Chapter Eleven:

Once they all woke up the next day, dread started creeping up on them. Each person on the Space ship had at least one or two injuries that throbbed in waves of pain.

Coming down to eat his breakfast was like walking to his death as Elliot trudged down the stairs. Even seeing the cafeteria left him shaking all over. Just then, coming out of the cafeteria was Charlotte. Her eyes were bloodshot and her lips quivered. In her good hand she carried a bowl of Elliot's favourite cereal and her own bowl was balancing precariously on her arm. Not trusting herself to speak in fear of bursting into tears yet again that morning, she handed him his breakfast.

"Thanks," he whispered, as they walked into the direction of the Headquarters straight past the dreaded room where Finley died.

Isla smiled slightly as she saw them and Elliot could clearly see the notebook she was clutching to her chest. Freya insisted that she was fine and would come down to breakfast later on

"I c-can't bring myself to even step foot in that room," Isla said, shuddering, the memories flooding back.

Elliot nodded in agreement as he took a bite of his chocolate cereals. Charlotte whispered, "I can go. What would you like? And yes Elliot, I do give a shit about Finley's death." With that she stormed off towards the cafeteria taking a deep, shuddering breath before entering, walking towards where Taylor stood.

Back at the Headquarters where Isla and Elliot sat he spoke, "that was... unusual. I'm sorry that I said what I said, but she has been acting strange ever since the physical Trials, don't you think?"

He turned to face her as she replied, "Yes, it's true; even when she told us about what happened at her Trials. She couldn't answer our questions," Isla wanted to continue speaking, but seeing Elliot's face she stopped.

"I can't believe I'm saying this about my own sister, but maybe she didn't want to tell us the truth about her emotional Trials. Maybe she chose herself and not us," Elliot stopped talking as they saw Charlotte and Taylor approaching them. He signalled discreetly to Isla to let her know that they'd continue the conversation at another time.

"Hi," they said in unison.

"By the way, where are Rosiee and Mason? I saw John going to the Pilot's room to check the space laptop," Taylor said as she plonked herself down between Isla and Elliot. Charlotte sat alone opposite them, pleased when Mason walked towards them and sat next to her.

They ate their breakfast in silence for a while until Freya appeared behind them. Isla turned and stared in shock, cursing Mason as he spoke in disbelief, "What happened to you?"

She didn't answer, sitting down next to Charlotte turning her face towards her mouthing 'help!'

"Have you been doing that exercise routine I showed you?" Charlotte asked.

Looking at her gratefully, Freya nodded as she answered, "Yeah, my face always gets very red while doing those!" It was obvious to anyone listening that she wasn't telling the truth. Isla knew that whatever Freya had dreamed that night was heartbreaking; so much so that Isla woke up to her screams. She had been shocked when she'd seen Freya. The 18-year-old had scratched her face until it bled, but nevertheless she insisted that she was fine and wouldn't answer when she had asked what the dream was about. Isla was certain that Finley was behind it.

Purposefully changing the subject, Elliot said quietly, "I know this is a hard question to think of, but what are they going to do with Finley's body? After they attacked us like that, they're probably not going to have any sort of services. So you all think that they'll go to the service without us? The 10,000 lights for Luca was a good idea, but what are we going to do for Finley? We should at least do something," Everyone glanced at one another, each waiting for the other ones to speak first.

Eventually, when Elliot thought that no one would answer him, Taylor replied, "Well, I didn't know him, but he sounds like a very special person, so I agree. I could try to fix up the space laptop and try to 3D print at least 15,000 fireballs,"

"Good idea," Charlotte agreed, before anyone else could answer.

"Agreed, but how are you going to do that?" Isla asked. Everyone turned to Taylor for an explanation, but it was Rosiee who answered. She could see that Taylor's bruise around her eye was throbbing and talking was proving to be more difficult than she had expected.

"Taylor and I, with the help of others created a replica of The Intergalactic Federation's laptop and we're trying to improve the technology so that we can contact other Space Pods, such as our friends and family and now yours as well,"

"That's amazing!" Freya whispered, trying to think of a way to ease her awe burning skin.

"Thank you," Rosiee replied.

"Let's do that. 3D printing, I mean," Elliot said, finishing his last spoonful of cereal. When everyone nodded in agreement, both Taylor and Rosiee excused themselves to prepare for Finley's funeral service.

Once they were gone, Mason asked, "What should we do today, well, apart from our usual jobs?"

"I still need to fully unpack so I'm going to head up there now," Isla said, hoping that Freya would come with her and tell her what her nightmare was,

"I'll come with you," Charlotte and Freya said in unison.. Isla smiled at that. She felt for some time that Charlotte might've been avoiding her, but maybe because of all the goings on in the past three weeks, that was not the case.

"okay, and you?" Mason said, turning towards Elliot.

"I'll just go to my room; I didn't sleep a wink last night"

"I'm going to help John and try to fix the drink machine," replied Mason.

As they dispersed, Charlotte, Isla and Freya climbed up the narrow winding staircase to the bedrooms. When they came to her and Freya's bedroom Isla asked Charlotte, who had taken a seat on her bed, "how was it sharing a room with Rosiee?"

"It's been good so far, thanks. She's nice,"

"That's great," Isla replied, trying to sound enthusiastic. She turned to unpack her suitcase humming a tune that her Mum used to sing to her as a child.

Charlotte then asked Freya, "What actually happened? Are you okay?"

"To be honest, no. I had a nightmare last night and I woke up screaming. sorry Isla. The dream was about Finley, of course but we were both in the intergalactic Federation's Space Pod and we were walking through this passageway, which was pitch black at first, then a massive white light came on which was just as blinding. As Finley and I walked through it we saw someone waiting for at the end waving on calling to us and for some reason we began running in the opposite direction back to where we had come from," she paused for a moment to gather her thoughts before continuing, "I don't exactly know why or what we were running from, but whatever it was we knew we needed to get away quickly."

That sounds so scary," Charlotte replied, shivering. Isla wanted to ask what made her scratch her face like that, but thought better of it as she tidied up the last of her clothes. Freya just nodded as she sat on the bed heavily disturbing Cosmo from his slumber.

"Sorry Cosmo," she said. He responded by walking slowly towards her, his broken wing obviously giving him a lot of pain, and sat on her lap curling himself into a ball. He wrapped his good wing around himself and fell asleep once more. "he's so cute, I love him,"

"If he heard that, he'd probably kill you," teased Isla, smiling. It felt good to be talking about usual, everyday things again.

"I know we should be thinking about getting for Finley's funeral, but couldn't we just do some dragon spotting instead? Like we used to do when we were children," Charlotte suggested. Freya and Isla's faces lit up as they eagerly agreed. All sitting on Isla's bed, after Freya carried Cosmo over, they stared out into the black abyss out of the circular window. Isla's green eyes lit up once more when a pool of five luminescent Whale-dragons, who appeared even larger than usual. The bodies reminded Charlotte of the 'parallel universe' red double decker buses and the wing spans were massive. Freya and the others stared in awe as the beautiful creatures gilded past their Space Pod.

They watched the dragons for a while each pointing out different features until Isla said, "did you see that?"

"What?" Freya asked looking outside, focusing more to try and see whatever her friend was seeing. Charlotte did too and shrugged her shoulders in reply.

"I think I just saw a Raven-dragon out there! I can't be sure though" upon hearing his kind, Cosmo popped his up, listening attentively. Just then they saw another Space Pod which was very unusual, since this universe was huge and they very rarely saw any of them other than their own, of course. The lights in their Space Pod suddenly started flickering.

"Hmm, I'm not sure I like this," said Charlotte voicing their thoughts. They nodded as Isla suggested to them that they go and visit Rosiee and Taylor in the pilot's room to see what was going on. Still being too weak to fly properly, Isla lifted Cosmo in her arms and they went to investigate. Isla's thoughts returned to Finley and the pain unexpectedly ever took her.

***

Meanwhile, Elliot sat on the floor leaning on his bed just like he and Finley had done. Memories of the shy young man came flooding back all at once, his voice, his hair, his eyes, his lips, the way he had actually kissed him back. The way that Finley had really taken an interest in him and listened to what he had to say, fully concentrated on him. Elliot couldn't believe it had taken them both so long to finally realise that they had liked each other for ages. In a way this made Elliot even more heartbroken over his death because they could have finally been in an official relationship. A new found pain blossomed in his chest and he felt as if he might never be whole again.

***

Knocking on the door, Isla, with Cosmo still in her arms, Freya and Charlotte, waited for an answer.

"Come in!" Taylor called opening the door, "Hi, what's up?" She opened the door further and Freya gasped at the room before her. It was much larger than they had expected. Rosiee sat on the floor with a mini laptop on her knees. Before Taylor answered the door she'd obviously been sitting next to her; papers with both their notes on them were streuen around the room. A tiny sofa had also been placed in the far corner, which Star had christened as her own and was curled up, appearing to be asleep. Upon hearing Cosmo's voice, she unfurled her wings and flew over to Cosmo asking if he was okay. He nodded just as the two pilots finally swivelled around in their chairs and introduced themselves. Star flew back to her comfortable spot and curled up once again. They turned back around to view the after apologising saying that they needed to concentrate on their jobs, which Islas, Freya and Charlotte completely understood.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, Isla saw an enormous knotted bag of lights, which appeared to have a mind of their own as she seemed to jump around trying to escape.

"What are those?" Freya asked moving away from it as if it was poisonous.

"Those are what we are going to use for Finley's funeral. There are 15,000 miniscule 3D printed jellyfish in there," Rosiee replied. Upon hearing the word jellyfish Isla nearly dropped the Raven-dragon right there and then.

"Jellyfish?" Freya asked, glancing at Isla who'd gone very quiet and grabbing her hand. She still had the faint scars of the jellyfish stings all over her body and her fear of them was clear.

Noticing this, Taylor added, "don't worry. We purposefully removed their stinging abilities from the fake jellyfish we drew and outlined,"

"That's just incredible. Where did you learn to do all this stuff?" Charlotte whispered in awe. By that time the five young ladies

The silence stretched on and just as Charlotte thought that they hadn't heard her when Rosiee replied quietly, "Well, my grandparents were Intergalactic Federation Officers," she held up her hand to them before they could interrupt her, "my parents saw the way both their parents were being, well, I suppose brainwashed is the best word and didn't want to become involved with the Federation so as soon as they both turned 23, my dad is three years older than my mum. Anyway, long story short, my grandparents took the 3D printer and two laptops from the IGF and gave it to my parents," Rosiee stopped, waiting nervously for their reactions. Taylor already knew of course, but the others didn't.

"Wow! And did the IGF notice that they were missing?" Isla asked, staring at both the laptop and the small sleek 3D printer laying next to them.

"They did notice and actually, one day they actually came into the Space Pod to look for them, and not just in ours either. This was about 3 years ago?" Rosiee turned to Taylor confirmation as she nodded.

"But then how did you hide them?" Freya asked. Even though she was still painful to look at because she reminded her of Finley. Isla glanced at Freya and her heartbroken look made her want to hold her tightly.

"Well my mum cut open our mattresses with this sharp knife," Rosiee produced a knife that made Cosmo shrink back into his hiding place. "then they stuffed it all in there and sewed it back together. The IGF turned the whole place around just trying to see if they could find anything. When it was clear, to them at least, that nothing was there they left.

Seeing that this conversation was getting hard for her, Taylor took over, saying, "this was very similar to yesterday's raid in fact. That's one of the reasons why we were trying to protect and defend ourselves so much,"

The other young adults had no idea what to say about any of it; Rosiee's story, Luca and Finley's deaths, the Gravity Button suddenly being faulty for no apparent reason and the Trials. Suddenly Freya had a thought that nearly broke her, had The Intergalactic Federation even told her, the twins or Isla's family members about Finley's death. Do they still think that he's alive somewhere in the universe? The realisation dawned on her that perhaps they didn't, perhaps they still thought that they were safe all together. Maybe her parents, Finley's Aunt and Uncle, actually didn't have a clue.

***

Hearing a sharp knock on his bedroom door a while later, Elliot forced himself off the ground, picking up the drawing that Finley had given him, which he had kept with him. Opening the door expecting it to be Charlotte, he was surprised to find Mason standing there, shifting uncomfortably on the balls of his feet.

"Hi, come in," Elliot said, opening the door wider for him to come through. The truth was Mason wasn't entirely sure why he had decided to come here and his nerves danced around in his stomach; he forgot just how attracted he was to him.

"What's up?" Elliot prompted.

"Umm, well I finished repairing the drinks machine with John," he began unsure how to continue.

"That's great! I'm starving!" Elliot said enthusiastically. He stopped talking then, reliving Finley's tragic, untimely death and tears welling up in his eyes. He turned away from Mason as the other young man spoke, "I can get you food you don't need to go in that if you're not ready yet,"

Elliot could feel a lump in his throat forming and Mason let him go first, shutting the door to his bedroom as they walked towards the cafeteria. Dread seeped into Elliot's bones as they approached it. Only yesterday was it covered in debris, but now it was pristine; the events of the day before completely erased. This almost sent Elliot upstairs to his bedroom again, until they saw Isla, Freya and Rosie sitting in the headquarters' velvet sofas.

"Mason I'm sorry but I just don't think I'm ready to go in there yet," Elliot said, running his fingers through his brunette hair.

"That's okay. I'll get your lunch for you. What would you like?" He replied sympathetically.

"Anything is fine," Elliot replied, smiling in appreciation as he watched Mason enter and walk towards John who was getting a drink from the machine while Elliot went to join the others.

"Hey," they said in unison.

"Hi, Mason's going to get our food," he stated, pointing in the direction of the cafeteria and to himself. As he joined them, he continued, "What is that?" pointing at the laptop on Rosie's lap.

Isla and Freya looked up from the screen as Isla applied, "This is a laptop. You know the ones that the intergalactic Federation offices have?"

"Wow, but how did you get this one?" he asked, looking at Rosie in amazement. When she had explained what she'd already told them before, she let Elliot look at it properly.

"I've tried to build one of these before, but never quite managed it," Elliot commented, passing it back to Rosiee.

"Really?" all three of them replied curiously. He smiled slightly at their reactions and thanked Mason who had just given him his food and sat down next to him.

"Yes, originally I was trying to use the power from my GalaxyPhone and Finley's," Elliot paused as he said his name and gulping back tears he continued, "I wanted to do it because then when we left to go to the new Space Pod we'd still be able to talk to our families and friends from the old one."

"That's a great idea! And how did it go?" Mason asked a little too eagerly. Isla smiled to herself; Mason had only known him for 24 hours and already she could see the attraction he had for Elliot.

"Well, I'm not sure, I think I almost got it, but then Luca died and he was the one helping me the most with technology," he trailed off, images of Luca laughing at his jokes and listening to his endless discussions about Finley; both Isla and Luca were very good about that.

Silence followed as they all ate their food until Freya finally spoke up, changing the subject, "When Charlotte, Isla and I were dragon spotting we noticed another Space Pod very close to ours and a young Raven-dragon in open space,"

Elliot and Mason both glanced up from their food at the Raven-dragon comment and Mason said, "I'm sorry, what? A small dragon in open space? What were they doing?"

This time Isla spoke excitedly, "We don't know, but they didn't look injured or anything, they just followed a pool of Whale-dragons. They looked as if they just wanted to join the larger ones and play,"

Just then Charlotte and Taylor came from the pilot's room and walked towards the crowd to join them.

Before Taylor could stop her Charlotte blurted out, "Elliot! You'll never believe this, but Taylor and Rosiee managed to design jellyfish on the laptop and 3D print 5,000 of them. They'll do the other 10,000 tomorrow. They are beautiful and so luminescent," At the mention of the word jellyfish Elliot shuddered looking at his hands that had been stun in the physical Trials.

"Don't worry, they are miniscule and can't sting. Rosiee drew several and Taylor did the printing," Freya told him gently.

"Thank goodness for that!" Elliot replied, relief flooding in his eyes, "that sounds incredible though, thank you. Finley will be grateful when he sees this," He refused to believe that his soul was completely destroyed.

They sat around the Headquarters talking and eating, while Cosmo and Star were still in the pilots room.