The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Twenty

"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.