He lowers the pistol slowly and puts it down in his lap. Efrayl’s pale face is a mess of deep, ugly cuts. Deep enough to see through to the workings beneath his skin. His tunic and trousers are soaked black with blood.

‘Is she alive?’ I ask.

Efrayl picks up a device from the floor beside him. An external monitron, with a blood-splattered screen. He smears the blood obscuring the display with his thumb, and then nods.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘She is alive.’

I go to my knees, then, from the impact of his words alone. A single tear rolls down my cheek, hot and stinging. ‘You kept her safe,’ I say.

He nods, a lolling motion of his head. ‘You said to shoot anyone who tried to get to her,’ he says thickly. ‘So I did.’

I look around at those he killed. At the makeshift weapons in their hands. Bits of broken glass, and cutting tools.

‘You did well, Efrayl.’

He nods again. His breathing is ragged and fitful. ‘What you said before, about switching off the machine,’ he says. ‘Did you mean it?’

I glance up at Sofika, coiled in the cables of her machine. My dream-taker. My soulmate. The only person who knows exactly what I am and what I’ve done, and still has the heart to smile at the sight of me.

‘She won’t suffer any more,’ I say, looking back at Efrayl. ‘Not after Dimmamar.’

‘Good,’ he says. ‘That is good.’

‘Thank you, Efrayl,’ I say. ‘For everything you have done.’

He smiles faintly. ‘I did my best,’ he says, between breaths. ‘That’s all.’

And then my medicae takes a rasping breath and starts to shake just like Sofika did before. A seizure.

I try to get up to help him, but my legs won’t obey me and neither will my lungs. They are so shallow now that I can’t get air at all. I fall properly onto the deck, face down. Zoric runs over and crouches down beside me. He rolls me onto my back and puts his hand to that wound in my side and I hear him shout at Yumia to run for a medicae. I try to tell him that I don’t need one. That it doesn’t hurt, really. That I just need a moment. But the words won’t come. I don’t have enough air to speak them. I can’t move. Can’t breathe. All that I can do is lie still on my back and watch as Sofika’s stars disappear from the edges inwards, swallowed by darkness.

Evangeline

EVANGELINE

The furious eyes of the crewman go wide and white as I cut him down with my sword. The man falls to his knees, still murmuring. Still trying to claw at my vestments and my armour with bloodied hands.

‘I saw it,’ he slurs. ‘T-the abyss.’