Contagion

^{CHAPTER SIXTEEN} ONE

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.”

“Not now!” Jack said. “Come on. Come on, just a few more minutes, get me into—”

“You go,” she said. Her eyes changed then, seeming to glaze over with something darker. She staggered forwards, reaching for the museum’s perimeter fence, but Jack caught her before she fell. “You go on. I can’t stay like this. The illness…is in me as well. It has been for some time, but I’ve been denying it. Too late, Jack. But you’re strong enough.”

“No!” Jack said. “I need your help. I’m not as strong as you think.” But he lied. Desperate, anxious to get inside, still he needed Nomad with him. But not only for her help. He needed her because he could not let her escape London. Not with what she had inside, that potential for contagion. He was ready to remain here to keep his own infection contained, so he could never let her go.

He checked the time, and wondered how accurate the timer on the bomb might be.

Without warning Nomad flipped back, and Jack had to follow. The world came to life around them. Movement, sound, smells, much of it unnatural and strange. Jack grabbed Nomad’s arm and ran.

Through the gates into the museum grounds, and something came at them from the left. Jack raised a hand to halt it, but the shape skidded to a stop and backed off. Other creatures moved aside. Perhaps these amazing, wretched things were scared of Nomad. Maybe they perceived some kind of hope in their sudden arrival.

Or perhaps it was simply that they had already eaten.

Nomad ran with him, grunting at every footfall. She was more human than he had ever known her.

“The doors?” Jack asked.

“Safe,” she said. “The traps begin inside.”

Jack knew it was a terrible risk, but he used Reaper’s power to grunt the doors open. They fell back, hinges twisted and lock shattered, and he and Nomad ran inside. He had no wish to give those creatures time to rethink, so he skidded on the marble floor, turned, and breathed a gush of white flame at the opened doors. Glass cracked and shattered in the inner vestibule walls, and the flames lit the area as bright as daytime.

Jack shoved forward with both hands, feeling his power surge through the air and catch the doors, slamming them against the darkness of London. He kept them closed and melted their hinges, twisting the lock back into place and melting it into one piece. It might not withstand a sustained assault. But it would have to do.

“Show me,” he said to Nomad. She was staring at him with those glazed eyes, and he saw the respect and wonder. But he could not pander to that. “Show me!”

“This way,” she said. He followed her into the main hall where machines of war stood on pristine plinths or hung from the ceiling. She held up a hand and they came to a halt. She pointed. In the darkness Jack saw the fine tendrils of lasers crisscrossing the large space, and the glimmer of trip wires. Then she touched his arm and pointed at the hulking shadow of a tank at the other end of the hall.

There, she said in his mind.

Jack could see that she was getting worse. That did not concern him now. It would help when the time came.

“We don’t need to get too close,” he said.

She was looking at him wide-eyed. “I’ve brought you as far as I can,” she whispered. “I can’t stay here, Jack. I know you must, and I won’t change that. But what I have is too precious and it has to be preserved.”

“No.”

“Yes. It has to be spread.”

“No! It’s not precious. It’s poisonous. And you’re staying here with me.”

Every scrap of her illness—the weakness, the blood, the distant glaze to her eyes—vanished in an instant. She seemed to expand as she took in one huge breath, and Jack wondered at the effort and energies it took to drive down that sickness.

“Nomad—” he began, but then she turned and ran for the doors.

He followed. The bomb behind, Nomad in front, both were terribly destructive, but Nomad was probably worse. The bomb could end London and all the history of that great character city. Nomad, and the contagion she carried, would change the world. Some of the change might be good, but the possibility was too great that much of it would be bad. In London she had been her own person, but out there in the wider world, she would be precious. Sought-after. Jack tried not to imagine Nomad weaponised. He tried not to imagine an army of a thousand Reapers.

She shoved at the doors and they flexed in their frames, creaking and breaking. Jack dipped into her mind and broke her link with the doors. She stumbled forward, as if a great barrier had been removed before her.

“You’d dare enter my mind?” she asked.

“Please listen to—”

Nomad shimmered and Jack flipped just as she did. He recovered from the familiar shock just in time to catch a fist to his face. A real flesh and blood fist, knuckles grinding across his nose and opening wounds that had only recently stopped bleeding.

He dulled the pain that melted into his skull, skipped through the universe she had planted within him, and then that red pulsing star of contagion seemed to expand and surge at him, seeking his touch and the gift of release. It exuded both vigour and sickness, and he veered away.

But it had given him an idea. Inside him was this alien thing, and inside Nomad there might be something similar. Or someone.

As Nomad smashed open the doors and they spilled to the floor, Jack knelt behind her and concentrated hard. She’d raised a much heavier barrier, but she still did not quite understand that everything she could do had also been given to him. He circled the barrier, observing, and then drove down and into it, hauling himself through. Before she could do anything he was drifting into her own universe of potential.

The shock at entering her mind almost froze him. Her place of talents was so different from his. It was colder, for a start. The stars more distant, the spaces in between so vast, more hollow, more empty. There was no personality to this place, and that made finding what he wanted that much easier.

He sought the personality she had once been.

Jack excavated. Unearthed the truth she had kept buried for so long. Freeing who she really was. He touched the star and let it burst, and its light flooded Nomad’s subconscious. When he pulled out and drew back from her, readying for another attack, preparing to defend himself if what he’d tried went wrong, it was not only Nomad slumping to the ground before him.

Angelina Walker was a part of her once again.

She looked up at Jack with haunted eyes.

“You’re staying with me,” he said, and before she could react he stole her breath until she fainted away.

Jack used everything he had to venture closer to the tank. He mapped the trip wires and lasers in his mind, forming a three-dimensional understanding of where they were, and then sought out the other traps. He moulded a space of motionless air around motion detectors, levelled the temperature around body heat detectors. Paused by the inner doors, wondering what he might have missed and probing inside the tank with all of his human senses, and many senses that were far from human.

The bomb was in there, hot and heavy. The tank was welded shut.

“Angelina,” he said. The woman was leaning against the wall beside him, eyelids fluttering, leg twitching. “Is there anything else?” He brought her up out of her faint.

She was scared, shivering, useless. She would be no threat to him as she was now, but neither could she help. This was all on him.

“We’re going closer,” he said. “I have to be as close as I can. Come with me.”

Everything was still, and quiet, and as far removed from London as he had been in days. He stared at the terrible display of war machines, portraying both beauty in form, and ugliness in their intended purpose. Each one told a story now lost to the dark mists of long-finished wars. And yet each story still resonated, because Jack felt the influence of the people who had manned these machines. He had a duty to them as well as to everyone left alive in London. He had a duty to the world.

“What did you do?” he asked Angelina, not expecting an answer. But she gave one anyway.

“Only my best,” she said.

“You can help me put everything right,” Jack said. “I’ll sleep, but I need waking every few minutes. You can do that. You have to.”

Angelina nodded, and he saw no deception in her. He would have to trust her.

They moved closer until they were only a few feet from the tank, and then they stopped. They sat down slowly, Jack checking all the time for lasers he hadn’t seen, pressure pads or trip wires hidden in shadows. But he knew that they were safe, for now. With the powers he had, he knew.

He could sense the bomb inside, a terrible weight. And he knew the time was close.

“Lucy-Anne dreamt of Nomad and the bomb,” Jack said. “I have to do the same.” He closed his eyes and started breathing deeply, falling into his universe and then passing through an unknown place into Nomad’s stranger, cooler mind.

And he dreamt of Lucy-Anne.