We wandered around the base, opening doors and checking the cabooses for survivors. If only, I kept saying to myself. If only Greta and I had stopped Quam when we had the chance. If only we’d guessed. If we hadn’t rushed off to the Helbreen.

If we hadn’t gone to the Helbreen, we’d have been on the Platform and we’d be dead. That’s the truth.

The mag hut was far enough from the Platform that it had survived unscathed. I drifted towards it and peered in the door. The machines had stopped. All I smelled inside was dust and darkness.

But there was something else. A sound, a shadow, a sense of movement at the back of the room. It was too dark to see. I took off my sunglasses, but the contrast was so stark it made no difference. Could there be survivors? And if there were, did I want to give them away to Pharaoh? I hesitated on the threshold.

A shout spun me back around. Fifty metres away, Fridge stood in the open doorway of Star Command. His hair was wild and burnt away in patches; smoke smudged his cheeks. He leaned on a ski pole, but the pole was too short for his height so he listed like a drunk. His right leg hung bent at a painfully unnatural angle. I couldn’t understand what he was shouting.

I still don’t know if I heard the shot. If I did, I thought it was just another pop from the burning Platform. I’d started to run to Fridge. He’d seen me and turned, dragging himself towards me, still shouting. Then he suddenly fell backwards. I thought he’d dropped his stick, or skidded on a patch of ice. It was only when I knelt beside him that I saw the hole in his jacket. Round as a ten-pence piece, straight over the heart, blood pumping out through the hole.

I took off my hat and pressed it over the hole, trying to staunch the bleeding. It wouldn’t work. I tried anyway. Holding it in place, I looked up. The creature stood about ten metres away, rifle in hand. No emotion on his face.

‘What have you done?’

Pharaoh looked as stricken as me. He ran over and grabbed the gun by its barrel, twisting it out of the creature’s hands. He must have let it go. Pharaoh threw the gun on to the snow and stared up at his creation. There were tears in his eyes. They rolled down his cheeks and froze in his beard.

‘What have you done?’ he repeated.

Overshadowed by the creature, Pharaoh didn’t look like the unstoppable tyrant I’d always known. He’d grown small, an old man whom time had caught up.

‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man?’ said the creature.

Pharaoh squinted up at him. ‘What?’

He said it again. Shreds of black smoke blew around his face.

‘Where did you learn that?’

‘Careful.’ Louise had backed away. I didn’t know who she was speaking to. ‘Don’t do anything—’

My hat was soaked through. I pulled off my neck-warmer and laid it on top. A drop of blood squeezed out from the hat and trickled down on to the Zodiac badge.

‘I made you,’ Pharaoh said. A trace of the old arrogance, holding out against a changing tide. ‘You owe me everything. Every cell in your being.’

‘And you? Does a father owe his son nothing, except the fact of his existence?’

Pharaoh took a step back. ‘I’m not your father, Thomas.’

‘What, then? A god?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Why are you talking like this?’ said Louise.

‘My master? Am I your slave?’

‘Of course not. You’re—’

Whatever life might be, it goes in an instant. One moment, Pharaoh was living, a being of infinite capacities. The next — nothing. Those big, disproportionate arms he’d created reached out and clutched him in an embrace. One arm went around his head, the other held his shoulders fast. Almost as if he was trying to comfort him.

One arm moved; the other didn’t. The neck cracked. Pharaoh slumped to the ground.

Louise screamed. I was too far away. Thomas picked up the rifle where Pharaoh had thrown it, aimed and fired. Blood sprayed from her neck and fell on the snow like rain as she twisted away and fell hard. Her body jerked as a second shot went into her.

I moved towards her, but a hand on my shoulder spun me back. He held me there, his fingers digging into my collarbone.

‘Come with me.’

Fifty-three

I struggled, of course, but I hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten in hours, and he had the strength of the damned. It wasn’t a fair fight. When I was down, he pulled open my jacket to take it off me — that really would have been the end. Then he saw the broken zip and thought better of it. He stuffed me in a sleeping bag, wound it up with rope, and tied me on the sled behind the snowmobile, packed in with the survival gear.

Strapped down, I could only twist my head and watch as he carried the bodies to the gulch and dropped them in. Pharaoh, Louise, Fridge; one, two, three. When he came to Fridge, the creature stripped off his yellow coat and put on Fridge’s red Zodiac jacket. Fridge was big enough it just about fitted him.

He walked past and disappeared from my field of vision. The sledge rocked as he mounted the snowmobile. The engine coughed into life; I gagged as exhaust fumes blew over my face.

The smoking hulk of Zodiac Station slid by out of sight. I felt a see-saw bump as we crossed the shoreline. Then we headed out on to the ice.

I can’t write much about the journey. While it was happening, it felt like one long moment stretching for eternity — and then when we stopped it seemed to have gone in a flash. Hours, I don’t know how many, navigating the sea ice: bouncing over cracks and ridges, backing up when an obstacle blocked our way, trying again. Once I opened my eyes and saw dark water rushing beside us, as if we were taking a scenic drive along a lake. The snowmobile heeled over on the slope, and for a terrifying second I thought we’d tumble in. Mostly, I kept my eyes shut, my head burrowed in the sleeping bag to keep off the wind and the fumes. Pressing myself flat against the sledge to minimise myself. Dematerialise. Bumping and jarring as the sledge whiplashed on the rugged ice. The knots that seemed so tight weren’t tight enough to stop me bouncing, bruising me deep into my bones. I waited for us to drop off the edge of the world.

And then we stopped. It felt sudden, though everything feels sudden when you have no control. The engine cut out and the silence hit me like a brick. Just wind and whiteness.

He dismounted, opened the engine cover and fiddled with the drive belt, the same way I’d seen Greta do it when we’d towed Hagger’s snowmobile home. Then he went round to the back and pushed. The machine slid obediently over the snow, towards a break in the ice a few metres away. It splashed into the water, breaking the sugary crust that had already begun to form, and sank. Was I next?

He unloaded the sledge. The skis, the stove, the ration box and the tent. A strange replay of that first night with Greta, when we’d camped out and been found by DAR-X. Except tonight, the role of Martin Hagger (deceased) will be played by Thomas Anderson. The first of that name.

He put up the tent. He unstrapped me and carried me inside, like a bear bringing his meal back to the cave. I rubbed my arms inside the sleeping bag to get blood back where the cords had numbed them, while he melted ice over the stove. He thrust the metal cup against my lips, his clumsy hands spilling it over my face. The water was so hot I choked, but I forced it down. I had to get my strength back. The snowmobile was gone. The nearest settlement was probably Svalbard — or maybe Nord Station, on the tip of Greenland. Hundreds of kilometres.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I whispered.

‘You are my salvation.’

He poured water into one of the orange meal packs and handed it to me. No spoon. I slurped it down. The pack said it was chicken with pesto, almost the most far-fetched thing I’d heard that day.