'I-I don't believe you,' I said.

Had the room gotten smaller? Were the walls moving inwards?

My throat tightened and my heart was beating so hard in my chest that the pounding resounded right up into my skull, a maddening rush of noise that made me feel suddenly dizzy and sick.

Lena mock-pouted, a cruel light dancing in her eyes. 'Oh, Evelyn, did you actually think he cared for you? Or is it just Evie's delusions that you suffer from now? He played a good game, yes? A long game, but still a good one. He really had you fooled, didn't he?'

No, no, he loved me. He did. I'd seen his love. Felt it. How could that be faked?

I thought back to our night in the hotel. Everything he'd said. The way he'd looked at me. The way he'd touched me. When he'd told me he loved me. It was their love – Tom and Evie's – but it was also ours. Ours.

'It really was perfect,' Lena continued. 'You were so utterly lost in Evie that you desperately wanted to believe he was Tom and all he had to do was play along.'

It's just a wall. A mask. Something to hide behind. It's what we're good at.

I remembered his words then like an ice pick straight to my heart. I felt the sharp edge pierce it, the slash of the cold blade right through the centre. He'd practically told me how good the Greys were at pretending and I'd still chosen to believe the lie. Lena was right. He had fooled me. And I'd let him.

'Wait,' I said, suddenly remembering. 'What about Rico? Where does he fit into all of this? You said he was the one who betrayed your group and Tom tortured him and left him for dead. If it was you all along, why did Tom attack him?'

Lena's expression soured. 'Rico had grown too accustomed to his new life here. His nasty little habits became too addictive for him. He knew he would have to give it all up and he didn't want to. In the end, we knew we'd have to deal with him before he ruined everything.'

'And the rest of your people? You betrayed them?'

'Another perfect part of the plan,' she said, sighing almost wistfully, as if recalling a romantic twist to a story and not the fact they'd led the men, women and children of Lena's group to their deaths. 'Tom just has a way about him, doesn't he? I mean, he is so believable. We made them believe that Rico planned to have them killed, and Tom offered to help them escape and they just followed him. Just like that.' She snapped her fingers close to my face, making me blink. 'Then, while he was disposing of them, I caught Rico until the Commander returned to deal with him. Don't be sad, Evelyn, Rico was not a good human.'

I glared at her. 'I don't give a shit about Rico, you mad bitch. I give a shit about the people in your group that trusted you and died because of it.'

Lena just shrugged. 'Trust. Such a futile, pointless thing that goes hand in hand with suspicion. I'm so glad that we don't have to worry about that. The Hive controls everything. There is no distrust. No betrayal. Just compliance and harmony. Humans are so quick to turn on one another. They really are such a pitiful species. Trust makes them weak and betrayal makes monsters of them.'

'Monsters?' I laughed bitterly. 'You destroy whole worlds and yet we're the monsters?'

'We don't betray our own. At least, we didn't until we came here, and the human disease infected us. But not for much longer.' She smiled as she leaned closer, taking my chin between her thumb and forefinger. 'And you, Evelyn my dear, are nohuman. You are a mistake, nothing more.'

Hatred coiled inside, a snake hissing in the pits of my stomach.

'Shall we go?' she said sweetly, as if we were about to attend a party together, and not march me to my death.

Walking to the other side of the cell, Lena stood quite still in front of the wall, her head cocked slightly to one side. There was the slightest of noises, so faint that it was almost indetectable and the wall seemed to shift, the strange dark material retreating like oozing liquid, leaving a door-shaped hole in its place.

Through the doorway, whatever lay beyond looked just as Hellish as this room did.

'Come, Evelyn,' Lena said. 'It's time.'

With apprehension hammering in my chest, I followed Lena, peering carefully into the tunnel, which looked like it had been hollowed out from the same rock-like material as the cell. The walls were curved up to the ceiling, which sat high above our heads and the tunnel stretched into darkness either side. The temperature felt slightly cool and there was a faint cloying scent of damp in the air, almost as if I was in an underground cave and not a spacecraft hovering in the skies above London.

Lena waited in the tunnel; her face serene in its smugness.

Inwardly cursing myself for never having killed her when I'd had the chance, I stepped through the doorway, expecting to find guards stationed outside the cell and discovering the tunnel to be empty, save for the two of us. Instantly she began to walk, ordering me to follow alongside her like a puppy at her heels.

My gaze darted in the opposite direction.

Fight or flight, Evie?

I'd learned to be skilled at both over the years, but right then, neither seemed to hold the answer.

'You could try your luck.'

I turned sharply, hearing the cold taunt in Lena's tone.

She stood with her arms folded in front of her, clearly having realised what I'd been considering. It was, after all, true to form for me. I could sense that now. Fight or flight. Sometimes, both. Whatever I needed to do to survive.

'You could try,' she repeated. 'I really don't think you would get very far though.'

Upon her words, a sound slithered from the tunnel's depths. I peered into the gloom, trying to focus, and my eyes discovered others in the darkness - large, almond-shaped obsidian orbs, reflecting their malice back at me. A hiss met my wide-eyed stare. A clicking arose. The shadows shifted and my vision settled on Greys – so many Greys – creeping along the ceiling and walls on all fours, their long, lithe bodies crowding the passageway, getting closer and closer.

I gasped and took a step back.

The creatures stopped about five metres away, their clear loathing of me filling the tunnel almost as fully as their bodies did. Had they always known what I was? All this time, I'd thought that their hatred had been the same as their hatred for any human, but maybe it had been different for me? Maybe it had come from another place - an instinctive core that told them I was like them and yet, not like them at all.

A hybrid. A mistake. Fit only to be wiped out. Erased.

All at once, my mind flickered back to the basement of Clarence House and the Grey that had attacked me. Originally, I'd believed that Tom had told the creature to target me. Now I knew he had, and now I knew just why too. The hurt twisted in my heart and I swallowed hard, wishing I could bury the pain and be done with it, although something told me that the pain was nowhere near done with me yet.

'Oh, don't fret, dear,' Lena whispered, suddenly close to my ear, making me flinch. 'You have nothing to fear from them now. Soon, but not yet.'

She chuckled as she turned and walked on, and I could do nothing but follow her, constantly glancing back to see how close the Greys were as they trailed behind, their hissing haunting my every step. My skin crawled like a thousand bugs crept over my flesh, across my collarbone, darting on too many legs down my spine. The sensation grew the further we went, with passageways leading off either side revealing more inky black eyes staring at me from the darkness, each throat-click curling around my bones.

It felt odd to be walking among them. Usually I'd be running, fleeing, hearing the crack of gunfire loud in my ears, the shrieks as we tore their bodies apart with a flurry of bullets. This might have been Lena's normal, but it sure as Hell wasn't mine, no matter who my father had been. I wasn't even sure what my normal was meant to be anymore, but I knew it wasn't this. It could never be this.

Finally, we reached what appeared to be a dead end. I slowed my pace, my anxious heart beating harder at the thought of being hemmed in, with the Greys at my back and nowhere to go ahead, but as we neared, the wall shifted, like some sentient being that breathed and moved, and a large opening appeared.

Whatever waited ahead, it was brighter than the tunnels and I had to squint slightly to shield my eyes from the light. Behind me, the Greys chittered excitedly, but whatever excited them, only left me feeling cold and scared for what was to come. I flinched as one sped past me on the ceiling, the rush of air forcibly blowing my hair and making my heart race. I watched, mouth open, as it scuttled through the large doorway, turning once to look at me before it disappeared, emitting a long, sinister hiss. Others followed, the wave of bodies flowing past me, their skin slick and oily, their hissing and insectoid chitters leaving me under no illusion what I was to them – exactly what Lena said I was.

An abomination. Repulsive. Other.

And yet, in all their outward hostility, I felt a distinct undercurrent of fear running through them that floored me. I had no idea how I knew it, but I did. It was as if I could feel it inside, streaming under my skin, something that flowed in my veins.

They feared me.

The Greys actually feared me.

I blinked, feeling the realisation rock me back on the balls of my feet. This couldn't be right. How could it be? I was just one person. Alone. Neither one thing nor the other. I was just this screwed-up creature with all these images and thoughts in my head that didn't make any sense, all these memories that didn't really belong to me. I wanted to identify and connect with the faces that I could see now, but everything felt just out of reach, like I could stretch and stretch, and I would still never be able to grasp what it all meant.

I might not have been able to make sense of what I remembered, but right then, the one thing I was sure of was that they feared me.

I held onto it tight, because somewhere under my skin, I knew it meant something. It had to.

It was all I had left.

Following Lena through the doorway, I stopped just inside, my mouth dropping open with awe.

The chamber was both equally mammoth and monstrous. Similar stalactite formation to that which I'd seen on the bottom of the craft outside, hung down from the high ceiling, the surface glistening like oil-slicked hematite.

There were many more Greys here than had been in the tunnels, and they lined the walls, clinging on to any outcrop they could find, crowding together like a nest of bugs, surrounding the whole of the chamber, until it became hard to see where one ended and the next began. Their long, spindly limbs seemed to intertwine until they were one mass of bodies, their dark eyes unblinking, but still full of hate.

It was terrifying, like finding myself thrown into the blackest of dimensions in Hell, completely surrounded by hissing, spitting demons but despite the horror on all sides, my gaze was instantly drawn upwards to where the huge network of orbs was suspended in between the inky stalactites.

They were much larger than the ones I'd seen in Central Hall and they pulsed as if they were alive, a network of vein-like tributaries running over the surface, which burned effervescently, then faded, then burned brighter again. They were of varying sizes, and all linked together by some kind of twisting, fibrous membrane that held them all in place, even though the very size of them should have defied all means of gravity. I stared up at them, barely able to tear my gaze away. The closer they got to the very top of the ceiling, the more crowded together they were until I couldn't see the roof of the chamber itself, but I had this sense that there was something else hidden up there.

It knows I'm here.

What? What knew I was here? Why the Hell did that thought keep forcing its way into my head? Why did the sensation kept pushing its way under my skin?

Something was in my veins. I was sure of it. But, what? What?

I clenched my fists, feeling my nails dig into my palms and tried to force myself to focus on anything except the orbs and whatever lay above them, but that meant I had to look at them.

It meant I had to look at him.

The rest of the group, including Levi and his people, were all on their knees, their hands clasped behind their heads. God, how I hated myself then, knowing that my silence had led to this. I'd brought them to this point, after everything they'd done to survive and now, they were here, on their knees, facing death at the hands of the two people I'd asked them to trust. They looked battle-weary, resigned to this hand that Fate had dealt them – that I had dealt them.

I forced myself to look at them, my gaze sweeping over all these faces I knew, these people who had become my family. I saw a couple of them look my way as I walked in with Lena and the accusation in their stares almost crushed me. I wondered what Tom and Lena had told them? Had they told them I was a part of this? That I was one of them? I wanted to scratch the Grey out of my skin then, this thing that bristled under the surface, the creature I'd tried so hard to forget.

Finally, my gaze came to rest instinctively on Jace.

Blood crusted his ear and under is nose, looking like he'd taken a couple of blows to the face and I was all at once awash with anger and guilt – anger that it might have been Tom or Lena that had inflicted his injuries, after everything he'd done to accept them, and guilt that I'd been the one to lead him here. I didn't want any of them to hate me, but it mattered most whether Jace did. I couldn't even begin to imagine the betrayal he must have felt, knowing that he'd been deceived again by someone he trusted, and I cursed that hidden half of me that had done this to him.

Feeling my gaze upon him, he shot me a glance, his eyes slowly moving to meet mine and I drowned in the weight of his stare and everything I saw there. I saw his confusion and his pain so vivid and stark, so unrelenting. I wished I could tell him then. I wished I could have told him that I hadn't known; that I would never have lied to him, that I would never have betrayed him like his brother had, but even as those thoughts entered my head, I realised just how much I was lying to myself.

I would have done all those things.

I would have remained bound in silence in fear he would reject me. Despise me. I would have taken this to my grave if I'd had any idea what I truly was. I wouldn't have told a damn soul. Experience had taught me that the truth could be like drip-feeding poison into the veins.

Heavy with guilt and shame, I looked away first, unable to bear the burden of his hatred. My eyes misted with heat, and a tear rolled down my cheek, dropping heavily down to the floor between my feet.

Stop it, Evie. You're better than this.

I swallowed hard, clenched my fists into tight balls and looked directly at Tom.

Not Tom. Not fucking Tom.

He stood, still in human form, on the other side to where the two human groups knelt. I noticed he was still wearing the weapons he'd taken with him to the facility, his gun and blade both holstered on his hip. I was struck then by how in control he looked, how natural he was in this role. Gone was the Tom I knew, the schoolteacher, the brother, the husband, the one that everyone loved and in his place was their Commander. I'd seen small signs of the Grey he was underneath. That detached coldness that he could switch on and off when it suited him. His ability to manipulate those around him. How comfortable he was around weapons. It had all been there, staring at me right in the face, but this? How could I have ever believed he was anything but just another Grey?

And yet, he was everything Lena had said he was. I could see it so clearly. Even in his human form, I could sense his power, his authority. It blazed from him, this incredible aura that was undeniable and even then, knowing what he was and all that he had done, I couldn't take my eyes off him. It was like a force, pulling me to him and I hated that he had this influence over me. I hated myself for being so weak, so fucking foolish.

He hadn't taken his eyes off me as soon as I'd walked into the chamber. I'd felt them on me with every step closer I'd taken and finally, I let my gaze meet his, afraid of what I'd find there. I'd wanted to see Tom so badly – just one small sign that he was still in there somewhere, that it hadn't all been a lie – but I saw nothing but the Grey staring back at me.

Cold. Triumphant. Alien.

With a small, icy smile, he looked away from me and up to the Greys that lined the walls, sweeping his gaze over them all and as his eyes fell upon them, their excitable chittering rose, their eyes glinting with menace. High above, the orbs burned brighter, and I felt that familiar white noise rush inside my head, making me feel slightly dizzy. A sudden vulnerability surged through my limbs and I willed myself to stay on my feet. I couldn't give them my weakness now.

I wouldn't give them that, no matter what they did to me.

No matter how much this fucking hurt.

The victorious voice of the Greys faded, plunging the chamber into an eerie, unsettling silence and Tom took a step forward, eyeing the humans on their knees with a weighty disdain and stopping just in front of Taj.

From his position on the floor, Taj looked up at him, his expression full of challenge. Despite the odds, he wasn't about to back down and right then, I simultaneously adored him for it and was scared for him. I was scared for them all.

'You look angry with me, Taj,' Tom said, finally, his face maddeningly calm and controlled. 'Are you?'

'I'm not angry with you,' Taj replied. 'I'm surprised, that's all.'

Tom's brows furrowed slightly. 'Surprised?'

'That you went to so much trouble to get us here,' Taj said. 'But it's good to know that we were such a thorn in your side that you took on the job yourself. It means we were at least doing something right if the head honcho himself had to come and do what the rest of your Greys had failed to deal with.'

Tom chuckled coldly as he leaned down to steadily eyeball Taj. 'You give yourself far too much credit, my friend. You and your pathetic little band of survivors were never a thorn in our side. You were always extinguishable. Always. There was never a moment when we didn't know where you were. In fact, you should be thanking me. I could have snapped my fingers at any time and had every single one of you slaughtered, but I didn't. I allowed you a few more miserable weeks on this dead planet of yours.'

He smiled, standing upright and looking down on Taj like he was nothing but a bug, ready to be squashed under his boot. Insignificant. Irrelevant.

'You were never the thorn that needed extracting. But she was.'

My stomach sank as I watched them all shoot wary glances at me.

'If you all want to know why you are here, then you're looking right at her. Your friend. Or, at least, you thought she was.'

Tom smiled and it was all I could do not to throw myself at him. The rage surged like a wave, consuming me, making me hate him all over again.

'Fuck you,' I said, doing my best to keep it under control and knowing I was failing from the way his smile widened. 'I was their friend.' I looked at them all, imploringly. 'I am your friend.'

The response I received was unconvincing. Abby bit down on her lip, her eyes troubled, before looking away, as if she couldn't bear to even look at me. Gav's face was full of bitterness, and everything I'd hoped I wouldn't see. How could I even blame them? This was my fault. Every last bit of it.

'Evie... sorry, it's not your real name, I know, but then again Tom isn't mine, but we might as well stick with what's familiar, right?' he said. 'You might as well not waste your breath. They know. They know what you really are. They know everything. What's the point of pretending?'

'I'm not pretending,' I blurted out. 'I'm... I'm...'

'You're what?' he said, laughing. 'What are you, Evie?' He walked towards me then, stopping just a metre or so in front of me. His eyes narrowed. 'I'll tell you what you're not. You're not one of them. You never have been. You've killed, time and time again to avoid facing up to what you really are...'

'And what's that?' I scowled at him. 'An abomination? A mistake? Yeah, don't worry. Lena's read me the script already.'

'So, you accept it? Never thought I'd see the day you did that.' He turned to look at them all. He was enjoying this now, this show he was putting on for them, practically rubbing their faces in it. 'You people really have no idea what lengths she's gone to in her efforts to try and hide her past. I mean, forget the lies she told all of you about me. The lies she's told at every opportunity. The lives she's destroyed to keep her nasty little secret.'

'Stop it,' I gasped, aghast at his cruelty. 'That wasn't how it was, and you know it. Whatever I did, whatever I had to do, I couldn't help it. I... I never wanted to hurt anyone. I never wanted any of this. I can barely remember half of it.'

Tom turned sharply back to me, his face spotting with anger. 'Spare me the sob story. Spare them all. It's time to face up to everything you've done. Face facts, Evie. You're nothing but a hypocrite. You spend all your time hating us, pretending to be one of them, when the truth is, you're no different to the Greys you claim to despise. You're more like us than you care to admit, and you hate that, don't you? You hate the idea that you aren't the sanctimonious tiresome little creature that you really are.'

I felt the force of his words like no injury I'd ever received. Harder than any punch. Harder than any knife to the flesh. I might not really have been Evie, and he might not have been Tom, but we had been for a while, not matter how false it had been and to hear him standing there saying all these things, looking at me in the way he did, I wanted the poison of his truth to kill me then. I wanted it to be over more than I ever had.

'It hurts, doesn't it?' he said. 'The truth?'

I looked at him then, tears stinging my eyes. 'Yes,' I whispered. 'It really does. More than you would ever be capable of understanding.'

There was a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes – brief and fleeting – and then it was gone. Blinked away.

He stepped closer – too close – and I was all at once overwhelmed by the scent of him, by the blue of his eyes and the strong line of his jaw that I'd loved so completely. I didn't care what he said. I might never have been Evie, not really, but Tom had been mine, even for just a short time. He'd been mine and I had been his. I couldn't bear this.

As he moved closer to me, his gaze swept over my face and for a moment, I thought I saw something human again in his eyes, but of course, this was what he was good at. The pretence. The act. None of it was real. I knew that now and my heart sunk, plummeting into despair and grief all over again.

Whatever he saw in my face, he smiled, almost gently and reached out, snagging a lock of my hair between his fingers. 'Don't be sad, Eve,' he said. 'This was inevitable. You must realise that? No one can run forever, not even you. It's a shame though. I quite enjoyed our game. There comes a time however, when no number of miracles can raise Lazarus from the dead again.'

My eyes widened just a little at his words. At what he'd called me.

'Eve,' I whispered.

'W-what?' That flicker of uncertainty had returned, stronger this time. He couldn't blink it away, not this time. No matter how hard he was trying.

'You called me Eve.'

He took a step back as if I'd burned him, his face dropping.

'I don't believe you. I don't believe it was all a lie,' I insisted, staring into his eyes and looking for something, anything to tell me that what I said was true.

'Then you'd be just as much a fool as you always were,' he snarled, unholstering the blade at his hip.

Reaching out, he grabbed hold of me, grasping the back of my neck and yanking me close to him. My fear piqued, every part of me screaming in panic as he raised the knife to my throat and held it there, the tip pressed against my skin.

He leaned in until his face was just inches from mine.

'You know, they say that if you pierce a Grey's throat just slightly with a blade, just a little bit under the skin, they start clicking.'

I gasped involuntarily, remembering the same words I'd said to Lena in the tube tunnel. He'd heard it. He'd heard very single word of what I'd said to her and now he was using it to get back at me for threatening her.

As if summoned, Lena appeared at his side, smiling that same smug, arrogant smile at me.

'What do you think will happen if I pierce yours, Eve?' Tom said. 'Will you click like a Grey or die like a human? Will you click for your friends here? Or will you just bleed out? Shall we find out?' He pressed a bit harder, not enough to pierce my skin but enough to make me suck in a breath, fear gripping me tight.

'You won't do it,' I said, hating how desperate I sounded. 'You won't.'

Tom stared into my eyes and I felt it then - a small brush of his thumb just under my hairline, just like the day he'd brushed his thumb over my hand at the barriers in Green Park Tube Station.

'No, you're right,' he said, with a wink. 'I won't.'

With a speed that sent me reeling, he released his grip on my neck and grabbed Lena instead, pulling her to him just as he had done me. In one swift violent motion, he plunged the blade into her throat, and he held her there as her mouth dropped open in shock and didn't stop until the blood began to flow freely, viscous and thick, down the hilt of the knife and onto his hand.

Before she could even take her last breath, he glanced at the others and grinned.

'It's now or never, my friends,' he said.