A handsome young man sat on a leather couch, his body wrapped in form fitting militia gear with leather belts holding various weapons in place. He sat casually with one leg thrown over another, waiting.

Upon closer inspection, this uniform was made thick, with sewn in leather pads and seams.

When she stepped into the room, he paused.

Amber eyes lifted from a torn newspaper, a smirk playing over his lips.

Faine felt her heart electrify, pounding in her chest.

"Hey, little bird," he said. "You ready to fly?"

Waking, Faine pushed herself upright immediately. Her chest was tight, her breathing coming out in deep pants as she peered around the room.

No one was there, the curtains still drawn tight.

The sun had risen and fallen twice now, a full day of large ominous words filling her ears. They'd given her enough medication to make the pain stop, but the nightmares still consumed her. 

She'd seen those eyes before. In the dream it had felt as if she'd stared into them a million times. Yet now they felt so foreign, estranged from her.

Faine pulled the blankets up again, oddly cold in the large, empty room. The shadows were active now, whispering amongst themselves.

This was the fifth dream.

Those before had been twisted and cruel, full of screaming and violence.

Faine had seen images of the man Karras deemed mad, the man whose hair was a slicked salt and pepper, flopping outward as he yanked up that awful overcoat. She heard his voice curling through her thoughts, purring obscene monstrosities.

Find Trace, those voices had said.

As if his name held some kind of meaning.

The only thing Faine really knew was the throbbing in her skull, radiating pain down her spine in bursts of heat. She'd barely spoken more than five words yesterday, leaning heavily on her nurse to know how to meet her physical needs.

"More nightmares?" Karras asked, manifesting at the edge of her bed.

She preferred this dimensional silhouette to the strange talking shadow traveling along the walls.

He braced his hands on the foot of the bed while she stared at him, still blinking the sleep out of her eyes. No. She wouldn't call her last experience a nightmare. It felt warm and pleasant. Some piece of that tenderness extending towards the shadow of a man in front of her.

A distant feeling tugged in her chest, encouraging her to reach out to him.

Faine wondered if her fingers would slip straight through his frame or if they might actually land. Or if these feelings were another illusion, if they were even real at all. Karras could be the man who tormented her, haunting her one last time.

Trace could be the man in her visions.

Without the memories, Faine would never know.

Finally, she forced her head to shake. "No..." she said, unable to say the rest.

What if she was wrong.

What if he wasn't that man with amber eyes at all.

As if sensing a fraction of her inner turmoil, Karras sighed and leveled his would-be gaze with her own. "What do you need, Faine?"

Shadows tangled into the darkness, weaving images of horror in and out of her vision. As they began to swell, she felt the walls as if they began to breathe – closing in all around her. Faine couldn't think past those terrible thoughts and broken memories.

She had no clue.

"To escape," she answered groggily.

Faine prayed Karras might at least understand that much.

"They intend to help you," he said.

"Maybe..." Faine whispered, blinking past the burning. "Maybe if it didn't feel as though I'd been taken from one prison and locked in another with doctors who all look the same as those before them... Maybe if I wasn't going to be operated on and tested just as I was in that wretched hellhole... Maybe then I would believe this was for my own good..."

Karras' head dropped down, the sigh dragging out from his lips slow and near silent compared to the emotion lurking there.

"I have no control," she said slowly. "I have had no control over anything for lord knows how long... Not one person has asked me what was best for me and yet even if they did... Even if they did, I wouldn't know..."

Faine's heart seized in her chest. The fear and sadness dwelling inside as cold and dark as the dungeon they'd come from. So much had been left to the void, the unknown.

The tension between them lingered.

Then, as if an idea settled neatly into his mind, he seemed to decide on something.

"Once, several years ago, we made a pact," Karras began, coming to sit on the foot of the bed. "Naisene – the unit who recruited and trained us – taught us to put the world before ourselves... Whether or not they'd known, they were grooming us to be expendable and you were never one to bend morality."

The name sounded familiar, standing just on the edge of a precipice she couldn't reach. Still, Faine listened intently, waiting.

"I'd known for years that you had doubts about the missions we'd been given. Several of which we had no business surviving. Just before we were detained and brought into the Crimion Compound, you started getting skeptical and belligerent."

Karras put his hand on her shin, a gentle reminder to breathe. Faine's spine became stiff as he went on.

"You had this innate ability to sense when something was about to go south... I never knew how you did it, but I trusted you. Enough to make the stupid pact even..."

Karras' voice lifted over the word stupid as if it was made in jest. Despite the heavy emotions clouding over, he laughed softly.

Faine couldn't feel the tears flooding her vision until they threatened to roll down her cheeks.

"What was the pact?" Faine asked.

Karras chuckled again, shaking his head as he remembered something. "That we were in this together. We always had each other's backs, we'd been partners since the recruitment and it just came naturally. No matter what the unit demanded, we would never abandon the other."

"Why are you telling me this...?" she murmured, grabbing the blanket tighter as if it would protect her from whatever happened next.

"Because I don't know how to help you..." Karras admitted. He shoved himself off the bed and pulled the curtains wide to the rising sun.

Golden light washed over Faine, warming her cheeks for the very first time.

"So if you tell me you need out of this building right now, I will be with you every step of the way."

She swallowed thickly, taken aback by the sincerity in his voice. "Really?"

He nodded.

"Without your memories, you'll be a wandering menace anyway," Karras laughed. "Someone's gotta keep you out of trouble."

Despite herself, Faine laughed with him. A real, genuine laugh that ached in her lungs.

"Won't they look for me?"

"They will."

"Will the Guard come after us?"

"Indeed."

Faine pinched the bridge of her nose and weighed every option. "Where would we even go?"

As if he'd been thinking about it for a while, Karras pointed out the window toward the other side of town. "In the heart of downtown, there is a witchling Sorceress named Saesin who might have the answers we need about my body. I have high hopes she will be able to assist you in your current state."

"Hide... In the center of the city?"

"Haven't you ever heard of hiding in plain sight?" he asked. "Besides, you are a stand up citizen, Faine. Memory or no, it will take quite some time before anyone cooperates with the authorities. People are naturally skeptical."

"Let's hope that works in our favor," she muttered. "That could just as easily work against us."

"If you want to leave conventional methods behind and do this the hard way, I'd appreciate it if you would trust me slightly."

"In the middle of the city?"

Karras scoffed. "Saesin is eccentric, certainly. But she is eccentric enough to hide us no questions asked and it's not like you're giving me a whole lot of options."

"And you're sure?"

If looks could kill - let alone appear on Karras face - Faine knew she'd be struck dead.

"You don't have long to decide if you're serious," he replied, his head twisting to stare through her door. "I'd guess maybe two minutes before Dr. Siveen comes in here with more needles and questions."

Faine's teeth ground together at the thought.

No more needles. 

No more testing.

She threw the blankets off her scarred body, taking in the damage one final time. The sun skimmed across the charred edges, creating dips and valleys of shadow in the wake of burnt skin. Sunrise offered a delicate glow she hadn't noticed before, radiating over the small patches of healing.

As she eased herself onto the floor in nothing but the sweats provided for her, Faine decided one thing for certain.

The only worthwhile pain was the pain she chose.

Even if it meant climbing from the second story window into the crowded streets below.

She would never be an experiment again.