“I have to run,” said JC. “I have to try. I can’t give up on you. Not so soon after finding you.”

She smiled again, but there was sadness in her eyes. “I’m afraid we found each other a little too late, my sweet. I’m dead, aren’t I? Only a ghost now, a memory of the person I once was.”

“Yes,” said JC.

“Then go back,” said Kim, kindly but firmly. “There’s no sense in both of us being dead. So far, I haven’t seen anything to recommend it. You have your whole life ahead of you. All the years that were stolen from me. So go back, find someone else, someone with a future, and love her. Forget me, and be happy.”

“I could no more forget you than I could forget me,” said JC. “It wouldn’t be living, and it wouldn’t be love if it wasn’t you.”

“Now that is crap, and you know it,” said Kim. “You hardly know me. And no-one ever really dies of a broken heart. You will forget me, and you will move on, because that’s what people do.”

“It’s not what I do,” said JC. “Don’t give up, Kim. Because I won’t. I will follow you wherever this force takes you. I will find you wherever he hides you, and I will break you free and take you up out of this place and into the light again. Because that is what I do.”

“And then what?” said Kim. “I’ll still be a ghost. What kind of life could we have together?”

JC grinned at her. “I’ll think of something. Don’t push me; I’m still working this out as I go along. Never give up hope, Kim.”

“Never,” she said.

Kim started to drift backwards again. JC went after her at his own pace, refusing to be hurried. Kim’s speed remained the same, and JC smiled inwardly. It seemed he’d achieved some measure of control over the situation.

And then she and he rounded the corner into the next passageway, and JC stopped abruptly. Kim kept going, floating slowly but steadily backwards down the corridor, her feet dangling a good few inches above the thousands of razor blades covering the floor. Jammed in sideways, their glistening sharp edges pointing upwards. Thousands of them, covering the floor from one end of the corridor to the other, blue steel gleaming brightly in the fierce electric light. Kim kept going until she reached the far end, then stopped. JC’s heart sank as he realised there was no way past the razor blades and no way round them.