Stay away from it, Mother, Thea thought, tears stinging her eyes. Stay away from this because it’s too big for you. It’s not your world and it will eat you up. The idea of her mother in danger because of her stupid decision to take part in the trial was too much for Thea to bear. She pushed the thought down, but her brain was a badly packed suitcase and it had had a lot stuffed into it over the last few days, much of it waiting to spring back up again.

She was a burning tree.

With bobbing ghost balloons.

In her hallucination, the boat she’d been in with her mother had been full of baby owls and this boat was full too. She was taking the dead with her. Rosie and Ethan, but also all the others: Moira, Richard, the guy with the shark-tooth necklace who’d spoken to her during yoga, and every other person who’d joined the sleep trial with her. Kyle. Even Delores and Moses. They’d be with her for the rest of her life.

‘What are you going to do? If we make it?’ Thea asked.

Rory considered her, both of them moving gently in time with the waves. A gull screeched and Thea couldn’t help but flinch; it sounded like a warning, like panic.

‘Forget this ever happened.’ Rory sniffed. ‘Hide. Get a normal job and change my name. Survive.’

The word was unspoken between them: if. If we get to the shore. If we don’t capsize ourselves or get intercepted. If there isn’t a crew waiting for us on the mainland. If we find a way to get from the tiny deserted ghost village to a city, any city. If, if, if …

And then if she got to that mythical city, before she got warm, or a shower or food, first she would have to get that memory stick out – that was still in the zip pocket of her jacket, and she would have to … do something with it.

Right now, she couldn’t think what that something should be, but she knew it would be a big task. It would require someone equally big to take it on. Fearless. The thing was, despite being a burning tree with bobbing ghost balloons, despite everything that had happened to her on the island and everything she had done in response (wet, thudding sound of an axe meeting flesh) she wasn’t sure she was the right person.

But she was the only person.

Her thoughts were her own. Her own head, her own dreams or nightmares were not tampered with, taken out and held up to the light, squeezed or moulded like plasticine. What went on inside her brain – be it weird, disappointing, or depressing – was hers. Ing Enterprises, Aspire, whoever they bloody were, did not respect that.