Contagion (Toxic City)(9)

“To do with Nomad?”

“I think it's all to do with Nomad.”

“So many,” Rhali said. She squeezed Jack's hand tighter, then smiled weakly at him to let him know she was all right. Then she closed her eyes again. “It's all normal everywhere else…people moving around, cautious, smallish groups. Looking for food. Safety. But there's something so strange…big groups, all moving the same way. Fleeing something. Or heading for something else.”

“Where?” Jack asked. He looked up at Sparky, who shrugged and held out his hands: All clear here.

“From the north,” Rhali said. “There are dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. And they're all coming down from the north.”

“Oh, shit me,” Sparky said. “Guys, don't want to add to the crap quotient, but we have a guest.”

Jack looked up, keeping hold of Rhali's hand. Jenna stood shoulder to shoulder with Sparky. And they all stared along the street at the woman walking towards them.

To Jack, Nomad looked different from before. Lessened, and weaker. But her eyes still blazed, and for an instant they reminded him of that glowing red star.

She paused when she was a dozen steps from them. She only had eyes for Jack.

“My boy,” she said. “I've come to save you.”





Two of them had been with Jack the time she bestowed her gift upon him. The other was a stranger. But she did not care about those around him. It was Jack who mattered, Jack she had to help. Up to now he had managed to help himself, but this was something more. The bomb was unstoppable. And Jack was going the wrong way.

“My boy, I've come to save you.”

Jack released the girl's hand. She was slumped against the shop facade, sick. Nomad thought perhaps she might never rise again, but right then she did not care. Jack came towards her, and already she could sense the staggering change in him.

“Oh, you're everything I wanted this to be,” she whispered.

“You're bleeding.” Jack was staring at her mouth, and Nomad lifted a hand to touch the blood dribbling from her nose. It tasted alien, as if it belonged to someone else. He asked, “You're sick too?”

“No.” It shocked her that she should choose to lie. That was a purely human conceit, and she had removed herself from humanity.

“Yes,” Jack said. “Just like all of them. So can you stop the bomb?”

“No, Jack,” she said. The others came into focus around Jack now, and for the first time Nomad considered them as more than shadows. They stood together as if they were part of him.

“Why not? You're Nomad. All powerful, feared by everyone, and if you can do this to me, surely you can do anything!”

“I'm here to take you out,” she said. “Just you. Out of London where you'll be safe when—”

“I'm not leaving without my friend.”

Nomad glanced at the girl on the ground, the stocky boy, the other girl. “I'll take them, too,” she said, not sure whether she was lying again.

“Not them. Our other friend. And everyone else. Will you really leave London to its fate after you caused all of this?”

“It's evolution,” she said. “And you're the future.”

“No,” he said. “Help us if you can. Stop the bomb, warn everyone. Make it so everyone can leave.”

“Fifteen hours.” Nomad frowned, confused. “That's how long you have. But I'll never take you out by force, Jack. You have to want to be special, to be saved. I don't want you to doom yourself.”

“You're too late for that,” he said quietly. He was facing up to her and, though scared, so were his friends.

“I'll be watching you.” Nomad searched inside, trying to grasp something that would change how things were. But Jack was his own boy. She had told the truth—she would not save him by force. He was as special as she was, and he had to want everything she had given him for it to matter.

Jack watched Nomad turn to leave and did not call her back. She was almost not there—ethereal, like an echo of someone who had once been. He wondered what it was like being her.

“Jack, she's got to help!” Jenna said from behind him, but Jack shook his head.

“She can't,” he said. Nomad was walking away now, and her gait betrayed nothing. One look, Jack thought, and he took a deep breath and plummeted into the endless space between potentials, swirling, flitting across the void and closing on one star, always aware of that pulsing, glowing red shape that watched him like the eye of God.