I can do rather more than that. My hiding place is an old Resolution-class submarine, 425 feet long. There were only four of them ever made: Resolution, Repulse, Renown and Revenge . Four, and this one, which is perfect in every detail: top speed 25 knots submerged, powered by a Rolls-Royce Vickers pressurised water nuclear reactor, crew of 143. When I began to work with it, I realised that I could give every workstation a function, but for that I’d need sailors, so little by little I dreamed them, too: a ghost crew of friends and family and childhood heroes, and now they’re all down here in my mind wearing the uniform I made, doing what I set them up to do, minding the ship, each fragment of me doing exactly what I say. This is my last redoubt, my secret-keeper. The crew down here are the truth. Here, in the place where my muscle memory should be, where I keep my blood pumping, where I tell my lungs to breathe. All that, the machines are going to have to do now, and they will, because Oliver is so very desperate to know what I’m doing here. Oliver wants this ship, more than anything else, and the logs and the codebooks and all the rest. He wants the real me. I think it always upset him that I wouldn’t tell him more about myself.