Ash was slightly surprised not to hear the sound of bullets peppering the helicopter as it ascended. But for once, she didn’t care. She would take a moment of quiet when she got it.

She looked over at Zach. He was still staring vacantly at a spot on the opposite wall, his eyes pained and disturbed. Slowly, Ash stood up and walked over to him. He didn’t look up at her as she sat down beside him on the floor.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, staring at him with concern. She had never seen that strange look in his eyes before.

After a long moment, Zach shook his head. “There was something strange. That ocean. The black water.” He looked over at Ash, his crystal blue eyes full of confusion and unease. “It was like… when I looked at it, I… I recognized it. Like I had seen it before.” He shook his head again. “That’s impossible.”

Ash looked at the floor, her expression darkening. Because she knew that it really wasn’t impossible. She felt the same thing Zach was feeling, except she knew why. She knew that she had seen it before. And apparently, if what appeared to be the case was true, so had Zach. Had they all lived outside the city, on the other side of the border wall, for years before?

Ash closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. She felt the vibration of the helicopter, its engines thrumming just out of sight, its rotors slicing through the air outside.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she whispered, her eyes still closed.

Zach didn’t respond, but Ash could tell he wanted to know. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to know, though. If she told him what she knew, if she revealed to him what the Sovereign Supreme had said to her, nothing would ever be the same. He would be changed forever, just like she had been.

How could she do that to him? How could she deliver the truth that would wreck his reality forever? Perhaps it would be better to not tell him anything. To spare him the pain.

“What?” Zach asked quietly, his voice almost a whisper.

Ash exhaled and opened her eyes. She looked over at Zach and shook her head. “I—I can’t. Not yet, not now.”

She could tell Zach wanted to press further, but he restrained himself. “Okay,” he said quietly, nodding slowly. “I trust you. But—please, if it’s important, if it concerns me… tell me.” He looked away. “You may think you’re protecting me and everyone else, Ash, but keeping the truth hidden isn’t a great way to go about it.” He laughed half-heartedly.

Ash was silent for a long moment. “There are truths that are better left untold,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, but it’s for your own good.”

“Yeah,” Zach murmured, looking at the floor. After a long moment, he spoke. “I haven’t forgotten, Ash. What I did to you. I never will, I—I never can. It haunts me. Always. And when the Authorities held us both at the base, they…” He closed his eyes tight, and shook his head. “They showed me a video. Of when I betrayed you. And—and it didn’t show me, it didn’t show the Sovereign, it didn’t show anything. Except for you. You, and your cries, your sobs, and…” He swallowed hard. “I’ll never forget the look on your face. Never. It tore me apart.”

Finally, he looked up at her. “When the Authorities had us… what did they do to you?”

Ash couldn’t find the strength to respond for a long time. She stared back at him, wishing she could just forget everything that had happened there, everything they had done to her. But she couldn’t.

“They put me in a prison,” Ash responded. “They thought it would break me, but it didn’t, so they… they brought me face-to-face with you. Or—what I thought was you.”

Zach shook his head. “It wasn’t. I never really saw you. But I saw what happened. I saw… me, or someone pretending to be me, and…” He closed his eyes. “You almost killed me. You choked me, you hit me, you…” Zach’s voice broke, and he put his head in his hands.

Ash felt as though her heart was sinking through the floor beneath her. Though it hadn’t actually been Zach whom she had seen in that white circular room, though she hadn’t actually inflicted any physical hurt on him, he had still seen it. He had seen what she had done to the person she thought was him. He would have really experienced that, had the Authorities not replaced him with a fake in a masking device.

But why had they done that? Why not just put the real Zach in the room with her?

Because they knew that the deepest hurt, the worst way to stab someone, is not through physical means, but through psychological, through emotional means. It hurt even more for Zach to be unable to actually be there, to do anything but watch as Ash unleashed her sorrow, her anger, her pain on the fake Zach.

“But that was nothing,” Zach said, his voice choked. “Nothing compared to what they did next.”

He slowly looked up at Ash, his eyes full of pain. When he spoke, his voice was nothing more than a ragged whisper. “I watched you die, Ash. They killed you, right in front of me, and…” His words died in his throat.

“They did the same thing to me,” Ash whispered, pain deepening inside her. “They tricked us both. They used a masking device to manipulate us, break us, and… think the other was dead.”

“But we’re still alive,” Zach said quietly. “The real us. Or at least, I think, I—I don’t know. I’m not even sure what’s real and what’s not.”

He grimaced. “This is what they’ve done to us. Twisted our reality into darkness, so that we don’t even know if the people we’re with are really there or not. If they can make us think things like that, think that people are dead when they’re not, if they can break us with just a lie… what else can they do to us? How do we know that what we’re seeing with our own eyes is even real? We can’t. That’s… perhaps the worst thing about it. We can’t even trust ourselves, or what we see right in front of us. Maybe this whole thing is a lie. Maybe we’re not even real.”

Zach sighed, staring up at the ceiling of the copter. Ash knew exactly how he felt. For a moment, she thought again about telling him what the Sovereign had told her inside the crimson jet. He deserved to know. But she still didn’t tell him.

Finally, Zach spoke. “Ash, there’s—there’s something I need to show you,” he said in a low voice, looking back at Ash. His crystal blue eyes were deep and dark with something like fear. “When the Authorities had me, they gave me a message. One that I was supposed to give you. But I didn’t, I… I was too afraid.”

He paused, and looked down, reaching into a pocket of the ripped black pants he wore. Zach hesitated, a mix of struggling emotions passing over his expression for a moment, and then took out what looked like a small metal bead. He placed it into Ash’s hand, and closed his eyes again.

Ash looked down at the thing in her hand, a small sphere composed of hundreds of tiny black cells. Was this a message?

Suddenly, the sphere vibrated. Ash jerked back, and the tiny sphere dropped out of her hands and fell onto the floor. It glowed white for a moment, and Ash stared at it intently, worried and slightly perplexed. Everyone else in the hold was watching as well.

Then, a voice spoke from the tiny black sphere on the floor.

“We are watching you.”

Ash’s heart skipped a beat, and she tensed instinctively. Everyone around her had a similar reaction. Scarlett got up and took a step closer, Swift flying down from her shoulder and landing on the floor. The hawk pecked at the small black sphere inquisitively, cocking his head to one side as it glowed white again.

“We know where you are. We see your every move, we hear your every word.”

“Then why aren’t we dead yet?” Michelson muttered under his breath.

“Because everything must go according to our plan,” the voice said in response, and Ash glanced over at Michelson and the others. The device wasn’t just speaking to them, it was listening. This wasn’t a pre-recorded message, but a live one. Knowing that the Authorities had probably been hearing them this whole time disturbed Ash, but it didn’t surprise her one bit.

“We have a message to give you,” the voice said, and then went silent.

Ash stared at the small device, tight with anticipation.

But when the device spoke again, it was a new voice. A voice all of them recognized. A voice that dripped with venom and slithered its way into each of their minds, sending a cold chill down each of their spines.

“Pay very close attention. Because if you don’t, it might result in an earlier than scheduled death for some of you.”

Ash looked around at the faces of her companions. They all bore similar expressions of shock and fear. They were hearing the voice of the Sovereign Supreme speaking directly to them. He was watching them. And Ash knew that whatever message he had to deliver could be nothing but bad news for all of them.

“I know each and every one of you better than you even know yourself. It is a truth you will soon come to know and accept. And though you think you are amongst friends and companions…” The cold, smooth voice laughed softly. “You are wrong.”

The Sovereign paused for a moment, and then spoke again. “So I will give you some help. In the end, you must decide whose side you are on. Because your life will depend on it.”

He left those words hanging in the air like a dark cloud over the eight in the helicopter hold. Ash noticed everyone, herself included, began to glance around at the people around them. Could what the Sovereign had said be true? Was it just an illusion that she was among people she could trust?

She knew, of course, that she could trust some of those with her. Those she knew best. Zach, Alex, Scarlett, and Jayden. But even among her closest friends, could she really be sure? It was true that she didn’t know Jayden nearly as well as the other three. And they had all kept secrets from one another at times before. Some of those she had trusted the most had betrayed her. It was sickening, not knowing whether you could trust your closest companions.

“I will tell you who each of you are. There are things about yourself that you could never imagine to be true, and there are things about those you trusted that you could never imagine to be true. You will be faced with a dilemma. You can trust my words, and realize that the only truth lies in me, or blind yourself from reality and stumble into your own demise. It is your choice. But pay very close attention, and watch your back. Because, as you will soon find out…” The Sovereign laughed quietly again. “There is no one you can trust.”

Ash felt a chill creep through her very bones as the voice of the Sovereign continued, penetrating the minds of each and every one in the hold.

“And here is why. One of you is not real. One of you is a murderer. One of you is a child of your enemy, and one the sibling of your enemy. One of you is responsible for the pain endured by your companions. One of you will be against you in the end. One of you has knowledge that will lead to suffering. One of you will lead the rest to darkness. And one of you will die in a few minutes.”

The Sovereign went silent.

Ash could hardly breathe. She only stared at the device in shock, overwhelmed by what she had just heard, and not even able to make sense out of it.

And she heard, faintly, the sound of the Sovereign Supreme’s quiet laughter.

Scarlett suddenly stepped forward and slammed her foot down on the small black sphere. She brought her foot down on it again and again, and white sparks flew from the device, a crunching and cracking sound audible with every impact. Finally, Scarlett stepped back, her fists clenched. All that was left of the sphere was a smoking piece of metal and wires.

Ash looked over at Zach. He was staring at the remains of the device with a concerned look on his face. He met her eyes, and all she could do was shake her head slowly. “Can we even believe what he said?”

Zach shrugged helplessly. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. If what he was saying was true, one of us is going to die in a few minutes.”

“How could he know?” Ash asked.

“You and I both know that the Sovereign knows a lot that we don’t,” Zach replied. “But I sincerely hope he’s wrong in this case. In the case of all of the things he said, really.” He glanced around at everyone gathered in the hold, as if trying to guess who was going to die.

Luke, who was sitting next to Kim on the floor, spoke up. His voice was clear, but tinged with fear. “We can’t just wait here, can we? Sitting around here isn’t going to help anything. You heard what he said. One of us is going to die very soon, and we’ve got to do our best to prevent that from happening.”

“Yeah? Well, what are we going to do?” Michelson retorted hotly, sitting up and staring at Luke. “Form a defensive circle, pray that somebody doesn’t get killed, and hope for the best? We don’t know who it is who’s going to die, and we don’t know how they’re going to die. And hear what he said about one of us being a murderer? For all we know, one of us is going to kill that unlucky one. We can’t trust each other any more than the Sovereign himself.”

“You don’t know that!” Scarlett interrupted, taking a step toward Michelson, who glanced over at her with a frustrated look. “You believe that you can’t trust anyone because the Sovereign Supreme just told you that himself. Either you’re trusting us, or you’re trusting him, because you can’t do both.”

“I trust myself, and myself only,” Michelson replied coldly. “And right now, I’m trusting my instincts, which tell me that in this case, the Sovereign was telling the truth. One of us really is going to die, but there’s not a lot we can do about it, am I right? If the Sovereign wants someone to die, he’s going to make it happen, and there’s not a thing we can do to stop him.”

“Hey!” Allison snapped, grabbing Michelson by the shoulder. He turned to face her and shrugged her hand off. “Have you lost your mind? Just a few hours ago, you were with the Insurgency, prepared to face the Authorities with all you had, believing you could stop the Sovereign Supreme. And now you’re just… giving up?”

“I’m not giving up,” Michelson shot back angrily. “But I know truth when I see it. And if I know that I’m in the same room with a murderer, a child of the enemy, a betrayer, a fake, and one of us is going to die in a few minutes… Well, excuse me for being a bit concerned! For all I know, you could be planning to stab me in the back the moment you get a chance! And our pilot, the one we have trusted our very lives with, could be leading us right into a trap!”

Michelson stood up, fear-clouded fury broiling in his eyes. “We can’t trust our own companions; we can’t trust anyone here. You’d have to be a suicidal fool to put your life in the hands of anyone else on the face of this earth.”

Allison got to her feet as well, a struggle with one leg broken and in a splint. “Sit down, soldier,” she said in a low voice, staring into Michelson’s eyes intently.

Michelson spat. “You’re not my leader anymore. You’re not anyone’s leader. It’s your fault the Insurgency is in ashes. It’s your fault all of my companions are dead. It’s your fault for being so stupid, so rash, so—”

In a flash, Allison raised her hand to strike, curling it into a tight fist. Her eyes were burning with intensity, on the verge of tears. But in the split second before she hit, Allison hesitated, holding her fist back. For a long moment, Michelson’s eyes flickered back and forth between Allison’s face and her raised fist, shock and distress immediately replacing his burning anger.

Finally, Allison lowered her fist, a struggling expression on her face. Unable to meet Michelson’s eyes, she slowly sat back down.

Michelson stared at Allison for a long, tense moment, and then turned around, walking to a corner of the hold and glancing around at everyone else from the shadows.

Ash closed her eyes and exhaled. “This isn’t good.”

“You think the Sovereign gave us that message to make this happen? To drive us apart and destroy us from the inside?” Zach asked quietly.

Ash nodded. “But I don’t know if he’s telling the truth or not. Either way, we can’t let it turn us against one another.”

“But if what he said was true, how can we not?” Zach asked grimly. “We could all end up dead if we’re not careful.”

“I know,” Ash replied wearily, and stood up. “We need to tell Jayden.” She walked toward the entrance to the cockpit, and Zach started to get up, too.

“Ash, you shouldn’t go in there alone,” he said in a low voice.

Ash turned back to face him. “What, do you think Jayden is going to murder me? You think he’s just pretending to be on our side?”

Zach shook his head. “I—I don’t know. But we have to be careful.”

“And in being careful, we’ll destroy ourselves,” Ash responded. “I know very well that it can be hard to trust, but we can’t let the Sovereign’s words drive us apart.”

The door to the cockpit slid open, and Ash took a step forward. Zach reached out a hand and grasped her by the shoulder.

“Ash, you know what he’s done,” he whispered urgently. “He worked for the Authorities for years. He lied to you, manipulated you, he chained me to a chair and locked me inside a room just to keep the fact that I was alive hidden from you. He shot a man even when he was a part of the Uprising. We can’t trust him. Just because you think you’re fighting the same thing doesn’t make you trusted friends. We don’t even know who he really is. For all we know, he could be working for the Authorities. The Sovereign said there’s someone who isn’t real among us. He said there’s a murderer among us, a betrayer, one who will lead the rest to darkness. There’s a pretty good chance that Jayden is one of those. You can’t trust him, Ash.”

“So why should I trust you?” Ash hissed, anger and sorrow and confusion crashing like waves inside her. “There’s just as good of a chance that you are one of those things. And in case you’ve forgotten, Jayden’s not the only one here who’s betrayed me. He’s not the only one here who’s lied to me and manipulated me. He’s not the only one here who’s worked for the Authorities.”

Ash closed her eyes tight, feeling on the verge of tears. But there was no time for that now. Someone was going to die in just a few minutes. For all she knew, that could be her. That could be Zach. That could be anyone she cared about, anyone she thought she could trust. She had been betrayed and deceived and let down and misled so many times that truth felt more like an illusion than anything else.

“I’m sorry, Zach,” she whispered. “But there are times when we have to choose who we trust. And that time is now. I’m choosing to trust. You don’t have to, but you’re not going to keep me from making the decision I know is right. We all know that trust is one of the most dangerous things out there. But you can’t love without trust. Trust has led to the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow I have ever experienced, but in the end… for me, the joy is worth it.”

Ash stared into Zach’s eyes for a long moment, hoping to see some sign that he realized the truth in her words. But all she saw was conflict and doubt.

Ash turned away from Zach and stepped into the cockpit, the door sliding shut behind her.

The cockpit was quiet. Jayden sat in the pilot’s seat, adjusting controls on the multiple screens before him. Ash sat down in the seat next to him and silently stared out the window.

What she saw stole her breath away. The black ocean was all she could see in either direction, far below and stretching to the horizon and beyond, the sun reflected in its glassy, eerily calm surface.

“Came here to escape?” Jayden asked, bringing Ash back to the present.

She paused, and then looked over at him. He was still wearing what was left of his executioner’s armor. Only a few cracked, broken bits of crimson armor remained on top of a featureless black layer, a ragged blanket draped over his shoulder like a short cape.

Ash nodded subtly. “Partially. But there’s something you need to know.”

Jayden glanced sideways at Ash. “What?”

“The Sovereign Supreme sent us a message,” Ash said.

Jayden looked slightly shocked, confused, and fearful at the same time. “You’re kidding.”

“No. He told us that one of us is going to die in just a few minutes.”

Jayden’s expression darkened.

“That’s not all,” Ash continued. She exhaled and stared back out at the wide ocean. “He said we couldn’t trust anyone on board this helicopter. He said one of us is a murderer, one of us is a sibling of the enemy, and one is a child of the enemy. One of us is not real, and one of us is responsible for pain endured by others. He said companions, so probably someone here. And he said one of us will be against us in the end, one has knowledge that will lead to suffering, and… one of us will lead us to darkness.”

Jayden looked as disturbed as everyone else had when they had first heard the message. He seemed to still be in a state of disbelief. “You think he’s telling the truth?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to, but part of me thinks he’s not lying.” Ash glanced over at Jayden. “If we stop trusting one another, we’ll fall apart. Even if what the Sovereign said was true, I’m not going to stop putting trust in other people.” She looked back out the cockpit window. “But we have a more immediate threat. One of us essentially has a death sentence. The problem is, we don’t know who it is. But—”

She was cut off by a blinking red light on the control screen directly in front of Jayden. Her eyes darted to the panel, and the moment she saw the display, her heart dropped like a rock.

Their helicopter was being pursued by a tracker missile.

Jayden jolted forward in his seat, his hands speeding over the control screens and his eyes darting over the displays in a panicked state. Within moments, the entire cockpit was pulsating with red light, and alarms began to sound.

Jayden slammed his fist down on a screen and spoke into the intercom, “Strap into your seats! This is an emergency!” He grabbed the throttle and pushed it to the limit.

Ash fumbled to secure the straps on her seat, pure terror coursing through her. Wind buffeted the craft as it streaked through the sky, snow flying past in every direction. The rising sun nearly blinded Ash, its rays piercing the cockpit window.

The sound of blaring alarms and the double rotors thundering through the air above rang in her ears. Ash stared out the cockpit window, fear pulsing through her veins. She could hear the others shouting from the hold on the other side of the door.

And as she stared through the cockpit window, she caught a glimpse of the black missile streaking straight toward them through the gently falling snow.