I get other visitors, too. Isabelle, Ben and Jake bring a massive box of chocolates and even manage to bring a faint smile to my face. Patricia comes to see me, her hair as vibrant as ever, though she seems distant from the loss of her friends. Abbie visits with a hollow, dead look in her eyes, and we cling to each other for over an hour, howling like there's no tomorrow, tears streaming down our faces.

But one day a young man walks through the door, his blond hair longer than when I last saw it, with a shadow of stubble on his face. And as he takes the seat so many of my friends have sat in this past week, my mouth falls open in astonishment.

"Eddie?"


He gives me a small, sad smile that doesn't quite meet his eyes, "Yours truly."

"B-But..." I splutter, shaking my head, "How?!"

"I got out with Sooz's body."

And I remember them saying on the news: It seems one person was killed on scene, but a body has not been recovered. I'd always assumed the patrol had simply nabbed her before the press could get ahold of the information, for some reason. But it was Eddie got her out. Not the patrol.

I sit in stunned silence while he tells me what happened.

After Suzanna died, I took out the tower and we fled, but Eddie stayed behind to fight the remaining patrollers. Which, thanks to the others, wasn't too many to handle. He took Suzanna's body away, found a secluded area, and burned it.

"It was the way she wanted to go," he assures me.

He kept her engagement ring. The gesture breaks my heart, along with the thought of the wedding they never got to have, the life together that was stolen from them. And I can tell, from the look on Eddie's face, that it will haunt him for a long time to come.

"Have you been to see Abbie?" I say quietly. He shakes his head.

"Not yet. I only got here an hour ago - I missed all the fighting. What happened to her?"

I briefly explain Jennifer's predicament. "I think she could use some help."

Eddie stands, "I don't doubt it. Get well soon, Vivian."


Jennifer gets no better. Her infection is serious, and while she's no longer on the brink of death, she's by no means in a good state. Once I'm well enough to walk without the room spinning like a top, I visit her with Abbie at me side. Abbie looks like she's aged twenty years, and sits quietly by Jennifer's bedside, holding her hand. I'm reminded, with a pang, of Jake doing the same thing after Ben got shot.

Jennifer herself looks... bad. There's no other way to put it, really. I would have thought she was dead if it weren't for the steady rise and fall of her chest, and the slight flutter of her closed eyelids.

It's good she's asleep, Abbie tells me thickly, tears sliding down her face. Good that she can't feel the pain right now.


I'm discharged from the infirmary a week later, but I keep the little hospital band that reads: MENTALLY DISORIENTATED.

Disorientated is the word. I can hardly tell which way is up and which is down. I don't know what to do with myself all day.

My apartment was trashed shortly after the R.I. snatched me up and stuffed my brain full of drugs. I take a visit there, and manage to do nothing but depress myself. The door's been beaten in, all my drawers have been pulled out, my clothes strewn across the floor. All my photo frames have been smashed. The pictures of my parents were left on the floor, but the ones of me with Derek and Abie are missing - presumably because they wanted to track down my friends, too. I carefully brush away the crushed glass and salvage the precious photographs of my mum and dad, slipping them into my pocket.

The insurance company coughed up enough money to pay for everything, but it's not the cash I'm worried about, though I'm now worse than broke, thanks to the R.I. cancelling my infinite money deal. It's the loss of my home that strikes deep, deep in me. I've now lost both - my first home, and my second.

Derek's place is no better. They tore it up, too, so the two of us now stay in the little network of corridors and hallways that housed the R.I.'s hitmen.

That's what they were. Maria's become a stand-in leader for the time being, and she's being kept busy twenty-four seven, trying to clear up the monumental mess I made by tearing Jonathan to shreds. It's taking a long, long time to hack into the protected files, but we've recovered a few of them. Enough to make me wish I'd never set foot in this place.

Because a lot of things suddenly make sense in a way I wish they didn't.

Children die in the test. It's uncommon, but not rare. They overexert themselves, take too much of their edge, too quickly, and their hearts give out. It's a story that's been told up and down the country - usually as a deterrent against overusing your edge.

Except some of those children never really died.

We gained access to Jonathan's email - he really should have used a more secure password - and read them all. Again, we couldn't get into most of the documents, but the emails themselves gave us enough to go on.

When a child shows unusual prowess in the test - either extreme power or control or both - they're taken away. To eliminate the threat they might pose one day. Their parents are told they died, but the R.I. never killed them. They lock them in tiny cells and give them the same drugs that stuffed my brain with cotton wool and, according to the doctors, cause the subject to become more violent. Aggressive.

Dangerous.

We can't access the files on these people yet, but we can count them. There are thirty-two.

When I was rescued, fifteen were killed.

We captured six.

The last eleven are nowhere to be seen. Including the dark-haired pale girl that set my house on fire.

End of Book Two.