The next morning I decided I was going to go to school. I wasn't sure if I wanted to pretend things were normal, or if I just wanted to go somewhere that I doubted Mickey would follow. Either way, morning came and I left, but I didn't take the Civic. Between the crash and thinking I was being followed, I wasn't a big fan of cars lately.

Besides, it was nice outside, and it wasn't as though I lived that far from school.

The pinks and yellows of the sky were fading to a sharp blue as I walked down the street, and though a few cars passed by, the rest of the world seemed drowned in silence. I didn't mind it. It was the first peaceful moment I'd had in a long time.

The longer I thought about it, the more I wondered when I had last enjoyed silence. No moment came to mind, so I derailed the thought process.

"Hey! Thomas!" an ear-gratingly familiar voice shouted from behind me.

I turned slowly, apprehension already rising in me before I even laid eyes on Walski. He wore a vicious and wide smile, but it wasn't him that my focus was on. No, it was the entourage that followed him; four men in dark clothes. Upon closer inspection, I could see guns on their hips ... and after I noticed those and looked back to Walski, I saw the gun in his hand.

"Walski," I said slowly, the space between my brows creasing as I took a few steps backwards while they approached.

They all came to a stop a few yards away from me, the brutish men who followed Walski beginning to fan out. Covering more ground.

"What's going on, man?" I asked carefully, eyes skipping between each of his muscular buddies before settling on him.

"Oh, you know," Walski shrugged, gesturing with his gun in a way that some part of my mind recognized as being both idiotic and unsafe.

You don't point a gun at anything you don't intend to shoot.

"I've had enough of this crap," Walski continued, maintaining my attention. His smirk had morphed into a scowl, his features creased and twisted in annoyance. Without another word, I found his gun pointed at me. "I'm done screwing around."

I didn't have a chance to say anything else before one of Walski's new friends had come at me from the right. He hadn't pulled his gun, and instead swung for my head. I ducked without thinking, and as he began to fall from his exerted force, I acted.

What happened next felt like an out of body experience. It was as though my body was a separate thing from my mind. I was half-surprised I didn't witness everything from some other point of view.

When the first man began to fall, I launched my backpack at his legs, which sent them clear out from under him.

He was down for the count the moment the second came at me, this one fumbling with his gun in the process. I kicked the gun out of his hand and slammed an open palm into his nose within the same breath. Blood spurted from his nose and he dropped to the ground like a dead weight.

To my surprise, neither of Walski's remaining two goons came for me, but it didn't take me long to determine why. Though Walski still had his weapon pointed my way, he wasn't moving.

It didn't take me long to figure out why.

Mickey stood smack next to Walski, a gun of her own pressed right beneath his ear. She radiated menace in a manner I couldn't put my finger on, but I knew that the smile she wore was purely wicked. I couldn't understand how she looked relaxed in such a situation, but then again, ever since the car crash, there was a lot I didn't understand when it came to her.

I didn't even know if I could still think of her as Mickey.

"Attacking in broad daylight," she tsked, shaking her head. "That's a new sort of low. I assume you're supposed to be part of the Kinetic?"

Walski growled, "I am."

She hummed and turned toward me. She jerked her chin in Walski's direction. "You know this guy?"

I nodded slowly, still in shock over what I had just done. I had just put not one, but two grown men down without hesitation. Without breaking a sweat. I wasn't even sure if the two guys were alive. I wasn't sure what Walski wanted. "Yes. We ... go to school together. We're on the football team." I paused, staring hard at Walski, still shocked. "I mean I knew he hated me, but I didn't figure he was out to kill me before now."

She snickered at that, turning her gaze back to Walski. "I wouldn't take it personally. Before now, he was trying to confirm or deny whether you were a part of Team Alpha." She pressed the gun a little more forcefully into his neck. "Isn't that right?"

Walski continued to scowl, and though he made no move to answer her, he also made no move to attack.

"I can't say I'm surprised," Mickey continued, faking a sigh. "The barbaric build, the ambiguous accent. You make a decent little decoy. I'm surprised I didn't run into you earlier." Her passive expression morphed into a wolfish smile. "Then again, I'm betting it was your lackeys that I put down last night, hm?"

There was an explosion of movement then, so fast I didn't catch most of it. All I knew was that Walski went stumbling into one of his men, and Mickey grabbed ahold of my arm in the same second, dragging me toward the car I'd noticed (and dismissed) earlier. I heard gunfire, and my instincts took over, sending me clamoring into the passenger's seat of the car as I heard more shots fired — these closer, from Mickey's gun.

I stared at her as she threw the car into gear, peeling away from my attackers faster than I could ever remember her driving before. She was cutthroat and confident — she was terrifying like this. I again found myself wondering if I could really consider this dangerous girl as Mickey.

"What," I managed as soon as the echoes of gunshots died in my ears, "just happened?! Why is Walski trying to kill me? Where did you—where did you get a gun?" I looked around the inside of the vehicle with wide eyes; "Where did you get this car? Did you steal this? How—how in the world did I fight like that?"

Her initial response was to roll her eyes. "No, I did not steal the car, it was left in hiding when you and I came to Kingston. The gun is mine; I had left it in the glove compartment. Walski — is that really his name? That's so dumb," she paused to laugh. "Anyway, he's trying to kill you because, like I told you earlier—" This time she shot me a pointed look, "—you're the one living in a fantasy world. Jason Thomas does not exist. Rebel, on the other hand, is very real, which is why you did so well before I got there."

"We've lived in Kingston all our lives," I said, but my words were empty and void of conviction.

She scoffed. "Hardly. We have never been here before a month and a half ago."

"That doesn't make any sense!" I erupted. "None of this makes sense! If you're the one who's right, then—then why do we have families? School records? Why don't I remember any of what you're talking about?"

"It was a back up plan that we were never informed of," she said smoothly. "Gray set it up, and he used Under to do it."

"Risk, Rebel, Under ... What in the world kind of names are these?" I demanded next.

"If you'd shut up and listen to me for longer than ten seconds, I will explain things to you," she retorted, shooting me an irritable look.

I scowled at her. After I crossed my arms I slouched down further in my seat. Though I was pouting, I remained dutifully silent.

"Thank you," she muttered, shoving her fingers through her hair before inhaling slowly. "First of all, records are easy to fake. It's why we have so many different licenses, passports, birth certificates ... documents are not difficult to forge."

This time, she didn't wait for any response for me. "As for the families, and the relationships, and your lacking memory, that's a different story entirely. Under is another agent of LASAR, and a good one. She's telepathic, and given how long she's gone through training, she'd had enough time to hone her skills to a point where she can do some pretty astounding things.

"Apparently, one of those things is creating a complicated network of telepathic links. You remember the car crash? Both of us were supposed to go into a coma — not just me. Going unconscious together for that brief period of time would've completely terminated all of the telepathic links that Under created, wiping us permanently from the minds of the families we stayed with, along with anyone else she purposefully manipulated, or we happened to have come into contact with."

I stared at her, dumbstruck and speechless.

"When you didn't go into a coma, it complicated things," she continued, either ignoring my shock or actually not noticing it. "It meant all of those telepathic links she'd constructed were still in existence."

"Assuming this is true, how in the world do you even know all of this?" I asked carefully.

"Under left a letter," she said.

"Where?" I asked suspiciously.

"The gun range, obviously," she said. "She did a good job of it, too. It was a very decent set up."

I continued to sit in silence. I was slowly becoming aware that she was waiting for me to ask more questions. Part of me just wanted to demand to know where we were going, but I knew that wouldn't get me anywhere, so I focused on the rest of the information she had just given me.

It scared me, how much sense it made. But I still had questions.

"Why didn't Under just come and severe the—the telepathic ties herself? And, does this ... does this mean the crash was planned?" I asked then.

She bit her lip at that, and this time the expression on her face was one I recognized. A certain solemnity resided in her eyes, while the rest of her face remained stone-hard and composed. She ignored my second question. "Under's dead. When the Kinetic took down LASAR, she was one of the casualties."

I knew then that this car ride — no matter where it was to — was going to be a long one. Because if what she was saying was true, if I was the one with a screwed up head, then she had a lot of explaining to do before we were going to make any more headway. And if she wasn't right ... then this was going to go downhill, anyway.

But the longer I sat with her, with neither of us at the other's throat, the easier it was for me to believe what she was saying.