It was the first thing he thought of when he woke again – she was alive. He knew that even before he remembered that he was alive. But it was a thought that wouldn't go any further, and not just because of the pain. Every time he tried to think about what it would actually mean, his brain shut down. He couldn't think about seeing her again, or the state he would be in if he did. And the poisons of the last seven months were still sloshing around in his head. All that pain and anger had made him a different person – it had practically carved him a new face. Would it be the same for her? Would they still recognize each other?

No, he couldn't think about it. It was too big. It would hurt too much if it was taken away. She was alive. He couldn't count on it – he couldn't make any decisions based on it – he just knew it with every fibre of his being. And while he knew it, he couldn't lie still. He had to find out about it before he could find out how he felt about it.

When the world swam into focus, he saw a canopy of amulets above him – crystals and moons and arcane symbols hanging eerily still, without a breath of motion. There was something wrong about that. It was like seeing the flat sails of a ship in windless waters. Amulets were supposed to sway and clink and rustle. But there was also something familiar about it. When had he last seen motionless amulets?

Oh. Back in Lily Hamilton's room. Dangling in the window where she, too, had dangled. And the idea that she hadn't swayed either – that her body had been perfectly becalmed by the time anyone thought to look for her.

Why was he thinking about that? Because she hadn't come back, and Ellini had? Because he'd seen Sam recently, and felt guilty?

Anyway, there was no time to go into it – although it looked as though Sergei had forced time onto him, because he could feel thick leather straps around his wrists. They wouldn't have inconvenienced him under normal circumstances, but now every motion was slow and clunky, as though his body was refusing to talk to him.

The pain wasn't actually that bad. Presumably some kind of anaesthetic was keeping it at bay. But what he felt instead – what filled up his world from horizon to horizon – was a vast, creeping sense of wrongness. It is wrong, his body said. It is wrong to feel as though you might crack open if you breathe too deeply. It is wrong to be able to feel blood seeping through innumerable fissures in your skin. It is wrong for your insides to be so perilously close to the outside.

As a soldier – and, more than that, as a former student of Robin Crake's – he had thought he'd got over this feeling. He had thought he'd learned to treat his body with the irreverence it deserved. But this was different. This was a sliver away from death, and all his instincts had been primed to avoid death. Every voice in his body was screaming at him to lie still and get better – except the one insistent voice, located somewhere between his stomach and his crotch, which was screaming at him to find Ellini. It was all alone, but surprisingly loud.

"What did you give me for the pain?" he asked, assuming that Sergei was too clever to leave him unattended again. "It wasn't opium, was it?"

"No," said Sergei's voice, from somewhere close. "Ether. I thought you would not be anxious to try opium again."

"I'm extremely anxious to try opium again, that's the problem."

"Well, that's one problem we've avoided. But perhaps it's the only one..."

"Why did you save me?" said Jack. He didn't waste time craning around to look for him. Any kind of movement jarred the stitches, and there was no point looking at Sergei when you spoke to him. He never gave anything away.

"My son asked me to."

Jack smiled up at the amulets. "He's a good boy."

"Don't you tell me he's a good boy. You tried to use him to torture me."

Jack shook his head, and then wished he hadn't. "I didn't want you to die. I thought you were going to kill yourself, and it would have been... too easy. I wanted you to live on in pain, like me."

"That doesn't fit your definition of torture?"

He thought about it, and then muttered, "I think there was a part of me that just didn't want you to die."

"How long had you known about my son before you brought him to Oxford?" Sergei enquired. His voice was brisk and prickly, which was as close as it ever got to anger.

"Ah..."

"A year? Longer?"

"About eight months," said Jack. He felt rather vulnerable, strapped to the table, with Sergei nowhere in sight. He wondered whether a tweed-clad arm would come tearing into sight, brandishing a knife. But Sergei wasn't like that. Perhaps it would have been better if he was.

"And – let me see if I've got this right – you kept him a secret because you were waiting for a time when you would need... leverage over me? Is 'leverage' the right word?"

Jack winced. "Pretty much, yes."

"Do you do this for everybody? Plan how you would blackmail them if you needed to?"

"Only people who might be a threat to me. It's a compliment really."

Silence greeted this pronouncement – which was probably the least it deserved. "I thought you liked people," said Sergei, after a while.

"This is how I can afford to like people. I learn their weaknesses so I don't have to shut myself away."

Jack stared up at the amulets. It was funny to feel shame again. He had felt a lot of it in the past seven months, but the whole, intense tangle had been bound up with the way he'd treated Ellini. Now that she was alive, it was as though he suddenly had room to be ashamed of other things. He was still in a hopeless tangle, but outside elements had wormed their way in, tightening some threads and loosening others.

"In my defence," he muttered, "I'm the barbarian warlord. I never said I was anything else."

"Does that constitute a defence?"

"I suppose not."

There was another silence. The amulets didn't stir.

"For that, I do not forgive you," said Sergei. "All the other appalling things you did, you did because we had taken your memories and made you spurn the thing that mattered most to you. I understand that. But you made me miss eight months of my son's life when you were perfectly yourself – when I'd done nothing to you..."

"Yes," said Jack, still staring up at the amulets. "Sorry."

"I've told you, I do not forgive you."

"I'm not asking you to. I just wanted to say it."

Sergei came into view. His face was upside-down from Jack's perspective, but it would have been inscrutable from any angle. It was lined and grey with exhaustion, but all other emotions were locked up behind that moustache.

"And I, in turn, am sorry about Ellini," he said.

Jack smiled at the sombre, upside-down face. "Sergei, she's alive."

He could feel the excitement of it now – or was it anger? It filled him up like a deep breath and strained the stitches. He had a sudden, stupid urge to laugh.

Sergei held up a hand. "We'll get to that. Now, Inspector Hastings has not yet started battering down the door, but he has stationed a policeman at every entrance to the building. Do you have a way out which he doesn't know about?"

"Not if he has my notes, no. I could climb out over the roof?"

Sergei raised his eyebrows. "I'm quite sure you couldn't." He sighed and passed a weary hand over his eyes. "I think we must rely on his goodwill from now on. You don't have the strength to go far, even if we could get you out, and there's nowhere nearby to which he doesn't have access."

"Can I talk to him?" asked Jack.

"If you are going to do that, you'd better do it soon. I can't imagine you have many hours of lucidity left." Sergei drummed his fingers on the operating table. "Of course, you upset him quite a lot. I can't guarantee he won't kill you..."

"I could guarantee it, if you'd untie me."

"Yes," said Sergei, half-smug and half-apologetic. "That's not going to happen."

Jack sighed. He could still feel that molten, momentous something filling him up from the inside, threatening to burst his stitches. It wasn't happiness precisely, but it was a million miles away from the despair he'd felt yesterday. "Oh well. At least we got to kill Lord Elsmere."

"Oh congratulations," said Sergei sourly. "Another murder."

"No, not murder. Execution."

"Jack Ketch, are you, now?"

"I don't know who that is."

"Never mind," said Sergei, passing a weary hand over his eyes. "I'll get the Inspector."