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Your head hurts.
That sensation is the first you know. It is hard to think, your mind returning slowly and in fragments. It is hard to move.
The pain is sharp yet throbbing, radiating through the entirety of your skull. Is that the reason for the weight upon your thoughts, which remain otherwise frightfully empty?
After some moments in the darkness, you manage to find your eyes and realize that they’re closed. A tremendous amount of effort – nearly enough that it leaves you breathless – succeeds in prying them open, though at first little awaits beyond them but the vague sepia colors of a blurred and intangible world.
Searching a bit more, you find your arm. It rests at your side upon the soft thing beneath you, and attached to it are fingers that still tingle with a strange numbness. After a few tries, they obey your orders to twitch and curl into the fabric of the sheet beneath them, then splay outward to assist you in an attempt to sit up.
It is a difficult battle, coordinating muscles that feel stiff and out of use to work together in order to raise you from the bed. Determined for reasons you cannot yet begin to fathom, you persist, and eventually manage to lift your upper half into something at least gradually approaching a sitting position.
The action causes your vision to go white as the pain in your head flares from a point on the back of your neck, towards where your spine connects to your skull. Hissing in a breath, you raise shaking fingers back to touch along tender skin, and find that the action doesn’t help.
In an effort to make out the world around you, you blink, then blink again, gradually clearing away most of the fog and spots. Some persist, flickering in and out of your vision like spirits, but you ignore them.
Enough of your vision has been cleared enough to make out the room – for it is, indeed, a room – in which you’ve been laid down. It is small, it is dark, and nearly bare of furniture, though something near your side captures your attention.
It’s a table. Upon it, among various other knick-knacks, is an array of flowers. They might have been pretty once, but have begun to try, and the slow process of decay has already caused a few petals to scatter around them, limp and wrinkled, on the wood.
You don’t know why your gaze lingers upon them, but it does, and your head throbs in response. As you fight to sit upright, in the process losing your breath and having to fight for it, a single thought shoots like lightning through your foggy and addled mind.
Get out.
It isn’t a threat, but a warning, and your throat – which is bone dry – tightens as you listen. The voice, you think, is your own, but seeing as how you remember nothing about yourself it’s essentially that of a stranger.
You know it speaks the truth. You can’t stay here.
How you arrived is a mystery, but something tells you that it wasn’t your doing. Besides that, you’ve been hurt – that much is obvious.
Has someone here attempted to hurt you?
If they’ve discovered you’re awake, will they do so again?
The thought is enough to motivate you to stumble awkwardly to your feet. Knees weak, you nearly fall, but manage to catch yourself upon the wall long enough to gain your footing. Unsteady as a newborn lamb, you manage a step forward, then another, then another, until you manage to get your bearings enough to walk without assistance.
Heart pounding in your chest, you creep towards the door, fumbling for a moment to figure out how to open it. As you prepare to do so, you suddenly go still in response to noises on the other side that cause your breath to hitch within your chest.
Footsteps. Voices. Indistinct, in a language you can’t make out.
Frozen, praying that they don’t come in your direction, praying that you aren’t discovered, you wait in complete silence until the sounds – blessedly – begin to fade.
Then, you crack open the door.
A dark hallway greets you, lit sporadically with the insufficient light of widely spaced lamps. The area beneath them is tinted a sickly yellow that causes your head to swim, but you walk towards the light nonetheless, feet driven onward by the same motivation that dragged you from the bed.
Down the long, narrow corridor you stumble, certain of nothing save the urge to get out of whatever place this is in which you’ve found yourself. Where you’re headed, you’re uncertain –
From what you’re running, even more.
But you continue onward.
Every now and then, you pass a door. Even rarer, one opens, but never does it take you where you need to go. Behind a few, you hear voices, hushed and ominous.
You do not open them.
Towards the end of the hall and a door at the end you hope will lead you out of here, your journey is interrupted. Once more, the sound of footsteps reaches your ears, and your heart leaps into your chest as you look wildly around for a place to hide.
A stack of crates is all that meets your eyes, and you’re thankful to find yourself small enough to fit behind them. You aren’t completely hidden, but it’s enough that you’ll be overlooked. . . hopefully.
If they don’t look too closely, that is.
Swallowing, tongue like sandpaper, you blink away new spots in your vision as the steps draw closer. Expecting to be pulled from your hiding place at any moment, you watch, unblinkingly, as a few figures appear from the darkness and walk slowly – agonizingly slowly – in your direction.
They slow, then stop, in front of the boxes, and you make yourself as small as possible – an action which is painfully unnatural – while holding your breath.
Don’t let them find you.
You have to get out.
Your destiny awaits . . .
They’ll take it away.
Urgently, your own voice whispers in your mind, and you know it speaks the truth. This is your only chance, and if you’re found it will be taken away. Your only chance. . . Only chance. . .
Only chance to what?
You don’t know, but you know you can’t afford to be caught.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, the footsteps carry on. Only once the sound has faded away completely do you allow yourself to let out a shaking, painful breath.
Your head hurts.
Slipping free from your hiding place, you take a moment to look around, eyes finally lingering on a set of stairs leading up to another door. Instinct drives you on, and you tread as lightly as possible in an effort to keep the wood beneath your feet from creaking.
Hands braced upon the door, you hesitate.
You listen.
Only when met with silence save for the sound of your own heart and breath do you dare to push the door open.
The light that greets you is so bright that your head feels like it’s splitting.
Despite this, something within your chest leaps in joy. The sun aches, but it is where you belong.
You don’t waste any time after that. Dizzy, disoriented and exposed, you rush from the cover of below the deck down the gangplank and off the ship. The instant your feet touch the earth, you know you’ve achieved something great.
Yet, you can’t shake the feeling that something remains hot on your heels – a hunting hound, out for blood, desperate to catch you and keep you from your goals.
You stumble. Once or twice, you fall.
Your head hurts.
But you keep going. Again, and again, you keep going, until the ship disappears behind you and you’ve found yourself lost in the throngs of an unfamiliar city. Only then do you allow the tension in your shoulders to relax.
You aren’t safe. Not yet. You know that much.
Your journey has only begun. Towards what, you don’t know; why, even less.
All you know is that you must go. Then, despite the pain still thrumming in your neck with every movement and despite the fog in your mind, you must keep going.
All the way to London.