A bag over my head and the sweet scented sting of chloroform; that's what I woke up to. Scratchy fabric scraping my skin and a moist cloth clogging my airways, blinded, suffocated, disorientated - it was something no child was ready for or is supposed to be subjected to.

I don't remember fighting, I don't even remember screaming. I remember being stiff with fear and too shocked to emit anything more than a silent strangled wheeze. I do remember collapsing: helplessly, spinelessly, dependently; right into the hands of my captor. I tumbled like a wall and that was when my world began to crumble.

Then it was white light. My vision was a white out bleary haze, spotted with flickering specks. The world flashed as I blinked and my head spun like I'd just got off a round-a-bout.

My ears were dulled, as if someone had plugged them with defenders. Then everything drew into focus, as if someone had twisted a dial on a microscope.

There were a string of Russian voices coercing behind me. I was too dizzy to even recognise words, let alone listen. Everything was numb. My brain was foggy.

I tried to move my body, twisting and then looking down at my form. Then I managed to find my centre of gravity: I was on my back, cuffed to an operating table. I shook my wrists, rattling the shackles. It served me no justice and no freedom: it only drew attention to me.

The nattering stopped. I looked over in the general direction of the voices, and my eyes struggled to home in on the two figures. They were a smudge, but their outlines remained.

I looked around, twisting in the bindings and trying to figure my location out.

It was a dingy clinical facility. The walls and floors were tiled, all coloured in a vile faded clinical green. Above me was a panel of whirring bulbs, blasting harsh white light into my retinas, flickering in my eyes. If was dank and the stench of damp and - oddly - rotting meat teased my nostrils. The walls were splashed with unidentifiable fluids, congealed brown splurges and rotting dripping smears. But there was one substance I recognised, puddling on the floor not so far away; filled by the drips leaking off the table. Blood. Scarlet on lime.

That's when the fatigue faded and the panic truly set in. I writhed on the table, contorting and twisting, trying to free myself with desperate ardency. I struggled like my life depended on it. Tears leaked from my eyes and seeped into my debauched flame hair, bunched up and tangled beneath my head. I thrashed and whimpered and sobbed; hiccupping and blubbering.

"Enough, girl!"

The tears didn't stop. I couldn't stop them. They were pouring down my cheeks at an uncontrollable and alarming rates, moistening my cheeks until they glistened.

"Enough!"

Click. The safety of a gun was taken off right next to my ear.

That's when my lips sealed themselves, but noises still rattled around my mouth.

"I told you, you should have gagged her."

"The young ones always cry the most."

There was a flipping of paper, from a nondescript location. I took a risk, turning my head, then had the cold metal muzzle of a gun kiss my temple and nudged me back into line.

"Natalia Alianovna Romanova," my name rolled of his tongue curiously, and then he tsked. "Orphaned. Nine years old. Stalingrad. Do you know why you're here, Natalia Alianovna Romanova?"

"нет, сэр," No, sir. I blundered over the words clumsily, the words broken up by harsh sobs.

"Stop snivelling child, and speak up!"

"нет, сэр!" I repeated in a bolder voice, trying to restrain the cries wracking my hollow chest. My diaphragm was twitching and my chest was heaving. The sobs were flowing like someone had opened a valve.

He tapped the gun against my forehead again, eliciting a frightened meek mewl from my lips; like a pathetic kitten.

"Do you know what happens to the ones who don't stop crying?"

"нет, сэр," I blithered, my breaths stuttering and catching.

He fired the gun at a tile on the wall just above my head. Specks of ceramic rained down on my face, flecks of dust and refuse sprinkling into my eyes, making them water and causing me to blink frenetically.

Alarm spread through my system, my already racing heart skipped a beat and when I swallowed back my bile saliva it made a loud click in the enclosed room. My whole body was trembling and twitching, unable to stop shaking with fear.

"They get destroyed. The weak ones, they're disposed of and replaced. no one needs a weak link in their chain. They crumble like ceramic, they are useless. Don't prove yourself to be useless, Natalia."

I remained still. No more noises spilled from me, but tears still swelled in my eyes. But I refused to let those tears go. I wouldn't let myself seem useless. I wasn't ready to sign my own death warrant at nine years old.

"сэр!" A man gave an awe-consumed beckon and shout from the back of the room.

"Дa?" He responded, his attention drawn from me.

"You'll want to see this, sir."

The man squinted at me threateningly, jabbed the solid barrel of the gun at my head and then gestured to the wall behind me; just reminding me of how easily I crumbled. I remained obediently silent.

"Ivan - he says he rescued her from a fire, yes? But he did not tell you where from. Sir, it was the night the Tsar's palace was burnt by the revolutionary rebels that he came into possession of her."

I knew very little about history. I was nine years old. I was home-schooled by Ivan. Though Ivan had never spoken about the Tsars' - in fact - he had valiantly avoided the subject, I knew exactly who they were. Russia's most hated family, the royal family. It was hard to keep a lid on such horrors when you saw anti-monarchy revolutionaries marching through the streets, rioting, raising banners and committing arson. Certain things couldn't be buried, nothing that current.

The revolutionaries went on culling and seeking out members of the royal bloodline who had gone into hiding even after the king and queen had been killed; making sure to spill every last drop of Tsar Blood.

So when I heard my name and the Tsar name in the same sentence, my blood ran cold, as if piercing flecks of ice were being pumped through my veins.

"Мой Бог," My God, he gasped, a harrowing chuckle reverberating through his chest. "Perhaps little Natalia is more precious than we realised.

"The soldier is a fool. Why did he admit such a thing?"

Ivan. They were talking about Ivan.

"The old bastard would do anything to belate another beating."

"Нет!" I objected, screaming at the top of my lungs, my strangled how bouncing tinnily around the claustrophobia inducing clinical cell.

Both men averted their gaze from the page with wide eyes; appalled and amazed by the magnitude and temerity of the shout.

"Leave Ivan alone! He's done nothing wrong!"

The men chorused into sinister spine-chilling laughter. Then the gun was aimed at me again, the iron sight lined up between my eyes.

"On the contrary Tsarina, he's kept you hidden from harm when you should've been executed along with your mother and father." His words were bitten out into the air with a clenched jaw. "Just count yourself lucky I'm too impressed with your physical versatility and fiery confidence to pop a bullet in your skull right now."

"Leave him alone." I spitefully retorted.

"It's too late for that, Tsarina. He's dead."

My heart flopped, it plodded to a halt. My stomach twisted up into a thousand knots, all bunched together and looped. My eyes overflowed and more tears were waterfalled down my cheeks. I could only hysterically cry, too petrified and upset to summon any words. My world had ended. Ivan was all I ever had. And he was gone.

"You however are not. And we intend to utilise you. We need you. You and twenty-seven others for a new initiative. Perhaps it is time you gave something back to the motherland after your family tried to leave it in ruin."

"I never did anything. I swear!"

He was prowling towards me, arming himself with a syringe. He flooded the chamber with a burnt gold liquid, filling it with a dosage of something unidentifiable.

"Perhaps not. But your mother and father certainly did."

"What's that?" I whimpered in a shaky voice, my vision blurred by the torrents of tears gathered in my eyes.

"Your future."

The needle was massive, the length of a middle finger and as wide as the lead of a pencil: a thick cylindrical metal tube. He inserted it into my wrist and pain exploded through my body. The pain only grew worse as I felt the liquid trickle into my bloodstream. My veins were burning, sizzling as the serum ripped through my core and edited my DNA. It was ripping apart my genetic coding and rebuilding it. I rattled and shook the bindings, struggling, but locked in place by the cuffs from ankles to my neck.

Sweat broke out across my forehead and my heart gave a few palpitations. Screams rattled from the back of my throat, tearing my vocal chords, scorching my throat. Tears spilled from my eyes with excruciating pain.

I was burning up, my skin was fuzzing with pain and my muscles were tense and stiff.

Something from above me descended: a device that caged my head; surrounding my skull and clamping down on it. A few isolated shocks zapped at me, as if I'd just got a static electric shock; then it intensified. My sight blurred with the pain, I howled, I convulsed and twitched. I was locked into place.

My mind, it felt as if it was draining, I could feel myself slipping away. I could feel my personality and memories fading from my grasp. I could feel memories dripping away, as if someone was slopping white paint over them. I was questioning things, so many questions. There were so many blank spaces. I was lost.

My teeth sunk into my tongue, gnashing at it and the tang of copper overcame me; the scent filling my airways and diluting my tongue.

Then I remember my sight closing in on me; the dark boundaries shrinking inwards, enveloping the world and then nothing but black remained.

A/N - Dedication goes to KaranChan! x