There was an anomaly pulsing before him. The shimmering white light hung gently in the air, humming softly but otherwise making no movement. Nick Cutter stretched out a hand, but no matter how far he reached, he could not pass his fingers through it. After a space of time – perhaps a second, perhaps a century – the anomaly closed. A sense of finality settled about his shoulders.

"Sorry, mate," a familiar voice said from behind him. "That one's closed. Can't go back."

Cutter turned and regarded Stephen Hart with the mildest curiosity. Stephen was dead, had been dead for several months, and yet he was here, and for some reason that was barely surprising at all. Professor Cutter looked around. There appeared to be somehow neither ground beneath his feet nor sky above his head, but they were surrounded by anomalies. Most of them were invisible, but Cutter could sense their presence – and sometimes, if he looked out of the corner of his eye or tilted his head just so, he could catch a glimpse of one. For several microseconds or maybe millennia the professor was preoccupied with this, until he looked back at Stephen again and asked the question he already knew the answer to.

"Is this death?"

Stephen inclined his head. "Yes."

Cutter nodded and glanced down at himself. Though he wasn't certain he actually possessed a corporeal form at that point, a body appeared, complete with bullet wound. "I was shot," he reflected, his fingers gently pressing against the hole in his flesh. When he touched it, there was no pain, but memories flooded into his mind. "Helen. Helen shot me." He glanced at Stephen. "I'm sorry, but this only proves you have terrible taste in women."

Stephen smiled. All of a sudden it was easy again, like nothing had ever changed between them – no Helen, no affair, no creatures, no deaths. "Why are you here?" Cutter asked. "I mean, I know you're dead, but… there are other dead people, too. Where are they?"

"Oh, they're here," Stephen said, gesturing around at the nothingness. For a moment Cutter wondered if the things he could sense, the glimpses he sometimes caught, were actually anomalies after all.

"What happens now?" he asked.

Stephen gestured again, and this time anomalies opened up all around them. "You explore," he answered. "The anomalies will go forever, until you want them to stop."

"Where do they go?"

"Everywhere," Stephen said.

Cutter caught and held his gaze. "Can I go home?"

For the first time, Stephen looked sorrowful. "Not the way you want to," he replied. "You can watch, sometimes, through certain anomalies. They won't be able to see or hear you, though. The people back home."

Cutter nodded slowly, his gaze panning over the anomalies scattered all around the nothingness in which they somehow existed. "I want to check up on Connor every once in a while," he said. "Left him a job. Want to make sure he does it properly. Do you know which of these…?" He trailed off.

"No," Stephen answered quietly. "I'm sorry, I don't. You have to figure it out yourself."

Cutter sighed. "Ah, well. Don't suppose I have anything better to do." He began to approach the nearest anomaly, but stopped just short of stepping through to look back over his shoulder at Stephen. "Will I see you again?"

"If you want to," he replied. "Anything is possible here."

Cutter nodded again and faced the anomaly. He did want to see Stephen again, to have a companion throughout infinity, to talk to and argue with just as they had in the old days, though he also wanted time on his own now to adjust to the nothingness and the anomalies and what it meant to be dead. He had the feeling that when he wanted to see Stephen again, he only had to think about it and step through the right anomaly and Stephen would be there. Anything is possible here.

The thought lodged in his brain – if indeed he still had a brain – and he stopped, turning back to his friend a final time. "When you say, 'anything'…?"

Stephen smiled at him. "On the other side. She's been waiting for you."

Nick Cutter stepped through the anomaly without a second thought.

He emerged into an entirely different landscape; there was grass beneath him and blue sky above. A wind that he couldn't feel rustled the grass, bringing with it the scent of spring flowers and honey. The ground sloped gently upwards towards the crest of a hill, where a woman was standing with her back to him, her brown hair flowing gently in the breeze.

He approached her carefully and very slowly, fearing, despite Stephen's assurances, that she would disappear at any moment and leave him alone. As he grew closer to her, he started to feel the breeze on his skin. The sun began to warm his back. Small patches of flowers that had not been there before poked themselves up through the soil – or maybe they had been there, and he just had not noticed them.

His feet made no sound on the grass as he walked, and if he had still had a heart it was beating silently, else she could have heard it hammering against his chest. It was not until he was a mere metre away that she turned around to face him. If he had still had a heart, it would have stopped then.

"Claudia Brown," he said.

"Hello," she replied. "What was it you wanted to tell me?"