The world blurred around her, and she opened her eyes to a host of bright white lights, staring directly at her and all positioned above her. Anya tried to quit, tried to move her head away, but she was strapped tightly to a table. It was impossible for her to move.

She started to panic, and she felt her heart starting to race. How was she going to get out of this?

High heels clacked on the tiled floor beneath her, and instantly Anya knew who was approaching. Her eyes strained to see the figure moving so much closer to her, but at the same time, she didn't want to look at her. The woman made her feel too sick to even keep her eyes open.

"We're awake now, are we?" said the woman smoothly. "Dr Parker, set the machine up, please. I want Subject 007 in it within the hour."

"Right" said Dr Parker, and Anya heard the scuffle of footsteps behind her, followed by the sound of electricity starting up.

Something flashed in Anya's memory, and she felt the bile rising in her throats. Something about the sounds of that electricity set her teeth on edge and made her hair stand on end. She tried to wriggle in her ties, but they wouldn't budge, and the hard metal edges chafed on her skin. Anya bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.

"You've regained your strength over the last few days, so to pay for the little outburst you had, it's time for you to earn your place here, Subject 007." Even with the Director's silhouette against the glare of the lights, Anya could tell through their barely-restrained antagonistic mirth that the Director was smiling.

Then, a rattling of metal as someone pulled out a tray.

"Get her ready," The Director said in a sharp voice, and Anya stilled.

She saw the point of the needle, and she wanted to scream, but her mouth couldn't even open.

"Mmmf!" Anya tried to shout, but the gag they had put over her mouth sealed her voice away. Tears streamed down her face in horror.

She felt the pricks in her skin, and Anya's eyes rolled into the back of her head in terror. Not more injections…

As before, flames raced through her veins, burning every inch of her limbs and attacking her organs. Her brain felt like it was on fire.

She felt the tears starting to roll down her cheeks.

No no no no no she screamed in her head. Please not this! Please don't do this!

She distantly felt herself rolling, and Anya realised that they must be moving the metal table that she was strapped to, and rolling it closer to the machine behind her. Anya felt the pull of the electricity, and all her hairs moved in the direction towards it.

Static, she realised.

They had rolled her into the mouth of the machine, and Anya felt herself being swallowed up by more bright white light.

It surrounded her. Drowned her. More tears streamed down her face when even closing her eyes didn't keep the glare out.

The voices of the doctors faded away as lights started to spin around her, and Anya heard the loudest thumping noise all around her, like a giant stomping down on her brain. It was the scariest thing she had ever heard.

She couldn't move. Couldn't close her eyes, and close her ears to the sounds of the thumping all around her, and the lights spun and spun and spun until she felt dizzy. She didn't know how long she was in there for, but it felt like an age before the lights started to slow down, and she felt herself being released out of the mouth of the machine.

Anya lay helpless there, almost brain dead from being subjected to so much overstimulation in such a short amount of time. She couldn't even hear what people were saying anymore as she had been partially deafened, but she felt them wheel her away on the metal table to another place.

They removed the fabric from her mouth, and strapped some kind of mask over her nose and mouth. From the shape and feel of it, Anya knew that it was a heavy-duty breathing mask.

And then the table started to tip forwards, and Anya slid from the table into a tank of water.

The temperature change hit her like a shock, and Anya's eyes jerked open in reaction. She took a huge gulp of air through the mask, and tried to swim upwards, but her limbs hung uselessly by her sides. She was too drained to move.

Something buzzed above her.

No no no no she screamed in her head, and she felt herself becoming breathless as she struggled to stay afloat. Her white pyjamas were completely saturated with water, and made her heavier in the tank. Now that she was submerged in the water itself, the initial shock of the cold wore off and it started to warm up to her.

Anya quickly realised that she could still see, and she realised that the container was visible on the outside. She watched as blobs of colour and light shifted around her, and she could just picture the scientists walking around in their various lab coats and clipboards, all writing notes about her.

She floated the short distance to the edge of the tank and pressed her hands up against the glass. It was so hard to see through it, especially since her mask was only covering her nose and mouth. If only it covered her eyes as well, so that she might be able to see under the water.

Anya soon tired, and she felt herself sinking slightly further into the tank, until she was suspended just in the middle of the water. She felt her arms and legs relax and float beside her, and she slowly started to close her eyes.

She was so tired…

All she had to do was to concentrate on her breathing. Breathing in and out. The mask felt so uncomfortable on her face, the outline of it pressed so hard against her skin, but she didn't dare loosen it.

She couldn't die in here.

She had no idea what they were going to do to her, and part of her didn't want to know, but she knew that she needed to get out. If she was suspended in a tank of water, then they had her imprisoned. She would never be able to get out.

Then suddenly, a sharp pain went through her entire body, and Anya clenched her teeth to brace herself against it. It felt as though she was being stabbed by needles all over her body all at the same time.

The wave of pain quickly passed, with a lingering feeling of numbness in her toes. She nearly fell to the bottom of the tank, as her entire body lost all tension, even the tension that had kept her afloat

Then the wave of blinding pain came again.

And again.

With sudden clarity, Anya knew: they were passing electricity through the tank, and she was caught in the middle of it.

Her breath fogged up her mask every time she screamed, but she knew that no one would be able to hear her. Not beyond the wall of water she was encased in.

Another round of electricity passed through the tank, and Anya went rigid with the pain that lanced through her.

She could feel her eyes closing, could feel herself passing out, but she held fast onto her consciousness. There was no telling what they were going to do to her once she lost herself into her nightmares.

But the pain kept her grounded into wakefulness, and she forced herself not to faint, even when the voltage got inexplicably higher.

They must have given her some kind of muscle relaxant because didn't shake through the electric waves as much as she expected to. She hung limp, lifeless, and endured each wave of pain like it was her last.

And then, after an unfathomable length of time, the pain stopped. Anya sagged into the darkness, and let her limbs fall.

The water was warm. It felt like she was on a cloud, floating. Nothing around her. No sound. No sensation. Not even a thought that she could hear to keep her going.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Anya knew that she needed to maintain her sanity somehow. She needed to stay focused, and keep all of her senses working.

Anya focused as hard as she could on the moving coloured blobs in front of her, what she assumed to be the scientists in the lab. They clustered together, and broke apart, into patterns of individual movement. She couldn't feel pain anymore, or anything at all, but if she could focus on one sense, maybe that would keep her grounded enough for her to keep her sanity.

Then, the lights started to dim.

Shit. Anya's heart raced as she realised what was happening. They're turning off the lights! Are they just going to leave me here?

Her hair floated around her, in waves, and Anya felt it tickle her face.

A memory came to her.

She was ten years old, and one of the boys had just pushed her over into the mud in P.E. She was about to win the race, and they pushed her down to overtake her..

Anya had done her best not to cry, but her best wasn't enough. Hot tears tracked down her face, mixing with the mud from the ground.

She almost didn't notice the hand that reached out towards her. His face was tomato red, and he could barely look her in the eyes, but he didn't laugh at her, and he didn't look disgusted at the fact that she was covered head to toe in dirt.

"Don't make me stand here forever," he muttered. "Take my hand and get up, you dummy."

Anya stared at him dumbstruck, then took his hand and let him pull her up.

"You're bleeding," he mumbled to her. "Your knee. You should… go to the nurse… or something." It was like he was saying it through gritted teeth.

Anya nodded numbly, but startled when there was a jeer of laughter behind her.

"Desmond has a CRUSH!" jeered one of the boys. Anya couldn't be bothered to remember his name at the best of times.

"I DO NOT!" Damian shouted back and again tried to avoid eye contact with Anya. "I'm just being a gentleman, unlike you idiots! When did your fathers tell you to treat ladies so disrespectfully?!" He yelled and shook his fist at them.

"That's Damian-sama for you!" shouted Ewen from the side (he had his leg in a cast, so couldn't participate in the race). "He's morally above other people!"

However well-intended Ewen meant to be, it made Damian more embarrassed. "Come on," he muttered to Anya, and indicated to the nurses office at the side of the building. "You should get that seen to, before you get an infection or something."

"Okay," Anya said breathlessly.

At this point in time, Anya and Damian had an unspoken truce. She knew that every time she was close to him, it seemed to set him off somehow, and nothing she could do would make it better. And yet, this one time, he was speaking to her of his own volition. Anya had to try not to mess things up.

It was a short walk to the nurses office, but it was a quiet one. He didn't speak a single word, and yet at the same time, his mind raced a million miles an hour.

Stay cool Desmond, Stay cool! Don't embarrass yourself! She's just right next to you!

Anya was as clueless as ever. Even more so, because she was mentally eight years old, and two years behind Damian in terms of understanding social situations. She fingered the ends of her hair nervously. At Yor's insistence, she had kept it shoulder length, so that it wouldn't get in the way of her other activities.

But when she reached up to twirl her hair around her fingers, that seemed to catch Damian's attention.

Her hair… it shines in the sunlight…

Anya felt herself blush a little at that.

"Um, Sy-on boy," she said shyly. "Do you like my hair?"

Damian stilled, and shivered, like a bolt of electricity had raced up his spine. A breath of air rushed out of him and he blurted: "No! Why would I? It's silly and short?"

Shit! I can't tell her that I love her hair! It looks so soft and I want to touch it!

Anya smiled a little at his thoughts, and tried to put two and two together. "So you'd like it more if it was longer?" This was the best her eight year old brain could do.

Damian startled, looked horrified for a second, and then actually pictured Anya with longer hair. He blushed even harder.

Anya was intrigued. The version of her in his head had longer hair, and for some reason this made her appear glowy and a little glamorous.

"Okay," she said, resolute. "I'll grow it."

"Y-you don't have to…" Damian started, but his words faded away as he realised that Anya had stopped listening.

When they were both fifteen (and well, she was actually thirteen), she had finally managed to get her hair to the perfect length. It reached past her back, and she spent ages brushing it every night to get it as soft as possible. All the other teenagers around her had started to care viciously about their appearances, and she still felt that she was lagging them behind somewhat in that regard.

Becky started wearing makeup to school, but Anya still didn't really see the point, but she saw how it affected the others. She saw what the power of makeup did to Becky's confidence, and to the stares of the boys that followed after her in the corridors.

Anya wasn't interested in the stares of boys, and she had plenty of confidence, but she knew for a fact by reading everyone's thoughts that her real feature was her hair.

And there was a certain someone who loved her hair more than anyone else. He sat behind her in class, fantasting about stroking it with his hands. Anya had wondered how long it would take him to ask her, but he never did. Damian proved to have an iron will, and steel-like discipline when it came to asking for things that he really wanted.

She felt her hair spreading around in the tank, and Anya wondered how long it would take for it to get all tangled up around her. It would take ages to brush out all the knots and the tangles. It was already bad enough after she had been swimming, or after she had been in the bath for a while. But she liked to feel it waving around her.

It reminded her of him.

It made her think of something that was outside of this godforsaken place that wasn't anything to do with experiments, or scientists, or being trapped.

Yes, she had trouble understanding Damian at the best of times, but she always knew that underneath his thorny exterior, he thought about her as much as Becky did, and a little bit more than her parents did. In short, she knew by reading his mind that he was someone in her close circle of family and friends that completely cared about her.

Again, she didn't understand a lot of why he liked to spend time with her, but that wasn't a huge concern to Anya. She knew she was cool, otherwise Becky wouldn't be friends with her, and she was happy with her school life as it was.

Every time she thought about Damian at school, she felt a warm bubbling feeling fizz up inside of her. And everytime she thought about Damian outside of school, she felt tingles of electricity shoot through her fingers and toes, spreading across her whole body.

They were only just starting to get closer. They had managed to get through so much. And she still had a way to go before she could actually say that she was Damian's best friend.

(Why she wanted to be Damian's best friend wasn't available in her thoughts at that point in time.)

Anya felt her eyes close in the dim darkness of the lab, and in the saline suspension of the tank.

To sleep, perchance. To dream.

When Anya awoke, a pit of disappointment formed in her stomach at the feeling of still being suspended in water. She had hoped they would let her out by now.

She tried to shift her head to the side, and realised that something had changed. It wasn't just the oxygen mask that was attached to her.

They had done something while she was asleep.

More tubes and wires covered her body, and it felt like she was in the middle of a spider's web. They shifted stiffly around her, and when she twisted and turned they kept her trapped.

Trapped like prey.

Panic bubbled in her chest, and she let out a gasp that fogged up her mask once more.

The only thing that she was grateful for was that she was still clothed, but even that had drastically changed. She was in a tank top and shorts, presumably so that there would be more skin accessible for them to stick tubes in.

Anya didn't even know what half the tubes were doing (or what any of them were doing, except for the oxygen mask), but she had the sense that if she tried to pull some of them out, then she would harm herself in the process. Many of the tubes and wires were placed on her in such a way that she knew it was connected directly to her skin, and any sharp movements would cut her, or worse, damage some part of her body.

How long would they keep her like this?

How long until she could get out?

Thankfully, the lights had been turned on, and Anya blinked against the harshness of them. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could make out some of the blobs starting to move around her.

But as they say, every cloud…

The pain overcame her before she could take her next breath.

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I know I'm putting you all through a lot of pain so I thought I'd put in a cute Damianya memory to ease that a little bit! It's going to be a bumpy ride but Anya WILL be rescued (will be in Ch. 46, so there's still a bit of a wait but it is coming!)