Twenty minutes after that found them all back in the sedan, Pierce still unconscious in the back seat, all the while Aya was still trying to contemplate what exactly it was that was following them.

More importantly though, what did they want?