Her words don't register at first.
Then they sink in like the hollow toll of a bell, and I'm catapulted back to when I first met Roan, when I sarcastically asked him if he thought the CC was killing Seconds who failed the Trials. He'd dismissed it because it didn't make sense, and it still doesn't, but . . .
"I don't understand," I say.
Cole moves past me and sits on her bed. Her shoulders are hunched, and she looks hollowed out and stripped down, like I've only ever seen her wearing armour and now that's all gone.
"What do you think happens to Seconds once we leave the CC?" she says.
"If we prove ourselves at the Trials, we are given some sort of government jobs," I say.
"And that's true, but not the way we think it is."
I lean against the wall and listen.
"Seconds belong to the government. The government set up the CC, and they work to keep as much information about it suppressed as possible. The CC likes to remind us to feel grateful that they're keeping a roof over our heads, but we all know that they're not doing it out of charity, don't we?"
I nod.
"The government doesn't fund the CC. The military does. They're training us. The Trials are not to determine whether or not we can offer any value to society. They are to test how useful we are to the military."
"Wait, what?" I blink at her.
"They train us to be physically strong. They train us to obey authority. They don't allow us anything of our own, anything that might encourage us to rebel. They train us to believe that we are worthless, and we all believe it, don't we? We're all desperate to prove ourselves in the Trials, because we think it's the only chance we have."
I can't deny it.
"It is the only chance we have, but not in the way that we think," Cole continues. "The Trials is a competition, but it's testing us in the worst kind of way. It's testing us to see who's capable of killing each other."
I gape at her.
She's joking . . . right?
"I'm serious," Cole says, reading my face. "That's what the Prey/Predator designations mean. The CC's military contacts want to keep on top of who they might be expecting in their program, so in our last year here, we are assigned a label, an expectation of where we stand in the Trials. Seconds who are marked as Predators are the ones likely to succeed. They are not necessarily the strongest or the fastest – they are the ones most likely to be capable of, or willing to kill the people they have grown up with. The others, the ones marked as Prey? They're expected to be the victims."
I can't wrap my head around this. It's too much.
"Do you understand yet?" Cole says, watching me. "To pass the Trials, kids marked as Predator are expected to kill kids marked as Prey."
"Why?"
"It's the ultimate test of loyalty, to see how far they can get us to go. It's hardly unheard of for soldiers to do awful things in battle, but even the military is still supposed to play by the rules. Human rights violations are still investigated. But imagine if they had a contingent of soldiers who didn't legally have human rights. Imagine if those soldiers had been brainwashed into thinking that they had no value at all, except what the Trials assigned them. Imagine if they were so desperate to belong that they were willing to kill their own friends. If you can get people to do that, you can get them to do anything."
"What . . . what does Undecided mean?" I ask.
"It's self-explanatory. It literally means they haven't decided yet if we are Prey or Predator." She points at me. "You're physically strong enough to be a Predator, but you're too attached to your friends, and none of them are likely to survive the Trials. The CC hasn't decided if they can get you to kill any of those friends, or if they should let someone else kill you."
"Are you trying to tell me that this is why you killed my cat?"
"Yes. You and I are both Undecided, so there's a chance that we will wind up as Prey. I'm not going to let that happen. I won't die in the Trial Grid. I hoped that, because you were also Undecided, I could make an ally of you, both during the Trials and then afterwards. I'm not going to pretend that life isn't going to get much, much harder after we finish them."
"Why didn't you just tell me this?" I say.
If she had, I could have told her that I was arranging for Boots to be taken somewhere outside the CC. But maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. The CC has warped Cole's mind, and even if I told her that I had a plan to get Boots out, she'd probably still have killed him in some bizarre attempt to help me.
Cole looks away.
I think I understand.
"Fletcher told you all this, didn't he?" I say.
She shrugs. "He gives me information, I give him sex. It works for both of us."
"Hasn't it occurred to you that he wants you to die in the Trials so that he doesn't ever have to worry about being found out?" I say.
She says nothing.
"And that's why you couldn't tell me before. You couldn't risk getting into trouble with him," I realise.
Finally she looks up and her eyes are wretched. "And I don't want to lose him," she whispers.
My heart twists.
I will never forgive Cole for what she's done, but at the same time I pity her. Fletcher is a monster, and he is using her. He won't give a damn if she dies during the Trials; he'll just replace her with another girl. But Cole actually has feelings for him.
This is what the CC has reduced us to.
Any sense of confidence or self-worth that we have is systematically stripped down and beaten away during our years in this place, until people like Cole are so starved of affection, so desperate for human connection that they will put up with abuse from people like Fletcher, because they don't think they'll ever get anything better.
Or because they honestly don't think that they deserve better.
My hands are starting to shake; I knot them together in my lap.
I don't want to believe any of this is real. It's too awful, too ridiculous, too cruel.
Is it . . . is it possible that Cole is lying?
Is she gambling here, like I was, hoping that if she feeds me the right-sounding lies then I'll believe them and keep her secret?
Surely not. That doesn't make sense. If she was going to lie, she would make it less grotesque, wouldn't she? If I hadn't seen the designations in that folder myself, I wouldn't have believed a word of it.
"Let me see if I've got this right," I say. "If my status becomes Prey, then I am expected to die during the Trials. If it becomes Predator then I am expected to kill. If I survive the Trials, then I will be handed over to the military as some sort of secret asset that they can do whatever they want with, and they'll never have to worry about human rights violations because I don't have any."
"That's right."
"What if they mark me as Predator and I refuse to kill anyone?"
"Then another Predator will probably kill you."
"And if they mark me as Prey and I end up killing?"
Cole shrugs. "I guess then you've passed? I don't know because I'm not going to be in that situation."
Pieces start clicking together in my head. "This is why you've been so vile these last few months, isn't it? You're trying to prove yourself as a Predator so you stand a better chance in the Trials."
Cole stares at the floor. "Ever since I found out what this all meant, I've been trying to . . . harden myself. I knew that people like Taffy were never going to be Predator, so if I could start dehumanising her in my own head, it would make it easier for me to kill her."
I feel a hot blast of rage at the indirect threat to Taffy's life, but I tamp it down for now. I can deal with that later.
"Don't you care that this isn't right? Can't you see how utterly evil this is?" I say.
Cole meets my eyes, and her stare is flat, blank, like she's taken every emotion and locked it away, deep inside.
"I care about surviving. I already know what my future holds – I'll belong to the CC until the Trials, and once I pass those, I will belong to the military. It's not going to be a good life – I imagine I'll be risking myself doing things I don't want, and I don't expect to be treated well – but it's better than no life at all."
"That's what the CC wants you to think. But we deserve better than this. We're people, Cole," I argue.
I almost tell her about Roan and Beyond and what they're planning, but I bite my tongue. She's telling me all this to protect her own secret, but I can't trust her with mine. I won't put Roan and Rosie at risk.
"You can't think like that if you want to survive. And I am going to survive," Cole tells me.
"But this is insane."
I want to protest that the CC can't get away with forcing kids to kill each other, but clearly they have been getting away with it. The Trials have been running for years.
I remember what Roan said about Beyond's source – the man who claimed to be a Second and told them that looking into the Trials was the way to bring down the CC. I've considered that he might not have been telling the truth, that he might not even have been a Second, but . . . he had been in the military. It fits with what Cole's saying.
"I've been trying to help you survive too, and you will realise that one day," Cole says.
My brain is scrambling over all this information, still trying to break it down and process it.
"What's the Trial Grid?" I say.
Cole mentioned it earlier, but I've never heard of it before.
"It's where the Trials take place."
"Right, but what is it? And where is it? In the mess hall? The rec rooms?"
She gives me a look that suggests I'm being an idiot. "Of course not."
"Then where?"
She sighs. "I don't know, okay? Fletcher won't say. It's somewhere in the CC, and I know it's not any of those places, but I don't know more than that."
My mind races. "Could it be outside? In the grounds?"
"I don't know. Maybe." Cole screws up her face. "But it seems likelier that they'd hold it inside where there's definitely no chance of anyone from the outside seeing anything."
Somewhere inside the CC, but not in either of the rooms I previously considered? That doesn't make sense.
Panic blooms inside me, and the wings in my heart start to thrash.
Rosie is counting on me to plant her bugs on any cameras that might be focusing on the Trials, but how can I do that when I don't know where they are?
I finally have the information that I need, that Roan needs, but everything is falling apart.
Roan.
He'll be down at the fence now, waiting for me. I have to tell him what I've found out.
I get to my feet so abruptly that Cole jumps.
"Where are you going?" she says.
"I have to . . . think."
She jumps up, blocking my path to the door. "You can't tell anyone else about this, Caia," she warns.
"I'm not going to," I lie.
"I'm serious. If you breathe one word of it to your friends then I will tell Fletcher what you know, and he will make sure you never get a chance to tell anyone else."
I don't know if she's implying that Fletcher will kill me to keep everything under wraps, but it wouldn't surprise me.
"I'll keep quiet," I say again, and it's partly true.
I'm not going to tell any of my friends.
But I am going to tell Roan.
And together, we're going to stop this before it has a chance to start.