The concussion has faded a little, but early in the morning I throw up all over the floor, and after some guards clean the mess up someone appears in the doorway, and I almost vomit again.

It's Xavier's father. The man from the Black Hole. The last time I saw him, he'd tried to kill me.

"Hello, Miss Evans, we meet again," he takes a seat beside my bed and I wish I could kick him, and wipe that cocky smirk that resembles Xavier slightly, but I can't. "I've heard you're currently suffering from a concussion, and you should get maximum rest. However, I have a question in which I seek your cooperation." Without waiting for my consent or reply, he continues.

"Recently, my son Xavier has been much more rebellious than usual, but I accepted it as part of growing up."

He wasn't even there when Xavier grew up. I grit my teeth to stop myself from yelling at him.

"So I decided to attach a tracker in Xavier, in case he goes off to do insensible things like other teenagers, and I've found traces of him on board a pod that was escaping the Black Hole after breaking the sensor... and it so happens that you were on board that pod, Miss Evans. Would you like to tell me where my son is so I can make sure he's safe?"

Time slows down. Xavier has a tracker in him.

"I-I don't know," I say, and that's the truth. My head begins to whirl again, and pain explodes in my temples, spreading out. The constant ringing in my ears gets louder, and I want it to just stop.

"You don't know?" He asks, sounding incredulous.

"Y-Yes," I stutter, closing my eyes, the pain and stress combined making it so hard to think, to breathe, to relax.

"Miss Evans, I'm very sure I've made known to you what happens if I don't get maximum cooperation," The man threatens, and my throat closes up.

"After w-we went to s-stop t-those people f-from... from taking... that girl," I stammer, the pain now blasting full force, my head feeling as if it should burst.

"Athena?" Xavier's father chuckles, "That one is one tough cookie, it seems. Likes to pretend she's all high and mighty and strong."

I flashback to the scene where that girl-Athena-had tried to crawl across the carpark. She was brave and unique and strong, and I admired her for that. I saw hope in her, I saw resilience, and pride. She wasn't like me. I'd been hiding behind a mask my whole life, and later on started thinking I wasn't worth anything, wallowing in self pity.

I should never be like that. I'm stronger than I know I am. I should push myself to my limits, and never be afraid of who I am.

"What happened after you found Athena?" Xavier's father asks, a hint of menace underlying his tone.

"I don't know," I say. "He disappeared."

"Disappeared?" He laughs, as if he's talking to a three-year-old. Then pain, a giant burden, a massive weight, slams down on my head, worsening my concussion, I'm sure. "Please, Miss Evans, we're having a serious conversation here. People don't disappear."

The door swings open, and Xavier's father looks up, irritated. In the doorway stands a guard.

"What?" Xavier's father snaps.

"I'm very sorry to interrupt your friendly little conversation," the guard says, removing his helmet, white-gold hair spilling out. Xavier's father's eyes widen. "But I don't think you should be treating my friend this way."

"X-Xavier?" I stammer, my head still cloudy. He sends me a nod and tilts his head at his father.

"Let them go." He says firmly.

"Let who go? Miss Evans?" His father lets out a humourless laugh, touching his fingers to the wall. A control panel appears at his fingertips. "I could trap you both in here and make the room self-destruct at any moment, so I'd advise you not to infuriate me."

"But you won't," Xavier says, "you still need an heir to your Edit throne."

Xavier's father's fingers stiffen, and my breath hitches.

"I could always make Miss Evans the heir. I could destroy you from the inside out."

The blood rushes from my face.

"The tracker? I knew from the first time that you stepped into my house that you weren't my father," Xavier says with a shake of his head. "I'm just another one of them, aren't I? After you destroy me you'll wipe out Amber's memories and make her think you're her father, and then you'll just repeat the same thing until you've found the perfect person who's just cruel and sick and cold-hearted as you."

Xavier's father claps slowly, walking towards him. "I see that you've learnt a lot the time that you were gone."

"I learnt it before I left," Xavier replies stiffly. "Now let everyone in this camp and everyone in the Black Hole go. Stop with the games, stop with Edit."

"What makes you think you have the right to request something like that?" With a flick of his wrist, Xavier's father directs the control pad to fly off the wall, and into his hands, now a three-dimensional object.

"As the heir to Edit." Xavier says.

"Don't think I'm stupid, Xavier. I know you're not intending to take over Edit. I was forced in the same way by Dakota's parents, you know. It was the wrong decision to go serve the Adams." Xavier's father shakes his head.

"Dakota's not one of them. Those were her adoptive parents. Dakota's Asian, from China. Her last name is Lin." Xavier keeps his eyes on his father's as he speaks.

"As if you think I'd believe that!" Xavier's father yells, and retrieves a gun from nowhere-literally. He grabbed at the air, and a gun just materialized from it. Xavier barely flinches while in contrast, my mouth falls open and I almost scream when Xavier grabs his own, loading and chambering it without hesitation before aiming it at his father.

"Let. Them. Go." He says calmly.

"This is your last warning, Xavier," his father warns.

"As it is yours." Xavier replies smoothly.

Both men's hands tense on their guns, and my eyes dart between both of them anxiously.

And then the door bursts open, just as Xavier's father squeezes the trigger.

All I see is a flash of dark hair that shoves Xavier roughly to the ground before I get out of the bed, stars flying in every direction, the world turning beneath my feet. I hear someone's voice calling out. Someone yells a name, before guards start to flood the doorway.

Bile rises in my throat, and I do my best to swallow it back, the ringing growing stronger in my ears. Panic overcomes me, pulling me under, before arms are wrapped around me, pulling my head into someone's shirt.

"Amber," a familiar voice says, and then presses a kiss to my cheek. It's Chance. "Stay with me, okay? Stay with me," Chance continues, his hands on my wrists, pressing them together.

This is just a hallucination.

"No, baby girl, I'm right here. I'm not a hallucination, or an Edit trick."

I didn't even say that out loud.

"What's wrong?" Chance lifts my chin, but his hand feels cold and foreign. Pressing a hand to my temple, I yank away from him, and sure enough, it's not Chance. Stupid Edit and their stupid tricks. It's just a guard, one with a pair of handcuffs. I look around the chaotic room and find no trace of Xavier's light hair. He was a trick too.

Why are the guards here? Why...

Someone presses something to the back of my head. It's cool and comforting, and takes away the pain of the concussion. I turn around, and stare into Dakota's familiar brown eyes.

"We filmed a video together on the ship," Dakota murmurs low enough so I can hear.

It's her.

"We need to get out of here. This place is sick and disgusting."

"Wait. What happened?" I ask as we move out of the room, my head finally clear.

"The guards... I think something happened." Dakota says. "I mean, that's obvious, but I think it's Carmen's fault. She's in the control room now, and-"

"Wait, what?" I lean against the hallway wall, my head starting to spin again.

"While you were in that room I met up with Caden and the others. They haven't seen Chance or Xavier, but we needed you to get out of that room, so we got this-" she gestures at the pack in her hand, a simple grey coloured object, "-that apparently takes away a lot of pain. Let's walk as we talk, okay? We don't have much time before everything dissolves into chaos."

Pushing myself off the wall, we begin brisk walking down the hallway.

"Carmen also found her way up into the control room using the Edit façades. We managed to find a machine in Athena's room and I'll explain later how we got to her, but-" we turn right as a loud smack sounds from down the corridor, and a soldier runs towards us, rolling his eyes.

"Hurry up, won't you? And by the way, hi Amber," he says, and I almost freak out, but as we turn left, running down the hall now instead of walking, Dakota explains, breathlessly, that Carmen's talking to us through soldiers, because she's manipulating them.

"Xavier" was a distraction, and his father fell for it. Dakota was the one who impersonated him because she knew best how he always acted-slightly cocky, always cool and calm, sarcastic at times, but underneath it all, determined. It was a little hard to get his voice, but in the end they managed to complete their task.

"Okay, I need to go now, meet you in Athena's," Carmen says, and the soldier runs backwards, away from us. Hurrying up a flight of stairs, the back of my calves start to hurt and I slow down my pace.

"Come on, Amber, you can do this," Dakota says as she takes the steps two at a time.

I need to push myself to my limits.

Motivated by this thought, I follow her up, up, up, just as the door below me smashes open, and footsteps follow us up.

Faster, faster, faster!

Dakota grabs a chair out of thin air, like Xavier did previously with the gun, and places it on the middle of the steps. I attempt to do the same thing, but it doesn't work. Strange.

My heart stop for a second. Is she an Edit trick as well? I almost freeze. I have to decide now, whether to trust her or not.

Dakota throws open a door, and I stop on the stair I'm on. Hurry up, Dakota mouths, and I count to three in my head. After three seconds when the guards are right at my heels, I start moving. Grabbing a gun out of the air, Dakota starts firing at the soldiers, and I know she's definitely Dakota. If she was a guard, she'd drop the disguise and help them.

Or maybe she could be Xavier's father's personal guard.

Running through the door, Dakota slams it shut, and locks it, motioning for me to follow her. "What was that for?" She asks, irritated. "You could've gotten both of us killed."

"Are you an Edit trick?" Dakota's rarely like this; she's always been sweet and kind and-

Dakota's lips curl into a snarl, and she wraps her hand around my throat, pinning me to a wall. Her façade disappears, revealing a guard, her hair tied up in a neat ponytail, her dark eyes fierce.

"I'm Dakota's sister, by the way," she says, a not-so-welcome smile on her face. Her grip isn't tight enough to suffocate me, but strong enough that there's already a pain burning. "Emily Adams. That little brat thought she could run off and be free, eh? Where's she?"

"They-" I choke, "they took-took her away," I sputter, gagging, my lungs screaming for air.

"No, they didn't," a voice rings out from beside us, and Emily freezes, her lips pulling back into a threatening grin, as she turns her head. The look in her eyes tell me that she's ready to take on a challenge, a fight.