More Than Human

Chapter 5

June 8th

Daryl showed me into the dorm. Gloria and Fay were already there, sitting on a bed together.

"Guys!" I screamed in delight and ran them over with a hug. We all fell onto the bed.

"Where were you?!" asked Gloria.

"Trying to find you guys!"

"Mmph!" cried Fay. I realized that my knee was squishing her stomach.

"Sorry." I freed her.

"Thank you! Where's Lea?"

"I... I don't know." We were all silent. "So.... How'd you guys end up here?"

Fay told me her story first, about how she woke up here, in the dorms and there was this man who told her all the same things that Daryl told me.

Gloria's was more like mine, in the way that she woke up in the operating room and left, but this woman was waiting for her at the door and talked to her while leading her to the dorms.

After that, I told them my story.

I knew the most about the Institute, including the fact that the people here call it the Institute.

"Woah, people with superpowers.... I WANNA GO MEET THEM!" screamed Fay.

"Did he tell you why we were here?" asked Gloria, ignoring her.

"No, but in the operation room, I overheard some doctors talking about 'comparing the differences between genetic modification at birth and genetic modification at age 13'."

Gloria was silent as she took that in. Fay, being a wonderful artist and super funny girl, but not the best at math and science, asked what the heck did it mean.

"It means," said Gloria dully, "that they did something to our DNA."

"You know what that is, right?" I just wanted to make sure.

"Yeah, I think. It's the instruction thingies for your body?" Fay guessed.

"Yeah. And Daryl said something the girls with powers that I saw being V1s and us being V2s, so..."

I couldn't bring myself to say it. I wasn't so dumb that I didn't know what was going on. I just don't want to face the truth.

"So we must have powers," finished Fay.

But instead of us all getting super excited, we just sat the and stared off into space.

I thought of how we were kidnapped, and brought here for probably illegal experiments. I thought of Erica, Jess, and Rose, and of my parents and started to cry.

They must be worrying about me. They don't know what happened to me. They might think I was dead, or that I had run away.

"Maddie?" asked Fay, concerned. She sat down beside and wrapped her arm around me. "Maddie, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm perfectly fine," I snapped though the tears. "I just got kidnapped, experimented on, and told that I have a 48% chance of survival. I'm perfectly fine."

I stormed away from them and threw myself onto another bed. I sobbed into my pillow.