This Is Not The End.

Chapter 3

"Who invited the Snuff?" a Flame asked, turning his privileged nose up at me. His accent was deeply southern – I guessed he came from old Virginian money or something – but he said everything with an air of dickhead-ery. Good first impressions.

"I did!" Kai jumped from his chair and tackled me, which was absolutely forbidden. I grinned and hugged him back.

The Flame scoffed and straightened the sheets of paper in front of him. In block capitals was the tag R047, and in much smaller letters beside it was JF.

"Skye, if you would like to take a seat and we can get started," Ariadne smiled and motioned to an empty chair between the boys.

"Excuse me?" The Flame pursed his lips, "You can't call her by her name. It's numbers only – order makes us survive,"

I coughed to hide my laugh. He shot me a glare.

"Thank you," Ariadne acknowledged him, "But I believe that, in doing that, you all are being dehumanised. I understand your abilities are very unusual to the human race, but you all are still people, and so I will be calling you by your first names, if that's okay of course,"

He looked as if he was going to say something else, but he didn't.

"Well I'm Kai," Kai shook her hand vigorously. "An Australian Sun, how ironic,"

Kai never shut up about Australia. I'd learnt to block it out at this point.

"It's lovely to meet you, Kai," Ariadne laughed.

"Well, I think this is stupid!" The Flame shook his head, "We've been given numbers for a reason – we should be using them!"

"Shut up, mate," I rubbed my eyes, already fed up with him and his silver spoon.

"You shouldn't even be here! This is a colours meeting,"

"I represent the Colourless. You can't just ignore us because we're not special enough to have a power,"

"Have you ever thought that perhaps there is a reason you don't have a power?"

"Woah," Kai intervened, "Hold up there, man. D'you wanna think about what you're saying, or are you happy being an asshole?"

The Flame glared at him, "I'm being honest,"

"No, you're being rude. Shut up before we make you," Kai didn't back down, and I raised my eyebrows to see if something was going to kick off, but the Flame merely held his gaze for a second before shooting his eyes to his paper. Ariadne scribbled something down on her tablet.

"This is stupid," he slumped back in his seat and I scoffed,

"Don't be such a prick next time,"

Ariadne clasped her hands and smiled at us. How she kept smiling after everything I didn't know – my first thought was drugs, but she seemed too put together for drugs.

"Right then!" she said, "Why don't I tell you why you're all here?"

"What, before a fight kicks off?"

She gave a little laugh but didn't add to that, "We've got a new trial for you all, if you're willing,"

Kai groaned loudly, "Can you call it anything else? I feel like a lab rat,"

"Okay, what about a fun little opportunity?"

"Worse. Worse. Definitely worse,"

I leant back against my chair, "What does the fun little opportunity entail?"

"I'm going to be honest with you," she set her tablet down with the screen facing the table so we couldn't peek at what she was working on, "This facility doesn't have long left. The drill you had the other night, that was real, and it's proven that this place just doesn't have the defence needed to keep you all safe,"

"Hang on," I said, "Why is that a problem? We can't get infected,"

"That's true, but you can get mauled to death,"

"Preferable to this place,"

"Skye," Kai nudged me with his foot beneath the table and I shut up.

"Sorry,"

"Don't be – this place is barbaric," Ariadne offered me a supportive smile which I appreciated. She seemed to be the answer to all thirteen-year-old me's prayers. Sixteen-year-old me had stopped praying years ago.

"So, what do we have to do?" the Flame spoke up.

"We have chosen you because we think you represent the best of your colour – or lack thereof,"

I glanced between Kai and the Flame, and I couldn't help but think they'd made a mistake. Kai was an erratic puppy most of the time, and when he wasn't he stared into space, lost in the labyrinth of his head. The Flame, well, he'd already made a bad first impression. Daniel Whatever-His-Name-Was must've really been the star player of this team, and he'd never even know about it.

"What we at SWORD are asking of you three is to make it to Washington DC. It's not far, but we need you to stick to the first road you see as your route. You can't miss it, you'll be able to see it from the edge of the facility,"

SWORD was the only thing I could remember when Janet tried to drill things into my head. Solitary World Onslaught Relief Department. They were different from the organisations which were trying to find a cure – those ones had much more complicated initials – SWORD stood for saving anyone who was left.

They had set up our facility, the hell that it was, and a part of me blamed them for the way we'd been treated. They'd been pretty busy over the last through years as The Push skyrocketed, but it could never condone what I'd been through.

"Why us?" I asked.

"We're not just sending you three," she explained, "We've sent out two other groups of three on different paths to find the best route,"

"So, we are lab rats?" Kai leant over the table, his hair falling in his eyes.

I could tell she was getting more and more frustrated with our endless questions, but we had a right to know.

"Doctors are saying the disease is soon to become airborne," she explained patiently, "Healthy, non-immunes have been quarantined in safe spots all over the world. We need to move everyone with abilities to SWORD's headquarters before this facility is overrun with the infected. There are so many of you that we can only transport you by armoured busses and tanks. As you are immune to Progressive Cerebral Decline, you're our best bet in scouting out the way to go, and so we need you to do this for us, but only if you're sure about it,"

"So, it's stay here and die, or go out there and maybe die?"

She gave a slight nod. "You'll be heroes to us all,"

"I'll do it," the Flame said immediately. His leg bounced anxiously, and he pressed against it to keep it still.

"Fuck it, me too," Kai shrugged, "I will feed myself to the hordes if I have to look at my yellow walls again,"

"Skye?"

"What about the others?"

Ariadne looked at me blankly, "Excuse me?"

"The others. My kids. Every Snuff in my ward. What about them?"

She consulted her tablet, unprepared for my question.

"We don't have powers, what will you do with us?" I drummed my fingers against the table, my nails too short to be making a sound.

"The Colourless will be transported alongside every child with a mutation," she said delicately, almost afraid she'd say the wrong thing, "You are still immune to the disease, and we will still strive to keep you safe,"

'Safe' wasn't the word I'd use, but she'd given a pretty good pitch. She promised me that my people – the kids without a chance – would be taken as seriously as everyone else, and that we would make it out alive and untouched, and I'd go to the ends of the earth to make that happen.

"I'm in,"