Enhanced (first draft)

Chapter 20

I find myself looking up at a white ceiling. There a a light shining just out of my line of sight, but I am still squinting from it.

Everything seems too bright. I can't still be in the farmhouse. I don't even know how I got here. One second somebody had ahold of me in the darkness, and the next second I was out.

I struggle to get up from the stiff table that I am laying on. My upper body barely gets an inch off of the ground before I feel that there are straps wrapped around me.

Now I am truly alerted that something must be wrong. Could I have gone crazy and not known it? I think it's unlikely that I'm in an insane asylum. Maybe I am just on a hospital and they are strapping me down because I just had some treatment done and can't get up or it will rupture the stitches or something.

Despite my assumption, I continue to struggle with the straps, shimmying my body around on the table and trying to make even the slightest amount of progress. My efforts seem to be futile, but I keep going. I am not going to just give up.

A low chuckle sounds near me. It is immediately followed by a familiar voice. "Just stop struggling, honey. You are safe now; you are home. Don't worry."

My blood runs cold. It seems to be freezing my veins on the way to my heart. Once my heart is frozen, it struggles to beat and shatters. I am broken; my life is ruined.

I strain my neck as my as I can, given my restrictions. I just barely get a glimpse of the person that I have been trying to avoid. Soren is sitting in a chair next to another Enhanced man that looks vaguely familiar. There is a smile on Soren's face. Strangely enough, it appears to be genuine.

I swallow a couple of times, trying to find my words while also trying to moisten my dry mouth. The first time I try to say somehing, I can barely hear anything but air escaping from my mouth.

After a second's hesitation, I try again asking, "How did you know that I would be coming back?"

Soren gets up and walks to my side. "Let's just say that I had somebody on the inside."

But who could it be? It couldn't be Trace! There is no way that he would return me to my oldie. I'm certain that what was in between us was real.

Could it have been Kali? I want to say that it was, becaus it makes so much sense. Soren could have just been pretending to me that he didn't know where Kali went years ago. Maybe he didn't want me to know that there was a whole other world out there.

I almost convince myself that it was Kali when I realize something. We left Kali before Cyrus was kidnapped. She had no clue where we were going after Xander's execution. How could she have told Soren where we were going to be heading if nobody told her? Anyways, it does seem unlikely that Soren was keeping that fact that he knew where Kali was away from me.

That leaves one person. All of a sudden, I truly notice the person that had been sitting next to Soren. He move so that he is standing right besid Soren and he gives a slight wave. That fiery red hair awakens something. Recognition finally dawns on me. Cyrus. Cyrus is the one that betrayed us. Cyrus is Enhanced now. His crooked nose is now straight and a few other features are more well-defined than they had been before. He looks beautifully evil.

"But why, Cyrus?" I barely whisper. Pain from being betrayed laces my voice. It is unmistakable to them that I'm hurt.

Cyrus look almost ashamed of himself. "I used to be Enhanced, Nyx, but they stripped my enhancements after I committed an infraction. Don't get me wrong, I loved Trace like a brother. I still do, but I love this life better. When I learned from Kali that Outcasts could now become Enhanced, I jumped on that opportunity. Once I escaped from my kidnappers, I got here as fast as I could and made a deal with Soren about it. I would give him you, and he would convince the Inside to let me back in and make me Enhanced again."