I should have been exhausted: I’d spent much of the night lying wide awake in bed thinking about Cassie, wondering about ways I could continue with my original plan to leave the Family Quarter and stay with her. Needless to say, I’d not come to a final conclusion, but something along the lines of sneaking out and back in before she could miss me was certainly an appealing idea at this stage. When my daily alarm beeped into action at 5.00am, I bounced eagerly from my bed as though I’d slept for a refreshing eight hours, rather than the two or three hours I think I’d actually had.
The more time I spent with Cassie, the more I knew that what I was feeling was not one-sided. I grinned as I thought this (again!), crunching hard on the end of my toothbrush, because I was brushing my teeth at the time.
This whole experience was quite odd for me. I had to admit, my old irritations with the station were still there, and the questions I had still burned inside my head. But, I just couldn’t be angry about it. Cassie was filling up my mind more than ever and it made me…happy.
It was 5.30am. The mirrors had begun a gradual rotation thirty minutes earlier, but it was so slow at this time of the morning, that most people on the station believed that dawn started at 6.00am. As I left the Green Zone, I noticed a couple of other early risers. It was an easy guess that they were heading towards jobs in the agricultural area: they all wore the same forest-green day suits.
I studied the figures, wondering whether Patrick might be with them. But none of them seemed to have his particularly, cheerful lope. Maybe he’d accidentally managed to sleep-in after his late night.
A small grin turned my lips upwards. Perhaps I would be tucked up in bed right now, if I didn’t have a plan in my head and a ‘borrowed’ swipe card in my pocket. With a bounce in my step, I headed towards the central zone and The Clinic.