The minds of the Magi ship, she realized. Not the same one that had carried her to the Maker; that was gone, turned to superheated dust and scattered across the cosmos, along with the original Dakota.

‘But you didn’t do it to help me,’ she moaned. ‘You brought me back because you wanted me to lead you to the Mos Hadroch.’

It had to be done, they replied. We want to help you, Dakota. You don’t ever have to die if you don’t want to, not really. Not any more. We made you whole again – or as whole as we could make you.

She wanted to wade out into the water, to let herself sink as soon as she could no longer feel anything solid beneath her feet, but soon realized she didn’t have the strength or the will to do it. And even if she could, she knew the ship would just resurrect her again.

A bundle of what at first appeared to be rags lay close by but, when she stepped over, Dakota found they were clothes, identical to the ones she’d worn when she’d left Ocean’s Deep a few years before. She picked them up, thinking that at least she wouldn’t freeze to death if the nights here were as cold as the day was warm.

As she dressed, she glanced up at the curved underbelly of the Magi ship, and imagined it giving birth to her here on the shore, spitting the clothes out after her and watching over her until she blinked her eyes open for the first time.

She pulled the jacket around her shoulders. ‘Why am I here?’ she asked the air.

There was a message, the voices whispered in reply. It used Shoal protocols, and was directed to Ocean’s Deep. Indecipherable to all but you.

They fed the message to her: a stream of data encoded using encryption techniques developed jointly by the Shoal and Magi – before one had committed genocide against the other.

The message was from Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals, and it concerned the Mos Hadroch. It detailed a rendezvous here on this world’s shore, where dull grey waters lapped against broken shale.

What am I made of? Dakota wondered, panicked by the thought. She reached down and pinched the flesh of her forearm between thumb and forefinger. It felt like ordinary flesh and blood but, if she’d been remade, how could she be sure her knowledge of what flesh should feel like hadn’t also been changed? After all, she wasn’t even real, just a dead woman’s memories prodded into life and given the illusion of independence.

Not true. You are alive, said the voices from within the starship.

‘Shut up!’ she yelled, her hands curling into fists by her sides. ‘I didn’t ask for this.’