"Well, thanks for thinking I'm trustworthy, I guess."

"Are you still mad at me?"

I was a little caught off guard, but I just shrugged. "I'm not mad at you...but Jake, I don't know if things can be the same for us again. I know you can trust me, but I don't know if I can trust you."

"I just told you all of this stuff. I'm clearly not on their side any more. Why can't you trust me? What can I do to make you believe me?"

I shook my head. "That's not what I meant." Jake looked confused. "I can't trust you to be a friend to me. You hurt my feelings, and I know that sounds trivial and pathetic after all we've been through, but it's true."

"You know you were my only friend before we came here. Then you went and just willingly threw that ten year friendship away like it was nothing, just to fit in with your new buddies. I can't trust someone like that with myself again."

"I wish I could make you understand how sorry I am that I said that." He looked sad.

"You can't though. I'm sorry. Maybe I'll eventually get over it, who knows. But not now. We can still talk to each other and stuff, and have a superficial kind of friendship, but for now that's all it's probably going to be."

He sighed. "I guess that will have to be good enough for now. I'll leave you to whatever you were doing." He got up. "See you around." I nodded and he left.

I had turned back to my desk for all of a minute when I heard another knock on my door. Normally, no one came to our room, maybe every once in a while looking for Kat, but never for me. Now all of a sudden, I was Miss Popularity. I prayed to God it wasn't Terry.

It wasn't. To my surprise, it was Markus.

"What are you doing here?"

"I saw that Jacob guy leaving your room just a second ago. You guys used to be friends, right?" He stayed standing by the doorway and his expression was cautious.

"Yeah. Key words: 'used to'. We had a kind of falling out a few months ago." I paused. "Do you want to come in? I won't bite."

Markus didn't smile, or make any expression at all, but he did step into my room. Why was he acting so weird?

"Listen," he said, his tone serious. "You shouldn't trust him."

"Huh?" That wasn't the direction I had thought he was going in, at all.

"I saw him talking to Ezra about five seconds before he came into your room."

"You think Jake is working with Ezra?"

Markus just shrugged. "Looks that way."

I was totally confused. "Why would he come into my room though?"

He just shrugged again. "No clue. I just thought I should warn you." He looked part my shoulder and saw the speech paper on my desk. "How's the studying coming?"

"It's not. Every time I take the paper out, I just end up staring at it. I don't really care about it, honestly."

Markus came a little farther into the room, looking a little more comfortable now that we had moved on to a familiar topic. He sat down on Kat's bed.

"Yeah, I couldn't care less either. Just let Terry do it. He's full enough of himself to pull it off."

I snorted. "Let's not. I 'studied' with him the other day-"

"Willingly?" Markus interrupted with a grin.

"Ha, ha. And no, he pretty much cornered me. It was excruciating."

"I wonder if Aiden or Ezra is going to pick the winner."

"Probably Aiden. Ezra doesn't usually concern himself with us unless he has to."

"You know we have another match-up session coming up soon right?" Markus said.

"No, we do?"

He nodded. "I heard Ezra mention it. Apparently he's refereeing again. I guess it's like a mid-term or something. They're doing it as soon as Group B gets back."

I groaned. "Group B is coming back soon?"

"I mean I guess so."

"I wonder what they were doing all this time," I wondered out loud, not really even talking to Markus, but I saw him clam up a little out of the corner of my eye.

"Sorry," I said, "I now we're not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff." There was an awkward pause. "I hope Ava fares okay," I said. "She's so small."

"I know, I worry about her too," Markus said. "She's been really improving in training though. I try to take extra time with her whenever I can."

"That's good. It's so nice how you look out for her," I told him.

He shrugged. "I have a sister her age. She was sick the day of the kidnapping, and I haven't seen her this whole time, so I guess she was safe at home. Either way, Ava kind of reminds me of her. I was always a protective big brother type."

"That's nice of you," I repeated, not knowing what else to say. There was another silence. I realized I had never really talked to Markus one on one before, and had no idea what to talk about with him.

"Everyone in our Group thinks I'm weird, don't they?" Markus abruptly said, breaking the silence.

Huh? Markus never came across as the type that cared what anyone thought of him. "No, no one thinks you're weird," I told him, "Terry is weird. I think everyone just thinks you're really introverted. It's not a bad thing. I mean, I'm pretty introverted too."

"You don't seem introverted."

"Ha! That's just because I'm always with Kat. She drags me into everything. If she wasn't around, I honestly probably wouldn't ever come out of my room except for when I absolutely had to. I can't believe I'm admitting this, but I only had one friend back home. One."

"I didn't used to keep to myself this much. I used to be decently outgoing. I don't know what happened. When I came here I just turned off I guess."

"If you're feeling lonely or something, it's not too late. Everyone in our Group is dying to be your friend. If you try even a little bit, I guarantee that pretty soon you'll be the most popular person in our Group." I paused. "Thanks for giving me a heads-up about Jake," I said.

"Why would Ezra be trying to use your friend against you, anyway?"

I shrugged. "I have no idea. Jake and I don't even speak anymore. Ezra is just a freak, I guess. I think he kind of hates me." My mind flashed back to when I had heard him talk about me to his mom outside the hospital. He hadn't exactly been complimentary.

"Seems like kind of a weird way to go about it, though. I'd be on the lookout if I were you."

"You don't need to worry about me," I assured him, "I stopped trusting Jake a long time ago. Do you talk to any of your friends from your old school?" I asked.

"Nope," he answered quickly. "I don't think I really had that many really good friends. After everyone got sorted into Groups, we pretty much all fell out of touch. It's just easier to be friends with the people I see every day. You're pretty lucky to have Kat as a roommate."

"I know, I got super lucky," I agreed.

Markus cleared his throat, and leaned in a little closer. So now we were getting to the real reason he had come here. "I need to tell you something," he said. His voice wasn't even a whisper.

"What is it?" I asked.

Markus took a deep breath, and I noticed it was a shaky one. "I was on my way to see you when I noticed your friend and Ezra. I needed to tell someone about something I saw during training."

"Earlier today some of us were in Rosen's office, and I 'happened' to glance at her desk-she was busy talking to Aiden or something-and she still had her computer screen up."

"I kind of tried to edge closer so I could read what was on it, and I saw a list with our names on it. There were stars next to mine, yours, Carrie's, Evan's and Kat's names. Everyone else's had this dash thing next to it."

"That was it?" I asked. "Did it say anything else?"

"There was something written at the top, but I didn't get a chance to read it. It looked like it was an email or something."

Something clicked in my brain. Weeding out the spares. Considering Evelyn supposedly saw something 'special' in me, I doubted she was weeding out me. Which meant everyone with the dashes were the people being eliminated.

"What do you think it means?" I tried to sound like this was all new information to me.

"I think they're getting rid of some of us."

I knew I needed to tell Aiden this, immediately. He would be the only one who would be able to do something to save everyone.

"Have you told anyone else about this?"

Markus shook his head. "You're the only one."

Did I have a sign on my forehead that said 'Tell me your secrets' or something? Because everyone seemed to come running to me whenever they found out something shady. This must be how Aiden felt dealing with me.

"You need to tell Aiden," I told him.

"How do you know we can trust him? He might've written that list for all we know."

"Trust me, Aiden will help. He's gotten me out of more than a few tight spots. He's on our side. You need to tell him. He's the only one who can help."

"You're sure? You're sure we can trust him?"

"We can trust Aiden," I assured him.

"Okay," Markus still looked a little unsure, but didn't ask about it again.

I couldn't stop thinking about my conversations Jake and Markus the entire next week. For some reason, when Kat came back into the room, I had kept the events of earlier that evening to myself. I wasn't sure why, as Kat and I had discussed much more private or forbidden topics many times.

I kept watching Aiden and Markus's interactions, trying to gauge if Markus had spoken to him or not. I doubted Aiden would tell me if he had, considering the way our last conversation had gone. He hadn't so much as looked in my direction in the last week unless it was strictly necessary.

"Listen up, everyone, I have some news," Ezra said as we were all packing up our equipment after running a round of simulations. We had finally progressed to the point where they were allowing us to handle needles. Aiden had said that we would be practicing on volunteers soon enough.

"I have an announcement to make," he continued, "At the end of next week, most of Group B will be returning from their mission. A select few will stay behind to continue the mission, but everyone else will be returning to headquarters."

"Two weeks from now, you will all be undergoing another assessment before you advance to the next stage of your training. There will be written portions of the test as well as another physical portion. I suggest this time that all of you study up and practice the skills we have taught you in your time here."

Everyone looked at each other in shock. Shock that Group B was returning after all this time, and shock that we would be tested yet again. Markus and I exchanged glances with one another: he had been right.