Opening
Chapters 16–20 thrust Malencia "Cia" Vale into her darkest trial yet: secret aid slips through the Testing fence, loyalties fracture, and survival demands choices that scar her body and identity. As she and her companions—Tomas Endress and Will—race the final miles, Cia confronts murder, manipulation, and a finish line watched by officials who measure humanity as data.
What Happens
Chapter 16: The Man at the Fence and the First Kill
A gray-haired stranger tosses a bag of food and water over the Testing fence, vanishing before Cia can question him. She suspects he belongs to the rebels Michal Gallen once described and, fearing a trap and the surveillance in their bracelets, hides the supplies from Tomas and Will—an early beat in the system’s Deception and Manipulation by Authority.
Tomas and Will snipe over who should scout water, their posturing grating on Cia. She breaks from them, pedals ahead, and snare-sets near a stream—her first solitary step into Coming of Age and Loss of Innocence. A humanlike mutant ambushes her. Cia shoots to survive, then sees the truth: she has killed a person. More mutants hunt her, communicating in guttural language. She fires again and flees, then stanches a savage arm wound and backtracks to find the boys, shaken and unwilling to be alone—proof of the brutal calculus of Survival in a High-Stakes Competition.
At dawn the stranger leaves another bag. Reuniting with Tomas and Will, Cia learns they met another candidate, but both dodge details. Will murmurs, “Your boyfriend isn’t the nice guy he’s pretending to be,” and Cia spots dried blood on Tomas’s knife. The seed of Trust and Betrayal takes root.
Chapter 17: A Secret Vial and a Silent Threat
Cia meets the fence man again. He knows her name and claims to oppose the Testing. He warns that after the fourth test, officials will dose candidates with a truth serum in their final interviews, then hands Cia a vial to counter it—pulling the narrative into Memory and Identity. He hints a Commonwealth insider sabotaged skimmers (Cia assumes Michal) to keep candidates safe. The choice is grim: trust a stranger’s chemistry or risk her family’s secrets with Dr. Jedidiah Barnes.
Cia shares the food with Tomas without revealing its source, but their fragile peace splinters when she presses him about the candidate he and Will encountered. He claims he can’t remember the name; she hears the lie. Her arm infection worsens. They reach the ruins of St. Louis, a city pocked by a vast crater—history’s warning and a mirror of Morality in a Corrupt System. As they skirt the edge, dozens of humanlike mutants emerge to watch, then silently trail them. A watcher ahead drops, shot by an unseen hand.
Chapter 18: The Massacre and the Agony
The shooter is Brick, another candidate, firing from a rooftop with a machine gun. Thinking he’s protecting Cia, he slaughters the watchers—who never attack. Cia screams for him to stop as the street becomes a river of blood. She and Tomas flee, traumatized by a massacre born of fear.
That night Cia declines fast. Her arm pulses with infection; ointment fails. She orders Tomas to build a fire, bites down on a scabbard, reopens the wound, and squeezes out the rot—an excruciating, clear-eyed act of survival that leaves her gutted but alive. At dawn, Roman Fry ambushes them. His knife duel with Tomas culminates in Roman gaining the kill stroke—until a single shot drops him. Cia didn’t fire.
Chapter 19: Betrayal and the Finish Line
Will steps into camp, rifle still warm. He has repaired a one-person skimmer and proposes traveling together. He paces his speed to help them avoid a candidate’s tripwire. The land greens as they near the end. With ten miles left, a female candidate ambushes them; Cia’s bike is destroyed, and the shooter escapes on a skimmer. Tomas vows to walk beside Cia.
Will’s smile falls away. “I’m getting rid of my competition,” he says, and shoots Tomas in the abdomen. He admits he was the crossbow shooter in Chicago and has been eliminating candidates since—grief over his brother curdled into ruthless ambition. Cia fires back and wounds him twice. Will flees on his skimmer.
With eight miles to go, Cia refuses to abandon Tomas. She cannibalizes her ruined bike into a wobbly tandem rig, straps Tomas on, and pedals until the contraption crashes fifty feet from the finish. Under the impassive gaze of officials—including Dr. Barnes—Cia drags Tomas’s unconscious body across the line. Dr. Barnes congratulates them as if tallying a data point.
Chapter 20: The Aftermath and the Final Test
Nine days later Cia wakes in the medical wing. The doctors counteracted the poison spreading from her arm, but a scar remains. Tomas recovers. Twenty-nine candidates completed the fourth test: a smug Will, silent Brick, inscrutable Stacia. Zandri Hicks didn’t make it. Tomas confides he overheard officials discussing a drug that interferes with “upcoming Testing procedures.” He swiped a few pills—insurance against the memory wipe Cia’s Father warned about.
On interview morning, Cia chooses the rebel over the Commonwealth and drinks the vial. Will corners her, breezily confessing he betrayed and killed his third-test teammates—just like Roman—and repeating his warning not to trust Tomas. Dr. Barnes addresses the group, calling the interview a chance to “get to know them better” and stressing honesty. Candidates go in one by one. After Tomas, Cia walks the hall and realizes the real test now is herself: the person the Testing has made her face.
Character Development
Cia’s final push strips away naiveté and cements a defiant, inventive survivor willing to resist a system that rewards cruelty. Around her, masks slip.
- Malencia “Cia” Vale: Kills to survive, performs agonizing self-surgery, and engineers a makeshift tandem to save Tomas. Her innocence fractures into resolve, ingenuity, and moral clarity under pressure.
- Tomas Endress: Jealousy and secrets shadow him until Will’s bullet leaves him vulnerable. He shows quiet resourcefulness by stealing pills to counter the wipe.
- Will: The friendly veneer drops, revealing a calculating killer who justifies murder as strategy. He personifies the Testing’s darkest lesson: success at any cost.
- Dr. Jedidiah Barnes: His cool congratulations at the finish line underscores bureaucratic indifference to suffering and frames the Testing as experiment over education.
Themes & Symbols
These chapters intensify Trust and Betrayal: Will’s duplicity detonates Cia’s fragile network of alliances while her unease about Tomas lingers. Survival in a High-Stakes Competition becomes brutally literal—Cia’s first kill, the watchers’ massacre, and her self-surgery show success measured in blood and ingenuity. Memory and Identity sharpen as Cia weighs the vial against enforced “honesty,” fighting to protect the self the Commonwealth aims to rewrite. Morality in a Corrupt System dominates St. Louis: Brick’s slaughter, Cia’s defensive killings, and Will’s ambition trace a spectrum of violence shaped by policy, not conscience.
Symbols deepen the critique. The watchers—human yet altered—embody the forgotten casualties of past wars and a moral test the candidates fail or pass by how they see them: monsters, or people. Cia’s scar becomes a permanent ledger entry for pain endured and a quiet refusal to let the Commonwealth erase what it taught her about herself.
Key Quotes
“Your boyfriend isn’t the nice guy he’s pretending to be.” —Will
This whisper fractures Cia’s trust and foreshadows Will’s own deception. It redirects suspicion toward Tomas while masking Will’s predatory agenda, capturing the Testing’s weaponization of paranoia.
“I’m getting rid of my competition.” —Will
A manifesto of the Testing’s logic. Will’s blunt admission strips away pretense: the program rewards elimination, not ethics, and he has adapted perfectly.
“Congratulations. You have passed the fourth test.” —Dr. Barnes
Delivered as Cia drags a bleeding Tomas over the line, the line lands like a lab result. The clinical tone exposes institutional inhumanity—pain is merely proof of performance.
“The final interview is simply a way to get to know you better.” —Dr. Barnes (paraphrase of his address)
Framed as benign, the interview masks coercion via truth serum. The dissonance between language and intent exemplifies official manipulation.
“Tomas doesn’t deserve your trust.” —Will
Replaying the wedge he drove in Chicago, Will exploits Cia’s doubts to isolate her. The repetition shows how sustained psychological pressure can be as lethal as any weapon.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters deliver the fourth test’s climax and reset the stakes: Will’s unmasking clarifies what the Testing selects for, while Cia’s refusal to leave Tomas reasserts a competing ethic—care under duress. The gray-haired rebel’s vial, Tomas’s stolen pills, and Dr. Barnes’s smiling deception converge on the coming interview, where memory itself is contested terrain. By the time Cia reaches the door, the question isn’t whether she can survive the Testing, but whether she can preserve the self it is designed to break.