Her face is slicked with sweat. ‘We never run,’ she says, and leaps up, firing the blaster again.

She catches the Marshal’s buzzard on its nose, and snarls triumphantly as it flips in the air, careering into the metal barriers behind us.

No more time. I grab her arm and drag her with me as she screams about insubordination. With a desperate surge of relief, I see that the others have reached the doors of the Charis, that Pegeen is slumped safely inside the hold.

‘Silas,’ I yell, climbing aboard. ‘Get us out of here!’

Blood soaks his shirtfront from a gash to his head, and he looks dazed, but he nods, staggering towards the flight deck.

A charge pings off the ship’s hull, and something shatters.

‘Limiter scum!’ the General calls.

‘Shit!’ Falco ducks as a rain of charges slices through the night. ‘Low, they’ve got us fixed!’

I look down in alarm. A generator is running at the edge of the dock and beneath the dirt I see it: the fine, mesh pattern of a gravity mat, fizzing at the edges, locking the Charis in place.

Deep within the ship I hear the rumble of the engines starting up, coughing and spluttering. The General fires the blaster again and the ship shakes, the metal of the walkway beyond buckling from the force of the explosion.

Through the blinding flare, they crash into my consciousness, unspooling the paths around me. Thousands of versions, but through it all the same terrifying images; the desert, my friends lying dead, the thing with my face reaching out…

My eyes clear. Falco is yelling, the General smacking the dead blaster. I see the Marshal stumble through the smoke towards us, his pistols raised.

I leap from the ship, back to the ground.

Shouts follow, but I ignore them as I kick at the dock’s control panel. The ship strains against the pull of the mat, and soon it will overheat, the Peacekeepers will rush upon us and it will be too late.

Wrenching open the metal casing, I find the power lever. A shape looms from the smoke, not six feet away; Marshal Joliffe, his face lit with violence, a pistol pointed at my heart.

Too late.

I pull the lever, sending the Charis leaping into the air at the same moment that he fires.

* * *

The wind carries me in its jaws. I feel its breath rush past me, a continuous exhalation.

I remain motionless. The jaws are like a cat’s; gentle while I don’t move, while I don’t remind it of my quick heart and thin skin, so easily broken. But it is already broken, and pain comes on in fast, red circles. Who has done this to me?