Akuji falls to her knees and turns to face the bed, like she’s about to pray or something, but instead she pulls out a drawer from the bed. Here, she places her fighting sticks and slams the drawer home. Then she stands and drops her clothes. She’s nothing but muscle and bone, and the split second before I turn away, I see a tattoo—a line of secret symbols driven into her bloodless skin travelling up the side of her ribs.

I strip down to my underwear as fast as possible, feeling self-conscious. When I turn around, pulling down my cotton shirt, I find her gazing right at me. She’s barefoot, wearing a pair of grey tights and a white V-neck T-shirt. Ironic words, in black, are emblazoned across her chest: SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.

What did they tell you? she demands. The shape of the words snap through the air. The fact I can hear them—feel them—still throws me.

“No big deal,” I say. “Just that getting my friend back is important, or, you know, the whole multiverse will end.”

She stares at me, no expression in her marble-pale eyes.

“Can I ask you something?” I say.

You just have.

“Can you hear what I’m thinking? Like I can hear you?”

She shakes her head. You must isolate the words first. Free them.

“How do I do that?”

Choose the word. In your head.

“Any word?”

Think of it. Think of nothing else. Take all the noise in your head, everything that is not the word, and black it out. Leave only the word.

I focus. I take a deep breath and I think about a word.

One word.

Akuji stares at me and I stare back at her. The room is still and the word is bright in my head. A jewel. Nothing else. Just the word.

Simple, Akuji thinks to me, without hesitation. Issi.

I nod slowly, impressed and more than a little scared. “She was Malik’s girlfriend, wasn’t she?”

What makes you say that?

“Intuition.”

Akuji smiles. I run my hand through my hair, feeling exposed. A bar of red light falls across her jawline. Her eyes sink into shadow.

“I’m taking her place,” I say. “And you don’t like it.”

Akuji just looks at me.

The air in the room feels thick. Outside, the ash floats down unabated. A neon light flickers.

“Something bad happened to her, didn’t it?”

She became lost, Akuji thinks to me.

“Lost?”

Between.

“How?”

It happens. Some Fall between worlds. They do not return. Not the same. Falling…it can break you. Make you into something else.

Akuji turns, climbs into her bed and rolls onto her side, away from me. Like hot breath on cold glass, the moment quickly fades. Her voice vanishes from my head.

I crawl into my bed. Weary, tired to the bone. The sheets are stiff and cold.

—