SYNOPSIS

ARKE COULD'VE TOLD YOU SEVERAL THINGS AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT. THE ONE SHE SEEMED TO TELL THE MOST WAS, THAT THEY, AS PEOPLE, WERE NOT SAFE.

FROM ANYONE.

NOT WITH WICKED WAITING TO SNATCH THEM UP AND DISSECT THEM LIKE LAB RATS. And she knew that if she let either of the two children that accompanied her out of her sight, they would surely be taken.

It had always been that way.

Before Arke had even been born, surprisingly.

And last time she'd checked, she was only sixteen, seventeen in another five months.

Years before, WICKED had been a organization of good, wanting to help people and ease the pain of the flare and the losses people seemed to continue to rack up as it spread.

But slowly, as the need for a cure grew stronger, parents were urged to turn in their children to the government, specifically, but not limited to, the immunes.

So when Arke found that all of her friends had been taken and she had no choice but to join them or be seen as an outcast, she slipped past her parents in the dead of night and made for the train station where the children had been collected nightly.

She wished she hadn't.

Everything seemed to slow in those few months, they'd tried to coax a new name onto her, but, they'd accomplished nothing and realized zero progress had been made with the subject.

It seemed that having a stubborn subject may bring them better variable outputs, but cost more time, which wasn't something they had much of.

Three years later, sitting in the dining hall, she saw a boy being removed from the hall, he had kicked and screamed, even begged for them to leave him alone, something about his memories. He didn't want them messing with his memories.

Everything Arke had ever thought WICKED to be good for suddenly turned dark, and she knew she wasn't dealing with the same organization she'd volunteered for all those years ago.

That was when she'd begun her plot to escape, it had been simple really, just to follow the group of boys that ventured out of their rooms once a week in the middle of night to congregate in an abandoned lab. They had to know a way out.

And that was when she found it.

They'd snuck up onto the roof, undoubtedly aware of Arke's presence, but, not bothered. She'd slipped past them with her backpack over her shoulders and gently let her feet slap the wet dirt with a soft thump.

It wasn't until she was around the corner of the building that she saw the shine of headlights coming from where the group of three boys stood at the foot of the ladder.

They met the cruelty of WICKED that night.

Years later, when old acquaintances re-emerge from the shadows and alliances seem to be falling apart, Arke finds she must work with a group of boys and a single odd girl to try and end WICKED's reign of terror.

All while they continue to threaten her and the two children that seem to be stuck to her like glue.