Chapter Text
Normal. What the hell was normal, anyway? Was it going to school? Hanging in that empty park on the corner with your friends? Or was it lying awake, terrified that you were going to be found out and taken away, never to be heard from again? However things used to work, this was the new normal.
And Lucy hated every minute of it.
Thirteen years old. She’d been thirteen for three weeks, and yet she’d spent all of them staring at the same cracked old ceiling in her cell. Sorry, cell was too harsh a description, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a cell, it was a cabin, and it wasn’t a prison, Wythburn was a rehabilitation camp. Yeah, because that softened the blow about as much as you’d expect.
Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration. A fancy scientific way of saying death sentence, because if the disease itself didn’t kill you… Don’t think for a second that you were getting let off easy. If IAAN didn’t send you to an early grave then Skip Tracers, PSFs and DEPRAC would be happy to finish the job.
Skip Tracers, the ones who found lost kids and turned them in for a pretty penny profit. The scum of the earth. Lucy had never met one, nor would she ever want to. As far as she considered it, they were about as low as it got.
PSFs, aka Psi Special Forces officers. The ones that banged their fists on the cabin doors at half five every morning to wake you up. The ones that tasered as a bare minimum, and threatened to shoot you if you misbehaved. The ones that blasted ‘Calm Control’ (ear-shattering white noise) over the speakers to silence you the second someone so much as looked at them wrong, the spineless bastards.
DEPRAC, the Department of Psionic Research and Control. The ones attempting to find a ‘cure’ for the Problem. Because it was a problem, wasn’t it? Kids who could throw people across a room with their mind, blow up a parked car, or knock out the local power grid. What could be more painfully British than calling their problem a Problem, but with a capital ‘P’? Of course, that would make the IAAN survivors Problem Children™.
Lucy considered the prospect of that for a second.
It was probably why they called the survivors Psi, the ones with the abilities. It made it easier for the adults to put distance between them, make them seem less like the kids they knew and more like the monsters they feared and kept hidden away in their makeshift ‘rehabilitation camps’ . Note the sarcasm? Though, she supposed, if they called them ‘Problem Children’, it would just make them sound like they were describing the stereotypical hyperactive eight-year-old boy with undiagnosed ADHD. Not that the world wasn’t filled with them as well, but most eight-year-olds with undiagnosed ADHD didn’t use to have telekinesis, or the ability to read people’s minds.
Yeah, welcome to the new normal.
It fucking sucks.
• • 𝚿 • •
“Lucy.” Norrie’s voice took on a sing-song quality as she hung upside down from the top bunk. Her red hair fanned around her like a halo as she watched Lucy sit up.
“You’re going to fall,” she told her best friend matter-of-factly the moment she was conscious enough to see what she was doing.
“I did gymnastics for three years. I’m in my element,” she retorted with a grin. The bed creaked uneasily and her confidence faltered ever-so-slightly. Her eyes widened. “But it’s possible I was… overestimating my skill set, or at least the structural integrity of this unreliable piece of shit.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “If I move, it’s gonna fall.”
“If you don’t move, I’m gonna fall,” Norrie countered.
She laughed, caving instantly. “On three?”
“One…” Norrie winced.
“Two…” Lucy prepared to tackle her friend onto the neighbouring bunk. (Sorry in advance Lizzie, the only person ever to make their bed in this hellhole.)
“Three!” They chorused, Lucy diving forward the second the bed gave way and tumbling with Norrie onto Lizzie’s bed as their bunks fell sideways and crashed into the other two. Now balancing at a precarious angle above them, the incredibly unsafe bed frame gave one last groan of discontent before growing still.
Lucy looked at Norrie out of the corner of her eye, and the moment they made eye contact it was over. It was impossible to fight the hysterical laughter that bubbled out of them as they leaned back against Lizzie’s bed. If there was one thing she was grateful for in this messed up version of events they’d been forced into, it was meeting Norrie.
Norrie White entered Lucy’s life at just the right time. It might never have happened had the world not gone to shit, but if it had, she knew they still would’ve been best friends. If IAAN was like a never-ending storm, Norrie was the light that existed in spite of it all. Where many at Wythburn had slowly given up, worn down by the constant poor treatment from PSFs, Norrie had done the complete opposite. There wasn’t a day where she didn’t make Lucy laugh.
Sometimes it was a quiet joke at breakfast, usually at the expense of Jacobs, one of the PSFs that really had it out for them.
Other times it was a corny as shit knock knock joke at three in the morning when neither of them could get to sleep. Those were the best ones, because they made you cringe and laugh and laugh at yourself for laughing and in the hours of the morning that are supposed to be quiet they’re suddenly lit up with the sound of blanket-muffled giggles and the reminder that things aren’t all as bad as they seem. At least, not for that moment.
A loud hammering against the door shut the pair of them up instantly. It was Jacobs, no surprise there. “Keep it down!” He yelled. “Don’t make me come in there and see what all that fuss is about!”
The two of them side-eyed each other before clamping their hands over their mouths to stop them from setting each other off laughing again. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut as her body shook with silent giggles, and Norrie leaned against her in an attempt to suppress her own laughter. It wasn’t the first time they’d been told off making too much noise, and it was unlikely to be the last, but Lucy wasn’t scared of it. Not when she was with Norrie.
Once the footsteps retreated from the door, Lucy slowly removed her hand from her mouth. “Remind me why you thought that was a good idea?” She glanced over at the still-balanced bunks and Norrie followed the line of her gaze before shrugging.
“You’re not a morning person, Lucy. Sometimes I have to get creative if I want you to get up on time,” she replied matter-of-factly. “And it worked, didn’t it?”
“It trashed our room,” she pointed out.
Norrie shrugged again. “Not like she was much of a looker in the first place, was she?”
At that point, Lizzie and her bunkmate Ruth returned from the showers escorted by two other PSFs. It was lucky that the officers didn’t see the state of their room when they dropped the girls off, or there’d be hell to pay. Lizzie stood there in her towel, staring at the bunk leaning against hers for a moment as she decided on what to say. It took a while, but she finally settled on something.
“This…” She pinched her nose in exasperation. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
Norrie, virtually without a filter or any sense of social cues replied: “This… is what you call nice?”
She received a light elbow in the ribs from Lucy for her troubles.
• • 𝚿 • •
Where Norrie kept Lucy sane, Paul kept her hopeful. Everything about the camp was split except for mealtimes, which was the only chance the girls and boys got to mix. And the only time where the ‘less dangerous’ ones were allowed to mix. That was where she met Paul. He wasn’t just separated from cabins like hers because he was a guy, it was also because he was a Blue. Although it depended on which way you look at it, which colour was more dangerous… If Lucy talked to him alone, she had a feeling he’d understand her a little better than Norrie did, even if it was just a small difference between them. Paul was sceptical about the Problem, and it was a breath of fresh air from everyone who had just accepted that this was the way the world worked now.
“All I’m saying—” Paul punctuated his point by gesturing with his fork. A soggy piece of toast fell from it as he did so, landing on his plate pathetically. He pretended not to notice. “All I’m saying is that it’s a little too convenient, isn’t it? It took less than three months for them to figure out what we are, figure out how we tick and all that bullshit. And Fittes and Rotwell, two of the most influential scientists in London just happened to have enough disposable income to fund an entire new division of the Government? I don’t buy it.”
“Well they are two of the most influential scientists in London,” his roommate Alfie chimed in. “They’re probably raking in more money now as a result of the Problem than they have in years.”
Paul smirked, pointing at Alfie with his fork. “And that, my friend, is what we like to call motive.”
Norrie rolled her eyes, pushing her porridge around her bowl as if it might suddenly turn into something more appetising if she prodded it enough. “So clever and handsome,” she deadpanned, turning to Lucy. “Such a radical thinker, isn’t he Lucy.”
“Say what you want, but you can’t ignore the inconsistencies forever.” He shrugged. “You’re a Green, aren’t you? You’re supposed to be smart.”
“Smart enough to tune you out when you start being annoying,” she replied with a laugh.
“Oh, is that why you always zone out when I prove you wrong?” He joked. “Just you wait, Norrie White. One day I’ll break us all out of here, and we can find the real source of the Problem.”
“Of course, Mr Conspiracy,” she retorted. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Lucy thought it over. “You’d really break us out of here?”
“‘Course I would. They can’t stop all of us, can they?” He grinned. “And I’d go straight to London and see what they were really doing in those research labs.”
“You’re absolutely mental.” Alfie shook his head at him. “They’d turn you into a lab rat and probably give you a lobotomy.” Alfie, being a Green like Norrie, was the practical one in the group. He stopped things from escalating into all out chaos, Lucy appreciated that.
“That’s why I’m bringing you as backup,” Paul replied with a grin.
Alfie shook his head so much it Lucy almost expected it to detach from his neck. “Absolutely not. I’m essentially useless, and we’re both going to end up dead. I do not consent to this!”
“You can be my guy in the chair!”
Lucy laughed as Norrie scoffed at them dismissively, and everything else seemed to fade into the background. These were her people. Hers. Her own mother was practically prepared to pay the PSFs to take Lucy off her hands the day they came knocking, but Norrie was the one who dusted her off in the back of the minivan and told her:
“Now that ‘tragic backstory’ can be checked off the list, I’ve decided we’re the main characters in this shitshow. Sound like a deal?”
Confused, and a little intimidated, Lucy had nodded.
“Good. I’m Norrie White, and I think we should stick together if we want to survive this clusterfuck of a ‘Problem’. By making us the main characters, we now have plot armour. We’re going to get through this easily, because we’re fucking unkillable now.”
Lucy frowned. “Are you sure that’s how that works?”
“Positive. What’s your name?”
“Lucy Carlyle.”
Norrie grabbed her hand, holding it tightly. For a moment, Lucy was almost overwhelmed by the need to protect this girl. “We’re invincible now, Lucy Carlyle.” Then she let go of her hand, and the feeling was gone.
They had each other's backs after that, and Lucy realised what she thought she had in her family was nothing compared to what she got out of this one friendship.
It was a shame it was built on one fundamentally inexcusable lie.
Lucy wasn’t a Green like Norrie, or the other girls in their cabin.
She was an Orange, and everyone knew Oranges were monsters.
• • 𝚿 • •
Six months ago
Her mother threw the letter down on the kitchen table and scoffed. “Utter bollocks, that. It’ll be gone in two weeks, I tell you, and they’ll be embarrassed for making such a fuss.” She picked up the laundry basket and moved it to the counter, and Lucy took that as her chance to sneak a peek at the letter that had been sent home from school.
Dear Parent,
You likely will have heard by now about the disease threatening our nation’s children. The recently formed Department of Psionic Research and Control has released a set of guidelines that we have been permitted to share with you and hopefully it will help identify whether or not your child is at risk. The contents of this report may distress your child, so we advise you not to discuss the current climate openly in your household.
Lucy rolled her eyes. It was a little late for that.
We have been encouraged to keep news reports and all discussions of the illness out of classrooms and assemblies for this exact reason.
These are uncertain times, but rest assured that your child’s education will continue as per usual for as long as we are able to keep the school open. If you have any concerns, speak to Headmistress Nolan via her secretary.
SIGNS YOUR CHILD IS AT RISK:
- Your child suddenly becomes sullen and withdrawn, and/or loses interest in activities they previously enjoyed.
- Your child begins to have abnormal difficulty in concentrating or suddenly becomes hyperfocused on tasks, resulting in them losing track of time and/or neglecting themselves or others.
- Your child becomes prone to violent outcomes, unusually reckless behaviour or self-injury (burns, bruising, cuts that cannot be explained).
- Your child develops behaviours or abilities that are inexplicable, dangerous, or cause you or others physical harm.
IF YOUR CHILD DEMONSTRATES ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, REGISTER THEM ON THE DEPRAC OFFICIAL WEBSITE AND WAIT TO BE CONTACTED ABOUT THE LOCAL HOSPITAL TO WHICH THEY SHOULD BE TAKEN.
As much as she wanted to believe her mum had a point… The slowly dwindling number of classmates begged to differ. It took three weeks for her form group to go from twenty-six to nine. Seven of her classmates’ families were organising funerals already.
Lucy skimmed over the symptoms again, briefly wondering if any of them applied to her. She scoffed at her second glance, realising what bullshit it all was. Sullen and withdrawn? Oh, maybe that’s because people are dying, and everyone’s scared shitless about it. Abnormal difficulty in concentrating? That could describe half of her original class, and it wasn’t a new development.
She skipped to the last point, reading it at least three times over just to make sure she’d understood it correctly. The problem with trying to keep big things under wraps was that everyone was bound to find out sooner or later, especially in such a tight knit community. All it took was someone in the year above sneaking their phone into school and suddenly everyone knew what their parents had been trying to shield them from.
People were dying.
Children were dying.
The adults seemed to be completely unaffected by the mysterious illness sweeping the nation, as well as anyone under eight and over fourteen years old. Something was picking off that age group, Lucy’s age group.
And somehow, they thought they could hide it from them.
It got to the point where it was impossible to tell if someone’s parents were keeping them home because they were scared of them getting sick, or because they were already dead. Lucy went to bed every night wondering if she’d wake up the next morning.
As her eyes were drawn once again to the final point on the letter, a memory of what she’d seen on the news resurfaced. It was of a little girl no older than nine, terrified out of her mind, being manhandled and medically subdued after throwing a grown man against a wall so hard something irreversibly snapped.
At some point, they stopped caring about the ones that died, and everyone slowly came to terms with the real reason DEPRAC was formed. The Department of Psionic Research and Control. They knew exactly what was happening, and it wasn’t the ones that were dying they were worried about.
It was the ones that remained that terrified them.
• • 𝚿 • •
Two months ago
Lucy wasn’t dead yet, and as more time passed she started to think that it was never going to happen.
But if she didn’t die, then that meant something much, much worse.
To deal with the ‘enhanced’, more commonly known as Psi (the P in DEPRAC makes more sense now, doesn’t it?) rehabilitation camps were set up across the country. How they thought they’d be able to ‘rehabilitate’ them, Lucy had no idea, but somehow the Government seemed optimistic.
She soon realised it wasn’t optimism, but heavily veiled fear. There wasn’t a cure, no matter how much questionable research DEPRAC seemed to carry out. This wasn’t about helping the kids, this was about control.
Lucy learned that lesson in the back of an unstable minivan as she looked out of the window and saw that her mother had already shut the door. No final wave of goodbye, not even the slightest regret of what she’d done. Granted she didn’t have a choice when the PSFs came knocking, because she could have at least acted like the goodbye meant something to her. She knew it didn’t, but that didn’t mean the lack of effort wasn’t hurtful.
She turned away from the window and looked at Norrie instead, her new friend. Her new, slightly intimidating, incredibly overconfident friend. Lucy didn’t mind being friends with someone like that, it meant she could blend into the background more easily. Drawing attention to yourself when things were the way they were at the moment was practically a death sentence in itself. She’d tone Norrie down where necessary, if it helped keep them both out of trouble, but Lucy liked that she’d have the ability to hide in her friend’s shadow.
That is, if they even got to stay together.
As soon as they reached Wythburn, an old school that had been abandoned for years before the Problem (if the DANGER, ASBESTOS signs on the gym supply shed was anything to go by) but had been brought out of retirement in the past month, they were separated. First the boys and girls were separated, and then they were split into even smaller groups to visit classrooms on the ground floor that had been turned into makeshift consultation rooms. Lucy risked one last glance back at Norrie, but she had already been pushed into one of the rooms.
A few moments later, Lucy was facing the same fate.
The man on the other side of the door was scrawny, and he was facing away from her when she was escorted in. That either meant he wasn’t afraid, or he had a method of neutralising her if he needed to. Her eyes scanned the room, taking in all the available details. There was a chart on the wall, a coloured pyramid; an array of papers were scattered across one of the desks; a large machine that looked a little too big for the room; a single syringe in a clear casing.
That was what she needed to avoid.
“Take a seat, Miss…” The doctor turned around with his head still buried in a file, he paused expectantly.
Lucy swallowed thickly. “Carlyle, Lucy Carlyle.”
He nodded. “Yes, yes, I thought I saw you somewhere down here. Ah! Here we go, Lucy Carlyle.” His finger hovered over a point on his list, and she assumed that was where she was situated. “Now, how much do you know about this system?”
She stayed silent, providing him with a blank look in response.
“Of course, where are my manners!” He put the files to one side and pulled over his previously abandoned office chair. His glasses slid down his face a little and he took them off to clean them against his shirt before putting them back on. “Please, take a seat.” He gestured to the chair underneath the machine as he sat in his own chair, and Lucy eyed the contraption warily. She’d never been in hospitals much when she was younger — never really needed to — but this looked like something you’d find there. That, or it was some sort of newly invented torture device.
She prayed it was something of the former as she gingerly sat down underneath it.
“My name is Albert Joplin, and I’ll be administering your test today.”
“Test?” Lucy asked warily, eyes straying to the machine above her.
“Not to worry,” he replied cheerfully. “It’ll only take a sec. And then I’ll send you on your way to get situated!”
He was too enthusiastic for her liking. No one was that enthusiastic about anything first thing on a Tuesday morning, let alone a damn test.
Without warning a walkie-talkie on the desk roared to life, a panicked voice on the other end yelling. “We have a situation— Orange out of containment! Orange out of containment! We need restraints in the cafeteria, we need—”
Then it cut out, and all that was left in the room was silence.
Right until the single gunshot pierced the air and Lucy almost jumped sideways out of her seat. Joplin jumped too, his glasses slipping down his nose almost enough to fall off. He caught them just in time and pushed them back up with one finger.
She didn’t know what ‘Orange’ meant, but Lucy found herself dreading that test.
Joplin cleared his throat uneasily. “Well… They seem to have sorted that! Why don’t we get on with this now?”
All she could do was nod quietly.
“This is a CT scanner,” he explained. “Judging from your hesitation, you haven’t encountered one before?”
She shook her head.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything!” Joplin pushed his chair over to the desktop computer, and Lucy could just about see her name being typed into a form of some sort. “No need to panic, I can promise you it doesn’t hurt. Before we start, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead picking up the files again and flicking through them. “Did they ask you or your parents any questions when they picked you up? Did your parents report your symptoms to the soldiers?”
Suddenly, Lucy was on high alert. Her voice shook with uncertainty as she locked eyes with Joplin, but she refused to let him draw conclusions about her. “No. Because I don’t have any symptoms.” That, and her mother wasn’t exactly known for her hospitality, so she’d all but booted the soldiers back out the door and sent Lucy on her merry way with them. A charmer, as always.
Joplin’s smile faltered as he focused on choosing his next words carefully. “There are lots of different kinds of symptoms, Ms Carlyle. We just need a quick picture of your brain so we can put you with others like you.”
“I’m not sick.” Lucy’s eyes darted around the room, looking for something, anything that she could defend herself with if she needed to. “I’m not sick,” she repeated. “I don’t have IAAN. I’m safe.”
“You don’t need to worry—”
“I’m safe,” she repeated again, more to herself than to Joplin.
I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe.
“Ms Carlyle, no one here is going to hurt you. A lot of the residents here are perfectly safe, and you most likely fall into that category! Are you good at puzzles? Do you have an eidetic memory?” Joplin attempted to calm her down with more questions. “Greens are good at those. Did you read ‘Matilda’ when you were younger? Have you ever managed to do anything like she does in the books?”
What?
“How about electricity? Have you ever made anything short-circuit without meaning to?” He was grasping at straws now, slowly making his way towards her as Lucy prepared to bolt for the door. There was too much about this that seemed wrong. Alarm bells were ringing in her head loud enough to cause a headache but no matter how much she wanted to run it was almost as if she was glued to her seat, powerless.
“Calm down, Ms Carlyle. If you hyperventilate you may faint,” Joplin warned, one last attempt at being delicate as he reached for her bare arm.
It had the opposite effect. As soon as he made contact with her, Lucy gasped like the breath had been forcefully stolen from her lungs as she fell backwards into the abyss.
She was alone in the corridor, and that was the biggest red flag. The room was… the room was right there, wasn’t it? She was just inside? Lucy reached for the handle, eyes scanning the corridor to make sure no one was coming. Even though she’d seemingly just escaped, the same wrong feeling from before was back with a vengeance. Then again, she was barely sure it had ever left, instead pushed to one side by the fear that seemed to have transported her here. It was accompanied by an even newer feeling, one of intense unease… The other shoe was about to drop, something still wasn’t right. She pulled her hand away before she could open the door.
It was her.
She was out of place, and it couldn’t have been more obvious if ‘doesn’t belong here’ was written on her forehead. Lucy pulled her jumper more tightly around herself, fingers clinging to the sleeves in a way she was surprised didn’t make holes in the material. Leaving the door behind her, she wandered down the corridor. It was completely empty, and it was impossible to tell if that was a good or bad thing.
Bad. It wasn’t empty for long.
As soon as voices started to grow louder around the corner, Lucy began to panic. She looked around, eyes falling on a nearby door. The light was off inside, which meant it would hopefully be empty. She prayed it would also be unlocked, but that was less of a guarantee. Luckily enough, it was, and she slipped inside before anyone could see her. It wasn’t just the voices that had prompted her to enter, this room had a pull that she couldn’t quite explain. Like this was where she was supposed to be, she just hadn’t caught up yet. Now things were running on schedule and Lucy found herself moving on autopilot as she sat down at the desk.
She hadn’t even seen the desk when she came in, even in the dark it was impossible to navigate the room yet she did so with practised ease. It made no sense, but she couldn’t help herself. Her hands landed on the keyboard, logging in to an account she didn’t know with a password she wouldn’t remember later. It was almost as if muscle memory had taken over, but that didn’t make sense, did it? She’d never been here before.
Lucy’s hands moved up to her face, taking something off and rubbing it on her shirt before putting it back on. She paused briefly. What about that action seemed familiar? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
The computer loaded before she could linger on that thought for too long, and her eyes widened in horror as dozens of files popped up on the screen. Pictures of kids like herself filled all available space, names and colours next to them and for a moment she spotted someone from her school, someone who disappeared one day and never came back.
Stephanie Childs. RED.
Red?
Her hand reached into her pocket, pulling out a USB drive that definitely wasn’t in there the last time she checked. The file along with the rest of them went onto the drive before she put it back into her pocket again.
More footsteps outside, speeding up just like her heartbeat.
Lucy held her breath until they receded. Clearly they had higher priorities.
As soon as the ‘transfer complete’ notification popped up, Lucy removed the drive and logged out of the computer. The screen went black and in the dim light shining through from the hallway, she could’ve sworn she saw Joplin staring back at her in the reflection of the screen.
Joplin.
Her eyes flew open, completely disorientated. Everything in Joplin’s consultation room was exactly where she left it, including the doctor himself. He was staring at her in a daze, hand frozen in the air where it had removed itself from her arm. It was as if no time had passed, but that made no sense because she’d been…
Where exactly had she been?
Joplin stumbled backwards, still not fully aware of his surroundings. He landed in his chair and blinked twice, before taking his glasses off to clean them and then putting them back on. He blinked again.
Oh.
Lucy hadn’t gone anywhere — not physically at least. It didn’t make sense and attempting to explain it made even less sense.
“Orange,” Joplin muttered to himself, reaching blindly for the radio. She wasn’t sure if he meant to say it out loud, but she’d heard that word before. It didn’t mean anything good. The sound of the gunshot was still ringing in her ears as she threw herself forward, trying to get to the walkie-talkie first.
She didn’t want to die.
Despite everything that the Problem came with, the risks of living outweighing that of dying, she still didn’t want to die.
In that moment, Lucy wanted to live.
She collided with Joplin, knocking his chair over and sending them both to the ground. The walkie-talkie spun away from them, underneath his desk and just out of reach. Panic took over as she tried to stop him from reaching it. “Please, please don’t kill me. Please. I can’t be Orange. I don’t want to be an Orange.” Lucy barely understood the words coming out of her mouth, the system that segregated the harmless from the killers. The safe from the risks. “I’m not an Orange. I’m not an Orange.” She grabbed his arm, clinging onto it so he couldn’t reach past her. “Please,” she sobbed. “I’m…”
She had to be something, or it would be worse.
Safe. Puzzles. Greens.
The conversation came back to her and she would’ve yelled the word if it wouldn’t draw attention to the altercation in the room. “Tell them I’m Green. Please, I want to be Green.”
She didn’t remember much of what happened after that. There was a grey uniform, a green ‘X’ spray painted onto the back. There was a bunk, and she was sinking into it. There was a file, and that file said GREEN, and that file was lying, because Greens couldn’t do what she did in that room.
An imposter, she lay awake staring at the ceiling. A cabin full of Greens, and an imposter. She was lying. She was dangerous. She’d been… inside Joplin’s head? Twice, almost. Enough to convince him that she was safe, enough to make him doubt himself and mark her down as harmless.
But she wasn’t harmless.
She was an Orange, and Oranges were monsters.