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around me, and for my actions .
    “Goodnight, Bell. I guess I’ll call you next week.”
    And with that, the door to my living quarters slammed shut, leaving me to drown in the silence around me. It was a welcome peace that would surely be short lived. I knew that it soon enough, my father would call for me and Cole to head out on another mission – to locate another hard-drive, to keep watch over the world that we had been excluded from – and I would have had no choice but to follow his orders.
    Because that was my life, and that was the world that I lived in.
    I was a project, a product, a mission that had never been designed to have a sense of self-identity.

Poor Choices, Deadly Consequences
    B ack at the Horde facility...
    It was pretty sad that it had taken being tricked into breaking into a Horde facility to figure out what the hard-drives had contained, but hey, at least I finally knew. That was a plus. Er, that was the only plus, really.
    Because after being told what the hard-drives had contained, the Horde had managed to capture both Cole and myself. And I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to escape.
    “You just had to play hero, didn’t you?” Cole groaned, trying to break the heavy cuffs binding his wrists. The downside to the Horde having one of the hard-drives in their possession? Other than having full access to the research conducted at Bilson Corporations? The downside was that they knew every bit of information about us.
    They knew our strengths, our weaknesses. They knew our fighting patterns and what abilities we had. They knew every single detail about us, and we hardly knew a thing about them.
    “In my defense, I didn’t think there would be this many of the freaks inside,” I countered. “And besides, in a strange way, I actually prefer dealing with them to dealing with my father.”
    “You’re insane, Bell. You know this, right?”
    I shrugged and leaned against the wall. I was worried, sure, but I’d had enough practice to know that panicking wouldn’t do a damn thing to make the situation any better.
    “I’m well aware of this, although I’m quite surprised that you’re just now realizing this. I mean, you’ve only been following me around for how many years now?”
    “How about instead of joking, we try and figure out a way to get out of here?”
    I turned to look at Cole, taking note of the frustration that lined his face, and arched a brow in surprise. “You should know better than to think I’m not already working on that.”
    My natural response was to be a sarcastic ass. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t alert and that I hadn't made it a point to study my captors. My eyes had been following the Horde members since they’d thrown us inside of an oversized cage, eager to uncover some sort of pattern.
    That was the most important thing I’d learned during my training when I was younger – that, we as people, had a tendency to develop patterns without even realizing it. We were predictable beings, and apparently I’d been no different.
    I really needed to think before I acted , I reminded myself, only to have Cole break out into laughter beside me. “I can agree with that,” he answered.
    “Oh, shush.”
    “Assuming we get out of here, your father’s going to have my head.”
    “I highly doubt that,” I countered. The fact of the matter was that my father had favored Cole. If he were to have anyone’s head, it would have been mine for getting Cole into trouble. “You know very well that you’re his golden child. When I get us out of here – and I do mean when , not if – he’s never going to let me live this down.”
    In fact, I was willing to bet he was going to make it a point to keep his eyes locked on me more so than usual; which, as much as I wanted to blame Cole, was entirely my fault.
    I could have turned around and left when Cole told me to. But I allowed my stubbornness to lead me directly into a trap, just as the Horde had hoped. Yeah, even I had