Author's note-  Hey,

I'm speaking to you from the beginning of the story this time. Which is super weird. It feels slightly topsy turvy up here! Just thought I'd explain to you guys that this chapter will have major switching POV's. They will be indicated by the *** and will slide between the POV of Kate and Tom and then Flynn's POV. I know this might be slightly confusing because I write in 3rd person but I thought it's worth trying something new. Who knows how it will go?! Anyway I'll be off now. See you on the other side! - hippywitch

☁☼☁

With eyes turned half-moon, mirroring the setting sun, Flynn watched Tom and Kate float towards the 3rd rank platform. He was so pleased to see them.

It felt like he had jumped into a childhood photograph, burned around the edges but the familiar faces were nevertheless safe from Time's persistent grasp.

He chuckled, remembering Law Nine- All communications are to remain restricted to necessity.

The other Purifiers would report him if he'd engaged in Prohibited Communications. Which didn't frighten Flynn as much as it should have. The punishment couldn't be worse than anything he'd already experienced in the Forest Facility.

Running his fingers shakily across the black ridges on his forearm, Flynn caught site of the 2nd Purifier station. Higher rank; higher standards.

And so Flynn's routine began. 

He boarded the rowing boat and ascended up to the platform. He passed the emaciated pipe workers. They too would work from later afternoon through the blackening night. Water Purification required constant maintenance and Flynn's job was one of the more demanding on the Rigs.

The Aquarists had it better in that sense. At least in those metal clad suits they only worked during the day time. Though when the week was over all workers would be sent home, suits and all, to be replaced with a new batch.

After the obligatory identity check, Flynn walked to a corner of the platform. In front of him, a circular symbol cut into the ground began to rotate like a rusted nail, slowing unscrewing and rising higher until it revealed a cylindrical crystalline frame.

The tube rumbled to a stop and the teenager stepped inside. His head pushed uncomfortably against the top of the elevator and the rings of circular light around the container began to glow brighter- a given now that the lift declined into the canopy of darkness below.

As Flynn descended he was hidden from the eyes of his fellow Purifiers. He closed his eyes, momentarily basking in the privacy.

"You know, for an elevator you aren't exactly uplifting," Flynn mused.

He grinned and took a bow, clearly imagining an audience applauding his pun.

"I'm just wasted in this place really I ummph!" The elevator had apparently thought different as it jutted to a stop, propelling Flynn face first into the glass.

From the exterior he looked like the victim of a dubiously sourced plastic surgeon, Flynn's face squished up against the glass, saliva running down in slapstick strings.

He pushed himself away from the edge.

"Well that was uncalled for," he rubbed his jaw. "What do you have to say for yourself?" The elevator made no reply, as an elevator should. Instead it just whizzed innocently into movement again.

"'Should have taken the stairs," Flynn said, knowing fully well that there were none to take him this far underwater. The elevator shook once again, threatening Flynn. "Okay okay I'll stop. Just don't ruin my good looks. They're all I've got!"

Sure, Flynn was fully aware that elevators were incapable of feeling, but who else could he talk to all this time? He'd been contact-less for so long that he'd grown attached.

***

Kate writhed around, unable to meet sleep as a friend whilst the sounds of the pipe workers incessantly pushed against her ears. Even with the thick-walled container encasing her, the clanging and hissing still haunted Kate. In turn reminding her of the flaccid faces of flesh that grappled with the boiling water outside.

The cans of meat the Colonel had given them were warm and rancid. Though this smell was a welcome familiarity compared to the pungent odour of sweat and sick, concocted in the airless containers by the anticipation of what was to come.

Kate had lost track of how long she had lain awake. Was it seconds? Minutes? Hours? It was the not knowing that was torture. Time as an uncatchable force. She turned over once again.

She could see the shadow of Tom in the darkness. He was facing her but he remained unresponsive to her movements. Kate wondered if he was really sleeping.

Images of Tom stumbling along the plank of the ship earlier that day played out like a film reel in Kate's mind. He had almost died saving the woman in the blue scarf. The world that the government had manufactured beneath their very noses had almost killed Tom. Had almost killed all of them, in some way or another.

Kate felt her skin prickle in resentment, daring to transform and mutate once again with such an intense need for revenge. She stared at Tom, longing for a slice of comforting normalcy. Though, even that had been restricted now, locked up in a cell like a despicable prisoner.

Just wake up and tell me one of your stupid pretentious words, Kate thought.

No such luck. She turned onto her back, keeping an eye on Tom still inn case he stirred or filled the room with the green luminescence that he had tried to hide from Kate.

*

Screeeeeeeee.

The door of the container was yanked open, stirring those within from sleep and sleep-deprived unconsciousness.

"Up."

Tom groaned. For a second he could imagine that it was his brother Jack who was waking him up, after they had stayed up too late together the night before just talking, as close brothers do.

"Get up."

When Tom opened his eyes he was back in the shipping container- purgatory confined to a space. Kate was shaking him awake. He shrugged her away, biting back a retort in front of the Colonel.

"Breakfast." The Colonel announced smugly, throwing each one of them a bag of crumpled dark green material. Tom eyed it, noted it's similarity to seaweed, and then shovelled it forcefully down. As did the eleven other Purifiers.

"Today, Aquarist training begins," stated the Purifier Colonel in a nonchalant tone, as though he had repeated this speech so many times before. "Now move your boney asses and follow me." The Purifier trainees stirred into action, not forgetting the charged blade that swung like a warning from the Colonel's lean waist.

In a display of attentive loyalty, Kate was the first to rise. Tom followed closely behind, shoving the last of the sea-weed down his throat. It was a welcomed alternative to the rotten meat.

They stepped into the morning, the concrete floor of the platform searing from the intensified rays. The hissing of water had subsided and the pipe workers were now no-where to be seen. Yet the ghosts of their presence still hung in the air. 

After they had gathered in the centre of the platform, beside the huge pipes, the Colonel spoke again: "You'll split off into four groups for the descending."

Almost immediately Tom separated himself from Kate, deciding he would attract less attention this way. Before he could ask how they would indeed be descending, four translucent lifts rose from each of the platform's four corners.

"We will be testing your skills at accumulating sea water, or as Aquarists for the Purification cause. You will wear metal suits for protection but also for the water absorption itself."

Kate paused, recalling the metal carcass that was suspended like disbelief in her mother's closet. 

Mum was an Aquarist? Quickly Kate pushed the thought from her mind, not wanting to feel sympathy for her mother, who had let the government abduct Kate in return for her own safety.

"So what happens if we don't succeed in the field?" asked the trainee with overcast grey hair.

"Then you won't be coming back alive. If by some godforsaken miracle you do survive, you'll be involved in water purification, Aquarist suit maintenance or pipe workings."

The trainees shuddered, as though a great wind had blown right through them, trailing their spines and leaving them with anxious unease. "Now, you-" he pointed to the group Tom had joined. "take the forward elevator to the left." They went. "This group will take the left back elevator." Another group turned and left. "Back right," he told the group Kate was in, the girl in question hid partially behind the other three trainees to ensure her tank-less back was still hidden. "And I'll follow the last of you to the back left elevator."

To a circling bird or a Cessna plane cutting through the sky, the platform might've looked like a barren oil rig, fallen into the past as a relic of more careless times. But then again, from above you couldn't see the blue lit elevators, descending in unison underneath the sea itself.

*

The darkness made eerie company for Kate as she descended with 3 mute trainees in the elevator. She didn't attempt to make conversation. They would only get in her way now if she did.

Kate gazed at the sterile blue lights encompassing the elevator. They were the kind of urban technology that hadn't yet reached the archaic settlement of the District of Lakes.

Down. Down. Down.

Kate's stomache floated inside her as her body was dragged downwards along the flow of gravity. She hoped she wouldn't be sick. Bodily fluids were extremely hard to dispose of with an oxygen mask attached to your face.

Slowing in velocity, the elevator came to a stop and the blue lights dimmed out. Through the streak of light in front of her, Kate could just about distinguish the faces beside her- one round, one serious and one you wouldn't want to come across in a dark alley.

The elevator opened, allowing an orange hue to flood the contraption and into reveal a large rectangular space. The air was thicker down there. Kate could feel it pushing against her.

 Stepping out of the elevator and in the opposite corner of the room, she saw Tom entering and smirked at him. She had got her way by getting Tom involved in this mess. 

"This way," said the Colonel, who had also appeared in the room. He stood by one of the two doors, impatiently tapping his feet.

The trainees passed a large tube of water that looked as though it should lead upwards, towards the large pipe on the platform and the pipe workers, Kate presumed.

Before they were hurried on Tom managed to take in small details of the room- the out of place art- deco styled flooring, the windowless walls papered in the images of clear blue oceans of a holiday brochure and the two flickering neon signs that bathed the room in a fiery glow. One read Aquarists and the other Water Purifiers.

They entered through the doorway under the sign that read Aquarists and the subsequent room was almost the same as the first, except the thirteen Aquarist suits hung across the four walls. Beside them were filled oxygen tanks, one of which Kate took immediately.

"Whilst I believe in learning on the job. There's a few things I need to tell you before we start..." Tom leaned towards the Colonel paying close attention and fully aware that his life was at risk.  

Though Kate's mind drifted away, she gazed at the suits. There they were again. The metal monsters. Stood side by side like the Roman army.

These suits were not covered in greeny- yellow slime like her mother's had been. They were newer, unused. Kate reached a hand shakily towards a particularly large one. Layer upon layer of bronzed metal formed the suit, at the joints in particular, where movement was most required. Each was secured in place by intricately sized nuts and bolts.

Kate could see, on the shinier suits that around their arms and legs were small translucent hollow pipes, cobwebbed delicately across the metal carcass. They came together on the left chest panel. She scrutinized the pattern, trying to understand it. Then, taking a step back, it fell into place. The pipes were the veins of the suit, it's reason for existence and they all led into a hollow glass heart. Beside the heart was a placard:

Axel Hastings

Purifier Colonel

3rd division

A twisted smile spread across Kate's face, a plot formulating in her mind.

 "Into the suits now," ordered the Colonel. Kate hadn't heard. Though the horrified look on Tom's face told her that this wasn't going to be easy. 

***

"Promoting mental harmony?" More like "promoting sea-sickness a phobia of the colour blue", Flynn noted whilst eyeing the tasteless wave wallpaper that was plastered over the walls of the underwater compound.

The wallpaper depicted the water of old, the water that glistened a multitude of translucent jade and blue hues and made the lake water look like sewage waste. Which it could have been. The true contents of the lake water had been glossed over by their teachers. Except for the radioactive isotopes and bacteria. The government had stressed that these were to be removed at all costs.

Hence why Flynn stood over one of three ginormous tanks, regulating the flow of lake water so the H20 molecules separated from the radioactive isotopes and germs in a filter. 

 Purification by the process of reverse osmosis, they had been told in the Purification briefing. 

Flynn had joined the others in the Water Purification room, their feet slipping along the monochrome tiles as they were soaked with water.

" How's water pressure looking?" Flynn asked.

"Just below dangerous," replied a man next to him. His name was Gregg. Flynn knew as he'd heard the 2nd rank Colonel refer to him in using the name. 

Flynn never liked Gregg. He was too negative. He'd tried to tell him a joke once about the rock and the hill. To which Gregg expressed his disapproval by trying to shove his head in the boiling tank water.

"Good enough!" said Flynn. "What about the filters? All replaced?"

"Replaced and secured," confirmed another.

"Right," and Flynn turned the large tap handle to let in the water. It collected in the first half of the tank and was passed through the next through an osmosis filter, where Flynn added disinfectant in the final stage. When the water was cleansed it would be sent back up to the pipe workers and pumped around the Lake District in short bursts so as to ensure the pipes wouldn't burst under high pressure.

Flynn had done the Purification process seemingly endless times a day until it became second nature, almost sending Flynn into a trance.

He missed their days at school, where he could revel in his own childishness and things didn't feel as daunting. Flynn still recalled his last Religion lesson before he and his friends had found the forest.

*

A priest. Dressed in robes of woven green stood before the class, as per usual on a Tuesday. Their cabbie hat adorned with a golden leaf and the same dark silhouette representing the people's deity.

"Mother Nature," began the hatted priest. "Once protected us all. She gave us plants, the sea, the soil. She protected us like any mother goddess should. Yet your ancestors, children, wanted more."

"I wonder if that included the Priest's ancestors," sniggered Tom, leaning over on his chair towards Flynn.

"But he's absolved of all holy sin!" replied Flynn sarcastically.

"Quite," hushed the priest, having only heard their detached whispers. "Your ancestors killed Mother Nature. They polluted her blood with dirty poisons, divided and pulled apart her limbs with war and drove their drills into her earthy heart. The most wicked of offences!"

The children responded to the Priest's speech as they had been taught- horror, shock, fear. Though they had heard the talk so many times before. Their generation had never seen the destruction of the earth. They were too young. Though, they'd grown bitter as it seemed that they were the ones to have suffered for it.

"There are certain ways you can earn her forgiveness dears. Make up what you have lost through respect and obedience to society in The District of Lakes. Never again dirtying Mother Nature's many names with your sinful mouths."

The class repeated in unison Law One of the government. "Never talk about the growth of nature. Nature is illegal and to talk about nature is to break the law."

"Good. Now. Time for hymns."

"We're gunna need Mother Nature to save us from these out of key harmonies." Flynn whispered.

"Speak for yourself," replied Kate confidently.

The class stood and the words were pulled down from a screen above.

"Amazing grace, how sweet the-"

"drowned!" interrupted Tom, initiating the competition between Kate and he over who could come up with the best words to replace the lyrics of Amazing Grace.

"That enslaved a wretch like me!" Kate bit back, accepting the challenge.

"Wretch is right!" he whispered in between verses.

"Hey!" Kate tried not to laugh over the sound of religious singing.

"It's 1-1 so far, but who will be crowned the winner?!" chimed Jasmine in her commentator voice.

"Now now, this will only lead to treble I mean trouble," said Flynn as Jasmine was making the ugliest faces she could conjure up, her dark bushy hair hiding her mischief from the priest. 

They'd laughed all the way through the hymns, using the singing of the other children to mask their rebellion from the Purifier Guards. Who were standing by the door.

*

"Oi, you lost your marbles again?" Flynn returned reluctantly to reality. All 5ft denseness of it.

"No Gregg, thanks for your concern," he replied sarcastically.

"Then stop laughing. Freak."

Being a freak has it's advantages and disadvantages, he thought. Flynn adjusted his oxygen mask reflectively, one that he should not have been able to live without.

"You're right. Think this oxygen tanks' a bit faulty. Atmospheric percentages must be off," he lied. Gregg glared at him in response.

Prick, Flynn mused, his happy nostalgia diminishing into the obscurer corners of his mind. 

He knew the water had to be purified. He'd had the orders drilled into him enough times now. Much as he wanted freedom it had to be done. So he tried his best to resist as little as possible. He'd survive. As long as the memories made the hollow glugging sounds of water shooting through the pipes less torturous. But it was different now that Kate and Tom had found him. 

RRIIINNNK

The intercom sounded above the Purifiers. It let out a shrill whine like a metal fork grinding it's prongs against more metal.

"A replacement team from the 2nd division Purification Rig is required. There have been some.." the voice over the intercom paused momentarily. "Breaches of the systematic order in the 3rd division. Send over the replacement team immediately."

Flynn pondered a moment, the disinfectant running into the water container and causing it to overflow.

He had only ever heard an intercom announcement once before during his months of time working on the Rigs.

And it had implied only ever one thing:

Workers passing their expiration date. 

Hey, tis me again. Back and ready for action! Hope you enjoyed this chap. Also this is the beautiful artwork of Annelie Solis that encompasses what I envisioned Mother Nature (another interpretation is the photo up top!) -hippywitch