One day someone will make it safe. I've stopped waiting for that. Which is maybe why it catches me so completely off guard when something changes at midnight on a Tuesday with no warning at all. Two weeks in. I have a routine. I know where everything is , the training halls, the mess, the library on the second floor where the older students go to avoid each other. I know which instructors look at new arrivals' pack designations before they look at their scores. I know the girl from the senior table who's been cataloguing the new cohort , her name is Priya, second-year, fast and calculating and not yet sure what she thinks of me, which is the ideal state for someone I may eventually need to deal with. I know that Sophie has made three friends in two weeks through the mechanism of sitting

