“Yes!” shouted Jake as another zombie rabbit bit the dust in their computer-generated Crawkling underworld. Jake was having another great night, the gamer points were building up quickly. He glanced at the bottom corner of his screen. Shit! He cursed. 12:15! He was late for Leina.

Jake leapt out of his chair and sprinted down the corridor to meet her. He rounded the first corridor and stumbled, a wheezing, sweating and unfit mess.

“Leina!” he called. “I’m sorry!”

“Don’t worry!” she shouted, “I’ve found something to fill my time.”

He dragged himself to the exit from his quarters and draped himself against the bars.

“I’d forgotten about these,” he admitted, dejected. “I’ll never get out after all.”

“I’ve sorted it, darling.” She grinned as she pulled her jacket wide open to give Jake the big reveal. At the other end of the corridor, Jake could see Kait the security guard staring at a set of playing cards, a stunned look on his face. Leina brought his attention back. “Go on, help yourself,” she said, winking at Jake. The flirting never ended.

He was about to object vehemently when he saw a glint hanging out of her inside pocket. Keys! Leina had stolen the keys to his cell from Kait!

“Errr… we don’t have time for that,” Jake said. “We must go!”

Leina turned the key in the gate, and Jake followed her to her hover car which she drove across the peaty bog-land to the Crawkling army’s spaceship hanger.

They arrived and Jake looked around in awe. Of course, he’d seen the hanger many times in the world of Lapine Death Corps but somehow that didn’t quite do justice to the real-life version. There were hundreds of thousands of ships, all painted with the distinctive green flames which symbolised they were Crawkling. The vast space to one side of the hangar indicated that there were more than double the amount of ships in the air than on the ground.

Leina laughed. “Even our Crawk-King Leader of War is astounded by our vast power?”

Jake smiled and nodded, it was quite ironic.

“So, I’ve got you access to this one”, she said, pointing at a ship right in the far corner of the hanger.

“Really?” Jake was astounded. “You’ve got it that simply?”

“Well yes, of course. I have my ways of getting stuff.” She winked.

Jake didn’t want to know, Leina wasn’t an image he wanted in his head. “Ok then, let’s go.”

Jake was almost there. He had a ship and he knew how to fly it. All he had to do now, was to somehow fly away and leave Leina here.