'W-where's the capsule?' Kass stammers.

'This can't be right.' Rai shivers from head to foot, his face screwed up with the strain of holding the sea apart. 'It can't be.'

I can't. . . even speak. All I can do is stare up at the flag, mounted on the towering rock that is supposed to contain the capsule.

But instead. . .

Buried inside is a person. Man or woman, I can't tell; they're completely encased in the rock, other than a few exposed body parts where the rock has been weathered away. Their face, mouth fixed open in a scream. Outstretched fingers, reaching for something we'll never know. One leg moulded forever into a run. All mottled with dark-grey scales that's spread across their complexion like a disease. One eye-socket is completely submerged, leaving the eyeball dead and bulging outwards.

A scream bubbles up inside me. I clutch my throat, desperate to force it down. Musa springs to mind and I can't help letting out a gargled choke – will I ever see him again?

'Who are you?' Kass yells, as he crawls towards the rock. 'What happened to you? Tell us how to help you!'

'I don't think you can save them,' Rai whispers.

I nod, wanting to gag. This person wears a cloak of the cold reek of death. 'Whoever it is, I think they're long gone.'

'But – but what are they doing here?'

'This must be it.' Rai's voice cracks; I figure he's trying to convince himself at the same time. 'This must be the capsule. The – the visinium capsule.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Look.' Rai points at the ground; I lower my head, still crouched on all fours, trying to steady myself. Then, I see. Radiating from the rock are thousands of tiny strands, so fine they're almost invisible, snaking through the earth under our hands in a swarm that tethers the person in the rock to the very ground itself.

'It-it's like Cotton said.' My eyes follow the cables up the sea bed into the prisoner's very skin. A thousand silver leeches, collecting at the points where the skin is darkest grey. 'Remember? She told us that cables connect the hotspots to the capsules. These must be them.'

I want to weep.

'This is the capsule? This thing?' The ground mimics Kass' horror, writhing angrily. Rai is also struggling; the ocean walls on either side of us are starting to seal, leaving us penned in a clearing with the capsule at the centre. The clearing growing smaller by the second. Panting heavily, Rai lets out a moan.

'Guys – I can't keep this up much longer. We have to hurry.'

Kass stares at him. 'But what are we meant to do? It's a person.'

'Aargh.' An invisible force knocks Rai to the ground, as part of the towering walls begins to topple down. He flips over onto his back, catching the water before it splashes down on top of us. 'QUICK,' he cries. 'Please.'

'I don't know what to do!' My vision blurs as panic overwhelms me. How can I destroy it now? It's a person! But I have to – for Nura. For everyone I love. But, I realise, even if I want to, we don't know how. And yet. On autopilot, I drag myself forwards onto the rock, staggering to my feet at the base. I may not know what to do, but something inside me does.

'We can't destroy it. We can't, Sammi.' Kass' face is streaked with dust and blood, sweat and something white, exposed on his cheekbone under the blood. My stomach lurches.

'We can't,' he insists, but my hand grabs the person's foot. I look up into its face and my gut twists.

It's alive. Its face full of despair.

The eyes swivel downwards and meet my own.

Please, they seem to beg. Help me.

I heave myself upright, clutching the rock, reaching for their face. My fingers brush their cheek –

Its cold as ice. Hard as metal.

My other hand cups their other cheek, feeling the soft fuzz of skin, the finest velvet, and a tear trickles down onto my palm from their one good, remaining eye.

'SAMMI!' Rai screams.

'Sammi, no!' Kass roars.

But I know. I know in my heart what I have to do.

As I look up at into this person's face one last time – it isn't their face I see at all.

It's Nura's. My Nura. She's at home right now, her body plugged full of wires just like the person in the rock. Her hair swathed over her pillow, pipes carrying liquid into her arms, her legs, her stomach, everywhere, keeping her alive, keeping her with us.

Is she in pain? I suddenly wonder. Is Nura in pain right now?

As gently as I can, I focus every ounce of my strength, all the energy of my power, to flood through my fingers. And then – instead of warm skin, or biting metal – I feel the capsule. Not the person. Something else. Something alive inside the corrupted skin, like nothing I've ever felt before. Not solid, or liquid, or even a gas – it's like everything, and nothing, all at once. I feel its structure, just like Keller predicted – but it's no element I recognise. It's erratic, ever changing; some bonds weak, some strong. The strong ones, I can't touch, I'm no physical Elementalist – but the weakest ones, I can. They quiver, sensing my presence. And I'm drawn towards them.

No. Not towards them.

I remember in Keller's lab. The feeling of prising particles apart. How each one felt different. How each one succumbed. To me.

The capsule should have been different, but it's exactly the same. No, I'm not drawn towards them – I command them. I can blow them apart.

It's not until I taste salt on my lips that I realise I'm crying. 'I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. . .'

I close my eyes, and push.

*

It takes a few moments for the capsule to react.

The force of my blow – I feel the chain reaction flooding through, the snap snap snap of a thousand bonds breaking all at once.

I make to back off, but something stops me; I look down in horror to see the person's outstretched hand now clinging to my shirt. I try to prise it off, but the hand lets go instantly, seizing my hand instead. It squeezes, a quick, sharp movement. Thank you.

Something cold is pressed into my hand; then it lets go. I fall to the ground.

'Sammi.' Kass catches me. 'What have you done?'

But we don't have time. 'Quick, we need to run!'

Speechless, Kass allows me to drag him away as I stumble as fast as I can away from the rock, away from the thing.

'Rai?'

Rai's still flat on his back, trying to hold the sea apart for us.

'Come on!'

It's the push he needs; he wrenches himself to his knees and together we thunder across the tumultuous sea bed, Rai moving our small clearing through the red waves with us, leaving the capsule to be submerged once more.

'Henry!' Rai bellows. The sea thrashes with increasing urgency over our heads, threatening with our every step to hurl itself on top of us. 'Where are you?'

The ground lurches again, even more violently than before, and Rai finally loses control. The clearing buckles, and the waves explode down, down, over our heads.

Bursts of sound as my ears break the surface.

Silence as I'm drawn back under.

Pain from all directions as I'm flung like a rag doll.

Swim, stupid. I push my arms and legs as hard as I can, and my head bursts through the surface.

'There, look!'

Spitting out water, gasping, desperately paddling, I turn to where Rai's pointing – finally, we can see André back on the shore. We must be close. With strong, confident strokes, Rai catches me around the wrist, Kass clinging to his back. And together, we tread water. And watch.

André Labelle on his knees in the sand, arms held high above his head. Surrounding him, the very same guards that laughed with him, stayed up all night playing cards with him, shared his room, his food, his life with him. Guns pointed at his head, and shouting, all of them shouting, Commander Trojan at the head of the circle. Barrel of her gun in André's face. There are bodies, Futurist soldiers, who clearly tried to follow us into the water, but now lie, face down, being tossed and turned by the water near the shore. They hadn't made it far.

André had rigged a trap in the fort. Smoke seeps from the wall cannons, and deep grooves have been blasted in the rocks. A thick, black fog coats the ground. And the bodies.

The sea thrashes over us one last time, and I feel the last of Rai's strength slipping away as his grip on my arm loosens, the waves about to tear us apart.

'Henry!'

Rai's scream, his last scream before we're submerged, rips out into the night's sky, and all the soldiers turn our way.

André's face lights up at the sight of us, and I swear I see him wink. His arm retracts, and he throws something.

'Quick!' Trojan shouts, but that's the last thing I see before I'm swallowed up by the waves. It's all I can do to cling on to Rai, and pray he has a good hold of Kass.

Then, everything happens very quickly.

An explosion ripples through the sea from behind us –

Something white - Henry? - plunges into the water towards us –

Henry drops something, and Rai catches it before it sinks into the deep –

A chasm blossoms in the sea, a glittering void dispelling all light, all space, all time even –

– a Wormhole –?

– I'm pulled inside, and everything goes black.

*

We burst out of the wormhole and roll onto the ground. The safe, motionless, ground. Water pours through the Wormhole after us, but in a flash of swirling black matter, the Wormhole disappeared.

And the world grows silent.

I lie on my back, chest heaving up and down. Up and down. Although I know I'm still, it still feels like I'm being tossed by the waves. Water sizzles from my body, rising in a hiss of amber mist.

'W-where are we? What happened?' Kass lies next to me, his eyes closed. 'W-where's André?'

'I don't know.' I try to reach out towards him, but my body hurts too much. Everything hurts. Every inch of my skin, every muscle, every bone. Instead, I blink water out of my eyes, turning my head weakly to take Kass and Rai in properly. No. . . Kass' skin is a mess of blood and blisters, and whilst Rai is only flushed, he seems to have passed out. Under the crook of his arm, nestles a wrecked, sizzling Henry.

'Henry, and André. Th-they saved us.' Or, maybe not passed out – Rai hides his face with his arm, but I still hear the choking sounds of his tears. 'André threw the temporary wormhole – remember? – to Henry, who brought it to us in the sea. H-h-he sacrificed himself for us. Th-the capsule –,'

'It exploded.' Kass interrupts, his voice flat. 'I guess Sammi did it. Did it kill them? Are they all dead?'

'No,' Rai says, high-pitched with emotion. 'The explosion was only small. I saw before I triggered the wormhole, it didn't even reach the shore. B-b-but the Futurists. . . They opened fire. . .'

He stops, and doesn't carry on. My own sobs shudder in my chest, as I picture André, stranded on the rocks, surrounded by his enemies, who were once his friends –

Who killed him.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

'. . . Where are we?' Eventually, Kass sits up, and out of the corner of my eye I see him sway. I reach out just in time to catch him, and with difficulty, prop him upright, his head lolling dangerously. He grits his teeth.

'I don't know,' Rai whispers, pulling himself upright too. He shivers, pressing his lips onto Henry's crackling body. 'I don't know if there's a way to tell where temporary wormholes go.'

'Great. What do we do now?'

'I know.' Something occurs to me. I start searching, but then realise my hand is still clenched around something hard and cold. Oh yeah. The person in the capsule gave me something. No time to look now – I stuff it into one pocket, then rummage through the others. 'Oh god. . . Not now. It can't be lost. . .'

'What?' Rai's shivering harder than ever – at least it's not raining. Except; hang on. Nowhere doesn't rain at night. Except Singavere. Which means – we're in incredible danger. I out-turn my pockets in even greater desperation, cursing myself for not having put it somewhere safer. . .

'My button! Eldred's button, the one that led him to me in the first place. If I had it, we could call him! He could come and find us!'

'Use mine.' Kass' voice is so faint; I reach back for him and he collapses into my arms. His eyes flicker; he's barely conscious. 'In my shoe. Take it. . .'

Rai's there instantly, easing off Kass' boot with such tenderness as I cradle Kass' head in my lap. He tips the murky-brown button from Kass' boot into his hand, closes his eyes for a moment, then presses down hard.

We wait in the eerie silence.

Then comes a voice. A voice that sounds like safety –

'Bloody hell, kids. You've got yourselves into quite the pickle. Let's wrap this up and take you home, hmm?'

'Eldred,' I sigh, as the raggedy beard and grandpa hat loom over me, face cracking into that wrinkled smile I'd recognise anywhere.

'It's okay, Sammi. Rai. Puffin. I've got you now. I've got you.'

*

I turn over, sighing gently, relishing the soft, warm pillow under my head, the snuggly-white blanket pulled up to my chin. There's a smell of home that I haven't bathed in for what feels like so long. . .

It's so good. Like coffee-granules, and home-made honeycomb shampoo. The smoky scent I associate with the mists of Abhor.

'M-Musa?'

I don't dare open my eyes, in case it isn't true, it isn't him. But my hand is warmer than the rest of me, held in something equally soft, equally warm. I feel calluses over the palms, rough and familiar. I'd never need a map to track these hands. Something wet and hot spots my cheeks, and a deep throaty chuckle in the voice I love most warms me all the way through, to where I need it most.

'I'm here.'

My eyes open. And there's Musa, sat beside me, his expression so fierce it makes my burning heart pound. He gasps, his tightly furrowed brows relaxing and red-raw eyes squeezing shut for a moment. Then he leans over me, stroking my hair, my cheeks, my nose, my lips, everywhere his fingers can find.

'I – I thought –' He shakes his head, and rubs his eyes with his sleeve with a shaky laugh. 'I thought I'd lost you.'

I can't speak. Sometimes, no words are enough to explain how you feel. My hands reach up of their own accord, one nestling into his hair, that silk, the other cupping his cheek, my fingers tracing the shadows under his eye. Musa chokes out a sound - of pain or pleasure? - as I touch him; he covers my hand with his own, pressing it harder into his cheek. I want to keep it there forever.

'Sammi –,'

'Shh.' I place a finger to his lips, and then wriggle aside, making space in the bed for him. He tries to speak again but I just shake my head, not wanting to hear, not wanting to know anything other than the safety of him, the feel of him. He looks down at me, his eyes so wide, almost frightened, but when I tug his hand, he slithers into bed beside me, and wraps his arms around me.

I lie, encased in his arms, trembling as I remember. How the waves engulfed me, how the earth flung me from one side to the other. The prisoner, whose eyes burned my soul, yearning to be free. André's face as he turned towards us upon Rai's scream, the utter elation and pride as he realised we'd –

Musa holds me as I weep, as I scream, as the memories tear me apart from within. But as long as I have him by my side, I'll be okay. I'll always be okay.

I have to be.

*

It takes a few days for me to fully recover. But I don't mind; I've been assigned my own room in the medical facility, and as long as Musa's with me, I'm content to hide away as long as I can. Apart from when I go to the bathroom, Musa never leaves my side, helping me eat, get up to shower, then easing me back to bed.

The sea, obviously, burnt me. Not just outside, but inside too; despite the oxygen nozzle André gave me, I still managed to inhale enough water, scalding my oesophagus and stomach. Dr Keller said it could have been worse. I'd not been submerged for as long as Kass had, but it was, as Keller said, 'bad enough to be getting on with.'

Luckily, Dr Keller smeared this icy goo over my burns that made them tingle, and he made me drink this milky stuff that made my insides feel the same.

'It's helping,' he assured me. 'You might not even scar too much.'

'So what if she does? She'll still be beautiful,' Musa snapped, making me blush horribly. Keller muttered something awkward and incoherent, before retreating from the room, mumbling about needing to see Kass.

I didn't mind. The more time just me and Musa, the better.

But a few days later, other people start visiting. The best visitor is Rai; he pokes his head around the door one morning looking sheepish, tapping cautiously.

'Rai!'

'Oh! You're happy to see me.' His face relaxes, and he joins me on my bed, glancing at Musa every now and again who stays in his chair, arms folded, eyebrows slanted down.

'Of course, I am,' I smile. His skin has a pinkish to it, but apart from that, he seems pretty much unscathed. 'You look well, considering.'

He nods, still looking glum. 'Yeah. Keller's pissed with me though. I did that thing he hates to protect myself from the sea and got dehydrated again.'

'Better than being burnt, though?'

He sighs, rubbing his eyes. 'It's all my fault.'

'How do you figure that?'

'If I hadn't given Kass my emotion-filters, I wouldn't have been so crap at the start. I'd have been able to stop the water hurting you. And Kass.' His eyes well, and my heart plummets.

'Is Kass really bad?'

'Yeah,' Rai sniffs. 'I should have been able to protect him.'

'That's not your fault! Look, I don't really understand what happened with you guys, but it's not your job to protect us, Rai. Kass should have just given them back.'

But Rai's shaking his head. 'No, that's not his fault. He wasn't in control. Wearing the filters for the first time was probably the best he'd felt in months. It must have taken all the pain of losing his family away, and then some. It's always strongest at first, before you acclimatise. He wasn't doing it out of malice. I see that now.'

He swallows. 'I should have known better than to take them off. If I hadn't, I would have been able to protect you guys. Maybe even save –,'

'Don't say it.' We both fall silent, as I try not to let any thoughts of André enter my mind. 'There was nothing any of us could have done.'

'Maybe with better planning –,'

'Yeah, maybe, but we can't change that now. They should have told us more in the first place.' A shot of anger sparks in my chest. 'Them keeping us half-way in the dark put us in danger. Even more danger than we needed to be in.'

'There's a lot more going on with RESIST than we know,' Musa mutters, and we spin around to face him. 'I have a feeling we're only scratching the surface.'

'Well, that's not right!' I say, clenching my fists under the covers. 'We're the ones risking our necks, how can they keep things from us?'

'Maybe they don't completely trust us,' Rai shrugs, and I lie back, chewing the ends of my hair. Not trusting us? After what we just did for them? 'But you're right. We should have been told more.'

But a week stretches by, and nobody comes to tell us anything. Whilst some of the lower-ranking friends we've made come to visit, no one of a higher rank than Keller bothers themselves. Rai takes to mending Henry on my floor with the toolkit that one of the engineers, Tanner, has given him. Musa silently resents his presence, shooting him filthy looks and barbed comments, which in typical Rai-fashion, go blissfully ignored.

We haven't even seen Eldred since he saved us. And this hurts, more than I thought it would.

But on day ten of recovery, he finally comes.

'You're looking better now, sweetheart,' he grins, his shaggy beard preceding him through the door.

'Hi, Eldred,' I say stiffly, as Rai stumbles up from his mess of wires and tools. Musa, who is sat behind me, wraps me up in his arms and glares at Eldred on my behalf.

'You took your time.'

'Ha! Well hello, Musa, it's been a while, hasn't it? Did you have fun at training?' Eldred winks, cocking his hat at us; I swivelled around to Musa, whose face has turned scarlet.

'Training? What training? Is that where you were?'

'Stop trying to change the subject, Eldred,' Musa hisses at Eldred instead. 'Sammi nearly died destroying one of your capsules, and no one's even bothered to come and say thank you.'

'Oh, sorry.' Eldred raises an eyebrow, and strokes through his beard thoughtfully. 'I didn't realise you were expecting an applause, Sammi. Were you also, Rai?'

'N-no,' Rai stammers, as I blink, stunned. 'But some acknowledgement would be nice.'

'Yes, well, all in good time. We've had rather a lot to deal with, you know, what with saving you, fixing up Kass, breaking the news to Fabien. . . It's been difficult.'

Oh. . . Of course. I stare my hands in dismay. André was this Labelle's – Fabien Labelle's – younger brother.

'How did he take it?' I dare to glance at Eldred, and am relieved to see that his eyes – whilst sad – are soft as they meet mine.

'Not well, as I'm sure you can understand. Now, Cotton is waiting for us in Kass' room. She'd rather speak to you all at the same time, so as not to repeat herself, but he's still not quite well enough to go to her office. Fancy a trip?' He gestures to a wheelchair in the corner of the room, and with deep breath, I agree.

'Wheel me, Musa?'

Musa says nothing, just wriggles free and pecks me on the forehead. Gingerly, with his help, I hobble over to the chair, Eldred nodding in satisfaction.

'Good girl. Now, follow me.'

When we get to Kass' room, Rai hangs back, a reluctant, almost frightened look on his face.

'What's wrong?' I ask, as Eldred pokes his head in the door to ask if they're ready.

Rai flushes, one hand rumpling his hair. 'W-what if he blames me? And thinks it's all my fault?'

I reach for Rai's hand, and after a hesitant glance at Musa, he takes it. 'Don't be ridiculous,' I say, squeezing. 'There's no way Kass will blame you. He's an idiot, but not that much of an idiot.'

Rai chuckles weakly.

Eldred leads us in.

*

Kass' room is even whiter than mine, and stinks of sterile, purifying hand gel. Keller fusses around the bed where Kass is awake and sitting up, straightening pillows and tinkering with his drip. Kass' arms and face are swathed in bandages.

'Hey, Kass,' I whisper. 'We've missed you.'

'Oh, yeah, sure you have.' A muffled, but ever sarcastic, voice emerges from underneath the bandages. 'As if you haven't just loved spending the whole time in bed with Musa.'

'Dude!'

'Hah!' Eldred pounds his legs with his fist as he laughs, and Keller sniggers too, with a guilty smile at me and the puce-faced Musa.

'This is hardly appropriate.' Cotton's voice comes from the corner of the room, and we all turn, sheepish, to face her. 'Please, take a seat. I haven't got long, and from what Kass has been telling me, we have a lot to discuss. So – from the beginning. Tell me what happened on your mission, spare no details. Everything could be important.'

Cotton listens in silence as Rai and I tell her everything since Eldred left us in Arenya. Kass occasionally joins in but mainly leaves it to us. It's clear it hurts him to talk.

The only time anyone interrupts is when we get to the part about the capsule.

'Let me get this straight,' Cotton says, frowning deeply with her chin in her hand. 'The capsule was a person? Encased in the rock?'

'Yeah,' I nod. 'It was awful. All the cables were there like you said, running from the ground all the way up into – into the person.'

'How?' Rai bursts out. 'How could the capsule be a person?'

'Hmm.' Cotton covers her eyes, massaging her temple with her fingers. 'Every time we think we understand. . . What do you think, Eldred?'

'Well, I suppose it is possible. We know so little about visinium, as it's a substance uniquely found on Ra, so we have no way of studying it. I doubt even the Futurists know much about it, other than maybe Jinaka. Perhaps. . .' Eldred takes off his hat and wrings it between his hands. 'Perhaps it only exists in a stable form inside humans?'

'What?'

'Is that possible?' Cotton asks.

'Probably. Our bodies are a collage of different substances, even poisons like mercury and arsenic, albeit in minuscule amounts. Why would it be surprising that the body could host one more?'

'But that doesn't answer the question,' Rai muses. 'If it were only stable inside the body, what about the cables? How would they work, then?'

'Well.' Eldred coughs, pulling his hat back onto his head. 'It was only a theory. It's impossible to know for sure on so little information.'

I suddenly remember something. 'The person gave me something.'

All eyes turn to me. I grab Musa's arm urgently.

'Musa, where are the trousers I was wearing? The person in the capsule gave me something, and I put it in my pocket. Where are they?'

'It's okay.' Musa puts his arm around me as I start to spiral. 'I've got it.' To my surprise, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out something with jagged edges. 'I found it when I washed your clothes. Here.' He hands it to me, and I clutch it tightly.

'What is it?' Cotton comes to look, her breath tickling the side of my neck. Slowly, I turn it over in my hands. It's acidic yellow and curiously shaped, a shield with sharp corners and a pin at the back. The edges bear green and black embellishments.

'It's a badge.'

'Yes. And those are Amarish colours,' Cotton frowns, squinting even harder at it.

'The person must have come from Amariland,' Eldred says, thoughtfully. 'But those colours haven't been used since the Kingdom of Amariland fell after the nuclear wars.'

'It's got writing on it.' I lift it up to the light. 'M-major? Uh –,'

'Give it to me.' Cotton snatches it, her face growing pale. 'No. Surely not.'

'What?' Eldred asks.

She turns to him, looking troubled. 'Major Herman Briggs.'

'That name rings a bell,' I say.

Rai nods. 'André mentioned him. He made the fort on Coral beach.' He swallows. 'Surely the person in the capsule wasn't him?'

'It couldn't be,' Eldred says slowly. 'Briggs died a war hero nearly thirty years ago.'

There's a pause.

At last, Musa breaks the silence. 'So, what are they supposed to do now?' His arms coil over my shoulders, hands searching for mine. 'You can't expose Sammi to a situation like that again.'

'Well, next time we'll know what to expect.' Cotton gets to her feet and starts pacing. 'The main problem is that FUTURE will now be on high alert. You had it easy, this time; no one was expecting an attack. Now they'll know you're targeting capsules, they're bound to increase protection to maximum security. We won't get away with having such a small team to defend you.'

'If we'd had a proper team in the first place, André might not have died.'

Kass' words are bitter; they sting. He turns his mummified face towards Cotton, eyes smouldering.

Cotton regards him. 'A bigger team wouldn't have been able to infiltrate the base and grant you access to the facility. Believe me; you had it easy this time. Next time –'

'Next time? These capsules are people! You saw the badge, that was Major Briggs. You can't seriously expect us to destroy people?'

Cotton scowls at Kass, her usually calm features twisting with impatience. 'What else can we do? Stop resisting because FUTURE fights dirty? That's playing right into their hands! There's no real proof it was Briggs, and anyway, it's like Sammi said. It's kinder to put them out of their misery.'

'That's not what I said,' I mutter.

'Same difference. This is a war. You can't play nice in war, you have to meet fire with fire. We have to destroy the capsules, there's no doubt about that. If we don't –,' Cotton lets out a grunt of frustration, and resumes her pacing, sharper, angrier than before. 'If we don't destroy the capsules, we can't change a thing! We'll just be sat around like cattle, waiting for the Futurists to be relocated, and for us all to die. Is that what you want, Kass?'

Kass says nothing, just turns away.

'I said, is that what you want?' Cotton shouts, a bead of spittle flying from her mouth onto Kass' bandages. Dr Keller winces in the background.

'No.'

'I thought not.' Cotton straightens up, smooths down her jacket, and clears her throat. 'Our next meeting will be in two days' time. Make the most of your free time until then, because after that, things step up a notch.' And she marches from the room.

*

The night is cold, even under all my blankets, and I shiver, trying to warm my feet on any part of Musa they can find.

'I know what you're doing,' he grins through the darkness, grabbing hold of my wrists in one hand and tickling me with the other. 'Stop it. How do feet even get so cold?'

'S-s-stop!' I giggle, unable to breathe or quench my own laughter, until we end up tangled in each other's arms, heads squished onto the same plump pillow.

I can feel his breath, soft, on my face. It tickles my nose, and when I look up, his eyes are only inches from mine. Eyes I've known my whole life, and for a moment I think of that day by the pool. He gave me my bracelet, those eyes full of self-doubt, and fear. And hope.

'I'm going to miss this,' he whispers, his eyes filling with that same fear, that same self-doubt. 'I just want to keep you here, with me, forever. I don't want you to risk your life again. You can't.'

'I have to.' My fingers stroke the delicate lines of his cheekbones, smoothing his hair out of his eyes, where it pools like ink across the pillow. 'You know that. It's what I was born to do.'

'So? We can still run.'

'What?'

'Think about it.' His hands tighten around my wrists, and his face brightens, startlingly beautiful, but terrifying at the same time. 'You and me. We can get away from all this – you just say the word. We'll run away –,'

I think about it. I really do. I imagine the two of us, alone and safe, hiding in a forest somewhere, catching fish in the river, warming ourselves by the fire at night –

And then I remember. There's no river of fish. There's no forest to hide in. The rains would snuff out any fire we make.

But most of all?

Nowhere is safe for us. For me. For anyone.

I don't have to say the words. My expression is enough – Musa's tears fall silently onto the pillow as I cup his face in my hands, and bring it slowly, slowly towards my own . . .

– my heart fluttering like frightened wings –

And it isn't spoken about again all night.