He thinks of the ropey amplifiers they’ve been loaned, working flat out for hours. The taped-up smoke detectors. The meltwater spilling in from outside, soaking the tangles of cabling all over the place. The wall of gas bottles in the quad. The crush of people in this overcrowded building. The sealed exits.

A disaster is just something that happens when several improbable events occur in the same place. That’s all it takes.

Above him, a sheet of red light flickers across the blackness. Is that a face he can see? Like a giant. Enraged. Yelling at him to act? Or is it just disco lights, synced to the beat?

Will is paralysed by fear. He doesn’t trust his senses.

Words are coming to him. Just like they did in the darkroom, on the speedboat before that. A voice that bypasses his ears, that speaks directly to his mind. The voice is familiar. It is the same.

This is not over.

That is what he’s being told.

Something unspeakable is about to happen. The information bypasses the part of his brain where thoughts are processed, weighed up. Instead, it is etched into the corner of his mind that deals in certainty.

This is the end.

It becomes obvious now. This strange messenger, of course it wasn’t Alfie. Will wasn’t being readied to prevent just a suicide. This was always going to be about something bigger. Time hasn’t yielded and distorted and folded back on itself just so one person’s life can be saved. Saving Alfie was just a bonus. A training exercise, even. Of course it’s about more than that.

Will gazes deeper into the smoke and the light. The less he focuses, the clearer it becomes. The face. The source of these words, of this certainty.

Why is this face so familiar to me?

No sooner has he constructed the question than the answer is clear to him.

It brings no shock. It is like he’s known all along but only now chosen to look at the information.

It is me.

The messenger.

It is me. Dying.

Am I too late? Will asks. Please. Let it not be too late.

He loses focus on the face that bears down on him, that great magnifying mirror above his head. Instead he tries to see the crowd. Nothing. He spins round but he can’t see across the stage either.

His chest feels heavy. Is it panic that makes it so hard to breathe? Or smoke? He’s sure he can taste it now: bitter, toxic.

He has to do something. He knows he’s condemning himself and all these hundreds of people if he doesn’t.

There must be a break-glass fire alarm somewhere. But where?

He considers leaving the decks and feeling along the walls for such a thing. But then he thinks about the panic an alarm might cause. This many people – one way in, one way out.