I go to my bedroom and Boots emerges from under the bed. He runs over to me and rubs against my legs and I stoop to lift him into my arms. He nuzzles around my face, softly purring, and even though I hate carrying dead mice around in my pocket, it's worth it to make sure this little ball of fluff is safe and fed.

Once he's eaten, I sit with him on the bed, running my fingers through his fur.

He's mostly black, but he has little white socks on his hind legs, which is why I named him Boots – after Puss in Boots, and I know I don't have anything to compare him to, but as far as I'm concerned, he's the most beautiful cat in the world. Taffy says that lots of people on the outside keep cats as pets, and I can see why.

Sometimes I imagine Boots to be like his namesake, standing on his hind legs and drawing a little sword, helping me to fight my way free of the CC. In reality, he just snuggles in my lap and dribbles on me a bit.

I pet his fur and think about what just happened. Up here in my room, surrounded by the white walls I've always known, it almost seems like Roan was a dream, but I'm wide awake now.

It was real.

He was real.

There's no reason to trust him. I don't know him. I don't know anything about him, but I can't shake his words from my mind. Does this group of his have any reason to be suspicious of the Trials? How can they possibly be suspicious of something when they know nothing about it?

Unless people on the outside do know something about it?

No, that can't be it, otherwise they would know if there was something wrong. Priya and Taffy would know about it.

Maybe I should have stayed and listened to what else Roan had to say, but I doubt I could have absorbed much more. We only exchanged a few words, and already my whole world feels shaken.

The room around me is the same as ever – plain white walls on all sides, metal-framed bunk beds next to the single locked window, the tiny en suite toilet, the mirror on one wall, the clock on another – but at the same time it feels . . . off somehow, like it's flawed in a way that I can't quite see yet.

But it's not just what he said that has my head spinning – it's who he is.

Roan is from the outside. He has grown up in a world away from the CC, in the world that I desperately long to know. I can only imagine the stories he could tell me, and that, perhaps more than what he said about the Trials, is pulling my mind back to the fence where I met him.

I love hearing stories about the world outside, and Taffy is usually happy to share them with me, whereas Priya finds it harder to talk about everything that she's lost. But now I'm not sure that Taffy's stories are enough. After all, she's been here seven years, and the world could have changed in that time. Even if it hasn't, she was only nine when she came here. There's so much she can't tell me because she hasn't experienced it, but maybe Roan has.

My heart isn't a bird now. It's a mouth, opening up, hungry for stories.

I want to know about people my own age, what they do with their time, how they live their lives. Maybe I shouldn't want to know – it will only exacerbate the fact that I will never be able to experience it myself.

But perhaps living vicariously through other people's stories is better than knowing nothing at all.

Contact with the outside world is strictly forbidden.

I should report the encounter to Ripley.

But I'm not going to, and not just because it would mean losing my secret spot.

I think of Roan on the other side of that fence, his hair so richly red under the sun, and then I think of the fox I saw, running free in this prison.

Whoever Roan is, whatever he wants, I can't betray him to the Handlers.

I do want to see him again, and the feeling is so alien to me. I don't quite know how to process it.

The door opens and Taffy comes in, tucking her bushy hair behind her ears.

"There you are," she says. "Afternoon training's about to start."

I'm taken aback. I didn't spend long talking to Roan, which means I've spent most of my two hours of rec time up here in my room, completely lost in the chaos of my own head.

I lift Boots off my lap and set him down on the bed. He protests a bit, but then curls up in a ball on my pillow.

"Are you ready?" Taffy says.

I nod, and we leave the room together.

Every kid in the CC has to train.

When my floor was younger and living on the lower floors, we were schooled as well as physically trained, but now that we're approaching the end of our time here, schooling has finished and there is only training.

The first afternoon drill lasts a couple of hours, followed by a break to refuel with snacks, and then a second drill. During the winter months, we do the second drill in the dark.

The drills differ from day to day, but they always involve cardio/aerobic, strength and endurance training, and stretching exercises to increase flexibility. We're told that this will help our performance during the Trials.

I don't mind the exercise; it helps me blot out everything in my head. But Priya, who is less than five feet tall and slender as a sapling, struggles. Before coming to the CC, she never did any exercise, and even though she's greatly improved over the years she's been here, it's still much more of a challenge for her than it is for the rest of us.

We do push-ups side by side, and her matchstick arms tremble with the effort. Her teeth are clenched, flashes of white against her dark skin.

"You can do this," I murmur, trying to encourage her, but when Ripley insists we do another round, Priya's arms buckle and she collapses, face-first, on the ground. Her long black braid trails in the dirt.

"Get up," Ripley barks.

None of the Handlers care that Priya hasn't been trained for this the way we have. They don't care that they're expecting her to keep up with people who have been doing this for so much longer.

Priya hauls herself back into position. Tears glitter in her eyes.

I hear whispered voices, and then a loud laugh that I know is Cole's.

Sometimes I think that people like her choose to be cruel because it's the only kind of power they have in this place. But Cole hasn't always been this bad. These last few months, it's as if something has blackened and twisted inside her, but sometimes I think I see the faintest shadow of what might almost be regret in her eyes.

I don't know why and I'm not sure I care. All that matters to me is that she targets the people I care about.

Balancing my weight on one arm, I lift my other hand and flash my middle finger in Cole's general direction. Taffy taught me that.

As we continue with the drill, another Handler, Fletcher, walks among us, correcting our form where necessary. Most of the time it isn't – we know what we're doing by now. But Priya doesn't quite get it right and he shouts at her.

It isn't fair.

But then nothing about our lives is fair.

Priya collapses again, and again she's told to get up and carry on, and she does, even though her whole body is shaking. Maybe she's not built for this kind of thing, but in other ways she's stronger than most people realise.

But if we're being trained to be the best in the Trials, then Priya's inner strength will count for nothing, and that makes me think again about what Roan said.

I would never say it out-loud, and I don't even like to think it, but there's a good chance that Priya will fail the Trials, and that's even more unfair, considering we all have several years' advantage over her. Why hasn't that been taken into account? Maybe not everyone will pass, but we should at least all be playing on an even field.

My pulse throbs with unease.

After both training sessions are finally over, we return to the mess hall for dinner, and then the rest of the evening is rec time, until the lights go out at nine. But no one is allowed outside after dark, so I go up to my room with my friends.

Boots is delighted to have us all here, squished together on my bed, and can't seem to decide whose lap he wants to sit in.

"Have you worked out how you'll take him with you when we all leave?" Sonny asks, scratching under Boots's chin.

"Not yet," I admit.

He was so tiny when I found him, a speck of fur, shivering and crying in the rain, and it wasn't hard to smuggle him inside without anyone seeing. It's been harder keeping him hidden. We all contribute to feeding him, and though Taffy told me that cats on the outside often use litter-boxes if they can't go outside, we don't have one of those, so we trained him to use our toilet. Obviously he can't flush it himself – one of us has to do it when we have a chance – so sometimes our room doesn't smell particularly nice, but we consider it a small price to pay for his companionship.

But Sonny's question nags at me. It's something I've been trying not to think about because I honestly have no idea what to do. Boots is a small cat, but he's a lot bigger than he was as a kitten, and I can't see how I'll be able to smuggle him out of here when it's time to leave the CC. And we don't even know where we'll go from here. Obviously it depends on how we perform in the Trials, but it's very hard to plan how to sneak Boots out with us when none of us know where we'll be going.

Priya is quiet, picking at a loose thread on the cuff of her jumper.

Sonny nudges her with his shoulder. "You okay?"

She nods, but she doesn't look at any of us.

I think back to what she said this morning. I really can't imagine what any of this feels like for her and Taffy, though Taffy has had much longer to get used to it. They were born free, cherished firstborn children, and they should still be free. It's grotesquely unfair that a tragedy can strip them of their rights and land them in here, with the illegal Seconds.

I'm not happy with this life, but it's all I've ever known. It's different for them.

Sonny nudges her again. "Why don't you tell us that story again?"

Priya hugs her knees. "It's silly and you've heard it all before."

"Yeah, but it's your favourite and we love to hear it."

Priya peeks at us from under her dark fringe. "You really want to hear it again?"

"Absolutely," I chime in. "It's our favourite too."

Priya doesn't often talk about her experiences prior to the CC, but she likes telling us about the films she used to watch, turning them into stories for our entertainment. Her favourite is a sprawling epic story about an evil Empire, a runaway princess and a farm-boy, monsters and robots and magic forces, and I don't always understand it, but I love hearing the soft quality of Priya's voice as she takes me to this faraway place, so very different from the world we live in.

But this time I find it hard to concentrate. My gaze keeps drifting back to the window and the fence outside, the place where I met Roan.

We spent so little time together, but his face is clearly etched in my mind, and I can't stop thinking about it, or about what he said. I can't help that little flicker of hope when I remember that he said that people on the outside do care about Seconds.

We've always been taught that we're hated, that our existence is taking valuable resources away from legal firstborn children, who deserve them more. We've always been taught that even though we didn't ask to be born, even though we had absolutely no control over it, it's still somehow our fault.

While Priya tells her story, I glance at the mirror on the opposite wall, at my own face staring back at me.

I was just five years old when another boy in the CC, an older boy, attacked me with a knife, slicing my face open. I didn't know him and I never knew why he'd done it. He screamed that he was proving himself, but no one has ever been able to tell me what, if anything, that meant. If I'd been on the outside, I might have been permitted surgery to reduce the scarring, but those options aren't available to Seconds.

The attack has left me with one scar that runs from the edge of my right eye, across my cheekbone, through the corner of my mouth and across my chin, and another scar that runs down the length of my nose, splitting my left nostril, and down through my mouth, giving my lips a slightly twisted look. I know how lucky I am that the knife missed my eye, but the scars are still stiff and painful sometimes, and when people like Cole make it clear what they think of my face, it gets harder and harder to remember that it could have been worse.

I never knew what happened to the boy who attacked me.

I avert my eyes from the mirror. I don't remember what I looked like before, but I know how people react when they see me now.

I know how people from the outside react when they sneak up here to stare at the freaks.

But not Roan.

He noticed my scars, but there was no disgust on his face, only concern, and I don't know how to feel about that. I hate what I see in the mirror, and despite what I say to Taffy, I can't quite comprehend that other people might not have the same reaction.

And yet Roan looked at me as if I was just another person, as if I was anyone he might have met on the outside. I don't think anyone has ever done that before.

It's at that moment that I realise that I'm going to try and see him again tomorrow.