‘Ilex!’ Kay shouts and throws herself into his arms.

I can’t believe he’s here. When I first arrived at the Academy, Ilex was the only one who would even speak to me. We lost him when we escaped, and all this time I’ve been wondering if he made it out alive. I slap him on the back.

‘It is you,’ Ilex says, pulling back from Kay to look at me with his eyes wide. ‘They said they had Academy Specials with them and I . . . Blake, where’s Ali?

It’s like the air has been punched out of me. I look at Kay. Ilex doesn’t move, but his face changes. He knows. His eyes turn glassy.

Kay eases Ilex into a sitting position on the doorstep. He stares unseeing at the ground. She takes both his hands in hers. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘Ali is dead.’

He blinks.

‘She was amazing,’ I say. ‘She saved us. We were trapped in the lift and she climbed out and went to get the key and stood up to The Leader’s aide, but . . . he shot her.’ I remember Ali’s body crumpling when the bullet hit her. All I can say is, ‘She was so brave—’

‘I don’t want to know it,’ Ilex says. He twists his head away as if to avoid hearing. ‘It’s not good. She shouldn’t be saving you.’ He looks back to me, raw grief contorting his face. ‘You’re the big good, Blake; you’re the one with the thinkings and the words. You should have saved you. Why did you get Ali to do it? She was a little girl. She was mine.’ A sob tears from his throat. ‘I loved her.’ He puts his head in his hands and weeps.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t have the right words to make things better.

Kay pulls Ilex to her and wraps her arms around him. She doesn’t speak. She just makes noises like a mother comforting a baby.

Kay sits with Ilex like that for a long time. In the end Ilex lifts his head and rubs his face with his sleeve.

‘I have to go now,’ he says.

‘Ilex, wait,’ I say, but he’s already gone back into the visitors’ centre. He disappears down a corridor marked To the Caverns.

I don’t know if I should follow. I desperately want to talk to him. I want to make him feel better. I’m afraid that I’ve lost a really good friend. Tears prick at my eyes.

Kay sees my indecision. ‘We have to wait to talk to him. He loved Ali so much. He wants to think about her, he doesn’t want to talk to us.’

She’s right. Ilex needs time. I can’t force him to understand just because I feel terrible.

A man comes towards us along the corridor Ilex disappeared down. I tense.

‘You the Academy kids?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ Kay says.

‘Ilex’s friends?’

I don’t feel like a very good friend, but Kay nods.

He sighs. ‘No Ali, then.’

‘She died,’ I say. ‘We tried to look after her, we really did, but there was this man—’

‘Terrible places,’ the man interrupts. ‘Academies. Terrible.’

‘Yes,’ Kay agrees.

‘Been looking for her since he got out,’ the man explains. ‘When he heard you were here . . . well, suppose he hoped one of you’d be Ali.’

The guilt of being alive when Ali is not fills my throat.

‘Is Ilex all right?’ Kay asks. ‘I mean, is he okay here? Is it a good place?’

The man’s face darkens. ‘Don’t believe everything the Resistance say about us. We know how to look after kids. And we don’t send them off to get shot.’

The muscles in his neck have tensed up.

‘The Resistance didn’t say anything bad about you,’ I say. ‘Honestly; they told us that you were good people.’

‘Good, is it? Normally, we get called shirkers.’

‘What’s shirker?’ Kay asks.

I look at the man, but he obviously isn’t going to offer an explanation. ‘It’s, er, someone who doesn’t do the thing that they should do,’ I say.

‘Should do?’ The man’s face darkens. ‘You think we should go interfering on the other side of the fence, do you? Then what happens? My kids’ll end up in an Academy. Thought you ran away from one of them.’

I feel like we’re caught in the blast of his rage towards the Resistance.

‘I don’t want anyone in an Academy,’ I say quietly.

But the man isn’t listening; he’s off on his own train of thought. ‘Coming round here, asking for help! What about what you could do for us? Do you think sticking a bit of food our way is enough? If you’ve got such big ideas about making things better for Wilderness people, you could start with us.’

‘Maybe—’ Kay begins.

‘Do you think we like living down there in the dark and the dirt? Do you think we don’t wish it were different?’

‘It must be hard,’ Kay says gently.

‘That’s why the Resistance are so tough on their kids.’ And as I say it, I realise that I’m becoming more sympathetic to their methods. ‘They’re fighting to make things better. That’s why they want your help.’

He gives a gusty sigh. ‘No use fighting. This isn’t the nicest way to live, but you’ve got to accept things. Do the best with what there is. It’s no good dreaming. That’s what you are: load of silly kids dreaming. You’ll never change a thing.’

I might be a kid, but I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do.

‘We’ve got to believe in a better world if we want to bring about change,’ I say.

The man tuts.

‘It is hard to keep on fighting,’ Kay says, and I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or the man.

The man gives Kay a long look. ‘We’ll take care of Ilex,’ he says, and he walks away.

When Tanisha and the others return, she doesn’t look too happy. We board the minibus and she throws herself back in her seat.

‘It’s just stubborn,’ she says, more to herself than anyone else.

‘Did they say no?’ Kay asks.

‘Yeah, they said no.’ Tanisha blows out a breath. ‘Most of them anyway.’

Kay shoots her a commiserating look. ‘Are there lots of people down there?’

Tanisha nods. ‘There used to be a whole lot more of them when they lived in the school.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Leadership pounced and took a load of them away. I reckon they’re in factories now.’ She frowns. ‘If they’re lucky.’

‘They just took them away? Has that ever happened with the Resistance?’

‘They manage to pick off a cell occasionally. Us central lot move around a lot. We’ve got strict security. We don’t normally let in anyone we’re not expecting.’

‘I thought that was because of this boy and girl Ven was told would be posing as Academy students,’ I say.

‘Trust me; Ven’s suspicious of new arrivals even when he’s not expecting Leadership spies.’

I look out the window. What happened to the boy and girl? Was the information wrong, or are they still wondering about in the Wilderness? They must have been around my age; did they want to spy for the Leadership or were they forced into it?

‘Do they . . .’ Kay nods back in the direction of the caverns, ‘have guards?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Tanisha nods, ‘for what it’s worth.’

I catch her meaning. ‘They’re kidding themselves thinking they’re safe down there, aren’t they?’

Tanisha shrugs. ‘It’s not a bad place to hide.’

‘But if anyone ever finds them and wants to catch them, they’ll be like rats in a trap.’

She shrugs again. ‘We don’t try to tell them how to live. In fact, we’ve tried to help them. You’d think they’d want to give something back.’ She grips the seat in front of her. ‘It’s not even for us, it’s for everyone. They’re too damn scared, that’s what it is.’

I remember what the man said. ‘I think they’re so beaten down that they’re afraid to even imagine that things could be better,’ I say.

‘Hmm,’ Tanisha says. I think she feels it’s got more to do with straight-up cowardice.

‘So no helpers at all?’ Kay asks.

‘A few of them said they’d come. Out of the adults. They didn’t even give the kids a choice. I bet they would have come if they’d had the chance.’

I’m not so sure. Part of the reason this country is in such a mess is because it’s really hard to trust any other way than the one you’ve grown up with.

For the rest of the journey all I can think of is Ilex’s face falling from hope to grief.

All through the afternoon I keep running over what happened at the Academy. It’s my fault that Ali’s dead. I want to scream I didn’t mean it.

All these things that I’ve done. All these people who have died. Ali, my mother, Wilson, Scarface. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. How have I become a murderer? It doesn’t feel like I had any choice. I don’t want to be where I am. This has to end soon. This revolt has got to work.

That night, Kay is upstairs working and I’m still lost in my thoughts, staring at the feathered paint peeling off the rec room walls, when a whispered word from Tanisha’s conversation with a boy with dreadlocks pierces my bubble.

Assassination.

Without turning my head or changing my posture, I tune into Tanisha’s low voice. At first she says a lot of things about timings that I can’t follow, but then the boy talks. His voice is louder and I distinctly hear an occasional word drop like a penny.

‘Rifles . . . square . . . The Leader . . . assassination team . . .’

I catch my breath.

They don’t just want to remove the Leadership from power. They want to kill The Leader. I’d assumed that they wanted to imprison him, maybe put him on trial. But they want to kill him, just like me.

Tanisha and the boy are interrupted by Robin. ‘You were talking to those cave people today,’ she says to Tanisha accusingly.

‘Yep,’ Tanisha agrees.

‘You were trying to get them to help.’

‘That was the plan.’

‘I could ask my friend Jed to help you.’

‘No point, we can’t take any of the Wilderness children unless their parents agree.’ Tanisha catches hold of Robin’s arm to ensure she has her attention. ‘And Robin, you’ll be in trouble if anyone finds out you’ve been roaming about playing with kids in the Wilderness.’

Robin pouts. Tanisha placates her by saying she’ll play a game of cards before Robin goes to bed. The boy moves away.

The word assassination is still flashing like a sign in my mind. All this time I’ve been thinking that I’d have to steal one of the tickets that Ven has got hold of for the celebrations in the central square where The Leader is going to speak, so that I would be able to get close enough to him to kill him. And even though I knew that every Resistance member will be given a gun, I was panicking that Ven would try to make me an exception. But now it’s all being made easy for me. Ven will have planned how to get as close as possible to The Leader. All that weapons practice in our Future Leaders sessions on warfare is finally going to be some use. All I’ve got to do is get on that Assassination team.

I just have to persuade Ven.