Chapter 2

By Monday morning, I had stopped pretending I could sleep through the dread. I had spent most of Sunday talking to my family on the phone, trying to reassure them about Monday even though I knew little more than they did. By the last call, I could almost believe myself when I said I would be all right. That night, I lay awake listening to the familiar sounds of the flat. Lena moving in the room beside mine, the fridge starting up in the kitchen. I tried to memorise all of it. When I came out of my room, Elise had put the kettle on and Lena was kneeling beside an open bag in the hallway, asking nobody in particular where her charger had gone.

"Under the book," Elise said, without looking up.

Lena went to check. I crouched beside my own bag and pressed down on the lid until the zip finally closed. Elise set a cup of tea on the floor beside me and told me to wear my spare jumper instead of carrying it. I pulled it over my head. It was warm from the radiator, and I stayed crouched beside the bag for a moment, holding the cup between my hands while they talked over what still needed packing.

Even with our bags nearly full, there were still things to gather before we could leave. Elise brought her toothbrush from the bathroom while Lena remembered the shoes she had left drying on the balcony. I went to fetch them, and she searched for something to wrap them in before squeezing them into her bag. Every room had a bag waiting outside its door. We were used to leaving at different times, shouting goodbyes down the hallway while someone else slept, and now everything we were taking stood in a line by the entrance.

I stood in the doorway of my room longer than I meant to. The shelf looked bare without the books I had packed, and there was a pale rectangle on the wall where I had taken down a poster to bring with me. I had wanted something familiar beside my new bed, though I still hoped I would be back to put it up here before long. Elsewhere, the flat looked much as it always did. My clothes still hung on the drying rack by the window, and Lena's mug was soaking in the sink. Those small things made it difficult to believe we might be away for more than a few days.

Elise locked the door and checked the handle again, and nobody said a word about it. At the bottom of the stairs, I looked back up towards our floor. Nobody had been able to tell us when we would be home. I followed her outside before I could think about it any longer.

Lena's suitcase lost a wheel halfway from the bus stop. After that, we took turns dragging it, trying to keep the broken corner off the pavement. By the time the institute came into view, she had given up and lifted it by the shorter handle. She switched hands every few steps, insisting she could manage the rest of the way herself.

Noah's mother had driven the boys. We found them beside her car near the entrance, Theo sitting on his bag while Noah listened to her remind him to call that evening. She drew each of us into a hug, asked whether we had eaten and brushed a loose strand of hair from Elise's cheek. I had been trying not to think past the entrance doors, but standing next to her made me want to follow her back to that kitchen and never leave it.

"Look after yourselves," she said. "All of you. And call if you need anything."

"We will," I told her.

She squeezed my arm and reached for Lena, who leaned into the hug with her bag still hanging from one hand. Theo lifted it from her as they parted and asked what she could possibly have packed that weighed so much. Lena took his smaller bag in exchange without answering, and he looked at me as though I might explain it.

"I had trouble closing mine too," I admitted.

"That's reassuring."

Noah kissed his mother's cheek and promised, again, to call. As we walked towards the entrance, he looked back. She was still standing there, waiting for us to go in, and he lifted his hand.

The building had been a college once. Pale marks showed above the entrance where the lettering had been taken down, and arrows taped to the walls led us towards registration. The corridor smelled of fresh paint. Through a window, I could see trucks parked beside a temporary medical unit, where staff were lifting someone out of a vehicle. A girl ahead of us in the queue was crying quietly, her face turned towards the wall. One of the staff came over to speak to her and stayed while she searched her bag for her papers. I moved mine closer to my legs and checked that I could still reach the envelope in its front pocket.

We stayed together until it was our turn at the desks. When our room assignments came, Lena leaned over to compare hers with mine, and we had the same number. She smiled at me as though we had won something. I hadn't realised how tightly I had been holding my envelope until I loosened my grip. Theo was sent to another floor. Then the woman behind the desk checked her screen a second time and told Elise she was transferring to the east facility.

"It says to come here," Elise said, looking at the form she had brought.

"This is the intake point. Your training placement is there."

"Today?"

"Yes. The transport coordinator is downstairs."

Elise kept her papers on the desk while she asked about accommodation and whether she would return for any assessments. The woman answered what she could, then pointed out the contact number for the east facility. Noah had gone to the next desk while they were talking and came back with the same instruction. They were going together.

I was relieved they wouldn't have to arrive there alone, though I had been expecting all five of us to unpack in the same building. Beside me, Lena looked down at our room number again. We had been pleased to see it a moment earlier, and now I wished Elise had been given one to compare with ours.

Outside, a man checked their names against a list and pointed them towards a bus. We had planned to share some of our toiletries, so I took out what Elise would need and handed it over. She crouched to make space in her bag while Lena held it open.

"It's not far," Noah said. "We'll still meet."

"When we all get a day off together, we should go for pizza," Lena said. "At our usual place."

"You're not ordering for everyone this time," Theo told Noah.

"You ate it."

"I was hungry."

Elise laughed, and Noah started defending the pizza none of us had ever let him choose again. I listened with my hand on the zip of my bag, glad we could still argue about something so ordinary. Elise joined in while she packed, gesturing with a bottle until Lena took it from her and put it away.

We still had a few minutes, but she had begun checking her bag again, and the end of a cable was caught near the top. I tucked it in and pulled her into a hug.

"Text when you get there."

"I will."

"Even if you're busy."

"I will," she said again, holding on tighter.

I rested my cheek against her shoulder. When I let go, Lena stepped in, and Noah put his arms around me and squeezed. He told me to look after everyone, and I told him he should do the same. He glanced towards Elise, who was still clinging to Lena, and said he would try, but she listened to him about as well as she listened to us. Theo kept a hand on Elise's shoulder while they spoke too quietly for me to hear, then hauled Noah in hard enough to make him complain.

When the coordinator called the remaining passengers, Elise looked back from the steps and lifted a hand. I waved until they had found seats. Lena stood so close that our arms pressed together, and I watched Elise's face in the window until the turn took her out of sight.

I had always known when she would be home, even if only because she had asked us to leave something out for dinner. I wanted to turn and tell her something about Noah's terrible taste in pizza. It hurt, in a small and stupid way, that she wasn't beside me to hear it.

"At least they have each other," Lena said, and slid her arm through mine.

I laid my hand over hers. Across the road, someone was unloading another vehicle and carrying bags towards the entrance we had just come out of. I watched them until I stopped looking for the bus, then turned with Lena as Theo reminded us we still needed to find our rooms.

He carried her bag up the stairs before going to find his own floor, and we agreed to meet downstairs for orientation. Lena said little on the way up. At the landing, her hand trembled as she let go of the railing. She tucked it into her sleeve, and I stayed beside her while Theo carried the bag along the corridor.

Our room was a former classroom, with narrow beds, lockers and curtains we could draw around our sleeping spaces. Some of the beds already had belongings around them, bags pushed underneath and clothes hanging from open lockers. A pair of boots stood neatly beside one bedframe, and a towel had been hung over a chair near the window.

"At least we're used to sharing," Lena said.

"Just leave me somewhere to sleep when you start unpacking."

She smiled. "There's nothing on your bed."

"Yet."

We unpacked side by side. The shelves were narrower than I was used to, so I folded my clothes into smaller piles and wedged my toiletries in beside them. At home, I had known where everything belonged, including the things Lena put down and forgot. Here I kept stopping with something in my hands, deciding where to put it. Lena borrowed a hanger, and I passed her one. It helped to have her next to me, doing something as ordinary as folding clothes while we settled into a place neither of us knew.

We met Theo downstairs and found seats together for orientation. It lasted an hour. They told us about meals and assessments, which parts of the building we could enter without permission, where to go if we felt unwell and who would be supervising our training. We were each handed a lanyard with our name and an identification number, which we would need for lessons and appointments.

I tried to keep track of the instructions, but by the time they reached the assessment process, I was grateful they had given us the information in writing too. Lena leaned towards me when they mentioned our first lesson was tomorrow morning. Theo would be meeting his group later, in another part of the building, and whispered that at least he could eat breakfast without rushing. Lena told him he would find a way to be late anyway. I smiled as he protested, feeling better for knowing we could still meet before our lessons.

Someone from the medical unit spoke about matching. Once our ranks were confirmed, guides and espers would be assigned to work together according to compatibility and the support required. I wrote that down, wondering how much say we would have in who we worked with.

Afterwards, we went back to our room. Elise had sent a photograph of hers, and I sat on my bed to look at it while Lena leaned over my shoulder. She had a desk. Lena sounded personally wounded. I started a group call and propped the phone against the wall so we would both fit in the frame.

Elise answered first, and for a moment all we could see was her forehead. Lena told her to move it back, and she said she was trying to plug it in. Once she propped the phone up, we could see her sitting on the bed, with familiar things from our flat arranged around her. I turned the phone slowly around our room while Lena complained about the ceiling light. Elise said theirs was the same, and that she had to share her desk, and Lena said that was still a desk.

Theo joined from his bed. A knock came at Elise's door, and Noah put his head in to ask for her charger, because he still hadn't found his. She waved him over, and he leaned into the frame and said he could have been invited. I told him to check his phone. He did, went quiet, and then laughed.

Elise had her knees drawn up on the bed and her sleeves pulled over her hands, the way she sat when she was cold or frightened. She was smiling at the screen, and I didn't ask about her hands. If she wanted to talk about something else for a while, I understood.

We talked about the people they had met and how they were settling in. Noah had already found someone who knew the area, and a guide who had arrived the week before had shown Elise where the laundry was. I watched her hands move while she explained, the way they always did, and wondered how much of a person you could keep through a screen. When Lena said it was strange without them, Elise's smile went soft. She said she kept turning round to ask where she had put things. I told her she would lose them with us there too.

"Yes," she said. "But you'd find them."

Nobody wanted to hang up. Theo asked whether we were coming to dinner, and Noah said he and Elise should probably eat as well, and still it took another few goodbyes. Elise asked us to call after our first lesson. Lena told her she wanted another photograph once she had everything where she wanted it. When the screen finally went dark, I held the phone a moment longer. Lena rested her shoulder against mine, and neither of us said anything.

After a while, she sat up and asked whether I was ready. I nodded, and we went downstairs together, finding Theo waiting near the dining hall.

The room was loud with cutlery and a hundred overlapping conversations. A girl by the windows saw us searching for seats and moved her glass closer to her plate.

"There's room here."

She introduced herself as Liv and nodded towards the girl beside her, who was telling a story about getting lost on the way to an assessment. Theo admitted he had nearly walked into the wrong sleeping quarters, which made Lena ask whether he had at least noticed before unpacking. While he defended himself, I reached for the water.

Their conversation settled around me. Liv had arrived a few days earlier, and Lena asked her about the lessons. Something Theo said made the whole table laugh. I laughed too, half a second late. Until now, I had been thinking only about getting here and staying together. Sitting there, I let myself think about the part that came after.

Not everyone was sent into gates. I knew that. But nobody had told us where any of us would end up. Lena and I might be kept at a base, helping espers when they returned, or we might be sent through with them. The boys and Elise could be the ones going out to fight. Across the table, Theo was grinning at something Lena had said, and I tried to imagine being told he was hurt, or sitting in a corridor waiting for news of Elise or Noah while nobody could tell me anything. My stomach tightened, and I set down my fork.

The worst part was how easy it was to picture. Even if we all stayed safe, I didn't know whether there would ever be a day when we could go back to the life we'd had, or how much would have changed by the time we were allowed to try.

"Did you come together?"

Liv was watching me.

"Sorry?"

"The three of you. Did you know each other before?"

"Yes." I glanced at Lena. "There were five of us this morning. Our friends went to the east facility."

"That must have been hard."

"It was a surprise," I said, and Lena's knee knocked against mine beneath the table.

Liv said she knew someone at the east facility and had seen them just last weekend. Lena asked how she had arranged the visit, and I returned to my food while they talked. Hearing that someone had managed it made our promise of pizza feel a little more possible.

We stayed until the room began to empty, then said goodnight, returned our plates and walked out with Theo. At the foot of the stairs, he asked us to save him a place at breakfast. Lena reminded him his lessons started later. He said he still had to eat, and she assured him we would leave him something if he managed to sleep through it.

Upstairs, others had come back while we were away, and someone was already asleep behind a drawn curtain. We collected our toiletries and went to wash. Back beside our beds, we changed and folded what we had worn.

Lena pulled the battery lights from her bag and began to untangle them. I recognised them from our flat, and my throat went tight. She wound them around the head of her bed, and I understood that she had found room for them among everything else she'd packed, on a day when she had barely been able to lift her suitcase. I was glad she had.

I switched off the main light. Their soft glow was enough to see by, and I slid beneath the blanket and lay facing her across the gap. We spoke quietly, admitting that neither of us knew what it would feel like to guide someone. She asked me to wake her if she slept through the alarm. I said she would never hear the end of it if she did.

After a while, the room filled with the small sounds of strangers trying to sleep: a cough smothered in a pillow, someone turning over for the fourth time, a phone screen glowing blue behind a curtain until it went dark. Our conversation slowed too. I was tired enough now that I could listen without trying to guess who was still awake or what tomorrow would bring.

Lena reached across the space between our beds, and I took her hand, resting my arm along the edge of the mattress. Her hand was warm in mine, and holding it helped me settle. Eventually, she complained that her arm was going numb, and I laughed under my breath as we let go.

Her lights were still glowing when I set the alarm.