The metal staircase that led down from the second to the basement floor in the Victorian decor of the foyer of the mansion, stood against large glass windows with gothic architecture that had intricate web patterns on them and dark pastel blue and grey walls, upon which pictures hung. She descended the first spiral of the stairs, clicking heels on the black wooden floor of her house and took stairs to downwards moving through the hallway of rooms, and unlocked the room in the corner entering the room whose furniture was covered with white sheets and dust particles floated in the air. In the corner of the room, the doctor sat hanging onto her consciousness, her head resting against the arm of the covered sofa. She crouched in front of the doctor and tapped her cheek, jolting the woman back to her consciousness and raised water bottle to her lips, urging her to drink.

"Why..." The doctor choked on water, coughing and spilling the water down her chin, and then looked up at the other woman who was watching her with a careful gaze.

"Why are you keeping me here?" The panic struck her, but her strong gaze pinned her in place. Besides, the last time she tried to run past her, the other woman caught her and threw her across the room spraining her wrist and locked her back again in the room ignoring her pleading shouts.

"Where do you live?" She counter asked her captive who was taken aback by her question about her place.

"I-I there's no one." The doctor knew that abductors tried to reach captives' families to threaten and harm them to make captives cooperate with them.

"I am letting you go." She spoke, loosening the ropes around her arms and removed them.

"W-why?... without wanting any ransom or ..."

"I didn't keep you here out of personal grudge, I needed to borrow your name and identity for some time but since I can't do anything with it I'm letting you go." The doctor watched the other short haired woman in disbelief.

"So, where do you live? I'll drop you there instead of letting you walk straight out of here, and report it to cops."

"C-Block from hospital, second building , apartment 09." The woman gushed out the words in a single breath and the other woman gave her a knowing smile.

"Good, I'm letting you go." But there's a strange look in her eyes, and the doctor couldn't control a shudder that ran through her body when she noticed an unidentifiable expression on her face.

"But not before removing your memories." The doctor gasped as a dark look flickered across her captor's face, and then she's falling into darkness.

The other woman carried the doctor and drove her to her apartment. She passed the building guard who immediately rushed to check on the girl, and she had to freeze him with flick of her wrist and stepped into the elevator and reached the second floor, carrying the unconscious doctor in her arm to her apartment, flicked open the lock and dumped the girl on the couch. She walked back out of the building, and unfroze the guard but not before removing his memory of the incident.

These past few days, it's getting exhausting for her to remove memories of many people. It drained her, took too much of her energy and her skin began to appear pale like a an anemic 

She drove herself back to the patissier's shop, and stood outside the bakery looking inside through the glass pane of window. The old Michael noticed her from the corner of his eye and urged her inside greeting the girl with his warm smile.

"Can I get that latte? It's somehow different from what I have tasted." She asked sheepishly and the man's chest rumbled with laughter. Michael led her to the empty table in the middle of his shop and asked her to sit.

"Should I bring you blueberry muffins? I have just put them in the fridge."

"No, thank you. Only Latte would do." Michael nodded and barked something at a blond boy who's taking order from another table. She rubbed her face in tiredness, she could feel herself drained and boneless because of exhaustion. She looked at her reflection in the glass, and noticed the sunken eyes and dark circles around them.

She needed her sleep.

She needed hunt.

_

Ava entered the hospital building through automated double glass doors of the hospital with David and walked on the freshly cleaned floor smelling of antiseptics in the morning and went straight towards the reception counter where a woman in the blue uniform was sitting at the computer talking to someone on the phone and asked them to wait for a minute. Ava tapped her fingers impatiently on the silver plate of the reception counter waiting for the woman to finish her call. The call ended, and the woman put down the phone's receiver turning her attention back towards the girl.

"Good morning, how may I help you?"

"We are looking for Dr. Katerina." Ava told the receptionist. " Can you tell us on which floor her office is?"

"Do you have an appointment with the doctor?" The question caught Ava off guard and she looked at David from the corner of her eye silently asking him what to do since it wasn't their appointment, but the other male assured her that they would work something out to get the information about the doctor. The receptionist lady made a clicking sound on the keyboard, typing into the computer and checked through the appointments of Dr. Katerina's patients and then furrowed her curved brows at the computer's screen.

"You don't have any appointment listed with Dr. Katerina, have you?" She pointed out looking up at Ava who wet her mouth in nervousness.

"Please, look it's urgent." Ava insisted but David stopped her, and silently asked to talk with the receptionist himself.

"Look, he was discharged from the hospital last day and was under..." Before he could finish, Ava interrupted him with a light tap on his arm when she spotted the nurse from the last day who had come to change the hospital sheets when she's being discharged and pointed with her thumb in her direction.

"Hey,hey!" Ava jogged towards the nurse in pale pink uniform, stopping her by crook of he elbow who couldn't at first recognize the girl at until Ava told her that she's the patient who asked for Dr. Katerina during her discharge.

"Do you know where is Dr. Katerina's office?"

She asked the nurse being hopeful since the nurse knew about the doctor, didn't she?

"Her office..." The nurse paused before she could answer Ava and then her eyes landed on someone past Ava's shoulder.

"Oh, here is the doctor herself." The nurse pointed at the doctor who came towards the reception and said something to the woman at the counter. Ava and David stared at the doctor in confusion and then back at each other. The doctor was the same woman whose profile they had seen last night but she was not the woman who they came to the hospital for.

"Doctor, this girl is asking for you." The nurse spoke to the brown headed woman who turned to look at Ava and David with her professional smile and slipped her hands in her coat's pockets.

"Yes?" The doctor asked but neither Ava, nor David could speak trying to comprehend surreality of the situation until Ava broke the awkward silence.

"We are here to meet Dr. Katerina."

"Yes, I am." The doctor answered, looking expectantly at their confused faces.

"No, not you the other doctor." Ava corrected herself but she wasn't expecting that answer from the doctor.

"I am Doctor Katerina. Who else you are looking for?"

"You are Doctor Katerina?" Ava's face faltered and her eyes flickered between the doctor's face and her name badge pinned on her coat's breast. There was a similar thin scratch at the corner of the name plate, the one she had seen on the Katerina's badge and it further confused her. It did not make any sense in her mind.

"What about the other doctor, the one with short black hair and brown eyes?" Ava questioned the nurse directly instead since she's the one who had told her that it was the doctor's off day and wasn't going to be in the hospital.

"She wears a mourning ring."

"I don't know any such woman." The nurse replied before leaving from there for her shift after checking time on her wrist watch and Ava could only watch her retreating back through the corridor's doors in shock.

"There is no other doctor that shares your name? She is a cardiologist." It was David who questioned getting confused at the surreality of the situation.

"No, sir. There is no other doctor." The receptionist spoke looking up from the computer's screen, and Ava shook her head in denial clutching hands at her side.

"I had been under her care for two days." Ava barked making the receptionist glare up at her as if to warn the girl not to make a scene n inside the hospital's vicinity and David asked her to calm down noticing the guard standing at the doors who was looking in their direction, ready to remove them if needed be.

"Have you got the right name?"

"Yes."

"What about the surname? "

'It was Katerina.' Ava wanted to yell, 'Just Katerina' but the words got stuck in her throat. Before David say anything to the receptionist, Ava ran out of the hospital towards their parked car in the lot and clutched her head in her hands in anger leaning against rear of their car.

"Ava!" David called running towards the girl inhaling through his nose when he took in a look of disbelief and shock on her face shaken by the situation.

"Are you okay?" The question made her look up at him and she couldn't lie.

"No." Her voice broke and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and pulled the girl closer rubbing her back to comfort her.

"Are you with me?" He asked and the girl nodded into his chest.

"It doesn't make any sense." She breathed out and blinked up at the elder male who nodded thinking about the identity of the doctor.

"No, it doesn't."