Free Cured by Diana

then training at six.”
    I blanched. I had forgotten that Primes
barely need sleep. It was already eleven at night.
    “So everyone have a bit of down-time now.
It’s lights off at midnight.” Regina waved and sauntered out of the
room. Felix and I exchanged a worried glance. Tomorrow our secret
was over. We were done. Feeling nauseous from a mixture of fear and
too much food, I excused myself from the table and returned to my
room. I called Felix on the WallScreen but he didn’t answer. I
didn’t blame him for not wanting to talk. I lay on my bed and tried
not to think of the next day, finally falling into a
nightmare-filled slumber.
    Felix shook
me from my dark dreams. A look at the WallScreen opposite me told
me it was 4:05 in the morning. 

    “Go away Felix. Sleeping,” I mumbled
groggily.
    “Rise and shine, Ave. We gotta get outta
here.”

    I blinked myself awake. Remembering where I
was, my stomach twisted and I sat up. “Argh,” I managed.
    “ At least you
slept,” Felix sighed, “I’ve been up all night planning and
re-planning our escape.”
    I looked him in the eye. He wasn’t
joking.
    “No way Fe.” I shook my head. “We can’t
escape. It’s way too risky. We’d never get out alive. And even if
we did, they’d track us down straight away.”
    Felix frowned and his jaw tensed. He was
angry. “The alternative is telling them what we did and being
executed on the spot,” he said matter-of-factly.
    I realised that he was right and rubbed my
eyes, trying to wake myself up enough to understand whatever scheme
Felix had conjured up. “What’s the plan?” I asked.
    His anger gone immediately, Felix jumped off
my bed, excited to share his ideas.
    “Well, at first I though we should fake sick,
you know, like we used to do to get out of school back on Olympia,
but I thought that might be a bit obvious if we both did it.”
    I nodded and he carried on. “So I figured
that I could pull the sick card, and…” he trailed off.
    “And what?” I asked, knowing I wasn’t going
to like this next part of the plan by his cautious tone.
    “And… Well… Ave, I figured you could play the
superiority card.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You know…” he looked uncomfortable, “You are
kind of a celebrity to these people. They used to be Norms. They
expect you to be a brat…”
    “You’re asking me to be nasty to them?” I
asked, “How is that going to make any difference? Except for making
them all hate me?”
    “Well, if you refuse to train… pretend like
you are above basic training because of your parents… then maybe…
maybe you can get by just watching the training. They’d never know
you have no powers.”
    I shook my head vigorously. “Absolutely not,
Felix. Eberyone will despise me. Plus, I can’t pull that off. Don’t
you remember how much I sucked at drama back at school?”
    Felix looked down-heartened.
    “What do you suggest, then?” he asked.
    I hadn’t
thought about it. I had just planned on being found out eventually,
and then accepting the consequences. Felix of course, was not such
a coward, and had actually come up with a way out. It was a flawed
plan, but it was a plan nonetheless. I realised I had nothing to
lose.
    Felix lightly touched my leg and I jolted,
and then blushed when he quickly retracted his hand. “So … Uh… What
do you say to my master plan?”
    There was no alternative option. “Lets give
it a shot,”
I said. Felix grinned and jumped off the bed. He began
pacing my room. 

    “Great. So the next leg of the plan, after we
get out of training…”
    “ If we get out of training,” I
interjected.
    “ Think
positively,” he said, “ When we get out of training,
they’re going to send us to the initiation destination, where we
will start the first trial. Now, from what I remember, Hercules’
first trial was something to do with a lion.”
    I nodded; we had learnt this at school.
“Right,” I said. “He had to fight and kill that big