Contagion (Toxic City) (9 page)

“Me also! But I relish it.” He walked forward and sat on a bench, almost within reach of Jack. “Tell me you don't relish what you have, too.”

Jack did not answer.

“You feel the power. You know you're different, and better than everyone else.” He waved a hand to indicate Sparky and the others. Behind Reaper, Fleeter was still smiling. Jack bristled.

“Different, yes. Very different. I've got abilities now…I could crush you with a blink.” He knelt up, and then stood, taller than his sitting father. Holding out his hand, he felt the heat-rush of a new star. “I could clasp your heart and halt its beat,” Jack said with wonder. “I could get into your head and destroy your sense of self. Make you…a robot. A hollow man.”

Reaper sat up straighter, his cruel face taking on its usual anger.

“Before you could even think about muttering one of your earthquake whispers,” Jack said, “I could heat your guts to the temperature of the sun and melt you where you sit.”

“Then do it,” Reaper breathed.

“No,” Jack said. “Because you're right. I am different from all my friends. But I'm no better than any of them. I'm using what I have…I'm doing my best to help people. Not crush them. Not kill them.”

“But you've killed before,” Reaper said, smiling.

Jack glanced up at Fleeter, and she looked away. Her smile slipped. Was that shame, or fear?

“Yes, she's been watching you for me. And yes, she saw you dispatch those three Choppers. Imagine their families now, Jack. A little son waiting to see his father again. A daughter, returning from school with a picture she's painted for Mummy. Except Mummy isn't coming home. Because you turned her into jam.”

“I
have
imagined, and I always will. And it hurts. Because I care and you don't, and that makes you…” Jack shook his head, angry, shaking with frustration. “Worthless! You're worthless, Dad. You have so much, and you mean so little.” He sighed. “It's really so, so sad.”

Reaper stood. Jack tensed, but sensed no violence brewing in the man. Not yet. But he remained ready, each fingertip touching a different star. He
thrummed
with power, and he knew that if Reaper or any of the other Superiors made an aggressive move, he'd sweep them all away.

He wouldn't kill them. He'd simply move them aside so that he and his friends could carry on. Stronger than he had ever been before, his greatest strength was understanding his place. A friend amongst friends. Special, but no more than them.

“Go, Dad,” he said.

“Come with us,” Reaper said. It still sounded more like an order than a request. “No one can stop the bomb, so we're going to break out. And with your help, we'll succeed.”

“Just me?” Jack asked.

“
All
of you.” Reaper glanced around the boat, never looking at anyone for long. He only really had eyes for Jack.

“What is this?” Jack asked. He laughed, looked at Fleeter, but she was silent. “Just what? Last time we met you were happy to stay here and torture what you left of Miller. You wanted only violence, even when the Irregulars and Superiors did have some kind of alliance. So what is this?”

“A new alliance to save us all,” Reaper said.

“You don't need a healer, or a truth seer, to break out of London,” Jack said. “You've got all the firepower you need.”

Reaper stared at Jack as if trying to will the truth his way. But Jack still did not understand.

“We've chosen our own paths,” Jack said at last. “We're going to find a peaceful way out, for everyone. You and your so-called Superiors can do what you want.”

“But they're trying to kill us all!” Reaper said, and it was the
closest Jack had heard him sound vulnerable and desperate. It was a plea.

But Jack looked around the boat at his friends, and he sensed their silent support.

“And that's why we'll escape London with the moral high ground,” he said. “Slaughter a thousand Choppers to get out, lose hundreds more survivors to the machine guns, and what way is that to expose ourselves to the world? People are going to be frightened enough of us. We have to show that we mean no harm.”

“And get blown up in the process,” Reaper said. “Very dignified. Very honourable.”

“Perhaps,” Jack said.

Reaper seemed ready to say something more, but he shook his head instead.

“You'll see that our way is the only way,” Jack said. “Use violence to break out, and they'll stop you eventually. Lock you up. Cut you into pieces, kill you.”

“You think we're destined for anything else?” Reaper asked, almost defeated.

“Tell them,” Fleeter said. The moment froze, as if the ice woman had gasped and chilled the air.

“Tell us what?” Jack asked.

Fleeter seemed nervous, shifting from foot to foot. Her smile remained, and Jack realised that it was a natural part of her. It displayed neither humour nor mockery, but rather a grim acceptance of how things were.

“Reaper,” she said. “Tell them why you really want the Irregulars with you.”

Reaper glared at her.

“A distraction,” she said. She took a couple of steps towards Jack,
a symbolic gesture that seemed to shift the whole balance on the boat.
I still can't trust her for a second
, Jack thought. But this was more confusing than ever. Was it a part of Reaper's play?

“You can leave with him,” Jack said.

“Yeah, get the hell off my boat,” Sparky said.

Fleeter shook her head and came closer to Jack. He readied himself to flip, and at the first sign of her going he would do so. He wouldn't let her phase out, grasp him, knock him out, put him down. Everyone was depending on him, and that idea had been growing for some time. He was no better than any of them—he believed that deeply, because humility had always been a part of him—but they did rely on him. In these dangerous times, his own deadliness was their protection.

“You're cannon fodder,” Fleeter said to Jack. “You and all the Irregulars. Cause a distraction, draw fire while we can…while Reaper and the Superiors can escape.”

Jack saw Reaper tense, and then smile again. “Jack could have found that out for himself, I'm sure,” he said. “Asked me a question with one power.” He wiggled his fingers like a manic spider. “Delved inside my mind with another.”

“I chose not to,” Jack said. Fleeter paused, slightly closer to him than Reaper. She was waiting for the violence her revelation might bring, or perhaps some sign of acceptance from Jack. She received neither.

“It doesn't matter,” Reaper said. He nodded at Fleeter. “
You
don't matter. We'll still be ready when you are. Make your own ineffectual efforts to get out, and we'll be right behind you.”

“If I thought there was an ounce of decency left in you, I'd ask you to be with us,” Jack said.

Reaper chuckled softly, and the ice flow trapping the boat
rumbled and cracked. “But there's not,” he said. He glanced up at the sun. “Nine, maybe eight hours left. And while we wait for you weaklings to make your move, there are still Choppers left to hunt.” With that he turned and jumped from the boat, and Shade and the ice woman followed.

Jack could have stopped them. For a moment he even saw what might happen—the ice cracking in great convulsions, rearing up, smashing together with Reaper and his other Superiors trapped between the solid slabs, and then flowing quickly along the Thames. Anyone not crushed to death would drown. Anyone not drowned would be slaughtered by the Choppers stationed at the Thames barrier.

He knew he could do it. But the moment when he considered that was over in a blink, and then Fleeter was sitting before him, almost contrite.

“Right,” she said. “Right. Okay. I've just pissed off Reaper.”

“I do it all the time,” Jack said.

The others around the boat rose and sat on benches, nursing cuts and bruises and breathing a collective sigh of relief.

“Intense,” Sparky said. “London is just way too intense for me. Give me a little village, country lanes, forests, a pub.”

“Maybe soon,” Lucy-Anne said, and for a while no one said anything else.

Maybe soon
, Jack thought. But for the life of him he didn't know how.

Fleeter sat on her own at the bow of the boat. Jack tended to Breezer—healing his wounds, easing the bruising he'd received across his left shoulder as he'd fallen—and then he moved up close to Fleeter to try and clear the ice. She looked ahead, beneath the bridge, even though
he was close behind her. Either something about her had changed radically, or she was a good actress.

Jack leaned over the handrail and dipped both hands into the cold water. The ice was already turning slushy without the ice woman there to tend it, and as Jack heated the water from one of his inner suns, the boat drifted away from the floe's grasp. Breezer started the engine and reversed the boat, aiming for the gentle arch closer to the north bank.

Jack sat close to Fleeter and looked back at the others. They were sitting close, talking quietly, tending cuts and bruises and trying to move on from the tense confrontation. Rhali more than anyone seemed quite calm, but she had not seen what Reaper could do. And what she had been through was worse than anything he could have dreamed up.

“So,” Jack said.

He heard Fleeter laugh softly, but they sat almost back to back. He knew that sometimes it was easier to speak honestly when you did not have to look someone in the face.

“So,” Fleeter said, “Reaper was telling the truth. I've been following you ever since I got back from taking your mother and sister out of London. And though a big part of why I did so was because Reaper asked me, because he likes control and, well, I think somewhere inside he still cares a little…I also followed you for myself.”

Jack wasn't sure what she meant. She'd flirted with him, but he'd put it down to her seeking a measure of control more than anything else. “For yourself?” he asked.

She laughed again, and this time it sounded more heartfelt. “Don't flatter yourself. Well, maybe you're a cutie, Jack. Maybe you are. But I know you've got a good heart, and you've seen what I can do, and what I've done. I know you're still beating yourself up about those Choppers you had to kill. I must be a monster to you.”

“No,” Jack began, but Fleeter turned around and grabbed his shoulder, hard enough to hurt. She pulled him around to face her. She was serious. Even behind the omnipresent smile, she was as serious as he'd ever seen her.

“I saw outside,” she said. Her eyes went wide like a kid seeing Disneyworld for the first time. “When I took them through there was a sense of…release. Even though there were still houses and streets where we came out, it all felt so different. It felt like another world because it
was
another world, and I knew that. And for the first time in a long while I allowed myself to…to remember.”

She trailed off, but Jack did not prompt her. This was a story she had to tell in her own time.

“Almost as soon as Doomsday happened, my life became a dream,” she said. “I've always been a daydreamer. When I was a kid my mother said I'd sit in the garden with my dolls and plastic animals and…just…disappear. Into my own world. She told me she used to worry about it, but then she started seeing it as something wonderful. I'd sit there for hours just playing, totally immersed in my imagination, and those dolls and animals would come to life. She timed me once, and I was there for almost three hours without looking up. And when I did look up she said I looked blank, blinking, wondering where I was. Then I smiled at her…at my mummy…and…”

There were tears in her eyes, but she seemed unaware.

“Guiding your mother and Emily out of London reminded me of the world I've forgotten,” she said. “Reaper took me in and made me what I am.” She frowned, shook her head. “No. He showed me the way. What I became was all my fault. But under his wing I forgot my mother and my brother, and London became my whole world. Coming back in yesterday, leaving your mother and sister out there, free, in the world I've forgotten…that made me realise I've been
living in a dream. For the last two years, with Reaper and the others, doing what I do and seeing what I've seen. All of it has been a dream.”

“And you're waking up,” Jack said.

“No, Jack,” Fleeter said. “But at least I
know
I'm dreaming. Helping you get back to your family, helping you all…perhaps that'll give me a chance to wake.”

Jack could have asked Breezer to use his own talent to probe inward, discover Fleeter's truths. And Jack thought he could have also done so himself. But he thought this was something that demanded trust.

“Thank you,” he said, and he meant it.

“Don't thank me yet.” She shrugged. “I know he's your father, and there's more of that left in him than you give him credit for. But Reaper's a mean bastard. No saying what he'll do next.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jack said. “Not as if we haven't already got stuff keeping us on our toes.”

She laughed again, and Jack prodded her shoulder, a friendly nudge. He might have hit Sparky in the same way. Something told him that Fleeter was not the hugging kind.

They moored the boat and disappeared into an Italian restaurant on the riverfront, gathering in the kitchen, and their mood was dour. Few words were exchanged. They had to formulate a plan, but their futures looked so bleak that no one knew where to begin.

Breezer decided to leave. Jack asked him to stay, but he only shook his head, defeated. “I have friends,” he said. “People who've looked up to me for too long for me to abandon them now. I want to be with them when…at the end.”

“You can't just give up!” Jack said.

“
You
can't,” Breezer replied. “Jack, you can get your friends out easily. With the abilities you have, and with her.” He nodded at Fleeter. She sat apart from the others, quiet and still.

“There's no way I'll do that and leave everyone else to die,” Jack said. But the harsh idea had already crossed his mind. Around eight hours until the bomb exploded, and soon would come the cut-off time for him and the others to escape London. Before then they'd have a chance, and Breezer was right—Jack could get them out. After that point, they'd have run out of time to flee. He didn't know the extent of the damage the bomb would cause, but the Exclusion Zone formed the boundary they had to cross.

The thought of running, and failing everyone in London, was terrible. Jack's abilities gave him a sense of responsibility which he couldn't shake. When the time came, perhaps he would send Fleeter out with his friends. But he could never leave. Nomad's touch had
made him a part of what London had become, whether that city's doom was sealed or not.

“We can't just give up,” he said to Breezer. This time it sounded like a plea. The others were watching, and Jenna stood close to Jack, supporting him with her strong silence.

“We rush the Exclusion Zone, they cut us down,” Breezer said. “We stay here, we're toast.”

“Something will happen,” Jack said. “I'll
make
something happen. See the truth in what I say. It's what you do, so see it!”

Breezer sighed, eyelids drooping. “I see that you
want
it to be the truth,” he said. “You're a good kid, Jack.”

“So don't just sit down and die!” Jack said. “You've already spread the word to get as many as you can to Heron Tower. So now go back there and take them west.”

“And then?” Breezer asked.

“One way or another, we'll march out of London. And if we have to fight our way out, so be it. Better than just waiting for the bomb.”

Breezer sighed, nodded. He seemed relieved to have had the weight of decision taken from his own shoulders.

“Good luck,” Breezer said. He shook Jack's hand. “You and your friends…you're pretty amazing. I'll see you in the west. We'll wait somewhere near Chiswick.”

“I'll find you.”

As Breezer left, Jack eased himself down against a metal cabinet and sighed. He was exhausted, and the universe inside seemed to be thrumming with expectation. The whole of his world knew that something momentous and terrible was about to occur.

“So now what?” Sparky asked at last. “It's a mess. We're lost.”

“We're doing everything we can,” Jenna said, but even she no
longer sounded certain and strong. Jack heard her doubts, and when Rhali sat close beside him, he leaned into her and smiled.

“Fleeter,” Jack said. “Any thoughts?”

“Only that we should get out of London.”

“And leave everyone else to die.”

She did not reply, but she looked troubled.

“Lucy-Anne?” Jenna asked.

“I can dream,” Lucy-Anne said. She sounded far away, talking to herself. “When I'm dreaming, and I know I'm there, I can move things as I want. Make things happen as I want them to happen. But I don't think
I'm
really in charge. Maybe it's fate. Perhaps I can just…juggle fate, for a little while.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked.

“I've dreamed of the bomb,” Lucy-Anne said. “I see Nomad and then the bomb explodes. Except…” She frowned.

“Lucy-Anne?” Jenna prompted.

“Except now it's mixed up with another dream. I see Nomad, and she kills me.”

“We can't just stop an atom bomb with a bloody dream!” Sparky said.

Lucy-Anne didn't seem to hear him. She was frowning, lost in her own world, and Jack went to her and touched her chin. Her tears were cool. He lifted her face.

“We'll do whatever we can,” he said. “And with everything that's happened, I do believe a dream can help. I do.”

She smiled past her sadness and loss.

“Eight hours,” Jack said, turning around to face the others. “Four hours to do whatever we can to stop the bomb or find a safe way out. And then if none of that works, we go west, meet Breezer and the others, and try to get out anyway. What do you think?”

No one replied, but everyone nodded. As plans went, it was woolly. But it was all they had.

Moving north towards the Thames, Andrew saw a man about to die.

The man was wearing no uniform, yet he had the bearing of a military man—cropped hair, slim build, a neat moustache. He carried no weapons. If he had, there was a chance they might have saved him from what was about to kill him. But even then, Andrew thought it unlikely.

The creature circled him. It had been human once, and though still retaining some vestiges of humanity in appearance, its actions and movements were alien. Taller than the man and thinner, its legs long and chitinous, torso human-sized but covered entirely in a sleek, shiny shell, it was its head that still reflected humanity—human eyes, long hair, a head longer and thinner yet still recognisable.

It clicked and snicked, circled the man, drooled.

The man was begging, and it was his words that drew Andrew into the confrontation. Any other time he would have moved away, not even turning when the screams and noises began. Those inhuman creatures did not concern him, because they could always sense that he too was no longer wholly human. And he knew that even they found him troubling.

“I can stop it!” the man said. “Please, please!” He was panicked, verging on hysterical. Andrew wondered where he came from.

“Stop what?” Andrew said. He crossed the road and stood on a traffic island, ten steps away from the desperate man. The creature only glanced at Andrew before seeming to disregard him.

“The bomb!” the man said. He gasped when he looked at Andrew, uncertain that he was even there.

“You're normal,” Andrew said. “You're not one of us.”

The man uttered a sharp, insane laugh. “What the hell
is
it? What the hell are
you
?”

“How can you stop the bomb?”

The man's shirt was soaked through with sweat, and he carried a small rucksack over one shoulder, grasping the strap as if it was precious.

“Because it's what I was sent in to do,” he said.

“So you're one of them,” Andrew said. “One of the people keeping London hidden away as a dirty, dark secret.”

“Do you blame us?” he asked, nodding at the creature scratching sharp claws across the road surface.

“Yes,” Andrew said. “Completely. But if you can stop the bomb, perhaps you amongst all of them can redeem yourself, a little.”

“That's what I want,” the man said. “I lost an uncle and three cousins to Doomsday. All dead, not…changed. Not like you. And when we heard that madman Miller had triggered the countdown, I was one of the first to volunteer to come in. Deactivate it.”

Andrew moved towards the man, passing the creature and sensing the startling intelligence its appearance seemed to belie. The man cringed back a little, but not too far. He seemed used to the strangeness that London now harboured. Though he had never seen anything like Andrew. “So what happened?” Andrew asked.

“We were attacked. The Superiors. Only three of us got away, and we hid, discussed what to do. And we decided…between us…to carry on.” He touched his jacket. “Tried to dress more normally. There was no talking to them! No reasoning! They attacked us, but did they know what we were coming to do? Do you think they even had a clue?”

“So what happened to the other two?” Andrew asked, ignoring the question. He knew about Superiors. They would have attacked
the Choppers without pause, and without mercy. Killing those who might, this time, save them.

“We split up. I lost touch with them this morning.” The man took a phone from his pocket.

“Let me hear,” Andrew said. The man did something to the device and then hesitantly held it out. Andrew closed his eyes and listened.

The hollow, low moan of eternity. Andrew had heard it when he died, and the sound haunted him now, as if mocking his unnatural state and assuring him that, soon, he would be where he belonged. There was a sickening sense of scope to that noise, as if it was the underlying note to an infinite universe, nothing to echo from, its travel never-ending. If Andrew had possessed a body he would have shuddered.

“They're both dead,” he said, opening his eyes.

“And…you?” the man asked.

Andrew simply stared at him.

The creature scuttled forward and Andrew turned, insubstantial hands held out. “No! He's important,” he said. “You came down from the north because of the bomb, and he might be able to stop it.”

The thing darted closer, mandibles gaping, wet mouth already working as if chewing at flesh. The man gasped and pressed back against a wall, and Andrew stepped in front of the creature.

It skidded to a stop, scarring the road.

“He's important,” Andrew said again, quieter. He urged the man along the pavement, backing away from the creature. He could not tell whether it heard him at all, and if so whether it understood.

“Which way?” the man whispered.

“Whichever way looks best,” Andrew said. “But slowly. Don't give it the opportunity of a fast hunt. Might like that.”

“Oh, great. Great.” The man whispered. “And now I'm listening to a ghost.”

The creature watched them go. Andrew smiled. He'd experienced a frisson of fear, and it had been good to feel human again. But the fear had not been for himself.

After a few minutes they passed a multi-storey car park, and the man stepped inside. He paused between ranks of forgotten vehicles, hands on his knees, leaning over as if about to be sick.

“You need to stay with me,” Andrew said.

“A dead guy. You're coming with me to the museum?”

“No. You're coming with me away from it.”

“No,” the man said, shaking his head. “No, no, I have to go where the bomb is.”

“Go there alone and you'll die,” Andrew said. “You think the thing that almost ate you was strange? Wait until you reach the museum. There are scores of them there. They've come down from the north, and none of them can do anything to prevent what's going to happen.”

“But
I
can!” the man shouted. “So they'll let me pass, let me in!”

“Like the Superiors did?” Andrew shook his head. “They're different now. Moved on. Evolved. Just because you and they want the same thing, don't assume they won't eat you.”

The man closed his eyes and grabbed his hair in despair.

“But I've got an idea,” Andrew said.

“We don't have time for ideas!”

“We'll have time for this one.” He circled the man, trying to exude confidence, calmness. “What's your name?”

“Hayden.”

“Hayden…that Range Rover. See it? Wait in there and I'll bring people who will help.”

“What people?”

Andrew thought of his sweet sister. “Special people. Now hide
yourself away and stay safe. Right now you might be the most important person in London.”

“I've got to try,” Jack said. “I've got to try!”

“We'll keep watch,” Sparky said, and he and Jenna slipped from the kitchen and out into the restaurant area. Jack guessed they'd like some time on their own. Rhali stayed with him in the kitchen, but her eyelids were drooping, and she fell quickly asleep.

“What do you think you can do?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“I know so much of what I can do already,” he said. “But there has to be something more. Something that can help us. All I have to do is…” He pretend-grabbed something from the air and clasped his fist shut, staring at it, knuckles white with pressure.

“Not your fault if you can't,” Fleeter said.

“Maybe not,” Jack said. “But I've got to look for something. I feel the weight.”

“Of responsibility,” Lucy-Anne said. “Yeah. I think we all feel something of that.”

Jack smiled at his friend and then at Fleeter, pleased that the girl smiled back. She was changing, slowly. The problem was they no longer had time for slow.

“Won't be long,” Jack said to all of them, and then he sat in a corner between units and closed his eyes.

He fell into his universe. He was a shooting star, a fleeting spark of hope. Infinity was nothing because he had infinite speed, and he moved from one talent to the next. At first he touched abilities he was already familiar with—a shout like Reaper's, Rhali's sense of movement, Fleeter's flexing of time and movement. He gathered them to him and let them go again, comforted by their familiarity. Then he moved on to other stars, reaching out with hopeful fingers.

He could pass through walls, manipulating the quirks and quarks of quantum mechanics. Drawing oxygen from water would become easy. He could read minds, and another talent presented itself that would filter out the terrifying static and interference of another person's thoughts, allowing him to home in on one specific idea. It was chilling and thrilling, but he passed it by.