Chapter 3 - The Chemical Cage
The realization hit me with the force of a freight train.
I had never been permanently paralyzed.
I had been trapped inside a chemical cage built by the people I trusted the most.
I ordered Vance to drag the doctor to the underground cells and extract every piece of information he had.
Once the room was empty, I looked down at my useless legs and felt a wave of pure, violent rage.
Sarah stepped forward cautiously, offering to examine my medical charts to see how long the detox would take.
She calculated that without the daily injection, the neurotoxin would leave my system in forty-eight hours.
However, she warned me that the withdrawal would be the most agonizing pain I had ever experienced in my life.
I told her I had survived eight years in a tomb, so a little pain was not going to kill me.
By midnight, the withdrawal symptoms hit me like a tidal wave of fire.
Every nerve in my lower body woke up screaming.
My muscles convulsed violently, tossing my upper body against the restraints Sarah had strapped across my bed.
She placed a cool, damp towel on my forehead and held a leather strap between my teeth so I would not bite off my own tongue.
For two days, I lived in an absolute nightmare of fever, pain, and hallucinations.
Lily visited my room on the second day, sitting quietly by the door with her little speaker.
She played classical music softly, and somehow, the gentle notes anchored my mind and kept me from going insane.
On the morning of the third day, the fever finally broke.
I opened my eyes, exhausted and soaked in sweat, to see Sarah sleeping in a chair beside my bed.
I took a deep, shaky breath and focused all my mental energy on my right leg.
Slowly, deliberately, my knee bent upward and my heel dragged across the mattress.
I could move.
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But my victory was cut short when I noticed a tiny red light blinking inside the smoke detector above my bed.
Someone had hidden a surveillance camera in my private quarters.
