I was only dimly aware of arriving back at the reservoir. Casey guided the SUV into the transfer stage, and I felt the familiar lurch that came with shifting from one alternate to another. I swallowed the nausea away as I had been taught as the hangar materialized around us.

Taught by Nadia, I suddenly recalled, and clenched my fists against my knees, feeling a sudden, overpowering surge of grief. The pain in my limbs, even the cold that had worked its way deep into my flesh and bones, made me feel as if I was experiencing it at a distance. Maybe I was going into shock.

Casey reversed the SUV down the transfer stage’s ramp, to where a medical crew was waiting for us. One of the doctors I remembered from my time in quarantine came forward and tried to take my arm as I stepped out of the car, but I shook him off with sufficient force that he stumbled into one of his colleagues.

He yelled something after me, and I heard someone else call my name, but I wasn’t listening. I headed straight for the wide open doors and the bright, clean sunlight that lay beyond.

Outside, I kept walking, making my way towards the barracks and the row of jeeps parked outside. I was tired, hungry and on the verge of absolute exhaustion, but the rage that burned within me drove me on.

I saw a couple of soldiers standing around next to the barracks, surrounded by the usual haze of cigarette smoke. Their conversation dropped away at my approach, and I knew what I must look like. My clothes had half-dried on my back, but I was covered in streaks of mud and filth. I didn’t give a shit. I stepped past them, climbed into a jeep, grabbed its keys from the dashboard and put it into reverse hard enough I dented the front bumper of the vehicle parked behind it. I drove out through the compound gates and made for the first road that would take me out of town.

I made no conscious decision to take the road north. All I wanted to do was drive, and keep driving until I could drive no longer, however far or long that might be. I’d run rings around the damn island if I had to. At first I headed east, making my way onto the highway that ringed the coast, following it as it curved north past the runway until I had passed the ancient caldera of Rano Kau.