Hey guys. Sorry the chapters have been a little shaky when coming to updates. But don't worry, I have them written down and they will start to come more frequently once I begin summer break.

Leo never ceases to amaze me.

The next night, the last time They walk by our cell, Leo holds his skinny fingers out to me. I manage to just barely make out their outline. As seconds tick by he adds a finger to mark the minutes. It feels like an eternity for him to reach five, and then both of us are moving.

Another thing I have learned about Leo is that he's a man of many talents, not to mention secrets. Whenever I think I have a good part of him figured out, he locks up and I'm back to scraping at the surface.

It takes a delaying minute of feeling around a corner for Leo to find something skinny and small between his way to the door and kneels as I ask, "How'd you get that past Them?"

Leo shrugs as he continues his work. "I got my ways."

I decide to leave it at that.

Leo is incredibly fast for a blind person. We take strange twists and turns down the deep, dim halls of Faculty X-7—ones that make my head spin. Each corridor was different than the other, difficult for me to memorize the way.

I am the only one of the two of us who seems to consider the possibilities of flashing alarms, They running around screaming of escape experiments don't dare speak aloud, worried about my voice getting us for sure.

Instead, I take in the detail. The walls are the dark color of steel, the floor tiles a glassy marble that reflects the light rafters dangling high above my head. It's pretty nice for a prison/lab.

Leo keeps close to the wall, running his fingers over the plates next to the doors. Sometimes he would stop to focus on the lettering. On the fifth one, second on the right from a dead end, he stops.

"This is it," he says confidently. "I know it is."

Just to be sure I glance through the slim window cut out on the door. Then I learn to never doubt Leo, despite whatever situation.

She looks tiny and deathly pale. The room is designed to give off the impression of a hospital, dull colors and all. But They are still there, all throughout the room. Her hands and ankles are kept restrained, as if They expect a struggle when she awakes. With her head lolled to the side, I can see the flash of stamped ink on her neck.

She has a code. Just like Leo and I.

I try the door; locked.

Leo sighs before I can ask. He pushes me aside and kneels, brushing his fingers along the width of the door, finding the lock in record time. I count the seconds; 120 isn't bad.

"Three minutes," Leo considers as the door swings open smoothly under his palm. "Not too shabby."

I shuffle in behind him. The usual headache pounds persistently behind my eyes when I stop at the side of bed. I lean close to take a closer look at the code on her neck.

EX-2279

I'm still clueless to what the numbers mean, but I suspect they serve as a production code of sorts.

"Surprise, surprise," Leo mutters dryly making me look up. He is indicating the syringe needle inserted into the underside of her right arm. "Pumping drugs into a comatose; probably the thing still keeping her under."

The pound still rings loudly in my ears, but I have to try something—just to ease myself.

Gingerly I touch my fingers to her left wrist. There is a gasp; I'm sure it's mine. But then I hear a startled noise—the first unsettling noise I've ever heard Leo make.

Images flash behind my eyes, going off like fireworks.

"Chase!" It's the girl, and she's crying, fighting frantically to escape the masked man's hold. His gloved hands dug into her arms with a grip of vice.

My own head whipped from side to side. Where was Adam? And Leo? Were they taken already?

In anger my voice howled, lashing at the hands that restrained me. I felt myself start to weaken, almost like dying away.

"No, no, no," She began to say, looking at me with wild eyes. "Chase, stay with me. Chase!"

It was faint as the memory begins to fade away, but my voice was loud and echoing, called out to her.

"Bree!"

I gasp and my body rolls in a shudder, falling to my knees as I return. I feel sweaty and dizzy, my mouth full of cotton.

Leo doesn't need to see me to know of my painful vision. "What did you see?"

I slowly rise, gripping the edge of the metal bed contraption.

"Adam," I say lowly, trying the name out. It still brings the same pound as Bree's did, but somehow duller, more of a thud. "Where is he?"

Leo takes in a sharp intake of breath.

"I don't know."

{~~~~~~~~}

It's my fifth, maybe sixth time going to the interrogation room—more like hall, because of all the wails I hear when I'm escorted down there—and the investigator's tricks are getting as stale as my excuses for him.

The only people who knew that I know are Leo and possibly Bree. (He says the possibility percentage of her actually hearing us while we are in there with our visits was fairly high, but promises nothing.) General Whitman always put me on edge with his attitude of always knowing what I have for sure locked between Leo and I, leaving it as I am dragged into that damn metal chair across from his indifferent, angered face.

But I remain the same each painfully long interaction with him—I won't tell a word of what I know.

General Whitman glances at me often as he paces the length of the room, unable to decide what to do with me I assume. He, I'm sure, is aware of the drug's supposed effect on me, so why bother? Isn't the needle and chemicals supposed to make me forget? To make me remain here?

Or are They hiding stuff from him too?

Horrible crying starts outside the room—it must be coming from the room across from mine. I wince and squirm in my seat; I hate hearing listening to people cry, and here was no different. Only it's much worse than what I'm used to—or was, that is. I can remember (only vaguely) holding my sister in my arms, so tiny and small, as our parents scream below us, bellowing and echoing off the walls and vibrating up to where we lay in her small pink bedroom, waiting for the storm to pass.

I remain silent and stoic as General Whitman's beefy fists pound the table, screaming everything he's already said at one point. I let him do it for a while before he tires and is sick of me, dismissing me with a grunt. One of Them is waiting outside the door and wordlessly leading me back to my cell.

To my surprise, Leo is there too with his escort. He's as gray-faced and sunken-eyed as the rest of Them, immediately sparking my pity. They never seem to know what enough, exactly; that's the only way I can seem to phrase it to myself. The men especially—so brainwashed that they only appear to have complete control over Their motor skills. The woman can be seen exactly like this, except less so in a way.

I lock away my questions for now, saving them for Leo later.

Leo's guard lets him in first, mine quickly shoving me in afterward. I stumble to my cot, both of us silent as we listen to the clump-clump-clump and click-clack-click of their footfalls fade away down the hall.

When they finally do, Leo darts up, eyes wide and shining with excitement as he turns in my general direction. I wonder sometimes—can he tell how easily his eyes give him away, even with the thin white film dulling their brown color.

Another question to unanswered, I think as he begins to talk, wildly lashing into detail with his hands.

"You'll never believe it! Their voices were so loud, it instantly gave them away." Leo ducks his head down, tapping out his mental math work on his fingers against the cot. For being so smart without any sight, it's almost a scary thought to think of how genius he would be with it back in his control.

"Who?" I ask in confusion. "Them?" I think back to all the gray faces and blank, listless stares, wondering how They could possibly reach such an alarming volume. That control must've also fled whenever whatever controls Their minds set in, whatever that procedure may be.

His head shakes back and forth wildly. "No, no, no," he dismisses my idea, "the boss man and his son! We were walking down the Four Turns hallway, and passed door eleven when I heard their voices behind the thirteenth! It was so loud and shaking, you didn't even have to be near twelve to know what door it came from."

Discovery about Leo of the day, I think to myself, He is also a man of many numbers. It makes sense for numbers to such an outlet for the little guy with his expanded knowledge and I all, I guess. Numbers and equations are the one thing you can predict while vulnerable to the expecting and un-expecting.

"Have you figured out who it is yet?" I ask eagerly, shuffling to kneel by his cot for me. He doesn't look alarmed by the added pressure of my hands pushing down on the cot. But why should he? Nothing ever takes Leo by surprise. "Anyone from my past?" I can't help but add that in; the thought of the man behind all this and my memories is too great not to consider.

Leo tilts his head in thought. Replaying the voices, maybe?

"It was definitely a son," he says slowly, still working it out. I nod for him to go on, but feel a wave of stupidity when I realize, yet again, that he can't see it. So with a nudge of his knee, he continues. "He was speaking really loudly, like he was about to pass on an important duty and there was already a screw-up before the main event happened."

I lean back on my heels. "Could he be sending him to another Faculty?"

Instantly, almost like a reflex, I think of Adam and his strong and childishly innocent and bruised face passes over my brain for a second. And like that, the dull pain is back, but not as great as before.

Leo lays down, rubbing at his temples like recalling these memories are slowly killing him. "I need rest," he announces, and promptly flips away from me, his shin hitting against the wall as he did so. I wince at the blooming pain that should've come with the hard blow, but Leo doesn't even flinch.

I sigh and stand. Leo is a man to work on his own terms; once he deemed it ready, he would give the information. But for now, I'm left to wait.

Laying down on my own cot, I slowly let exhaustion lull me to a restless sleep.

{~~~~~~~~}

Bree paced the length of hideout, anxiety sculpted into her features. "How can we be sure? Are they really hiding out there? Or are they making idiots out of us getting away with it all at once?"

Leo sighed from where he was seated in front of his desk, Davenport's tablet in hand. "Bree," he said confidently, "I have no doubt that our GPS system has failed—mostly because I came up with it."

I snorted from couch. For a hideout, it was well furnished but pretty small with a desk, a couch, a large panel of TVs hooked to our monitor and some wirelessly receiving signals from Davenport's mainstream from his lab.

"Please, if it wasn't for I pointing out the many flaws and tweaking them to fit the average standards, your plan would be chucked into an awaiting garbage bin."

He squinted at me, annoyed. "You're really going to milk the whole smarts thing, aren't ya?"

"Every damn second," I agreed smugly.

Adam looked between the two of us, his faraway look present like always, "You two…" he pointed between Leo and me, "are very knit picky about each other."

Leo looked to me and we shared a look. It was true, for the most part, because as the more intelligently advanced, it was a major competition. But he was trained that way; I became bionic and intelligent all within an hour of them finding me. Naturally, competition was inventible.

"Guys, can we please just focus on the mission at hand here?" Bree said, stopping her mad pacing session to look at and throw her hands up.

There really wasn't much of a mission; the two Slovinkcy Brothers were very gullible and thought too much into their themes, making them easy targets for capture. Our job was to wait it out and pounce, the surprise tact to our advantage.

{~~~~~~~~}

With a jump, I awake, nearly falling off the bed. My clothes stick to my hot and flushed skin. That pounding thumps between my eyes and behind my temples persistently like a warning. Is that going to happen every time I do something like this?

Across from me, Leo sleeps fitfully, alert for anything even in his sleep. I think back to what I gave away in my dreams and realize that everything it told makes sense. Leo is incredibly smart, and this Faculty is one for experiments.

So, does that mean we are bionic experiments?

I promise, I've already thought about the next chapter and my summber break is coming up soon, so hopefully it won't take as long as this one.

Please leave a review to tell me what you thought about this chapter.