She's about my age, with hair that's such a bright blonde it can't possibly be real, and even though she stands several inches shorter than me, she exudes a wealth of confidence that I can only aspire to. Silver rings glitter in her ears, and she's squeezed into skin-tight, shiny black trousers with thick-soled boots, and a dark t-shirt that hangs off one shoulder.

I've never seen anyone like her, and I falter, suddenly unsure.

Who is she?

Why is she here?

I look to Roan, my eyes full of questions.

"Caia, this is Rosie," he says.

Rosie waves at me. Every one of her fingers sparkles with rings.

I lift my hand in response, but I still feel strange and out of place. Rosie is part of Beyond, and more than that, she's Roan's best friend, so she must be here for a reason, but this is our place, mine and Roan's, and I'm not entirely comfortable with someone else being here.

Maybe it's silly, but I wish he had told me she was coming.

Roan kisses me, and I relax a little. He knows me, so if he's brought Rosie here without prior warning, it's for something important.

"It's so good to meet you at last," Rosie gushes, and I think she's going to shake my hand, but instead she throws her arms around me and hugs me like we're old friends. "Roan hasn't shut up about you."

I steal a small look at him, and he smiles back.

My heart flutters.

"Thank you so much for agreeing to help us," Rosie says.

"I don't know much help I've actually been," I admit.

She waves a glittering hand. "Oh, please. You've been amazing."

Her praise warms me.

"Rosie's had some ideas, and we need to talk to you about them," Roan says.

Rosie hurries over to the thickest clump of bushes that screen us from the rest of the grounds, and for the first time I notice a big black rucksack sitting there. Crouching down, she unzips it and pulls out a plastic box, a little larger and thicker than the phone Roan used to show me pictures of the world.

"Remember what I told you about Rosie being a tech-head?" Roan says. "This is one of her little inventions."

Rosie gives him a mock-withering look. "Little? This is genius."

"I know, but I can't let your own brilliance go to your head."

She laughs.

They're so easy together; I'm suddenly very aware that they have known each other a long time. There's nothing romantic between them, but this is the first time I've seen Roan interact with anyone else, and it makes everything feel off-kilter somehow.

I'm not jealous of Rosie, but I need some time to adjust to this.

"Okay," Rosie says, holding the plastic box aloft, "this is a genius piece of kit developed by yours truly."

"Uh, Rosie?" Roan says. "I know you're about to unload a whole bunch of technical jargon, and maybe don't do that. Keep it simple."

"Because I won't understand it otherwise?" I say, feeling a little stung.

"Because I don't understand it. She explains to me what she's doing sometimes, and honestly it's like she's speaking gibberish," Roan says.

"This is a super special Rosie scanner, and it's one of several similar projects that I'm currently working on," Rosie tells me. "Basically, I can use it to scan a piece of tech, and it analyses what that tech is and how it works."

"Okay." I'm already confused.

"Roan told me about the tracking device in your neck. What I want to do – with your permission, of course – is to scan the tracker with this. That way I can gather all the information I need to build something that will disable it."

I look at Roan; he's grinning, warm and wide.

"But . . . interfering with the trackers sets off an alarm," I say.

"Presumably only if the tracker is still active, though I need to get a proper look at it before I can say for sure." Rosie waggles the scanner at me. "Can I?"

I nod and sweep my hair over one shoulder, baring the back of my neck. Rosie stands close behind me, her breath tickling my skin, and I don't know what I'm expecting, but a second later she says, "All done."

"Wait, that's it?" I say, turning back around. I don't even know what she did.

"That's it," she confirms. "All I needed to do was run the scanner over your tracker, and it's picked up everything I need. I'll have to have a proper look at it when I get back home, but I'm very confident that, given a little time, I can build something that will safely disable your tracker without anyone in the CC knowing," Rosie says.

I swallow hard and look at Roan again.

His face is as bright as a star.

"Even if we don't find out what's going on with the Trials, even if we can't stop anything, I won't leave you here. I won't let them keep you," he says.

My eyes burn.

Of course he's been thinking the same as me – about the uncertainty of the future.

But . . .

"I still can't leave," I whisper. "I won't abandon my friends."

Roan's expression dims, and the light inside me fades in response.

"I'm sorry, but I just can't. I go with them or I don't go at all," I say.

If Rosie can do this then she has offered me a shining piece of hope, a real chance at a future with Roan, but no matter what I feel for him, I cannot take that chance if it means abandoning my friends to this place.

Roan slowly nods. "I know. If you were willing to abandon them then you wouldn't the girl I thought you were."

"Well, isn't this adorable?" says Rosie brightly. "But before we can discuss self-sacrifice and other cheerful things, I'm not finished. Caia, the CC is monitored by cameras, yes?" She doesn't give me a chance to answer. "Are there any rooms that aren't monitored?"

"Our bedrooms and bathrooms, the infirmary and Records itself," I say.

"So the Trials will be monitored too?"

"I . . . I assume so. We have two indoor rec rooms, and, besides the mess hall, they're the only places big enough for us all to take any kind of test. I don't know for sure, but it seems unlikely that the Handlers would move all the furniture out of the mess hall when they could just use the recreation space. Both rooms have cameras, if that's what you're asking."

"Excellent. Now, this scanner can show me how a piece of tech works, but because it's handheld, it's not always that practical. So I've been working on adapting it, and I think I'm getting close. You and Roan won't understand the tech behind it, so I'll try and explain it in a way that makes sense. Imagine this scanner as a bug that can –"

"I don't know what a bug is," I interrupt.

"Imagine this as a flat little disc that can attach to a computer or a camera or anything like that, and can then access everything that is stored on that computer, or everything that that camera sees, and relay it back to me," Rosie says without missing a beat.

I know she's trying to explain it in a way that I understand, but I'm still struggling to keep up.

"If the CC have this many cameras, then they must have some kind of hub somewhere, where they monitor CCTV activity, and if I get one of my little bugs into the CCTV hub of this place, I will be able to access every piece of footage that those cameras record – from the outside," Rosie explains, perhaps sensing my confusion.

"Okay," I say.

"Now, we know that Seconds take the Trials towards the end of their final year at the CC, when everyone is sixteen or over, and you've got to be getting close to that, right? In an ideal world we hoped to find out what the Trials were in advance, and then stop them if necessary, but it's starting to look like that might not happen, which isn't the end of the world; it just means we have to go with Plan B. If we can't stop the Trials, then we can still find out what they are and potentially stop them in the future."

Her voice softens. "I know this doesn't help you or your friends, but it will help a lot of other Seconds, and I promise you that even if you have to do the Trials, I won't let the CC keep you or secretly ship you off anywhere else. Okay?"

I nod.

"Now, if everything else in the CC is recorded, the Trials will be too. So if we can get one of my fabulous little bugs into the main CCTV hub, then Beyond can directly access everything that those cameras are seeing."

"Okay," I say again, still trying to process everything she's telling me.

"So, that means that we can then broadcast that footage across the whole world. Everyone will see what the Trials are."

"I . . . you can do that?"

"Of course I can." She flashes a white grin. "I'm brilliant."

"There's just one problem. I have no idea where the CCTV hub is."

"Ah." Rosie's taps her chin with one hand. Her nails are very short, but still painted bright red. "Yeah, that is a problem. You're absolutely sure there was nothing about it in this Records place?"

"I'm sure. There was a computer in there, but I don't know what it's for."

"Accessing the computer would be fantastic too, but the cameras are the really important part. They're the eyes of the CC, and through them we could see anything that the CC wants to keep hidden."

"The only place something like that might be is in the Handlers' quarters, but there's absolutely no way I can get in. There are no circumstances, ever, in which a Second can go in there."

Rosie thinks about it for a moment. "What about the cameras in the recreation rooms? What if I made several bugs, and you planted one on each camera? It wouldn't be as good as accessing the main hub, but we'd still be able to see what was going on."

"I'm not tall enough to reach the cameras," I say.

Rosie waves a hand again. "Let me worry about that. Can you actually access them?"

I consider it. I really want to do this for them, but –

"Not without being seen," I say, regretfully. "Each floor in the CC has recreation hours at different times, so there's always someone in those rooms. When the fifth floor – mine – are training outside, the fourth floor will be having rec time in one room, while the third floor are having lessons in the other, that sort of thing."

I think about this.

"But I don't know if the Trials will even be inside," I say. "We have to do a lot of physical exercise and training every day, and they keep close eye on our health to make sure we can perform at our best in the Trials, so there's a good chance that it's outside, at least in part."

"That's not a problem. The whole grounds are monitored too, aren't they? So even if the Trials are outside, I can still get access to the cameras out here," Rosie says. "And if they're partly outside, and partly inside, that's fine too. I'll just have to get to work making lots and lots of bugs."

"But even if the rooms were empty, I don't know exactly how the CCTV system works. I don't know if someone is constantly monitoring it, but if they are, they'll see me trying to plant any kind of device. I'm willing to take the risk if it's just to myself, but if they catch me, they'll simply remove your . . . bug things and then we're right back where we started."

"And you can't put yourself at risk like that," Roan says, his eyes dark and intent.

"If it's the only way –"

"No. You can't do it, Caia. I don't trust these people, and I don't trust what they'll do to you if they catch you doing something like this."

"Then what's the alternative? Give up?" I demand.

"No, we let genius Rosie come up with another plan," Rosie butts in. "Let's break this down. Given enough time, I can make bugs to plant on every camera, and I can make sure that Caia will be able to reach those cameras. If the problem is her getting around without anyone finding out, then obviously we need a distraction."

"Like what?" Roan says.

"I don't know yet, but I can come up with something."

He points at her. "Nothing that is going to put Caia in danger."

She rolls her eyes a little. "Relax, Romeo. I want her to be safe too."

Roan stares at her, then switches his gaze to me. "Rosie, can you give us a minute alone?"

"Sure thing."

She gets down on all fours and crawls back through the fence, then she sits on the other side, a splash of colour against the varying green of the trees and grass. She pulls what look like a pair of black rubber wires from her pockets, with little nubs on the end, and then she puts those in her ears and starts nodding her head in time to something that only she can hear.

I turn my attention to Roan.