A/N I actually managed to finish this one before the birds started singing outside - clearly I'm getting better at the whole 'not staying up all night' thing. Hope you like it!

'What do you mean "you don't know the way out"?' Gazzy shouted incredulously, his eyes wide as he looked at Jeb. 'I thought that was the whole point of you being here and telling us everything – you could break us out of this room so that we could go and save Dr Martinez!'

'Yeah, man, there is something kinda sketchy about all that. Like, are you sure you can't just walk us out the door past those surveillance guys? You've obviously got the gear,' Ratchet said, nodding towards Jeb's arm where his ID device must have been implanted.

'I'm able to come and visit you, yes. But any movement of subjects kept in such a high-security cell is monitored extremely carefully – anything I tell the team outside will be checked and cross-referenced back through all the databases to make sure it's been properly authorised. I'm afraid that if I tried to get you out then we wouldn't make it past that second door; only Valencia can give the order for you to be removed from here. '

Iggy sighed disappointedly.

'Yeah, she mentioned that before.'

'What are we meant to do, then?' Star demanded. 'We know what we need to get done, we've got a plan-… Actually, we don't have a plan at all. What exactly were we gonna do once we broke out of here?'

'We need to split into two groups – one to head for the mainframe, and one to find The General and apprehend her in some way. Then meet back at that first door we used to get in, fight our way out and boom. Done,' I said.

'Easy as that, huh?' said Star, one eyebrow raised.

'Well, can anyone think of anything else that needs doing?'

Everyone was silent, then Iggy's head suddenly jerked upwards, his pale eyes widening.

'Jeb,' he said, his voice urgent. 'Jeb, what happened to Ella? You'll know, you must know!'

I felt a stab of guilt that I hadn't thought to ask about my sister but turned quickly to Jeb, waiting to see his answer.

'She's here, shut in a room on the other side of the complex, near the staff's living quarters.' He looked uncomfortable, cringing slightly as he spoke. 'Your mother said it was very important that Ella be kept safe and out of the way, so-'

'So you came in the middle of the night to where we were sleeping in the desert, and you took her!' Iggy shouted, his face twisting, hands clenching into fists.

Jeb closed his eyes, looking pained.

'Yes. But I assure you, she hasn't been hurt. She's being held in a room with full furnishings and getting meals delivered every day. I assure you, she isn't being treated like a prisoner.'

'Aside from the locked door, I'll bet,' I said cuttingly.

'Aside from the locked door,' Jeb agreed. 'She isn't a high-security captive, though – there are no guards stationed by the room. If you can reach it without raising the alarm, you'll be able to get her out fairly easily.'

If he'd thought that this would make us feel better, he had another think coming.

'So it would be a totally straightforward rescue if it weren't for the fact that we're stuck in an inescapable room,' Iggy fumed as he stalked away from the rest of us, hitting a hand against the wall as he reached it and spinning himself around to slump heavily against it. I was surprised by how hard he was taking it; I mean, I'd realised that there was some lovey-dovey stuff going on between him and Ella (cringe – seriously, that's my sister), but he looked really upset.

'Okay,' I said forcefully, pulling the group's attention back towards me, hoping that giving him a bit of space would help. 'So that's three groups we'll need: one to go to the control room, one to get The General, and one to get Ella.' I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling nervous as I turned back to Jeb. 'You don't think… I mean, is there any chance that Fang's still…?' Alive. I couldn't bring myself to say the word out loud; to say it would be to confirm that I knew there was a good chance he wasn't.

Jeb blinked, looking confused.

'Fang…' he said under his breath, his gaze skimming around the room, eyes widening when they landed on Dylan as if he'd only just noticed that he was there. 'Dylan, what are you doing here? What happened? You were down for extermination. And Fang…?' He shook his head, unable to work out what had happened. In a way I didn't blame him – I'd seen it and there was still a part of me that couldn't believe it.

'They came to take Dylan but the whitecoat they sent didn't know who was who,' I managed to get out, the muscles in my face straining against the words as if they were some kind of poison I was being forced to ingest. I tried to keep going, to tell Jeb what Fang had done, but my throat closed up at that point. It didn't matter though; he knew what I meant.

'Fang gave himself up as Dylan,' he said softly, and I could practically see the gears turning in his head. I nodded mutely, then heard Nudge's voice coming from behind me:

'Could he still be alive, then?' she asked quietly, looking scared of what Jeb might say. I totally understood – I had my whole attention focussed on him at that moment, watching his eyebrows knit as he worked through the different outcomes, wanting him to just spit out the answer already… but not wanting to hear it if the answer was a bad one.

'It's possible,' he said finally, and I just barely stopped myself from making an audible sound of utter relief. It wasn't much, but it was a lifeline, a lifeline for Fang.

'So… What? How could…?' I struggled with the words, not quite managing to find the ones I needed.

'Valencia mentioned that she was ordering Dylan's retirement,' Jeb explained quickly, his hands coming up to gesture in front of him. 'She gives the orders, but she's too high up to oversee everything that happens personally, so some of that falls to me; she gave me the task of scheduling the, ah, appointment. It wouldn't have gone unnoticed if I'd failed to do anything, but I tried to give Dylan the time to escape once he'd been taken out of this room – I arranged it so that retrieval from here would be scheduled for two hours before the actual process of retirement was due to take place.' He must have seen the hope in our eyes, because he quickly twisted his hands so that the palms were facing us. 'That doesn't mean he's definitely still alive – Valencia might have noticed the schedule and had it altered, the people in charge of retirement might have gone ahead and done it straight away… Just… Don't count on it too much. In fact, it might be better if you didn't count on it at all.'

Too late, I thought.

'Where would he be?' Gazzy jumped in. 'If he was still alive, where would he be?'

Jeb looked worried, and I knew he thought we were pinning too many hopes on the slim chance that Fang might not have been killed yet.

'They'd have taken him to the main testing area, either for some final experimentation or to be held in the corridor with all the other subjects being prepared for retirement.' He grimaced. 'Amongst the staff it's known as "Death Row".'

'The testing area... Not those rooms we came past on the way here?' Kate frowned.

'No,' Jeb replied. 'Those are just a few rooms used for short procedures or emergency surgery on the subjects situated in Holds 1 to 20. The main testing space is upstairs, taking up the whole of the floor above us. If Fang's still alive, that's where he'll be.'

I inhaled deeply, pushing back the light-headedness I was feeling.

'Right, so that takes us up to splitting into four groups,' I said, looking around at the group. 'If everyone-… Iggy? What's up?'

I'd been expecting to see Iggy hunched unhappily against the wall the way he had been a few minutes ago, but instead he was frowning in perplexity, holding his hands out in front of him, reaching up to touch his hair. At my words, he turned his head in my direction, his face taking on an expression of slow realisation.

'There's air coming in,' he said, standing perfectly motionless as if listening or waiting for something. My forehead wrinkled in confusion, and I glanced around at the rest of the group; they all looked just as mystified as I did.

'Um, what do you mean, Ig?' I asked carefully. He tilted his face upwards, his movements all sudden and jerky, like he had just thought of each one a split-second before doing it.

'There's air coming in,' he repeated, giving a small laugh of astonishment. His head snapped down to face us all again, and he must have felt the weight of our stares because he stepped forwards, moving towards us excitedly, waiting for us to catch on.

When none of us gave the shout of understanding that he was looking for, he threw his hands up in exasperation.

'Okay, so we're stuck in a big, soundproofed, reinforced room, right? There have been at least nine of us in here at any one point, moving and talking and using up oxygen for, what, a good few hours now? How much air do you think this room holds? Not that much, I'd guess. Not enough to supply a group of pent-up mutants with increased respiratory rates!'

Dylan gave a small 'oh!' as he realised what Iggy meant, earning him an eager nod.

'Yes! There's got to be air coming in from somewhere, and I don't know about you guys, but I'm guessing it's not through the vacuum seal on that door.' Iggy walked back to his spot on the wall, lifting his head towards the ceiling again. 'At first I thought I was just imagining it – y'know, I thought it was just my brain wanting to be up in the sky and feeling the wind and all – but there is definitely air coming from up there. It's faint, really faint. But it's there.'

I strode forwards to join Iggy by the wall, and he shifted slightly, letting me stand where he had stood. I closed my eyes and went dead still, feeling as hard as I could for the slightest breeze. I couldn't feel anything, but Iggy's sense of touch seriously outclassed my own. Opening my eyes, I stared straight upwards, tilting my head right back. For a moment all I saw was the white of the ceiling, but then something caught my gaze; a tiny movement, high up on the wall. I shifted to try and get a better view, and whatever it was moved again.

'Ratchet,' I said sharply, looking over at him. 'Can you see anything up there?'

He squinted at the wall, even going so far as to pull his sunglasses down to maximise the effects of his super-sight.

'Nothing whatsoever,' he said after a few moments.

I nodded.

'Right, now come stand here and look up.'

He moved forwards, doing exactly as I had done, and when he tilted his head back he gave a low whistle.

'What? What is it?' demanded Nudge, her eyes wide.

'There's something up there,' Ratchet said. 'It's just a tiny sliver, but I can see a bit of my reflection. There's something reflective sticking out of the wall.'

Without saying anything else, I pushed off hard from the floor and snapped out my wings, forcing myself into the space above the group. I watched the wall closely as I moved upwards, and as I neared the ceiling, I was suddenly looking at my own face; my reflection. Pushing myself forwards, I reached out to feel around it, laughing out loud when I realised what it was.

'It's like a box!' I called out, looking down at the upturned faces below me. It was as if some kind of square manhole cover made out of mirrors was protruding slightly from the wall. It was maybe a metre squared in area, facing the opposite wall straight on, so whilst I could see it easily from up here at this angle, it was too high up for anyone on the floor to accidentally be caught in it. In terms of thickness, though, its mirrored edge stuck out from the wall by only a few measly centimetres, which meant that to spot it from below, you had to be standing in just the right position and looking straight up to catch the smallest glimpse of your own reflection. Unless you were gazing directly at one of the planes of the box, head on to one of its surfaces, all you saw was the unbroken whiteness of the rest of the room reflected off the mirrors, making it as good as invisible.

Which really did beg the question, what was behind it?

I wasn't about to hesitate to find out. Pedalling backwards a bit, I threw a foot right into the face of my reflection, shattering the mirror. I grinned when I saw what it had been hiding and dropped back down to tell the rest of the group.

'Score!' yelled Gazzy, pumping a fist into the air.

'Nice catch, dude,' Ratchet said with a laugh as he slapped Iggy on the back.

I nodded, smiling. A vent, I thought. Now that's something we can work with.

A/N Had a slightly tricky time of translating the picture of the mirrored cover I had in my head into words, but I've changed up the description a bit and I hope that makes it clearer! Basically the cover of the vent is made out of mirrors, rendering it invisible. :P Let me know what you thought!