Zandri Hicks

Quick Facts

• Role: Five Lakes Colony candidate chosen for the Testing
• First appearance: Chapter 2 (selection ceremony)
• Key relationships: Malencia "Cia" Vale, Tomas Endress, Malachi Rourke
• Defining traits: Stunning beauty, artistic ambition, defiant streak
• Fate: Dies off-page during the fourth test; her ID bracelet later becomes a catalyst for doubt and suspicion
• Central themes: Trust and Betrayal

Who They Are

Bold, talented, and unwilling to be molded, Zandri Hicks is the Five Lakes candidate who refuses to pretend the Testing is a privilege. She’s an artist in a world that prizes efficiency over beauty, and her choices—how she dresses, how she speaks, when she resists—are acts of self-definition under surveillance. Zandri’s arc showcases how individuality can be both armor and liability in a system designed to erase it, making her a haunting emblem of The Price of Success.

Personality & Traits

Zandri’s confidence is real, but it’s also a performance—one that shields fear and isolation. Her rebellious gestures read as aesthetic and strategic choices, signaling she’ll comply when forced but never surrender who she is. The Testing reveals her as both competitor and companion: sharp-tongued in public, unexpectedly tender in private.

• Artistic and inventive: Described as “an artist first and a scholar second” (Chapter 2), she excels at science only when it serves her art—like creating new paints. Her sense of symmetry and balance informs practical designs, including a new windmill for Five Lakes.
• Defiant, by design: She alone asks, “What if we don’t want to go?” at selection (Chapter 2), and later arrives late to the skimmer (Chapter 4) to prove she can be compelled to attend but not controlled.
• Prickly confidence: She dismisses others’ status—“Some of us don’t find University pedigrees attractive” (Chapter 4)—telegraphing both disdain for hierarchy and insecurity about her own place within it.
• Vulnerable beneath the bravado: On the first night, she hugs Cia and says, “Give ’em hell tomorrow” (Chapter 5), revealing fear and a desire for solidarity that her public persona suppresses.
• Style as self-assertion: Long blond hair that “glistens in the sunlight” (Chapter 4), a crimson tunic at selection (Chapter 2), and a gauzy multicolored skirt with a peasant blouse for departure (Chapter 4) become visual statements: Zandri will be seen.

Character Journey

Zandri begins as the Testing’s loudest dissenter—angry at being conscripted and skeptical of its promises. Once in Tosu City, her resistance shifts from open refusal to strategic self-presentation: she engages when it benefits her, keeps rivals at arm’s length, and leans into shared interests (like art) to soften tensions. The brief trust she builds with Cia complicates the stark competitiveness of the trials. Her off-page death during the fourth test, and the later discovery of her bracelet in Tomas’s bag, ricochet through Cia’s psyche, reframing the Testing as a landscape of paranoia and performance, and sharpening the novel’s portrait of Survival in a High-Stakes Competition.

Key Relationships

• Cia Vale: What begins as wary rivalry—tinged by comparison and competition—turns into a momentary alliance when fear strips away posturing. Their hug before the first test reveals Zandri’s capacity for loyalty and Cia’s instinct to nurture, a bond that later magnifies the horror of Zandri’s disappearance and Cia’s doubts about whom to trust.
• Tomas Endress: Zandri’s open crush fuels early tension; her hair flips and pointed remarks are as much about being seen as they are about winning Tomas’s attention. After her death, the discovery of her bracelet in his bag recasts these flirtations as part of a tragic triangle that destabilizes Cia’s trust in him.
• Malachi Rourke: Initially dismissive, Zandri warms when art becomes common ground, hinting at a gentler, collaborative version of herself. Their exchange shows that even within a ruthless selection process, shared curiosity can momentarily eclipse competition.

Defining Moments

Zandri’s story is a sequence of gestures—some loud, some quiet—that chart a path from open rebellion to fragile connection, ending in ominous absence. Each moment reveals how she crafts autonomy within coercion.

• Questioning the mandate (Chapter 2): When Michal Gallen announces the selections, Zandri asks, “What if we don’t want to go?” Why it matters: It brands her as the group’s conscience and skeptic, framing the Testing as forced labor rather than honor.
• Calculated lateness (Chapter 4): She arrives late to the skimmer to Tosu City. Why it matters: It’s resistance as theater, showing she’ll fulfill requirements but on her own terms, preserving dignity in a system that treats candidates as assets.
• First-night solidarity (Chapter 5): She hugs Cia—“Give ’em hell tomorrow.” Why it matters: A rare, intimate crack in her armor that humanizes the “prickly” rival and foreshadows the moral costs of the trials.
• Off-page death and the bracelet (Chapter 21): Zandri dies during the fourth test; later, Cia finds her identification bracelet in Tomas’s bag. Why it matters: The absence of a body and the presence of the bracelet seed dread and doubt, detonating the novel’s themes of secrecy, suspicion, and the instability of memory and allegiance.

Essential Quotes

“What if we don’t want to go?” (Chapter 2)

Zandri collapses the ceremony’s pageantry with one question, reframing “selection” as coercion. It positions her as a moral counterweight to the United Commonwealth’s rhetoric and foreshadows her refusal to internalize the Testing’s values.

“Some of us don’t find University pedigrees attractive.” (Chapter 4)

This jab undercuts status worship and exposes how social capital functions among candidates. Her sarcasm is defensive and incisive, rejecting hierarchies that the Testing seeks to cement.

“Give ’em hell tomorrow. You hear?” (Chapter 5)

In private, her defiance becomes a blessing rather than a weapon. The line fuses courage with care, transforming Zandri from a combative foil into a fleeting ally whose loss will reverberate through Cia’s choices.