The day Phil spent begging was almost the worst day of his life. Cold and aching from sleeping on the floor curled up against Dan and PJ to try and conserve body heat, he wasn't in the best of moods to start the day.

The looks people threw him were more depressing than the lack of money. He could accept someone walking past and completely ignoring the hat in front of him, but for someone to throw him a filthy look and sweep past him, holding their possessions as far away from him as possible and sniffing disgustedly was just awful. He wanted to stand up and yell after them, "This isn't my fault! I've escaped a country run by a man who shoots people for not dyeing their hair, and you're walking past me looking at me like I'm a piece of shit and I don't understand why," but he knew this wouldn't get him anywhere. If anything, it would make them stare at him like he was disgusting and insane.

Phil was alone all day. Dan wasn't fit to be left on his own - he was jittery, scared and looked almost mad - so he and PJ were outside, sitting slumped against the entrance hoping that the generosity of strangers could pay for their train ticket. They'd decided that splitting up would hopefully earn them more money, and Phil had agreed, but he was regretting that now.

Sitting slumped against a wall looking desperately up at strangers and trying to restrain himself from begging them for money was not how PJ thought he'd spend his 25th birthday, but he tried to pretend he was somewhere better. It took a moment of fantasising about the wonderful place he wanted to be for him to realise that he didn't know where this fantasy location was. A beach? He'd never been to one, only seen them when he was heading to work with Dan. Maybe back in the club, getting drunk with Phil and laughing his head off? All he could think of when he imagined the club was the debris falling from the destroyed ceiling, and the bartender's lifeless eyes.

In the end, he opted to fantasise about Chris. It had been years since they'd last seen one another. What would he look like now, PJ wondered. Would he still have that same smile, the same cocky expression when he was flirting? PJ didn't know. Hopefully. He prayed Chris looked similar enough for PJ to recognise him.

Dan was barely conscious for most of the day. He lay with his head in PJ's lap, drifting in and out of sleep. On the few times he was awake for long enough to focus on the world, he would panic, sitting up so fast he'd smash his head on PJ's chin, looking around him with terrified eyes. PJ didn't quite know what to do. He resorted to whispering gentle words of comfort until Dan fell asleep again.

As the end of the day drew nearer, Dan's periods of consciousness became longer. By the time night had fallen, he'd been awake for almost an hour, and PJ was praying he'd slept enough by now.

They'd agreed to meet Phil inside the station once it got dark, so PJ collected up the money they'd been given and stuffed the torn piece of fabric he'd ripped off his shirt and used to put coins on into his pocket.

Phil was waiting for them on a bench in the entranceway. When he saw Dan looking awake and less scared than he had for a while, his face broke into a huge smile. "Dan! Are you back with us now?"

"I don't know," Dan answered honestly. "I've slept a lot, that's for sure, but I don't know if I can deal with all this." He waved his hand around him as though to indicate everything.

"This?" PJ sat down on the end of the bench, pulling Dan down next to Phil.

Dan struggled to find the words. "The freedom, I guess," he said after a while. "It's a lot to take in."

Phil nodded. "I can imagine it must be a bit weird. But hey, you'll get used to it. Hopefully."

Dan nodded, not believing Phil for a second - probably because Phil didn't even seem to believe it himself. "Shall we count the money?" he asked, taking the bottle of water PJ was offering him and sipping from it before passing it on. Phil had been to the kiosk in the station at some point, and had bought water for them all. They'd barely had anything to drink since leaving Prae, so they were extremely thirsty, and they'd finished off the first water bottles in a few moments.

As an answer, Phil and PJ reached their hands into their pockets and tipped the money onto the floor in front of them. Dan slipped off the bench to sit beside it, and he started sorting through the piles with his hands. After a moment he looked up at Phil in delight, holding a fiver. "Someone gave you this?"

"People here are generous," said Phil after a moment. "There was one man who spent a while begging, too. He gave me another note."

Dan pushed a few coppers aside to reveal a tightly folded tenner sitting on the gleaming tiled floor. "Oh my God."

"What?" Phil asked, sliding down to sit beside Dan.

"We might have enough for train tickets."

Phil smiled, taking Dan's hands and squeezing them tightly. "We might be able to get out of here-" he looked over to PJ- "and maybe find Chris."

PJ smiled, both at the mention of Chris and at the sight of Dan blushing furiously as Phil held his hands. After being unconscious for most of the day, he seemed to be returning to his usual self, and PJ was very glad about that. PJ had stopped being overprotective of Dan now - mostly because, after everything that had happened, he was more inclined to trust Phil - and now the sight of him and Dan was more adorable than irritating. It was slightly painful for him, though, to see Dan and Phil holding hands and acting like a couple when the one person he loved was either dead or near impossible to find.

They sat there on the floor together for a while more, counting the money, until eventually Dan looked up triumphantly and said, "Forty-two pounds and eighteen pence."

Phil looked impressed. "How do you know?"

"We learnt currency in Year Five," Dan answered, smiling. "You wouldn't know, seeing as you never actually came to school."

Phil tried to scowl, but he was in too good a mood to do that. "So, does that mean we'll have enough for the train?"

'Let's hope so."

The three of them stood up and Phil looked over to Dan and PJ. "So, I'm relying on you to buy these, because I don't know how money works, okay?"

PJ smiled. "We'll take care of it."

He and Dan marched purposefully up to the ticket desk in the corner of the room, and Phil trailed behind. The man sitting behind the glass screen looked down at the three of them, and Dan froze, but PJ managed to say, "How much for three adult train tickets?"

"Where to?" the man asked, tapping at his keyboard.

PJ panicked. "The biggest city near here?" he said, making it sound more like a question.

"London," the man answered, giving him a strange look. "That'll be thirty-six pounds. The train leaves in ten minutes, so you'd better hurry."

Barely believing their luck, Dan handed over a pile of pound coins and pennies. "I think this is enough," he said, visibly trembling.

The ticket guy sorted through the pile, looking bored. In the end, he handed Dan three slips of paper and a few coins. "Have a good journey," he said, dismissing them with his hand.

Elated, the three looked around for any indication of where they were supposed to be going. Dan examined the tickets closely. "It says Platform Three on here, and it says the same on that sign," he said, pointing. "Shall we follow the arrow?"

"Good idea," Phil agreed, and they set off at a brisk walk to the ticket barriers. Once there, they stopped. They'd never been near anything even remotely resembling the ticket barriers, and had no idea how they worked. Luckily for them, a man in a neon jacket standing by the wall seemed to sense their confusion, and he walked over, holding his hand out for the tickets.

Dan handed them over, and the man examined them and smiled, pressing a button to open the gates. "Have a nice evening," he said, ushering them through.

"Thanks," Phil managed to say before PJ dragged him down the nearest flight of stairs.

Once they were on the platform, all three of them were treated to their first ever sighting of a train. Highly polished and luxurious, it seemed to scream to them that they weren't in Prae any more, that the UK was a whole other world.

Dan's face broke into a huge smile and he grabbed Phil's hand and then, as an afterthought, took PJ's too. "We've actually done it," he said. "We're going to London."

They approached the doors of the train cautiously. It wasn't that they'd never seen technology like this before - Prae had a huge scientific and technological department in its main government buildings, and it was always pioneering new pieces of tech - just that seeing them on a train, a vehicle designed to move people freely wherever they wanted to go, was new.

PJ was the first to reach out and press the button, and the doors slid smoothly open. With a final glance at one another, and a final encouraging smile, they stepped inside.

I'm on camp! Fun times