I don't tell my friends what happened.

I go back to my room and gather up Boots's small body. Sonny fetches me one of his jumpers to wear – it's much too big for me, but it means I can hide Boots inside it. I couldn't have done when he was still alive, but now . . .

I ask my friends to leave me alone while I bury him. Maybe that's selfish – they loved him too – but I'll have to do it in my little spot down by the fence, where the cameras can't see, and Roan will already be there, and I'm still too afraid for my friends to find out anything, especially after everything that Cole has told me.

My footsteps feel impossibly heavy as I make my way to the spot that has become such a source of happiness for me, and will now always be tainted by Boots's death.

His body presses against me, and I feel like I'm carved from ice. His fur is still soft, but he's gone cold, and I can't ever warm him up.

He'll never sit in my lap again, or rub his face against mine.

He'll never share my pillow or curl up my stomach.

I'll never hear the sound of his purring.

He's gone, completely and always.

Grief is building and building inside me, and I'm trying to hold it back, but when I push through the bushes and find Roan pacing on the other side, I can't. I collapse, and he catches me before I fall, holding me tightly in his arms.

"Caia? What's wrong?"

I can't speak. I carefully pull Boots from under Sonny's baggy jumper and hug him against my chest. I can't believe I'll never be able to do this again.

"We have to bury him," I sob.

"What happened?" Roan asks.

I tell him. Everything.

While I speak, Roan picks a spot at the base of one of the trees and begins to dig, using his bare hands to pull up chunks of soil. Roots and small stones scratch his fingers, and more than once I see him wincing, but he doesn't stop.

I don't know how long it takes to dig the little grave; I'm frozen in place, holding Boots. My head is a storm.

Everything that Cole told me is a tangle of fear and horror and disbelief, and I haven't forgotten any of it, but as Roan digs, all I can think about Boots, and my complete failure to protect him.

"Caia," Roan says, and I realise he's stopped.

He's sitting back on his heels, his filthy hands resting on his thighs.

"Do you want to –" He gestures to the grave.

"I can't," I whisper.

I cannot put my darling cat in that cold hole in the ground.

Roan nods. He holds out his hands.

I kiss Boots's furry head one more time. "I love you," I whisper.

Then Roan takes him from me, and gently places him in the ground.

My heart breaks because he shouldn't be here, he should be curled up in my bed, waiting for me, not lying in a dirty hole, cold and still and lifeless.

"I should've protected him," I whisper.

Roan starts to cover him up, and when the first handful of dirt hits his fur, I flinch.

"There's nothing you could have done. No one could have predicted Cole doing something like this," he says.

I watch him fill in the grave through tear-blurred eyes, and then he puts his arms around me, holding me tightly against his chest.

"Do you think he had a good life?" I choke out.

"He was with you, so yes."

His life was so short, but it's left an indelible mark on mine.

I cry into Roan's shoulder for a while, and he strokes my hair and kisses my forehead, and even though there's nothing he can say that will make me feel better, he'll never understand how comforting it is to just have him here.

But I can't keep wallowing in grief.

"The Trials," I say pulling away from Roan and trying to organise the chaos in my head. "We have to stop them."

He sighs, deep in his chest. "Are you sure Cole wasn't bullshitting you? Because this just sounds . . ."

"I know how it sounds, but Cole killed Boots over this."

"That just means that she believes it's real, not that it actually is. How do we know this Fletcher guy isn't just feeding her a load of crap to get what he wants?"

Well . . . that was a possibility.

"I just can't believe that this is really what's going on, not in this country, not in this century," Roan says.

I stare at him. "You told me that wars had been fought over the issue of owning other people as property. You told me that you thought the world understood that that was wrong, and yet here we are." I spread out my arms. "I am property, Roan, and that is happening, in this country, in this century. Don't ever say that something can't happen here because it absolutely can."

The reality of what I'm saying seems to hit home; Roan rocks back slightly on his heels, his face going pale.

"And you're right – Cole might be lying or Fletcher might be, but what if they're telling the truth? What if this really is what the CC is doing? Even if you think it's unlikely, is it worth taking that risk?"

Roan swallows hard.

"If this is real, then the CC is planning for my friends to die in this Grid," I say. "That means we cannot let the Trials go ahead."

All I want is to get out of this awful place, and take my friends with me, but that would mean abandoning every other Second to the cruelty of the CC. There are hundreds of them in that building, and I don't even know how many more babies and toddlers currently live in the nursery at the back of the building. Maybe they're not all my friends – some of them I even hate – but I cannot turn my back on so many innocent lives. I won't.

Besides, even if I was prepared to run and abandon everyone else, how far would I really get? Even if Rosie can disable my tracker, the CC will know that I'm gone, and I'm not naive enough to think they won't take whatever steps are necessary to hunt me down. The only way any of us will truly be free is to put a stop to the CC, and that means we have to expose the Trials for what they really are. Even the people who are generally indifferent to what happens to Seconds won't ignore something like this.

"I need Rosie to set off this pulse of hers tonight," I say.

Roan starts to shake his head. "I don't know if she's ready."

"She'll have to be. We've just run out of time."

"Hold on, hold on, just let me think about this."

"Roan, there's nothing to think about. They're going to kill my friends, and who knows how many other Seconds."

"I don't know where this Grid thing is, but Cole says it's not in the mess hall or the rec rooms, which is where I thought it might be. She also doesn't think it will be outside, but we don't know for sure. So these are my options. I put bugs on cameras in the mess hall, rec rooms, and perimeter fence anyway, in case Cole is wrong. I get into Records and put one on the computer too, so Rosie can access anything that's stored on there. And then I get into the Handlers' quarters and put bugs on anything and everything I can. The Handlers know what's going on, and the Trials are only a few days away; maybe there are arrangements that they need to discuss, or phone calls that they need to make. This isn't all happening in a vacuum, is it? Someone has to be talking about it."

It's far from a coherent plan, and there's no guarantee that I'll get any of the evidence we need, but I don't know what else to do. We can't wait until the Trials start, because if Cole is right, that's when people will start dying.

Roan locks his hands behind his neck and makes a deep groan of frustration. "We were supposed to have more time."

"Well, we don't. This has to happen tonight. We only have a few days left to stop this."

Roan suddenly grabs me, holding me again, so tight that I almost can't breathe. "I'm scared for you," he whispers into my hair.

"I am too," I admit, because I know that I can be honest with him.

But he doesn't ask me not to go ahead with this, he doesn't ask me not to risk myself, and it gives wings to my tired heart. This may have started as his crusade, but it has become mine too, maybe more so, and he understands that. He knows that, with so much at stake, asking me not to do this would be an insult.

I press my face to his shoulder and breathe in the smell of him. Tears prick my eyes.

I am terrified – for my friends more than myself.

I am furious – for every Second who will be put through this, for every Second who has already died, and for the Seconds who survived too.

I've hated Cole for a long time, and I should hate her more than ever now, but I don't. I hate the people who made her into what she is. I hate Ripley and the other Handlers. I hate the government officials who helped create this and then covered it up. I hate anyone in the military connected with it. I hate the people on the outside who blame us for something that is not our fault and who completely ignore our suffering.

And I'm terrified that this will all go wrong.

I'm terrified that we'll all fail, and the CC will continue to stand, continue with the Trials.

I'm terrified that I will never be free of my cage.

"Part of me wishes we could just run away together, and forget everything else," Roan says, his voice muffled against my hair.

He doesn't need to say that the other part knows we can't, because I feel the same way. I will give anything to put a stop to this, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a little part of me that wishes we could just slip through the fence and disappear into the woods and never look back, and let all this be someone else's problem.

Roan owns my heart, but I will not abandon my friends. Not ever.

"Right," he says, letting me go. "I need to go, then. Rosie might need help."

I don't want him to leave. I want him to stay here and hold me and tell me that everything is going to be okay. I want to tear the tracker out of my neck and crawl through that fence and fly away with him.

But I force myself to let him go.

"We'll come back tonight with everything you need. As soon Rosie sets off her RP, you'll have eight to ten minutes to get as many bugs planted as possible. Obviously that includes setting off the alarm, getting out here to collect them from us and then getting back to the CC."

It's not a huge window of time, but if that's what I have, it's what I have.

"How will I know when you're going to set off the pulse?" I ask.

Roan looks at his watch. "Do you have a clock in your room?"

"Yes."

"Okay." He thinks for a bit. "We'll set it off at midnight. Everyone in the CC should be asleep by then."

Even that seems like too long to wait, but I don't have any choice. Those extra few hours are vital for Rosie to make sure that all her devices are working properly, and the point of setting off the fire alarm is to create enough chaos that no one notice when I slip away to collect everything from Rosie. I stand more chance of getting away unseen at night than I do in broad daylight, and I'm hoping that being abruptly woken up in the middle of the night by the fire alarm will make people panic more than they would if it went off while they were awake.

Roan's forehead furrows as he looks down at me. "I'm still worried about this."

I stretch up to kiss those little furrows. "It'll be alright. I'll be free soon, and then think of the future we can have. No more sneaking around. No more hiding. We can spend as much time together as we want, and there'll be no one to tell us we can't."

My words are as much for my benefit as his. I cannot lose sight of what we are fighting for, and I have to hope that there really is a better future on the horizon for all of us.

Roan nods, but nothing can erase the fear in his eyes.

"Will you come here tonight, with Rosie?" I ask.

"Of course I will. I'm not letting you do this alone."

Technically he is – once he and Rosie have handed the bugs over, it's all down to me. Rosie can't do anything else until I've planted them, but I will still feel better knowing that Roan is nearby.

"I'll see you tonight," I say, and kiss him.

As I walk back up to the CC, flames of pure determination burn at my core.

I am going to stop this.

I am going to save my friends, and everyone else.

I'm even going to save Cole.

Boots is free in the sky now.

Soon, I will be too.