Morpheus had been tasked with doing something different to her sleep than the other clients, but it seemed the outcome was the same: the brain craving some REM relief. One minute, she’d been watching Moses cry over the dead body of Delores, the next she’d been in an owl-filled boat with her mother, Ethan and Rosie, a retching owlet on her knee coughing up …

The memory stick!

Thea got to her knees, black shapes floating in her vision, twisting and squirming like bacteria under a microscope. For the first time, she registered how quiet the room was. No wailing. Where was Moses?

How long had she been asleep?

Delores’s body was still on the floor, a waxwork of the woman she had once been, the red of her hair mingling with the obscenely glossy blood oozing from her head.

Nearby, someone started speaking in a dead, monotonous tone.

‘Morpheus’ – it was Moses – ‘was the master of dreams. He ordered the dreams of heroes and kings. He influenced the dreams of the gods themselves …’

On her hands and knees, Thea crawled around the edge of the desk and found Moses, huddled against the wall in a tight ball, his eyes a blank stare.

Above Moses’s head, on Delores’s desk, was her laptop. A laptop that would definitely have internet connection. Thea instinctively checked that the memory stick was tucked safely in the waistband of her leggings.

Moses sniffed. He’d smeared blood around his eyes trying to wipe them and now, with the markings on his head and the streaks on his face, he looked like one of those frightening tribal masks.

‘Moses?’

‘Thea, wasn’t it?’ he asked vaguely, never taking his eyes from Delores.

‘Yes.’

‘Look what she did. This place.’

‘You could help stop it.’ Thea hauled herself up, her arms wobbling.

‘Me? It’s done. There’s no coming back from this.’

She looked at him, in his blood-spattered T-shirt and dirty pyjama bottoms, hunched and crying. Outside the office door, Thea didn’t know what was waiting for her, but it wasn’t a red carpet to freedom. She needed Moses, as help, leverage, or bait. She wasn’t yet sure which one.

‘Delores had a private boat waiting for her, in a cove,’ Thea told him. ‘No one knew about it. If we get off the island, if you open the door, you could tell people the truth. What they’re planning to do, how dangerous it is …’

‘She should never have sold the tech. How could she?’ His voice took on a child-like whine. ‘She took it away from me.’

He stared at Delores’s body and then clutched at his face, rubbing his temples hard.

‘I’ve killed her,’ he moaned. ‘But it wasn’t my fault. You know that, don’t you? It wasn’t my fault.’

He flicked his eyes up to her guiltily, then back over to the body.