“It’s like this: we planned to do all the hard work over here, before slipping back to our home branches to finish up. Everyone getting to go home happy. We’ve spent more time and sweat than you can imagine, trying to make that plan work in theory. Cam’s lot don’t really care, because they fully intend to fuck off back to the stars when we’re done. It doesn’t affect them much which universe they’re in, but it’s a big deal for the rest of us.” She suppressed a yawn. At this point she’d been up for almost forty-eight hours, and was due another dose of the amphetamine-type drugs Cam had fabricated for her. “So reality check time. We’ve gone over the maths and there is too great a chance that going home will compromise the plan. Meaning it’s bye-bye universe.” She felt like crying, suddenly, because damn it…she had tried so hard to square that circle. It had come down to her casting vote—and she’d really wanted to go home. She wanted to live. After all, she’d only worked out how to set her life straight two-thirds of the way through it. She had a lot of living to catch up on, that miserable Khurram Amir Khan had never dared to try.

But the whole universe was a precious bauble to balance against a few more parties at Camden Lock, a few more liaisons in understanding bars and another couple of pride marches. Never let it be said that when it came to the crunch, Kay Amal Khan was selfish.

“So it’s like this,” she told them all. “We’re going to do it all from this side. We’re going to nail the doors shut, with us still inside the house. Even then it might not work. I’m not going to lie to you, this is stuff that nobody—not Cam, not Ertil, not Murther and certainly not me—can claim to have mastered. But we think we’ve got the maths down and we’re playing the odds. This is a suicide mission. I’m sorry. We didn’t know when we set out.”

She was looking specifically at Julian and Alison, at Mal and Lee, who needn’t have come. They could have stayed in the Cousins’ world. They could have been repatriated to the shattered streets of London. They could have…any number of things, really. But now they were sentenced to exile and probably death, just like her.

“So…what, then?” Julian asked after a contemplative pause.

“Well, we stick with Cam, I guess. Live on in a trilobite’s gut. I think it’s used to the idea of having company, now. So maybe that can be a thing. We’d suffocate pretty damn quick outside, so I don’t really see any other option. I really am sorry. We all are.”