There was only one place in the city with tighter security than KHA, and that was BioPlus HQ.

For a building so transparent on the outside, a huge glass structure, it was weirdly difficult to get a real look at what went on inside. Just getting through the first set of doors involved scrutiny from three security officers, whose efforts to conceal handguns under their clothing were not fooling anybody. The fact that I was one of the only people in the room not wearing a bulletproof vest made me feel uncomfortably vulnerable.

At the reception desk, the three of us were fingerprinted four times over, and I stared for so long into a retina scanner that both eyes started to water. When I offered the guard my hand, a plus sign was stamped onto my skin in dark blue ink – right over the lingering green tinge from the night before.

But this was only enough to get us out of the main lobby. Every set of doors we encountered from that point onward involved the swipe of a staff ID card, and the lift wouldn't move until all three of us had been retina scanned. By the time we made it to the waiting room on the seventh floor, I felt mentally exhausted.

The air between my parents and I was awkward, to say the least. Neither of them had said more than two consecutive words to me since last night, and my dad seemed constantly ready to restrain me again in case the need arose. Knowing this wasn't exactly working wonders for my nerves.

In the waiting room, I sat as still as possible, trying to ignore the eye my parents were keeping on me at all times. The entire room was white, and light from the huge glass window made it that much harsher on the eye. Whoever was in control of the thermostat obviously hadn't got the memo about it being the middle of winter: the air con unit was on full blast above us, and the constant cool flow made it hard not to shiver.

Eventually, a technician appeared around the corner, wearing a lab coat just as glaringly white as the surroundings. He read my name monotonously from a clipboard before beckoning me to follow him down the hall.

Nobody had told me explicitly what I was here for, but it didn't take long to become obvious: for the day, at least, I held little more power than a mouse in one of BioPlus' research labs. I was not here for my own wellbeing – at least not directly. This was in the name of science.

The first test involved a solitary room, though I could hear the tap of a keyboard from behind a two-way mirror, and the electric shocks on my neck were unmistakably in time with the strokes. The second was more intrusive: I was forced to lie down inside what looked like an MRI scanner, and the loud whirring of the machine came worryingly close to my head. For the third, I was strapped into a chair with six separate restraints, and the technician's assurance that "This will only sting a little" turned out to be entirely unfounded when the syringe sent a burning sensation right up my arm.

"Excuse me," I said, when he threw the needle into a biohazard bin, moving to retreat to a room set behind a glass screen. "What exactly is this for?"

But either he was ignoring me, or the screen was soundproof – I didn't even get a glance in my direction.

"This is really painful," I tried again, gesturing to my arm. Not only had its weight turned to lead, but it felt like fire was ripping through my veins, and having it creep further toward my torso did not seem like the best sign. "Is it supposed to be?"

Still nothing. I went to move, but the straps around my wrists were keeping them pinned to the arm of the chair, and struggling just made painful grooves in my skin.

"Can you at least answer me?"

My voice cut across the lab, tail end verging on hysteria. The technician looked up, but there was no reaction in his beady eyes, and my visible panic remained completely ignored.

"You can't do this without telling me what you're putting into my body," I said, struggling harder against the restraint. I wondered if he'd changed the setting from behind the screen; all of a sudden, the reclining back seemed to have locked into an upright position, and the wrist straps now barely offered any wiggle room. "What the hell are you playing at?"

He leaned forward, into what I guessed was a microphone, since his flat voice was projected overhead. "Please remain calm. It is vital for the test."

"What test?" I spat back. "Isn't this illegal? I'm not your lab rat, for crying out loud."

His expression didn't waver. "Please remain calm."

"How the hell do you expect me to remain calm right now?" I yelled. The burning sensation had intensified, consuming my whole arm, and it was taking all I had not to scream in agony. "You've got to stop!"

I was growing desperate. The pain had breached my shoulder, and it was spreading rapidly through my chest, beginning to creep up the vein in my neck. I twisted my neck in an attempt to provide some resistance, but it only made things worse.

"What are you doing to me?" I screamed. My vision fragmented before me as my eyes started to water. "Are you even a real doctor? I didn't come here to be tortured."

The pain was splitting me in half. My eyes were squeezed as tightly shut as I could, and I'd bitten down so hard on my bottom lip that the metallic taste of blood had spilled into my mouth. There was nothing else to focus on. I couldn't even determine whether I was still screaming.

I wasn't going to survive this. Whoever the technician was, whatever he was supposed to be testing... I was going to die right here in this chair.

But maybe that wasn't as bad as it sounded. For the pain to stop, I was willing to do anything.

"Please," I managed to force out, though I could barely hear my own voice anymore.

Then, suddenly, it stopped.

It took a few seconds to realise. The agony in my chest seemed to have its own aftermath, and the searing heat took longer to die down. When it did occur to me, my eyes flickered open, but I was still in the chair with the restraints tighter than ever.

"What the hell was that?" I shouted. "What did you just do to me?"

"Please remain calm," he said flatly. "You must complete the test."

"You're not giving me a test!" I had no energy left to struggle against the straps, and something told me no amount of movement was going to make them give, not without some kind of higher command. "This is torture. You can't have been authorised to do this."

"Your sister didn't react like this."

Every part of me froze. For a second, I was convinced I'd misheard, but the echo now bouncing off the walls was proof enough otherwise. The words were exactly like they sounded like.

He was looking at me, safe behind his screen, and the emotionless expression irked me more than anything else. It was like he assumed he was untouchable. "What did you just say?"

Not breaking eye contact, he leaned closer to the microphone. "I was merely making an observation," he said. "Your sister didn't react like this."

"What do you mean? What do you know about Nova?"

The energy had returned to me all at once; I found myself struggling against the restraints again, trying to pull my arms away from the chair's cold metal edge. The resistance just angered me further. "The test is over, isn't it?" I yelled. "You don't need to keep me strapped in here anymore. You want to let me out of this chair?"

"Of course, Ms Oxford." He reached for a button, and seconds later, the pressure against my wrist was relieved. "I apologise for any pain you might have experienced during the test."

But I couldn't bring myself to make a comment. I was too fixated on what he'd already let slip.

"You said my sister had been here," I said, rising from the seat. A remnant of pain shot down one side of my body, but it only lingered for a few seconds, and it was nothing compared to what I'd already endured. "You said she's done this. When?"

"A couple of years ago." His eyes, trained on me, followed every step. "We trialled the same injection. She didn't scream so loudly."

"What were you doing to her?"

"The same thing we were doing to you."

"Yeah, and funnily enough, you didn't actually mention what that was." I had moved all the way across the room, and there were only a few paces left between me and the glass screen. "So tell me now."

"It was an experimental drug," he said. "We were testing the reaction on modified DNA. For that, we need people like you and your sister."

"A drug for what?" I pressed. "What were you doing to her? To me?"

"I'm sorry. That's classified information."

"It can't be!" The protest came out louder than I intended, my voice bouncing off the bare four walls of the lab. "You can't just do that! You can't stand there and inject whatever you want into us like we're lab rats. What kind of laws are you following? We're human beings."

"Well." We were as close as the screen permitted, but the fact that the glass was there in the first place still made me feel like an exhibit at the zoo. As he stared back at me, the first hint of emotion began to creep onto his face: the hint of a self-satisfied smile, curling the corner of his lip. Just the sight of it made me feel nauseous. "When it comes to you and your sister, that's certainly debatable."

For a moment, I couldn't believe it. The ease with which he'd turned from emotionless to... this was staggering. Who could even begin to think of making such a comment? He worked there, for crying out loud. If nothing else, he was making a living off BioPlus' back – and that should've been reason enough to keep opinions quiet. To sit there and insult my entire existence was hardly the service I expected.

Or maybe that was part of the deal. Now that they'd done the job, I was their property. I was just supposed to sit there and take whatever they had to throw at me.

Except I was never going to.

"What the hell did you just say?"

He refused to break eye contact, and holding it for those few extra seconds was what reignited the fire in my chest. "You heard what I said."

And I had. I knew deep within me that he meant every word of it, and it was this realisation that seemed to resonate through every fibre of my being. Something told me all the strength in the world wouldn't have broken the BioPlus-manufactured glass between us, but in that moment, I was willing to try.

But, before I could do anything more than clench my fists, everything happened.

An alarm sounded overhead, and the blaring noise drilled right into my head. Instinctively, I reached up to clap both hands over my ears, but the action did nothing to block it out. I glanced up toward the speakers through which it was ringing, half-convinced I would see the air vibrating right in front of me.

When my gaze drew back to the technician, his face had transformed. The smug smile had vanished, since replaced by the radiation of pure unadulterated panic. Suddenly, he leapt from his seat, gathering together his belongings from the desk in front of him.

"What's going on?" I yelled, but my voice was instantly blanketed by the alarm. I wasn't sure the technician would've heard even if he had been paying attention.

He was moving at top speed, piling everything from the desk into his arms so he could throw it into a locked drawer. A swipe of his card through the reader sealed it, and he didn't even spare a glance in my direction.

"Emergency," said the voice overhead, booming through the entire building. "Implement Protocol One immediately."

"What kind of emergency?" I was still trying, though I knew I had more chance of getting a response from the automated alarm than the employee stumbling around before me. "What's Protocol One?"

However, with everything cleared away, he was already darting for the door farthest away from me. Slipping through without even swiping a card, it was the vanishing figure that sent a jolt of panic through me. Was he just going to leave me here? The door was on the wrong side of the glass screen, and nothing short of trying to smash through it was going to get me anywhere close.

"Emergency. Implement Protocol One immediately."

I spun on the spot, casting my gaze across the room. The door I'd been ushered through thirty minutes ago looked heavy-duty, undoubtedly sealed twenty-four-seven under BioPlus regulation. There was no way physical force was going to get me through.

"Emergency. Implement Protocol One immediately."

But then it occurred to me: the way the technician had slipped out of his own door seconds ago, without needing to swipe through any kind of card. If Protocol One was some kind of evacuation procedure, was it possible that the alarm system triggered a security lapse? There was only one way to find out.

"Emergency. Implement Protocol One immediately."

I moved so fast I practically threw myself at the door, hands shaking as I fumbled with the metal handle. This had to work; it was my only ticket out of here. I tugged with all my strength, and for a second, nothing happened. The single painful moment was enough to send another jolt of panic through me.

But then I felt a click, and the door shifted. Slightly more force on the handle and I was able to pull it toward me.

"Emergency. Implement Protocol One immediately."

I had no idea where I was going. All the time I'd spent inside HQ had been closely supervised by at least one person in a lab coat, and I'd never felt more alone. Roaming the corridors unattended was a luxury not afforded to anybody inside. Moving out of the door, I noticed the hallway was completely empty, though I could hear a few panicked voices in the distance. Their shouts broke right through the rhythmic lapses of the alarm.

I had to get out. That much was obvious; whatever Protocol One entailed, it could not be good news. An arrow on the wall pointed the way back to the waiting room, which I figured had to be my best bet for reuniting with my parents. Throwing myself down the corridor, I broke into a sprint, my trainers squeaking on the polished floor with a pounding rhythm of their own.

"Emergency. Implement Protocol One immediately."

I didn't make it to the waiting room. Mere seconds after I rounded the second corner, the voices grew much louder. Most of them were panicked, streams of words running into one another from all directions – but then I heard one that stood out among all the rest.

"This is a government investigation." Max Snowdon's voice, as loud and authoritative as it sounded on TV, sent my heart plummeting to the pit of my stomach. "By order of the New London authorities, I have the power to enter any area of this establishment I deem necessary."

Shit.

I stopped so suddenly the momentum almost pulled me over, and I had to throw one arm against the wall to steady myself. Though I wasn't out of breath, the burning in my chest had me feeling like I'd already run a marathon. The footsteps were getting closer, and I knew I only had seconds before they rounded one of the last corners between us.

I needed a new escape.

Spinning on my heel, I tore back in the direction of the testing lab, my eyes scanning the space ahead for anything that might be of use. A fire escape, an emergency stairwell... anywhere out of sight. That was all I needed.

And then, suddenly, I saw it: right at the end of the hallway I was sprinting through. A white door that probably would've blended right into the wall had it not been for the emergency light above it. I skidded to a halt and yanked the handle; thankfully, it swung open without the need for too much force.

I emerged inside a disused exit; the walls, lacking a painted finish, matched the harsh concrete of the stairs. The steps seemed to be at least twice steeper than normal, and I didn't dare glance down the centre to see the seven floors between me and the ground. My heart felt ready to pound right out of my chest, and I could only hope the burning sensation was not a warning that I was at risk of passing out. Falling down seven storeys of concrete was a little beyond my enhanced healing capability.

The alarm was still ringing, but at least the shrill warning was slightly dampened out here. Not having a speaker system overhead left at least some room to hear myself think.

I was making progress, at least; my heart leapt when I saw the sign telling me I was one floor away from the ground. I was almost there. Just a few more steps and I could make it out.

Once on the ground floor, I wrenched open the first door I came across. I'd hoped for the freezing temperature of the outside air, but the whitewashed corridor I found instead was far from it. Though I'd made it to the right level of the building, making it outside was not going to be that easy.

It was more dangerous down here. I couldn't risk sprinting through the hallway at top speed, not if I wanted to make an inconspicuous getaway. I forced my feet to slow their pace, even though the adrenaline pulsing through my body felt like it was trying to drag me back into a run.

I was about to round a corner to the left, but a sudden noise stopped me in my tracks. Instinctively, I flattened myself against the wall. It wasn't a voice, but instead more of a rattling – like someone was trying to force their way past a locked door. My heart was in my throat, but this was the only way out: backtracking the way I'd just come was a dead end.

Peeling my back away from the wall, I edged closer to the corner, steeling myself for a peek that could last only a fraction of a second.

Taking a deep breath, I counted to three in my head, and then made my move.

Unfortunately, from there, things didn't exactly go to plan.

Because standing there, glancing over his shoulder at the worst possible moment, was Jace Snowdon.

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Hi, guys! I really don't have a lot to say here but since I missed out the author's note last time and you seemed to be sad about it, I figured I had to put one here. I'm going to try my best to upload the next chapter on Friday as planned, but I don't have a lot of it written. My degree is kind of crazy at the minute! Hope you enjoyed.

- Leigh