Nathan paced down the winding country road, thoughts racing, hands shaking. Trees obscured both sides of the lane, their entwined trunks casting shadows over the rough gravel.

Kyra twirled a stylus between her fingertips with a frown, scanning the words she'd written; they didn't sound like hers, though. They didn't have her flare, her detail, her voice.  Sighing, she cleared the Tab with a flourish. "Come on, Kyra. A five-year-old could have written this better."

Her hand hovered over the screen, itching to get all of the emotions trapped inside into words. But she couldn't.

Writing was Kyra's escape from reality when someone else's words wouldn't do the trick. Her mind, constantly over thinking and analysing, was put to better use – being creative. And she loved it. She didn't have to keep her anger, anxiety, or fear locked up. Words were hers to explore. But for once they wouldn't come. And how could they? How could she write about something she didn't understand yet? Kyra leaned back in her seat, hoping she would find the words she needed written on the ceiling.

A thud from above knocked her off her stoll. She froze, heart attempting to jump from her chest, listening to the once silent house. It was quiet. Almost deafeningly so. All except for the faint swoosh of a window and the ruffle of papers being shoved aside.

Kyra slid her Tab onto the kitchen bench and inched behind it, deftly selecting the largest knife from the block. Covering her mouth with one hand, she tiptoed to the staircase and turned right at the landing. Pale light spilled through Daniel's window, illuminating the hallway but throwing the stair landing into shadow. She edged along the wall, began to climb the next stairs. Every light tap of her foot resulted in a wince. 

A dark backpack was leaning against the stair railing; the inside was empty except for a Tab and a crinkled yellow file. There was a name across the top, but she couldn't quite decipher the handwriting. She leaned forward, eyes narrowed, heart racing every inch she gained towards the bag.

"Crap."

Kyra whirled around. The voice had come from somewhere close, so close she could hear the speakers ragged breaths, so close she could feel their presence. The staircase was empty, as was the hallway leading from the study nook to her parents' bedroom. Light, warped and drained of colour by the curtains, filtered in through the windows and cast deep shadows around the house.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she peered around the corner; in the reading nook was a long L desk that wore a layer of dust like an animal with a winter coat - a winter that had lasted eight years. The dust was scattered now, shifting as a dark figure ruffled through the drawers, placing what they found into neat piles.

Kyra moved so that she faced their back, her body pressed against the cool glass, her shadow ending just before the figure's feet. The person picked up a piece of paper, scanning it carefully with a gloved finger. There was something familiar about their body, the thin yet muscled figure hugged by their thick black clothing.

"Drop the papers."

The figure stiffened and raised his arms above his head as the papers floated down like feathers. "I didn't take anything I swear."

"Turn around, slowly."

So slow it was almost painful, they spun around. The man pushed back his hood, revealing a shock of short yet untidy dark hair. Shadows followed the curve of the man's lips and jaw as he took a shaky breath. Deep brown eyes connected with her wide ones as the knife dropped to her side.

"Ethan?" she breathed.

Ethan's lips quivered as though he were trying to find the right words. "Before you say anything, I'm really really so-"

Kyra's fists against his chest cut off the rest of his sentence. He buckled under the wailing assault and slammed into the wall, arms raised to block her fists.

"Hey, Kyra, stop it! Stop!"

"What the hell Ethan! You scared the hell out of me!" She stumbled back as the knife slipped from her fingers, using her other hand to brush hair out of her eyes. "Why are you going through my dad's stuff?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you the reason." He grabbed the blade and placed it on the desk behind him, pausing to ensure it was out of her reach, before turning back to Kyra.

She raised a brow. "Try me."

"You want to know the truth?" Ethan threw his hands up in the air. "Fine then. Seven years ago my father left the city on a mission to the Outside. Ever since that night, there was this one star in the sky, one that always reminded me of him. It wasn't until I heard you thinking about it a few weeks ago that I got suspicious."

Kyra didn't know what shocked her more: that Ethan had seen the star, or that he knew she'd been thinking about it. It must have been from the night before the results ceremony where she'd sat across from James on their windowsills. It felt like a lifetime ago.

"I discovered that it isn't a star at all; it's a drone." Ethan swung the bag onto his hip and dug around, before pulling out a pile of papers and handing her the top one. It was blurry, but the image showed a white-gold orb, with strange markings around the bottom like an alien language. "You see that writing on that side? It's code, my father taught it to me. It says-"

"The Shadelands." It took Kyra a moment to realise she'd said the name. Her eyes widened as she looked between the paper and Ethan, and then back again. "My father taught me when I was a kid, but I didn't know it meant anything important; I didn't know I still understood it."

"Well it does mean something important. My father said that if I ever saw that word I had to find him. And so I started investigating. I broke into the Hall of Arbitrio."

A sharp breath escaped her lips. "That's impossible," she murmured. It was the room in the city hall that contained all of the city's files and history since before the society began; only the city council were admitted into the room. All others risked death to even touch the door handle.

Ethan didn't respond; he pulled the file out of his bag and dug through the papers for several minutes, before pulling out the correct one with a flourish. It was blank but when Ethan held it up to the light the white faded, exposing lines that slid away from Arabel like rivers. But they weren't; they were routes. Each one led to a different word scrawled in her father's familiar hand writing.

"Both of our fathers had these maps attached to their files. It gave me some possible locations, but nothing other than that. Guesses, possibilities - but I was still lost. That is, until the president walked in and started talking about some Outsiders they'd captured who were being held in the Control Centre. Outsiders, can you believe it?"

Kyra didn't have the heart to tell him she already knew Outsiders existed; but hearing someone other than James admit it, after all the lies he'd told lately, loosened the knot in her stomach. It was a blessing and a curse. The chance that her father was still alive was high, but so were the odds that Arabel would soon be under attack if what James said about the Outsiders' plans was true.

"I broke into the Control Centre's jail to see what I could find, and I actually found them Kyra. Real proof that people on the Outside exist." Ethan smiled; there was nothing rueful about it, no embarrassment behind the joy. "I know it's a long shot, but it only proves that our fathers might not be dead, that these Outsiders could be from the same place our fathers were investigating."

A shock ran through her as she recalled James' words from the previous day. She turned to Ethan with narrowed eyes. "Was Ashley Henderson there?"
Ethan looked at her for a long moment, so long that Kyra was worried he'd misheard her. Then he nodded. It filled her with dread; James told her the truth - Ashley was in there with a weapon. But that weapon wasn't a gun or a bomb, it was a race of people that wanted to see Arabel burn.

"How do you know?"

Kyra opened her mouth to lie, to hide what had been eating at her for days. But the truth tumbled out instead. At some point Ethan had sat down, his hands curled around the arm rests in a vice.

"So that's why they're in there? To try take down Arabel? But... why would they want to? That's what I don't get."

"The Exempt and the Outsiders have been living in secret for four hundred years; every second they're alive is another second that they risk their lives. They're mad at us, at our ancestors and they want someone to blame." Kyra shifted from foot to foot. "An eye for an eye. But it was so long ago, and the people here, they-"

"Don't deserve it, it wasn't their fault."

"Don't you get it? Some of them do. These people are still taking away what isn't theirs. Our memories, our chances, our loved ones... I'm not saying everyone needs to be punished, but the control... it has to stop. If only the Outsiders could see our perspective."

Ethan's head whipped up, his eyes wide. "The Outsiders in the Control Centre offered me a way out with them; all I had to do was set up the escape and find the other part of this map, your father's part. And then I'd be able to go outside."

With a wave of her hand, she sprinted down the stairs; Ethan grabbed his bag and followed suit. The faux wood creaked under foot but didn't sink. Kyra ran her fingers across the railing as she jumped off the bottom step and turned left to her bedroom. The chair was in the centre of the room, spinning with the light breeze that filtered in through the window and scattered the curtains in waves.

Grabbing a stylus off her desk with one hand and scanning the floorboards with the other, she dropped to her knees next to a small gap. She slid the instrument into the hole and eased the thin board up. Sighing, she opened it and ruffled through the objects she'd hidden there; it was full of her father's CDs and books and pictures from the old world. Ethan sat on the bed. Kyra glanced up at him every few seconds, acknowledging each change in his confused expression with pursed lips. She knew what it was like to learn too much at once, to have your world and everything in it challenged by one person's words.

"Found it." Kyra seized the smudge of green and grey from the pile and handed it to Ethan. Sitting cross-legged next to him, she murmured, "My father gave that to me before he left - said I could use it for a base for the worlds in my books. The only condition was that I couldn't mark it, and I had to keep it safe because he'd need it back one day."

Kyra smiled, sadly, faintly. She now understood why he'd made her promise to protect it with her life - in the wrong hands it would be all someone needs to kill thousands of lives past the fence. Or thousands of lives inside of it.

Ethan lined his map up with Kyra's; they fit like a glove. Hers, the terrain with a legend in kilometres, and his, the route and places marked clearly in black ink. He laughed with a shake of his head. "It's perfect."

"How long have you been looking for that part of the map?"

"Since I saw you at your Vinctures."

Kyra bit her lip as they sat in silence for a moment. She spoke slowly. "The day after I was attacked on the train, you said you trusted me. You showed me the Outside. Is this why you said that? So that I would trust you too when the time came? Was everything about finding this map?"

Ethan looked up. "No. I did trust you. I do. The day you were attacked... it was the first time we cut down your drug levels, on my orders. If I'd cut you off completely we would never have found you - and it would all be my fault. The thought of it... I had to show you that you're important. You're... you're like family."

Kyra slid off the bed and began to pack away her belongings. "The Exempt offered me a deal too, you know; coerce you into helping them or they'd use my family against me and make me do it anyway."

"That's not much of a choice."

Kyra shrugged. "I'm not going to sell you out. You're like my family too. I don't think either deals are possible without help though."

"Let's think about this logically for a moment. Either way the Outsiders escape." Ethan met Kyra's gaze. In that moment his hard eyes softened; somehow their darkness, nearly black in colour, seemed warm. "They won't hurt your family Kyra, especially not if we both know their secrets. I think we should use that."

"Are you suggesting we blackmail them?"

"Yes. Either they kill us for knowing too much or they help us just to get us out of their hair." He shrugged. "At least this way we're in control. There's no way to get out of the city without them, but if we use their resources, we might make it. If we pull this off, I could be the one to show the Outsiders there's another way. We could stop all the bloodshed before it starts."

"The Exempt would never go for a plan like that. We'd have to lie about why you want to go with them. Make it about them, how they can improve themselves."

"Exactly. They'd do it if they thought it would help them."

Kyra nodded slowly, thinking. "But if we do this and it doesn't work, are we condemning our own people to death? I'm not doubting you, but you've spent your whole life working for the people they hate. It would be hard to listen to you when you look and sound like the enemy."

"There must be a way to make the Outsiders see sense." His eyes widened. In seconds he was on his feet pacing the room. "And I think I know how." 

"How?"

"You understand people a lot better than I do. Odds are they won't listen to me. I'm too close to the heart of everything, I've been a Controller my entire life. They won't believe I didn't know what the leaders were doing."

Kyra nodded. "They'd only listen to someone who's been suppressed or controlled - they'd see the irony in that. Similar lives inside and outside of the fence. They'd believe someone like-"

"You, Kyra."

Kyra fumbled for words, unsure what to say to that. "No, I mean, no. I don't think-"

"Think what you want, but you have the power to make a difference Kyra. You're one of the only people who can." His hand on her shoulder made Kyra look up. Those eyes - so dark and yet warm - bored into hers. "Will you come with me?"

— author's note —

Sorry this chapter is a few days late. I'm back at school now (only five weeks until I graduate) so my updates might not be as regular as I want them to be.

Thank you again for reading!