'What? You were babysitting me?'

'You heard me. What are you playing at? Look. I know you want to help, but you're useless. You're a danger to have around.'

'What about Holly?'

'What about her?'

'She shouldn't have gone in on her own.'

'She volunteered. Drawing them out of the house was the best strategy.' He looks uncomfortable.

She had something to prove to Nico after breaking the rules, and she's proved it. Permanently.

We stay silent the rest of the way. What happened? I wanted to kill that Lorder. The knife was in my hand; the opportunity, there. But the mere thought of using it, pushing the blade in, cutting into skin, veins, and muscle and I froze. I couldn't do it.

If Katran hadn't come running back, I'd be dead.

My fists clench. What was all the training I did with Nico and the Owls for? I know so many ways to end life.

I hold Emily's face in my mind. She refused Happy Juice that could have saved her, for what? Now she and her baby are both dead. And Holly: neck snapped. The other two in her cell whose names I didn't even know.

Lorders did that.

Next time I have a weapon in my hand and a Lorder in front of me, I won't fail.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

'Would you have done that, what that girl did?' Tori asks. She inspects her knife as we walk the last steps to the house. She obviously didn't have problems using it.

'It was pointless. She didn't save her baby.'

'But maybe she couldn't live, knowing that her decision is what killed it. Like, if I'd been there when Ben died, and hadn't done everything I could to save him. I couldn't live with that.'

I look at her carefully out of the corner of my eye. Does she know something about Ben? No. She's just relating what happened to that girl to herself, to the one she'd do anything to save. I sigh.

Tori slips an arm around my shoulders. 'At least they won't be terminating anyone else there, not for a long while. Wasn't that brilliant today?'

'From what I could see of it.' Which was more than enough.

Tori glances ahead; Katran, leading the way now, is almost out of sight. She lowers her voice. 'It's not fair. Talk to Katran, make him see you have to be in on the action next time. But you were still part of it, and we did something.' She raises her voice again. 'We showed them, didn't we?' The others around us shout a ragged cheer.

Nico steps out of the house as we walk up to it: the afternoon over, he is back from school. Where I should have been. He glances around, sees who is missing. 'Did they die a good death?' he asks Katran.

'Yes.'

Holly's brother bounds out of the house behind Nico. Not allowed on this venture today; not trained enough, Nico had said. 'Where's Holly?' he asks.

No one answers. Katran holds his shoulder, while he shakes. We stand together: a minute of silence stretches out in slow seconds.

Nico looks up and nods; everyone starts to walk away. Katran with his arm around Holly's brother now, speaking in a low voice into his ear. Changed, and gentle: like the Katran of my dream, who comforted me when I was scared. Did that really happen? No matter how crazy it seems, something inside says yes.

'It is good to see you two getting along,' Nico says, gesturing to Tori and me, next to each other, arms linked.

'Why wouldn't we?' Tori asks.

'It isn't often two girls who shared the same boyfriend can be friends.'

Tori stares at me, eyes wide. Pushes me away. 'Ben?' she whispers. I look back at her, shrug helplessly. What can I say? She turns tail and marches away into the trees.

Nico smiles. 'A word,' he says, pointing at me, and walks into the house. I stand there a moment, too stunned to react.

'Come!' he calls.

I follow him through to the windowless room he has taken as office. Candles cast flickering light on damp walls.

'Why did you do that?' I ask, unable to stop myself.

'What?'

'Tell Tori about me and Ben.'

'Rain, you know how we must work in a group: total honesty. Nothing hidden between us. Lorders lie; we tell the truth.'

'Truth is freedom, freedom is truth,' I say, words from the past tumbling out from some hidden place, inside.

He smiles. 'Just so. Now tell me: how do you feel about what we must do after the attack today?' His face is mild, but his eyes, watchful.

I banish the red of blood from my mind, and clench Emily's cold ring in my pocket. Focus on what the Lorders did to her, do to others like her all the time. We must stop them. Resolve hardens inside.

'I'm on the right side. Our side.'

'Good. Soon there will be other work to do.' He smiles, touches one hand to my cheek, and I am flooded with the warm glow of being in his favour.

'I'm in.'

'I never had any doubt,' he says, but he SO did. 'What is it?' he asks, alert as ever to any changes flitting across my face.

'It is just... I don't really understand. Why you even want me involved. What can I do?'

'You're one of us,' he says. 'No matter what happened to you when you were taken, or who you were after you were Slated, you will always be one of us. But more, you are important to me.'

He says no more, slips an arm around my shoulders. The glow becomes more. I belong here, with Free UK: this is who I am. What I must do. But what is that, exactly?

'What is happening?'

'Soon, Rain; soon.'

Disappointment must reflect on my face. 'You don't trust me,' I say.

'I do.' He hesitates; smiles. 'I can tell you this. Soon there will be concerted attacks, in London, other major targets.'

'What were we doing today, then? That wasn't coordinated with anything.'

He smiles again. 'Clever, Rain. We don't want to pull in our activities now. They must think it is business as usual, not know we are leading up to something big. And we have identified individual targets as well.'

My stomach twists. 'Assassinations?'

'Don't be squeamish.' His voice is cold. 'You know what this government has done, is doing, to people like you. To Tori. Think of what happened to her. There will be kidnappings as well, high-profile, in a variety of sectors at once. We'll get some attention in the right places.'

'What about the hospital attack? It is heavily protected and guarded. It would take resources, and...' I stop, realisation sinking in. 'A diversion?'

'Just so. We'll leak plans of a proposed attack at the hospital, but this time, when they are ready for us there, we will be elsewhere.'

Elsewhere...elsewhen. 'Armstrong Memorial Day.' I say it as a statement, not a question. 'At Chequers. That is the place and the day things will start, isn't it?'

He stays silent.

'My family will be there.'

'We are your family.' A mild reproach. I flush.

'Nico, you don't understand. Mum isn't pro-Lorder; at least, not any more.'

'No?'

'No! They Slated her son.' And I tell Nico about Robert, with guilt at confidences broken, but I have to make him see. 'She tried to find out what happened to him; she's not one of them.'

'Yet if she doesn't support us, her feelings about the Lorders are not relevant. She can be a martyr for our cause.' He puts a hand on my chin, tilts my face up. The horror must be in my eyes. 'Rain, I know this is hard. But you must be strong. We have to strike at the Lorders where it hurts the most. She is a symbol for their cause she allows this. No matter her feelings on it, she is a Lorder tool.'

I clench Emily's ring in my pocket.

I must be strong.

He kisses my forehead. 'That is enough for your curiosity. Time for you to get back home before you are missed.'

'Why can't I stay here?' I say, without planning to say it, but yes, why? Because when I am here, with Nico, and even Katran, I belong. I believe in their plans: our plans.

He puts a warm hand on each of my shoulders. 'Stay strong a little longer, all right? We need you on the inside. You can't disappear from that life, not yet. Go on, Rain,' he says, gives me a little push towards the door. I walk through it. Leaving Nico's presence it feels as if the temperature drops.

Tori isn't in sight, but Katran is back. He follows me as I head through the trees.

'I don't need an escort, you know. I remember how to get there.'

Katran ignores my words, continues to follow.

'Did you hear me?' I turn and face him at the bikes.

He smirks. 'I did, oh special girl, but this is an order from above. To see you safely home.'

'I won't tell. Go slink behind some rocks and take a nap, instead.'

He ignores me and extracts our bikes from their hiding place, and we set off, Katran in front. Going much too fast for the need for quiet, but that was always him, wasn't it? More guts than sense, Nico used to say in the early days, but eased off when he saw Katran was always just within an edge of control. Close to the precipice, never going over. But soon I am exhilarated by speed, by remembering past times and using it to not remember all that happened today, and I don't care about the risk.

It takes me back to other days. With an edge of danger. Slips of memory come and go, make me feel alive; tantalise, then are gone.

And I don't understand. I study Katran, ahead: who is he, really? Who was he to me all those years ago? Questions burn and tumble inside.

The hide a few miles from home appears in the distance. Katran slows, stops, turns his bike on the path to take off back the other way.

'Wait a minute,' I say, then hesitate. 'I want to ask you something.'

'What: can't find your way home after all?'

I scowl, clench my fists; why even bother. 'Why are you such a jerk sometimes?'

'Do you really want to know?' There's anger behind his question.

I turn away, yank my bike through the trees to the hide and conceal it. Katran stays, watches: probably checking I do it right. I pull the tarp and camo over and start marching up the path.

'Come back. I'm sorry,' he says.

Katran, apologising? I'm so stunned I stop, turn back. He's off his bike now, and I walk up to him. Challenge is in his eyes and I face him, unflinching. But with his dark eyes staring into mine, the words are gone.

'Well?' he says, finally.

I swallow. 'My memories are a little...messed up. Can I ask you about something? From years ago.'

'Fire away.'

I cross my arms. 'I had these really bad dreams. Nightmares. I still get them.' I sigh, stare at the ground. Not wanting to say it out loud, but needing to find out what he knows at the same time. 'Being chased. Running, on sand, absolutely terrified. And...' I look up. 'You used to wake me, hold me when I was scared.' I say it, don't ask it, because somehow I know it is true.

And there, in his eyes: confirmation. He turns, the angry red of the jagged scar on his right cheek hidden. Sometimes, like now, when he isn't angry to match the scar, you can see a different person. The one who had an arm around Holly's brother.