There are cries, alarms, the smell of burning plastic and gore. It’s all over me, I realise, spattered from the medic’s chest. I hear footsteps and turn, expecting to see soldiers. But it’s the General, her face a mask of blood.

‘Move!’ she orders.

Are they with us? Is it their intervention, somewhere in the web of time, that ensures the security systems of the base are activated two seconds too late, that the tracking beams of the automatic guns are only able to spray the dust at our heels as we plunge across the parade ground? Are they showing the General the path to take through all those potential futures, as they have shown me?

By the time we reach the mule, the camp is on full alert, the air thick with gunfire and roaring engines and thudding boots.

‘They have a shock cannon at the gate,’ the General says, ‘and I am damn near out of charges. If we distract them, and try to ram it—’

My head is ringing with the noise and the chaos. I squeeze my eyes shut. Had I known it would come to this? The General swears and shoves at me as more beams blink into life and sweep the ground.

‘We need to move.’

‘I know.’ Neither of us will die here. ‘Follow me.’

‘Low!’

I count the seconds between each beam and run for a few inches of shadow cast by a wall.

‘Low,’ the General hisses, stumbling close behind me. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘On the western side of the base,’ I say, buttoning the medkit into my jacket, where my heart thuds madly. ‘There should be a waste pipe. If they haven’t buried it, we can use it to get out.’

‘And if they’ve buried it?’

I don’t answer. We have thirty seconds grace, perhaps, to make it out alive before the base marshals its scattered forces.

Whose grace? I look into the sky, as I once did every night as a child during prayers, but dust-filled clouds drown the stars.

I grab the General and run. Above, there’s a terrible whine, the screech of an alarm, and one of the automatic guns opens fire, charges searing into the metal fence behind us. No time to stop. We round a corner and there – I choke with relief – there is the waste pipe, large enough to transport the leavings of the entire base.

‘You’re crazy,’ the General yells, ducking charges. ‘I’m not getting in there.’

I grab the pistol from her and empty the remaining charges into the pipe’s join until the plastic melts and it begins to leak foul-smelling water.

‘Help!’ I kick at it.