A/N: Just a quick thanks to those of you who are reviewing. I'm doing my best to keep up the pace of the story, and as always, I would love comments as to how I'm doing with everything.

Chapter Ten

The scenes that filled the mother's eyes upon a fluttery sort of coming-to were for the most part of the typical Hellish nature of Silent Hill; she was apparently lying in a position suggesting her body had been carelessly thrown to the ground; she felt that her ankles were drawn closer together than was comfortable, and managed to tilt an aching neck and head just so as to lay eye on an impossibly thick, braided rope of clearly ancient heritage which wound its way about her legs a good three or four times. Further restoration of consciousness brought her into awareness of a similar bind about her wrists, which had been placed behind her back as if they were those much-hated handcuffs. Of course, in a way, they were handcuffs—they just lacked the metal property. Experience screamed at her not to move any more than she already had, and to remain quiet, for she didn't know exactly what the environment that currently surrounded her was composed of, but she managed to overcome that instinct and sit up slightly.

The room into which she has been discarded was too dark to allow her to see much beyond the point of her own form; a conical lamp dangled from the ceiling above her, its yellow light dim the source of her ability to see herself; every so often the cord supporting its weight would emit a shower of blue sparks, which failed to burn out before falling relentlessly upon Rose. Now fully awake, the twinges of being burned made her flinch and writhe against her binds, her breathing quickening as her heart did the same. At last she managed to squirm her way out of the path of the flying sparks, and leaned her weight against a wall, which was closer than she had originally anticipated. A sudden bout of claustrophobia swept over her, and she began a strange sort of hyperventilation; soon after a door was abruptly slammed open and another figure stepped into the room. Wishful thinking led her to believe it was Cybil, but as she soon discovered, 'twas anyone but the young cop, the heroine.

"What is it about this town that keeps you coming back, witch?"

The voice was spoken with such harsh tones that Rose mistakenly dubbed the speaker of the male species, but when they stepped into her field of vision, 'twas decidedly female. Her hair was long, and pulled back into a ponytail of perfect proportions with a thick ribbon of blood-caked silk, the casual dress which lined her figure was of the purest white; Rose was rather shocked that there lay not a single stain of any substance upon the material, and, had she not been in a situation where she was bound around the hands and feet and thus forth incapable of movement, she would have taken the opportunity to compliment the woman on her obvious beauty. In the light the mother was currently seeing the visitor in, however, she was anything but beautiful, and was instead a manifestation of the fear that had plagued her since her return to that decaying town.

The woman stepped closer, until she was less than a meter away and staring with a dangerous, unfaltering gaze down at the blonde, who cowered against the wall, and her voice again echoed against the close surfaces.

"I asked you a question, witch. Now speak!"

Rose cast a sharp glare upward, before daring to respond.

"I've come to help my little girl."

"The demon…yes…I thought I'd recognized you. You're the one who contaminated our only sanctuary."

"I only carried out what you'd already brought upon yourselves."

"And destroyed what slim rays of hope might have shined upon my people."

Rose's expression gradually changed from fearful to angry; the woman didn't appear to have any intentions of harming her, aside from the fact that she had her locked in a particularly small, dark room, and virtually immobilized…a rather large 'aside from.'

"Your people never deserved hope," she snapped, her blue eyes flashing, and her voice lowered in a threatening manner.

The woman opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was drowned out by a sudden blaring of sirens, which carried across the lands and through the halls and alleyways, twisting and turning and diving and rising so as to reach every possible ear, and warn every possible victim of the impending danger they were sure to face. Rose's body shuddered involuntarily at the sound; oh, how she hated that sound. Two other figures suddenly joined the two in the room, both of them in the suits of the coal miners whom had captured Cybil during their last visit; Rose let out a sharp cry and threw her shoulder into the particularly sensitive area between the legs of one of said miners; he dropped to his knees, but the other quickly took his place at her side and jerked her upward, lifting her, and throwing her body over his shoulder like one would a particularly heavy sack of flour, or some other grain. Unable to do anything but make the going difficult for him, Rose struggled non-stop as the group dashed for whatever their newest safe-haven was; as they rounded one especially sharp bend in the halls of the building, she slipped off his shoulder and fell to the ground, her lower torso still held firmly, so that only her upper half twisted—a most unpleasant experience indeed—and cracked her already throbbing head against a floor of hard stone.

The miner was hardly kind to her; he picked her up in much the same manner as he had done moments before, slinging her over the opposite shoulder this time, and hurrying to catch up with the woman and the other miner. Rose cried in his ear repeatedly to let her go, though she knew her attempts would be ultimately futile and a waste of energy at best; the sirens ceased their wails whilst the group was still in motion and, Rose presumed, far from refuge. The woman shouted at the men to get into a nearby room, which they proceeded to do in an understandably slim amount of time, and at last Rose's figure was tossed to the floor, and the rusted metal door was slid shut, and an enormous lock slipped into place. The woman raised her head to take in the condition of the room; her gaze fell to Rose, who lay crumpled and heaving to inhale some ever valuable oxygen; immediately after, her voice broke the silence as the paint on the walls began to melt away.

"How far are we from the Library?" she asked, her authoritative voice surprisingly smooth and soft, entirely devoid of the harshness it had contained when she had spoken to Rose previously. One of the miners clicked on a flashlight, shining it about the room, as the other answered.

"Not very far. If it' s necessary, we can make a run for it."

"And we have no need to worry for her safety," the other said, as the beam of the flashlight landed on Rose and they rounded on her with critical expressions, as she in turn stared up at them with desperately lifeless eyes. She couldn't get over the cruelty of the people here. They were almost worse than the beings which roamed during the dark hours.

"She is not to be left behind, Layton."

The miners now turned those same critical eyes upon the woman simultaneously.

"But Galia—what worth could she possibly—"

"Silence. I'll hear no more of it. You'll do as I say, or fend for yourself here."

Rose managed to push herself into a sitting position, and perceived the goings-on with naught but a dense layer of confusion mashed between her brain and understanding. A part of her intently focused on the fact that this woman—Galia, as the named miner had called her—did not anticipate leaving Rose alone, which was both a blessing and a curse in the same instant. Solitude would mean she had a chance for escape; it also meant she would stand a lesser chance of survival. Her conscious was suspicious of just why she was 'not to be left behind;' whether they meant to burn her as a witch later on, or whether they actually planned on aiding her, Rose could not be certain. She only knew that her mind was longing for the company of another whom she could trust without a doubt, and depend on to always be by her side during her times of need. She wondered just what had happened to Cybil, and feared the worst; though the cop could likely handle herself, and she did have a gun, she was out there alone during this darkness, and Rose couldn't stop the constant waves of concern that washed over her as she sat there.

Her arms, still tied behind her back, brushed against the cold steel of the wall, and when she attempted to move her feet, the rope caught on some sort of pipe lodged in the flooring. An idea quickly formed in her head; whilst the group conversed worriedly amongst themselves, the woman repeatedly scraped the rope back and forth against the rusted pipe, gradually tearing away layers of the thick braid. At last the pressure about her ankles was relieved, and blood began to flow through the veins and arteries once more; her legs were now free. Carefully, so as not to be noticed, she shifted her position so that she might repeat her actions with the binds around her wrist, and soon they too were freed.

The miner called Layton abruptly snapped his head in her direction, but her reflexes were faster than his own; she resumed a stance as if she were still bound in the proper places; when he again looked away, she turned her palms out and pressed them to the wall. Instantaneously, a swarm of the same vine like tendrils sprung from her touch, climbing the walls and stretching along all available surfaces, at last reaching the floor and, much to her delight and shock, snatched up the legs of the three people, whilst she herself remained untouched. Taking advantage of their momentary lapse of concentration, she dashed toward the steel door, first attempting to raise the lock by hand, but after failing, resorted to kicking it upward with a great deal more force than one such as her might be expected to be capable of providing; the veins forced their way through the cracks in the door, helping to open it, and at last the door slid into its pocket, and the young mother fled.

Her eyes remained trained on the ground which constantly appeared before her, never looking back to the cries of anguish emanating from the room she had just left; the darkness was so complete that she tripped numerous times during her travels; by this time the pain in her knee had long since faded to a dull, ignorable ache. She skidded to a halt and rounded a turn in the narrow hallway, at last expelling her breath in one enormous exhalation when she ran headlong into a heavy door, and crashed through it out into the street. With nothing to arm herself with, she felt bare and exposed, and all too vulnerable; she continued running as fast as humanely possible, or perhaps more, stopping only when something sounding suspiciously similar to the bay of a coon dog split the silence. She spun around in search of it, but, unable to see anything without a source of light, her actions were useless. Before she even realized what was happening, something had snatched hold of her by the shoulder and covered her mouth, hauling her backward with a great amount of strength, despite her struggles, and into an alleyway, at last pulling her down to the ground beside what looked to be a large dumpster.

Something still covered her mouth for the duration of her struggles; Rose bit down hard on whatever it was, and her head was jerked back to unintentionally hit the brick behind it; all too quickly a loud whisper broke through the barrier panic had placed between the animal and human areas of her brain.

"Jesus Christ Rose!"

Eyes widening, the mother immediately ceased her fighting, as Cybil clicked on her flashlight so as to make certain her friend knew she wasn't in the presence of a less kind being. Rose's chest heaved to and fro as she yet again struggled for air, and the rather inappropriate thought that she would be in great physical condition by the time she left this place drifted through her mind; her eyes remained fixated on Cybil's, as if trying to be sure she wasn't hallucinating.

"It's bad enough I nearly had my leg melted off by God knows what, but you trying to eat my hand is another story altogether."

Shaking her head, the mother at last spoke.

"I—I thought you were Galia," she stammered helplessly, and her form began to tremble violently, to which Cybil responded by rubbing her upper arm in a nearly unconscious manner.

"Galia?"

"Apparently there w-were surviviors-s."

"You met them?"

"They caught me."

As her heartbeat returned to a normal pace, and her breathing to a normal rate, the quaking of her body moved entirely beyond the point of control, and grew steadily stronger until she felt as she often had at home during the times when she had cried; the young cop watched her carefully, her senses on high alert for more than just Rose's health, but also for the presence of any creatures in the darkness. As if on cue, the stench so typical of the darkness began to waft away from them, and the absence of light as well, though it was nearing evening as it were, so the light still wasn't great; the two looked upward as the ash began to rise into the air, though Rose's gaze quickly shifted back to the cobblestone earthen landscape, and Cybil, now able to see more clearly, turned off her flashlight and realized the severity of Rose's apparent fit.

"Good Lord," she voiced worriedly. "You need sleep, Rose. We both do." Her violet eyes skimmed her friends face, taking in the newest cuts and scrapes and bumps, noticing her head in particular, but paying it no mind, as it didn't seem serious. Abruptly Rose slapped one hand against the wall, expecting the same bloody vines to be thrown forth, but to her surprise, they did not. It seemed that it only worked near or during the premature darkness. Cybil watched her peculiarly, tilting her head so as to see her face, and then narrowing her eyes. "What are you doing?"

Rose turned to look at her with bloodshot eyes.

"Nothing. It's nothing—I—I just wanted to see if I was safe."

"What're you talking about?"

"I'll show you the next time, if it works."

Confused, the officer decided it best to let the subject remain where it had come to rest, and leaned her head back against the brick wearily. Rose's shaking had yet to cease, which resulted in her turning her head to look at the determined mother, and speak.

"Try to get some rest, Rose," she told her gently, and though she was very fatigued herself, she volunteered to keep watch. "I won't let anything happen to you, and if the sirens go off again, you'll hear them."

She gripped Rose's hand with her own and squeezed it in a reassuring gesture; this seemed to be enough for the mother, for she almost instantly collapsed, a dead weight against Cybil's side, her head resting unconsciously upon her shoulder and her hair spilling over her eyes, shielding her features from view; the blonde officer, unwilling though she was, settled her own head against that of Rose's, drifting off into a sort of half-sleep, her eyes remaining open only just, and the pistol still loaded in her hand.