‘Ahri,’ she says, and just like before my name comes with blood. That is dark, too, painting a thin line from the corner of her mouth down to her chin. I let go of her and hammer the emergency buzzer for Efrayl. I don’t release it until I hear the door open at my back and the medicae comes rushing in.

‘Do something,’ I shout at him. ‘Do something, now!’

He pushes me aside, opens his emergency kit and pulls out an injector that he connects to one of the lines feeding her. Efrayl depresses the plunger, and I see the dark liquid press its way out of the glass injector and into the plastek line. Into her veins. It reminds me so much of the dream that I nearly stop him, but then Sofika stops panting and shaking and she settles as if she is going to sleep, her blue eyes sliding closed slowly.

‘What is that?’ I ask hollowly. ‘More kalma?’

‘No,’ Efrayl replies. ‘She is too far gone for that. This is sedation. A chemical sleep, where dreams may not find her.’

I look at her face, and I know he is right about the dreams because Sofika isn’t frowning or shifting. Her face is still, and calm. Her breathing is even. Efrayl sets about checking the machine. He checks fluid levels and taps his fingertip against glass vials. His shoulders slump.

‘I will have to keep her under,’ he says. ‘As Sofika’s body grows weaker, her powers grow stronger. She will not be able to tell what is real from what is not.’

‘How long will she have to stay like this?’

Efrayl turns and looks at me. His eyes are heavily shadowed, his fingernails bitten down to stubs. ‘Until we reach the other side,’ he says. ‘She cannot take the Rift’s pressures.’

I blink. ‘That might mean days.’

‘It might,’ he says. ‘But I won’t risk another seizure like that.’

My heart feels as though it shrinks as I imagine days without Sofika.

Days of dreaming alone.

Efrayl looks at Sofika sleeping, and he shakes his head. ‘I told you,’ he says softly. ‘I told you this journey would kill her.’

‘And I told you that it wouldn’t.’

Efrayl looks back at me. ‘Her blood is dying,’ he says. ‘It is turning bad, just like the water. Just like the food. It is poisoning her.’

‘The machine is meant to cleanse her blood,’ I say. ‘So the machine is failing.’

He laughs without a trace of humour. ‘The machine is working as best it can. I am working as best I can. You have to understand, lord. This has always been about management. About limiting Madame Sofika’s suffering. The machine cannot prevent death. Only the God-Emperor can do that.’

I look at Sofika, sleeping peacefully. At the dark blood pushing around the plastek lines that feed her. I think of my dreams. Of my father’s promise.