The Stars, Sun and Skye

The Whirlpool

They walked inside. A big gruffly man was already waiting for them.
"Hey Caps. Brought you two new recruits."
"Helium! Good job. I'll get you your pay later. Let me talk to them girls myself first."
The man Helium addressed as Caps got up and Helium walked out of the main room within the store.
"Welcome girls. I'm Captain. But you can call me Caps. Who might you two be?"
"Where's Helium?"
"I think I'll do the talking here. Now let's start again. Who might you two be?"
"I'm Eava. This is Evie," Eava looked at Evie.
"Wonderful. Now I can tell you what you two will be doing for me."
"We won't be doing anything for you unless we want to," Evie snapped.
"Well. We'll see about that. For now, rest. Join Helium into the Yellow Room there," he said pointing at the door that Helium had previously disappeared into.
They walked cautiously through the small door to enter a large room full of roll-up mattresses placed neatly on the ground. The walls were painted yellow and close to 20 kids lay on their own mattresses most of which were asleep. The shop seemed much smaller from outside. They too, had strange wristbands with the swirling logo like Helium's but instead they were yellow.
"Liking it so far?" Helium saw them enter, "You two can sleep here on this mattress. We usually get up at 7 to start work but since you girls haven't had much sleep; Caps will wake you up at nine. "
"Work?" Evie asked.
"Caps will brief you. Sleep is more important now." He walked out of the room and left them to sleep on the empty King-sized mattress in front of them. The mattress was dirty, clearly unused for a while. But they had to make do. Evie and Eava lay down on their mattresses. Skye was curled up on Evie's left while Eava was on her right. They eventually fell asleep just as the sun was rising.