My head aches.

I crack open an eye, then shut it again, because the lights are so bright, stabbing into my brain.

What happened?

Memories come back in pieces, and it takes me a few minutes to fit them back together.

Fletcher . . .

Ripley . . .

The Trials.

I sit bolt upright, gasping.

I'm lying on the floor of a small white room, little more than a cube, with a single door set into one wall, and a series of stark lights running along the ceiling.

I've never been here, but I know what this room is.

Isolation.

Pushing myself to my feet, I move unsteadily to the door. My head is pounding, but I'm only dimly aware of that.

The door is locked.

There are two cameras at either end of the room, and red lights blink on both of them.

Tears threaten, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

I can't fall apart now.

But what else am I supposed to do?

The cameras are back on, the doors are all locked, and all Rosie's bugs are under the desk in Records. Assuming that no one has found them by now.

I'm trapped in Isolation.

I'd realised back in Records that I have failed, but the true enormity of this sends me to my knees, my palms sliding down the metal door.

Everyone was depending on me, and I've let them down.

Sonny, Taffy, and Priya – they'll all go into the Trials in a few days, and they'll be going there to die. And none of them have any idea.

The electronic lock on the door clicks open and I scramble back on all fours, terrified that it's Fletcher coming in, that's he's going to corner me in another small room.

It's Ripley.

She closes the door behind her, folds her arms across her chest, and regards me with a cool, assessing stare.

I want to stare back at her, to let her know that I'm not afraid, but I'm so tired. I'm not sure I have any fight left. My gaze falls to the floor.

"How much do you really know?" she asks.

"I know everything," I mutter.

"Because Fletcher told you."

"That's right."

She gives a little nod. "I apologise for him. His behaviour is completely inappropriate, and I assure you that he will be dealt with."

A bitter laugh rips out of my throat. "Let me see if I understand this. You can see the problem with a grown man taking advantage of a teenage girl, but you can't see the problem in forcing that same teenage girl to kill her friends?"

People on the outside might have been conditioned to hate Seconds, but they have nothing on the Handlers.

"You shouldn't even be here. Seconds aren't legal," Ripley says.

"That's not our fault. It doesn't give you the right to treat us like this."

"Legally, it does."

I cover my eyes with my hands, the anger draining out of me again. There's no arguing with her. She runs the CC so she either truly believes in this place, or she's being paid enough to not care about what happens here.

"How did you find us in there anyway?" I ask.

Fletcher had seen me sneaking away from everyone else and had followed me to Records, but I can't work out what Ripley was doing there.

She gives me a cool look. "I quickly noticed that you weren't among the other Seconds from your floor. You stand out more than most of them."

Because of my scars, she means. I glare at her.

"When I noticed that Fletcher was also missing, I thought perhaps he had gone after you, and I came to investigate. I was right, in a sense," she says.

She must have heard us talking in Records.

If I had just been a little more careful, if I had checked one more time that no one was following me, then I might have got away with this.

Instead, everything has fallen apart.

Suddenly something occurs to me, and it feels like a knife driving into my heart.

"Thomas," I say, and Ripley frowns a little.

I look up at her, my throat clenching and unclenching, because I know what I have to ask, and I know what she's going to say.

"When he attacked me, he said it was because he had to prove himself. He was talking about the Trials, wasn't he? Somehow he found out what was going on, and being marked as Undecided made him desperate. Desperate enough to attack a little girl with a knife. Desperate enough to leave me permanently disfigured because he thought it would prove that he was capable of being a Predator."

Ripley says nothing for a moment.

"Answer me," I cry. "I'm right, aren't I?"

"Yes," she says, utterly without emotion.

A sharp cry spills from my throat. I knew that this would be the answer, but hearing it confirmed still hits me like a physical blow.

For years I have hated that boy, and now I can't blame him anymore, just like I can't blame Cole for killing Boots. The real blame lies with the Handlers, the people who took children and moulded them into killers.

"What happened to him?" I ask.

"He was unstable. We took care of him."

"And by that, you don't mean that you got him the help he needed, do you?" I spit.

Her silence says it all.

Thomas is dead then. They couldn't use him so they just disposed of him. Like he was nothing. Like he wasn't a person.

I'll bet he wasn't the first, either.

Is that what they're going to do to me?

"You've caused us a lot of trouble," Ripley says, and the way she so easily pivots away from the subject of Thomas makes it clear that she really doesn't care.

If she's serious about punishing Fletcher then it will be because he's abused his position, not because she gives a single damn about Cole, or about any of the girls who may have come before her.

"So what happens to me now?" I ask.

"That rather depends on you. I've been watching you lately, and I'm of a mind to change your designation to Predator. Obviously I no longer need to explain to you what that means."

"I'm not going to kill my friends," I say, glaring at her.

She gives me a look that says she could not possibly care less. We really are nothing to her. I wonder if this indifference to our lives really is because she's being paid not to care, or if this shows how effective anti-Second propaganda can be.

"Then I suppose you have chosen your own designation," she says. "Very well."

"Are you going to keep me in here until the Trials?" I ask, with a fresh stab of fear.

They're still days away, and if I'm in Isolation I won't be given anything to eat or drink. I'll be too weak to even think about defending myself.

"The Trials are being moved up," Ripley says. "Fletcher has created something of a mess. We have since learned that you may not be the only one of his girls, and that he has been paying CC staff to look the other way if they spot his indiscretions on the cameras. Unfortunately we have been unable to determine exactly how many girls he has shared information with, but we have to contain this. The whole objective of the Trials is to test how our assets perform on the spot, and I'm sure you can understand how that will be affected if too many Seconds know about this in advance. So the Trials will be held tomorrow."

"You can't do that," I blurt out, without thinking.

She gives me a coldly amused smile. "We can do whatever we like."

My mind races, trying to find some way out of this.

Clearly Ripley hasn't yet found Rosie's bag, or she would question me about it, but the bugs are no good to me now. I'll never be able to get my hands on them. I'll never be able to tell Roan and Rosie that the Trials' date has been changed, and they'll never know what happened here.

I'll just have . . . disappeared.

"It's a shame," Ripley says, studying me. "I think you could have been useful to us."

"Go to hell."

She smiles once more, a hollow, bland thing, then she walks out of the room and closes the door behind her.

I am left alone.