About an hour after leaving Elizabeth's house, as we continued to traverse the coarse path that eventually led north along the edge of the chalky cliffs, we saw a broad indeterminate structure emerging in the distance between the sparse trees on the grassy expanse.

"Is that what we're aiming for?" I asked her, and she offered several quick nods in response.

It looked to be the ruins of some kind of ancient castle or fort – no doubt originally built on the higher ground for strategic purposes. From a distance, the wall nearest the ocean looked reasonably intact and sturdy, but the opposite wall had been demolished, possibly as a result of some historic battle.

As we drew nearer to our goal, I heard faint voices. Tobi and I dismounted our bikes upon Elizabeth's instruction, and abandoned them near the undamaged flint wall, both of us looking up at the remaining obsolete turrets in awe. Surveying further inland, I noted a crude wooden cart piled high with logs of all shapes and sizes.

Following Elizabeth as she traced the outer wall of the fort to an opening that might once have been a door, we stepped inside the boundaries of the archaic building.

Worn pathways led in every direction through the ancient brickwork, with clumps of grass and parts of the original flooring punctuating the space between them. There may no longer have been a ceiling to the structure, but the walls had clearly been partially reconstructed in places and reinforced in others, and we immediately felt the resulting protective effects of the renovation against the bitter ocean breeze.

As we walked, we saw three young children happily playing a game of marbles on what was probably once a grand flint staircase, but now only had six steps left. Ivy grew through the gaps in the otherwise resilient stone and continued weaving itself up the adjoining wall as if it were trying to reach the sky.

Without warning, two older children raced past us, giggling as they chased each other through the maze of broken walls. As my gaze followed them, my heart jumped when I noticed two young women in their late teens locked in a passionate embrace with each other in the shadows.

"You've built a refuge for the Katki ... by repurposing a disused fort," I gasped in wonder as I realised why Elizabeth had brought us here.

"I can't take the credit," the redhead replied nonchalantly. "My father wanted to put his pay-off from Rachel to good use. As you can see, this place needed some work before it was habitable. The people that live here either have no paperwork with which to earn money of their own, or they've been branded as criminals and are wanted for treason."

"Because they fled when they found out their child was Katki?" I surmised, already knowing what her answer would be.

"Exactly," she confirmed as she opened a door located centrally in the structure.

We followed Elizabeth inside, feeling a marked increase in temperature as we did so.

I imagined that in the original fort, the space we'd just entered would have been the main dining hall. Much of the floor was still intact in the huge room, and makeshift beds created from blankets and rugs could be seen at one end. A log fire burned in a sturdy hearth, and the aroma that filled the air suggested a stew was simmering in the large iron cooking pot that hung over it.

The heat from the fire was being confined to the room by a functional roof that didn't appear to be part of the original structure. I assumed the Katki must have built it for shelter from the elements.

Elizabeth immediately asked us to remove our bags, which we did, and started to unload clothes, blankets and food that had a long shelf-life, such as dried pasta and rice. Tobi knelt to help her unpack.

Meanwhile, my eyes scanned the room, and caught the familiar face of a blonde lady in her mid-twenties sitting on some blankets against one of the colossal stone walls. As I instinctively walked towards her, I wasn't surprised to see her cradling a small baby in her arms.

"Patience McKay?" I assumed as I knelt beside her, recognising her from the screen in my lounge on the day that I'd first discovered Tobi's artistic talents.

Looking at me sceptically, she nodded with caution.

"My name's Matthew Sullivan," I told her. "Elizabeth brought me here, and I want to help if I can. I believe you're wanted by the Andekas because of this little troublemaker?"

Her expression softened when I smiled and indicated the tiny infant wrapped in a blanket, and she nodded a little more confidently this time.

"Can I see?" I asked gently.

Patience moved so I could see the face of her child, who was sleeping peacefully.

"Does your little one have a name?" I asked as I admired the babe in arms.

"Joseph," she told me proudly, just as Tobi joined us, having been dismissed by Elizabeth who was now finding homes for the supplies she'd brought.

"Hi Joseph," I smiled at him even though he was asleep. My platinum blond companion sat himself beside me and peeked at the little boy. "This is Tobi. He's Katki, just like you."

That seemed to catch the blond lady's attention.

"You're Katki?" she asked Tobi in astonishment.

"Yeah," he replied, pulling down his collar slightly to show her his tattoo.

"Oh, you grew up on the Kinnisvara?" she inferred from the numbers on display.

"Until I was given to Matty," he answered with a nod in my direction. "He didn't want to give me the Ravim, so I just pretend to subservient when there are other people around."

"Why would you even do that?" she turned to me, looking understandably bewildered at the idea of someone deliberately releasing a supposed monster from their incarceration.

"I was trying to find a treatment," I admitted. "But now I know there's nothing to cure, so I intend to do what I can to help instead."

As Patience continued to ask us questions, Tobi and I ended up recounting an abridged version of how we'd come to be sitting with her on a blanket in this Katki sanctuary, all of which she appeared to find fascinating.

It wasn't long afterwards that Elizabeth appeared, smiling down at our little assembly.

"I hate to break up your party," she interjected. "I just wondered whether you'd like to see the rest before we head back?"

"Absolutely," I nodded, standing to join her. I still had so many questions to ask our guide, and it seemed like this could be a good opportunity. "It was lovely to meet you, Patience," I added, turning back to the blonde lady. "Bye, Joseph."

Tobi followed suit and stood, waving to Patience as we walked back out into the chilly winter air with Elizabeth. Opting to go in the opposite direction to the one where our bikes lay, she traversed the weathered pathways through the fort with the two of us in tow.

"The supplies we brought," I said contemplatively as I noted the number of children playing tag or jumping from the derelict steps. "With all these people, that food isn't going to last long."

"I'm not the only one who makes these kinds of trips," Elizabeth assured us as we made our way to the most damaged corner of the refuge, through a gap that led past what would have been the outer wall. "There are more sympathisers out there than you might think. And those of us that can earn money and contribute to buying food, clothes and other essentials do so. But there are also other ways of obtaining food."

Smiling broadly, Elizabeth gestured to the space in front of us, and I turned to look.

Rows of leafy green plants extended into the distance with several adults attending to them. Chickens roamed free, clucking loudly as they pecked seed from the ground around them, and the sound of a rooster diverted my attention to a functional, if primitive, chicken coop.

"You've built a farm?" I breathed in awe.

"It wasn't always this big," she explained. "It started life as a small vegetable patch, but as the number of people looking for shelter grew, it was expanded to accommodate them. There's also a freshwater river beyond those trees in the distance where they can get water and fish. And we discovered an ancient coastal path that leads down to the sea, where there are lobsters and crabs."

"It's nearly mid-winter," I pointed out. "Surely not much will grow in these cold conditions?"

"Actually, if planted at the right time of year, there are some vegetables that will grow and be able to be harvested during the cold season," she reminded me. "Potatoes, broccoli, parsnips, sprouts and leeks will all be available to eat from here for the next couple of months."

"That may be so, but what happens when the harsher weather comes?" I asked, contemplating the rugged path we'd used to get here. "It must be much more difficult to get provisions up here in the snow."

"You're absolutely right," she agreed. "Which is why we're bringing up as much as we can before the first frost."

Turning back towards the fort, Elizabeth led us round the fortified interior edge so that we could see the reinforced areas more closely.

"So, just how many people know about this place?" I asked, recognising that the effort that must have gone into this had to be sizeable, both in terms of labour and the required materials.

"Enough to make it work," the redhead replied as we continued our walk. "There's a fine balance to be had between getting the word out to the people who need it, while ensuring we keep our little enterprise hidden from the Andekas."

"That must be difficult to organise without communication devices."

"It can be," she confessed. "But we've never had a good enough reason to use what we have."

"Wait a minute!" I cried, stopping in my tracks. "You have access to communication devices?"

"Well, only one device of sorts," she confirmed. "We can't use it to communicate to one another directly because that would require us to have more than one of them, but we think we've worked out how we could transmit something to all the screens in people's homes. Of course, we've not tested it because the only way to do that would be to send out such a communication to the entire population, which is why the device has never actually been used. But my father thinks it could work in theory."

I pondered what Elizabeth said for a moment, before deciding that such a piece of technology was not as useful as it sounded. If used in their current situation, all it would do would be to alert the Andekas to the fact that they had it. And right now, secrecy seemed to be the main advantage this group of Katki and their supporters had.

We started walking again, back round towards where we'd abandoned the bikes. The two teenagers that I'd spotted in the shadows earlier could be seen holding hands, strolling together further inside the walls of the castle. I motioned towards them as I posed another question to Elizabeth.

"They've been living in this place all their lives?"

Elizabeth turned to see who I was referring to and nodded her head.

"Yes," she confirmed. "I watched them grow up. In fact, I've only ever dealt with lucid Katki from infancy before. So, you can imagine how shocked I was when an adult one showed up on my doorstep."

She smiled slightly as she turned to face Tobi, and he returned the friendly gesture, warming my heart.

I noticed we were now heading back towards the large dining room, having completed a circuit of the partially reconstructed castle.

"How do the parents of a Katki infant know to come here?" I probed.

"Well, they usually don't, until they decide to flee," the redhead replied as she led us into the warmer space. "At which point, their face is usually all over the Andekas screens and it's a matter of luck as to who finds them first. Fortunately for us, not everyone agrees with the way the Andekas run things. Our network of trusted people is sworn to secrecy, and constantly on the lookout for those who are trying to abscond. We even have a contact within the walls of the Kinnisvara who has some limited access to the Andekas' formal contracts and schedules."

It made sense that I wouldn't be the only one to question the activities of our widely esteemed potentates, but I hadn't considered that there may be pockets of people that were cooperating on the matter. And now it seemed we were part of that team.

Upon entering the room with the blazing fire, Elizabeth continued over to where our bags now lay. Picking them up one by one, she handed each of us the ones we'd brought up here. Although not as heavy, they seemed just as full as when we arrived, which confused me.

"What's in these?" I asked her, at which point she opened the one I had in my hands, enough to show me.

Inside I could see empty packaging and folded up boxes.

"There's nowhere to leave packaging without damaging the environment up here," she explained, before securing the bag closed again. "If we take some of it back with us, we can recycle a lot of it or dispose of it sensibly."

Strapping the bags to our backs, we walked briskly back to the bikes and mounted them, ready for our return journey. The ride back to Rannik was easier than it had been to get to the higher ground, since the majority of the trek was now downhill and the load we carried was a little lighter. As such, we reached the coastal town in a little over half the time it had taken to get to the fort.

On our arrival back at Elizabeth's house, Tobi made it clear that he was keen to help those living at the fort in any way he could, and I felt the same. So, before saying goodbye to Elizabeth, we ensured we made arrangements with her that would enable us to contribute towards the wellbeing of the liberated Katki. After topping up on water, Tobi and I cycled back to my house.

We arrived home just before sunset, weary after our extensive excursion. By the time we'd eaten and hauled ourselves to bed, we were certainly too fatigued, both physically and emotionally, to do anything except lie in each other's arms and reminisce on the events of the day. Upon reflecting on how the Andekas had evaded scrutiny with respect to their misdemeanours for so long, we agreed, before we slept, that our ensuing focus should be to do everything we could to uncover the whole truth behind the venerated family.