Ash woke, spread starfish—head throbbing, throat aching, neck forming a crooked angle on a lumpy pillow. Bright white halogens burnt imprints in her eyes and the plastic-coated bed-sheet crackled as she tried to sit up. Her left forearm throbbed and she looked down to see the pointy end of a drip disappearing into her vein. On her other arm, the dull pressure of an inflatable cuff monitored her blood pressure.

She struggled into a sitting position and looked around. The room was small: door to the right, window to the left, the latter covered with venetians. She smelled pine disinfectant and pomegranate hand soap. She was in the orphanage sick bay.

The nurse bustled over and pushed Ash back into the pillow with a latex-gloved hand. "Easy, girl," she said. "You were severely dehydrated." She studied Ash from behind her glasses, eyes narrowing. "You're lucky you made it back to the orphanage before you passed out."

Ash's mind chewed over this statement. How had she made it back to the orphanage? The last thing she remembered was fighting the gangly orphan in the alley, kicking him in the groin and feeling his pulse between her fingers.

She froze.

His pulse.

Her fingers.

It all came back in an electrifying jolt that made her sit up again. Everything from the deadpan expression in his eyes, to the glittering runnels of flames, to the grotesque man in the cloak who had seen it all. She'd killed the boy in the alley. That much was certain. But the flames? They'd been caused by something else—a gas leak, a freak explosion, a lighting strike—something completely beyond her control.

Right?

She closed her eyes as she remembered the strange feeling in her chest and the hot tingling sensation that ran down her arms before bursting from her fingertips in a bright blue explosion. It was as though she'd conjured the flames herself, created them in her mind, then released them on the boy with the precision of a struck match. But that was impossible. Completely and utterly insane. Nobody could 'magic' flames like that. The notion was so ridiculous, she almost laughed.

She shook her head and focused on the problem of the boy. She'd murdered him and there was a very high chance that the nurse knew, that the orphanage knew, that she was in very big trouble.

She glanced to her right, balking when she saw the door was blocked by a formidable guard with a downwards sloping mouth and sculptured crew cut. A heavy duty torch dangled from his belt, banishing all thoughts of escape. She knew from experience how easily the battery end could double as a baton and she didn't want to be on the receiving end of its painful blow. As her blood pressure went skyward, the machine next to her beeped a warning and the nurse turned around. She studied Ash over the top of her owlish glasses.

"Is everything alright, girl?" Her tone was plain, enquiring, not filled with disgust or fear as one would expect from someone speaking to a murderer.

Ash considered the woman. Perhaps she didn't know what had happened in the alleyway. Perhaps no one did. Perhaps the grotesque stranger hadn't turned her in. Perhaps, just perhaps, she'd gotten away with murder. She steadied her voice to hide her discomfort. "Yes." Everything's fine.

The nurse continued to look at her for a moment longer, before shrugging and checking her clipboard. "Well then, there's nothing more I can do for you." She pulled the inflatable cuff off Ash's right arm and carefully withdrew the needle from the left, elevating it while she taped a small bandage over the tiny seeping hole. "Keep up your fluids. No strenuous activity."

Ash ran her fingers along the bandage, grazing the bright red scratches left by sharpened fingernails of the gangly orphan. She froze—Evidence—and jerked the sleeve of her orange jumpsuit down to hide them. Thankfully, the nurse didn't seem to notice and continued making notes on her clipboard.

After an excruciating minute or two, the nurse looked up again. "Oh, I didn't realise you were still here. You can go now." She motioned to the guard. "She's all yours."

The guard grunted and unclipped a hand held radio from the pocket of his starchy grey uniform, so old that the only thing holding it together was a thick band of heavy duty tape. Orphanage technology was in need of a serious upgrade. But they weren't exactly high on government priority lists. He cleared his throat. "The girl's awake," he said into the device. "When would you like to see her?"

A thin, reedy voice cut through the crackle of radio waves. "Bring her to me now," it said.

Ash stiffened, petrified in place by the voice of Emmeline Wilson, Director of the orphanage, woman of rules, regulations and analytics. There could only be one reason why she'd been called to her office.

They knew.

The guard clipped the radio back onto his pocket and approached her with a set of handcuffs. The cold metal bit into her skin and she recoiled. Questions jostled in her head. What would happen to her now? Would they lock her in solitary confinement? Would they take her to jail? More questions rammed against the first set in discord. If they knew, why did they put her on a drip? Why did they take care of her as though her life mattered? Why didn't they just leave her out the front of the orphanage to die? It wasn't as though the orphanage truly cared what happened to them outside its grounds.

As the guard pulled Ash through the door and out into the long, narrow hallway, her mind scrambled through her options. Running would be futile. She'd look even more guilty and she wouldn't get very far—the whole orphanage was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, complete with fingerprint scanners on all the gates and twenty-four hour surveillance cameras on the yard. The only option left was to go with the guard. Try not to speak unless asked a question, try not to admit anything unless forced.

She fell into rhythm behind the guard's heavy steel-capped steps, following him down the corridor and past a set of long windows giving view to the nursing bays beyond. Babies lay in plastic cots which swung from steel structures in the roof and were pushed every now and again by a shuffling nurse. Children crawled along the cold, tiled floors and tugged at the nurse's white slacks. The nurse sighed and pried their fingers away, checking her watch. It was clear she wanted to be anywhere else.

Ash dropped her gaze to the white tiled floor. She didn't want to see the rows of abandoned children—a testament to the zero child policy forced on her caste a few years before she was born. But it did nothing to block their wailing cries and her chest ached as she imagined their tear-streaked faces, mouths groping for words they'd never learn, Mum, Dad, their plump fingers reaching for phantom breasts.

She was relieved when they reached the door, and even more relieved when they stepped outside. Warm air brought on a sheen of sweat and her cuffed hands rose to wipe her forehead. The only light came from a sliced moon struggling to penetrate the thick smog, telling Ash it was well past curfew, much later than she'd expected. She must've been unconscious for over an hour.

The guard's torch flicked the shadows aside and their feet plumed dust on the well-trodden path through the yard. They passed the dining hall—a large tin shed at the centre of the grounds, reverberating with raucous yelling and the clanging of cutlery. Judging by the commotion, dinnertime was over and the orphans had begun fighting each other for a last spoonful of mash—a pulverised meal consisting of leftovers from eateries around the city, the same stuff that went to feed the pigs.

They passed the dormitory complexes—decrepit plasterboard buildings huddled in a corner of the yard, looking as though they might fall over at any second. Soon they would be filled with an orchestra of snores. Ash glanced at the senior boys' dorm and wondered if her brother was inside, hiding from the mealtime frenzy. The dining hall was a dangerous place without someone to watch your back and she guessed her brother wouldn't have risked it without her.

They walked on until finally, they reached Director's office—a small, lofty room, elevated above the grounds by spidery scaffolding and made accessible by a winding set of external stairs. The shiny metal facade, pushed together by pop-rivets made Ash think of a large, windowless shipping container.

They climbed and Ash felt her sheen of sweat thicken. The guard stooped to scan his retina on a laser identification sensor on the heavy metal door, then pressed his thumb on the gel fingerprint pad attached to the handle.

The door opened with a click.

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Thanks for sticking around for scene two guys! What do we think of ACE and the orphanage so far? How do we think Ash will get out of this one?

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