‘You, Low, are a traitor and a murderer who didn’t even have the courage to answer for her crimes.’ She shifts uncomfortably. ‘But, if we ever find anyone mad or stupid enough to take us off this moon, I will pay your passage. In return you… will do your best to keep me alive. Until I can find an answer for whatever is happening to me.’

Her hand is pressed to her side again. She’s suffering, not only from the wound, I realise. Were the artificial enhancements within her breaking down, like the Commander had said?

‘Agreed.’

We look out at the passing desert.

‘We shouldn’t be here,’ she says.

‘I know.’

‘We were dying. I couldn’t have walked another step, let alone crawled out of the desert.’ Her hazel eyes are still bloodshot. ‘How are we alive?’

I remember the way the dice had fallen, one, one, one, one. ‘I wonder if we are.’

‘What do you mean?’

I hesitate. It’s one thing to let such thoughts whisper through my head, but to voice them? ‘What if we did die, there in the Edge? But somehow, we have moved across to another reality, one where we lived.’ I cannot look at her. ‘All I know is that when I feel the Ifs I see different futures, or different possible futures or… realities that are happening, simultaneously. What if they lifted us from one to another, crossed two worlds over? How would we know? We wouldn’t, perhaps we would only feel that something is wrong.’

She stares at me. ‘Those… things you’re obsessed with, they don’t exist. They’re just superstition.’

I catch her arm as she turns away. ‘They showed me Moloney’s death before it happened. It’s why I went with him. I knew he would die.’

‘And they didn’t mention that we would too?’

‘The Augur did. Don’t you remember? They said we had to walk through hell.’

‘You’re insane, you know that?’

But there is something in her face, guarded and fearful. The mark carved into my chest prickles.

‘What did you see,’ I demand. ‘In the Suplicio? I saw Moloney. I saw bodies. I know you saw something.’

‘Nothing,’ she says, trying to pull away from me, her voice shaking. ‘Nothing, it was just an hallucination.’

‘It was more than that. What did you see?’

‘I didn’t.’

I shake her. ‘Tell me!’

‘I can’t!’ she bursts, her face reddened and terrified. ‘Don’t make me, please.’

Abruptly, I let go. I see it then, in a way I had not before; how much she carries for someone so young, a weight and responsibility she should never have had to bear, but does, all the same.

Hesitantly, I reach out again and place a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. You were right. We were just hallucinating.’

She wipes at her eyes. ‘Don’t patronise me, traitor.’

I smile a little. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’

‘You’d be dead before you got the words out.’ She sniffs. ‘Now, what the hell is Peg doing with those weapons?’