CLAMY Everyone here is a Clam: a faceless body, a living Hand clamped over the face - one eye on its back does all the seeing - and a pearl inside: the soul. The Hand squeezes the skull to press the soul's power into the body. At birth a number is read from your pearl. It decides everything. Clamy read zero, the lowest in living memory. But his Hand never locked... and something is in there with him. Calm. Patient. Impossibly strong. It only ever asks one thing: "Let me take over."

• Fantasy