The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Crying won't help, but I do it anyway.

I am completely broken inside.

I don't know how long I've been in here, but Roan and Rosie will have realised that our plan has failed the moment only one bug activated.

I try to comfort myself with the reminder that this isn't over – not for Roan and Rosie anyway. No one can tie them to anything that's happened here, which means they are free to try this plan again with any Second in the future.

But that won't help me.

It won't help my friends.

And when I think of Roan trying to befriend another Second, when I think of everything that we've shared, the pain in my chest is so sharp I actually double over.

I don't think he could. If they want to do that, Beyond will have to send someone else.

Is this really where it ends?

Am I really going to die in the Grid, without ever having seen Roan again?

How long until he realises what's happened?

I pace the floor for what feels like hours, but might only be minutes. There's no clock in here, no way of telling the time, and the lights don't ever go off, or even dim.

Time has no meaning anymore.

It's just me, this room, and the agony of my thoughts.

I think of Boots, and how maybe it was better than he's gone now, because at least he won't be found after our deaths, and thrown out to slowly starve.

I think of my kind, loyal friends, and how they're just fodder for this parade of inhumanity.

I think of Rosie, and how I hope she will continue using her skills to help Seconds in the future. There are still a lot of kids in the CC who will be approaching the Trials after everyone on the top floor is gone, and they need her too.

I think of Cole, and the kind of person she could have been if this place hadn't broken her and twisted her, and the bleak future she has resigned herself too because she doesn't think she deserves anything better.

I think of the sky outside, my beautiful everywhere sky that I will probably never see again.

I think of the great wide world that I will now never get a chance to explore, and all the things that I will never get to experience.

And I think of Roan, my kind, sweet, darling Roan. My only regret there is I didn't get to say goodbye. I didn't get to kiss him one more time and taste the sunlight of his lips and see the sky in his eyes.

I didn't get to tell him that I love him.

Because I do.

Maybe I was afraid to admit it before, maybe I didn't know how to put it into words, but I do love him. I've given him my whole heart, and maybe we'll never get to fly free as we planned, but during the weeks we had together, he gave me a taste of the sky, and I will hold that with me for as long as I have left.

I try very hard not to think about how the Trials will play out. I hope it will be quick. I hope the people that I love won't suffer.

This is all my fault. If I had just been more careful, I wouldn't have been caught, or at least I wouldn't have been caught until after I had planted more bugs. At least then I would have known that Rosie could have exposed all this, and even if I still died in the Trials, she could prevent anyone else from doing so in the future.

Now everything is pinned on one tiny bug on that one computer in Records, and maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but that seems like a seriously long shot.

Finally they come for me.

The door opens and two Handlers who normally work on the fourth floor march into the room, followed by Ripley.

"There's still time to change your mind. You could be an asset to us," she says.

"I'm not an asset," I spit, fresh rage flaring up. "I'm not a tool, or a weapon, or a thing. I'm a person."

Her expression doesn't flicker.

"Seconds belong to the government. If you can't be useful to them . . ." She doesn't need to finish the sentence.

"We don't belong to anyone!"

But my words fall on deaf ears.

Ripley has been running the CC for a long time, which means that she's been sending kids to their deaths for years. Nothing I can say will have any effect on her.

Ripley nods to the other Handlers, and they each take one of my arms.

I entertain a brief fantasy of fighting them both off and making a run for it, but that's all it is – a fantasy. They both outweigh me, they both have batons, and they have Ripley as backup.

They lead me from the room, and I find myself in a white corridor, faced by a series of doors. They look like the doors to our bedrooms, but they are spaced further apart, indicating bigger rooms, and I don't recognise any of them.

I suddenly realise where I am, and it makes me want to cry with frustration.

Isolation is in the Handlers' quarters.

I am in the Handlers' quarters – exactly where I needed to be. Except now I don't have Rosie's bugs. I don't have access to any of the rooms.

With their hands on my shoulders, they march me down the corridor, Ripley in the lead, until we emerge into the main hallway of the CC. If we were to keep going to our left, we would come to Records.

But we don't go that way.

We stop by the staircases, in front of the lifts, and I'm confused because those lifts have never worked, and then I realise what's happening.

That's just another lie.

There's a tiny panel on the wall, and I've always thought it was as defunct as the lifts, but now Ripley presses her finger to it.

A second passes, and then the doors slide open, revealing a polished metal box.

"I don't understand," I say, resisting when they try to push me inside. "These have always worked? What's the point of lying about that?"

Ripley just gives me an impassive look.

One of the other Handlers gives me a hard shove and I stumble into the lift. The Handlers follow me in, and one of them presses a button on another panel on the wall. The doors slide shut.

I don't understand.

The lifts go all the way to the top of the CC, with stops at every floor, but why would the Handlers take me there? Surely that's not where the Trials are.

And then we're going down, and my stomach sinks in a way that has nothing to do with the movement of this little metal box.

This is why Cole couldn't work out where the Trial Grid was being held.

It's not in the CC.

It's under it.