That was the first night I fell asleep under my window. I soon lost track of the number of mornings I woke up stiff and chilled, my room stinking of sulphur. There was no way to escape the serum’s effects, but I found ways to delay it. The cold, stinky breeze cleared my head, as did pinching my wrist, and tapping rhythmic patterns into the windowsill. I’d never had reason to fight the serum before, but now I craved the freedom to exchange aeroplanes with Kali more than the sweet, easy anaesthesia of serum flooding my veins. Between messages, I sketched more than I ever had before. Birds and mountains and fern forests; all images I’d glimpsed in the library but never seen with my own eyes.

Except one day, when my door beeped loudly and the lock buzzed open, it was still dark. Boots clumped in as I started awake, neck cricked. I grabbed the new aeroplanes scattered around me, scrunching them behind my back, but the guard didn’t glance down. He slammed my window shut and buzzed it to locked.

“Wh-what…?” I croaked—then scolded myself. I shouldn’t question the guards. They knew best.

Except that wasn’t what Kali had said in her last aeroplane. My insides crawled at the reminder.

I tugged at my strength. Had they found out about the aeroplanes? Or was it another—

“Eruption. Mount Ngauruhoe. One week lockdown, minimum.”

He left. The door locked. I piled the aeroplanes into my arms and scrambled onto my bed, curling up with them in the corner. I unfolded the latest one and squinted to read it in the dim green glow of the permanent night light.

I do not understand why you talk of them as if they are trying to help us. They are the ones keeping us here.

They’re keeping us safe.

And now you sound like one of their puppets. Aspiring to be the next Lieutenant Jiangshi? Planning to get your legs blown to a thousand pieces then return as an inspirational figurehead?

A lump lodged in my throat just rereading it.

He’s a hero.

Okay, I’ll play. Security keeps us safe from what exactly? No eruption or mud pool or poison gas out there is going to hurt us like they do. Do you think the regular humans without security are given serum to convince them that their lives are worth living? Do they vanish in the night because an experiment went wrong?

Procedures don’t go wrong in Block B. They’re standardised.

No. It’s just easier to hide the ones that go wrong.

Even with the serum pulling me under, I’d been unable to argue. But I winced rereading my own words. They felt weak and repetitive—because I’d heard them a hundred times before. A phrase spoken so much it’s lost its spark and become a cliche. Kali’s treason was new.