Contagion

^{CHAPTER FIFTEEN} TWO

“They did something to us,” Reaper said. “At the edge of London. Crossing the Exclusion Zone. They fired several artillery shells. I thought they were just bad shots, but then I smelled something, felt strange. Tired. It must have been some sort of gas to knock us out, but Haru froze the worst of it into ice. I didn’t know what they’d done until I tried to…to shout.” He was struggling to sound strong, as dismissive as he’d always been. But his fear was leaking through. Jack didn’t think it was fear of death. He thought that Reaper was more scared of losing his destructive power for good and being normal again.

“They stole his shout,” Haru said. “They stole my cold.”

“Miller’s last revenge?” Jenna suggested.

“He’s dead?” Reaper asked.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “The Choppers know what’s happening, so when you went to them it was a gift. Their last chance to trap you Superiors so they still have someone to experiment on when everything’s blown wide. And they wouldn’t want such murderers breaking out of London.”

“You’d call me a murderer, Jack?” Reaper asked, eyebrow raised.

But right then, Jack didn’t care. So much had happened that he was finding it difficult to care about anything. He was withdrawn, distant from everyone and everything, prisoner of his own guilt and struggling to see light anywhere. The sun was down now, over London and in his mind. Darkness ruled.

Outside, something cried out in the night. He listened, but it was not human. Rhali was still lost.

“But you led them to us!” Jenna said. “Why the hell would you do that? Why would you think that was anything like a good idea?”

“We weren’t sure they were following.”

“Bullshit!” Jenna shouted. Reaper flinched, face stern. But he did not respond. “What, were you scared? When you found you couldn’t shout someone apart? And are you so-called Superiors just the thickest crusts of dog shit on the shittiest covered shit-shoe in the history of shit? Are you? Huh? You’ve wiped out pretty much everyone who can do something about the bomb, and now we’ve got the last one here, you lead the Choppers right to us!” She looked ready to rage some more, but her fury seemed to wane as quickly as it had risen. She pointed at Lucy-Anne. “And look what happens.” Her voice was suddenly lighter, sadder. “Just look.”

Lucy-Anne was sleeping in the corner of the large room. It had been a nightclub of some sort at one point, probably turned into a drinking club soon before Doomsday. There were no bodies in here, but plenty of canned drinks and bottled water, and crisps and nuts. The main attraction, though, was its lack of windows. They were shut off in here. Jack wondered whether, if he really thought about it, he could cut himself off from everything that had happened outside.

But he could still smell the blood and feel the desperation of his friends.

He was tired. Sparky’s wounds had been simple to tend to. He’d be scarred, but Jack had stopped the bleeding and knitted flesh where his two worst lacerations lay open to the bone. But Lucy-Anne’s wound was far different. The bullet had passed clean through her face, but in doing so it had done major damage. Her lower jaw was broken, teeth smashed, cheekbones cracked. Her broken teeth had been driven into her throat, and if it hadn’t been for Nomad opening an airway—a finger tracheotomy—Lucy-Anne would have suffocated.

As it was, Jack had eased her pain with a touch, but try as he might he’d not been able to reset the bones. Perhaps there were some who could. He had seen Rosemary’s friend operate on Jenna to retrieve a bullet without opening her up. But right now, such damage was beyond his talents. She moaned, unconscious. Nomad slumped beside her, asleep herself. Nomad frightened Jack, because she gave off a heat and a stink that only he could sense. He thought she was dying, but she hadn’t said a thing since they’d broken into the club. He’d moved close to her once to try to wake her up, but the heat and smell had driven him away.

The stench of death. And the heat, for all he knew, of hell.

“I was wrong,” Reaper said.

“What?” Jack said, aghast.

“I was—”

“I heard what you said!” He could barely even look at the man. Frightening, powerful, inhuman, to hear him utter such words disturbed Jack as much as anything else. It made him realise how much was changing, and how useless everything had become.

“So now what?” Sparky said. “I mean, thanks for sorting me out, mate. And for Lucy-Anne…for doing as much as you can for her. But now what? Rhali’s gone. Your charming dad’s gang are mostly dead or gone. Apart from Mrs. Frost there. And Hayden’s had his brains blown out.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I know all that.”

“So you’ve got a plan?” Sparky said. “Cos we’re shit out of time.”

“No plan,” Jack said. “Other than, just…” He shrugged, because what he was going to suggest was no plan at all.

“What?” Sparky asked. “Tell us. You sound like you’ve given up, and you can’t sound like that. I won’t let you.”

“You saved us all back there,” Jenna said, and she cut straight to the core of what was torturing Jack. Not the bomb, or Hayden’s death, or even Rhali’s disappearance. It was the fact that he had killed again that made everything seem so pointless. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t alter the way he thought. Even if everything worked out fine, he had killed to make it happen. A world where that was the price was perhaps not a world worth saving.

“Maybe,” Jack said. “Or perhaps I just made your pain go on a little longer.”

“What, you wish we’d all been killed?” Jenna asked.

“Screw that,” Sparky said. “And screw you. I’m going for the bomb even if you’re not.”

“Me too,” Jenna said. She was sitting beside Sparky, grasping his hand tightly in hers as if she would never again let him go.

“I’m so scared of myself,” Jack said. He looked at Nomad but she was still slumped beside Lucy-Anne, as if echoing the girl’s state. He’d started to hate the woman for what she’d turned him into. His gifts should have brought only good, but instead he’d become a killer.

Just like his father.

“Are you scared of me?” he asked Reaper.

“I’m scared for you,” Reaper replied. He looked like Jack’s father, but that was because he was trying. Stripped of his power, he was using other means to advance whatever his cause might be. Give him his powers again and he’ll be as much a monster as ever, Jack thought. He snorted and turned away.

Lucy-Anne was looking at him. He caught his breath and went to her, and when they saw she was awake the others gathered around as well. Sparky held Jack’s arm and Jenna pressed close to him, and he had to fight back a sob. His friends were loyal, and close, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for them.

Nothing.

Giving up could never be an option.

Lucy-Anne was trying to speak, and Jack could see the pain it caused her. They’d dressed some of her wounds with napkins, and Jack had stopped the worst of the bleeding. But the structural damage to her face was appalling.

“Don’t try to speak,” Jenna said, but Lucy-Anne grabbed at her friend’s jacket and squeezed tight, clenching her fist against the pain.

“Gu…idee…”

“Got an idea?” Jenna asked.

Lucy-Anne nodded.

“I’ll get you a pencil and paper,” Sparky said. “Hold on. Hold on!”

An idea. Jack and Lucy-Anne looked at each other, and he wished he could pluck the idea from her mind. Wished it was that easy.

Sparky returned.

As Lucy-Anne began to write her idea down, Jack was still dwelling on that thought.

Pluck the idea from her mind…

The pain was part of her dream, and in the strange places she wandered, no one knew what she was trying to say. The London of her dreamscape had a bland, washed-out look—all colour was bleached, the sky was a monotone grey, and the parks and avenues were filled with the memories of trees. People walked the streets, but their expressions were neutral. Even when Lucy-Anne tried speaking to them, they only broke into slight frowns. Children walked with parents without being naughty, or inquisitive, or children at all. The River Thames did not flow.

The only splash of colour and life was the woman she was following along the South Bank. Nomad! she tried shouting, but the woman did not seem to hear. Either that or Lucy-Anne’s voice was not working, because she could not hear herself.

I was shot. I can see, but not smell or taste. I can feel and wish I couldn’t. Some of this is true.

So she ran after Nomad instead, sprinting through her dream of a London that never was, and each footfall jarred up through her body and reminded her of the pain.

Nomad turned, smiled, and Lucy-Anne imagined them meeting and embracing and the bomb not exploding.

She approached Nomad and held out her arms, and the woman raised her eyebrows in surprise. They embraced. I think this is something I can do, for a while, Lucy-Anne said.

When she opened her eyes she was talking to herself, and that grey London was deserted. But it was still there. No heat blast, no mushroom cloud, and a future that might just be malleable, for a time at least.

Maybe for long enough.

“You really think you can do that?” Sparky asked.

“It’s all we have,” Jenna said quietly. She was looking at Lucy-Anne, smiling and nodding.

“But dream a nuclear explosion not happening?”

“What else would you do?” Jenna asked, not unkindly.

“Get the bomb onto a boat. Float it down the Thames. Into the North Sea, or something.”

“In…” Jenna glanced at her watch. “…less than two hours?”

Sparky frowned. He had no answer.

“It’s the only idea,” Jack said. They all looked to him, Reaper included.

“Getting pretty bloody desperate here, mate,” Sparky said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, we are,” Jack said. “That’s why Lucy-Anne’s right.” He looked around at all of them, and he had tears in his eyes. Sparky, feisty and hard, but with a good heart. Jenna, resourceful and kind. And Lucy-Anne, who might well have lost more than all of them, and who now might be dying.

“Nomad,” Jack said, pushing hard into her mind to make sure she heard. She raised her head.

Lucy-Anne tensed, trying to lift herself up, and Jack thought that perhaps she already knew. But hopefully that would not matter.

Hopefully.

Jack closed his eyes and flipped, and when he opened them again his friends were all but frozen where they stood, sat or lay.

“Jack,” Nomad said. She had flipped as well, just as he’d hoped.

“I won’t let anyone else die for me,” he said. He didn’t say what else he was thinking; not yet.

“And I’ll do anything I can to help you and Lucy-Anne.”

Jack moved across to Lucy-Anne, careful not to touch anyone else in case he hurt them. Haru exuded cold even now. And Reaper was in his way, raised a couple of inches from his seat. In that last moment before Jack had flipped out, Reaper had perhaps seen that he was scheming, and he had gone to stand and try to have some part in Jack’s plans. But he would not.

Jack paused before his father and stared at him. Like this, his features again resembled those of the man he had once loved, and still did. The memory of his father was rich and strong, because Jack had strived to keep such memories close for those two long, lonely years between Doomsday and now. And he only wished he could find it in his heart to feel forgiveness and grant his father another chance. That should be how this all ended; with redemption and hope.

But he could not.

He resisted the temptation to nudge Reaper aside and knelt carefully by Lucy-Anne.

“I think I know,” Nomad said.

“And you’ll not try to stop me?”

“Of course not. It means you and Lucy-Anne get out.” Her expression did not change, and there was no way he could read what she was really thinking. But even flipped out, he did not have time for a long discussion.

And I’ll help too, Andrew said. He emerged from shadows at the back of the club and drifted forward. Jack was surprised, but only for a moment. He’d been wondering where the ghost had gone, but had already guessed that he would not have abandoned his sister.

“She’ll be all right,” Jack said. “You need to get her out of London, to a hospital, and they’ll be able to fix her.”

“Probably,” Andrew said. “But shouldn’t I be helping you?”

“Nomad and I will be fine,” Jack said. For a second he thought that Andrew could see the truth. But the ghost said nothing.

“I’ll have to tell them,” Jack said. “When I flip back and get ready to leave.”

“We could just go,” Nomad said.

“No.” Jack shook his head but did not bother trying to explain. Nomad was showing how far from being human she had drifted. He didn’t know how he would tell his friends what he was doing, but he supposed the words would come when they were needed.

Jack touched Lucy-Anne’s forehead, so gently, and looked at her terrible wounds before closing his eyes. They’ll fix her, he thought, but he could not be sure. Perhaps he was trying to feel better about not being able to fix her himself.

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.