He shrugged off his jacket, an ache moving through him as it dropped to the dock. It was a good jacket, and he was sad to see it go, but the leather would just get waterlogged and drag him down.

Gunshots blasted through the air behind him.

Ash jumped.

He sank into the black water, cold pressing against his skin and seeping into his ears, blocking out all other sound and leaving him with a deep ache in his skull. He surfaced, gasping, and started to swim, hoping the exercise would pump some warmth back into his blood.

His arms and legs began to stiffen after a few minutes, and his skin burned with cold. His trousers quickly filled with water, slowing him down. Another ten minutes of this and everything below his neck had gone numb. He was vaguely aware that he’d slowed down, that it was harder to move his limbs through the water.

It can’t be much farther, he told himself. His chest ached and he could barely catch his breath. He heard the sound of a motor growling in the distance. The cackle of laughter. It wouldn’t be long before the Cirkus found him.

Pain prickled just below his ribs, where the piece of the Second Star had lodged itself into his gut. Cringing, Ash pressed a hand to his belly. He could feel the hard edge of his ship just below his navel, shifting inside of him, and he realized that the wound must’ve opened up, again.

He lifted his hand. It was damp . . . but not with blood. The substance that clung to his fingers was thicker than water, and silvery.

Ash blinked, and the substance changed, hardening into a solid, black mass that coated his hand like a glove.

And then it changed again, this time becoming gaseous and green. Ash watched, amazed, as it drifted into the inky-blue sky around him and was gone.

Exotic matter acted like that, he knew. It shifted and changed in that canister the Professor had built for it, so that he never really got a handle on what he was looking at. But Ash didn’t have any exotic matter in his body.

Did he?

It was true that, when they crashed the Second Star, he got a piece of something lodged inside his belly, just below his ribs. He’d thought it was part of his ship, but what if he’d guessed wrong? What if there was exotic matter inside of him, lodged deep into his belly along with the old piece of the Second Star? Would that explain why he’d been able to travel through the anil without a time machine?

Was it possible that he was the time machine?

Ash closed his eyes now, swimming hard toward the anil. The sound of shouting bounced over the waves, so near. He felt the spray of a boat on his cheeks.

The anil was just a few yards ahead. As Ash swam closer, he felt something, some faint pressure slip beneath his ribs, tugging him forward. It was so slight that he could’ve been imagining it. Just a needle’s prick of pain. A sharp tug. It took his breath away.