Joanne is a year above Sephy at Heathcroft. After Sephy attempts to sit with the noughts at lunch, she, Dionne, and Lola beat Sephy up. Several years later, after he joins the Liberation Militia… Mr. Jason is Callum and Sephy’s history teacher at Heathcroft. They both find him insufferable because of the way he treats Callum and the other noughts: he regularly insults them, gives them poor…

Sephy and Minnie’s mother and Mr. Hadley’s wife is a wealthy Cross woman. She demands total loyalty from her nought staff (in the prologue, she fires Meggie for not corroborating an alibi in… Alone in the house together, Sephy and Callum have sex, and Sephy instantly bursts into tears afterwards. Jude and Morgan return before Sephy and Callum are fully dressed and while Sephy is still crying. They conclude that Callum raped Sephy, and they share that someone told the police about them: police arrested Leila, Pete is dead, and Andrew is gone. Jude and Callum fight and while they’re distracted, Sephy runs away into the woods. Callum finds her before Jude or Morgan can, and he points her toward safety. Before she leaves, Sephy shares that Andrew is working with Mr. Hadley—Andrew is the man she saw meeting with Mr. Hadley years ago. Sephy gets home safely, and Callum, Morgan, and Jude split up for their safety. The cell is expecting the General of the LM’s second-in-command to visit them at their remote location, but Callum is immediately suspicious of the man, Andrew Dorn. When Andrew asks to see Sephy, Sephy visibly startles at the sight of him. The next day, Andrew, Jude, and three other members of the cell, Morgan, Leila, and Pete, leave to deliver more demands to Mr. Hadley, leaving Callum to guard Sephy.

Sephy and Minnie’s father and Mother’s husband, Mr. Hadley is a powerful Cross in government: he’s the home minister. He’s a large, imposing man and is constantly angry and physically violent with his… A few months pass while Callum grieves, and his unhappiness, confusion, and hatred of Crosses grows. When Jude comes out of hiding to recruit him to the L.M., Callum agrees. Sephy is leaving for boarding school, and she writes to Callum, asking him to run away with her; Callum opens the letter too late and sprints to the Hadley estate only to see Sephy's car pulling away. Adam Stanhope is the lawyer Mum and Callum hire to represent Dad during his trial. He’s a nought—and to Callum’s extreme surprise, he’s a second-generation lawyer. Because he understands the importance of not appearing…

Mr. Corsa is the headmaster at Heathcroft. Despite allowing noughts into the school, Mr. Corsa shows on several occasions that he in no way supports integration. When Shania is injured on her way to school…Sephy watches the case unfold on the news from home, and she knows Dad is innocent. Callum is suspended from school for no reason, but he’s somewhat hopeful about Dad’s prospects when an anonymous benefactor—presumably Sephy—pays for one of the best lawyers in the country, Kelani Adams, to represent Dad. But though Dad pleads not guilty to all the charges, and though Kelani mounts an impressive case, the jury finds Dad guilty of all the charges. Technically, Andrew Dorn is the General’s second-in-command in the Liberation Militia—but Sephy and Callum discover that Andrew is actually a spy. This is because at the beginning of the novel, when Sephy is…

Mum is Callum, Jude, and Lynette’s mother and Ryan’s wife. When readers meet her in the prologue, she’s a hopeful person. She works for the Hadley family and dreams of Callum…

These events at school are complicated by their respective home lives. Sephy’s parents are estranged, and her mother is a lonely alcoholic. Callum’s siblings, Jude and Lynette, often argue because Lynette is unwell—after a traumatic event three years ago that Callum doesn’t understand, Lynny has been off in her own world, and she believes she is a Cross. After an especially heated argument, Ryan McGregor explains to his sons that Lynny is like this because she was beaten nearly to death by a group of nought men who found out she was dating a Cross. As a result of that argument, Lynny is injured, and she snaps out of her fantasy world; within a few weeks, she steps in front of a bus, leaving a note to Callum explaining that she killed herself. At the same time, Sephy's mother Jasmine takes sleeping pills in an attempt to end her life (though Kamal Hadley and others seem to think it was just to get attention). Climax: There is no single climax, given that there are several distinct story arcs, each with its own climax.