“We’ve kept him in a cage since yesterday,” Sying had offered jokingly. Her eyes weren’t laughing, and pity had crept into the corners of her mouth. Pity for Olive, her only likely ticket off No Man’s Land Fort. Olive clung to this thought.
Her face fixed, she devoured a huge salad, covered in fried tofu, and topped with finely grated, mature Queso Zamorano. Her hangman’s meal. The Slow King’s men had brought the ingredients in by helicopter. She surmised that her host was sure she was going to die.
There was a TV in the room. She switched on the evening news. Footage of huge space shuttles clogging the runways at Heathrow spilled out of the set. Emilie was the second news story. She was still missing. The cops had no idea who’d brought her back to Earth. The Slow King had never asked Ol
