Note ~ I just wanna say that even though the fancy little chart shows all you guys as numbers, you're more than just a number to me. :D There's just so many stand up people wandering around hereabouts, and it's such an adventure to see the different cultures that pop up outa nowhere. So thank you once again for reading! You guys bring many smiles!

SuddenSummerStorm ~ Thank you! I appreciate the support! ^.^ And I'm glad I look like I know what I'm doing. :P

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Altair's lips twitched instinctively as a wandering insect found it way upon them. His eyelids fluttered open as he brushed it away with the back of his hand. The warm sound of buzzing wings tickled his ear, but as he listened more closely, he could detect a more disturbing noise from somewhere behind the stable. He closed his eyes again to focus on the sound. There was a repetitive thumping, accompanied by the harsh gasps of a hopeless sob.

Curiosity ruled his limbs as he pushed himself to his feet, careful not to disturb Faruq, who was sleeping peacefully in the hay. It was still very late and the moon still shone with a relentless voice in the small village. Who could be awake at this hour?

Altair stretched out of pure necessity before making his way around the side of the splintered stable. He rubbed his eyes sluggishly to clear his vision as he rounded the edge of the structure. What he saw crumpled in the sand a few yards away was too sorry a sight to judge. Illuminated in a curved patch of moonlight was the small ghost. He had never seen her so broken. Her entire body trembled and quaked as muffled sobs caught in her throat, and her veil lay discarded in the sand beside her. Dark curls fell all around her as she slumped into the ground and wept.

Altair watched, too struck to move, as the pallor girl reached into her pocket and pulled out the strange device that was her existence. Without warning, she let out a heaving gasp as she sent the object singing through the air and into the sand ahead of her. It landed with a light thump and she proceeded to watch it continuously with her piercing irises, which Altair imagined to be considerably bloodshot. By the looks of things, she had been crying for quite a while, and it did not seem that this was the first time she had thrown the strange device.

He wanted to say something, anything, that would pull her out of whatever trench she had fallen into only hours before. What could have happened to make her so despondent? Was it another nightmare? Was it getting worse? He was grateful that her back was facing him. Surely she would have run at the first sight of someone else in the state she was in.

"What do you want?" she whispered suddenly, a furious harshness in her breath.

Altair froze. How had she seen him? He was about to open his mouth in a reluctant response when she spoke again, this time with a hint of hysteria in her tone.

"Three, two, one. And you're back!" she snarled.

Her hand dipped into her pocket again and she chuckled humorlessly as she retrieved the same black device from its depths. The one she had thrown was now missing from the sand. It was then that Altair realized she was not speaking to him. She was talking to the machine. Just as this occurred to him, her back arched in another stream of strangled sobs.

So she had been right about never putting the strange device in her robe after changing. It had fallen out of her pocket in Damascus. It had followed her. Altair began to wonder how many times she had thrown it just to test this fact. How long had she been alone out here in her misery to soak in her own tears?

He had to stop her. He simply couldn't afford to have her crumpling up and deteriorating when there was so much left to do. At least, that's what he would have liked to tell himself. An incessant piece of his stomach turned every time he saw Sarah suffer. She just didn't deserve it, any of it, and the sooner she could get home, the sooner life would become a littler brighter for everyone.

"Shabah," he said dimly, so as not to frighten her.

Almost immediately after his voice ceased its vibration, she was scrambling to her feet and twisting her gaze to peer at every darkened crevice around her. Her sobs retreated to a quiet sniffling as she struggled to follow his noise.

"Are you alright, Shabah?" he attempted to ask.

She whirled around frantically and froze when she caught sight of the stilled Assassin. "A-Altair?" she whispered. Her voice was barely audible in the noise of the night's silence.

"Yes, Shabah, it's me," he confirmed.

"I-I…What are y-you doing here?" she stammered, clutching her discarded device against her chest.

"I could ask you the same."

Her gaze fell to the ground. "I m-must have sleepwalked…"

Altair frowned. Did she honestly think him so base that he would fall for such a ruse? "What's troubling you, little ghost?" he asked. "I know you didn't sleepwalk yourself over here."

She hesitated. "It's nothing…"

Altair sighed irritably and leaned against the stable wall. "Out with it, Shabah. I don't have the time to waste on your games."

"If it's a game I play, then it is yours," she snarled, locking her strained irises with his.

"And what game is this?"

"It is one of silence," she whispered, her eyes sinking back to the sand.

Altair raked his memory for her meaning. What had he told her to make her vow silence? Then, he remembered. He had warded off her attempts at sharing her other world with him. He didn't want to know anything about her. He had given her a new name. Ghosts were silent.

"So this is about your…world?" he questioned, gathering her meaning.

She leveled her gaze with his once more, her swollen eyes giving him the answer he sought.

"Then I will hear it," he said calmly. "If it would calm your nerves."

Sarah stared at him incredulously, like he had just told her she was recovering from a deathly illness. Her mouth fumbled with words as she averted her gaze towards the distant cliffs.

"Would you try for me, Altair?" she finally pleaded.

He raised an eyebrow. "Try what?"

She limped over to him and reached for his left palm, inside of which she placed her odd device. Gently, she curled his fingers around it and pulled away, staring at him intently. Altair flinched at her touch. Her skin was so smooth, like she had never climbed a building or wielded a splintering sword.

"Throw it as far as you can," she instructed, taking another step back.

"Won't it just come back, Shabah?"

"I'm not ready to believe that yet…"

Altair nodded in compliance and pulled his arm back in preparation. With a silent grunt, the dark object went ripping through the chilled air and behind an expanse of short plateaued rock. The thump it was presumed to make never reached his ears, which seemed to satisfy Sarah a great deal. She smiled slightly and closed her eyes, waiting.

"Is it-"

Altair's question was answered prematurely as a heavy frown tugged on Sarah's lips. "Yeah…I can feel it back in my pocket."

"Is this the reason you came out here?"

"No…Well, not really anyway." She joined him on the stable wall and sunk into the sand, sitting neatly beside him as he repositioned himself into a tired lean. "I had another dream…" she began, her voice hushed.

"And?"

"Every time the sun sets…I feel…It feels like another piece of me is stripped away. And then I dream…I dream about things that are never there. I'm not…"

Altair looked down to see her staring blankly ahead, lost in thought. "What is it?"

"I'm…I'm scared," she breathed. The confession was so quiet Altair was almost sure he had imagined it until she continued. "It's hard to…remember what they look like anymore…"

"Who?" he asked, trying to sound as composed as possible. He did not relish the thought of nurturing her depression.

"My family…Every day it gets a little harder. Every minute feels like I'm being pulled farther and farther away from everything I thought I knew. It's like someone's sucking my very blood…and then leaving me as a drained husk of who I once was…"

Altair swallowed dryly. He hadn't expected anything like this. She was falling apart the longer they spent trying to find her way home. But what could he do? What could anyone do?

"And this thing!" she spat suddenly, yanking the device from her pocket. "It just keeps reminding me that I don't belong here!"

She flipped open its cover and hissed as it flashed to life in her eyes. There on the screen was the symbol too small to see, too vague to recognize. It was almost like she knew what it was already. She was just being prevented from realizing it.

"Is that all of it?" Altair asked, shifting his shoulder slightly.

"All of what?"

"Is that what was bothering you?"

Sarah glared up at him for half a second, then sighed and abandoned the effort. "Yeah, I guess that's all of it."

Altair reached to pull her light frame from the ground and situated her squarely beside him. "You think you can sleep now?"

"I can try…"

"Is that the attitude you carry with you everywhere, Shabah?"

She stared at him vacantly.

"Tell me, how do you plan to get back to where you belong by crawling around on your hands and knees?" he pressed.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it's your choice whether or not to lose your precious memories," he resolved tiredly.

With this, he wandered back into the stable and out of sight, leaving a dumbfounded Sarah to stare after him.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"So what did you find?"

"Slight discrepancies in his brain wave synchronization. His thoughts are going off track..."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying he's thinking for himself."

"What? Could it just be a glitch in the system?"

"This is no glitch. I don't know how he's been able to hide it this long, but his brain has been working independently since day one."

"And independent brain? But that would mean…"

"We have to pull her out before it's too late."

"No! We've gone too far to give up now!"

"Listen to yourself! Either we pull her our or we leave tonight!"

"Then we're leaving."

"And what of Altair?"

"Find the source. I want those frequencies tracked."

~.~.~.~.~

"What's his status?"

"There's nothing more we can do to stop the degeneration. They're running out of time."

"Looks like they're finally moving. Monitors are disabled…There! An opening in their receptor sequences…Now's our chance."

"Roger. We're good to go. Patching it through."

"God, Sarah. I hope you get this."

I blinked at the empty air that Altair had occupied a few seconds ago. He sure had a way about him that made the simplest fear seem pointless and insignificant. To him, fear was worthless. And the worst part was, I knew he was right. It was my choice. My memories were fading because I was letting them fade. I was so caught up in the unfortunate circumstances that I was losing sight of the heart that still beat in my chest, the heart that belonged somewhere else.

I gritted my teeth and pulled my iPod back up to my face to gaze at the impossibly agitating symbol that lurched on it. This time however, it was gone. I gasped in a mix of horror and bewilderment as the screen flickered in a parade of ambers and golds. It flashed and popped for a full minute until the colors refined into a perfect Assassin seal, just like the one in my dream.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a full second until I finally found the courage to open them again. As I did, the seal fizzled into a series of numbers that could have very well been morse code for all the sense it made to me.

"2.0, 0.3, 2, 3, 000, 2.02, 0," I read aloud, my voice trembling.

Then as soon as it had appeared, the scene crumbled back into the familiar strange symbol that took its dreaded residence upon my screen. I frowned at the tiny emblem, trying to process what had just happened.

2.0, 0.3, 2, 3, 000, 2.02, 0…

I remembered them perfectly, like they had been instantaneously imprinted in my brain. And then there was the seal…It was almost like a message. But then, why would it be so encrypted? If someone really wanted to tell me something, the message would have been very clear, right? Besides, why would they tell me via my ipod? It was evil as far as I was concerned, like an untouchable leech. I still couldn't accept that it was following me. I still couldn't accept a lot of things, it seemed.

My exhaustion started to get the better of me as I dropped the cursed device back into my pocket, assuring myself that those numbers meant absolutely nothing…But then, what if they were the key to my escape?

Suddenly, the crisp prick of a needle found its way to my arm. I jumped and stared daggers into my skin, my heart beating furiously. I had felt it go in, I was sure of it…But there was nothing, only the soft paleness of my inner arm.

It was true, then. I really was going insane.