Wind, hot sand and punishing heat, along with a pounding headache, welcome me to our next teleporting destination. I try to shield my eyes from the blinding sun as I lie on my back, recovering. Welcome to New Mexico.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Eight groans, but he sounds satisfied. ‘We made it.’

I smile but stay where I am to give the pain in my head time to lessen before I try to move.

‘Ella?’ I call out.

‘I’m right here, Marina,’ she calls over. ‘Look where we are! New Mexico!’

‘Finally. Can you try communicating with Six again?’

‘I already have. No luck yet.’

I slowly stand up. Eight is on his hands and knees at the bottom of the sand dune, dry heaving. The teleporting seems to have affected him more severely than it did the last couple of times. Ella has her hand on the back of his neck. The two Chests sit nearby. I rotate 360 degrees and all I see in every direction is sand, sand and more sand. And the occasional cactus. ‘Which way should we go?’

Ella and Eight climb up the dune and stand next to me. After a minute, Ella points north and says, ‘Look! Six said something earlier about dying in a desert with mountains.’

Squinting, I see where she’s pointing. The faint outlines of mountains ripple in the afternoon haze.

‘That’s where we’re going, then,’ Eight says. ‘We can cover the distance in short hops once my teleporting comes back. For now, we walk.’

We pick up the Chests and head north. ‘Ella,’ I say, ‘you need to keep trying Six. If you can’t reach her, maybe you can try Four, or even try one of the others, Five or Nine.’ We’ve lost so much time just getting here. Maybe Ella can find something out that will save us some time now.

Nine examines the map he’s brought up on the screen in the middle of the steering wheel. He looks around at the endless desert surrounding us. The car’s GPS has picked up an underground tunnel nearby; now we just need to find the entrance. When I press the green triangle on the tablet, it shows we’re only a mile or two from the ship. I push the blue circle and shout, ‘Nine! They’re here!’

‘Who’s here?’ Nine asks, scanning the horizon. ‘The other three blue dots. They’re here in New Mexico!’ Nine rips the tablet out of my hands and lets out a loud hoot. ‘Holy shit, bro. This is really all about to go down.’ He looks at me, his eyes shining.

‘I think this is it. The beginning of the end.’ As much as I’m looking forward to finally getting a chance to do what we need to do, it’s dawning on me that this is going to be the fight of our lives.