Trying to find a book from 15 years ago [duplicate]

Question

I read this book back in middle school and I've been trying to remember more about it and possibly read it again.

I remember the cover was a greenish blue. It would have been around the 2004-2005 time frame. I remember the whole book had an overall dark and industrial dystopia feeling to it.

From what I remember, the book's main character was an orphan and imprisoned in a large orphanage where the kids where forced to work. There was some sort of accident during a routine transfer and he escaped with some other kids. These other kids ended up fighting a government-type military who was trying to capture them... there was also something to do with a creature or aliens.

I want to say it started with a "C".

Answer 1

Possibly 'The supernaturalist' by Eoin Colfer. The children are used as guinea-pigs for companies to test toiletries and medicines on.

Answer 2

This could be The Awakening Water by G. R. Kesteven (a pseudonym for G. R. Crosher). The protagonist Watford Nine John lives in the Watford Nine facilty (an orphanage of sorts), where he and the other children do agricultural labor under the supervision of "duty men." He chances to meet a girl who has run away from another facility, and she introduces him to drinking un-drugged water.

She held out the bottle to him. 'It's only water, and it's not doped.' John recalled the phrase and, as he tasted the cool, earthy water, he realised that not for three days had he drunk from his meal-time beaker, and during those three days a bewildering change had come over him. It was as if he had woken from sleep not to the usual plodding work, but to a multitude of new experiences and -- strangest of all -- to an awareness of himself.

Without the drugs in his system, he is able to escape from the Watford Nine facility and join the group of youthful rebels, who are fighting against the "Party" that controls their dystopian world.