They didn’t need her permission to start the tests. The little bloody discs were already on her head and they could start experimenting on her whenever they wanted, even if she was no longer part of the trial.

A sleepless soldier.

By now, her eyes should have felt like Velcro and her brain should have been a claggy porridge of neurons. But this was the truly terrifying part:

She felt fine.

Delores’s voice floated back to her. ‘Think of sleep as malleable, like plasticine, and Morpheus gently rolling and massaging it into the smallest ball it could be. It’s still plasticine, hmm? It’s just been squashed together. We would mould your sleep into the smallest ball possible – and you wouldn’t even notice.’

Thea’s brain was polished and buffed to a high shine. She felt better than she had ever felt before: alive, alert, awake.

Too awake.

Chapter 21

She shouldn’t have been there.

It was late. But the beep of the machine was strangely soothing, and tomorrow she’d be with the search party and probably wouldn’t be able to visit.

She did what she always did lately: she put the pack of chocolate buttons Rory smuggled for her on the bed by Rosie’s hand, as if she could wake up, reach out and take one any time she chose.

And she talked.

‘… so everyone seems to be getting a great night’s sleep and I just stay awake, except I don’t feel like a zombie the next day. I feel great, which I shouldn’t because who should feel great after nights and nights of being awake? So that makes me think maybe they’re trialling the Sleepless Elite thing on me regardless. Except that makes me sound paranoid, doesn’t it? At least I’m getting through all the books I’d been wanting to read …’

She popped a chocolate button into her mouth and watched Rosie’s hand. It didn’t twitch.

‘We all miss you.’ Her throat swelled around the chocolate and she blinked back tears. ‘I miss you. I—’

That was when the screaming began.

Thea jolted upright. It wasn’t the sound of someone screaming in fear, or an excited squeal – this was rage bundled and bound into one voice box, a pure howl of fury so intense it sounded like it could tear the person’s throat in two.

Thea ran to the door of Rosie’s room. There were other doorways in this corridor of the building, doors that Thea hadn’t given much thought to. But what if they were all little hospital rooms like Rosie’s?

And, more importantly, why would you have so many?