The walk towards the canteen gave me slightly more hope. There were some signs of life, at least. We’d slipped into the hatches close to our room to drop off our bags before backtracking and taking the normal corridors. Kids ran through the halls shouting and laughing loudly but I couldn’t bring myself to focus on any of them. My eyes slid off them unfocused as I clenched my hands to keep them from shaking. I couldn’t even smile at Sammy as he ran past us in the hall.

That hope was dashed as soon as we entered the canteen though. Normally, it bustled with life. Children and tutors would chat loudly and the mouthwatering aroma of food would encase you in a bubble of warmth and happiness but not this time. It was hushed.

I scanned the room, trying desperately to work out what was different when I realised it was everything. Part of the buffet on the back wall had a large sign saying “TUTORS ONLY”. As we drew closer I realised that the food there looked much nicer than the rest of the food. Bland, damp slabs of greyish bread lay in trays put out for trainees but the much larger tutor only section had delicious-looking golden rolls with individual pats of butter. We had the option for waffles, pancakes, bagels and more whereas the trainees had none of that. Unrest rolled in my stomach as I reached out for some of the limp bread and a sad scoop of protein scramble. It wasn’t right. We did not deserve better food just because we were tutors. Andy always insisted that trainees deserved luxuries too.

My gaze roamed the room as the rest of my crew grabbed their sad breakfast. Too many new tutors in crisp, pristine dress uniforms and gleaming badges marched through the room, shushing any trainee who dared to speak. There was clearly a different rule for them, however. The table of tutors closest to the buffet were guffawing rambunctiously. I turned away from them, choosing to sit on one of the empty tables as far as possible. My crew followed silently, unable to believe the change we were witnessing. I looked sadly down at my food and tried to shovel some into my mouth.

It wasn’t good. Barely a step up from veggie mush.

I made eye contact with my crew. We didn’t need to talk, we all knew things were much much worse under Plend’s rule.

Someone slid onto the bench next to me.

“Something weird’s going on here, Aries. I’m scared.” Sammy whispered, his head pointing down at his tray and his lips barely moving.

I swallowed, my mind spinning as I tried to work out what I could say to warn him without getting him in trouble.

I’d just worked it out and opened my mouth to speak when a heavy hand clapped on my shoulder. Sammy’s head jolted upwards in fear.

Some perfectly preened tutor I didn’t recognise was smiling down at us.

“Is everything alright here?” She asked, her lips curled in disgust.

I forced myself to smile and meet her eyes.

“Yes. Just eating our breakfast.”

Her face became a bad imitation of a smile before she turned to Sammy.

“And what are you doing here? Should you not be sitting with other trainees, not tutors?”

Sammy’s eyes widened and he looked at me helplessly.

“Actually, he’s entitled to sit here.” The words came out of my mouth before I had a chance to think about them.

The smile dropped from the woman’s face.

“And what, pray tell, would he have to talk to you about?”

It was a demand, not a question. Clearly, these new tutors didn’t like the idea of us poisoning young and impressionable minds.

“His performance during the last flying simulation. You’ve gotten better in the last week, do you remember what we said you needed to work on?” Cas smiled at Sammy gently.

“Urm… yes… Using the other screens and… urm… my ship control.”

“Yeah! Do you remember what all the screens show?”

“Yeah! It’s different if you’re being the primary or the secondary but for the primary, the route is on the right and the scanner is on the left?”

“Good job!” I glanced at the woman who was still watching us before saying, “You can go back to your breakfast now.”

She snarled at me before marching away angrily and my eyes caught the weapon dangling from her waist. She had a stun stick. All of the tutors did, I realised as I stared around the room. They never used stunners here but they’d used them back in the orphanage.

“What do we do?” Sammy squeaked.

I looked around at my crew. They all looked furious.

Shall I tell him? I asked.

I knew it was safer if no one knew but I couldn’t just leave him like that. I couldn’t leave all of the trainees who deserved better.

Yeah.

I stretched my neck, surreptitiously checking the room. There was no one within earshot and yet I still spoke quietly.

“Sammy, it’s not safe for us to stay here. Something’s already happened to Peg so we have to go.”

He looked around, horrified.

“We’re going to get to somewhere safe and then try to do something to help, okay?”

I’ll ping him on a secure line when it’s safer. Cas thought to me.

“Cas’ll ping you on a secure line, once we get somewhere safe and we’ll work something out. Okay?”

He still looked scared but he nodded.

“Try and stay out of trouble as much as you can until then. Keep your head down and do what they say. Use the hatches to get around, tell the other kids. The tutors don’t use them and this lot won’t know about them. Cas’ll send you the details now.”

Cas subtly brushed his hand over his wrist monitor and I saw Sammy’s light up in response. He quickly slapped his hand over it and swiped it clean.

We should go. Cory warned us quietly.

“Okay, kid. We’re going to go. We’ll see you again someday, okay?” I promised quietly.

Sammy paused and waited for another suspicious-looking tutor to pass before whispering, “thank you.”

I swallowed and tried to smile at him before rising and carrying my tray to the bins. My discarded bread joined the rest in the bin and my heart pounded as we slowly fled from the room. We ducked into the hatch as soon as there was no one around and broke into a sprint.

Our bags clutched in our hands, we burst into the garage and rushed to Frida.

We don’t have time to do the normal checks, we just need to get in and out of here as soon as possible. I ordered as I unlocked her ramp and hurried on board.

I could hear Cory and Gem buckling themselves in as I brushed my hand over the console to activate it.

“Frida, we need to go quickly. Override flight plan protocols and disregard preflight checks.” My voice shook as I spoke and I could hear Cas typing frantically beside me to ensure Frida was able to override them.

“Overriden.” Frida chimed after a short pause.

My heart leapt and I engaged the engines, steering her towards the open doors. The thrum of the engines almost drowned out the sinister hiss coming from the main bays. I turned to check on the others, my hands almost dropping from the controls as my breathing became heavier. My heart beat sluggishly in my chest as I tried to keep my eyes open and find out where the gas was coming from. Gem’s head lolled back as sleep claimed her but I could see Cory fighting it. He scrabbled clumsily at his harness, ripping it off and flopping to the floor. I was frozen as I watched him pull himself us and try to rouse Gem but it was too late. I stared around dumbly at Cas who was watching his wrist monitor, his mouth hanging open. It was beeping. That was the other thing I could hear. It broke through the haze I was feeling and I forced my eyes to focus on it. The countdown had ended early. We were too late.

We should have checked the engines. We should have checked everything. I don’t know what it was that caused the gas to go off but we should have done more. We were too focused on just escaping and we threw away our one chance.