Selwyn was next to join us, his face dirty with ash. I saw that he had heavy bandages wrapped around one arm. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I figured I’d better warn you now you’re here. Kip Mayer’s been arrested.’ He inclined his head towards the Patriot agents. ‘By them.’

Rozalia grabbed his arm. ‘What?’

‘I heard about it from Yuichi just now. He saw Mayer being bundled into a jeep by a couple of Patriot types, back in town, outside the Authority’s offices there. They drove off towards the base, so they’ve probably got him locked up there, unless they’ve already taken him back to the Authority’s own alternate.’

‘What do you mean “bundled”, exactly?’ I asked.

‘I mean that Mayer was in handcuffs, so Yuichi said.’

‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What possible reason could they—’

‘They don’t need a reason,’ Rozalia said, her voice full of a terrible finality. ‘They’ll just make up some damn excuse. And with us stuck here, and no way to talk to anyone else in the Authority except through them, they’ll be free to take control of the transfer stages and consolidate their power over the island and all the alternates it gives access to.’

Selwyn stared at Rozalia with his mouth open.

‘Anything else we need to know?’ I asked him, to forestall the inevitable flood of questions.

‘I-I heard that they interrogated Wallace, up at the base hospital.’ He thought for a moment. ‘It seems kind of weird they’d put Kip in chains like that, right after they finished talking to Wallace.’

‘So Wallace can still talk?’ asked Chloe.

Selwyn made a face. ‘Just about. Right after me and Randall got him out of that inferno he was babbling something, but nothing that made any sense. We got him in a jeep and drove him up to the hospital and raised seven shades of bloody hell until they all woke up and helped get him inside. We stuck around long enough to see him get wired up with tubes and monitors and all kinds of stuff, but then the Patriots turned up and threw us out on our arses.’ He shuddered. ‘I don’t even want to imagine how much pain Wallace must be in, the state he was in when we got him there. I really thought we’d carried a corpse out of there at first, he was so badly burned.’

I stepped up close to Selwyn. ‘What did Wallace say, exactly?’

Selwyn looked at me with a troubled expression. ‘I already told you, nothing that made any sense to me—’

‘Just tell me, dammit!’

‘Take it easy,’ said Chloe, putting her hand on my arm.

‘I don’t know,’ said Selwyn. ‘He was babbling about Casey and people dying.’ He peered at me. ‘Why? You know something I don’t?’