The guards shove me into the glass room. There are no people watching me from the other side this time. I’m all alone, a prisoner, waiting for the right moment to unlock myself and fight for my life.

The door squeaks open and someone steps in, dressed in white, hair like snow, perfect features.

The Higher, ready to take my life so he can preserve his own.

Chapter 23

Highers can only be killed by another Higher.

I quickly grab the keys and unlock the cuffs, the chains hitting the ground with a clack. Taking out the knife, I step back, until I press against the wall. The knife is small but sharp and shimmers in the light.

“Do you remember me?” The Higher asks, taking a lazy step toward me. He’s dressed in ratty clothes, but the perfection of his existence outshines the minor flaw. “Do you know who I am?”

“Am I supposed to?” I poise my knife in front of me.

“Well, I know you.” Another slow step. “An abomination … zi plimbare. Just like the rest of us.”

I sidestep toward the glass. "What does that mean?”

He doesn’t answer, chanting away in the Higher’s language. Another step and another and I’m right in front of the glass.

“You know why they put me in here?” He asks.

“To kill me.” I tap my knife, testing the thickness of the glass.  “Because they think I’m like you—they think I’m a Higher.”

“That’s one reason,” he says. “But there’s more to it than that. There’s more to everything that just simplicity. Everything has an underlining meaning.” He brushes his snow-white hair back, revealing a small tear in his faultless skin. “Not everything is what it seems.” He rolls up his sleeves showing me the same set of numbers like on Cedrix skin, only they’re different numbers. “Even I’m not one of them, at least not on the inside.”

“One of what? A Higher? Because you look just like them.” But my eyes catch the tear in his skin. “Almost.”

“I didn’t use to.” He rolls down his sleeve. “And I’m still not completely, because that was never supposed to the point. The point was to change me back, but that never happened.”

“Change you back?”

He takes a deep breath and I pick up on a sense of fear flowing off him, but can’t quite grasp what it is. “I was an experiment that didn’t work.”

“An experiment?”