‘I don’t really know,’ I say. I turn my head so I can look up into Sarah’s tired eyes. I try to smile. I’m exhausted. My eyelids are already fluttering when I open my mouth to speak, ‘He was you, he tricked me into thinking he was you, the monster.’

Sarah takes this in without any sign of confusion. She shakes her head and looks away. ‘I know. He showed me. A couple days ago he came into my cell. I thought he was there to take me back to the room where . . .’ She trails off for a minute, then clears her throat and straightens up. ‘This room with all these machines and strobe lights. I feel like I’m crazy in there and everything hurts. It’s hard to explain. But he wasn’t here to take me anywhere. He just stood there, not saying anything. Then he started jerking around, like he was having a seizure. Then he started to shrink, and, bam! – it was like I was looking into a mirror. When he finally did speak, it wasn’t his voice. It was mine. I tried to hit him and rip out his eyes, but he beat me so badly that . . . Well, the first time I could stand was when I caught you when you were thrown in here.’

‘I’m flattered.’ I try to laugh, but it gets caught in my throat. ‘No, seriously, thank you.’

‘Well, you’re welcome.’ She’s smiling down on me, and I think she must have been terrified . I was more scared than I’ve ever been just now, and I was born and raised to do this. This is my life. It isn’t Sarah’s, not by a long shot.

‘I don’t get something. How did he know so much about you? How could he trick me for so long?’

‘They know everything, Six,’ she says, her voice deadly serious.

I slowly begin to roll out of her lap, to push myself off the ground. I try to ignore my ribs begging me to stay down. ‘What do you mean, everything ? About who? And what do you know? About any of this?’

Sarah looks away. ‘What little I know, I told them all of it,’ she says after a minute. ‘I couldn’t help it. They kept taking me to that room, strapping me down, and they injected me with drugs. They asked me the same questions, over and over; after a while my mouth moved even though I told it to stop. I just couldn’t stop talking.’ Sarah puts her face in her hands and sobs. ‘I told them everything, repeating whole conversations word for word.’

I sit against the wall and let the pain wash over my body. ‘If John sees Setrákus Ra and believes it’s you, I don’t know what will happen.’