It wasn't real. Any of it. I wake up strapped to a chair, wires stuck all around my body. I'm screaming and crying and thrashing around in the chair, but I'm not in a glass cage anymore. I wasn't drowned in blood. I'm not dead.

A doctor clutches onto my arm, squeezing my skin tightly in his hand. I try my best to jerk my arm out of his grip, but between the restraints around my upper arms and legs and the cuffs around my wrists, he's able to easily gain control. I feel something pinch my arm as he injects an unknown substance into my bloodstream.

Almost immediately after he lets go, I feel myself beginning to calm down. I become too tired to thrash around in the chair. My throat is too raw to scream. The room goes quiet as the doctors surrounding observe my reaction to whatever drug they injected into me.

I look down at my skin. Except for the sweat drenching every inch of my body, I'm still mostly clean. My wrists are dripping blood once again from earlier, but other than that, there's no blood anywhere else. My skin has been washed clean of everyone's blood but my own, and yet I swear I can still see their blood staining and dripping down my hands. I swear it's still there, invisible to everyone else's eyes but my own.

My eyes begin to grow heavy; too heavy to keep open. I let them close. Maybe I'll just sleep for awhile. Sleep would be better than being in the reality I've been forced to live in. 

🪐🪐🪐

"I don't think this is a good idea." I say, my voice shaking as much as my body. "They already took my friends away from me. What if-"

"They won't, Venus. We have to do this, okay? For them." The boy replies, a radio on the floor in front of him. He's sitting in front of it, adjusting the antenna as static fills the silence between the two of us.

I fiddle with my lab coat, fighting the urge to reach up to touch a necklace that I know isn't there anymore. I gave it to him before they took him from me. Something for him to remember me by. Something for him to hold on to.

"This is a really bad idea, Thomas. She's gonna find out. She always does. She'll find out and she'll separate us just like she did to me with my friends." I pause as he continues to fiddle with the antenna, barely even paying attention to me. "Please just stop for more than two seconds and think about what you're doing!"

"You know better than anyone else that I can't think about hardly anything for more than two seconds." He replies, though his mind and gaze are still fixed on the radio in front of him.

I can feel frustration bubbling up inside of me. I can't just sit back and watch him carry out this plan. Not without trying to talk some more sense into him. I snatch the radio off of the floor and shoot to my feet. 

"Give that back!" Thomas shouts, storming over to me. I hide the radio behind my back, backing up against the door to his room. "Come on, Venus! The cameras are only disabled for a few more minutes!"

"I can't let you do this, Thomas! I can't let her take you, too! She already took everything from me! I can't let her take the last good thing I have in this place!"

"If I don't do this now, then WICKED will never stop! Where will they draw the line?! How many more kids are they gonna send up there?! We built that, Venus! It's our fault that they're up there!" He shouts, running his hands through his disheveled hair. "And I don't give a shit what happens to me! If I don't do this, then they're gonna kill you! We both know that she won't let you live! If I do this now, I can save you! I can get you out of here before she can do anything to hurt you! I have a plan! Believe it or not, this is the one thing that I've thought about for more than two seconds!" 

I can feel tears welling up in my eyes. He's right. If I don't let him do this now, then my mother will kill me. I don't know how and I don't know when, but I do know that I'm not her idea of perfect. I'm not like Thomas, Teresa, Aris, and Rachel. I'm a mistake. I'm a flaw in her code. And my mother doesn't like anything that isn't perfect.

"Please." He pleads, his voice softening. Tears begin to form in his eyes, but he blinks them away. He places his hands on my cheeks, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "You're all I have left, Venus. Please. Let me save you."

I hesitate before letting out a deep breath, handing Thomas the radio back. He offers me a small smile before turning around and messing with the antenna again. After a few moments, a woman's voice can be heard among the crackling of static. 

I offer Thomas a slight nod, giving him a small, encouraging smile. He smiles back, but I can see the nervousness right through it. Taking a deep breath, he begins giving the woman the coordinates of every WICKED base, trial, and lab. 

I can hear the distant sound of the guards running through the corridors; can hear their shouts as they alert each other of what's happening. The cameras must've turned back on. WICKED knows what we've done. They're coming for us.

It's too late.

🪐🪐🪐

"She's calm now, Chancellor." A female voice behind me says as my eyes open once again. Moments after, Ava Paige enters the room, Janson following close to her heels like a lost puppy.

Ava stands tall, barely glancing at me before turning to look at the doctors, asking, "How did she respond?"

The doctor looks around at her peers, her hands fiddling with her lab coat. "The results were inconclusive, Chancellor." She replies after a moment.

Her eyebrows twitch upwards. "Inconclusive?" She snaps. Janson glances at me for a moment before turning his attention back to the doctors. The doctors all nod, glancing nervously at each other as Ava Paige glares at them. She holds out her hand. Immediately, a male doctor hands over a beige file. "Leave." She orders.

Just like that, the doctors all usher out of the room. Ava Paige, Janson, and I are the only people left in the room. Janson and Ava don't turn their attention to me for a few minutes, both of them reading over the pages inside of the file first.

Janson speaks first. "We just have to keep trying, Chancellor. The tests will work. With the simulations, memories, and serums combined, she's sure to talk eventually. We just have to give it time."

"I don't have time!" She shouts, shoving the file folder into Janson's chest. She turns to me, grabbing my chin and forcing my face upwards so that I'm forced to meet her eyes. Tears streak down my face as I stare at her. There's no sympathy in her eyes as she looks at me; no ounce of emotion other than anger and disappointment. My mother lets go of my face, ignoring the small sob that escapes my lips as she turns back to face Janson. 

"Besides," Janson continues, keeping his voice calm so as to not upset Ava Paige. "do you really think that Thomas won't come looking for her? We can continue to run tests on her; try and figure out why she isn't one of them yet, and I can guarantee you that Thomas will come for her."

"He won't." I say quietly, my voice cracking. The two people turn around, Janson raising his eyebrows. 

The rat man steps towards me, his hands clasped together in front of him, holding the file folder tightly to his torso. "I'm sorry?" He asks, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Thomas. He won't come for me." I reply, trying to raise my voice a little so that I sound stronger. "He's smart. He knows you guys and he knows what you do. You're not clever. You can't trick us anymore."

"Oh, honey, if only you were right about that." Ava Paige says, her heels making the familiar clicking sound on the floor as she walks towards me. "Thomas listens to his instincts. If his instincts tell him to come looking for you, which I'm positive that they will, he'll listen to them." She pauses, walking forward until she's directly in front of me, so close that I can vaguely make out the dark circles under her eyes, which she attempted to cover with a heavy layer of makeup. "Thomas might be better than you in a lot of ways, but I always prided you on being the smarter sibling." She drags a hand along my cheek. I jerk my head away from her touch. 

"What?" I snap, my eyes widening as she takes a step away from me. 

"Don't get too excited." She says, her voice flattening. "You might share your father's DNA, but you don't share his immunity."

My eyebrows furrow. Thomas is the half-brother that Marcus told me about? What does she mean, immunity? I'm barely even able to process and understand the first bit of information, let alone what the hell she's talking about now.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I ask, my voice rising, though it's shaking as much as my hands.

"Thomas, of course, got the good DNA. He's immune to the Flare virus. He's the one who, after years of experiments and studies, might just be the key to finding the cure." A small, distant smile crosses her face before fading as she looks down at me. Her eyebrows draw together as she tilts her head, looking at me with an all too familiar look in her eyes. "Imagine my disappointment when I found out that Thomas was immune to the Flare, but not my own daughter. Can you even imagine how embarrassing it was for me to look at you and know that you aren't immune too? Think about my disappointment now as I look at you, knowing that you're already infected." 

"How long have you had those scratch marks on your neck, Venus?" Janson questions, tilting his head.

"I... I don't-" I stammer, trying to process all this information.

"They don't look fresh, so it has to have been a few weeks, maybe even a month, since that happened." He interrupts abruptly, pushing for me to remember. To give them information which, once again, I don't have.

"What scr-"

"Teresa informed us that you began acting weird after you killed Marcus. She noticed you touching the back of your neck more than usual. Could that have been when you were scratched?"

"I don't even know wh..." I begin, my mind spinning as I try to wrap my head around this information. And then, I remember. My heart begins beating faster as I remember the altercation at the house; Thomas running to my rescue, jumping at Marcus, and forcing the man to the floor. I remember the stinging sensation of the man's fingernails digging into my skin as I fell after him.

Thomas had stabbed the man in the thigh, but the damage had already been done. I'd already been scratched. I was angry. I wanted revenge. Not just for me, but for the other kids he sold out to WICKED just for money. For all of us who had to endure three years of grueling tests, experiments, and physical labor all because Marcus betrayed Jorge.

My voice sounds small. It isn't mine. It belongs to someone else, because I don't recognize it when I ask, "I'm infected?"

Janson nods, but Ava Paige remains still, staring at me, that familiar, icy look in her eyes once again. I break the eye contact after a moment, the look in my mother's eyes sending a chill down my spine. I sink back in the medical chair, my mind a tangled mess.