Inside cell K23, 3 of the 4 occupants woke and dressed drowsily. Gecko looked over at Kate, still asleep.

"I think we should wake Fel up now, or we'll all be really late."

Grey just listened and continued pulling scruffy socks onto his cold feet; it was unlikely that Gecko would be speaking to him. Spat nodded and walked over to the sleeping girl.

"What d'you think she is?" he asked.

"Cat, I think." Came a small voice from behind him.

Spat looked at Grey, who was now gazing intently at the small figure on the bed. Kate was curled up in a tangle of covers, which looked more like a nest than anything. She seemed a lot smaller when she was all tucked up in a little ball.

Spat leant forward to wake her.

A sharp poke in the shoulder was all it took to bring Kate's mind swimming up into consciousness. She groaned and rolled over, stretching her stiff muscles.

Spat smiled at Kate as she twisted and extended her arms and legs, curling and uncurling before getting up off the bed delicately. Definitely feline.

"What are we...what's happening?" Kate mumbled as she scrubbed a hand over her face and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

"We got work to do. You've got 10 minutes to get ready and then we'll show you what to do."

Spat and the others left the dorm to let Kate get dressed in private and returned in the said 10 minutes. She followed them through a seeming maze of corridors and steps that all looked alike, to collect various cleaning equipment and then to fill up on soapy water.

Another trek through the never ending corridors and they arrived at a set of toilets and showers near some other dormitories. These dormitories were empty now, the beds like skeletons, bare without their sheets or mattresses and the ceiling embellished with cobwebs.

Spat, who was leading the group, stopped and set down his broom and bucket.

"I went and got the instructions from Triffit this morning, we're doing the toilets, showers, and dorms H12 to H19. Me and Gecko'll start at 19, Fel and Grey start at 12 and we'll meet in the middle. Lets do it."

The party separated, Gecko and Spat disappeared into H19, armed with mops, buckets and sponges. Kate stared at the doorway. Fel. That's what he'd called her. She remembered what he'd said when she'd first met him. Kate wasn't who she was anymore. Whatever, she knew who she was.

"C'mon. This way."

Fel...Kate... looked up to see Grey already halfway down the hall and walking away from her. She turned, clumsily gathering her stuff and jogged down to catch up with him.

Grey shifted his weight from one sore knee to the other and dunked his moth eaten cloth into the bucket of freezing water. He wrung it out and went back to scrubbing the grimy floor.

Kate leant her mop against the wall and sighed, the picture of pathetic- ness. She was fed up, and hungry. She had started off almost enthusiastically but had been gradually slowing as she tired. She looked over at Grey, who was working methodically and with grim determination.

Fed up of the silence, Kate decided it was up to her to start something.

"So, how did you get your name?"

Grey stopped scrubbing, shrugged, and then resumed cleaning a few inches further down the room without looking at her. Kate tried again.

"What's your real name?"

Grey didn't stop this time, but answered with a cold

"Grey is my name."

Kate made lazy circles on the floor with the mop, and persisted

"Ok. But what was your name before you came here?"

Grey was used to working on his own, and growing tired of this new girl's attitude. Some things were better not to talk about.

"It means nothing now."

"But what..."

"Pass me that cloth."

Kate finally got the message from the tone of Grey's voice and the frown that had flashed across his usually blank face. She shut up and passed him the cloth.

An hour and a half later, the four met at cell H15. They moved on to the showers and toilets at the end of the row of dorms. Kate took one look at the toilets and said that she thought it would be best if she did the showers. Gecko handed her brush and bucket and told her harshly that she'd have to stop being a snob if she wanted to survive here.

Kate was offended, she had expected to be treated as one of them, outcasts were meant to stick together. She made a point of not complaining for a while, but it was lost on the others.

With relief Kate entered the shower block, the smell of damp and mould a welcome luxury to the smell of the loos. She was shown where to clean and began the last leg of their apparently endless work. Spat and Gecko were working together as usual, doing the tiles, and Grey was struggling to reach the top of the walls with the broom and mop.

Spat was easily half a foot taller than Grey, and Kate watched Grey with growing anger as he battled with the height of the room while Spat sat scraping out the tiles and whispering to Gecko. Kate was finally angry enough to say something.

"Hey, um, Spat." Spat stopped scraping and looked towards her, eyes warning her. "Why don't you try doing that last bit, I think you could reach better than Grey."

There was a moment of silence where Spat stood up and took a step towards Kate. Grey stopped what he was doing too and cut in

"It's ok, leave it Fel."

Spat ignored him. "You ain't gonna tell me what to do. I say it's fine."

Kate drew breath to speak again but Gecko got there before her.

"Just get on with it Fel."

Kate realised that no one around her was going to back her up. She took a step away from Spat and turned back to her corner, embarrassed but bristling with the unfairness of it.

They worked in silence until the showers were almost white again, collected their equipment to dump it in it's cupboard and then they hurried up to the canteen to scavenge what food they could.