#Chapter 102: The Sister
Enzo
I should’ve known that Lisa couldn’t be trusted. I thought for sure that I had her on my side thanks to my own abilities, but as it turned out, whatever training Edward had given her made her completely invulnerable to me — and, in turn, her own hypnotic words lulled me into a false sense of security.
She led me through the woods behind the cabins, taking me on a winding path that eventually led to a small hatch in the ground. She opened the hatch and climbed down a ladder, and I stupidly followed.
“What is this place?” I asked as we entered a narrow tunnel at the bottom of the ladder.
“It’s Edward’s secret hideout, if you will,” she said. “Do you know that the school actually used to be a sanatorium back in the day? Well, this was where
they used to transport the dead bodies.”
It was now that I started to realize that following Lisa could end in disaster, but what else was I supposed to do? There was no other possible way to find Nina, and as Lisa led me through the maze of tunnels, I knew that I could easily get lost in here if I tried to find my way on my own.
Eventually, the tunnel widened. We passed by rows of solid metal doors, each with an illuminated keypad on them. The bright fluorescent lights gave the place an almost scientific feel, but the sound of dripping water was a constant reminder that we were actually in a glorified sewer.
Finally, Lisa stopped in front of a door. She turned to shoot me a grin, then knocked on the door.
“She’s in there,” Fio said inside of me. “I can sense her. And… there’s another presence inside of her. Her wolf may emerge soon.”
I didn’t have a chance to ask about Nina’s wolf; I was too focused on getting her out of here. As I heard a bit of a commotion inside the room, I took a few steps back to get out of sight of the door and began to borrow some of Fio’s power so that I could quickly shift and even kill Lisa and Edward if I had to.
What happened next happened so quickly.
The door slid open with a mechanical whirring sound. Lisa stepped inside and the door shut again. I heard a few words exchanged before the door slid open once more, and I made my move. I quickly stepped in through the doorway
and began to shift.
“Let Nina go before I kill you,” I said..
But then, I felt a needle in my arm. I looked down to see Lisa pushing the needle in with a grin on her face.
“What the–”
I tried to shift, but I couldn’t. I lurched away from Lisa and toward Edward,
who stepped out of the way with an absurdly casual demeanor. I fell face forward as my limbs became too heavy to move, my ears filling with the sound of Nina’s muffled screaming. As I fell, my head faced a closet on the far wall. Its doors rattled as Nina pounded on them.
“Nina…” I whispered. I had to get to her. I tried to push myself up, but I quickly fell back down as Lisa and Edward only laughed at me. My body quickly became nothing but dead weight as I tried to drag myself across the floor. Fio’s presence turned into a whisper, then he was gone altogether.
And then…
Darkness.
I woke up in a blindingly bright cell to the feeling of something hitting me on the side of the head. As my eyes
squinted against the bright lights, I felt someone grab my hair and yank my head back.
Edward’s face came into view.
“You know, you really should learn to mind your own business, Enzo,” he said, dropping my head with a thud against what felt like a cold metal post. I tried to move, but quickly realized that I was on my knees and was chained to that very post.
“Where is she?” I croaked.
Edward chuckled. “She’s right next door, where she’ll be able to hear your torture. But don’t worry — she thinks that you’re just the Big Bad Wolf.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh, but it is,” Edward replied. “She’s such a simple girl. Just a few days of treatment was all it took to make her think that I’m her knight in shining armor. And soon, once I’m certain that she’s nothing but a shell of a person, she’ll be shipped off to The Sister for her execution. Public, of course.”
1 groaned and struggled against the chains, but it was no use. “You’ll get caught,” I said. “People will be looking for both of us. My father will find you and he won’t hesitate to kill you.”
Edward laughed again. “No one will be looking for you, because I’ll wipe your memory and set you free. As for Nina, as far as anyone else knows, she took off with her new boyfriend. We’ve already got all sorts of ‘evidence’ in the works to help our case.”
“So why am I here, then?” I asked. ” Why not just wipe my memory now and be done with it?”
“Because,” Edward said, crossing over to a table on the other side of the room and rifling around for a moment before returning with a large leather whip in his hand, “there’s still a shadow of the old Nina in there, and I need to kill it off. And, as for you, well… You piss me off.”
Suddenly, I heard the whip crack behind me, followed by searing pain flashing across my back. Edward whipped me again and again. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t shift, I couldn’t fight back — I could only endure it.
I wasn’t sure how long it went on for Eventually, my pained grunts stopped, and my vision began to fade, and that was when Edward decided that he was done… for the moment. I watched in agony as he casually walked over to the table, whistling to himself as he wiped the splattered blood off of his hands. He then retrieved another syringe and, still whistling, returned to me.
“This will keep you from healing,” he said, grabbing my arm and pushing the needle in. “I won’t kill you yet, though. We’ve got a bit of work ahead of us before she’s entirely broken.”
I couldn’t respond. My throat felt as if it was closed up from the pain, and Edward was nothing but a dark blob moving across the room. I heard the door slide open, then shut, and I was alone again.
I had no way of knowing how much time passed. I repeatedly slipped in and out of consciousness from the blood loss, but each time I came to, the lights were just as blindingly bright as ever All I knew was that it was hours at the very least, I imagined that Edward was probably sitting in his office on campus right now, pretending like he didn’t have students locked up in a dungeon below.
My wounds weren’t healing, just as Edward said. If I didn’t get help soon, I would surely die down here. All that was keeping me going at this point was the thought of saving Nina and getting her out of here.
Eventually, I heard the sound of bare footsteps approaching in the hallway. I braced myself for the door to open and for Edward to return for another
beating but he didn’t. The footsteps.
stopped outside my doorway, and for Edward to return for another beating but he didn’t. The footsteps stopped outside my doorway, and suddenly, a sweet smell permeated through the door.
Fio, who had been too weak all this time, seemed to twitch at the sweet smell.
But then, I heard other footsteps definitely Edward’s this time. I heard the sound of the footsteps outside my door retreat once more along with the smell.
A few moments later, the door slid open and in came Edward.
