Part I: Leslie

Bright. Bright light, almost searing.

Rolling over, covering his eyes with his arms. A metallic creak from below.

The air around feels cool, but not cold. Fresh. The light slowly becomes more bearable. Leslie uncovers his eyes slowly and rolls over again. Walls across from him; greenish-blue patched with white where paint had chipped off or disintegrated.

He sits up. He's on a bed with a thin, grimy mattress. The frame creaks when he moves.

How did he get here? Why?

The floor his feet find when he stands is tile. White but cracked. Plants push through. Dirt. A small barred window just above his eye level lets in sunlight. Pure, like mid-afternoon. Greenery outside too, small plants, like the window is just above ground. Vines creep in and dangle onto the floor.

It smells like a field.

Sunflowers. Hay and smoke and fire and pain. Red cloth. Setting sun and pain.

Leslie holds his head with both hands, whimpering slightly until the images and sensations fade. They were so vivid. Memories, but he knows he's never seen or felt that.

He doesn't remember much before here. He doesn't try. He wants to go home, without really knowing what home is.

The doorway to the room is open, since the barred door lies flat on the ground. Leslie stumbles out. The room outside is similar. Tile and earth and flakes of paint. Darker. No windows, only sunlight patterns leaking from other rooms—cells.

He just starts walking. Is there a right and wrong direction?

Quiet.

Faint rustling, wind, maybe.

Faint chirping, birds.

In between, silence.

Silence. The basement. Dark and cold. Alone, so alone. Waiting. The voices, the visions. She wasn't dead.

Leslie stumbles into a wall and stops with his hand against it. As quickly and powerfully as the memories come, they fade. Once they're gone, he can't quite reach them anymore.

He keeps moving. A girl's laughter, distant.

Doesn't look back.

xxx

A tub of water. The hard floor against his knees.

Leslie comes to in front of a bathtub full of water. He's kneeling, leaned over it as if he'd been looking for something.

His right hand is wet.

Though the water is fairly clear, there's dirt settled at the bottom, making a dark backdrop so he can see his reflection.

The girl is giggling behind him.

He turns.

Red and black.

But there's nothing.

He stands and shuffles out of the room. His head hurts again. Why is he here? Why is he alone?

Then, glass shatters.

Leslie starts. Somewhere above him? He stops and listens. Silence.

But this hadn't been like the girl laughing. It was a permeable sound. It was real.

He finds stairs, eventually. Darker, colder, grayer. Not the calm peace of the overgrown rooms.

Then upstairs. Sunlight floods. The ceiling has holes in some places, and the second floor is visible. It barely has a ceiling left at all.

Footsteps. He hears the quiet crunching of the debris underfoot. Coming closer…. Should he be scared? Should he keep going toward the sound, or should he hide?

He stays in his place.

"Help…help…" he mutters, somewhat involuntarily. "Remember…remember…"

"Leslie?"

A quiet call, a woman's voice. It's familiar. He can't quite place it with his vague remains of a memory, but it's someone he knows.

"Leslie, where are you?"

He starts to shuffle toward her—she must be in one of the rooms connected to this hallway—but then stops. He doesn't have a good association with this woman.

Chasing. Gunpoint.

"Don't kid yourself. You're just as expendable as they are."

xxx

Leslie's sitting on his heels. A different room, again.

Cold on his cheeks. Tears?

Someone suffers behind him. He turns.

A woman lies on the floor, moaning and crying with pain. She curls into herself, and blood pools.

Kidman, he knows, remembers.

Leslie doesn't like Kidman. Leslie doesn't trust Kidman.

It seems wrong that she's here and all the blood, but he doesn't know what to do. He shuffles past her and out the door. He's scared. He doesn't know what's happening.

More noises. Footsteps.

He starts down the hall, but he catches sight of a figure to his right and he ducks into a closet. The door is slotted. He can look out and see the room across, where Kidman lies in her own blood.

Someone passes by the door and sees her.

Familiar, again. A man.

"Oh, fuck, Kidman. What the hell happened?" A deep voice. Steady. This is a better association.

He kneels beside Kidman. She moans and chokes, "Se—Sebastian. Why-?"

"Shh. Stay with me. But don't try to talk. Shit." Searching his pockets, then hers. He finds some small object Leslie can't see.

Leslie sits. Dark, only slits of light. Should he stay here? He likes Sebastian. Sebastian is good. But…blacking out again. Whatever happened to Kidman….

Sebastian has a one-sided conversation. Then he stops.

"Hey, you still with me?" he asks her.

She nods stiffly.

"Ambulance will be here in a few minutes. It'll take them a little while, but they'll make it." He shrugs out of his long coat. Wads it up and tucks it behind her head.

"Sebastian…"

"Relax—"

"No. He—he's still here…"

"Ruvik?"

She nods.

"I know." He's unbuttoning the black vest he wears.

"Why—?"

"Same reason you are." He takes something silver off his belt.

"No, why—why are you helping me?" She's gasping. Her words are the passing of air between convulsions of pain. "I—I killed Joseph, you…you threatened to shoot me—"

"Quit. Breathe. You have to breathe."

Leslie can smell the blood from across the hall. Rich, metallic, sharp.

Experiments. Touch of sedative. Glint of a blade. Flesh cleanly ripping open, peeling away. Then it's him. There's pain. So much pain.

The pain in his head never fully goes away. It washes back, an ocean wave, but never leaves. The memories, though. They get more vivid, more than sensations: experiences.

"This is gonna hurt," Sebastian is saying.

Leslie looks back out the slits in the door.

Sebastian pours something out of the silver container onto Kidman. She tightens. Her fists clench. But she's silent. Sebastian takes the black cloth of his vest and presses it to the wound in her shoulder. He does the same process for her other wound, spreading the vest across her chest to reach both.

"Sebastian," she says breathlessly, "you have to find him. He—he's only going to escape if you stay here."

"I know. I'll get there."

Leslie starts to slip.

"Don't do it, Ruben, just walk away. I know what you want to do. Please, don't."

Soft, pleading. Matches the laugh. He just knows, somehow, it's the same girl.

xxx

Leslie opens his eyes to the end of a gun. He starts slightly.

"Sebastian?" He thought he trusted Sebastian.

Sebastian keeps the pistol steady but there's hesitation, mistrust in his eyes.

"Don't fall for it," Kidman says from the floor. "I think he's faking it—it's what he did with me."

"I'm not so sure."

"You don't have a choice, Sebastian! You…" She stops to regain what little breath she has. "You have no idea what he could do if he gets out of here."

Leslie rocks back and forth slightly and starts muttering, "Conscience… conscience…conscience." The word is stuck in his mind as if he's just said it or heard it.

"I won't just let him leave," Sebastian says. "We'll take him to an asylum. Not Beacon; somewhere better."

"They'll never understand his case, Sebastian. He could take advantage of them so easily. If you can't do it, give me the gun and I will. He—he's right; I would."

"Leslie?" Sebastian says, lowering the gun slightly and reaching out with his other hand to put it on Leslie's shoulder. "Is that you?"

Leslie looks up at him and asks, "Sebastian? Can Leslie go home?"

The muscles around Sebastian's eyes tightened. Conflict inside him.

Then, "I can't." He lowers the gun to his side.

"Don't make this mistake—"

"Kidman, no. I've made up my mind."

Struggling up, rising. He's slipping.

Sebastian turns away slightly and Kidman sweeps the gun off the floor next to her. She raises it at Leslie

"No—"

and fires.