The CC is mostly empty now.

Anyone injured in the Trials is either in hospital, or in the infirmary, including the Predators. If they had been firstborn they would have been arrested, but apparently no one quite knows what to do with them in this situation.

The other Seconds who weren't in the Trials, and the babies in the nursery have all been taken into temporary housing somewhere in the city.

Most of the people marked as Prey this year died in the Trials, and even though my failure to save them tastes sour on my tongue, I have to remember that I have helped to save many hundreds more lives. No one will ever go through the Trials again.

I need a shower. My skin is crusted with dried blood, flaking off in rusty spots, and my hair is matted into stiff chunks. I can smell it everywhere, rank and metallic. The closest showers are in the Handlers' quarters, but I can't bring myself to go in there. Instead, Roan helps me up the stairs to the showers on the first floor.

It seems likely that the lifts do actually work between floors, and aren't just for the Trial Grid, but I can't bring myself to go in those either.

I haven't set foot in the first floor for a long time – Seconds aren't allowed to visit any floor but their own – but the showers are the same throughout the building.

Roan waits outside while I peel off my clothes and step under the hot spray.

This is probably the last time I will ever be in these showers, and much as I can't wait to leave it behind, it feels very strange too. The CC is all I have ever known, regardless of how I feel about it.

I wash my hair three times, until the water runs clear, and I'm sure there's no blood left. Then I do the same to my body.

When I'm clean, I find that Roan has left me a towel and a pile of clean clothing. My hands tremble a little as I touch them. I'd expected my usual grey uniform, the only clothes that Seconds are ever allowed to wear, but instead I find a pair of loose black trousers, with a drawstring at the waist, and a soft blue t-shirt.

Blue.

I lift the t-shirt to my face and hold it to my cheek like it really is a piece of the sky.

Of course Roan remembered.

I slip the clothes on and dry my hair with the towel until it's just damp, and then I go out to where Roan is still waiting, sitting on the floor.

A smile breaks over his face. "Blue suits you. I thought it would," he says.

I smooth down the t-shirt, feeling a little flush of pleasure. I can choose colours now and I want to wear them all. I want to be a rainbow.

Roan climbs to his feet and pulls me in for a hug.

"Roan?" I whisper, resting my head on his chest.

"Yeah?"

"Where am I going to live?"

He's quiet for a moment, and I look up at him.

"Well," he says. "I was hoping you would live with me."

My jaw drops.

"If you want to," he hurries on. "But I'll understand if it's soon, or you're not comfortable doing that yet –"

"Of course I want to," I say, kissing his chin.

His whole face lights up, and he captures my mouth with his, kissing the breath right out of my lungs.

I'm so lost in the soft, warm taste of him that I almost don't notice that faint music is coming from somewhere.

"Sorry," Roan says. "It's my phone."

He pulls it from his pocket, taps the screen and holds it to his ear.

"Okay, we'll come down," he says.

He taps the screen again and puts the phone back in his pocket. I wonder how long it will take me to learn to use one of those things.

"That was Rosie. She wants us to come downstairs so she can check your tracker," he says.

My hand flies to the back of my neck, to the little bump where the tracker still sits. "I thought she had disabled them."

"She has, but not in the way she originally wanted to, and she didn't have a chance to thoroughly test it out before she gave it to me to use. She just wants to make sure that they're permanently disabled."

"What if they're not?" My stomach lurches with panic.

"Even if they're not, the CC can't hurt you anymore." He wraps his arms around me. "I won't let anyone hurt you, okay?"

I nod, but I really hope that the tracker is dead. Even if the CC can't use it against me anymore, if it's active I will still feel like I belong to them.

We head back down to the infirmary, and I pause in the doorway, because Rosie's not there.

Cole is.

She's dressed in a clean CC uniform, standing by one of the cabinets, idling looking over its contents, and she turns to us as we come in.

Her face is as pale as I last saw it, and her eyes are still haunted, but she manages the ghost of a smile that quickly turns into a wince when it pulls on the stitches in her face.

I stare at the wound. Whoever stitched her up did a better job than they did with me, but Cole will be left with a nasty scar.

"Pretty, isn't it?" she says, reading my stare. "I guess that's karma for you."

But there's no bitterness in her voice.

For years, she bullied me and Taffy about our facial scars, and now she will know exactly what it's like to be us. She understands that.

Maybe someone else would agree with her, feel that karma has given her exactly what she deserves, but I can't take any satisfaction in what Fletcher has done to her.

"I'm sorry," I say.

Cole touches the stitched-up wound. "Don't be silly. I like to think I'm going to look even better with a scar on my face."

I can't help but smile. Maybe, like me, she will carry the horror of the Trials for a long while yet, but she's not beaten. And now, free of the CC, free of Fletcher, maybe she can truly start building herself into a better person.

Rosie bustles into the infirmary, almost hitting Roan with the door.

"Oops, sorry," she says, and her voice is a cheerful as ever, but her face is subdued.

She watched the Trials.

She saw all the horror and slaughter firsthand, and it has scarred her too, just not in a way that most people can see.

I throw my arms around her and hug her. "You are a genius," I tell her.

When we pull apart, her expression fades even more. "You look like you've been to hell and back," she says.

"I feel like I have," I say, grimacing a little.

She leads me over to the nearest bed, and pats it, encouraging me to sit down. I do, watching as she produces the little scanner she used on my tracker the first time.

"Is this going to hurt?" I ask.

I haven't forgotten the effect of the last one.

"If I haven't properly disabled them already, I can do it now and you won't feel a thing," she promises.

Roan moves my damp hair out of the way, baring my neck.

Cole watches us with unreadable eyes.

"That's it. It's done," Rosie says a second later.

"It's definitely disabled?" I say.

"Disabled, dead, deceased, never to come back to life," Rosie says.

I put a hand to the back of my neck, hardly able to believe it. My fingers trace the small bump beneath the skin. "If it doesn't work anymore, does that mean it can be removed?"

"If you want it to be, but it's not necessary now. It's completely dead – no one can ever reactivate it," Rosie says.

"I don't care. I know what it represents and I want it out of me," I say, looking back at her.

Even if I never see the CC again, even if the whole building gets torn down, as long as I have that tracker in my neck, I will never truly feel free.

Rosie blanches. "I don't know . . . I'm not sure I can do that. I really don't like blood."

"How deep is it in?" Cole asks.

"Not deep, it's below the skin –"

Cole holds up a scalpel. "I'll do it."

Rosie looks at me. So does Roan. I still don't think he entirely trusts Cole, and I don't blame him. I know that Cole isn't going to hurt me, but for sixteen years she was an enemy, and part of me still doesn't want to turn my back on her, especially not when she has a blade in her hand.

But looking at her, I realise that Cole needs this.

I'm the last person in the world who should trust her or help her in any way, considering everything she's put me through, but I don't see that Cole anymore. I see a tired, wounded, desperately damaged girl whose entire world has crumbled, and she's standing in the ruins, looking for anyone to reach out to her. She needs someone to show any sign of trust, any sign that she's not completely alone.

I'm not sure I can ever be friends with her, but I won't leave her out in the cold either.

Wordlessly, I tip my head forward, exposing my neck even more.

"This is going to hurt," Cole warns, coming up behind me.

"Everything already hurts. Just make it quick."

I take Roan's hand, and he watches whatever Cole is doing with worried eyes.

"Maybe we should do this in a hospital," he says, but Cole doesn't listen.

I feel the edge of the blade as it touches my skin, then the quick, sharp pain as it slices down. My hand tightens on Roan's.

"Okay, I can see it," Cole reports.

I grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut, and then there's the strange sensation of something sliding out of my skin.

Bloodied fingers appear in my vision as Cole waves the tracker in my face. It's a tiny piece of black plastic, so small and benign looking that I can hardly believe it's been keeping me prisoner all this time.

"There. All gone."

Cole drops it into my hand, and I hold it for a moment, staring at this tiny symbol of injustice and cruelty. Then I drop it to the floor. I want to stamp on it, but my feet are bare, so I look up at Roan and I don't even have to ask him. He knows exactly what I want. He stamps on the tracker, smashing it beneath his heel.

Cole puts little adhesive strips over the cut, holding the edges together.

"Now do mine," she says, pressing the scalpel into my hand.

I swallow. I don't want to do this. I'm tired of blood, tired of blades, tired of pain, but I suspect Cole needs hers gone as much as I do, and I'm won't deny her that.

Gritting my teeth, I cut the tracker out of her neck.

Roan opens the front doors and I step outside, blinking in the sunlight. It's a beautiful day; the sky is blue, the air is golden, and everything shines with hope.

Beyond the fence is a mass of people, some in suits talking earnestly into cameras, others in uniforms that I've never seen before, and some just dressed normally, like Roan, and the chaos of voices is so loud that I shrink back, clinging to Roan's arm.

"Come on," he says, steering me away from the crowd and around the side of the CC.

The grass is all churned up, from hundreds of pairs of feet when everyone gathered here after I pulled the fire alarm.

We walk past the nursery, so much smaller than the CC, and then I stop because I've never been here before. The chain-link fence runs around the whole of the grounds but here, behind the nursery where Seconds aren't meant to go, are a pair of metal gates, and beyond those gates is a dirt track, cutting through the trees closing in all around. At the end of that track is a shiny silver car. I know what those look like, thanks to glimpsing them on book covers and reading about them inside the books themselves, but this is the first time I've seen one in real life. They're bigger than I expected, but the low hum of the engine is quieter. I'd imagined them as great roaring beasts.

Logically, I should have known that there was vehicle access somewhere in the grounds – staff members come and go, and the Seconds themselves have to be brought in from the outside world, and I suppose food and other supplies aren't being brought on foot from the city – but I've never seen one, and so it's always been hard to imagine cars coming here. They're part of the outside world, not the one in here.

I pull in a deep breath, tasting the air. Already it seems different, richer and cleaner. Freer.

"Are you okay?" Roan asks, watching me.

I take another breath, and close my eyes, feeling the wind brush against my skin, trail invisible fingers through my hair.

"Caia," Roan says and his voice is suddenly serious.

I open my eyes to look at him, but he's looking at the ground.

"Back in the Grid, you . . . said something," he says.

I think back, but it's just a chaos of blood and death and screaming and fear. "What did I say?"

He bites his lip, and it's so sweetly nervous that I smile. "You said you loved me."

Oh. Yes, I remember it now.

My smile widens. "I did, didn't I?"

He looks at me, hopeful but cautious. "Did you mean it?"

I cup his beautiful face with both hands and bring his forehead close to mine. His eyes really are pieces of the sky. I am made of light and butterflies and dreams.

"Roan Mason," I whisper. "I love you."

His face shines like the sun. "Really?"

"Yes. I love you absolutely and completely, with my whole heart."

He brushes his lips against mine. "Well, I was going to say something dramatic and romantic, but you've beaten me to it. So I'll just say that I love you, Caia."

He kisses me and my heart explodes into a thousand colours.

"Are you ready to explore the world with me?" he says.

I know it won't be as simple as that. I know that I'm going to face anger and distrust and prejudice, and I know the country is going to face an upheaval and plenty of people will blame Seconds for that, rather than those who tortured us, and I know that it's not going to be easy learning everything that people on the outside already know.

I know there will be dark days ahead.

I know that I will be haunted by the events of the Trials for a long time, and it won't be easy moving past them.

But I have Roan with me, and that makes me strong enough to take on the whole world.

A flock of birds fly overhead and I tip back my head, gazing up at them.

"I'm ready," I say.

The sky is waiting.

The sky is everywhere.

Author's Note in next part :)