The room was hot.

Sweat pooled on the back of my neck, threatening to trickle down into the collar of my shirt. The heating vents had not taken into account the dozens of people squashed into the main hall, breathing the same heavy, nervous air. I longed for a drink to wet my mouth, but our bags had already been stored away in lockers, and the only item left on my possession was my ID card. Being without that, after all, was a criminal offence.

"Are they giving them out?"

Beside me, Orla was on tiptoes, craning her neck to see over the queue in front of us. In any other crowd, her six-foot stature put her above most heads, but she didn't get the same luxury at school.

"I can't see anything," she said eventually, bringing herself back down to normal height. "It's too packed in here."

She wasn't wrong. Save for the auditorium, the main hall was one of the biggest rooms in the academy, but today it certainly didn't feel like it. The architecture was less than fifty years old, but it had been designed to look deceivingly ancient: a large wooden stage loomed above us at the front of the room, framed by red velvet curtains with a convincing fade. Below the stage, dozens of tables had been set up, each one decorated by a splay of manila envelopes.

Only etiquette kept us where we were standing. Left to our own devices, all of us would run right over and snatch up the one with our name on it.

"Would it kill them to turn a fan on?" Verity was shifting from one foot to the other, nervous energy slipping into irritation. "The temperature in here is ridiculous."

"You're telling me." I ran my tongue over my dry lips, still wishing for a glass of water. "I just want to get this over with."

The UNL result collection was always a big deal – though at KHA, that was hardly surprising. The school always turned it into a bigger event than necessary, like they were asking for drama. Every year, at least half a dozen students would end up in hysterics, refusing to move from crumpled heaps as they clutched rejection letters. Only final years were allowed inside the hall, but news always travelled school-wide anyway. In Nova's year, a girl had worked herself into such a frenzy that she'd had a full-blown panic attack, ending up being carted away from school on a stretcher.

I realised I was twisting Nova's ring around my finger, with such force it was digging a red groove into my skin. I had to make myself stop. We were all nervous, but showing it felt like a kind of weakness.

At KHA, after all, confidence was key. Without it, you were already lagging behind everybody else – no matter how impressive your DNA.

My words were partly true: I did want this over with. I wanted nothing more than to open the letter to see Congratulations, hug everybody in the vicinity, and dash home to spill the news to my parents. Mum would probably get all tearful, and Dad would insist we went out for dinner to celebrate. It would be the good news we'd waited two years for. Then, finally, I might be able to think about the upcoming year whilst still being able to breathe.

But whatever confidence I was projecting on the outside was sapping everything from my head. Sure, I could tell myself it was all going to work out – but I was also the one who'd been there in the interview room, and therefore the hardest to convince. Looming before me was the very real possibility of my envelope being the thinnest on the pile.

No, after all, didn't require much paper.

I almost had to be thankful for the distraction of the previous week. The events at BioPlus HQ had given my mind more than enough to be getting on with, and it was much easier not to think about UNL admissions when the name Eden Clarke was bouncing around inside my skull.

I hadn't dared ask anybody else. At first, I considered trying Orla or Verity, off-handedly mentioning the name like I was asking after yesterday's Modern Humanity homework. But doing so would lead to too many questions, and I couldn't guarantee batting them off forever. As far as Jace was concerned, I was already treading on dangerously thin ice, and wandering out any further was broaching stupidity.

Still, it hadn't been enough to stop me spending several lunchtimes cooped up in the computer lab, trawling through old school databases for the name. I tried every nickname, every variation of the spelling I could think of, but there was nothing. As far as KHA was concerned, Eden Clarke did not exist.

"Finally." Orla's voice was what brought me back into the room. "The line's actually moving."

The first few students were moving now, clutching envelopes that made faces look even pastier. My gaze trailed after Casey Allor, the girl who'd scored perfect hundreds on every maths test for the last five years, as she headed for the open space in the centre of the hall. If I had to place bets on anybody making the cut, it would be her. She was a shoe-in. I tried to watch to see if she would rip into the envelope right away, but just as she turned to her friend, my view was blocked by a figure who appeared right in front of me.

"Hey."

I was face-to-face with Henry Whitmore, who was probably the only person in the room managing a smile. But that wasn't surprising; he didn't exactly have anything to worry about.

"How's it going?" he asked. "Nervous?"

"You could say that," I said, my own smile significantly weaker. "Maybe I'll be able to breathe when this is over."

"I have to say, I don't envy you guys right now." As he looked between the three of us, I had to wonder whether his expression was a permanent feature, like the muscles of his face had been paralysed into consistent joy. "Thank God the scholarships come out early, right?"

He was one of the lucky few: those who'd found out weeks ago, not only that they were in the door, but that someone was paying for them to be. It was mostly the athletic kids, since they'd already proved themselves entirely too valuable to slip through the university's net. Academic merit was much harder to come by when we were all neck-and-neck at the finish line.

"Yeah, get out of here." I rolled my eyes. "You're making the rest of us jealous."

"Just want to see who my new classmates are going to be," Henry said. "Am I not allowed to be curious?"

"Well, okay. Maybe you're allowed that much."

"Thanks, Astrid." I noticed then the way he was looking at me: eyes locked right on mine, the entire conversation balancing on this foundation. And then there was the twitch of a smile, permanently threatening to curl his lip, even when neither of us were cracking a joke. Some people might have been flattered, but it just made me feel more nervous. "You're too kind."

The laugh that escaped me was shaky at best. "Yeah."

Thankfully, he seemed to take this as his cue to disappear. "Well," he said, "I guess I'll catch up with you guys later. Good luck – though I don't think you'll need it."

Watching him head away from our class line, back into the centre of the room, I half-wished he knew how wrong he was. With my fate hanging on Dr Nielsen's decision, it was hard to be any shade of optimistic. But if I couldn't even admit this to Orla or Verity, there was certainly no way of getting the message across to Henry.

The queue was moving steadily, each step bringing us a little closer to the table. Only once enough of the line had disappeared did I notice the line of security guards between us and the table, their faces obscured by darkened helmets. It was hard not to think of their presence as sinister when I could tell each and every one of them was wearing a bulletproof vest.

"What's up with the helmets?" At my side, Verity asked exactly what I was thinking. "They're taking this security thing a bit far, aren't they?"

"Well, they're scared." My head turned in response to Orla's matter-of-fact tone as the three of us shuffled forward a few paces in the queue. "You should see how much time Mum spends cooped up in the study, having hushed conversations on the phone. If she even comes home in the first place. I'm pretty sure she's pulled at least three all-nighters at City Hall this week alone."

I fell silent, whatever words I had suddenly failing me. The fact that the city mayor was as tightly woven into this web as anybody else should've been comforting, but things weren't that simple. With public unrest growing by the day, there was nothing she could do but swear herself anti-modification to the grave, whatever the state of her daughter's DNA. Apparently, the walls drawn up between government and the rest of the city weren't as strong as they liked to believe.

"They really think something might happen here?" Verity asked.

"I don't know," Orla said, "but they're sure as hell preparing for it, just in case."

There was no time for further discussion: the people in front of us had moved up to the table, collecting their envelopes and clearing the space for us. I barely took a step forward before one of the security guards grabbed my arm, yanking my finger onto his scanner with unnecessary force.

"Hey," I said, as the light beneath my finger turned green. "Watch it."

"You'll do what you're told," he snapped.

"You didn't tell me anything," I pointed out. The fact that I couldn't quite see his eyes behind the darkened screen of the helmet only irritated me further. "You just grabbed me. You want to talk about manners?"

"Astrid." Beside me, Verity caught my eye, and I could sense the quiet warning underlying her words. It's not worth it, she was saying, without needing to tell me anything. Leave it be.

I resisted the urge to give the guard a seething look, concentrating instead on moving toward the table. A column of identical brown envelopes stared back at me, each of our names printed dead centre. Mine was in the middle, and it seemed to send a jolt of electricity through me when my fingers made contact with the paper.

I followed my friends away from the table, elbowing past a few classmates to emerge in one of the less crowded corners of the hall. The noise of the room had grown exponentially in the last few minutes. Every couple of seconds, there'd be a screech from somewhere behind me, and I'd turn around to see another girl throwing herself into the arms of her best friend, or a guy being clapped on the back by a gaggle of students and teachers alike.

"Okay." I looked back to see Orla glancing between the both of us, eyes drifting between our faces and the envelopes. "How are we going to do this?"

"All together?" Verity ran one finger along the seal, like she was testing it out. "I think this is going to be easier with moral support."

They both looked at me, waiting for my reaction. I wasn't sure how to tell them that no amount of support was going to make a rejection easier, and that I was already ninety-nine per cent certain that was what was sealed inside my envelope. They were nervous, but they weren't worried. I'd already been there to witness both play-by-play accounts of their interviews, frantic discussions about whether the date of the collapse had been fifty-one or fifty-two years ago, and whether the interviewer might penalise them for it. Neither of them had been interrogated about religion. Neither of them had slammed the door in the interviewer's face.

But I couldn't say any of it. So, instead, I forced myself to nod. "Yeah. Okay."

I looked down at the envelope in my hand, trying to gauge its comparable thickness by eye. Maybe if I could prepare myself for what I was about to see, it might be easier. But both Orla and Verity were gripping theirs too tightly, fingers obscuring what I wanted to get a look at, and I knew I was just going to have to take the plunge.

Taking a deep breath, I slid my finger beneath the seal, trying to steady my trembling hand.

The scream came from behind me right as the flap came open. It seemed to pierce right through me, sending a jolt of alarm through every nerve in my body. I spun instantly on the spot, trying to get a look at where the noise had come from.

This, as it turned out, was not difficult. A three-foot gap had emerged around Casey Allor, with everyone who'd been standing close now backing away. Long brunette hair framed a face that was flushed with colour, her skin almost matching the shade of the velvet curtains somewhere behind her. Everything about her stood a stark contrast to everything I'd grown accustomed to over the last five years. This was the girl who sat on the front row of every maths class, hand shooting up into the air with every one of the teacher's questions. She was quiet, reserved, the type of girl that only spoke when she was spoken to first.

Never once had I seen her lose her temper. And yet here she was, staring wildly at the people who surrounded her, hands clenched into painful fists.

"Is this a joke?" I heard her scream, her voice piercing well above the hush that had since fallen across the room. "This has got to be. You can't tell me I've been working non-stop for the last five years to be rejected from UNL!"

"Casey." Someone in the crowd nearby spoke up, hidden amongst too many others to identify where the voice was coming from. "Please. Don't make a scene."

"Don't make a scene?" The echo of her voice seemed to bounce off every wall, and I heard it as clear as if she was screaming right in my ear. Everything about the situation seemed to have paralysed me on the spot. We'd all known this was the day when tensions were going to be running high, but something here was very wrong. "Are you joking? My entire life has been ruined in the space of about thirty seconds and you're telling me not to make a scene?"

"Casey." Somebody else was trying now, but it didn't seem to be making any difference. Her entire face was contorted in anger, and I watched as she tossed the envelope aside, the single sheet of paper fluttering to the floor.

The moment it hit the polished wood panelling, she lunged.

It was almost like the scene happened in slow motion. I couldn't tell whether it was her elbowing through the mass of people in front of her, or whether they darted away out of pure fear. She moved across the hall, hair flying behind her. The security guards came into action a beat too late, because Casey was already at the table closest to the stage, lifting it into the air like it weighed little more than a couple of feathers.

I realised what she was going to do before it happened. But, even at that point, the metal legs of the table were already sailing through the air. There was one single second of complete silence, in which everybody in the hall seemed to be holding their breath. Then it hit the glass window, and the ear-splitting noise of the shattering set everything into motion once again.

Someone in the crowd screamed.

The guards moved before she could take another step, and they had her surrounded in seconds. Every part of me was frozen as I watched them tackle her to the floor, the force of the impact knocking over several other tables in the process. There were at least three of them on her, all of them probably twice her weight, but I couldn't help noticing how much they appeared to be struggling to keep her under control.

Several teachers had come to their senses by this point, stumbling forward through the mass of students that parted without any instruction. All of a sudden, Drew-Vaughn was in the vicinity, yelling in a voice that seemed to shake right through the room.

"Get her out of here!" she shouted, leaving us to wonder whether we were imagining the desperation in her voice. With the adrenaline coursing through me, I couldn't be certain what exactly my brain was conjuring up. "For God's sake, get her out of here right now!"

Two more guards seemed to appear out of nowhere, taking Casey's arms to yank her into a standing position. Even from here I could see her fighting against them, struggling frantically to slip out from their vice-like grip. Every inch of her body seemed like it was trembling, and only upon noticing this did I realise I'd stopped.

The alarm sounding overhead was what shocked my muscles out of paralysis. The continuous shrill ring was not the fire alarm; instead, it was something none of us had heard before, the type of noise that could not in any universe mean good news.

The door burst open several seconds later, colliding so hard with the wall it had to leave dents in the paintwork. Suddenly, half a dozen more security guards were forcing themselves inside, heavy-booted footsteps somehow managing to be heard above the swarming crowd. My head turned just in time to see Casey being escorted out; as she went, the grip of five separate men meant her feet barely brushed the floor.

The commotion blurred around me, like I was within my own little bubble, watching everything unfold. But the feeling didn't last long. Within moments, the extra guards were screaming over the noise of the crowd, and it became clear I fell under their obligation as much as anybody else in the room.

"Everybody against the wall!"

The voice cut across the hall like a knife, loud enough to block out Casey's lingering protests somewhere down the hall. There was a second's pause, and then everyone seemed to shift into action. Everyone except me.

"Astrid." It was only Orla's brief touch on my arm that brought me back to earth. Turning to look at her, I realised everyone was shuffling to the edge of the room, pressing themselves against the wall in an effort to appear as inconspicuous as possible. "Come on."

It was the last place I wanted to be. Stood there, with my eyes fixed toward nothing more than white paint brushstrokes, I was entirely too oblivious to what was going on behind me. There was no trusting my ears, not when the blaring alarm and constant shouting already masked so much.

My arm kept brushing against the person next to me; it was that much more obvious with nothing else to focus on. I was about to pull away, but when I forced myself to sneak a glance, it occurred to me who exactly I'd ended up beside.

I could only see Henry out of the very corner of my eye, but somehow his half-smile came across all the same. "Hey, you."

I shot him a look. "Bet you're regretting sticking around for the collection now, huh?"

I felt his chuckle against my arm more than I heard it, but apparently even this was too much. Our conversation was cut short by the prod in my back, forcing me closer against the wall. Glancing over my shoulder only put me face-to-helmet with the guard looming behind us. "You two can shut up," he growled. "This isn't a place for your chit-chat."

The exhale escaped me when the stick was removed from my back, safer once his footsteps moved further away. I wanted to glance sideways at Henry, if only to gauge his own reaction, but moving my head even an inch too far felt like a risk I could no longer afford to take.

I could hear the slow breathing of everyone around me: a collective effort to keep quiet, like drawing too much attention carried its own capital punishment. Maybe it did. With Casey's screams of protest still echoing in the distance, none of us could say with certainty where we stood anymore.

The pacing footsteps behind me all blurred into one noise; the only thing I could make out properly was Drew-Vaughn's voice in the corner, a panicked murmur that everything else seemed to measure against. A single bead of sweat trickled down the back of my neck, seeping into my collar.

More footsteps. They were coming from down the corridor, bursting to life when the door banged open again. Orla tensed beside me, and I had to resist the urge to grip hold of her wrist for support.

"Everybody stay where you are." The new voice was not muffled by a helmet, its presence a warning in itself. "Nobody moves from the wall."

Like any of us had been planning on it. Holding my breath, I risked the glance over my shoulder for no longer than a second, but it was all I needed. We were no longer alone. Instead, with the alarm wailing above us, we'd found ourselves in the company of the police.

"You will not be permitted to leave the premises until your identity has been verified," said the voice. "Failure to comply with instructions will be treated as a criminal offence."

How were they even here already? Only minutes had escaped us since Casey's meltdown... or had they? Just being inside the hall seemed to be skewing my perception of time, like normal rules no longer applied. Maybe we'd been here for hours already, pressed up against the wall like we'd already been marked prisoners. The air inside the main hall had never felt so sparse.

Henry's arm jerked against mine, and I realised a beat later he'd been yanked away from the wall. "Name," one of the officers demanded.

It was the first time I'd heard anything but confidence beneath Henry's voice; his stammer was like a foreign language. "H-Henry Whitmore."

A second's pause, followed by a beep. Then a sigh of relief.

"You're in luck," the officer said. "Looks like you're on the database. Back against the wall."

"But I thought they said—"

"Back against the wall."

I heard a shuffle beside me, and Henry was pressed back against the wall so quickly it seemed like he'd been shoved into place. Seconds later, my own arm was jerked, and I found myself staring right into the eyes of the police officer.

"Pretty little thing, aren't you?" he leered, and I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from retaliating. "You sure those blue eyes are all natural?"

The scanner he held was similar to what the original guards had, except a lot bulkier. It was difficult to ignore the green sticker on the side, where the leaf-shaped logo twisted itself into its own warning. If there was anywhere BioNeutral didn't belong, it was within the walls of this building.

Suddenly, a second officer appeared beside him, leaning over his shoulder to check the scanner. "Reid," he said, in a low voice. "Just had an order from the head. Check them against the public database. We need to be sure."

"You mean—?"

"Just do it." The look they exchanged conveyed more than I could read. Maybe that was a good thing. "We can't take any chances."

The public database? What did that even mean? It had never before occurred to me that such a thing existed – though maybe it was naïve to think my name wasn't splashed across the records of the New London authorities, cropping up somewhere or other. They had something on all of us. Privacy was a luxury even the richest struggled to afford.

In that moment, something else occurred to me. The memory flickered before my eyes like a flash of lightning, so bright it seemed to leave splotches across my vision. Maybe this was my only opportunity.

I knew it was probably a bad idea. Every rational sign pointed in one direction, and looking the other way didn't change that. But, all of a sudden, the officer had turned back to me, and our faces ended up so close I could feel his hot breath. He was demanding my name, and the words escaped me before I could overthink the consequences.

"Eden," I said. "Eden Clarke."

He gripped my hand, yanking it onto the glass panel of the scanner.

A couple of seconds' pause, in which I could do nothing but hold my breath. The panic pulsing through me had a life of its own.

The screen flashed red.

Then, suddenly, I was in handcuffs.

------------------------

Thank you for bearing with me on this chapter. I have decided to take the plot in a new direction, one that will improve the story by a long shot, and changing the end of this was very much necessary. Apologies for any confusion.

Secondly, if you haven't heard already from my many social media accounts, I have some exciting news: I'M BEING PUBLISHED! Except... not in the way you're probably thinking. Wattpad have teamed up with Gallery Books to produce a brand new anthology of 33 celebrity "imagines", which is being published by Simon & Schuster on 26th April 2016! I was given the crazy opportunity to write a chapter starring my favourite YouTuber, Dan Howell, and YOU, the reader. It's absolutely mental that my name will be in a book that you guys will be able to walk into your local bookshop and buy. If you feel like supporting me (and fulfilling some of your celebrity fantasies!) it's available to pre-order right now (link can be found in the pinned post on my profile). I'm so excited that I'm finally getting to bring my work off the internet and into the real world, and I hope you guys are too.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Until next time...

Leigh