A/N So I had a few people PM me and say that they couldn't review the last chapter because I'd deleted the author's note, meaning they were down as already having commented on that chapter. I, being a bit slow on the uptake there, did not realise that would happen when I deleted the author's note. So apologies for being a moron. On with the chapter!

Echoing bangs rang around our cell as Kate kicked again and again at the door; she attacked it with a desperate energy, releasing enough power into it to crumple any normal metal hatch. Unfortunately for us, that wasn't what this was. She was muttering agitatedly under her breath as she threw out strikes, and I looked around at the rest of the group with concern; since I'd met her, Kate had always been one of the more controlled out of the lot of us, staying positive and calm at times when everyone else had been close to quitting. To see her so frantic now was kind of alarming.

I stepped forwards hesitantly until I stood behind her, unsure of what to do.

'Um, Kate?' I said. 'Maybe you should stop now. It's not working.'

When she didn't reply, I reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder.

'Kate-' I started, but I was cut short when she shrugged me off her, the force in the slight movement enough to send me staggering back a few steps. She stood still for a second, breathing hard, her eyes fixed on the door.

'I can do this,' she said through gritted teeth. 'I've never not been able to get through anything before. I'm not letting a door lined with some stupid rock stop me.' And with that, she continued to beat against the door, her feet and fists hitting out at the metal.

I stared hopelessly back at the others and my eyes landed on Star, who stood to the side by one of the walls, her arm still held up in its makeshift sling and her gaze trained on Kate. There was a strange kind of sadness in her face, a look that suggested she'd seen this sort of thing happen before. As I watched she gave a small cough, dropping her head to look at the floor, and when she raised it again she had a look of determination in her eyes. Zipping up to Kate's side, she slapped her hard across the face so quickly that the other girl didn't have a chance to block it. Kate stared at her friend, eyebrows practically disappearing into her hairline, shock taking her attention away from the door.

'Kate. Stop,' Star said, her voice slow and firm, leaving no room for argument. 'Look at your hands. That door isn't going to break, and all you're doing is hurting yourself, which is probably just what those assholes want. Stop now.'

Kate's gaze fell to her hands, the skinned knuckles swollen and bleeding, and when she looked back at Star the wildness was gone from her eyes. The two of them just stood facing each other for a moment, and then Kate fell on her friend, wrapping her arms around the smaller girl's shoulders, her breath coming out as shaky sobs. Star patted her lightly on the shoulder, then pulled back and put a hand on Kate's arm, steering her away from the door and towards the edge of the room.

'We should get your hands wrapped up,' she said, starting to remove her sling so that she could use strips of it for bandages, but Kate stopped her.

'Star, you need that. Don't worry about me.'

The blonde girl rolled her eyes and continued to tug the sling off, wincing slightly as she jostled her injured shoulder.

'It's fine. You're meant to start moving dislocations after a couple of days anyway – builds up the strength again. And don't pretend your hands are okay, 'cause they're not.'

Kate wrinkled her nose then gave a sheepish smile.

'Might've broken a finger in my right one. Nothing too bad.' At her words, Star let out a laugh, probably the most genuine I'd heard from her since we'd met, and shook her head in mock despair as she began wrapping up her friend's hands.

'You utter moron,' she sniggered.

The rest of us had been standing motionless the whole time, watching the exchange unfold in baffled silence. Eyes wide, I leaned over to Holden on my left.

'What just happened?' I whispered, my gaze still fixed on the two laughing girls sat by the wall. Holden shook his head slowly, his face holding an expression of mild apprehension.

'Magic?' he replied questioningly, his eyebrows furrowing slightly. 'Did we just see magic?'

'It wouldn't even surprise me anymore.'

After a few moments we broke apart, like a crowd dispersing after a street show, moving to different parts of the room. I wound up sat with my back against the wall opposite the door, knocking my head lightly back against the surface behind me as I tried not to let the situation become overpowering; despite the brief distraction that Kate and Star had provided us with, we were still in a really bad place, filled with really bad people, with no way of getting out. Looking around the room, everyone seemed to be trapped inside their own heads, and somehow I knew that we were all waiting for the same thing: the General. When it came down to it, the pull of finding out who had been running this psycho assault course was too much to ignore; there was a strange magnetism there, as if meeting this one person would cause all of our lives and the things we'd gone through to suddenly make sense. It was like there was this weird unspoken agreement between us all – there would be no escaping from this place (if it was even possible) until we'd seen the person who'd made all of us what we were. Like meeting our maker, only for us it was literal.

Gazzy came over to me and sat down by my side, laying his head on my shoulder. I squirmed.

'Your hair's tickling my ear, Gaz,' I said, shifting him off me for a moment so that I could wrap an arm around him instead. We ended up with his head in my lap, my arm laid across his back, my hand stroking his hair slowly.

'We're stuck here, aren't we Max?' His voice floated up to me, muffled by his hands hovering over his mouth as he tugged at his lips, the way he always used to when we were living in the School and he was afraid but didn't want to show it.

I tipped my head backwards until it met the wall, closing my eyes as I tried for the life of me to find a way to comfort him. He'd been brilliant the past couple of days, but at the same time he was still just a kid who'd recently lost his sister and had now been trapped back in an old nightmare.

'No, Gazzy. 'Course not,' I whispered down at him. 'What have I always said, huh? Every time we've been caught or chased?'

He gave a sniff and blinked hard, his gaze drifting around on the wall opposite us.

'There's always a plan?' he said, the words coming out as a question, like he wasn't sure it was the right answer.

'Yep. There's always a plan. So we're gonna be fine, just watch.'

Gazzy twisted his head around to look up at me, his blue eyes – so like his sister's – looking very young and at the same time somehow older than he was.

'But there isn't this time, is there? We can't get out of this room. There isn't a plan.'

I swallowed, pressing my lips together, and it felt like my throat suddenly wasn't big enough anymore.

'Hey, hey, now…' I said, ruffling his hair slightly. 'Always means always. Right now, the plan is to wait; that cloned loser said someone was coming to visit us. The General. That's gotta be the person who's in charge of all this. So we're gonna wait and see what happens next.'

He looked up at me for a moment longer, then turned his face back towards the door.

'Hm... Wait and see. Sounds kind of like a non-plan to me,' he said miserably, and I winced. Because it was, really. It was a non-plan. But it was the best I had.

I hunched over until my forehead was resting against Gazzy's temple, my hand moving around to hold his as it lingered by his face.

'We're alright,' I whispered into his ear, feeling as though I was trying to convince myself as much as I was him. 'We're going to be okay. It's all going to be okay.'

The room was nice enough; there was a comfy bed, a desk with paper and pens and a spinning chair, an en suite bathroom, a big window which let in orangey light when the sun set… Yes, the room was nice enough. But Ella didn't care. The room was a prison. Meals were delivered through a hatch in the wall, the door was kept locked, and the window – made of bulletproof glass – didn't open.

She'd been stuck behind the locked door for nearly two weeks now, and she felt like she was going mad. So much had happened, it almost seemed like it must be a dream, because it was all too intense and too fast and too much to be real. She wasn't even clear on how she'd gotten here.

At least, she remembered the start of it. All too clearly. As the memories came in a rush, running like a film strip through her head, Ella felt a bit dizzy and had to sit down hard on the floor, her face screwing up as she started to cry again for what felt like the hundredth time in the past couple of weeks. She had to be wrong. What she thought had happened couldn't have actually happened. It couldn't be that her mom was the one who'd put her here. No. No, there was some other explanation. Taking control of her breathing, she forced herself to look through the memories slowly, sifting through everything that had happened since Max and the others had saved her from the Doomsday brainwashers.

She'd fallen asleep in the desert with the flock, Iggy resting less than a foot away from her; she'd been able to feel his breath on her face every time he exhaled. Then, in the middle of the night, she'd been woken by a gentle shaking on her shoulder. She'd rolled over to see her mom knelt by her side, stroking Ella's hair from her face and saying that it was time to go.

'Mom?' Ella had said quietly, careful not to wake any of the others. 'What… What's going on? They said you'd disappeared, is everything okay?'

'Yes, sweetie,' Mom had replied. 'It's all fine. Jeb and I had to go and get a few things sorted out. I'll explain it all to you later, but right now we need to go.' She'd nodded her head towards a spot a bit further out, and Ella had squinted into the darkness, just able to see the outline of an unfamiliar car with a figure standing beside it; Jeb. Then she'd looked back at her mother, confusion and tiredness making her need a moment to search for words before she could speak.

'You mean…' she'd said, struggling to understand, 'we all need to go? Let's wake up the othe-'

'No, Ella. Just us. Just you and me and Jeb.'

'But why?'

'I told you I'd explain later.' Mom's voice had taken on a stern tone, like the one she'd always used when Ella was a little girl and refused to eat her greens. 'Stop being silly about this, now; it's very important that we leave as quickly as possible.'

That was the moment when Ella had started to feel really uneasy. She'd glanced back at the still-glowing campfire, the others all curled up on the ground, Max and Dylan lying very close together indeed.

'I don't want to,' she'd said, her voice growing slightly louder. 'I want to stay here.' Iggy had shifted next to her, and Mom's face had morphed into a weird mix of frustration and urgency.

'Ella, this isn't a game, sweetie. We really need to get away from here – it's not safe.'

The memories started to get a bit fuzzy at this point.

She'd pulled Ella into a hug, stroking her hair and rocking them both from side to side slightly as they knelt in the sand, and for a moment the child in Ella – the part of her that still considered her mom's arms to be the safest place in the world – had taken over and she'd thought that everything was going to be okay.

Then she'd felt Mom's hand move behind her, coming around to clamp a strangely sweet-smelling cloth over her face. For a couple of seconds Ella had struggled, fighting against her mother's grip which had suddenly become very tight, too tight. Then she'd felt her strength going, her head swimming as her vision blurred and she fell into blackness.

And now she was here. But where was everyone else? What had happened to the others? To Max and Iggy and the rest of the flock? To Jeb? What had happened to her mom? Ella dug the heels of her hands into her eyes as the tears kept coming, wishing with everything she had that she could believe something else, anything other than what had to be the truth. It was her mother. She wouldn't do that. She'd spent thirteen years raising Ella, all alone, just the two of them.

But no matter how much she tried to fight the thought, no matter how much she told herself that she couldn't remember what had happened properly, that she might have gotten it wrong, Ella knew; her mother had taken her by force from the desert, from the others, and had put her in this awful room with its locked door and bulletproof window which didn't open. Why, Ella couldn't even begin to work out. But she'd done it.

The hatch pinged open as lunch arrived, the smell wafting over to where Ella sat, but she didn't make a move towards it; she really didn't feel like eating.

I couldn't be sure how much time had passed since Not-Ari and his Eraser pals had locked us into our holding cell, but my best guess placed it at around an hour or so. The tension in the room was rising as we all waited for the visitor we'd been told was coming, so when the door's vacuum seal released and it started to swing open, it was kind of like everything was moving in slow-motion. Or rather not so much that everything else had slowed, but like my brain had been sped up, so that I had time to whizz through a million different thoughts before the person behind the door was revealed.

Who is it? Do we know them already? Have we met them before? Would we be able to fight past them and get through the door? (No, there's that freakin' antechamber with the cameras and the second door that won't open for us.) Will we finally get some answers about what all this 'saving the world' crap really means? Will we find out anything about where we came from, why they chose us? Am I ready for this? Are they alone or do they have back-up with them? Male or female? (Jeez, is this starting to feel like a game of 'Guess Who?' or is it just me? Do they have facial hair? Are they wearing a red hat? Is it Brian? Yay, I win.)

My mind racing, all I could do in the last few milliseconds was hope that I was prepared for this.

As it turned out, I was not. Not in the slightest.

A/N Woop, now we start to get down to the nitty-gritty stuff where all the random shit that hasn't really been tied up in the actual books so far finally gets explained. Or explained by me, anyways. The real explanations will probably be different. Or there just won't be any explanations at all. Part of me thinks that the latter is the more likely option, which makes me sad. *sighs* Oh, well. Review!