When the door closed, Mia allowed herself a moment to process the fear building inside her. The world of laws and known boundaries was slipping away, and without the tools to fight it she was like a spectator to her own demise, utterly powerless. A hot rush of longing filled her as she thought of her parents’ love, and for a moment she surrendered to the warmth of its comforting embrace, but as the tears threatened, she understood giving in to the emotion would merely paralyse her, and so she pushed it back down and checked Douglas’s pulse instead.

It was weak and fluttering, his breathing shallow. Examining the wound, Mia gasped. Impossibly, in just half an hour, a filament of angry red veins had sprung up to cover his entire chest.

It must be a poison, she decided, annoyed that Singkepe’s superstitiousness was getting to her. It has to be.

At the mission, they sometimes encountered the consequences of such misguided belief – innocent women scarred for life or horrifically murdered. In a culture where someone must be blamed for every misfortune, those without support networks were most vulnerable. Resident sadists used heated irons inserted into orifices, or burned people alive in front of a baying mob, to atone for perceived evils. Mia was aware the PNG government had only recently repealed its barbaric Sorcery Act. The legislation had sanctioned black magic as a plausible motive for self-defence, which meant it was essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card for murder.

Still shaking her head, Mia prepared a fresh dressing even though it was futile; poor Frank Douglas was going to die.

And yet Frank Douglas did not die, and after a night, and then another day of heat and discomfort, with the ship travelling further and further from help, the tracery of red lines tripled in area, spreading beyond his bandages, down his torso and up his neck. If Douglas was aware of what was happening, it was impossible to tell. Mia kept expecting to find him dead, whenever she woke from her broken sleeps. He was not getting sufficient liquids, but without a drip, it was only possible to trickle water carefully into his mouth. Meanwhile, there was no sign of Singkepe, and she sensed he was avoiding her, sending the scary tall guard in for supplies instead.

Early on the second day after the attack, Sura appeared with Boerman. She wore a stylish shoulder holster containing a small automatic pistol. Combined with the green jumpsuit, it made her look creepily fashionable – terrorist chic. Mia wondered if that was what indeed she was.

Sura peered down at Douglas and crinkled her nose.