I sat next to the monitoring screen for the drones, which showed an aerial heat-map of the city and the Hives. If Casey was travelling back towards us from the city, the drone currently in the air would pick him up, and we’d have at least some warning that he was on his way. So far, it had found nothing apart from the seemingly random movements of night patrols. A second drone sat in its charging slot nearby.

I glanced up, following the direction of Rozalia’s gaze, to see the dark speck of the second drone dropping towards the charging station.

‘Does one of those things stay up all the time?’ I asked her.

‘Pretty much.’

I turned to look at Yuichi, who had spoken.

‘They run on automatic, twenty-four hours a day, long as you keep the station’s batteries topped up.’

The drone dropped low enough that I could hear the lawnmower buzz of its rotor. Once it was in place, the other drone, now recharged, would lift up and take over surveillance.

The buzz increased rapidly in pitch, the speck moving faster against the dawn sky. I frowned; it was coming in awfully fast . . .

I rolled to one side, thinking the drone was plummeting straight towards me. Instead of slowing down, it had picked up speed, giving a high-pitched whine as it executed a kamikaze dive into the transfer stage’s control rig. The sound of the impact rolled across the grass and the reservoir beyond, echoing faintly.

Oskar scrambled down from the roof of the EV, his mouth open in shock, and dashed over to peer down at what was left of the rig.

‘It’s smashed to pieces,’ he moaned, reaching up to grab at his head. ‘Oh, Jesus. Jesus. We’re fucking stranded.’

I stared, dry mouthed, at the smashed pieces of machinery lying scattered all across the clearing.

Oskar walked stiff-legged back over to the EV and vomited noisily next to one of its wheels.

‘This can’t be happening,’ Rozalia mumbled. ‘It can’t be.’

I looked at Yuichi. ‘There must be some way we can get back,’ I said.

He stared helplessly at the ruins. ‘I don’t think so, Jerry,’ he said quietly. ‘I really don’t.’

I went over to kneel by the smashed rig, pushing my hand through the bits and pieces of shredded component. ‘Maybe there’s still some way we could try to fix it . . .’

‘No, Jerry,’ Yuichi repeated. ‘Look at it, for fuck’s sake. It’s completely trashed.’

I tried to make sense of what had just happened, to quell the dreadful awareness that we might very well be lost on this alternate forever. ‘Could it have been an accident?’ I asked, looking around at him in panic. ‘Some failure in the drone’s programming, maybe, or . . . ?’