Contagion (Toxic City)(17)

Nomad is running across the street towards her. She jumps a blazing motorcycle, leaping further than is possible, and barely seems to touch the road as she lands and rushes on. She is the focus of movement in the street, the eye of the storm, and all flames lean away from her.

Lucy-Anne holds up her hands and tries to speak, but her voice has been silenced. My dream, this is my dream, and I can change everything!

But though she knows that she has been here before, she has no control over the scene. She cannot quench the flames, nor can she divert Nomad from her course. Perhaps they have been heading towards this meeting since Doomsday.

Gunfire sounds in the distance, voices, screams, and nearby the pounding of heavy footsteps.

Turn away, she thinks, but Nomad runs onwards. Step aside. But the strange woman is determined.

Lucy-Anne opens her mouth, but cannot scream as Nomad runs into her and knocks her to the ground. She tries to punch, but her arm remains by her side, not obeying her dream.

Nomad raises a fist and brings it smashing down on Lucy-Anne's throat.

A burst of light—

The Thames flows sluggishly before her, and to her left she can just see the curve of the London Eye above some buildings. She looks around in a panic for Nomad, knowing that when she sees her the blast will come. There is no stopping it. A sun will grow in London and consume everything, and however much Lucy-Anne wills her dream to change, can she really confront such power?

Nomad killed me, she thinks, feeling the impact on her throat, pressing her hand there, and then she sees her friends. She bursts into tears because they are so solid, so there. They are approaching the river with several other people and they come with purpose. Jack looks older than before, and there's something about him that reminds her of Nomad.

They are much further along the riverbank, and closer to her she sees a group of Choppers squatting down behind concrete benches and a fallen wall. They are watching. And aiming.

We have to go, a voice says. She turns and Andrew is there, walking along the riverbank past a line of long tables covered with the swollen, rotting remains of books. Lucy-Anne, you don't have long.

But…

She looks at Jack and her friends again, and the other people, and the Choppers slowly standing, ready to fire.

But not now!

Andrew has reached her. He looks more real now than he did back in the reality of London. Perhaps this is how she will best see him from now on—in dreams.





They talked for half an hour, eating at the same time. Sparky put away three burgers.

While others talked, Jack cruised his mindscape, probing here and there, tasting potentials unknown and powers already dealt, but he could find nothing that might help him locate Miller. If he'd had a drop of the man's blood, or a shred of hair, or an item that had been of sentimental value to Miller, then maybe he could have used one of his fledgling talents to zero in on the man. But he had nothing but a memory of his brutality, evident in the sad form of Rhali. She sat with Jack and shared his warmth, and Jack felt something strong growing between them. Theirs had been a relationship of contact, not words. He found that fundamentally beautiful.

Without any means to find Miller, they could only go to look for him. Breezer would come, and he would bring Guy Morris, the man who could control a person's actions with a whisper. Order every Chopper to drop their weapons, he would mutter in Miller's ear. And he would.

“Camp H,” Fleeter told them after a while. She sounded confident. “Best place to look if you've no better leads.” It was all she contributed to the conversation. Jack went to ask her how she knew, but there was no need. She was Superior, and still enjoyed acting it.

They gave themselves until six p.m. to find Miller and attempt to ensure a safe exit from London. After that, with six hours left until detonation, they would have to rush the Exclusion Zone one way or another. Jack tried to shut out images of thousands of people crossing those bombed, flattened areas and being mown down by machine-gun fire.

He still found Fleeter fascinating. He had seen her killing in cold blood, and yet now she was here, and she seemed different. She looked exhausted, but there was something else about her as well. A brightness, as if she had discovered life again. She'd told Jack about how she'd guided his mother and Emily out of London, and how for a while she'd taken a walk out there, seeing normal people doing normal, everyday things, unaware of the dreadful events just twenty miles from where they lived. This, she'd said, was why she had returned to Breezer and his people. She wanted to help.