Chapter Sixteen:

After being thrown back into her cell with such force that her head banged against the opposite wall, Isla groaned clutching her head. Both she and Estelle had endured a hell of a lot that day. She looked over at the young man who was in the cell next to hers and realised he was gone.

They started the day by being dragged out of their cells and told they were doing a different experiment. Isla had fought and ended up biting the Intergalactic Officer's arm, earning her a punch in the face making her see stars for a second. She was still sitting in the cell, head pounding and not being able to see in the eye where the glass had penetrated it and thought back to that day. Isla and Estelle had been taken to yet another from and Isla wondered, not for the first time where the room with the other cells were.

The two men had dumped the young ladies into the same glass containers only just large enough for both of them to sit in. They were told that it was up to them to escape from the small round hole above them. If they couldn't manage it within 20 minutes they would press the electric shocks. Isla had lared at them; it was impossible and they knew it. Estelle started to try and wriggle her way into the hole and cut herself on the invisible pointy edges.

"Shit," she had whispered. Isla and Estelle had tried multiple times to crawl their way out, both of them getting more angry by the second. Mrs. Thomas, the one who seemed to be on their side the day before was the one to push the button and immediately Isla hated her. The pain they felt was 100x worse than the glass columns they'd been trapped in. 

Now crawling over to where Estelle sat in the cell next to her, Isla glanced over at the Space Suit and the shattered glass of the visor plus the rope. Why hadn't she thought of this before? With a sudden burst of energy, Isla stood up and limped over to the suit, sweat dripping down her face from the exertion and pain radiated across her body.

"What are you doing now, Isla?" Estelle asked quietly, panic in her voice.

"Don't you want to get out of here, Estelle? To see your family again? Your friends? I don't know, boyfriend, girlfriend, partner?" Isla said, irritated by her lack of protesting.

"Of course, I do, but other people have tried to escape and they're all dead," Estelle hissed.

"Anything is better than here," Isla replied fiercely, tying the rope to the chain of the padlock, hoping that she was strong enough to pull it off. Just then the ominous sounds of the bolted door unlocking made Isla freeze in the process. She ran with great difficulty towards the back of the cell collapsing in a heap just in time as the person entered. Seeing that it was Mrs. Thomas, Estelle visibly heaved a sigh of relief, but all Isla did was glare at her. As the officer approached they could see she was carrying bags of food that she'd stolen from the food and drink machines. Isla's stomach growled and she didn't realise how hungry she had become, her thoughts taken up with how to get out of this place.

"You hurt us both today," Isla said to her, not taking the food she was offering her.

"I know and I'm really sorry. I had to, otherwise they will start suspecting me for being on your side," the woman whispered back, pleading as she shoved the bag of food between the gaps in the bars. Isla took it and started eating, not saying a word.

"How is the plan going?" Estelle asked eagerly.

"Nearly there. Two more days I think. Then we'll all be out of here," Mrs. Thomas said.

To Isla's surprise the young man on the other side of her who she thought wasn't even there back out of the shadows as he said, "Mrs. Thomas. You've been saying that for the last three weeks. What the hell is going on?"

Isla admired his courage even though she still couldn't see him properly.

"I know. I know. I've made the final touches to the poison." She replied.

"Poison?" Isla whispered, her food almost forgotten as she waited for an answer.

"Yes. My plan is to poison the guards and Mr. Snow who is in charge and then we can all escape. Including the ones in the other room," Mrs. Thomas said, taking a bite from her own bag.

Isla felt a rush of excitement, but couldn't help feeling that it either might not work or that 'Mrs. Thomas' was tricking them in some way. Was this another part of the experiment; having hope and then having it taken away from them?

"By the way, Isla," she added, staring at her with such intensity, Isla skirmed, "I think you will know a certain person in the other room..."

Before the 23-year-old could answer and ask her what she meant, Mrs. Thomas turned around and headed back to the door at such speed that Isla's hoarse voice couldn't travel that far. Hearing the door clanking shut and the three bolts clicking, Isla sank to the bottom of the cell door thinking about what the lady had told her. A pounding headache had formed at the base of her skull and she couldn't think straight.

"Isla? Isla?" She heard Estelle's voice and the young man's she still didn't know the name of, but they seemed so far away and felt her eyelids drop.

Dropping the food to the ground and her vision going in and out of focus, Isla staggered towards the door and, just as everything was going dark, she fell to the ground unable to control her body. The last thought as she fell was "she poisoned me. The bitch actually poisoned me!"

***

Elliot punched the wall in frustration, glaring at Charlotte who stared back waiting for his response, "you don't think this might have been helpful to mention before, Charlie?"

"I'm sorry," she replied, staring at her twin brother willing him to understand her point of view.

"So, let me get this straight, you thought you'd just play clueless little Charlotte and not tell us any of this while Isla, one of your oldest friends, has been kidnapped by them?" He thundered.

"Let me just explain, will you?" Charlotte said sitting on his bed as he paced up and down the room fists clenched, both offended and angry with her.

"Fine," he huffed.

Charlotte began at the beginning of the emotional Trials, saying, "when I went in I had no idea how this would affect anyone. I just thought that it's what they wanted to hear. If I'd known I would've always chosen you,"

Elliot, not believing a word she was saying, scowled at her as he sat down on the chair near to his desk.

"I know you don't believe me, but just listen..."

"Just tell me about the physical Trial," Elliot said.

"Okay, well, they took me to another Space Pod through the interlinking passage of our childhood ship and sat me down in an empty room with a larger laptop and I had to find out how to use it. Mrs. Clayton told me to craft up other dragon specialties and they talked about experiments being performed on Whale-dragons."

"What? But... but Cosmo is out there! They could be hurting him right now as we speak," Elliot said, becoming hysterical, running his hands through his hair.

"I know. I'm worried too," Charlotte said, "then once I had finally managed it Mrs. Clayton and another officer swore me to secrecy. They also said that if I came back with no wounds then you would all be suspicious so before I could protest the other Officer pulled out some kind of brick and brought it down on my arm. The pain was...," she stopped talking. She knew that Elliot couldn't care less at that time.

To her surprise, however his facial expression softened and he smiled at her. When his face darkened again she knew that he wasn't angry with her anymore, he was angry at the Intergalactic Federation just as he was.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"It's okay, but you know that you're going to have to tell the others, especially now that Cosmo has also gone missing,"

"I know. I'm so worried about them both. Especially Isla. She's been gone for so long it feels like," Charlotte replied.

Just then before Elliot even had a chance to answer her, Rosiee and Taylor burst into the room without knocking.

"What happened?" Elliot said, alarmed.

"We've got a call from The Intergalactic Federation about Isla. And James thinks he's found one of their ships. The one that Isla is in...," Rosiee said.

"We need everyone with us! Everyone else is in the Headquarters," Taylor added as the two of them rushed out leaving the twins more confused than before.

"But why would they call us?" Charlotte wondered aloud as they ran down the stairs to the Headquarters where Freya and the crew members were waiting for them.

Holding a GalaxyPhone between her fingers, Freya listened intently and said in as much confidence as she could muster, "We know that one of your officers took her. We are going to find her and anyone else you might have taken,"

Charlotte noticed that Rosiee was biting her nails and sat next to her to take her hand. She knew that Rosiee was reliving the time when the Intergalactic Federation raided her childhood Space Pod. She had told Charlotte about it last night with tears in her eyes.

"Put it on speaker!" Mason whispered. Puting the GalaxyPhone on speaker and laying it on one of the small round tables, Freya stared at the drawing that she and Finley had drawn for Isla. That felt like forever ago now.

"Hello. Are you still there?" The voice asked.

Freya stepped forward, cursing her trembling voice as she spoke, "yes. I'm here. Where is she?"

"We don't know. All we know is that she was very irresponsible, going outside of the Ship like that,"

Freya, Elliot and Charlotte stared at each other incredulously and they wished that Finley was here. Of course he would have been as angry as the rest of them, but he would've known what to say and how to go about dealing with the situation.

Instead Elliot replied, "This is Elliot Lane from Isla and Luca's childhood Space Pod,"

They all waited with bated breath to hear the answer when the phone went dead.

"Okay. That's strange. What did he say, Freya?" Mason asked, coming to stand next to Elliot.

"Well, basically, what he said was this; it's Isla's fault that she "ended up the way that she is" and they don't have her. That she's somewhere lost, floating in space," Freya replied, shivering.

James came into the Headquarters and called out to them to come as they thought they'd seen the Space Pod that Isla was in. James explained that the tiny 3D-printed jellyfish apparently liked to latch themselves onto the handles around Ship and therefore had helped them. The crew members, the twins and Freya all followed him into the Pilots room where Adrien was busy trying to both drive the Space Pod while tracking the other ship on the holographic map in front of him. James got straight to work, one hand flying over the controls and the other steering the Space Ship round then he usually did causing Mason and Rosiee to stumble on each other. Melody and John, who couldn't see a thing over the sea of heads, eventually gave up and sat on the small sofa at the back of the room where Star lay curled into a ball, watching Taylor like a hawk.

When Charlotte finally pushed her way through she gasped how near the Space Pod seemed and couldn't help wonder if maybe there had been some sort of mistake.

"Isn't the Space Pod too close to be 'the one'? We said that it would take four days or something to catch up with them. Isla was taken in half the time,"

"I know. I am worried about that as well. Don't you have something to tell the others? It might help us to know the IGF motives and put it together with the articles you found," Elliot said, giving her an encouraging nod as he felt in his pocket to check that the drawing Finley had given him when they had kissed was still there. It was still there as always, but touching it was somehow more comforting.

As Charlotte started explaining what she'd learned, Taylor and Mason stared at her in shock.

"Painful experiments on dragons? What if they are also doing experiments on humans? What if...," Taylor began, not wanting to continue her train of thought. The twins and Freya hadn't thought about that and their faces said it all. James and Adrien said nothing, each trying to concentrate on the job at hand filtering out the voices of the passengers.

"How about we let James and Adrien work and we can talk in the Headquarters. I don't know about you, but I'm starving," stated Charlotte, suddenly feeling closed in and claustrophobic.

"You all go ahead, Rosiee, Melody, John and I are going to stay here and help with the engines, make sure the Gravity Button isn't suddenly going to flare up again," Taylor announced just as Star flapped her wings and landed on her shoulder. Knowing that Taylor felt responsible for Isla's disappearance no one argued with her this time.

Freya's stomach growled as they entered the cafeteria and instead of the room being full of happy and carefree memories all of them saw Finley's blue frozen lips and pale glassy eyes. Each of them lined up at the food machine without saying a word and when it was Elliot's turn tears rolled down his cheeks silently and Mason just wanted to hug him right then and there, which of course, he didn't. Gradually Freya, Elliot, Charlotte and Mason dispersed, each one needing some time to collect their thoughts. 

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