Maki drifted towards his office, carried by the currents of traffic like a jellyfish. He was jostled and shoved by the battalions of suited workers, everyone fixated on their destination and unheeding of the secret invertebrate floating in their midst.

There hadn’t been much else to say to Kulit after. He had tried to tell her that it was okay, that there was nothing else she could have done, but there was no getting through to her. She wasn’t listening to him, not with all those voices in her head telling her that she had failed, that she had put the cause of Kamula back another hundred years. There was no interrupting that chorus.

So she had left him on the helipad. Muttered some bloodless platitudes thanking him for his help and pissed off, not even a wistful second glance. Didn’t even offer to catch up on social media, let alone help him up off the floor. Wasn’t extreme stress meant to bring people closer together?

He leant heavily on the door to his office, patting his pockets and dredging up his key. Probably he should have gone home, or to the apothecary, some place where he could restore himself back towards a semblance of harmony.

But there was something he wanted to check first.

His office was just as he had left it all those days ago. On the desk, Kukele hummed quietly, her screen powered down but the computer heating the room with the whisk of the fan. The package that had caused all his troubles still dominated the centre of the room, a bulky grump of ignored potential. Maki patted it as he passed, slotting the carnelian beacon into its housing as he went, the stone slipping in as neat as the Platonic Tab A into Slot B. He did not dare to attempt the translocation today, not with the threatening possibility that every blink might see his eyeballs ‘ported to someone else’s head. But the box no longer worried him as it once had. The thuggish dangers of Mr. Q Unknown seemed almost welcomingly local. Balé had become a very small place given all that he had been through and what was being a few days tardy between neighbours, anyway?

His chair groaned under his weight when he threw himself onto it, spinning him towards his desk. For a few moments that was all. Maki stared at nothing and wondered some of the big questions.

What was the destiny of the human race?

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Did anyone have any right to Chioté’s work?

What was he going to have for lunch?

Eventually his gaze fell from nothing to the handle of the drawer of his desk. Up until now he had been avoiding that part of his room.

“Stop being a coward, Maki,” he told himself.

So he waggled his fingers, snapped his wrists and then rolled up his non-existent sleeves.

“Shazam,” he muttered, yanking the draw open.

He laughed, grin straining at his cheeks, great gulping donkey heehaws squashing his stomach up against his spine. He slapped his thigh and then punched the air with both hands. There was no crowd, but he heard the applause anyway. He laughed so hard he dislocated himself across the room, but that didn’t stop him.

He didn’t think it was going to work. Didn’t think he had anything left in him left to give. But there was some magic that even a child could do.

Open one door, come out another.

Sitting in the drawer, a maniacally enthusiastic tiger hefted an enormous pen.

“Ah, Kulit is going to murder me.”

Maybe Carnavar would turn that helicopter around when they discovered his trick. Might be that thing under the jara would be unleashed upon Maki, to his great dissatisfaction. But by that time the Professor’s codex would all be online, disseminating at fibre optic speeds, viral rebellion baby.

And then what would be the point of dispensing pain and suffering? SuitOne and Two didn’t have enough personality between them to feel anything as potent as hate and more importantly, there was no profit in it. And what else moved a person like that?

Or at least, so Maki hoped.

But funnily enough, lying on his back on a vaguely sticky floor, Maki found that he had no regrets. Either he was suffering from an energy drink withdrawal or some kind of horrible fatigue-related hollowing out. Or perhaps, this just once, every little bit of him was agreed on something. He smiled up at the ceiling and hoped that wherever Chioté was floating around, that she had a good view of all that had happened. He had a feeling she would have enjoyed it.

But if you think that means you can spend the rest of the day lying on your back dispensing worldly wisdom, you are sadly mistaken, you wily miscreant.

Chioté never really was one for plaudits or praise. Maki sighed and tried to sit up. After flailing like an upside down dung beetle for a few embarrassing moments, he rolled over and did it the slow fashioned way.

One more hero job and then he could sleep. He turned on his scanner. Who knew that changing the world would taste like an energy drink? With a hint of cucumber.