‘Tie goes to the runner. It means when something is out there, it’s out there. You can’t get it back.’

Meera is shaking her head as if she’s just been handed a plate of worms for tea.

‘No. I don’t believe that. Maybe we can’t get it back, but we don’t have to let it destroy us. It’s all about the decisions we make. Frankenstein could have treated his monster nicely, but he didn’t. This doesn’t have to end in tears.’

‘Meera,’ I say. ‘I do believe you’re even more of a Pollyanna than I am.’

‘I am not a Pollyanna. But I have hope, and you need to have that, too.’

Hope. She did cure my narcolepsy, albeit by spiking my bevvies. Daring to hope is freakishly scary, though.

Meera says, ‘So you’re a dreamhacker, right? And you can talk to this Agency? If communication is possible, then so is understanding. This is the foundation we stand on as people. Without the hope of understanding each other, we may as well give up.’

‘The Agency has been killing people. It tried to kill you just now. Try negotiating with a murderer.’

She has no answer for that. I go over to a shop door, where in the reflected light I see myself all in black, with the Creeper’s mask. I’m a dreamhacker. If I can change other people’s dreams, I can change this dream. Anything else makes me a hypocrite.

I will the image to be the actual me. Charlie Aaron, green-eyed, head half-depilated, soggy, unremarkable. And defiant.

There you are, love. Be a fucking professional and get it done.

‘Let’s climb back up to the platform,’ Meera says. ‘I would feel safer there.’

I wouldn’t. But we climb up the scaffolds. It’s easy, because this is a dream. We do it in no time. When we get to the top, we are surrounded by greyscale sleepers acting out their individual dreams. I turn and look across the city. Written in cloud above the canal are the remnants of the words I have just spoken. Most of them have dissolved but one remains.

MURDERER.

I shiver. But Meera’s right: if I’m being used then it cuts both ways. The Agency is in my head. If I don’t like the way it is conducting itself, I have the power to change it.

No sleepwalking for me.

I’m awake, and what’s more, I’m going to wake everybody else up.

Meera is walking around the platform trying to talk to people, but they ignore her. I know how that feels. Well, they’re not going to ignore me. I’m the Agency. If I’ve been complicit in murder, then I’ll have to live with that – but I won’t let it define me.