Book of Fire: a debut fantasy perfect for fans of The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner. Michelle Kenney

their eyes blurred and closed. Then it was just me and the machines. I rushed to the beds. Grandpa and Eli were pale but their chests were rising and falling normally.

      I looked around at the bright, artificial lights blinking and dashing in sequence, and was momentarily overwhelmed. How was a girl from the forest meant to know how to manipulate all this technology? My hopes faltered. Then the image of Max’s figure flying down the holding bay flitted through my head, and I gritted my teeth. If Max could risk his life for his friends, then for the love of Arafel, I wasn’t going to be fazed by a few flashing boxes.

      I ran my eyes over the equipment, and tried to make sense of it. Most seemed to be recording information via wires attached to their chests, but they were also both attached to two separate tubes at their wrists. One was feeding a blue liquid in, while the other was taking a dark red liquid out. My heart stopped for a nanosecond. Were they draining their blood?

      Instinctively, I grabbed Grandpa’s arm and, with shaking hands, gave the red tube a delicate tug. There was a brief resistance, and then it slipped out noiselessly, and he moaned as I wrapped his forearm in the corner of his sheet to stem the blood. Then I turned to Eli, and performed the same careful manoeuvre. Casting my eyes around, I spied a pile of bandages and very quickly both were sporting crude tourniquets.

      The blue tubes proved harder to remove as thick needles were embedded in their arms. Desperately, I felt for Eli’s small gutting knife, and felt a moment’s relief to find it still tied inside his cotton trousers. In a breath, I’d cut both lines, and the viscous blue was seeping out onto the floor under the table. I exhaled to steady my nerves and glanced back towards the window. We were still travelling at a breakneck speed.

      ‘They won’t wake for several minutes yet. The chemical they’ve been absorbing takes the body down to an abnormally low temperature so they can stay asleep without any long-term tissue damage.’

      The low voice echoed oddly around the small room, and I froze. As my eyes shot to the open doorway, any new shred of hope I might have held disintegrated. Familiar, cold iris-blue eyes regarded me carefully. Their tall owner was still bodysuited, but his helmet was tucked under his right arm.

      There was no mistaking it was the same Insider I’d encountered in the trees. Now that I could see him more clearly I realized he was younger than I’d thought, perhaps no more than a year or two older than Max, with swarthy olive skin, crow-black hair and a square, uncompromising jaw. I inhaled swiftly. Much to my annoyance, there was something oddly drawing about him.

      ‘One step closer and you’ll be joining your friends,’ I threatened, grabbing another tiny bottle from my leather pouch, and yanking a needle out of one of the slumped nurses.

      ‘Don’t be scared,’ he said in a hushed, reassuring voice.

      He placed his helmet down on top of one of the units and held his hands up.

      ‘See, I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help.’

      His voice was soothing, like the voice the healers used when someone was ill, but he was one of them; and he’d tied me up and let the Leader take my family. I eyed him with wild hostility.

      ‘Why?’ I growled.

      He smiled a quick, measuring smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

      ‘Take a look around you. You’ve come into our alien world where everything is designed to be better, faster, and more intelligent than the outside; but who is lying on the floor at the mercy of a young Outsider with a rather good aim?’

      His voice was soft, but his eyes were flint-cold. I gripped the syringe tightly.

      ‘In truth, I’m impressed. I underestimated you. It seems Pantheon may have neutered the strongest instinct of all. Survival.’

      I felt like a laboratory specimen being dissected and stared at him with cold suspicion, waiting for the chance to stick the syringe in his neck.

      ‘You see, I have a theory that we’ve become victims of our own precise strategizing. Everything in here is so carefully designed that we are in danger of engineering out our own nature, of losing what makes us unique … our very humanity.’