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too,” she murmured. “My parents—they died too. I was a baby, too. Only I didn’t have any other relatives. So…I went through the foster system.”
Meredith nodded, unsurprised. “The other Candidates, they have the same thing. Except for Drew. He says his mother gave him up. Left him on the doorstep of an orphanage in Liverpool.”
“That’s…weird.” More than weird. “ All of them?”
Meredith nodded grimly. “I know what you’re thinking. We’ve wondered it too. But lots of kids are orphans here. Kind of comes with the mark.”
The mark . “What is it? Just a birthmark we all have?”
“‘So we can identify each other,’” she said in a low, stilted Nathan-sounding voice. “Where’s yours?”
“On the bottom of my neck.”
“Can I see?”
“Um…” It felt kind of invasive, but Julia told herself she was being stupid. “Sure.”
She lifted her hair, and Meredith stepped back to investigate. “That’s not so bad.”
“It’s not?”
Meredith turned to her and lifted her shirt. Julia’s eyes widened. Meredith’s mark was larger than hers, covering much of her right side. “It used to drive me crazy. Until I got here.”
Is that supposed to make me feel better? Maybe the girl was just sharing. Normal girls did that, right? They talked.
“So what are we candidates for exactly?”
“Good question.” They were nearing the end of the tunnel-hall now. Light from some unseen cove illuminated specs of glitter in the smooth rock walls, giving Meredith’s creamy skin an otherworldly, Twilight vampire quality. “ Candidates to be The One.”
“Isn’t that something from The Matrix ?”
“Dunno. I watched The Matrix in like, fifth grade. Conspiracy movies, not really my thing.”
It wasn’t a conspiracy movie per se, but Julia let it slide.
“The One,” Meredith went on, “will save the Chosen in their time of need.” She said this in a breathless, mocking voice.
How many Chosen were there? Were there any actual angels walking around? She thought of Cayne spread-eagled on that billboard and felt sick. “What’s our time of need?”
Meredith swatted at invisible lint on her homemade skirt. “Here’s the thing about this place: information is on a need-to-know basis,” she said darkly. “And none of us need to know. Nathan might, but you won’t get anything from him.” She sighed. “But we guess it’s our war with the Nephilim.”
“So it’s a war?”
“That’s what all the Shepherds and Bishops call it.”
“And this is a new thing?”
“We’ve been fighting off and on for forever. But a few hundred years ago it became a real war.”
Julia opened her mouth to ask how. And how would The One help fight Nephilim? But then they were at the end of the hall, at the mouth of a massive room, and it wasn’t the domed area from before. This room was more than a room. It was like…a meeting hall for giants. The massive space was rectangular and looked longer than three football fields, with dozens of little nooks, the largest one an amphitheater carved into the pure white stone. The ceiling gleamed, reflecting the bustling space below, and Julia realized it was made of glass.  
“That’s the bottom of the pyramid,” Meredith said.
She looked up, gaping, and felt an awful déjà vu.
“This is where we hang out. Waste time. It’s called The Commons.”
Meredith waved her hand, magician style, and Julia followed her along a path of dark gray stone.
 
The path led around the periphery of the massive space, taking them past clusters of middle-aged Chosen reading from leather-bound books in mod, egg-shaped stone chairs; packs of college-student-looking Chosen kicking a neon ball around; pairs of adult
Chosen eating soup at small wood tables—husbands and wives, hands clasped, heads bowed.
Meredith narrated in a bored tone, pointing out “old people,” “Law junkies,” “lightning chasers,” and “lovebirds.”
“What are lightning chasers?” Julia asked as they walked