The ceiling tiles swam in and out of focus. Bright fluorescent lights shined down on him. Everything ached. He wracked his fog filled brain trying to remember… well anything. Who he was. Where he was. What was going on... He couldn't remember anything. He looked down. He was lying in what looked like a hospital bed and was wearing some kind of gown - surgical perhaps. Had he had surgery? Or an accident? Was that why he couldn't remember anything? His mind seemed to clear, his thoughts becoming sharper, but it didn't help his memory. It was just. Blank. It was extremely disconcerting to not know anything about oneself, he mused. And there was no one in the room that he could ask.

He tried to sit up but couldn't. He looked down again, and now saw that a thin but strong band of material was running across his chest and over his arms, pinning him to the bed. There was another one at his waist and wrists. And a third and fourth across his thighs and calves. He moved his hands to try and free himself, but he had only dragged them a couple of inches towards him before something clinked and they would move no further. There was something silver around each of his wrists. Closer examination revealed handcuffs which attached him to the bed. Somebody certainly didn't want him to be able to leave the bed. There was no way out. He would just have to wait for someone to come in and explain what was going on.

Hours passed. Or they seemed to. There was no clock and no windows or any other way of seeing the passage of time. Nobody came. Eventually, he drifted off to sleep again. Sleep didn't bring any memories or dreams. There was just blackness and emptiness, as though everything had been locked away, out of reach.

A voice echoed from beyond the void "Alex… Alex..." Someone was shaking his shoulders, pulling him out of the great expanse of nothingness that his brain had inhabited just moments before. Was his name Alex? It must be if that was how the man was referring to him. Alex opened his eyes to see a man standing over him. His vision was still blurred and refused to come into focus to enable him to see any of the man's features clearly enough to identify him.

"Alex, look at me," he said, pulling a small torch out of his pocket and shining it into Alex's eyes. "Yes, you have been drugged," he said with what could have been the slightest hint of concern in his voice. "We have to get out of here."

"Who? Who drugged me?" It had been a long time since he last spoke and his voice rasped and croaked. If he had been drugged, it made sense why his eyes refused to focus on the world around him… but he was sure that it couldn't account for his complete lack of memories, although he couldn't be certain.

"MI6. I know you have questions, but they will have to wait until we are out of here."

Alex heard a click, and his right hand was free. Another click and his left was free. Suddenly, he found that he was on his feet, with no memory of the straps being removed or getting out of bed.

"Run!" The out-of-focus man grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the room and into the corridor. Sirens blared. Warning lights flashed. Alex ran. He ran as though his life depended on it and he was sure, without knowing why, that it did. Glass suddenly exploded all around them. Then came the accompanying sound of bullets firing. He felt himself being pulled into a room and without thinking helped his rescuer to barricade the door. He focused all of his attention on the man, willing his eyes to focus enough to work out who he was.

Blond hair. Cool blue eyes. A scar running in a perfectly straight line across his neck. He felt as though the name was just on the tip of his tongue, refusing to come to the front of his mind. A couple of seconds of intense thought later, it did. Yassen Gregorovich!

"Yassen?"

"Yes, Alex."

"What's going on? I don't remember anything," he admitted, knowing instinctively that it was safe to be so vulnerable in front of this man.

"It will be the effect of the drugs. They will wear off soon enough. We are getting out of here."

"No… I don't remember anything at all. I know that I know you and that I can trust you, but I don't know who you are or how we know each other or even anything about my childhood or what I did last week. It's just… blank."

Yassen examined him intently and cupped his cheeks in his calloused hands. "We will fix it. I promise you. We will get your memories back."

There was a pounding on the door. "We have to go," Yassen instructed. He moved swiftly to one of the walls, where there was a vent. He pulled the cover off and gracefully eased himself inside.

"Alex, give me your hand," he said urgently. "I will help you down."

The pounding on the door was getting louder and Alex could see their makeshift barricade beginning to fail. The door was opening. Almost imperceptibly, a little at a time, but they would soon be able to get in. Quickly, Alex hurried over to the vent. Yassen took his hand and Alex was just stepping forward to join him inside when the door opened enough for their pursuers to enter the room - had he taken longer to cross the few feet of space than he thought? - and a burning sensation spread through his hand. He cried out. His hand was red and sticky and he realised with horror that it was blood. He had been shot. At the same moment, something hit his neck. He lifted his non-injured hand to feel what it was. He had been hit with a dart and realised that it must contain anaesthetic. There was no escape. That was clear to him, even if nothing else was.

He looked down at Yassen, whose face, just like everything else around him, was still out of focus. He thought he could make out a change in the man's expression, he could just have easily imagined it. Then Alex dimly realised that the bullet had torn through both of their hands. Whether Yassen's new expression had been caused by the bullet wound or because he had somehow seen what Alex was about to do, he didn't know.

"You're worth more to them than I am. I know that much."

"Alex, no!" But Alex let go with his hand and watched Yassen slide down the chute to safety. The darkness swallowed him again, and he fell back into the same emptiness that had engulfed before. He crumpled to the floor and lay motionless, unaware of the guards closing in on him.