His fingers are white around the craft’s yoke. I see his pulse beneath the grimy skin of his neck, beating, beating. ‘One more boost,’ he yells. ‘Then we black out and dive.’

‘Moloney—’ I grab his shoulder.

For one brief second, he meets my eyes. Whatever he sees there, it makes his face blanch, his pupils contract. Then he lets out a curse and shoulders me back, wrenching at the yoke and slamming his palm onto the control panel.

‘No!’ I scream, too late; we are diving, the craft breaking up around us as it tears through the air. And then I see it, a bank of gloom ahead, where even the stars are blotted out. The Edge: the place no one comes out of alive.

Dust and sand splinter the glass of the windshield. We plummet towards the earth, but there is no earth, only whirling sand in the craft’s lights and we are tossed and spun as the wind claws metal from the craft’s wings, shredding it to bone.

Beside me, the General screams, but I can’t hear words. I look up and – for a heartbeat – see the ground, hurtling towards us.

I throw my arms across the General as the world is torn apart.

Three: The Book Of Life

THREE

THE

BOOK

OF

LIFE

IN THE RED light blood looks black, shining terribly bright, like oil. There is so much of it. Too much. It means I have minutes, perhaps seconds.

I drop the scalpel, but do not hear it hit the floor. The alarm is too loud, bouncing from the metal walls. In the red light nothing looks real. I trip, sprawling over the examination table, blood spattering in great dark pools. Across the room Darius the medic lies unconscious, his eyes rolled back, the saliva of the last word he uttered still fresh in his mouth, the needle in his neck where I plunged it. Poor Darius. Too young for this assignment. Too trusting.

I fall against the counter, sending the broken halves of the collar skittering across the floor.

My hands fumble desperately among the instruments, smearing everything with blood. There, the cauterising rod, used for much of the quick and dirty prison medical care, the only thing we deserve. I grab it and slam the button to charge it. It sputters, then begins to heat up. Black clouds roll in at the edges of my vision and as I raise it I think I see someone watching me; someone with my face but the eyes of a bird of prey.

I jam the iron against my throat. The hiss and the smell and the pain is too much and I know I’m going to black out, that all of this will have been for nothing. But, just as my eyes roll, the thing with my face grabs my arm, jerks me upright.

When I retch, dark sand pours out of my mouth.

* * *