Chapter 1

I was in trouble.

I really have to quit saying that. 'In Trouble' was currently my normal state of existence. I think it would be easier and far less time consuming just to say when I wasn't in trouble.

I'd exited the laboratory and stumbled into a dark stone hallway. I mean really stumbled as in almost fell. The adrenaline was wearing off and whatever power I drew on to bounce around speed zones was severely depleted. I don't think I could have sped up if I tried.

Perhaps I should explain. I can manipulate the speed I move at. Doctor Lukas Braun claims that I create a temporal dilation – which, I think, is his fancy way of saying that I can speed up my own personal time and the time of objects near me. Evidently, I generate some kind of field around me that separates me from what I call objective time – the time that the universe runs at. Within that field, I can make time go faster – giving me super speed from the objective point of view.

I call it speeding up or moving to different speed zones but no matter the way it's said, the effect is the same. I'm fast. Scary fast.

The field has other properties, too, properties I don't really understand. It heals me; based on my last use of it, it heals me pretty darn quickly and pretty darn totally. I'm not sure how and I'm pretty sure that neither Doctor Lukas nor his pretty biologist wife Doctor Leoni Braun know either. It also protects me from things like friction, blunt force trauma and who knows what else.

I also excrete some kind of liquid when I speed up; something like sweat but isn't sweat, exactly. According to Doctor Lukas, it causes amnesia and can even do some kind of limited mind control but I'm not sure I'm buying that last. The amnesia makes a little sense based on my recent history but I've seen no evidence of any kind of mind control. Doctor Lukas might have been using that to trick me somehow.

Don't get the impression that the Doctors Braun are my friends. They're not. They tortured me for the past few days or weeks or maybe even months; my memories are kind of sketchy over the past little while. I can see things, I can remember things but they're disjointed at best.

The Brauns broke me. They broke my mind. The speed field brought me back but I'm not completely whole yet. I'm still trying to put it back together.

The hallway was empty but I couldn't count on that lasting forever. I had to get moving – but it wasn't easy. My legs were threatening to give out, my breathing was coming in gasps, I was sweating like a stuck pig and it seemed the walls were trying to close in on me. I could swear as I stumbled two steps, then three, that the hallway was getting narrower, the walls closer, the darkness reaching for me again.

I fell, coming down on my hands and knees. I wasn't sure I could go on. I felt like there was a weight on my back, like the ceiling was going to crush me at any second. I imagined I could hear Doctor Lukas coming for me, imagined he was right behind me. I started crying because I didn't want to go back there. I couldn't go back to that cage. Not again. There would be nothing left of me this time. I couldn't take it. I just wanted it to be over.

I somehow managed to get back to my feet, my left hand on the cool, gray cinder block walls. Doctor Lukas wouldn't let it be over. He'd have another Resurrection Barbie ready to bring me back. I'd keep coming back again and again, losing little pieces of me to the darkness until there was nothing left of me but darkness. That could not happen. I could not let that happen.

I smelled the god-awful stench of burning flesh again and I had to stop, had to look my body over. I had to make sure I was still whole, that I wasn't burning again. I didn't want to burn again, not again. I looked at my arms and they were covered in that black char, the exposed flesh red and covered with pus. I screamed and started rubbing at my arms; I had to get it off, it had to come off, I couldn't be burned again, not again.

I looked down at my arms again and they were whole. Normal. Pale skin. What the hell was happening to me?

Put it behind me. Don't think about it. Concentrate only on walking.

A step. Another. I concentrated; the steps became my world. Everything else faded for me. There was no hallway. There was no Doctor Lukas. There was no cage. There was only the next step. Then the next one.

I can't say how far I went down that hall. I know it was more than one step but I have no idea how many more than one. I could only concentrate on them one at a time. For me there was nothing else.

A hand touched me on the shoulder and I jumped back, stumbling and falling. I scrambled back from Doctor Braun, scrambled back on my ass, my feet pushing at the cold, concrete floor, hands scrabbling to get me as far away from my tormenter as I could. My back hit the wall and I could go no further. I curled into a ball, my hands over my head, watching Doctor Braun coming closer.

Only as she came closer, I could see it wasn't Doctor Braun. She was younger. Her rich brown hair was longer. There was pity on her face. She reached to touch me and I pulled into myself even more but I was literally up against the wall and there was nowhere else to go.

She pulled her hand back, her face looking worried and sad. "Please, come with me. I can help you. I want to help you."

Her words were accented but I'd gotten used to it in the recent past. I stayed curled up, trying to shrink even more. I couldn't trust her. I couldn't trust anyone. I'd trusted before and they'd betrayed me.

"Please, Reece," she said. She knew my name. How did she know my name? "I've turned off the cameras in this hall but they're going to notice it soon and turn them back on. Please, we must go now."

I closed my eyes and cried for the briefest moment. I didn't want to go back. I couldn't go back to that cage. I had to face the fact that I couldn't get out of here on my own either. I needed an ally. Maybe I could trust this young woman – no, not trust. I couldn't trust. I'd go with her ... but I'd watch her. Not trust. I'd let her think I was trusting. I wouldn't. I'd watch her. No trust.

I stood up and tried to take a step. I stumbled, nearly fell, and the young woman grabbed me and put my arm around her shoulder. She held me upright, helping me to stand, and she turned us to the left, starting us down a long hall that crossed the first. I was even more messed up than I knew; I hadn't realized there even was a crossing hall.

I'd like to say I was paying attention to where we were and where we were going but it would be a lie. The truth is that it was all I could do not to shut down in blind panic. The walls were closing in, every door we passed reminded me of the one leading to my lab and the cage and I was shaking so hard I'm not sure how the young woman kept us upright.

Finally, she stopped at a door and punched some numbers into a keypad right next to it. The keypad flashed a green light and I heard a click. The woman pulled on the door and quickly helped me inside. She closed the door behind me and for a moment I was in darkness as black as pitch.

Darkness. It was coming for me again. It wanted me, couldn't stand that I'd been withheld from it for so long. I had been teased to it, dropped near its open maw only to be snatched back to the pain of my mangled body. It wasn't going to be denied this time. It would have me this time. I was falling into it, falling down, nothing beneath me to catch me.

I pulled away from the woman holding me. She had betrayed me just as I'd known she would. No trust. I had to get away. I had to get away from her, away from the darkness, away from everything. The darkness, though, was everywhere. I stumbled over something in that black pitch, felt myself fall. Falling. Falling. The darkness had me now, there was no escape. I pulled my arms and legs into a ball, clutching myself, making myself as small as possible. Maybe if I were small enough, the darkness wouldn't see me. Maybe it wouldn't take me if I could be small enough. I tightened even more, tightened the ball until it was hurting me, made myself as small as possible.

The light came on but I wasn't going to be fooled again. It was a trick. The darkness was just waiting until I uncurled, until I stood. Then, it would come for me again. Well, it wouldn't work. I would just stay here ... stay here until the darkness went away ... stay here until the darkness stopped looking for me.

"Reece?" the young woman said. "Are you okay? Come on, get up. They can't get you here. They can't hurt you. I promise."

They couldn't hurt me? She promised? She'd betrayed me once to the darkness, how could I trust her. I started crying because there was nothing I could do. I was helpless. Broken. I had no one I could trust. No one and nothing.

Eventually, it was too much. Eventually, I dropped into a troubled sleep.

I was feeling ... better ... when I woke up. Still not myself but ... better. I still had a headache but then I'd probably always have a headache now. I'd been broken and you don't come back from that unscathed.

I was in a big bed but I couldn't remember how I'd gotten here. The room was covered in shadow but the hallway light was on and the doorway was partially opened. That comforted me somehow but I wasn't sure why.

I looked around the room. It was ... well, it was definitely a female's room. No 'boy band' posters or anything but the long white dresser with gilded edges and oval mirror screamed female. As did the four poster bed with red comforter – or maybe it was pink, it was hard to tell in the shadow. There was also a small, drawered table with a trifold mirror set on it and a stool sitting just under it. It looked like bottles of some kind – maybe makeup bottles – sitting around the edges. Besides, I could smell perfume – a flowery, girlish scent.