“The Nissa came and found me. They knew our Earth, and they picked me up a mile off as having gotten displaced from it. They were running an operation in our dimension and they’re not the most inconspicuous types, so they recruited me. So I got to go home. They had me running errands, mostly to do with Doc Khan, but all sorts. They really are trying to save the universe, if it helps.” She read Lee’s expression correctly. “Okay, doesn’t help, right. Look, I…” But she choked up, and it seemed she had no more words, no more excuses.

“You…” Lee wanted to storm off again, except she’d already stormed off and had nowhere to storm further off to. “Mal, please.”

“I knew I wasn’t to contact you. The Nissa have enemies. Dangerous people. I mean, you know that now, right? And I understood I’d lead them to you, probably. Even me being involved was bad enough. Because if they could recognize me, maybe they’d follow that to you, to my folks, to anyone who’d known me. So I knew it would be an absolutely stupid, stupid risk for me to actually get in touch with you direct, and arrange to meet while on a job. Totally unacceptable, right?”

“Yeah, sure, spy malarkey rule number one,” Lee said helplessly. “And…?”

Mal swallowed, and then said in a very small voice, “I couldn’t leave it, Lee. I couldn’t be in the right world, the right city, knowing the whole universe was cracking like an egg, and just…not call, not see you, not…be with you. Lee, I was here for four years, and sometimes it was horrible and I wanted you there because you always helped. And sometimes it was beautiful and I wanted you there because—who else could I ever share that stuff with? And I wanted TV and pizza and…washing machines, if you fucking insist, but I wanted you most of all. So I went off-script and got you to Camden. Then that business went south and I was delayed. But I met you anyway, and I told myself that would be it. No more messing about until the job was done, and then maybe we’d have saved the universe by then. But I did check in on you again, and the bad guys had already found you. So I got onto the Fishnet and tried to save you. I brought you here—down a fault the Nissa had already used—but you ran off. Then I took you…”

“Somewhere really, really cold.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Mal said. “I don’t even know if that was me, or if that was the Fishnet itself. Cos that’s where you went—to its home world. The Findus dimension, where the frozen fish are.”