Chapter 49: Trapped
Rong Ye kept his eyes closed, though sleep had long since left him. The pain in his wrists and ankles was constant, not unbearable, but enough to remind him, with every slightest movement, that he was still tied up.
And the worst part was, he didn’t even know why.
The hooded man’s voice still echoed in his mind.
"You are the son of a man who has caused much harm."
That phrase had only opened a wound that Rong Ye believed was already healed.
He had never met his father. He only had a vague image, made up of the loose scraps his mother had refused to sew together: a brilliant scientist who had died under dubious circumstances. Nothing more. A figure defined more by his absence than by any real memory.
His mother never spoke of him.
Never.
And yet, there he was, the stranger who had held him captive, accusing that man of being the cause of so much harm. What did he know?
Rong Ye forced himself to take a deep breath, but as soon as he did, the memory came flooding back: the clandestine lab, the sound of sterile metal, the monitors flickering in the darkness. And the voices of his half-siblings.
He didn’t need to close his eyes to see them. They were there, lurking in some corner of his memory, ready to emerge when he let his guard down. The words they’d said to him. The things they’d done to him. The pain they’d caused him.
The voice of his captor echoed in his mind again, and with it, a pang shot through his chest.