He reflects this deeply. “I’m not sure yet.” His eyebrows incline together, like he’s confused himself. “So you remember the red door. What else do you remember?”

“I thought I was the one asking the questions?”

He smiles, amused. “Sorry, I forgot.”

I try to ignore how out-of-control he makes me feels. “What’s that place behind the red door? A lab or something?”

My question shocks him. “You really don’t remember much, do you?” He asks and I shake my head. “Then you know if I explain it to you, you’ll only be able to remember it from my word of mouth.”

“Be as vague as you can, then,” I say, sliding to the floor from my dizziness.

He nods, his hand reaching for his back pocket and he takes out a knife.

I start to scoot to my feet, but he catches me, drawing me to him by the hair.

“Ow, what are doing?” I reach up and push my hand against his face. “Let me go.”

He slices the blade across my wrist. Blood oozes out as he drops the knife to the floor.

“It’s a lab,” he says, wiping the blood from my wrist away with the sleeve of his black shirt. Dotting my wrist are numbers, like the ones I saw on Cedrix’s wrist. “It’s where we were created.”

Chapter 33

My eyes widen as I push to my feet, clutching my bloody wrist “We were created?” I raise my hand, staring at the numbers blending in with the blood and my skin. This is what the Higher was talking about.

“Yeah, you didn’t think you were born this way, did you? Your quickness? Your little heart trick? You fearlessness?” He asks. “You’re a lab experiment, Kayla. This is your lab number. We were all lab experiments. At least the Bellators are.” When I don’t say anything, he frowns. “You used to know what you were, but Monarch must have taken that away.”

“Monarch?” I shake my head, taking a step back, giving pressure to my wrist, trying to get the bleeding and the pain to stop. “There’s no way Monarch could be a part of this.” But even my mind laughs at me.

“Of course he would,” he says. “He’s the doctor who ran the experiments.”

I pull at my hair, my mind racing about a million miles a minute. “No, he couldn’t do this—he’s all I had.”

“He’s all we all had,” he says, untangling my fingers from my hair. “But you can’t hate him. He was just doing his job.”

“His job.” I drop to the floor, shaking my head in disbelief. “His job was to run tests on people and turn them into,” I gesture I myself, “into whatever I am.”