“Everything you think you know. The world. All the things that seem so important to you, they’re not what you think. Nothing is what you think.” He looks at the globe on my desk, spins it with a finger. “Africa, Asia, Europe—they’re not the same places you’ve known all your life. Similar. Not the same. So, yeah. Let ’em go.”

“You want me to let the continents go?”

He stops pacing, looks me dead in the eyes and my knees begin to shake. “I’m gonna say some things to you right now that might sound crazy, OK? But stick with me. This place? This world? This is not your world. This is Lūna.”

“Lūna?”

“That’s what I said.”

“OK,” I say, playing along. “If Lūna isn’t my world, then…what’s my world?”

“Sol,” he says, matter-of-fact.

“Right. And…where exactly has Sol gone?”

“Nowhere. It’s still there. It just doesn’t have you in it anymore. Not this you.”

“You’re doing my head in. You’re crazy.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“Look—”

“No, you look, Ana. You need my help. I was the nearest, and so here I am. That’s the way it works, like it or not.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your ears,” he says. “They’ve been buzzing, right? Crackling. You’ve had a bad taste in your mouth for a while. Your teeth ache. And you’ve seen things.”

Seen things? What does he know about that? What can he know? Who does he think he is, telling me stuff like that?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snap at him, fed up. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Me? I’m about the only person you can trust right now.”

“Trust? I don’t even know you, or what you are.”

“I told you. My name’s Malik. Malik Habib. I’m a Pathfinder.”

“Pathfinder?”

“Yup.”

“See, that’s exactly the sort of thing makes you come across as whacko. Let the continents go. A world called Lūna. Pathfinder. Just…stop messing with me. Stop all this madness.” I stride back towards the window. “You need to get outta here. What was I thinking, letting you in? I was—”

“Acting instinctively,” he says behind me.

I turn and look at him.

“You’ve landed in a strange new world,” he says. “You’ve lost your best friend. What else can you do but be guided by instinct? And by someone who knows it. Me.”

I say nothing.

Malik snatches up my iPad. “Tell me you haven’t been Googling alternate universes. It’s the first thing everyone does. Nowadays, anyway.”