I wake up, open my eyes. I see a wall in front of me, a stone wall. My hands are tied behind my back. I search back in my memory to why I am here, and there is nothing. Literally nothing. I don’t know who I am, or where I am, or why I am.

I know basic information, stuff anyone would know. I know that the capital of Bulgaria is Sofia, and the periodic table of the elements. But no personal information, no name, no family, no past, no present, no future. I look around, and I am in a cell, like a prison cell. There is a cot and a door with bars on it.

I stand up cautiously, and peer into the darkness outside my cell. “Hello?” I call, and am met with silence. Exhaustion overwhelms me, and I lie down on the cot on my stomach with my tied hands on my back. Despite my discomfort, I sleep in seconds.

I wake with the creaky door to my cell opening. Two guards are there, with swords pointed at my chest. Apparently, I am dangerous. I like it.

“We’re to take you to the head of the guard for questioning,” the younger one says. His voice barely masks his fear.

“No,” I say, trying to stop my voice from trembling. For all their fear of me, they know more than I do. This scares me.

“Come on,” The other one says, and tries to grab my arm. I twist away towards the door, and stand still, playing a mental game with them. I smile, but inside, I panic, fighting the instinct to run and scream, which would draw more guards. Wherever I got this instinct, thank you, I think.

Slowly, I back out of my cell, and slowly, the guards come towards me. I turn and run, but I misjudge the distance to the wall and forget my hands are tied. I fall on my knees. One of them drags me to my feet my an elbow, and I barely struggle. I want them to think I have given up, that I have lost my will to fight. They take me down a dirty hallway past more cells. There is a stirring from inside some of them, but I keep looking down. We go up a set of crumbling steps to a door. Before we go through, I am blindfolded and spun around until I don’t know up from out from right. I can hear a door opening, and then I feel cool marble under my bare feet. The air smells better up here, and  it is quieter. We walk for a while, and then I hear another door opening. I am pushed through.

I can sense more people in the small room than me and the two guards. “What on Earth took you so long?” a low, bored voice says. “Let’s get this over with, I have somewhere to be.” I am tied to a chair, and my blindfold is not removed. They don’t ties up my ankles, though. With my hands behind my back, I work on the knots on my waist.

“Do you know why you are here?” the bored voice says.

“No,” I say defiantly. I have my waist untied, and I begin on my hands.

“You do not know that on August the twelfth, last Friday, you killed a soldier attempting to arrest you for theft?”

I choke. Murder? I know, I know, that I have never killed anyone. And then the memory hits me like a runaway horse. “No,” I say, “I only wounded him. I cut him on the arm.” My first memory. He tried to grab me, and I lashed out with my knife, wounding him, but not fatally. That is all I know.

Someone slaps my face, and the blindfold slips. I can now see fuzzy shapes through the single layer of cloth over my eyes. The no-longer-bored-voice says accusingly, “You said the amnesia serum was infallible!” I know he is not talking to me.

Someone near the door responds coolly. “I never said it was infallible, I said that only rare and extraordinary minds would be able to resist it.”

“And a common street thief is a ‘rare and extraordinary mind’?” the first person says. I can now see he is a thickset man wearing a blue or purple shirt sitting at the desk. Two humanoid shapes stand on either side of him. Bodyguards.

“While unlikely, it is possible,” the voice near the door responded. I now have my hands untied; I am looking for an opportunity.

I get it when the man behind the desk ducks down to retrieve a paper he dropped on the floor. I throw off the ropes binding me and the blindfold. I snatch a knife off the desk and run to the door.

It is locked.

The man standing next to it elbows a guard in the face and takes a key from his hand - and hands it to me. My shock nearly slows me down, but I grab his hand and we race out the door together.

Through some hallways, we run together. I don’t know where we are going, who is at my side, who I am. But I am free.