Duci was at the Marketplace, buying food and fish for her polar bear. It was a nice day out, but she was a little miffed. She could have sworn she kept seeing a woman who looked just like her, except with long, curly brown hair. She shrugged dismissively, deciding it was the workings of an overactive imagination.

Finally done grocery shopping, and with her arms laden heavily with baskets and bags, she stowed down a dark alley that shortcut to her place. However, someone else did not have the intention of letting her accomplish that.

Someone came up silently behind her and put her in a chokehold, one hand over her mouth. Duci gagged, dropping the bags as she fought to free herself, fingers clawing to no avail.

"Hello Number 17." The voice in her ear was calm, cold and calculating.

Her "copy' said something indecipherable, and they were suddenly beamed up into the mother ship. That was the last thing she remembered, before all she saw was black.

—

She felt drowsy and disoriented, her vision was blurred. She was sure she heard voices, but she wasn't sure if the figures she was making out were human if even alive at all. She had never been in a situation like this, never been behind enemy lines, but she knew all of the theory behind it. She was determined to fight until her last breath.

Before now, Duci could never remember being afraid of anything. Nothing scared her, nothing held her back. Up until a few weeks ago she had been relatively fear-free. That was the part of her that made her a 'sleeper agent." They triggered some sort of senses in her, and it was not physical pain that she felt, (she couldn't, anyway) but psychological stress.

Her vision was still blurred, but the voices got louder and nearer. It was then that she tried to move, though drowsily still, only to come to the understanding that she was restrained. She writhed and fought to her sluggish ability, to no avail. Laughter followed her futile attempts. She blinked furiously, as if that would clean the blurriness out of her eyes. What did they give her" She stared up at the hazy faces, staring long enough for her eyes to focus. Finally, after several long moments, a clearly defined outline of the capturers focused.

The brunette, who looked like her and still managed to startle her, was watching her. The other figure, a man given from the contour, had his head turned away. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

Her "twin", so to speak, laughed mirthlessly at her futile attempts. "You cannot move, Number 17, let alone move. Do not bother yourself any further." Then she shifted her focus back to the other form. "What was it again, that you said triggered her out of her sleeper mode?" she inquired in a liquid poison tone, purposefully for Duci's ears.

"It appears to have been set off by a dark, intimidating being; the Eyes are what her memory emphasizes most. I did not get a good read from her, as if her program was trying to erase it on its own." His own silky voice returned as he turned to face Duci. In his hand was a huge needle, and he tested it, which sent a miniscule stream of water into the stale air. "You won't feel a thing, sugar," he ensured, a wicked look contorting what would have otherwise been considered handsome features.

Plush tiers formed an "O" of surprise, pupils dilating in horror at the needle. Needles had never phased her before, maybe it was just the given situation that instilled this sudden anxiety. It was too big to be real, the pitch-black of the liquid it held looked morbidly terrifying. She shook her head viciously, making a futile attempt to avoid the needle. He was right, at least, she didn't feel a thing as it punctured her fine skin, but she did feel the tingling of fear that inched its way outward from the point of entry and across her consciousness. A potent stench crossed her orifice of scent, gagging her, though that may have been whatever they infected her with.

Fear smelled like rot and decay.

After the injection, she witnessed the inky blackness creep across the milky and umber expanse of her eye. The sounds of humming and voices from the operating room faded into an eerie silence, the room itself fading altogether into the void that consumed her. This was what it felt like each time she passed out of consciousness.

It was akin to being on a really bad trip, a series of them, in fact.

Each situation she befell was different from the other, but they all ended in the same, dramatic way.

Darkness and horror. An ache of fear that pained her. May she never sleep without the lights on again.

And this smell, this taste of fear was her official induction ceremony to their twisted game. The Cylons way of playing a God. A weak imitation of their creator as it was.

This went on for hours, days for all she knew. There was no sense of time. She felt like she was outside of time, this psychological terror they induced. Not knowing she was locked in her head, and that lights were not on option. She dreamed of a beacon of light to save her from herself, the darkness.

But it never came.

"She's ready." Posion barbed words cut into her consciousness, and it was the last thing she remembered. —



She woke up screaming, her palms pressed against her cheeks in fright. Duci was trembling and all she knew was that it was dark. Wherever she was, it felt cold and unfamiliar. Blindly, hands coiled around the sheets. Okay, sheets" that meant...A bed? She patted down on the mattress. Several moments were taken to blindly assess her immediate surrounding with her hands. It wasn't until she heard Mez whining at the foot of the bed that she realized she was in fact in a very familiar place. She was home. She was alive...Maybe it had all just been a dream.

A very vivid dream.