Zoey awoke in a cold sweat. She jolted in the sheets, inhaling sharply, eyes going wide, before reality refocused itself. She drew in a few short breaths then slowed herself down, sitting up and pressing a hand to her face.

"Zo-Zo?" Candice inquired groggily from beside her in bed. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," Zoey bleated; her voice was heavy with phlegm. She forced it down, then added, "Just a bad dream." Candice started to sit up too, looking a little more awake. Zoey didn't want to be a bother, especially since Candice had her last class before winter break tomorrow, so she continued, "Don't worry. I need some air, that's all."

She got up, grabbed her coat hanging off the back of her chair, slipped on some shoes and stepped onto the outdoor balcony. It was below freezing, and it had snowed earlier in the day, but Zoey didn't mind that; she'd grown up in Snowpoint, and the cold didn't affect her too much.

She brought her phone with her, just as a distraction. It was still December 15th, barely. It was only a couple minutes until midnight December 16th. Zoey supposed she always felt a little off around this time of year, but it had never been quite this bad.

Zoey sought the comfort of her Chatot feed to calm her down. She had been busy in Hearthome working for most of the week, so she hadn't checked it much, and now was as good a time as any.

One of the first things that popped up on her feed was a photo from May captioned, "Aren't they precious?" It was of her tiny newborn daughter Allie and Gary and Leaf's seven-month-old son Briar outfitted in Christmas Haydens were visiting in Kanto and had, Zoey surmised, stopped by the Oaks to visit.

It perhaps might have struck her as odd, May and Drew putting their infant through interregional travel when she was barely a week old, had Zoey not known the reasons behind it. Adalet had yet to be inaugurated, but she had heard through the rumor mill (Dawn) that he was in the process of assembling a set of advisers from across different specialties. Coordinating was one of them, and Drew was on the short list. Zoey supposed his political science degree wasn't useless after all.

But it still bothered her. A lot, apparently—not about Allie, no, but that Drew was on the short list.

Adalet's election was momentous. It was an enormous leap in the right direction, the direction of a free and transparent democracy. But no matter how much she justified to herself that Drew was well-qualified (and oh, he was; he really was), she couldn't help but wonder: Would he be there were it not for his connections with the Championship?

And for that matter, would she be where she was were it not for her connections? No, definitely not. Thus, the question arose: Had anything really changed? Weren't they all still wrapped up in a decade-old conspiracy, tightly knit in their secret, powerful in their uniform silence?

On an impulse, Zoey closed her Chatot and opened up her contacts. With a flick of her thumb, her finger hovered over Homa's name. She'd answer. Homa never turned her phone on silent in case news broke. Sure, she would be sleeping, and she might be mad at being woken up in the middle of the night, but she wouldn't be for long. How mad could she be after receiving, from her own reporter, the scoop of her life?: There were sixteen, not fourteen, children who "died" in that bus crash ten years ago, and one of them was Leaf Greene, and it was no coincidence that she, Iris, and Paul were Champions today.

The conspiracy did not end the day they came back from the dead on March 5th, 2002; it persisted, outstretched its claws, deepened its roots. It did not end the day Ash Ketchum rightfully earned his Championship title on August 29th, 2009. And worst of all, despite Zoey desperately hoping otherwise, it did not end on Election Day, November 8th, 2011.

Zoey's hand shook, and her breathing grew heavier. She realized she was on the edge of a panic attack. The last time she had one of those was just days after the conspiracy began, when she was forced into a lie that she was dead, when she had to listen to the same broadcast that told the world, that told Candice, that she was—

"Zoey?"

Zoey came back from the edge. She fumbled with her phone for a moment before letting it fall to her side. Her eyes stung powerfully. She wasn't actually crying; her eyes had just watered a little, and with it being as cold as it was…

"Are you okay?" Candice came to her side, resting a comforting hand on her back.

"Yeah." That was what Zoey was going to say. It was her default setting to assure her others she was fine, regardless of whether she was or not. But her mouth disobeyed the rest of her being, as she found herself muttering, "No."

Candice looked terrifically worried then, and Zoey knew there was no backing out. She looked down at her phone's screen again. Her finger was still hovering over Homa's name, but with just an ounce of restraint, she scrolled a few names back up.

"Do you think Lucas would be pick up now?" Zoey asked, her voice shaking. It was most certainly past midnight by then.

"For you? Probably," Candice said.

That was all the assurance Zoey needed. She pulled his contact and tapped the call button.

Candice was right: It took a couple rings, but he picked up.

"Zoey?" his voice was full with equal amounts of exhaustion and concern. It pricked her with guilt. "Is everything all right?"

"Um," was all Zoey could say at first. Then she swallowed, steeled herself, and continued, "I'm sorry to call this late at night. But I need to talk to you. I need to talk to someone who doesn't know the truth. Otherwise, I think I'd make a decision I might regret tonight."

"The truth about what?" Lucas sounded more awake now.

Zoey sucked in her breath.

"The Fourteen," she said.

There was a brief spell of silence on the other end of the line. Then: "I'll be up there as soon as I can."

At that point, Zoey actually had no idea how much Lucas did or didn't know. The had not spoken once about the Fourteen the night since the Ketchum wedding, when Zoey figured Lucas's knowledge of her inner social circle derived from a fascination of the famed set of young trainers. She wasn't surprised or even all that weirded out by it. She imagined the affair probably was fascinating to anyone on the outside looking in.

But now Lucas was dating Barry. And if Barry hadn't said anything yet, someone eventually would, and Zoey figured it might as well be her.

Candice convinced Zoey to come back inside while they waited—no sense in getting frostbite in the midst of an emotional meltdown—and sure enough, Lucas arrived about an hour later, a little past 1 a.m., probably having sped on the empty roads all the way up to Snowpoint City.

Candice invited him inside and led him into the dimmed living room, where Zoey sat curled up on a large armchair in front of a roaring fireplace. Lucas pulled up a different chair close to her, and Candice plopped down on an ottoman.

Zoey inhaled a long, warm breath. "Thank you for coming," she said quietly. "You didn't have to—and—"

"It's okay," Lucas quickly assured her. "Don't worry about any of that. I wanted to come. Just talk to me."

Zoey had spent an hour rehearsing what she was going to say. No, scratch that. She had spent ten years rehearsing what she was going to say. She had always, always, wanted to say this, to speak the truth, but when the moment came, she suddenly did not know where to begin.

So she began with the one fact that changed everything about the story.

"There were actually sixteen of us," she said in barely above a whisper.

The rest, she found, came out easily. She was lucky her audience knew all the basics already—at least, the basics that had been paraded as the truth on talk shows, in headlines, through radio broadcasts… She didn't need to reiterate any of that. Just what lay beneath.

Lucas was an attentive listener. Zoey kept her eyes averted most of the time, but there were a couple of instances where she glanced his way for changes in his expressions. And there were, at a few pivotal points, some looks of awe discernible in the firelight. But never a look of judgment. That alone was a relief.

Candice was listening closely too, Zoey knew. Candice already knew the full story—she had gotten herself wrapped into it a little as well—but she wanted to lend her support regardless.

When Zoey finally finished, it was perhaps 2 a.m. Lucas said nothing at first. He was obviously thinking, and Zoey waited with bated breath. Then, carefully, he asked, "What made you decide to tell me this now?"

Candice shifted her position on the ottoman, leaning forward slightly. She was clearly most interested in this, Zoey realized. With good reason, for her behavior had probably been quite alarming to her fiancée.

"... I had a dream tonight. A nightmare," Zoey began. "I was on a bus. I don't know if it was supposed to have some connection to the bus that quote-on-quote 'crashed,' but whatever, I was on a bus. But this bus actually did crash, pretty badly, and I was getting crushed beneath it. And as I was under it, I thought to myself, 'No one's going to know what really happened.'" She paused. "Isn't that awful? I was dying, and instead of thinking of Candice, or even my friends, I was thinking of—that whole mess."

Neither Lucas nor Candice said anything. Zoey looked away again.

"I feel like a fraud," she said. "I'm a journalist. I'm supposed to uncover the 'truth,' y'know, keep people accountable."

"You do both those things," Candice pointed out. "Junia Stevens?"

"Yeah, but… then there's me," Zoey mumbled. "Then there's my friends. Leaf. Paul. Iris. Everyone." She dropped her head into her hand. "I almost called Homa tonight. I was prepared to tell her everything. I was prepared to come forward about it all. I only stopped myself because—" She looked up again. Lucas and Candice were watching her with anticipation. "—because it's not just me anymore. It's not even just them. They have children. This could ruin their lives. This could ruin our lives. So I told you—" She was speaking directly to Lucas then. "—because I had to tell someone tonight."

Lucas was silent for a moment longer. Then, he said, slowly, "Well, I'm honored you trust me. Really, I am. I gotta say, though, I dunno if this would ruin your life if you told it."

Zoey looked at him curiously. He continued, "If anything, I think it's a testament to your resilience. You were just a kid. You all were. That's a lot for a bunch of kids to have on their shoulders. And in spite of that, look what you've done together. You've, uh, kind of made a democracy."

"'Kind of,'" Zoey emphasized, and Lucas offered her a crooked smile.

"It's more than anyone else has ever done for this country," he said.

Zoey managed half a laugh. Then she sighed. "Well… it can't ever be, not really, until everyone knows. Everyone has to know. I'm going to have to tell the story someday." She suddenly choked up when she went on, "I don't want my last thoughts to be full of regret."

Lucas nodded slowly, obviously thinking.

"Someday," he agreed, "but it doesn't have to be tonight."

"Right," Candice jumped in. "It doesn't have to be now. It can be when you're ready. It can be when all of you are ready, whether that be in two days, a year, or ten years." She reached out and grasped Zoey's hand in her own, giving it a gentle squeeze. "And in the meantime, everything else is as it should be."

Zoey took these words of reassurance to heart as Candice scooted closer and kissed her atop the nose. Lucas leaned in closer, too, resting his hand on her shoulder. Zoey found herself at ease again.

Everything else was as it should be. For now.

Fin.