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"Who was that?"

The Captain had heard the sound too, for she turned away from Tom and pushed open the door. A series of hurried creaks followed, finishing with the slam of the ship's hatch.

"Oi!" The Captain shouted, following the intruder.

Tom willed himself to breath a sigh of relief after she'd left the room quarters. But his lungs were still un-moving and the oxygen tank was still just a melancholy facade, dimly pressing against his spine.

Instead then, he walked towards the book case, making sure he wasn't close enough to risk bothering Ray. He'd already dealt with the rejection of his brother. He couldn't cope with the the sting of rejection again.

"I didn't think the people in the Lake District were always this aggressive..." Tom began, eyeing his revived burns- courtesy of the Captain.

Ray tilted her head up. She seemed to be searching his face, as though she could not recognise him. "Tom?" she inquired and tilted her head to one side, in preparation to listen to his reply.

"Yes. It's me. It's Tom." he answered. And as he spoke, Ray relaxed slightly, as though his voice confirmed his identity, not his face.

Tom much preferred to attempt  conversation with Ray, rather than ponder the presence that had been lurking behind the door a moment ago. Though he had the unwanted suspicion that those eyes had belonged to the very same figure whom he had felt watching him above deck.

"It's only a matter of time before the government find out about the disruption and the Captain is held accountable. They might have seen you help me," Ray stated. She spoke with an un-shattering honesty. The kind that both refreshed and worried Tom. "You're in trouble too."

Ray loosened the cotton blue scarf slightly from around her neck.

"I doubt the Guards would've seen me. There's none on the ship. I checked."

"No, but there are Watchers." Tom's stomach clenched at the possibility of more unpleasantness and he tried not to regret his decision to speak to Ray.

"How exactly am I supposed to look out for Watchers?"

Tom ran his shaky fingers along the dust soaked bookcase. If only he had his dictionaries with him now. They would give him comfort like they had in The Forest Facility.

"You don't look out for them. That's the point. They look for us. The Guards you can see just fine but the Watchers are among us. They are the most dedicated to the Purification and the government."

"I knew I should've stayed in hiding," Tom cursed. It was much better to hide and be safe. And yet, it seemed the world was determined to not let him do so. Jasmine especially. Her speaking to him had proved that.

"If you want safety- I know a place." Tom offered, thinking about the delicious comfort of the boathouse.

Ray sighed. Fear had mangled her body with it's frost-cold skeletal hands.

"They've already found me. I was trying to escape all that when you stopped me."

Tom shivered, as he recalled the watery death that fluctuated below them as they spoke.

"Look, you don't have to punish yourself in this way," he tried with futile hope. "The world already does enough of that. But there's goodness too. There's no good in oblivion."

"You think I didn't know that!" Ray cursed and Tom finally looked back up at her from the bookcase. "Of course I did. But death was an option," she explained.

Then she took a moment and calmed herself.

Tom noticed as the lamp's glow moved about the room that Ray's hair was dappled with tiny raven coloured plaits amongst feathered black tangles. He felt this must've been what silver tuna had looked like in the ocean from the time before. Tom imagined the odd looking creatures as they darted to and fro- attempting to escape the jaws of a sharp- toothed predator. Though that was hundreds of years before. Before the only remnants of sea life left were long dead carcasses and seagulls starved of sustenance.

The boy said nothing at first. Part of him still wished that if he blocked out his surroundings, that they would dissolve. But the woman remained in pain when he opened his eyes again.

He wanted to convince Ray to hide. To save herself. But she was resolute. For he didn't even know this woman and had to rely on her willingness listen to a vaporous stranger.

Attempting again to talk to the woman, he timidly uttered "Why did you do it? Why did you try to jump?" For he knew how. He had begun to become acquainted with suffering of his own.

"What does it matter?" Ray replied coldly. "I'm a dead woman. A fucking dead woman walking."

She's not going let me help her, Tom noted in frustration. He turned away from her to leave. He needed to get back to Kate and Flynn. He felt too vulnerable on his own now. Like he would loose control of his mind. Again. It had been happening too often since he'd left the Forest Facility.

He walked across the room, with every intention of passing through the door.

"It was my son!" Ray blurted out, as if she couldn't bare to lock in the secret behind her ribs any longer. "I betrayed my own son."

Tom stopped- his intentions were crumbling. Looked behind him. Waited for an explanation. Though he didn't truly want one anymore, as he felt his mind threaten to unravel and revive the visions once again.

Ray lifted herself laboriously from the ground and had to lean against the wooden wall in order to ebb her erratic shaking. The years of suffering she had over Tom became ever clearer.

"My son felt lonely one night. I struggle to identify him sometimes," she gestured a weak hand to the temple of her skull. "Problem with facial recognition. It upsets him. So I started telling him a story... About another world to try and make him feel less alone..." Her voice began to tremble as she fingered her blue scarf. "with trees- and Robins that sing the whole morning through." She smiled sadly. "For fucks sake. I don't even know what a tree really looks like! Or a robin! Is that how you say it? Robin? Roybin?"Her crazed eyes shone as glazed marbles do. "But you should've heard my boy when I told him of their myth."

Tom subconsciously pulled his shirt further down his arm- in order to ensure the tree looking scar was hidden. He wasn't sure exactly how much Ray could see of him. "And now.. they're going to kill me for the mistakes I've made. They'll take my son too! 'Get what I deserve for being so careless," she concluded, exhaling a contained atmosphere from within her oxygen mask.

"There are worse things people have done?" Tom replied, knowingly. "All this restriction they give us. It's no wonder we leak sometimes. Was there anyone who caught you? If not you can still protect your son."

Tom surprised himself with the optimism that he coughed up from his throat like tuberculosis blood.

"The boy's father heard me. He works for the government. Truly. He told me he'd tell his superiors. Made no secret of telling me that throwing myself off of a boat would be the less painful option."

Again, Tom wanted to tell Ray what he had seen. He wanted to give her more hope. But he knew that if she was caught she would be taken and could let the Facility know where Tom was. Once trapped in the government's grip, it was extremely hard to escape scar-less.

Tom shook his head guiltily. He knew there was no way to help Ray. He had already intervened enough. He had already caused the price hanging over his head to sky rocket. "I'm sorry. I better go,"

"You better," Ray replied in grim acknowledgement. "Look, even though I didn't need saving- thanks. It obviously wasn't my fate to die there."

"It's what any decent human would do." Tom shrugged. "Stay alive, Ray."

"S' short for Mallory," the woman replied "I'd like someone else apart from the Captain on this cursed ship to know that."

She held out a hand, as unstable as Tom's. He took it in his for a moment. Her hand was cold, as though cracking glaciers hid beneath her skin.

Rays eyes flicked then to Tom's raw burns. "Watch yourself." Tom retracted his hand, quickly making sure she hadn't seen the tree etching. He nodded curtly in response, eager to leave.

And so Tom left Mallory beside the empty bookcase with an uncertain feeling. He didn't know if he would ever see her again. He didn't know if a child would go motherless. Though he was strangely glad that the uncertainty was possible. That he had managed to stop Mallory allowing death to consume her just yet.

So he took once last glance at the blue scarf'd woman as the woven cloth remained definitively around her neck.

Then he left.

*

Flipping open the square door hatch, Tom climbed up into the blinding light of the day.

He struggled to refocus on his surroundings at first. The world looked like a murky blank aesthete on an old school projector screen.

But then reality soon reformed and the boy moved across the boarded deck with both determination and a fear that he wouldn't be able to prevent his brain from collapsing again.

At the rear of the ship stood Kate and Flynn, oxygen masks hanging loosely from their faces as they gazed out into the water.

Flynn noticed Tom first as he himself glanced behind him with apparent skittishness. Though Flynn quickly sported his well suited grin, slightly visible under his mask, when he realised who was in fact walking towards him.

Tom approached his companions and rested himself on the cool metal ledge beside them.

Immediately, Kate turned to glare at Tom, making sure that he couldn't escape her wrath.

Both Kate and Flynn waited with a silent expectancy for Tom to explain who the woman on the plank was, but he didn't. Tom felt as though Mallory had told him her name in confidence and he ought to guard it safely in the hope that she would do the same for him, if she was caught for her supposed crimes against the government.

Law One: Never talk about the growth of nature. Nature is illegal and to talk about nature is to break the law.

Kate combated Tom's silence.

"You're a blind idiot," she said, firing verbal gunshots.

"I'm fine," Tom replied with a tired curtness. Little did Tom know that Kate had already seen the unnatural glowing green light in the boathouse. Evidence that proved him to be completely the opposite of fine.

"I heard Jasmine, on the bridge. She spoke to me," announced Tom, with a strange honesty.

"You did?" Kate questioned, aching at the mention of their best friend. "But you can't have! That's not..."

Kate had only ever used the idea of Jasmine up until now to manipulate Tom and Flynn. But the possibility that she was really alive made Kate's stomach twinge with guilt. It seemed she has almost forgotten her best friend.

"We have to find her," Tom said. "Dead or alive."

"Well haven't you changed your mind! " Flynn observed. Then he slapped Tom on the back. Any harder and he might've pushed him into the water. "That's the spirit."

Tom smiled slightly. Then slumped against the side of the boat once again, forgetting the corruption of his broken brain feeling clarity for a transient moment.

"We're nearly at the Purifier Rig now," Flynn announced happily.

The calm moment dissipated as Tom was reminded of the trap they were sailing oh so willingly towards. A trap that Tom was sure had devoured his father whole. How else would he have not returned home that evening? How else could he have left Tom and his brother Jack to fend for themselves all that time?

"Keep on the lookout. Who knows who we'll see!" Flynn knowingly tapped the bridge of his mask instead of his nose- a corrected mannerism from years before.

*

Kate pinched herself, hoping to suppress her guilt and the feeling that she should be searching for her friend.

I have havoc to wreak. Kate attempted to convince herself. The Government needs to regret what they've done to me. They will pay.

She straightened up, managing to shift back into her animalistic cunning. A distraction and a drug better than any sedative the Facility could have given her.

Her fingers twitched as she watched the horizon. If she squinted hard enough she could just about see three pointed gold structures, as they rose from the lake like Neptune's shining trident.

Though the closer the ship came to the structures the less grand they grew to be. Instead they appeared to decay in front of their very eyes, revealing the original golden sheen as an after product of the roasting spring sun, as it reflected off of the moldy metal surfaces.

"Look! You can see it now..." Flynn gestured towards Tom, hoping he would be as excited as he first was. But Tom looked away, feeling sick once again. At least, he looked away for as long as possible, until curiosity won the cat-fight against safety and he stole a glance at the structures from the corner rims of his eyes.

Three horns blared consecutively, as if on cue to signify their approach to the rig.

"You know... you look a little green," Kate noted cruelly in Tom's ear.

"And you're orange," he retorted. Kate clenched her sharp nails into her palms. She hated that he could use her transformation against her. She couldn't have him thinking that he was superior to her.

"Ha. Ha. Really though, are you okay?" Kate feigned earnest, taking her chance to try invading Tom's mind. "I saw you up last night. In the boathouse." Something must've happened to Tom in the Forest Facility. Kate was sure she wasn't the only one who had been experimented on. And she was becoming closer to finding out what it was that had happened to Tom.

"I told you. I'm fine. I couldn't sleep last night. But who can now anyway."

"I can," Kate lied. "Well I did. But then.." Tom turned to Kate, daring her to go on. "I saw this light. It lit up the whole boathouse."

"That's called moonlight," Tom said condescendingly "It's from this body called the moon that orbits the earth from 220,000 miles away."

Kate gave him a pointed look. One that was almost as sharp as the three pointed structures that had glided towards them.

"Moonlight isn't green." she replied stubbornly "You know... It even felt like it was coming from you..."

"Leave it," Tom snapped. Flynn still gazed out ahead of him but his head was tilted slightly to the side as he listened to the other two's conversation curiously.

"Something to hide?"

"Stop Kate. For once in your life how about you not stick your huge nose where it oughtn't be."

"Well..." Kate began again.

"No." Tom quietened his voice so that Flynn couldn't hear. "I've kept quiet about your fucked up mutation. So you better stop asking me questions."

Kate twitched, feeling the spaces in her skin where the fox hairs lay in waiting. The way he had used the word mutation. It made Kate feel sickeningly unnatural. She couldn't stand another person knowing about what she was. What she could become. Tom rarely snapped so when he did Kate knew she was in trouble.

"Fine," was all Kate could reply as the cunning version of herself became under threat.

Flynn poked his head slightly over the edge of the ship so that he could see both Tom and Kate. "You're not fighting again are you? What happened in the boathouse? I thought it was our hideaway. Our little safe-place!"

"Don't worry Flynn, it was the same as usual," Kate mimicked a tone of honesty, unaware that Flynn had heard more of their conversation than she would've liked. " Tom was just apologising for punching my nose earlier." Kate added, pointing to the purple bridge of her nose, that could've easily been hidden under her mask.

"You two are just as childish as ever," Flynn said. "But! That's why I love you twerps. I'm so glad we're together again."

* * *

The ship came to a standstill, the waters around it were no longer being pushed away due to the movement of the boat. Alternatively, the water was now gathering up against the ship, reaching out it's blue wet limbs as high as possible. It was as though the water itself was desperately grabbing at the chance of escape.

The soft chink of chains penetrated the air, followed by the plunking sound of surfaces being placed on a body of water.

"Purifier trainees take the first boat!" shouted the Captain, her cap- adorned head slightly visible among the mass of Purifiers.

Kate eagerly edged on ahead of Tom. Whilst Tom shuffled begrudgingly towards the group of people nearing the edge of the ship, keeping his head low so that the Captain didn't notice him again.

Though Flynn lagged behind.

"Flynn?" Tom spoke in a hushed shout. "Better hurry up or we'll lose you."

"I'm not a trainee mate. You're going to the 3rd station. I'm an official worker." Tom gave him a confused look. "I'm second station. 2nd rank!" Flynn explained, almost proudly.

"Oh no," Tom muttered. "No.No.No. You have to come with us.."

"It's against the code! You'll be alright. The Purification isn't anything to be afraid of. Just do the job well," Flynn said as Tom and Kate were pushed along by the growing line of people.

They were travelling, by the orders of the Captain, down the ship steps onto two smaller, more precariously built boats.

Tom watched Flynn disappear as he climbed down into one of the smaller boats.

A person sat at the front of the rickety boat, with their head pulled down and their hands grasped around two metal clad oars. Their body was clothed in a light black jumpsuit, one that Tom presumed must've been bleached by the sun. And patched onto it was the familiar Purifier logo- the woman being overcome by a wave.

He spoke not. Though as the rower began to pull his oars back and forth through the water, Tom noticed the two yellow bands, one around each arm. They must've been to identify him as another cog in the Government's purification scheme.

"I can't wait!" Kate whispered connivingly. She made sure she was quiet enough not to stir the ten other unknown people who had also settled into the boat nervously. "You never know, Flynn might've just missed Jasmine. She could still be here," she said, in the hope of throwing water on Tom's flaming resistance.

However, Kate didn't believe what she was saying. Once again her gut clenched. Part of her increasingly hated using Jasmine as a token for manipulation. But it had to be done. She needed revenge. And to do that, she needed to be inside the government's plan and only then she would undo it. Nothing could get in her way.

"Be quiet," ordered the unidentified rower of the boat. "Or you'll end up below." He gestured to the see-through the glass bottom of the boat that Kate presumed were to scare people.

The water was clouded and murky and a trainee who sat beside Kate struggled to contain a sequel of terror.

Yet the man didn't even flinch and though he refused to look any of the trainees in the eye, the barbaric blooms of purple and green tainting the pallor of his face had made it clear that the Purifiers believed in physical punishment. Even his oxygen mask couldn't hide a deep ridged gash that ran painfully from his upper lip to his chin.

"It's good that Flynn knows so much about this place." Kate was careful not to take her eyes off of the rower. "It'll make it easier to fit in. That's when we'll act," she confirmed as they approached the shabbier and most careless looking of the three Purifier Rigs.

"I'm not acting out anything. I'm in enough trouble as it is," Tom spat obstinately as he shifted away from the tilting edge of the small boat.

They had come ever closer to the Purifier Rigs.  Much closer to the corruption of the lake than they'd ever experienced before.

Author's Note- Hey folks. Mocks are over for a little while now which is a good relief. To those who are still reading thank you so much. I really am grateful.

Wanna know a little more about Mallory? Well her son's name in Malekai (pronounced Mal-ehk-eye.) Mallory only calls him Kai on rare occasions when he was misbehaving because Malekai hates pet names. Malekai also wears a blue scarf similar to Mallory because his mother has mild facial agnosia ( Prosopagnosia) so can't always recognise her son by looking at his face.

Sorry that this chapter is so long but I felt like it needed to be done to advance the story forward. Next chapter is going to be much shorter, with more action! Ready?:p

-hippywitch