A wave of terror crashes through me. Why do they want to shoot us?

‘But we’re on your side.’ My voice cracks.

‘The hell you are,’ the young man says and he lunges towards me. Before I know what’s happening he’s got my arms twisted up behind my back. They don’t get Kay so easily. It takes three of the crowd to pin her to the filthy floor. Even then she’s spitting and cursing.

I’m too astounded to do anything. Why do they want to kill us? Are they really the bloodthirsty savages the Leadership always said they were?

My hands are bound and the boy shoves me roughly into someone else’s grasp. I can feel his hefty presence behind me.

‘Shoot them,’ someone says again.

‘No!’ I say. ‘There’s been some sort of misunderstanding, let me talk to whoever is in charge.’

‘A misunderstanding?’ the young man says. ‘Is that what you call the brutal oppression of a nation, a misunderstanding? Because around here there are what you might call consequences for that sort of thing. You might call them consequences. I call it a bullet to the brain.’

‘We haven’t oppressed anyone!’ I say. ‘We’ve been fighting the oppression. We want to join the Resistance.’

‘If you want fighting, let me up and do fair fighting,’ Kay says from the ground.

‘I don’t want to fight you, tiny girl,’ the young man says. ‘I just want you dead. But first I have a few questions. Take them to the lock-up,’ he says to the people holding me and Kay.

And we’re dragged away.

Being pulled through the dark, derelict hospital doesn’t help my terror. Most of the windows are boarded up, but the solar lanterns give the flaking paint a ghostly glow. We pass a reception desk stacked with files covered in decades of dust. A sign for Radiology hangs crookedly from the ceiling, swaying in the draft.

We’re hauled up another flight of stairs and pushed through an old waiting room with padded chairs and an empty fish tank. A low table is covered by ancient magazines with curled edges.

At the end of another corridor we’re shoved into a room. The door is locked behind us and we’re left in the darkness.

‘What the hell happened there?’ I ask.

I lift my bound hands and try the door. It’s solid and the handle holds firm.

‘I don’t understand,’ Kay says. ‘Ty said the Resistance would help us kill The Leader. But they want to kill us.’

‘It’s a mistake. They seem to think we’re connected with the Leadership.’

‘But we’re not.’

‘No.’

‘But they don’t . . . what-do-you-say?’

‘They don’t believe us.’

There’s enough moonlight coming through the one unboarded window to make out that the room is empty except for several chairs and a piece of medical equipment that is attached to the wall with a giant jointed metal arm. I walk under it to look out of the window.

‘We’re too high to escape,’ I say. ‘It’s a sheer drop.’

‘They can’t keep thinking we’re Leadership,’ Kay says. ‘They’ll have to know it soon, won’t they?’

‘Yes, I’m sure they’ll work it out eventually.’

I only hope they do it before they shoot us.

‘When they come back, when the door opens, let’s punch them,’ Kay says.

‘It won’t be much of an attack with our hands tied,’ I say.

‘I can do attack with my feet better than lots of people can do with all things.’

Despite the situation, I laugh. ‘I know. But I can’t. And there are more of them than us. Anyway, surely they’ll send someone in charge to talk to us and then we can just explain things.’

‘Hmm.’

I ought to make her understand that not all adults are like the enforcers at the Academy, but a wave of tiredness washes over me. ‘I wish I was at home, in my bed,’ I say.

‘Come here,’ Kay says.

I push a chair next to hers and sit down. Kay shifts a little closer to me. Our upper arms are touching.

‘Blake,’ she says.

Something in the tone of her voice catches on to something inside me and I feel it pulling up through me like a zipper. I find myself turning towards her in the same moment that Kay twists to face me. I want to catch her up in my arms, but of course my stupid hands are tied. Her face brushes mine and then our mouths meet.

Eventually, Kay pulls away. ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘We can explain and it will all be okay.’

After a while she falls asleep on my shoulder and I sit very still, trying to believe her.

I doze fitfully for several hours. When I wake and my eyes adjust to the darkness, the first thing I see is the metal arm reaching towards me and I almost shrink away before I remind myself it’s not going to move by itself. I’m trying to gather a mouthful of saliva to swallow to ease my dry throat when a horrible thought occurs to me. I need to pee. I try to think about something else, but now that the thought has crept in it’s like an alarm that I can’t switch off. How is this even possible? My throat aches with dryness. I’ve barely drunk a thing in the last couple of days and yet . . . I definitely need to go.

Kay stirs. I feel shy.

She sits up bolt upright. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing. It’s okay. Nothing’s happened. No one has come yet.’

‘I need water,’ Kay says.

I stand up and press my ear to the door. I can’t hear anything.

‘Are you okay?’ Kay asks. ‘Why are you all moving?’

I realise that I’m fidgeting. ‘I’m fine.’ I could do without having to discuss this with Kay. ‘I’m just frustrated. When are they going to give us a chance to sort this out? When are we going to get to talk to an adult?’ I don’t add that I’m angry with myself that we came here in the first place.

Hell, I really need to pee. I can’t believe that there’s some idiot threatening to kill us and all I can think about is my bladder. This is not how I want to spend my last moments on earth. I should just go. But where? Efwurding efwurd. If I wet myself in front of Kay then they may as well shoot me.

Kay moves towards me. ‘What is it Blake? You can tell me.’

She touches my arm with her bound hands and I remember the kissing last night and I want to kiss her again, but I am bursting. I shift away from her. ‘I just . . . need to go.’

‘Go?’

‘You know, to the bathroom.’

‘Oh.’

I bang on the door. ‘Hello! Can anyone hear me? I want to speak to someone in charge.’

I think I hear someone moving about out there, but there’s no reply.

Kay hammers on the door. ‘We need water! Blake needs—’

‘You don’t need to tell them that,’ I interrupt. I assume that either everyone is asleep in another part of the hospital or that they’re ignoring us, but a few moments later the door opens and a boy in his late teens walks in carrying a solar lantern. We can’t be much of a priority if this is who they’re sending to talk to us.

‘I am Alrye,’ he says, closing the door behind him. ‘I need to ask you some questions.’

‘Can I speak to whoever is in charge?’ I ask.

He shakes his head.

‘Well, can I use your toilet?’

His forehead puckers. He wasn’t expecting that and now he thinks I’m trying to pull a fast one. He shakes his head again. Damn it, I can’t hold on much longer.

‘I really am quite desperate.’

‘No.’

‘Well, I can see that cleanliness isn’t your first priority here and I guess if you’re really going to blow our heads off then someone is going to be clearing up some mess pretty soon anyway . . .’

Alrye frowns. He opens the door and gestures for someone to come in. It’s another boy about his age, but much larger, with the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen. He’s obviously one of the heavy squad.

‘Take him to the toilets,’ Aryle says to him, pointing at me. ‘Quickly.’

I don’t have to be told to move fast. I’m down the corridor like a shot. Our footsteps echo around the tiles as we walk into the toilets. Shoulders holds up his lantern and I see rust stains from the ancient pipes creeping across the walls. I move towards the urinals, but Shoulders says, ‘They don’t work. We don’t have water for it. Here.’ He points to a bucket.

I struggle to get my trousers undone with my tightly bound wrists and then I enjoy what is probably the greatest sense of relief in my life. Until I remember that we’re about to be shot.

Now that I’m not about to wet myself I can think clearly. As I fumble about with my buttons I consider kneeing Shoulders in the groin. I don’t think there’s much point. Even if I managed to floor him, I’m not leaving without Kay.

On our way back to the room I scan the gloomy corridor looking for something, anything, that might be of use to us. Every door we pass has a faded sign about using hand sanitizer before entering. We walk under a section of buckled ceiling with wires dangling down like tangled hair. The whole place is falling apart. As we approach the lock-up room Shoulders swings his lantern from one hand to the other and illuminates a noticeboard on the wall. A newspaper article pinned there catches my eye. Unlike everything else in this hospital, the colours are still bright.

‘Wait,’ I say with such force that Shoulders actually stops.

‘What?’

But I don’t answer because I’m staring open-mouthed at the newspaper. There’s an aerial photo of a large red brick building with a clock tower that I recognise straight away, even though it’s half obscured by smoke and flames.

The headline reads: HUNDREDS DEAD IN ACADEMY ATTACK BY TERRORISTS.