The room feels like the air is being sucked out it, and it's getting harder to breath with each passing moment. It's Alina, she's using her gift to give Fedir an advantage over Hannah, and I don't know why the Elders haven't stopped her.

After, two hours of trying to break through the walls in Elder Alfie's mind they are still no closer to achieving it; exhaustion visible on both their faces, but neither one is willing to give up.

I can barely look at Elder Wyatt or Elder Alfie, they could call this off if they wanted to.

The loser of this game is going to die, it's unfair and cruel, but the adults don't seem to care. This is all for their amusement and it makes me sick to my stomach that life is so worthless to them.

"One of them is in my mind," Elder Alfie says softly, his eyelids twitching erratically.

"It's me!" Fedir claims, his voice full of relief, and my heart sinks into my stomach. "I see a woman with a giant blue cloud of energy going towards her".

Fedir lets out a loud gasp as Elder Alfie pushes him out of his mind.

Hannah doesn't seem afraid of her imminent death. Instead, she's standing there with a peaceful look on her face. I dig my nails into the palm of me hand, the world feels like it's paused itself a few seconds before a terrible event. I desperately want it to remain that, this moment to drag out until time runs out.

Fedir falls to the floor. His mouth opens but no words come out and when I look at Elder Wyatt I see his eyes are gold. A cold, dark gold that scares me.

Elder Alfie's face mirrors my own shock that Fedir is the one dying.

Fedir's body lies lifeless on the ground with his eyes wide open in horror. I am relieved that, my friend is alive, but sad at the death of the young boy on the cold, dirty floor.

"But he won!" Alina cries out, there's no sign of grief in her voice only petulance. "It's not fair!".

"Let me explain in words you will understand Alina," Elder Wyatt tells her with a ghost of a smile on his lips. "Hannah got into Alfie's mind an hour ago without him even feeling it, but chose to remain silent for sentimental and moral reasons that were drummed out of you a long time ago".

"Alina, we will leave you to dispose of the boy's body. We have quite the way to walk before the bands will work again," Elder Alfie says, his smiling and it makes my skin crawl.

Hannah walks slowly over to Fedir's body. She crouches down and gently puts his eyelids.

***

Hannah and I are sitting underneath an apple tree. A spug crawls across the ground stalking a beetle. We arrived back at the castle an hour before and had been hiding away from other apprentices ever since.

Elder Wyatt had given us permission to spend the rest of the day doing whatever we wanted as long as it was within the rules.

"Do you know what happens to the bodies of Nons and apprentices under seventeen, Raven?" Hannah asks, trying and failing to keep the rage out of her voice.

I shake my head no. I know when people died in Lo their bodies were taken away and people would light a candle in their memory.

"They get taken to a factory and put these large machines, then they are churned up, and sent to the poorest places populated by Nons," Hannah explains, pulling up blades of grass. "My dad works in one of those factories, and I hate him for being a part of something so, disgusting".

I can feel the bile rising in my throat. Every Sunday meat was distributed to the poorest in Lo, Jessie told me if I were ever handed any to bin it straight away. She must have known what it really was.

How many people pretended not to know what they really eating as they wolfed down their food?

"I'm sure he hates himself for being a part of it too," I try to reassure her. In my experience, Nons either fully supported the things the Elders did or were so, afraid they went along with it.

"He didn't see the difference between them or an animal. Meat was meat, he'd say," Hannah confesses with a small bitter laugh. "Right now, someone is putting Fedir's body in one of those machines".

I can't help picturing Fedir going through a noisy machine, the flesh from his body becoming nothing.

Does his family know he's dead? Probably, not. They were probably sitting at home believing Alina was helping him nurture his gift. Maybe his mother right now was bragging about her gifted son to all her friends.

Every time it's a revealed a child has a gift in her town or village, maybe before that child is sent away, she'll ask them to say hello to the son she's forbidden from ever seeing again. My heart aches for this woman and all the scenarios I can conjure up about her not knowing her son is dead.

My heart breaks for Hannah, my only friend who tried her hardest to make sure he lived and she died.

I pity her for all the things she knows that haunt her.

Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed them, please comment or vote, or both.

Also, I'm just horrified by the whole eating people thing as you and I never originally planned to have it in this book, but after a discussion with a friend who knows all the plot of Life Force they pointed out how visible it was for this situation.