Faces, Names, and Memories (completed)

Chapter 35 - Recaptured

I open my eyes and expect to see sunlight filtering through the caves opening. But, instead I see a room with white brick walls, high ceilings and no windows. I try to get up, but I realize I'd been tied to the chair I'm sitting in.
I frantically look around in search of my friends, but I'm alone in the room. What's going on? I try to free myself from the cuffs, but whoever has tied me up had used unusually strong ropes. 

I understand what had happened. It doesn't take a genius to piece together who had captured me. Somehow, the LEs found out we were in that cave. What I thought had been me falling asleep unusually quick had actually been the LEs throwing something into the cave to knock us out. They must have taken us here. But the question is, where are my friends? I know the LEs wouldn't have just taken me and spared them.

The metal door slams open, and two LEs walk in and stand beside the open door, while a third comes in behind them. The first two shut the doors as third makes his way towards me.

I swallow and try to mask the fear quickly filling my chest.

He stops two feet in front of me and removes his helmet. The man in front of me is strikingly attractive: piercing blue eyes that seem to see everything, hair that's just the right mix of blonde and light brown, and picture perfect facial features from the sharp jawline to the pristinely arched eyebrows. He clearly received the mutation recently. Something about him is vaguely familiar, though I can't quite place him.

"Hey, Jade. Did you guys have a nice day?" The man asks me with a sinister smirk. His voice is so familiar. "You guys enjoy the woods and the cold?"

Zuke, he's Zuke; they turned Zuke into a BZ.

"Zuke?" I question, wanting him to tell me that I was mistaken. He grins instead, flashing his brilliant white teeth.

"I swear you are the stupidest genius in existence," BZ Zuke says, by means of answering.

I stare at him, horrified at the dramatic change the serum had caused. I'd seen the girl in the movie mutated. I'd seen Cody mutated. But, my memory of neither of those compares to this discovery. Zuke had been my friend. He was a person that I saw regularly these past few days. I knew him. But, I don't know this man in front of me.

He laughs at my horror then at the metaphorical drop of a dime, leers at me. "Now enough with the small talk, we have some things to discuss. I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen."

"What did they do to you?" I have to ask.

BZ Zuke laughs again. "They improved me."

"No, they didn't," I counter. "They destroyed you." 

In an instant BZ Zuke is in front of me and he smacks his hand against my face, hard. I cry out in pain. Then, I look at Zuke with frightened eyes. 

"Don't talk back to me." He sneers. "Jaz wants you alive, but he didn't say unharmed."

I swallow and hold my tongue.

"Now, here's what's going to happen." He takes a step away from me. "You are going to work on whatever it is Jaz wants you to. No questions asked."

I am not doing anything for that monster.

"And, knowing how crazy you are, your probably thinking of how you can get out of it." BZ Zuke circles me like a hyena stalking its prey as he says this.