A/N: Yes, I am aware that it has been 6+ months since I updated this fic, but I have a good reason. However, I'm not going to put that in here, because no one wants to listen to whiny excuses, not even me X3

"Miss C.C., Miss C.C.!" the tinkling voice called out softly from what seemed to be a far away place.

'Please leave me alone…' C.C. thought, waving the voice away and willing herself to sink deeper into the comforting blackness around her.

"Miss C.C.!" the distant voice seemed to be getting closer, yet the green-haired nurse could not see where it was coming from. The dark confines of her mind were becoming lighter as she began to surface towards consciousness.

"Miss C.C.!" the soft voice called out again, this time right next to her and not as soft as she had originally thought it to be. She then began to feel the two small, delicate hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently, trying to rouse her from whatever dream it was that she was having. Her groggy mind did not want to let her awaken yet, though, as hard as she tried to.

Suddenly the cloudiness inside her head disappeared and her quick, sharp thoughts returned. Her amber eyes snapped open quickly, her mouth opening wide as she took in a deep, gasping breath, like she had not been able to breath for some time.

Tianzi, the one who had been trying to rouse her for the past five minutes, was taken aback by her sudden burst of energy and consciousness. She fell backwards onto her but in surprise, her light red eyes wide with shock. "Miss C.C., are you alright?" she asked timidly, edging back towards the bigger nurse.

It took C.C. a minute to gather in her surroundings, because she had forgotten where she was. White walls, pale yellow tiles… She was still in the hospital. She sat there for a moment, a blank look on her face, not moving at all. But then why was she on the floor…

The small, white-haired nurse leaned closer towards her and waved a child-like hand in front of her face, trying to get her attention. She had found her mere moments ago just slumped up against the wall, not moving at all. At first she had thought that the green-haired nurse was not even breathing. She had started to panic, but then she noticed that it seemed that C.C. was only asleep, so she tried to shake her awake to no avail. Or so she thought. That had been when the other finally awakened, but now she was acting in a queer manner, or, more so than usual.

C.C. continued to stare blankly at the white wall before her, not really seeing it at all. What was it that was nagging at her mind so? There was something that she was not remembering… Something that was important, or at least it seemed to be.

"Um, excuse me Miss C.C., but Dr. Lamperouge is looking for you and I came down here to fetch you for him; so maybe we should, um, go and try to find him now as well so you can see what it was that he needed," she suggested, trying to grab the other woman's attention.

Lelouch wanted her? Why on earth would he send Tianzi out to find her if he could just-

Then her amber eyes widened in understanding, something in the back of her mind finally clicking. That had been what she was forgetting.

The patient.

C.C. glanced around frantically. There was no one else in the hall except for them. Everything was quiet, so the patient could not have been nearby either. She needed something to write with so that she could ask Tianzi. Yes! Maybe Tianzi would know, for she was here when C.C. had been unconscious, so maybe she had sent another nurse away with the patient. She grabbed the clipboard that was lying on the floor beside them and the pen that lay on top of it. In a quick, loose cursive hand, she scrawled across the page, "Where is the patient that was just here?"

Tianzi furrowed her small white eyebrows together in confusion. Patient? When had a patient been here? "There was no one here when I arrived Miss C.C., but yourself. No one has been down here all day, except for a few nurses and Dr. Lamperouge," she said in her soft voice, a little bit afraid of the crazed look in the exotic woman's eyes.

C.C. scowled, her deep amber eyes narrowing in frustration. If no one had been here, then what the hell had happened? Was it just her imagination that she had seen that grey-skinned person here? No! It couldn't have been. That was ridiculous.

She shook her head, her lime green hair fanning out over her shoulders as she stood up quickly. She took a quick glance at the still kneeling form of the other nurse before she stormed off down the hallway in search of Lelouch. She had to tell him what had just happened and she needed to get to the bottom of all of these strange happenings. She needed to do it now, and quickly.

Lelouch strolled leisurely down the halls of the G4 wing, glancing down the occasional hallway for his missing nurse. It was already past four in the afternoon and he had yet to visit his new patients. That was a shame. If he didn't find C.C. soon, he would just go ahead without her. It was not like he could put this off all day as he had already, it was unacceptable.

He decided to search for her en route to the patients' rooms. If he found her on the way there then that was great. If not, well then he would just have to assess the damage himself and go from there.

Just as he was about to round another corner, he saw one green-haired woman charging towards him, somewhat angrily if he was not mistaken. He stopped in his tracks as she neared, waiting for her before he would continue.

"Ah, there you are C.C. I was beginning to worry. Where have you been all this time?" he asked bemusedly, passing her the extra clipboard he had been carrying just in case he found her.

She grabbed it from him a bit forcefully and looked at him quite seriously, no hint of humor or anything else but slight frustration in her face. "I do not know what happened," she replied through her mind vehemently. "Something is not right with these new patients."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, resorting to the connections between their minds rather than giving the outward appearance of a one-sided conversation. "We have not even met them yet, let alone assess their condition, so how can you say that?"

"I met one of them, briefly. I cannot say for sure what it is about them, but there is something that is not right. You cannot treat them, just send them on to someone else."

"How can you say that? If they are here then that clearly means we are the last option they have. If they are with us, then there is no way to cure their condition. We cannot just send them away. That would tarnish the reputation of this hospital, to turn away patients," he answered back angrily.

She glowered at him as they walked, her amber eyes glinting with unexpressionable frustration. There was no way for her to explain to him what she had experienced. He would not understand and he was so set in his ways that he would refuse to turn these people away either way. She clenched her fists, digging her manicured fingernails into the soft, fleshy part of her palms.

He sighed irritably, her mood catching. Lelouch turned his gaze to a little bit further down the hall, to the last room on the right. Stopping as he reached the door, he turned his purple eyes to catch her amber ones. "I suggest you be on your best behavior. We have a serious case here and no time for your ridiculous notions," he warned her before walking into the room.

She rolled her eyes and then followed him in, knowing that it was futile to even argue her point any further.

The room was bright with artificial light, not a single window in the rather large hospital suite. It was one of the biggest rooms in the G4 wing, reserved for patients with identical or similar cases, and in some instances, for family. All three of the new patients now resided in this room, each bed separated by a thick white curtain hanging from the ceiling. There was almost no color at all in the room, except for the faded yellow tiles of the floor and the sharp black of the two TV sets mounted on the wall. There were no vases of flowers or balloons with hopeful messages printed in bold colors across them. Nothing at all. It was rather depressing.

In the first bed as they entered the room was Samiel Dhroyen. In the middle bed lay the massive form of Zander Gheretto. And finally, in the last bed closest to the far wall was Maryelc Lucotta. The beds had been extended to their maximum length for all three patients, and yet in all three cases they were not long enough. It was not exactly normal to get a patient who was taller than eight feet, so surely it would not be strange for the hospital to not carry that length in bed.

Lelouch walked up to the first bed that held Samiel Dhroyen. He leaned over the side of the bed and looked into the man's face. He took a penlight from his chest pocket on his lab coat and waved it across the man's right eye. He gained no response at all, so he tried the same thing to the left eye, but to no avail. There was no response at all from the man, yet he was not unconscious or even asleep. It merely appeared as though he were staring up at the ceiling with blank, white eyes.

The raven haired man moved on to the next bed that held Zander Gheretto and did the same thing with his pen light, yielding the same results as before. Zander looked the same as Samiel, the grey, wan skin stretched tightly over the long face, bones prominent in every part of the face. Just like Samiel, Zander did not have any hair atop his head and his eyes were the same bright white.

Lelouch sighed dejectedly as he moved to the next and final bed that held Maryelc Lucotta. He flashed the light over her eyes, but unlike the others, he initiated a response from this one. The bald, pasty head turned towards him, the expression on the face completely and utterly blank. The eyes seemed to turn and follow him as well, but it was hard to tell, because they seemed to be the same bright white all the way around. Lelouch motioned for C.C. to come from her place near the door to his side.

"I want you to see if you can communicate with her at all C.C. We need to know if there is any thought process still continuing within these patients and this seems to be the only one that is responding at all," he said quickly, glancing up at her briefly before returning his gaze to the patient on the bed.

The green-haired nurse did not respond to him at all, but just opened up the frequencies of her mind to see if she could catch anything coming from the patient. She waited silently, catching nothing at all for what seemed to be forever. All there was was silence.

Then, very faintly, she began to pick up on something, although it was distant and difficult to hear. She furrowed her green eyebrows together, trying to focus in on whatever it was that she was hearing, trying to catch what was being said.

"…know…"

She was getting more now. She concentrated, but she didn't know if, at this point, she would actually even be able to hear it.

"I know you can hear me…" a soft female voice said, close now, almost as if it were whispering in her ear.

Her eyes widened slightly, but she quickly composed herself, not wanting to alert Lelouch, who was watching her intently.

"Did you hear anything?" he asked hurriedly.

She shook her head no, having cut off the connection between them so that she could see if she could hear anything from the patients.

"…what did you say?" she asked the woman on the bed hesitantly. Lelouch could not here her, so he did not know that she had made contact.

"I can hear you…" the voice whispered, "and I know that you can hear me too. Please…" the voice started, as if unsure of what to say. "I know the other one can not hear me, so it is up to you, it is you who we rely on," it continued hesitantly. "You need to understand, our accident…it was not what you think it is."

"What do you mean by that?" C.C. interrupted.

The grey head turned slowly until it faced her, it's white eyes boring into her soul. "The circumstances in which…" the voice was growing more and more faint, so soft now that it was barely audible.

She strained to hear the rest of it, but was almost knocked off of her feet when a steady, blaring stream of white noise suddenly invaded her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut in pain and slapped her hands over her ears, but as soon as it had started, it was over. C.C. opened her eyes to see a bewildered Lelouch staring at her worriedly. The connection she had established with the woman had broken like glass, there was nothing left of it.

She sighed deeply and re-established one with Lelouch.

"What was that?!" his voice invaded her head almost as soon as she had finished reconnecting them.

She stared at him blankly, her eyes betraying nothing. "It was nothing, absolutely nothing."

A/N: I realize that in the last chapter I said this one was going to be more interesting, well I lied. This was kind of another chapter just to push the story along, but I swear that the next one will be better. And it won't take me 6 months to write X3 With summer around the corner, the updates will be occurring more often.

Anyways, the moral of this note is: If you love me and/or you want this fic to be updated again, you'll leave a review. That means you, you ninja readers you