The next morning, I was woken up by the brightness of the room from the large windows. Morning light filtered in behind the large curtains and I covered my head with the sleeping bag, not wanting to get up and face the next day. I had gotten little sleep the night before, even after Kain had woken me up from my nightmare. Every time I'd fallen asleep images of Beckam would surface and wake me up before I could even understand the situation.

As I sat up in my bed, I forced myself to erase all thoughts of Beckam and the dreams from the night before. Thinking of it would only rip me apart.

The cafeteria wasn't too crowded when I walked in and it made sense since it was still only eight o' clock in the morning and I'd woken up pretty early in comparison to everyone else. Not even Pepper or Zander had woken up yet.

I got in line for food and ended up with a blueberry muffin and scrambled eggs. Since Pepper and Zander had yet to arrive, I felt awkward going over to sit at our usual table completely alone, although I suspected it wouldn't look too weird since everyone else in the cafeteria seemed to be doing exactly that.

But my attention was caught by Kain sitting alone at a table a couple rows down from where we usually sat. I walked over to his table, where he was completely alone.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" I asked, standing in front of him.

"No."

I sat down on the chair across from him and began tearing the paper wrapping from around the muffin. Instead of it coming cleanly off, the muffin paper ripped and patches of the paper became stuck to the muffin sides. I quickly tried peeling off the remaining patches, but couldn't get a grip on the paper without ripping it.

I hadn't even realized Kain had been watching me until he held out his hand, palm up, and said, "Give me your muffin."

I hesitated before giving in and handing it to him when he didn't pull away his outstretched hand.

He quickly began pulling off the excess patches of paper like an expert, carefully prodding at the correct spots and making sure he didn't leave any paper behind until he finished, and held a perfectly clean muffin in his hand. "Here." He offered the muffin to me.

"Thanks," I replied, grabbing the muffin and taking a cautious bite from it after quick inspection.

"No problem." He took a bite of his miniature stack of blueberry pancakes sitting on a plastic plate in front of him.

"So...," I muttered, wanting to bring up what happened last night, but not knowing how to do it. We hadn't said much after what had happened, and now I was curious about what he'd said about him and Beckam. "About last night..."

He stopped chewing his pancakes and looked up at me, forehead creasing as he kept his fork hovering in midair.

"What did you mean...by how you and him were...close...?" I asked, blatantly.

He silently placed his fork back on his napkin and took a small sip of his water, then stared at me.

"We were close...extremely close. Like brothers." I hadn't actually been expecting an answer and now that I'd heard it, I was wishing I never had.

"Oh," I whispered, and took another bite of my blueberry muffin. A vibrant blueberry taste filled my mouth as my teeth crushed down on a blueberry. I was shocked at how good the blueberry muffins actually were, since school food was mostly disgusting.

Kain had still not taken a bite after speaking. "Why were you saying his name?"

I took a larger bite of my blueberry muffin, staring down at my metal tray as I tried to delay my answer as long as possible. When I finally swallowed, I looked back up at him and met his icy eyes, that pierced into my skull. I couldn't tell him why, even if I really wanted to. I could never let him know.

Except he already knew that I had some relation to Beckam Reid since I'd admitted to it the night before.

I tried to think of a valid answer that could satisfy him if only for the moment. But then I was saved from having to talk by the appearance of Pepper, hair tied up in a bun as she walked tiredly toward us with a plate filled with toast and eggs.

"Do either of you know where the lunch ladies scavenged this food from? Because it looks unusually good," she announced as she plopped down in the chair next to me. "Of course, looks could always be deceiving."

She took a bite from her toast and then finally seemed to notice the one person at the table who she had yet to meet. She put her toast slowly back down and quickly chewed and swallowed. "Hi," she said to him, looking at me in confusion, when she realized that I wasn't as surprised by the person sitting across from me at the table.

"Hey." He gave a small wave to her before picking up his fork and catching a piece of scrambled eggs on it and eating it.

Pepper didn't respond with a friendly "Hi, I'm Pepper" or even start a conversation with him. Instead she was quiet, which I'd never seen her be in the full twenty-four hours I'd known her for.

Then I realized that they might go to the same school. And if they did go to the same school, they probably knew each other.

The silence stretched for a couple more minutes until Zander walked over and sat down on the other side of me, greeting us as put his plate down.

"So, who's ready for another day of inspections?" he said, faking cheerfulness.

"Morning to you, too." Pepper's voice sounded somewhat less peppy than usual, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that Kain was sitting across from her. Maybe I was looking too far into the situation, but it felt like something had happened between the two of them.

After we all had finished eating, another announcement came on from the speakers. I was starting to get sick of hearing them blaring out all the time with different instructions and places where we were supposed to be.

"All students please return to your sleeping rooms immediately."

There were multiple question marks on students faces as I walked down the hallway with everyone else, Kain walking along with me since we shared a classroom. The room wasn't that far away from the actual cafeteria, and soon I was sitting down in a desk which had been put back in order with the sleeping bags instead on the outskirts of the room. On the glass desk in front of me sat a white packet with a number two pencil and Scantron sheet right next to it. They were seriously going old school. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been asked to fill out a Scantron for anything.

A woman with her black hair in a ponytail and wearing a black outfit that I knew to associate with any inspection guards stood in the front of the room. She held a packet that looked almost identical to ours in her thin hands and smiled stiffly as she waited for everyone to be seated in desks around the room. When the entire class was filled she began to speak.

"Welcome, students. I'm glad you all made it here all right. As part of your necessary inspection, we are asking you to kindly and honestly answer every question listed in this packet. There is a space for you to write your name on the Scantron, and I would be happy if you could all do so right now." I found the spot she'd been referring to and quickly scribbled in my name with the graphite pencil.

"You'll have exactly two hours to fill out as much of this as you can. The questions are simple, nothing that you shouldn't be able to answer for whatever reason. Thank you for cooperating with this inspection, and your time begins now."

I opened the packet, and stared down at the first question. I didn't even have to read farther into the packet to know exactly what it was looking for.

It was trying to find out about us. About our personalities, how we acted, how we reacted, everything. The inspection. That's what they called it. They were inspecting our actions and how we went about our day to day lives.

I'd already known it, or at least suspected it, when Mr. Neilson had suggested the Capture the Flag game and how it would work. The prisoner's dilemma type addition had changed it from a game of simple agility and skill to a game of strategy and thinking, and somewhat morally related. And these questions only further proved my point, because instead of sneakily trying to creep activities that would show our inner selves to the inspectors, they were just asking straight up about us. The first page of questions was entirely concerned on our pasts, our lives, our families, our friends.

Then it continued to delve even deeper, asking about emotions. Have you ever been sad? How did you feel? Have you ever done anything you regret?

I had no choice. I had to lie. I had to break their rules.

Because if I knew one thing, after my entire life and everything I'd been put through, it was what lies were more important than others. When there was a dire need to lie, and when I had to let myself lose battles and be honest in the name of keeping everything else secret.

And there was something else, that I only realized now that the inspectors really wanted.

They didn't want secrets. It was so ironic how they were trying to force us to open up who we were inside our own minds, not only with Animuses, but with activities, words, and an absence of privacy, while they refused to ever give an actual full explanation of why they were doing it, or what the purpose was. I generally understood it, but they didn't elaborate. They didn't talk about who'd started the inspection idea, didn't explain why it had all happened or how they'd managed to force so many people to move to different schools temporarily.

The idea of secrets was something they wanted to eradicate.

As I continued scratching lies down into the Scantron, hand tightening around the number two pencil, the questions attempted to get even more personal, attempted to dig their fingers deeper into my thoughts and coerce my deepest secrets and desires out into the open. My lies flowed smoother after some time, easier as my pencil carelessly carved in answers into the green paper that were not true, had never been true. A spark ignited in my bones as I continued to lie, and heat spread through my arms and legs, a warm blanket of anger going through me. They'd made a wrong decision. They hadn't thought through what they wanted to do, and what they were doing now was completely wrong. Because they'd completely ignored the key to the issue at hand. They'd ignored simple shared ideas that even were defined in any dictionary that someone could buy at any bookstore. Because their goal was flawed, and had been flawed from the start.

Because secrets were meant to be kept.