Thea held out her hand to Moses.

She had spent so much time thinking and talking about this man in front of her, with his weird skull tattoo. Ever since she’d landed on the island, she had been dogged by his name and the rumours around it: inventor, genius, recluse, madman.

The Great Moses Ing.

‘You don’t have to fix this problem, Moses,’ she said. ‘It’s over.’

He swayed on his handrail perch, a living phrenology head. She didn’t know if they could get past Kyle, even if she got the gun from Moses and coaxed him down from the handrail, and she didn’t know if they’d find Delores’s boat. But she knew she couldn’t watch another person die.

‘Moses?’ She held his gaze as he turned his head back to her. ‘You don’t need to do this. Come down – you can help me. You’re Moses Ing, after all – you can tell people what happened here. They’d believe you. We can get out together.’

He gazed at her sadly. ‘We’re not getting out.’

Kyle smiled that smile, the one that hooked up the corners of his mouth. ‘He’s right, you know – you’re not getting out. Not that I care what happens to him – we can buy in another Moses if we need one. And you? Aspire have got plans for you but if you prove too difficult, well, they can find another you as well. Either way, this is the end. Jump, old man, or use the gun. I’m waiting.’

‘No! Stop!’ Thea turned to Kyle. ‘You need him! He could probably fix Morpheus – if you gave him a chance.’

She wasn’t quite sure what she was saying. Her only thought was to keep the two men safely where they were: Moses on the walkway and Kyle at a distance.

‘They’re not my orders.’ Kyle shrugged and took another step nearer, Moses between them. ‘Aspire has world-class laboratories which I’m sure can do any fixing for themselves.’

‘The world-class labs don’t matter.’ Moses smiled grimly and tapped his head. ‘You need a world-class mind. I used to have that. Not anymore. I wouldn’t help them anyway. Look at it all,’ he said, his voice breaking and tears forming again. ‘Look at what I’ve lost: Morpheus, Max … all of it. Look at what you did with my beautiful ideas. I gave you the tools to make gods of us. Do you understand that? I gave you the chance to be more than human, to be better, and look what you did instead … instead you created monsters.’