Contagion (Toxic City) (16 page)

Still touching her feverish skin, Jack dropped into his vast universe of possibility. The red star of contagion still pulsed, signalling
that he should approach, touch, and spread its news. He turned his back on it and steered away, paranoid that it could sense his true intentions. It felt like a sentient thing watching his actions. Maybe it was him ascribing intelligence to it, but he could not be certain enough to relax his caution.
It won't let me leave it alone
, he thought, a strange idea that haunted him for every moment he was here.

He travelled, dipping closer to the points of light and then away again, searching, seeking the talent that would echo Lucy-Anne's. But he could not find it. Hers was a naturally occurring ability, not one initiated by the external influence of Evolve. Perhaps her own universe was far different from his own.

And so Jack tried something else. Concentrating all his attention on one point, and always conscious of the feel of Lucy-Anne beneath his hand, he started to form a star.

Skeins of light surged across his vision. Heat and cold vied for supremacy, and such were their extremes that he could not discern a difference. Stronger swathes of light drifted in, and a swirling shape began to form before him. He was in a dream, and the shape took on the outline of a rapidly condensing star. Creation took place. Jack was its witness.

He bridged the void between himself and Lucy-Anne, creating a path between universes across which he willed every facet of her amazing power. The star grew with her potential, and for just a moment he peered into the mind of another. It was amazing, and humbling, and so different from his own that he drew back in surprise. And then the new star was complete, and his universe was alone once more.

Jack touched the star and felt himself swell with Lucy-Anne's miraculous ability.

He sat back and sighed. When he removed his hand from Lucy-Anne's face, the newfound sun faded quickly into the background starscape of his mind, settling as if it had always been there.

“You now have more than me,” Nomad said. She did not sound jealous, or amazed. She was simply stating a fact.

Good
, Jack thought.
I might need it
.

“We should go,” he said. He took one more look around at his almost-motionless friends. Reaper was a little further out of his seat, and Jack would have to be ready for him when he flipped back to normality. But he was confident that he could handle Reaper. He only hoped he did not have to.

Without another word to Nomad he flipped back, and she followed him moments later.

Lucy-Anne cried out, a wordless sound so filled with despair that Jack almost regretted what he had done. Nomad was there, settled in her seat again and watching them all with interest.

Reaper stood.

“What have you done?” he asked.

“Nothing yet.” Jack turned his back on the man, trying also to shut Nomad from his view. He wished it was only him and his friends here for this final moment. But that was a selfish thought, and one derived from a naive mind that could exist only in a world that was fair and reasonable.

Lucy-Anne was trying to sit up, pressing the impromptu dressings to her face with one hand and reaching for Jack with the other. Jenna and Sparky tried to hold her back.

Jenna was staring at Jack.

“What?” Sparky asked. “What is it? What did you do? You…flipped, then back again. Where've you been?”

“Nowhere but here,” Jack said.

“Oh, Jack,” Jenna said, and he was filled with admiration and love for his friend, because she knew him so well.

“What?” Sparky asked again, frustrated.

“You're too badly hurt,” Jack said to Lucy-Anne. He knelt before her and held her reaching hand between his own. She was breathing heavily through a bloodied nose, her airways cleared now, the wound in her throat covered with a wadded napkin. Jack had been able to close that wound, at least.

“Oh,” Sparky said. “So…”

“So Jack's going to do the dreaming,” Jenna said.

Lucy-Anne shook her head, then slumped against Jenna when the action made her dizzy. She groaned again. Jack held her to him, stroking her hair and enjoying the warmth of her. He'd held her like this many times before, but never would again.

“So we'll have to arrange where to meet you,” Sparky said. “And how to get out of London without them doing to us what they did to Reaper's lot.”

“I won't be meeting you anywhere,” Jack said.

“Huh?”

Jenna started crying.

“Oh, no,” Sparky said. “No mate. Absolutely not. Not after everything. No way. Not if I have to pick you up and carry you myself.”

“And I won't let you do that,” Jack said. He moved closer to Sparky and hugged him close. “There are other reasons,” he whispered in his friend's ear. He let him go and looked at Jenna. She met his gaze and wiped her eyes. He could see that she hated this, but also that she knew he was doing something important, and that she could never stop him.

He could not tell her right now, because Nomad was here. He only hoped they would work it out.

“You'd better move,” he said.

“Jack—” Jenna began, but Jack held up one hand. If they started a long good-bye, he wasn't sure he'd be able to go through with any of this.

“Just…kiss Emily for me.” He took a breath, thought of plenty more he wanted to say…and then flipped.

For one final moment before Nomad followed him through, he looked at the best friends of his life. Lucy-Anne looked wretched, but he hoped she would not bear any guilt for what was his own decision. She was damaged in many ways, but she was also a clever girl. She'd understand.

Jenna's tears glittered on her cheeks and her fluid eyes reflected Jack's image. She and Sparky had such a future together.

And Sparky, his big strong mate, so ready with a quip but so sensitive underneath. He might suffer the most over what was to come. But Jenna would tell him why. Jack was confident of that.

He'd told her enough for her to work out why.

Jack left the club without taking one final look at Reaper. He preferred to remember his father as he had been two years before, and he hoped he would have been proud.

Out in the silent, still streets he breathed in stale air and waited for Nomad to join him. She came moments later. Without a word they set off for the museum.

Perhaps she still believed this was not the end.

Jack had soothed some of her pain, but Lucy-Anne could still feel the damage done to her face, and her friends’ expressions when they looked at her told her everything she needed to know.

But she did not care about that. Neither did she care about what Nomad had done to her, and why, though it showed once again that her dreams were ambiguous things.

She cared about Jack and what he had done. It had been her idea, and he had taken it away. Stolen it for himself. Lucy-Anne was the one who should have been in the museum with the bomb—her and Nomad—but now Andrew was with her again, and they were going to try to leave London at last.

Jack had been in her mind. He'd left a sense of himself behind, and it was an almost sensuous feeling, like the memory of a kiss or the promise of making love. She could not help feeling that she'd lost him again, but she would treasure what he had left behind. Maybe she could dream it afresh again and again.

“We can't just let him,” Sparky said. “That's stupid! We can't just
let
him.”

“He's already there,” Jenna said. “Between one blink and the next, he's gone to the museum.”

And he's already dreaming
, Lucy-Anne thought. Jenna was looking at her, the saddest smile she'd ever seen on her friend's face. Lucy-Anne nodded gently, trying not to disturb her wounds.
Dreaming us safe
.

“Well, he's a fool,” Reaper said, standing, turning to go, and then
Sparky was on him, knocking him to the ground and punching with fists and forearms. Lucy-Anne wanted to shout for Sparky but she could not, so she had to sit and watch.

Reaper shrugged him off and Sparky sprang up, pouncing again as soon as Reaper tried to stand. They rolled into a table and sent chairs spilling, glasses smashing to the floor, drinks cans adding their own hollow shouts to the fight.

Reaper growled. The ground vibrated, and Lucy-Anne groaned aloud, standing and staggering towards the fight. Jenna grabbed her arm and held her back.

Andrew appeared from the shadows and smiled at Lucy-Anne. “You're going to be safe,” he said, voice carrying above the struggling boy and man.

Reaper shouted. A window cracked somewhere, a bottle shattered somewhere else. Sparky stood, panting, hands still fisted by his sides.

Reaper stood as well, but he did not shout again. He did not say a word. Lucy-Anne wasn't sure whether he was able to roar anymore, or whether he chose not to. But he sat down again and looked down at his hands, and the rosettes of blood dripping onto them from his bloodied nose.

“Your son is not a fool!” Sparky said. “Get it? D'you get that, you bloody superior dickhead?”

Reaper did not respond.

“He's as far from a fool as anyone I've ever known,” Jenna said. “You know what he's doing, and why?”

“Trying to stop the bomb,” Reaper said.

“That's only a part of it!” Jenna said.

Lucy-Anne frowned, confused.
Only part of it?

“He's seen what Evolve can do,” Jenna said. “The talents it gives; they're amazing, and deadly. Who knows if anyone will find a cure
to the illness, even if the survivors are welcomed outside London? Who knows anything? But he's also seen the terrible things it can do, too. Like you, Reaper. His father, the man he loved and respected and looked up to. The man he waited two years to find, and who he talked about every single day of those two years. And when he found him, Evolve had turned him into a murdering bastard. Someone who thought he was special, and superior to everyone else. And
no one
is better than anyone else. Jack knows that. And what Nomad gave him—the ability to spread the infection, and give it to other people—he knows the world isn't ready for that. It wasn't ready when Nomad spread Evolve, and it isn't ready now. I asked him. I wanted him to give me something to help, but he refused. And I'm glad he refused, because now I know why. It's because he loves me.”

Reaper was still looking at his hands. There was fresh blood on them now, and it was his own.

“He's the only one who
isn't
a fool,” Jenna said. “And the best way to honour him is to survive.”

“You're talking like he's already dead,” Sparky said quietly.

“He is,” Lucy-Anne said. It hurt to speak, but she had to make herself heard. “To us…he is.” She was crying. The tears touched her wounds—those injuries that Jack had also touched to take away the terrible pain—and made them sting. She was glad.

“We're leaving,” Jenna said to Reaper. “And because despite everything I think Jack still held out a spark of hope for you, I'm inviting you to come with us. To be who you were before, not who you've become.”

Lucy-Anne expected Sparky to object, but he merely stood to one side, head bowed. Remembering his friend.

“Andrew…” Lucy-Anne said, and she pointed across the darkened room.

“I will guide you out,” Andrew said. “I've been to the west, and hundreds are gathering there already. But we have to go now.”

Leaving blood and tears behind, they left.

They headed west. It was almost eleven p.m., and London's silent streets were as haunting as ever. But with Andrew leading them, Lucy-Anne felt a flush of confidence. The fear was still present—she thought that she would always be afraid, and the dark places she'd seen would remain as shadowy echoes in her soul—but alongside was confidence that they would make it. They had to. They could not let Jack's sacrifice be in vain.

She walked with the help of her friends. Sometimes she seemed to float, as if the weakness and pain from her injuries caused a kind of delirium in her. Other times, she thought perhaps Jack had done something to help keep her going, for a time at least.

Close to the river, Andrew whispered a warning and they left the street, hiding down a narrow alleyway between tall buildings. Sparky and Jenna knelt before Lucy-Anne and soothed her, protecting her with their bodies. Every time they looked at her she saw her injuries reflected in their expressions. They couldn't help it. She was never once tempted to put her hands to her face.

She swallowed blood. It ran past the hole Nomad had punched in her throat, and each breath she took was thanks to that woman. But every bad thing that had happened to them all was also thanks to Nomad. Lucy-Anne didn't know what to think about her, so she tried not to think at all.

Something passed the end of the alley, and a dreadful smell wafted along to them. They looked at each other but did not speak. They had no wish to attract the attention of whatever could make such a stench.

Lucy-Anne did not notice the point at which Reaper and Haru
drifted away. They'd left the club with them and followed, hanging back a little and yet still obviously a part of their small group. No one had spoken to either of them, and they had remained silent. But when they crossed the river at Battersea, the Superiors were gone. No one commented. But Lucy-Anne was a little sad, because she'd harboured a vague hope that Reaper might redeem himself. Help them escape, show that he cared in some way. It was the least he could do for Jack.

Sparky kept looking at his watch, worried, but Andrew simply drifted on. They could not move any faster than they were.

They met the first of the people at West Kensington. Irregulars, they huddled down in a small park and watched them pass by.

“Come on!” Sparky called to them. “Hurry up! We've got ’til midnight.” They did not emerge again, but Lucy-Anne hoped that they would follow.

There were more people in Chiswick, and here they met a group of people who directed them to Breezer. He was waiting for them outside a ruined pub, a table set on the pavement before him filled with canned drinks and crisps. He looked around for Jack, raised his eyebrows, but no one felt like telling him. Verbalising what was happening would have made it all so much worse, and they needed all their strength to get out of London.

“I waited for you,” he said. “Hundreds have passed me already, on their way out. I gathered as many as I could, spread the word as far as possible. And I've seen some of those things, too. From the north. We won't be the only ones leaving London tonight.”

Those monsters outside London
, Lucy-Anne thought, shivering.

But she wondered how well even the Irregulars would fit in, and whether they would be allowed. She imagined fenced fields with hundreds of people wandering aimlessly inside, guarded by watchtowers
and machine-gun nests. She pictured huge labs built in warehouses, and people strapped down while scientists in Chopper colours took their blood and cut them up, examining their muscles, their bones, their brains. She saw a dozen children in a metal storage container, dirty with their own filth and crying for parents who would never come.

But when she spoke of her fears, it was her dead brother Andrew who went some way to laying them to rest.

“The word is out,” he said. “Your friend's sister and mother planted the seed, and there were so many ready to take it up.”

“Yes,” Sparky said. “We knew a lot of them. And so did Emily.”

“Thousands have approached London,” Andrew went on. “The military tried to stop them but couldn't. Press helicopters are barely being kept out of London's airspace. Camps have sprung up all around. The relatives of so many lost in London are there. Lots have come to find people who are already dust. But some of them…they'll recognise some of the people around us now. Mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, will be reunited soon, and no one will be able to keep them apart.”

“They'll be registered,” Jenna said, echoing some of Lucy-Anne's fears. But the girl seemed to hold more hope. “They'll have to be. And maybe they'll be kept in quarantine for a while. But when it's seen how ill so many Irregulars are, a cure will become the priority. And then after that, getting back to normal.”

“Or as normal as anything will ever be again,” Sparky said.

“There,” Breezer said, pointing ahead. “We're close. I've already been this far, but came back to meet up with you all.” They closed on Gunnersbury and the edges of the Exclusion Zone, and saw a haze of light in the distance. It lit the sky like the lights of a town, and aircraft buzzed to and fro within it.

“You?”
Lucy-Anne asked Andrew. But she guessed she already knew the answer to that.

“I dreamed myself not dead for you, sis,” he said. “And I've done everything I stayed behind to do. It's down to you now. Survive. Do incredible things with your life. Be amazing. I know you will be.”

“Andrew?” she whispered, sad, resigned.

“Though I won't be there to see, think of me sometimes, won't you?”

Lucy-Anne nodded because she could not say anymore.

“Hey, er…” Sparky held out his hand, then lowered it again.

“Thanks,” Jenna said. “You'll be…?”

“Okay?” Andrew asked, smiling. “I'm already okay. No bomb can touch me.” He turned back to Lucy-Anne. “I'll wait here for a while longer, just to watch you go.” He drifted away from them, pausing beside a tumbled wall and becoming a part of the night.

With one last smile, Lucy-Anne turned her back on her dead brother and led the way.

Jack felt sad at Fleeter's death. He hadn't grown to actually like her, but she'd been interesting, and in her own selfish way she'd helped them more than once. He thought that deep down past the surface arrogance there had still been a little lost girl. He wished he'd asked her name.

They'd left her covered with a jacket, just another corpse in the mausoleum of London.

He was also mourning his lost father, a period of renewed grief that had lasted for two years. And he felt terrible about leaving his dear friends. But thinking too much about them might undo him, and jeopardise everything he was trying to do. He had a plan and he was determined to see it through, because if he did not then it would
have all been for nothing. The pain, the suffering and death. He could not let that happen.

He
would
not.

So he did his best to leave that Jack of grief and sadness behind, and the one who approached the museum was a new, simpler Jack. A young man with a mission, shorn of thoughts that might distract. He had become a memory with a purpose.

The scenario awaiting them was strange and troubling, but he tried not to waste too much time to wonder. The things surrounding the museum—frozen in the moment where they sat, lay, ran, flew, crawled—were amazing and terrifying. Jack walked quickly past them. The air was heavy and still, but sometimes he still caught a whiff of animal scents, unnatural and unknown.

“Hurry,” he said. Nomad had been falling behind, and he'd not wanted to risk a look back. He feared that acknowledging her slowness would give her the excuse to stop, and they had so much further to go.

“I…” Nomad said. “I think…coming from here, to help Lucy-Anne…I dug deep, used everything.”

Jack had to stop then, and he turned to confront Nomad. He was shocked at the change that had come over her. Still ethereal and mysterious, she was tainted now with smears of blood from her nose and the corners of her eyes. She looked lessened. The blood made her seem more human. “You're Nomad. You're the First Vector, Angelina Walker, the cause of all this!”

Nomad nodded without any sign of regret. “Yes. But I am…weaker.”