Sorry about the lull in uploads. I'm preparing for vacation so I'm trying to stockpile a bunch of chapters so I can just upload at a semi regular interval so bare with me. Anyway read! And remember, the other NoD writers (NovelistoftheSky, Elegon, and Etiger1995) all have stories in the same universe so read their stuff too!

Leya opened her eyes to find herself standing in complete darkness. An endless void sprawled around her and the silence was so deafening she could barely hear her own breathing. Where was she? Last thing she could remember was that she had been talking to Alex and she ended up passing out on Komodomon. This didn't make any sense to her.

With no real direction to go, Leya wandered around the darkness looking for...anything. As she walked she felt the minutes turn to hours or...was it just seconds to minutes? She had no real sense of time and she wasn't even sure if she making any progress as she couldn't feel anything under her feet.

She stopped. She wasn't sure but she thought she heard voices. Leya closed her eyes and concentrated. It was faint or maybe just soft? She couldn't make out what the voices were saying if they even were saying anything at all. She listened harder trying to make out the words the voices were saying. Then she heard it.

The sudden torrent of screams caused Leya to collapse to her knees covering her ears, her own screams mingling in with that of the voices. Thousands of people's anguish and pain filled her head. Leya tried for naught to ignore their cries, every attempt she made was met with another devastating wave of screams.

"What do you want?! I don't understand what you want from me!" Leya screamed back in desperation. As if her question deterred the voices, they all stopped. Everything had became quiet once again except for a single voice's tiny murmur.

"...ll..." It muttered.

"What?"

"...ou...ill...troy...fect...rupt..." Still the words came out no more than a mutter. Leya groaned, frustration clearly on her face.

"First you guys blow out my eardrums, now you won't speak up...Ugh...Just tell me what you want already!" She shouted into the abyss her voice echoing off the darkness. The whispering stopped leaving only the remnants of her echoes. Moments passed, then suddenly a low rumbling began shaking the area all around her; even the ground she once couldn't feel under her vibrated. Then just as quickly it started, it stopped.

A chill went down Leya's spine as her core went cold. It was as though someone had put two blocks of ice on her chest and back. She looked down and in horror attempted to scream but found her voice was gone. Protruding out of her chest was some sort of black liquid slightly wiggling its small but numerous needle-like appendages. Whatever it was, it was growing and fast. Leya clawed desperately at it trying to get it off of her. Weirdly enough, it didn't give any resistance as she attempted to grab it. After getting a firm grip on the gelatinous blob, she ripped it off her chest and the goop give a resounding plop upon hitting the ground.

It quivered and stretched upward until the top of the blob was eye level to Leya. From there it expanded and morphed, until it was practically the silhouette of a person. Leya took a step back; something about that thing unnerved her immensely. The black goo person cocked its head to the side like a puppy, warranting another chill down Leya's spine. The goo having the body of a person but no face like a living mannequin was freaking her out. As if sensing her discomfort, the head of the blob shivered and contorted into a face. The face that appeared however, turned her blood cold.

"What's wrong, Leya? You wanted me to have a face and I chose one!" The blob's voice was so laid back and playful -so out of place- it unnerved Leya even more. The face it had chosen was that of a young man she knew very well. His short brown hair sat chaotically on his head while his facial hair was trimmed to a neat stubble. But something was off...his eyes were supposed to be a weird but cool dark green and gray but these were completely black like the sludge that made up its body and his mouth seemed stuck in a permanent sneer.

"Why...why the hell do you have his face?!" Leya demanded.

"Why? There is no why! I just thought you'd like to see a familiar face!" He burst out into a fit of high-pitched laughter. He walked forward and lifted Leya's chin up so that her eyes met with his, a sly grin on his face.

"I just wanted to make you feel more comfortable and nurture your delusions about ol' Will-y boy. As one friend to another. I mean let's face it he's been gone what...six months going on seven now without even so much as a goodbye? He's either dead or doesn't care about you anymore." Leya reared her head back in disgust while quickly wiping away the residue of slime off her chin, gagging at the horrendous smell that wafted off of his body.

"Just shut up! I know Will is alive!" Leya retorted, clenching her fist. He had to be alive. Will was one of the strongest people she had ever met. He had faced down a Digital god and defeated him for god sakes! There was no way he could be...

"You poor poor deluded girl, that must be some fantasy world you live in! A world where the great William Murphy didn't abandoned all his friends and got himself killed somewhere!" The doppelganger cackled.

"I said..SHUT UP!" Leya threw her fist as hard as she could at the blob man's head. He didn't attempt to move out of the way but only smiled as he caught Leya's fist in his hand, just inches from his face. His hand then stretched and wrapped around her fist, trapping it in a small ball of sludge.

"Come on now Leya..." His voice became deeper with every word until it had the unforgettable Irish accent Leya had grown accustom to, "You know you could never beat me." Using her free hand, she tried to tear the sludge off her hand only for it to get stuck like animal in a tar pit. The doppelganger snickered as Leya struggled to release herself from his grip and with a slight flick of his wrist, willed several streams of sludge to travel down her arms, around her legs and up her neck to cover her mouth ensnaring and gagging her in a web of ooze.

"You know with me gone...Elegon back home, Alex typically doing nothing and Trace doing god knows what nowadays, you became top dog. I mean look at what you've accomplished! You've taken out groups of sovereign usurpers, saved several small settlements around the Digital World and established the guard for each one, and you even infiltrated a Digital World terrorist cell and sabotaged all their plans! Mighty impressive, I must admit. Leya's eyes widened in shock. Not only did this thing know about her friends but he knew about her missions. While it was no secret she took part of the first two missions as she was usually leading two to three teams at a time, the infiltration mission was given to her personally by Azulongmon for her and her alone and even then she was only supposed to collect information; sabotaging the terrorists' plans was an idea she had come up with on the fly. There was no way anyone should know about that, so how did he?

"I have my sources." He said, answering Leya's question very vaguely. "And that's not all I know. You see, the sovereigns aren't as all seeing or all knowing as they want you believe are. If someone like me managed to find out so much 'confidential' information right under their noses, it shows just how pathetic they are. But soon that won't be a problem."

Without warning, the area of Leya's scar erupted in continuous waves of pain her screams muffled by the slime gag. Her mind went blank as her body instinctively twisted and jerked in pain, desperately trying to get away from the source of her agony, in vain however. Her whole body was seizing as she experienced the same pain that killed her all those years ago. Her eyes met with that of her captor, who no longer had Will's face nor his voice but his original unnaturally laid back voice and had a simple white mask on.

"Soon, the sovereign's' reign will come to an end and a new world order will commence! And you want to know the best part?" A devilish grin adorned his face as he leaned in close to Leya's face. The world around her seemed to stutter as he approached her; it was as though her brain had skipped or didn't register a few seconds had passed. Whatever it was, Leya realized she was no longer looking at the sludge man, but at him and herself. Her body had stopped seizing even though she could still feel the phantom pains of whatever her captor had did to her and her eyes had this blank look in them and strangely enough, her restraints had disappeared.

"You're gonna be the catalyst to it all! You will destroy, infect and corrupt every living thing in the Digital World until there is nothing left!" Leya screamed and swore at the man with all her heart but her body did nothing, her face only darkened. Then slowly, a small smirk grew on her face, her eyes still vacant.

"...Good...Sounds like fun..." Leya watched in horror as her own lips formed those words. What was she saying... why was she saying this? She had devoted her life to protecting the Digital World and now she was standing here agreeing to corrupt it?

Corrupt... Leya's face dropped as realization hit her like a ton of bricks. The masked figure howled in delight, clapping his hands together like a small child.

"Excellent! Now the real fun begins!" He turned to face Leya, not her body in front of him but to her apparition and grabbed her wrist, sending several shocks up her arm. The pain felt a hundred times worse than the suffering she endured earlier so much so that her vision started fading.

"This will be so much fun and I'm gonna guide you every step of the way. For now...we must part ways...but don't worry darling, I'll be keeping in touch..." The last thing Leya saw before she blacked out was his malicious smirk.

Leya's eyes shot open as she rocketed up from the bed she was laying in instinctively scanning the small room of beds she was in for danger. Her heart was racing at a thousand miles a second and her body refused to stop shaking, aching badly as though she had just got off the battlefield. There was something else was wrong; Leya could tell that something terrible had happened to her but for the life of her could not remember what. The only things that came to mind was that it had something to do with Will and her arm. She groaned from irritation, scratching her arm absentmindedly trying to retrace her steps in her head. She had a panic attack after Alex told her she was infected, sparred with Komodomon to calm down, talked to Alex for a bit before passing out and then...

Images of broken memories flashed in her mind. Most of it didn't make any sense, but one thing was clear to her: Will had something to do with it. If he did do something to her that meant he was somewhere nearby. Leya pushed herself out of the bed and walked across the barracks to a child-sized green humanoid lizard snoring quietly in a bed two times to large for him.

"Gilamon..." Leya whispered, shaking him slightly. The Digimon grumbled and mumbled something about hot dogs before sluggishly opening his eyes.

"...Leya...what's wrong...?" He asked, exhaustion clearly in his voice but also concern.

"Get up, we are leaving..." Leya went to grab a travel cloak from inside a case under Gilamon's bed. She frowned as it was slightly too big, trailing on the ground behind her. It would have to do, she didn't really feel like searching all the cases in the room.

"Leaving? Why?" Gilamon was fully awake now, standing up beside his bed. Leya paused for a moment. Her mind was already made, so why was she hesitant? She took a deep breath. She needed answers and she needed them now not only about what had happened to her but where he had been these past few months.

"We are going to go find Will."