‘At the Centre. We’re at the lighthouse. Max hid you away because you …’ She suddenly felt embarrassed at calling him crazy. Even though he was. ‘You tried the tech on yourself and it kinda messed with your brain.’

‘But she’s trialling it anyway?’

‘Yep. They think they’ve worked out the problems.’

‘They haven’t,’ Ethan interrupted. ‘What you’ve created could probably destroy lots of people, like it destroyed Ted. How does that feel?’

‘Ethan!’ Thea shoved him.

‘What? In two minutes he’s probably going to go back to thinking we’re goldfish or something. What does it matter?’

Moses hung his head so Thea couldn’t see his expression.

‘How long have I been gone?’ he whispered. ‘How long have they kept me drugged?’

The video diary had been date-stamped and the final entry had been the previous summer. She kept quiet.

‘I should never have tested it on myself, but I’m not mad … not anymore, at least. They didn’t need to keep me locked away. You can help me, set me free. I could talk to her, help stop all of this!’

His eyes shifted warily from Thea to Ethan.

‘Is there some way we can destroy it?’ Thea tried, despite Ethan rolling his eyes.

Moses laughed, a harsh, raspy sound.

‘Destroy my tech? It’s beautiful.’ Moses slammed his palm against the side of his head a few times. ‘I wanted to make us gods. We could have been better than AI, the human machine, super-charged …’

‘Yeah well, now you’re cuffed to a radiator and I’ve got the key.’ Ethan came towards him and Moses flicked a wary glance his way. ‘Life sucks.’

Moses started to scrunch up his blanket in his fist. ‘Wait! If you take me there,’ he said, stretching out his sinewy neck, ‘to the Centre. I’d help. Everyone … needs … to … hear … the … truth.’

He blinked and shook his head, his last few words slurred, his eyelids drooping.

‘See?’ Ethan said. ‘Useless. He’ll be asleep soon anyway. Leave him.’

Useless. Thea wasn’t so sure. As she watched his chest rise and fall peacefully, she also wasn’t so sure that he was really asleep, there was something tense about his shoulders and jaw. Could they believe what he said? Not mad or dangerous – but drugged by Delores so she could steal his technology? She kept thinking of the Moses in the video diary, the one at the start. He would have helped them. Somewhere inside his shattered brain that Moses must still be there.

Ethan didn’t look convinced.

Thea went for a shower in the bathroom at the end of Moses’s room, even though she had to pick her way through snow and the fallen roof to get there. The soap was old and cracked, and she didn’t look too long or too hard at the plughole.