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No. 4314
Scene 2
The small square in front of the school was half-dark, kept in the gloom by the imposing silhouette of the school, and the local council's labyrinthine offices which loomed from three sides. Despite its darkness, it was filled with hundreds of pupils, with more streaming from the school's doors every second, and then splitting off down the adjoining tunnels, forming writhing distributaries of concentrated boisterousness. Security cameras bristled on the council building, flicking hyperactively between pupils who were suspected of subversive conversation or anti-social behaviour. This didn't deter the inhabitants of Drumellan Sec (officially know as school 192-a), as the city's authorities were widely despised, particularly in the deprived outer Schemes.
Fitz, Tormod and Manda were sprawled over a cracked plascrete bench, planning their escape into the Core.
"What time should we get the train at, Fitz?" asked Manda, staring at the porthole of grey sky that lay above them.
"Ah reckon about four. That gives us an hour tae get hame and doon tae the station" replied Fitz. It had begun to gently snow.
"Ah, sneachd, it's early this year, I thought it didnae start till October normally?" said Tormod, addressing his question to the same square of sky that the other two were staring into. The snow had buried them in a strange ennui, as the first snow symbolised the beginning of the long dark winters that had been the norm for a generation. Snow meant discontent in the Schemes, as people struggled to heat their hab-units; snow wreathed the city in anger at the monolithic Council and its Byzantine machinery; snow meant hunger. Fitz snapped out of this shared contemplative trance. "Right! Let's go and ah'll see youse at the station at four!" he said. The other two responded with nods; the children split and ran in opposite directions.
Tormod ran south, towards the edge of the Scheme, where the city abruptly transitioned into a cold moorland studded with pines. Here, at the underused city gate lay one of the urban Gàidhealtachdan inhabited by immigrants from the Hebrides and Western Highlands. These
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