The Testing

Cia and Tomas flee as the mutated humans rush to defend themselves. Cia sees Brick manning a machine gun on top of a building nearby. She screams at him to stop shooting as mutated humans cry in anguish as they die. Brick says he has them covered, but Cia begs him to stop hurting them; she’s devastated by the brutality.

They continue traveling as Cia’s arm worsens and their mental states deteriorate. They are only 150 miles from the end of the course; Cia removes their bracelets and tells Tomas that they need to remember what happened during The Testing. Tomas says he thinks they’ll use a drug and he hopes to find a way to counteract it back at the Testing Center.

Cia’s wounds are worse than ever and she knows that she will die if she waits until the end of the course for treatment. Remembering an injury from her youth, she knows she must open the scabs and remove the pus and poison from the wounds. She squeezes around the cuts and scabs until they reopen and the pus oozes out. Tomas cleans them with strips of cloth sterilized in boiling water. The process is agonizingly painful, but Cia doesn’t stop until it’s finished.

In the morning, she wakes convinced that another candidate is nearby. Someone throws a knife that almost hits Tomas. It’s Roman, and he and Tomas fight until someone else shoots Roman in the head.

Cia is afraid of another attacker but is relieved to see that it’s Will. They treat Tomas’s stab wound with a medical kit and then Will shows them the single-passenger skimmer he’d discovered.

They resume travel, with Cia and Tomas on their bicycles and Will keeping pace in the skimmer despite the fact that it is much faster and he could finish the course in a matter of hours. Ten miles from the finish line, Cia spots a shooter. They are ambushed by a girl with a gun who flees when Cia fires back and takes off in a skimmer of her own. Cia knows this girl will likely finish the Testing and become a University candidate and future leader despite the cold-blooded murder she’d planned.

Cia’s bicycle is broken; Tomas says he will stay with her and walk, but Will shoots him in the stomach. Will reveals that he is the crossbow killer and intended for them to die. Cia says she will shoot him, but Will says she doesn’t have the killer instinct. She is distracted when she realizes Tomas is still alone. She shoots Will but he escapes to the skimmer and runs. Tomas is too hurt to walk. He tells Cia to finish without him, but she refuses.

She finds another Testing identification bracelet in Tomas’s bag and adds it to the ones she’s been carrying for dead candidates. Overnight, she rebuilds the working bicycle so that it will support both of them. She ties them together with a loop of fabric and laboriously pedals over the last ten miles. As the finish line comes into view, the Testing officials stand and watch their approach. Fifty feet from the line, Tomas collapses from the bicycle, taking Cia with him. Cia drags Thomas over the line, where they are met and congratulated by Dr. Barnes.

Twenty-nine of the 108 initial Testing candidates remain. Cia is unconscious for days after finishing. They tell her that even with the access to medical technology, she nearly died. The scars will remain on her arm.

Tomas tells Cia that he overheard doctors talking about a medication known to interfere with the interview and memory wipe procedures; he plans to use the pills to prevent the memory wipe. Zandri never arrives in the Testing Center, so Cia knows she is dead.

Will joins Cia in the dining hall one day and tells her he’s glad he didn’t kill her. He says, “Leaders are supposed to inspire trust. They’re not actually supposed to believe in it” (292). He also confesses that he, like Brick, solved all his group’s problems in the third stage to eliminate the other team members. He tells her that he thinks the point of the Test was to find out if you could kill and then live with it.

Cia has taken the vial given to her by the man at the fence. She nervously waits to be called for the final interview.

The officials ask Cia to drink a glass of water. It has an aftertaste and immediately makes her feel relaxed and euphoric. She realizes she’s having difficulty filtering what she says, but once she can focus, she thinks the vial has counteracted the worst of it. She keeps her answers simple but avoids mentioning anything that might reveal the secrets her father told her.

When the officials ask about Tomas, she realizes they’re concerned about their relationship causing them to prioritize each other over the Commonwealth. She says that she’ll be disappointed if he isn’t accepted into University, but that leaders must live with disappointment and it’s a lesson she’s willing to learn early.

They allow her to ask questions. Cia asks what happened to Zandri. Dr. Barnes says he thought she’d already figured it out and tells her that she has Zandri’s bracelet in her bag. Cia remembers finding a bracelet in Tomas’s bag and realizes that it was Zandri’s. The only time they were apart was when Cia left Tomas and Will to find water. She remembers Tomas’s secrecy, the blood on his knife, and the emotional toll she knew the secret was taking on him. She realizes that Tomas must have killed Zandri. She is conflicted and hopes he did it in self-defense.

Cia is confined to her room while the officials deliberate. She is anxious, distraught, and deeply upset about what everything means. She removes her bracelet, takes her things into the bathroom, and accidentally discovers that Zeen modified the Transit Communicator to allow it to record himself talking about the Five Lakes projects. She listens to Zeen for a while and then begins to record herself, talking about everything that has happened during the Testing. Space is limited, so she must be strategic about what she keeps. That night, the person who brings her meal tells her that the winners will be announced the next morning.

Twenty candidates were chosen for University; Cia passes The Testing. Someone gives her a shot that knocks her out and removes her memories. She remembers, later, that she must have tried to avoid the memory wipe but failed.

Three weeks later, Cia’s friend Stacia comes to her dorm to make sure she’s ready for her birthday party that night. Cia doesn’t remember her Testing relationship with Tomas, but she knows that she likes him very much and thinks that there might be love there. Will is also there. After his memory was wiped, he’d been told that his brother, Gill, had, “like all unsuccessful candidates . . . been assigned to a new colony” (320). All the candidates interact as though they are friends—Will teases Tomas for being jealous. Brick gives Cia flowers for her birthday.

Michal brings Cia a birthday gift from her parents. Cia doesn’t remember the way he helped her and confirmed her suspicions. In her room, Cia opens the gift and finds flowers and notes from her family. Zeen’s letter demands she return his Transit Communicator. She is amused and picks it up to look at it, finding the button that she’d marked with a small lightning-bolt shape. When she presses it, she hears herself recounting the things that happened during The Testing.