The beams filtered through her eyelashes, like sunlight under a canopy. She opened her eyelids a little wider, and felt her eyes burn in the glare.

She squinted, trying to discern her surroundings. A single surgeon’s lamp hung directly over her head. The glare was so bright that she could see nothing beyond her white hospital gown, and the shackles which pinned her down onto the hospital bed.

Footsteps. To her right. She turned her head just in time to see a man wearing a surgeon’s mask which concealed most of his face bend over her. She felt the first bead of sweat roll down her forehead.

The man raised his arm. Between his clenched fingers she could just make out the thin sliver of a needle.

Her heart began to beat wildly as she realised what was about to happen. Her wrists strained against her bonds, but she could do nothing to stop that lethal weapon from stabbing down onto her arm, and the poison which would erase her memory and leave her a vegetable was plunged into her bloodstream.