A/N

This is a response to my own "alternative beginning" challenge from many many years ago. Fun factoid: I started this in November 2012 as my NaNo project for that year, and although very little of the 50,000 words I wrote then have made it into this final draft, the essence is the same- and I learnt a lot about what wouldn't work during that November, anyway, which sometimes is more important than knowing what will work. I then reworked it for Camp NaNo 2013, which is when half of the first draft was written. Since then, this project has sat on my MacBook and patiently waited as I got swept up in being an adult and completely abandoned any and all of my writing as things got in the way and I lost the desire and drive to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys). Then the end of 2023 came around, and with a lot of big changes happening I felt compelled to try and return to a hobby that used to fill my cup with so much joy. At the time I started it almost 12 years ago it was a welcome break and a real easy project to work on, something much needed as I was battling with version one million of a very uncooperative Six Degrees, and the rest of my life was getting more and more full on, so I thought what better project to pick up again as a fresh beginning in a period of big change once more.

I've tried to keep the theme of the original first book in mind as much as possible, and there are a many a nod here and there to it threaded amongst this fic. It's been absolutely awesome to work on this, just having fun with writing again and getting back into crafting a story and stretching my imagination. It's been a long, long time since I've put anything on this site, I am fully expecting it to be a ghost town, but this is far more for me than for anyone else anyway. However, if you happen to read this story and enjoy it, nice bonus!

Em :)

CHAPTER ONE

It was hot. It was insanely hot and, even worse, it was an energy sapping heat that seemed to pull every ounce of moisture from your body. Dressed in sandals, shorts and a tank top, Amber stood on the tarmac, fanning her face as she considered her surroundings with unimpressed brown eyes shielded by a massive pair of dark sunglasses. Her duffle bag sagged against her ebony legs; she sympathised with its reaction to the intolerable temperature. The insufferable heat hadn't made much of an impact during the short change over in Cairns to board the tiny twelve seater plane that had flown them out to the resort island- and certainly not enough of an impact that wasn't immediately erased upon being hugged by the cool arms of air conditioning. Now, out on the island's runway, she was starting to yearn with an even greater pang for the Boston winter she'd left behind, half a world away.

She wasn't the only one who looked knocked about by the far north Australian summer they'd just arrived smack bang in the middle of. To her right stood six other teenagers joining her on the program, each of them in varying levels of contentment. The two guys from the United Kingdom, Hex and Alex, were wiping sweat off their foreheads with the backs of their hands. Alex looked merely overwhelmed by the sticky humidity, but Hex seemed genuinely pissed off, a scowl firmly etched into his features, directed at the world in the general. Petite Anglo-Chinese Li had lost little of the bouncing exuberance she'd been subjecting the rest of them to since they'd met for the first time in Cairns, but even she was a tiny bit flatter; if the shock coming from Boston to Australia had been taxing on Amber's system, she could only imagine what Li, fresh out of a trip in the wilds of Russia with her zoologist parents, was feeling. Beside Li stood Paulo, who was the only one truly revelling in the sun beating down on them, his arms extended like he was welcoming the rays onto his olive skin. Justin, who'd barely had any travelling to endure with just a comparatively short plane ride over the continent from Perth, looked like he could take or leave the weather conditions, and South African Ruby, a quiet girl with an untamed expanse of curls plonked on top of her head, still appeared to be more concerned with the strangers she'd ended up lumped with than whether it was hot or not.

"This'll be amazing," Li enthused as they dragged their bags and themselves over to the courtesy bus that had just pulled to a rather squeaky stop beside the small building that served as the departure and arrivals lounge for the island's tiny airport.

"That's not the word I was going to use," Amber muttered under breath.

Li, right beside her, had to have heard, but she refused to let the negativity dampen her mood. She gave Amber a brilliant grin. "You're excited," she insisted.

"Absolutely brimming with it, Li."

"I could totally tell."

"Yeah." Amber's grip on the strap of her bag, slung over her shoulder, tightened just a notch; it was going to be a very long fortnight.

The mini bus was, thankfully, air conditioned, and the contented sighs of everyone (bar maybe Paulo) as they shuffled up the steps pulled a shit-eating grin from the driver. He cackled, shaking his head, and mouthing something that could have been 'Tourists', followed by a hearty round of tsking. Amber fixed the man with a stern frown as she passed him to find a seat, but he was too busy tuning the radio to notice her disapproval over his attitude. 'Tourist' implied something of a choice and a definite desire to visit the place you were in. Her circumstances included nothing of the sort, and she wasn't going to let anyone forget just how little she wanted to be there.

The bus held a greater capacity for passengers than the pokey plane they'd flown out in did, and there were ample spare seats available. Ruby had grabbed the first seat she could find, way up the front and just behind the irritating driver. Amber moved up the aisle, holding her massive bag half up in the air to save it from snagging on the seats. Li's consistent attempts to buddy up with her since they'd met had, thankfully, started to wane; she'd ended up in a window seat with Paulo next to her, the pair of them already engrossed in a game of something conducted on a notepad and pen that Li had retrieved from her bag. Hex had opted for the furthest seat away that he could find at the rear of the bus, and with the curtain on the window next to him closed tightly against the blinding sunshine, he'd donned a pair of headphones, plonked his ridiculously small computer on his lap, and reduced his world to the screen in front of him. Despite the amount of seating options, Justin had deposited himself on a chair next to Alex and started to yammer at the poor guy at a hundred miles an hour. Alex was politely nodding his head with a tense smile fixed on his face, but his eyes were almost darting as he looked for an escape route.

Amber ignored his peril and breezed past them to grab a seat by herself a few rows back. She, too, yanked the curtain closed in protest against the sun, and the instant reprieve it brought from the light made her sigh in relief. There was a book somewhere in the smaller carry on bag that she'd stowed in her main duffel, but she couldn't be bothered digging through her luggage to extract it. If there was any mercy left in the world, the trip down to the marina would be short, anyway. The driver abandoned his tuning attempts and hit play on a CD made up entirely of country music and Amber decided that, no matter how quickly the time passed, it wouldn't be quick enough.

The one saving grace of the trip down to the marina was that the road was sealed, and the bus' suspension was in full working order. Under no circumstances could the drive have been considered even remotely close to pleasant, but that was largely due to the loudly singing driver who couldn't hold a tune to save his life, and the fact that the welcome air conditioning grew steadily less consistent the further they drove. By the time the bus pulled up out the front of the marina, Amber was convinced that it might have actually been less warm outside the bus, rather than in it. That thought, plus a desire to get away from the tuneless man behind the wheel, had her off the bus first, even managing to beat Ruby who was a mere couple of steps away from the door.

It was much cooler outside, but that had little to do with the only slightly lower temperature and was more down to the illusion created by the wonderful breeze coming straight off the water. The boats bumping up against their moorings held the most familiar sight Amber had laid eyes on since leaving Boston, and she would have greeted it with a slight smile had the bumbling pile of teenagers spilling off the bus behind her hadn't brought her crashing back to reality. She wasn't anywhere close to home. She wasn't at all where she wanted to be.

"Finally! I thought we were going to miss our lift." The woman pushed herself away from the pole she'd been leaning against and strode towards them. "I'm Allison," she said, glancing at every face for just the barest millisecond, including them all in the rushed introduction by default. "I'm in charge of you all for the next couple of weeks, and if we don't get a wriggle on we'll have to swim to Bright Island." Seeing Ruby struggling with her two bags, Allison seized the larger, leaving the South African with just her carry on. "Look lively, kids. We've got a boat to board."

Without a backwards glance, she spun on her heel and strode towards the marina, beckoning with one hand over her shoulder as the teenagers straggled behind, scooping up bags and belongings as they hurried to catch up. A gate with an electronic lock panel separated them from the marina beyond, and by the time the group reached Allison she had keyed in the code and was standing with her back pressed to the gate, holding it open. She ushered the kids through with a wildly flailing hand, eyes fixed onto the large digital watch encircling her wrist.

"Everyone here?" She did a quick head count and frowned. "Who's missing?"

Amber, along with just about everyone else bar Hex, glanced about, pulling only- relatively speaking- familiar faces. There was seven of them. They'd all gotten off the bus.

"This is it," Alex told Allison, gesturing at the ragtag group.

Allison shook her head. "No. There was supposed to be eight. I-" Her frown cleared as she noticed something behind Li and Ruby's heads, back through the gate and up where the bus had dropped them off.

The others turned to see what had caught her attention and thus solved her confusion. Another courtesy shuttle, this one from the resort that sprawled across most of the little island, had pulled up in the vacant loading and unloading park that their bus driver had just left. The eighth member of their group was shrugging on a backpack, glancing around without much interest.

Allison stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle that had Alex and Paulo, standing closest to her, covering their ears with a wince. "You're late," she called out as the new arrival wandered down to meet them.

The girl didn't look particularly bothered by the fact. She didn't even so much as shrug or mumble an apology that she didn't mean. She looked, Amber decided as she studied the girl's sour face, like she wanted to be there as much as Amber did- as much, in fact, as the majority of the teens seemed to want to be there. With the exception of Li, who seemed the type to get excited about just about anything, and Alex, who had been basking in a quiet air of contented anticipation from the moment they'd all met up, the general feel of the group was that they weren't exactly on the program through any sort of conscious decision they'd made themselves.

One of Allison's eyebrows rose. She shut the gate a little bit harder than was perhaps necessary, before moving to the head of the group again. "Keep up," she said, words delivered just as briskly as she set off down the platform. "We're running late. I hate being late," she added under her breath, once again checking her watch like the motion was a nervous tic.

Given the size of the island, the marina seemed almost ridiculously out of proportion. Nestled into the protected embrace of the bay, the floating platforms and moorings extended out across the water like the veins of a living organism. Even though it was still early, the majority of moorings were empty, the boat owners and renters heading out with the sun to make the most of the beautiful summer day unfolding before them. Right down the very end, and closest to the ocean that sprawled out beyond the reaches of the bay, bobbed their destination: a large motor yacht, complete with a foot-tapping skipper on the deck.

"Cutting it fine," he said as they drew closer, giving a pointed look at the sun.

Despite her own consternation about the time, Allison waved his concerns away. "We were waiting for your boss' daughter," she said. "So if you have an issue…"

The skipper's brow creased. "Just hurry up, Allison. We're doing you a favour."

"Oh, yes, of course. You're doing me a favour." She snorted. "The debris all over Bright's landing strip is totally my fault."

"Just get on the bloody boat," he grated.

"Aye, aye." She tossed a loose salute in just to be completely antagonistic, but the skipper already had his back to them, hurrying away before they wasted even more time with continuing the pointless discussion. Allison grinned at the teenagers. "That's Steve," she explained. "He's an idiot. You're pretty safe to ignore everything he says."

Despite that, Allison hurried them along into boarding, just about tossing the bags- and the teens themselves- onto the deck before herself. They stowed the bags safely in the cabin, then climbed up onto the upper level and settled themselves on the various padded benches up above, nestled under the canopy that did its best to shield them from the sun.

"We've got a bit of a trip ahead of us," Allison said. She'd donned a wide brimmed sun hat and her fingers pinched the brim, preparing to pull it over her eyes as she reclined. "I trust you can entertain yourselves for a little while?" She didn't wait for an answer.

Amber's frown returned. So far the 'holiday' had been even less than she'd anticipated- something that she thought honestly wouldn't be possible, given how low her standards were already sitting. Their supervisor didn't seem that interested in supervising. The other teenagers were either shy, or hostile, or indifferent, or far too keen to buddy up. The weather was insane. She sighed. It was going to be a very long two weeks.