He couldn’t get any words out and the boy had kicked him and he’d fallen unconscious again. That had made his mind up. It was the last time he’d tried to talk. If he was going to get out of this he was going to do it on his own terms. His own way.

His mum always said he was stubborn, and now it was probably going to get him killed.

Just so long as he made his mark along the way.

At the castle he’d been locked in what had once been the dungeons with all the adults they’d captured. It had been filthy and stinking and vile. They’d fed him on rotting vegetables and bits of rancid meat, and he’d become feeble and sick. The kids weren’t that bothered. They only needed to keep him alive long enough to bring him here to be killed. For the most part the adults had left him alone. One night, however, a hungry father had got too close. He’d bothered Malik for hours and in the end Malik had strangled him. When the kids came in in the morning to check them out, they found the man half eaten. The others had been at him all night. Malik had stolen his clothes, disguising himself more fully, covering himself in their smell. Now he hoped they’d all – adults and children – leave him in peace.

It wasn’t to be, though. He was picked out and moved into another part of the dungeon with a smaller group of adults where they were looked after better, given proper food and cleaner water. And then they were moved out of Windsor altogether. They’d been sold to Maidenhead. Seemed the kids there hadn’t caught enough adults of their own to make it to the races. So Malik had been exchanged for fresh food and petrol.

So he was a thing. Not even a person. An ugly, broken thing. Buried deep down inside him was a dark, festering thought; it chewed away at him. Was there another reason he kept away from kids? Was it the real reason he wanted nothing to do with them? Was it shame? Dirty shame.

He’d become a freak. Someone to be laughed at. They feared him because they knew they might end up like him, and, because they feared him, they hated him. As far as they were concerned, he was a monster. So why not behave like one? None of this would change if they found out he was a boy, would it? He could never properly be one of them. So that’s what he was going to be. A dangerous monster. He would turn their hatred back on them ten times worse. A hundred times. He would make them pay for his shame.