Elliot looked around after the door had slammed shut. He found himself in quite a small room with whitewashed walls, a flickering fluorescent light and no windows. He was handcuffed to the table and there was a seat on the other side. Was he being interrogated? It looked just like the set up you saw on TV. He wracked his brain trying to think of anything that would have made him of any interest to anyone but he drew a blank. The door clicked open a few minutes later and Elliot twisted in his seat to see who had just entered the room, causing the chain of the handcuffs to clink. The sound seemed impossibly loud in the silence of the small room.

"Good evening, Alex. Or would you prefer Elliot?" the man greeted. Elliot had the distinct feeling that he knew this man. That he was someone that he could trust, but at the same time he was sure that he had never seen him before in his life. The man was dressed entirely in black, had blond hair and piercing ice blue eyes that looked at him in way that made Elliot feel as though he was missing something. As though the two of them shared a history that Elliot had forgotten.

"My name is Elliot. I don't know who this 'Alex' is that everyone keeps referring to, but I'm not him!" he almost shouted, surprising himself with his boldness.

"Very well," the man said slowly, moving around to sit in the chair on the other side of the table. "Elliot it is, then." He slapped a file down onto the table as he spoke, and Elliot flinched at the suddenness of the sound. "Do you know why you are here?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I haven't got a clue! And I don't know why you'd want me anyway. I'm no one special." The words tasted sour in his mouth, but it felt good to actually admit it out loud, even if it was to someone who had kidnapped him and was probably going to end up killing him.

"Do you recognise any of these people?" The man pulled several photos out of the file and placed them, the right way up for Elliot to have a look, on the table, not even acknowledging his outburst. He stared at the photos. There was a smiling woman who was probably in her late twenties. There was a boy, about the same age as him, if he had to guess, with curly hair and wearing a beanie. The third photo showed an older man with a beard and, for some inexplicable reason, wearing an eyepatch. He looked cruel, like the villain of a Bond film. The fourth picture was also of a much older man. He looked like the pictures of vampires you saw in books, with pale, almost see through skin, and grey hair. He looked lifeless. Elliot thought he looked familiar, but he couldn't place him. The fifth picture made him gasp in shock. It was a picture of his mother!

"Umm," he began, but his throat was so dry that his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and pointed, causing the chain of the handcuffs to clink again. "That's my mum." He looked up into the face of the man sitting before him and saw something flash behind his eyes, but then it was gone.

"And?"

"And I think I recognise this man-" Elliot said, pointing at the one of the man who resembled a living embodiment of a vampire "-but I don't know why he looks familiar or who he is."

"I see," the man said slowly. "And the other three?"

"I don't recognise them. Am I in some sort of trouble? Why do you have a picture of my mum?"

"Yes, but not the kind of trouble you are thinking of. And it is not important."

"What does that mean?" he gasped.

"It means you are not responsible for the mess you have found yourself in."

"What mess? My life is boring! Nothing interesting ever happens to me!" Elliot exclaimed, hitting the table with his fist in his exasperation. "Other than being kidnapped by you, anyway," he added under his breath. "What sort of mess could I possibly be in?"

"A mess that you do not understand, nor are responsible for," the man said, not unkindly, but with a seriousness to his voice that filled Elliot with fear. "A mess that I am going to fix." He stood up, leaning over to gather up the pictures as he did. His new position gave Elliot a view of the man's neck for the first time since he had come into the room. There was a perfectly straight scar running the whole way across. He gasped as a flash of a memory burst to the front of his mind. He was the man from his dream! Elliot could never recall the face after the fact, but now he saw it clearly. He had thought that he had never seen the man before and he hadn't exactly been wrong. He had seen him in his dream! And in his dream, he - Elliot - had been called Alex! How was that possible? How had he dreamt of a man that he had never met? And how was he now meeting that very man for the first time in real life? How had he got the details so correct in his dream? He was sure that he had spoken to the man in the dream. That he had known his name, but nothing was coming to him now.

"Is everything okay?" the man asked, seeing the shock on his face.

"Who are you?

"I am here to help. That is all you need to know for now." The man strode past Elliot, towards the door.

"Yassen," Elliot breathed, almost unaware that he had done so.

"What did you just say," the man asked, with much more intensity in his voice than he had had for the rest of their conversation.

"It doesn't matter."

"What did you say?" he asked, more insistently this time and walking back away from the door, towards the table again.

"Yassen," Elliot admitted quietly.

"Where did you learn that name?" he asked, sitting back down in the chair again.

"I don't know." Elliot looked up into the man's expectant face. "I… I have this recurring dream…" The man just sat waiting for him to continue. "I can never really remember anything about it once I wake up, but I feel like you're in it…" he said apologetically.

"What can you remember of this dream?"

Elliot buried his face in his hands in an effort to help himself remember. "I'm in a hospital," he began. "And then you show up-" he glanced up at the man through his fingers at this, but the man didn't show any emotion "-and you grab my hand and make me run. I think we're trying to escape. That's it. That's the dream."

"I see," the man said, his voice level. "Anything else?"

"I don't know! Everything's kind of hazy, but it's just a dream so it's not important anyway."

"How do you feel when you wake up?"

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly that. You have this dream. You wake up. How do you feel?"

"Um," Elliot said, filling the silence as he thought. Breathless," he said eventually. "Like I've been running. And my heart is always beating really fast. And my hand hurts."

"Why does your hand hurt?"

"I've got a scar. From a car crash when I was younger. I guess the running in the dream and my heart beating so fast makes it ache."

"Can I see?"

"My scar?"

"Yes."

Elliot was confused, but held out his hand anyway. The man took it and examined it intensely.

"And how did you say you got this?"

"I was in a car crash. I got quite badly hurt, so I've got other scars from it too."

"Let me guess…" the man said, apprising Elliot with a firm stare. "Quite a nasty one here-" he tapped his chest, "-several on your back, the worst one being just above your right hip, and others on your arms and legs."

Elliot stared in disbelief. "How can you possibly know that?"

"Because they are not wounds from a car crash. Here-" he held out his own hand and Elliot saw a very similar looking scar to his own.

"What am I looking at?"

"My scar."

"What about it?"

"Just look."

Elliot did as he was told, and looked for anything that might be of interest about the scar on the man's hand. He was just about to say that he couldn't see anything about it when another memory flashed before his eyes. His hand, red with blood. Another hand holding it. Rather awkwardly because of the handcuffs, Elliot grabbed the man's hand in his own. Their scars married up perfectly. He dropped it just as quickly and felt panic rising up inside him. His insides felt like they were on fire. He couldn't breathe.

A few minutes later, he had calmed down enough to be aware of his surroundings again and saw that the man was holding his hands in a firm and somehow reassuring grip. Once again, Elliot had the unnerving feeling that all was not as it seemed.

"What's going on?" he asked, not bothering to try and hide his confusion.

"Everything will make sense very soon, little one," the man said, releasing his hands and walking out, leaving him alone in the small room.

Elliot's mind raced. Nothing made any sense. Why had the man called him 'little one' and why did it make him feel calm in a way that it had no right to? He cradled his head in his hands, running his hands through his hair and tried to focus on his breathing. Slowly, it returned to normal and, exhausted from the events of the evening, he fell into a troubled and restless sleep.