I wasn't prepared for the chaos at school the next morning.

Officially, the academy had a strict entrance policy, but every student knew the rules were much looser on a daily basis. If you'd forgotten your ID card, you could usually avoid a late mark by sweet-talking the guard at the security desk, who'd swipe you through without one. We were allowed to get away with more than the faculty liked to think.

But when I headed up the steps of the main building on Wednesday morning, it quickly became clear that something had changed.

The noise hit me when the automatic glass doors slid open. A backlog of students at the barriers snaked right back to the wall, and an even rowdier crowd gathered around the security desk. Several older students were leaning right over the counter to argue with the guard, who looked thoroughly unprepared for the onslaught.

"New school policy!" he yelled, straining to be heard over the mob. "ID cards, or you're not coming in."

"But I've got an exam this morning!" I heard somebody protest. "You can't do this."

"Not my decision," the guard said. "If you don't like it, you can take it up with the headmistress."

Edging my way into the mass, I removed my ID card from the inner pocket of my coat. Never before had I been so glad about remembering to snatch it up from my desk. Once I finally made it to the barrier, I swiped the card through, pausing in surprise when the onscreen display requested my fingerprint. The only other time I could recall being asked was the first time they'd put my details on file; since then, security had been lax enough to skip over it.

A breath of relief escaped me when I emerged on the other side. Here, with students tailing off into corridors, there was at least more space to move. The main building had always been impressive: the huge glass ceiling and indoor garden couldn't be found in any other school across the city. However, with the noise of the chaos still buzzing behind me, I wasn't filled with the desire to linger. All I wanted to do was find Orla and Verity and head to morning assembly; this had to be the first step to regaining some sense of normality.

Unfortunately, I only made it as far as the outside courtyard. As I skirted around a group of intimidatingly pretty first-years, heading for the auditorium, I almost walked straight into Henry Whitmore.

He may have had good intentions, but Henry also happened to be one of the most egotistical people I knew – which, in a place like the academy, was something of an achievement. There was no uncertainty about which pages of the BioPlus catalogue his parents had lingered on: he was a born athlete, the star player of at least five sports teams. Which would've been fine, if he didn't spend so much time talking about it.

"Astrid." His face broke out into a smile when he noticed me, which was kind of a weird reaction to almost colliding headfirst. I realised then he was pretty much the only person outside not wearing a coat; though our uniform blazers weren't the warmest items of clothing, he looked entirely unconcerned by the cold. "Hey."

"Hey, Henry," I said, adjusting the bag on my shoulder. I had to be polite, but there was also the fact that the bell was five minutes away from ringing, and all I wanted to do was escape back into normal life as soon as possible. Since we'd never exchanged more than a passing greeting before, our encounter wasn't making the cut.

"How's it going? Feeling better?"

There was a smile on his face as he asked, the glint in his eye leaving no room for innocence. We both knew the truth, of course, but that didn't mean we could say it out loud. Even though school was probably the safest place for discussion, we'd all been taught to live with one eye over our shoulder at all times. So I nodded, playing along as best I could.

"Yeah, actually. Much better."

"You missed out on big news, you know."

I hadn't, but it was easier to give Henry's ego its quota of attention, especially when fishing for a quick escape. "Yeah? What happened?"

"My UNL interview." He looked about ready to burst with pride, toothy grin almost reaching his ears. "Smashed it, didn't I? They offered me a scholarship."

I managed a smile, hoping it looked sufficiently genuine. In reality, my gaze was already skirting around the side of his head, mentally calculating my route to the auditorium with enough time to spare. If I left in the next thirty seconds, looping around the huddle of six-foot-plus girls in the centre of the courtyard, I'd probably still have time to locate Orla and Verity. "That's great, Henry. Congratulations."

"Thanks," he said, still smiling. "I'm just so relieved it's official, you know? Now I can stop worrying about where I'm headed when I get out of this place."

"Yeah... sounds great."

"So when's your interview?"

I wasn't sure what surprised me more: the fact that Henry was asking me a question, or that this was the first time I'd thought about it that morning. Every waking moment of the last two months had been spent fretting about the upcoming admissions interview, preparing every conceivable question. And yet, today, the chaos of everything else had forced it from my mind. Kind of remarkable, actually.

"Oh," I said, struggling to pull my words together. "Next week. Look, sorry, Henry, it's just that I really need to be somewhere right now—"

"Oh. Sure." He took a step back, holding up his hands like he was letting me pass. Seriously, how was he not freezing to death? I had a scarf bundled up to my chin, and I still couldn't stop shivering beneath my layers. "I'll see you around, Astrid. Good luck with the interview."

I nodded my thanks, but that didn't stop me feeling guilty as I hurried away toward the auditorium. It was the first time we'd ever had a proper conversation, and it hadn't been anything like I expected. Henry spent so much time talking about himself that I never imagined him having any kind of interest in anyone else. Maybe I'd been wrong all along.

Still, as I approached the huge, circular building I was heading for, my mind soon turned elsewhere. The place opened early for morning assembly, and students usually filtered in as they arrived on campus. However, not for the first time that morning, something had changed. A queue now trailed around the curve of the building, clusters of people all looking equally as pissed off about being made to stand in the cold.

Suddenly, I caught sight of the head of Afro curls I was looking for: sure enough, about halfway around the building, Orla was shrinking into her bright pink coat, a red-nosed Verity beside her. She noticed me about the same time I did, and started beckoning me over with wildly animated gestures.

"Astrid!" she exclaimed, once I got close enough to be deafened. "Thank God. We were starting to wonder if you were taking a double sick day."

I shook my head. "Not quite. I just got cornered by Henry."

"Whitmore?" Verity frowned at me from beneath a woollen hat pulled all the way down her forehead. "Well, I suppose you were the only person left to brag to. It had to happen sometime."

"That's what I thought." Only then did I peer around at the queue in front of us, wondering if there might be some kind of explanation up ahead. All I could see was more people. "What is going on here? Since when do they make us stand around before assembly?"

"Since this morning, when they started going security crazy." Orla looked thoroughly hacked off, her thick eyebrows creased into a frown. "It's the Eva Kelly thing, isn't it? You can tell they're panicking. They think this place will be the first target if the story breaks – and, well, you can't say they're wrong."

Verity nodded. "They've got to cover their butts somehow."

"But for assembly?" Up ahead, the queue had finally started moving, leaving everybody else to shuffle a few paces forward. "Seriously? They've already fingerprinted everyone who made it through the door. We've only moved about fifty feet."

"It is kind of ridiculous," Verity said, "but I have a feeling it's going to stick around for a while. At least until Eva Kelly disappears quietly."

Orla looked the most agitated of all of us, her fingers tapping out an incessant rhythm on her upper thigh. It was her usual nervous habit, one she didn't know she had. "I just hope they open the UNL campus by tomorrow. I've waited months for this interview – I can't have them reschedule it now."

Verity frowned. "They closed the campus?"

"Yeah. It's completely cordoned off. Mum was down there all day yesterday, trying to calm things down. Apparently they caught two reporters trying to climb over the fence."

"Your mum was down there?"

I couldn't stop the surprise leaking into my voice. Orla's mother, otherwise known as Tamara Shield, had been one of the most powerful women in the city since being elected mayor a couple of years ago. Thousands of news stories and police cases must have gone by in that time – all through which she'd stayed cooped up in City Hall, preoccupied with other matters. Anything that broke her out of her normal routine was not good news.

"Yeah, and wasn't she complaining about it." The pace of Orla's tapping quickened. "I didn't even see her last night. She got in so late I was already in bed."

"Shit," I said, unable to voice anything more eloquent. "That sounds serious."

She nodded solemnly. "Yeah. It really is."

"Why now, though?" I asked, before I could stop myself. "Why Eva Kelly? What is it about this case that's making them so determined to uncover something?"

The two of them exchanged looks, moving too quickly for me to gauge them. I got the impression this was something they'd already been discussing in my absence. Orla was the one who dared to glance back first, and just one second's worth of her expression was enough to claw back the uneasiness in my stomach.

"I weaselled it out of Mum this morning," she said, in a much lower tone than before. "She didn't want to talk, but I wasn't giving up. The investigators... well, they've been looking at the DNA. They've linked it to potential disruption in her head, like a defect in the hardwiring of the brain, or something. They're saying the modification might've... I don't know. Taken over her. Made her lose control. Maybe even driven her to jump."

The silence that followed was perhaps even worse than the words themselves. I couldn't seem to do anything but stare, silently willing the churning of my stomach not to turn into anything more physical. This was current discussion at UNL. This was what was happening. And how long would it be before the media got a whiff? The possibility was unthinkable... once they got a handle on any of it, there was the very real potential of turning wild speculation into nationwide panic.

We weren't given much further opportunity to discuss it. The queue was moving in a steady stream now, and conversations around us had quietened too much to risk mentioning Eva Kelly again. When the three of us finally passed through the doors of the building, we were greeted by yet another round of security checking – though, in the current light, this didn't seem quite so surprising.

My ID was snatched off me as soon as I presented it by a uniformed guy I didn't recognise. Thinking it would end there was a mistake. All three guards on duty were equipped with electronic devices, which turned green only after receiving a matching fingerprint. Once I was finally ushered through, apparently having proven that I was not a government official out to expose the entire school, I turned back to look for the other two.

"They've got to be joking with all of this," Verity said, when she re-joined Orla and I, and we headed into the theatre to find our usual seats. "They'll spend more time frisking us between classes than actually teaching us anything."

It took twice as long as usual to fill the room. By the time the last dozen kids had shuffled into the back row, taking their seats with low murmurs, assembly had already been delayed by ten minutes. I thought this might irritate the headmistress, who'd already assumed her stance at the stage podium, but her thin face remained impassive underneath harsh the lighting.

Ms. Holland-Drew-Vaughn, aside from being a serial surname collector, had to be the most miserable woman I'd ever come across. For somebody in charge of the best school in the country, it wouldn't have killed her to be a little bit cheerier about it. The rumour went that she was the second cousin of Kristopher Holland – the British scientist responsible for the original modification technology, and pretty much the most worshipped man of modern society – and had tried as hard as possible to cling onto the connotations associated with his surname.

Which kind of made sense. In this day and age, the Holland name came with more power than the monarchy. Even the queen – Anna Maria the first – would kill for it.

Drew-Vaughn tapped the microphone, and the resulting screech of feedback was enough to silence the room. Crossing my legs, I sunk further back into my seat, preparing myself for another addition to the term's growing collection of tedious assemblies.

"Good morning, everybody."

Her voice was as croaky as it had ever been – just grating enough to stop you being able to doze off. Orla rolled her eyes, summing up exactly what I was thinking.

"First of all, I would like to apologise for the delay in being here today. You may have realised that this is due to the extra precautions being taken at the entrances to campus this morning."

Several murmurs rippled around us, but the words were muffled, and I couldn't quite work out where they were coming from.

"This, incidentally, is the main focus of our assembly. Many of you will no doubt have heard the sad news yesterday, regarding one of the academy's most successful alumni. Eva Kelly was one of the greatest athletes to come out of this school, and she had gone on, as many of you aspire, to study at the University of New London. Unfortunately, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, she took her own life."

The murmuring had stopped now; a tense silence instead fell across the room, weighed down by much more than just her words. Not a single person in the theatre had been unaware of the potential implications of Eva's death, but hearing it like this suddenly seemed like a slap in the face.

"In light of these recent events, security is being tightened on and around campus. What you have experienced this morning is indicative of what is to come."

I looked over at the other two, and we exchanged uncertain looks, not entirely sure what to make of it. Morning assemblies usually focused on boasting of the school's latest award or success, not necessary security measures. Despite Drew-Vaughn's claims, I was beginning to wonder how safe we really were, a five-hundred-strong group of exactly what the government might soon be hunting.

"Thanks to generous donations from parents and board members, security systems all over campus are being upgraded," she continued. "New state-of-the-art camera systems will be installed in every classroom by next week. The following rules will also come into immediate effect.

"Entry to many of the campus buildings will now require swipe-card access. All students will be fingerprinted on arrival and departure from the site. ID cards will be carried at all times; the faculty reserves the right to perform random spot checks at any point during the day. Any student unable to provide the correct identification may be removed from the campus without notice."

My eyebrows shot up, and the reappearance of the murmuring around me confirmed that other students shared similar surprise. The academy always liked to think they were hot on security, but even this was out of the league of any of their claims. Never before had I heard the threat of removal. Inside a school where the sole focus was usually placed on student performance, this was perhaps the most worrying thing of all.

"Of course, we hope you understand the reasoning behind these decisions." Drew-Vaughn's gaze swept across the theatre, pulling silence along with it. "As many have said in the past, it's better to be safe than sorry. At a time when we feel these restrictions are no longer necessary, policies will be relaxed. Until such time, however, they will be enforced to their full extent."

The bell rung then, its shrill sound cutting across the theatre and making several people jump. Her expression didn't falter; she just adjusted the microphone again, pulling it slightly closer in time to make her last statement.

"I wish you all a good day," she said, her voice lowering, "but let me leave you with this: whatever we find ourselves heading into – be this you personally, the academy, or even the city – may we find success in our commitment to preparation."

It was such an odd closing remark, far off her usual, that I actually found myself pausing. On all sides, students were gathering to their feet around me, but the words kept ringing over inside my head. I watched Drew-Vaughn as she stepped down from the podium and headed across the stage: her straight-backed walk, the frozen expression, the beads of sweat that I'd never before seen on her emotionless face.

Things were changing – that was for certain.

What I wasn't so sure of, however, was whether a commitment to preparation would be enough to pull us through.

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Hello, everyone! I was planning on waiting longer before posting the chapter but it took less time than I thought to finish it. It's tough to introduce such a huge volume of information in the first few chapters, but I hope this one's given you a bit more of an insight into the world I'm building. The comments on the first chapter were absolutely wonderful, and any feedback you have at all would be very much appreciated, since this is a very new genre to me.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the second chapter.

- Leigh