Sunlight.

The thought jolts through my heart like electricity. That door can't be our way out. It can't be that easy. But even though my head is throwing out warnings to squash my hope, I'm stumbling toward it, caught in the surge of teenagers eager to escape the facility.

Marcus walks through the door. The light filtering out through the gaps between the door frame and his body becomes whole. It's as bright as sunlight, but something is off. It's too white, too artificial. The crowd pushes toward him. In front of me is a girl with long tresses of black hair cascading down her back. The silky locks obscure my view when I'm pushed against her, but I see enough to know we're not heading outside.

We shuffle into a bare and spacious room with white walls like most of the facility. Black-and-white checkered tiles cover the floor instead of stone, like we're pawns on top of a giant chessboard. The black tiles shine like glossy squares of obsidian under the overhead fluorescent strip fixtures. My eyes ache from looking at all this artificial light. I've never missed sunlight as much as I do at this moment.

The beeping dies down as more people shove their way inside the room. No one wants to be stuck on the other side. It's either this—being herded together like cattle for slaughter—or ending up on the wrong side of the door.

I don't notice Willow until I catch sight of her slender frame and blond curls. She mumbles an apology to a guy she bumped into and rubs her thin arms as she surveys the room. She doesn't look scared, just sharp and wary, and I admire her level-headedness. I stopped being able to think straight the minute we entered the gym.

A loud slam makes me jump.

"Who closed the door?" Marcus asks from somewhere on the other side of the room.

"It closed itself," a guy answers. "Now it's locked."

Of course, it is. I've never been the claustrophobic type but now, standing in this locked and cramped space with barely enough room to move, I feel woozy, like I'm running low on oxygen. My chest expands when I inhale, but it's not enough. I can't be imagining things. The air does feel a little thinner in here: who's to say the Takers haven't brought us together to suffocate us to death? It'd be the most effective way to clean up the mess afterward. No blood. No struggle. We'd go as quietly as we came.

Don't let emotion dictate your state of being. I close my eyes, chase down every stray thought and wrangle it back into the dark box in the corner of my mind, just like Sam taught me to do. I observe the room and settle on the only other things in the room that aren't white: two rectangular speakers mounted high on opposite walls.

Someone nudges my arm. To my right is Alec, his features settled into a somber look as he points at one of the speakers. "That has to mean they're going to talk to us, right?"

I nod. Maybe Marcus was right. We might finally find out what we're doing in here. Question is, why would they bring us in here to speak to us? The cafeteria would have worked just as well. They could have placed the speakers in the blocks, too, if all they want to do is talk.

I don't like this at all.

"Me neither," Willow says, catching me off guard. I'm still too frazzled to keep my thoughts straight, or to keep them in my head. "I mean, what's the deal with the door not unlocking until now? This place is too specific if all they want to do is talk to—"

A high-pitched shriek cuts off her words. At the same time, the bright light turns off, plunging us into pitch black.

The noise drops me to my knees. I jab my fingers into my ears, shrinking myself into a ball like that'll make the noise miss me. My brain vibrates with the force of a jackhammer on steroids. My throat is also vibrating, moans ripping out of me, lost in the endless shrill cries.

It ends. The silence washes over me like a gigantic tsunami wave, making my ears pop. I blink against the sudden light and lift my head. It's too bright. A headache pulses behind my eye sockets; no matter how hard I squeeze my eyes together, I can't clear the dark spots dancing in my vision.

Someone nearby is retching, and my stomach turns at the sound. I'm so close to vomiting I don't know how I manage to keep my breakfast down. Breathing deeply, I focus on the person closest to me. Alec. He's wincing, cradling his right ear in one hand. I'm sure he also feels like his eardrums were stung by bees.

". . . Okay?" he asks, his voice distant like he's standing a hundred yards away.

Willow grabs my arm and jerks on it. Startled, I let her pull me a few feet and pause when the world tilts. She tugs me past a few kids still sitting on the floor or curled up on their sides, struggling to recover.

Then I see legs, twitching and jerking. The rest of the girl comes into view. She's on her back, convulsing from head to toe, her sky-blue eyes staring up at the ceiling.

"What's happening to her?" a girl standing beside her asks.

She's having a seizure. I step back when her foot bumps into mine. This is not a normal seizure. It's something that was induced by whatever the hell the Takers have just put us through, and there's no telling how this might play out.

I'm shoved from behind. Someone presses into my back, propelling me toward her. "Stop pushing!" I yell. "You're going to hurt her."

"Her?" a voice asks. "You mean him?"

It turns out the people behind me jostling for space aren't trying to get closer to the girl. They're inching away from another convulsing kid, this one lying on his side with his mouth ajar, drooling on the tiled floor. I recognize him as that Weasel kid.

As more people press up against the walls, I spot three other people in this state. One of them is Marcus. He's on his back at the center of the room, jaw clenched and head tilted back as his entire body twitches. My stomach roils harder. It's unsettling to see him like this, so vulnerable and helpless. If this can happen to someone as strong as he is, none of us are safe. Survival of the fittest won't keep anyone safe.

Their convulsions die down half a minute later. Weasel groans and presses his forehead to the floor while Marcus covers his eyes with a forearm. Buzzcut goes up to him and kneels next to his body, murmuring words I can't hear.

Marcus nods in answer, his throat convulsing. At least he's regained his senses. He looks dazed and in pain: no bruises to show for it but he looks beaten-up somehow. There's something shocking about seeing him in this state. I can't tear my eyes away.

"They brought us in here to do what—make us sick?" someone murmurs.

"We don't get sick, remember?" Willow answers. "Or we're not supposed to. And those of us that actually do . . ."

She doesn't have to finish that sentence. If this is some test to weed out the weaker ones, Marcus and the others have failed spectacularly. And failure is the one thing the Takers don't seem to tolerate.



Someone discovers the door is open, and the kids shuffle back into the gym. Buzzcut attempts to give Marcus a hand, but Marcus slaps it away. I'm relieved to see him angry. It beats being scared. I keep expecting him and the others to drop dead—or those men in black to appear again and take them away—but they're able to follow us out of the white room.

As I squeeze into the hallway, I overhear Rudolph a few feet away. "He was shaking on the floor like a spaz. That's what we should call him. Spaz."

A couple of his buddies guffaw. I trudge back to the cafeteria, massaging my temple, wondering what that was about. They gathered us inside a locked room just to screw up our hearing forever? And why did they have to pick that awful siren? First electric shocks and now this. They can't be doing this to torture us—but what do I know? This could all be a sick game or a twisted experiment to see how long we'll last before we have psychological breakdowns.

The TV screen that showed the countdown hasn't reset yet. No one comments on that. Everyone looks too miserable to do anything but nurse their headaches. It doesn't escape me that Marcus hasn't asked me to tag along with him and his buddies, and I can see why. He's slumped over in his chair, cradling his head. He doesn't look like he wants to talk to anyone.

"Dammit," Carson says. He runs tentative fingers along his earlobe. "I think that alarm ruptured my eardrum or something."

Willow leans in close to him. "Let me see." She frowns and grabs the tip of his earlobe with two fingers, pulling it back. "Sorry—just need to get a better look. There's something shiny in there. It kind of looks . . . wet."

"Oh my God," she gasps as blood slides out of his ear and runs down his neck.

"What—what?" Carson demands, his wild eyes flitting from my face to hers and back. When he touches his ear, his fingers come away coated with blood. "W-why am I bleeding?"

He sounds like he's seconds away from screaming his head off. I ignore his earlier complaint about my looking out for him and grab his arm, leading us to the shower room. Willow and I position ourselves on either side of him while he stands near one of the spotless porcelain sinks and cleans his ear out with water.

"Y'all don't think I'll end up like Marcus and them, do you?" He looks up at his reflection. He's scrubbed his ear so hard it's bright pink. Water drips from it, landing in darker splotches on the shoulder of his white shirt.

"I don't know," I admit. I couldn't lie to him if I wanted to. This is far beyond the scope of any reality I've had to deal with, even with all the strangeness of the past week.

"Could be damage to your eardrum," Willow says. She nods with confidence like she's an expert in otology, but all I see in her eyes is worry. Having blood spill from his ear hardly makes Carson as healthy as the rest of us anymore.

Two people appear at the wide door. One of them is the blue-eyed girl who had the seizure earlier. She's sobbing hard, her shoulders hunched forward and her head down. The lithe, caramel-brown girl has an arm around her waist and is whispering soothing words.

"Nothing is going to happen to you," she says vehemently. "If they wanted you dead, they would have killed you by now."

Recognition flickers in her eyes when she sees us. That and relief. "It's true, right? That she's going to be fine even though she had a seizure?"

She looks straight at me. I've been asked many impossible questions since I arrived here, and this one is up there among the most challenging. From the little we've put together about our uniqueness and the measures the Takers must have taken to ensure our fitness, it's unlikely they'll overlook this. Assuming the seizure doesn't kill her first.

Unlike me, Willow doesn't let logic stand in the way of her empathy. She rushes over to Lisa's side and places a comforting hand on her back. "Of course, you'll be fine, sweetie! You just had a reaction to all the noise in the white room, that's all. It's over now."

I make a pathetic attempt. "How do you feel?"

She sniffles and swipes a hand under her eyes. She's pretty in a delicate way, with those big eyes, pink lips and straight brown hair. Her skin is pale like she never got much sunlight even before this place. "My head hurts. It feels like it's been stuffed with cotton balls. And the buzzing in my ears won't stop."

"Give it more time." Willow sounds motherly. I get the feeling she's been in this situation a lot of times in the past, being the oldest of five kids and all. "In the meantime, you need to eat. Wash up and get yourself something, alright?"

A sliver of strength passes through Lisa's features, infusing into eyes still brimming with tears. "I will. Thank you."

We leave them in the shower room. Running into Lisa seems to have changed something in Carson. There's a frown on his face, but there's no fear. Maybe he's realized he wants to be a tough guy and show us he can handle stress. Or maybe he feels like he's better off than Lisa. Whichever the case, I don't question it.

"You think she'll be okay?" I whisper to Willow as Carson walks ahead of us.

She shrugs. "I want to believe that more thananything. But something about this doesn't feel right. Whatever is happening toher—I don't think she's supposed to be like this unless the Takers want her tobe. So why would they be doing this to her?"