Contagion (Toxic City, #3)(44)

“Your lot popping off a few more survivors?” Sparky asked.

Hayden did not rise to his bait. “No. Everyone's had the evacuation order, far as I know. That'll be something else.”

“Yeah, guess who,” Lucy-Anne said.

They turned a corner and moved along the new street, and five shops along was the locksmith's that Hayden remembered. The front door was open.

Sparky and Lucy-Anne waited close to the front of the shop while Hayden disappeared into the workshop at the back. As they kept watch they heard him rooting around for tools, dropping them into a metal box and mumbling to himself.

“Maybe we should just go,” Lucy-Anne said. “Take him to the museum and leave Jenna, Jack and Rhali where they are. Pick them up on the way out, after it's done.”

“No,” Sparky said. “No way.”

“But with Jack like that—”

“It's nothing to do with Jack,” he said. “I want to be with Jenna, and I know she wants the same. When the end comes, you know?”

“But we're doing our best.”

“Can't you feel it?” Sparky said. “The hopelessness of all this? Night's falling on London, Lucy-Anne. The end's close. Everything feels doomed, and what we're doing just feels so pointless. Clutching at straws.”

“You've got to have hope.”

“I do. I have hope that I can die with Jenna. With the girl I love. And all of us together, too, when the time comes. We got more than we ever dreamed really, didn't we? Always wanted to expose the truth of what London had become, reveal the lie being told to everyone. And here we are in the middle of it all. I never thought…” He chuckled wryly, shook his head.

“That doesn't sound like the Sparky I know.”

“Not sure I'm him anymore.”

She wanted to rage, and cry. Instead, she pulled Sparky close and gave him a hard, quick kiss on the lips. Then she gripped his lapels.

“There's still hope,” Lucy-Anne whispered. After everything, she was surprised that she was the one to say that. She thought of Nomad, and the explosion, and Rook falling and being killed even though she had dreamed him surviving. And the refrain repeated again and again in her mind as Sparky stared at her, unable to respond. There's still hope…

For a while Jack believed himself dead, because when he tried to rise from his star-speckled darkness he could not. Reality remained obscure and difficult to find. Like some people's idea of Heaven, it was beyond the universe he now knew.

But then he touched on a talent and plunged inside, and his perception changed. He floated in a blue sea that surrounded him on all sides and in all directions, and in places the sea was marred with frozen places, the ice a deep green colour, cracks seeping pain, sharp surfaces brushing against the sea and spreading more cold.

I know what this is, he thought, and he closed on one berg. The water grew colder and strong currents swirled through the sea, but he kept his course and reached out. The point between water and ice was ambiguous, but Jack felt power flowing through him and producing a warm, comforting heat. The berg began to melt. Green turned to blue. He could make out more details about his surroundings, as if the gift of vision was becoming more defined, and he waited there until the berg was almost completely gone. At its centre remained a solid core, a scar on the blue ocean that would likely remain there forever.

But Jack knew that he had done enough, and he drifted away towards another spread of ice. This was much larger but less defined, like a sea of sludge within this endless ocean of blue. It was a deep purple colour, and shades and tones swirled and flowed in its depths. Jack paused for only a moment before allowing himself to enter. The floating sensation was different—more harsh edges, and the smell/taste was sickly and rich—and he exuded the healing warmth once again.

As the cold ocean around him faded from a rich purple to a comfortable blue, it began to take on more features. His senses burst alight. He could hear the mumble of voices, though as yet the words made little sense. He could feel contact against his skin—a pressure behind him from where he was lying down, and a repetitive caress against one extreme that might have been his hand. And he could smell coffee.

Coffee!

He tried talking, but the shades of purple still swallowed his words. More heat, more healing flow. What he was doing amazed him, though perhaps it should have come as no surprise. He possessed remarkable powers after all, and healing himself was not the most incredible thing he had ever done.

As the purple faded some more he cast his senses farther afield, and when he felt able, he tried to speak once more.

“Large latte, extra shot.” Jack tried to sit up, and Jenna grabbed him beneath one arm, Rhali the other. When he was sitting he looked around at them all, saw the toolbox in Hayden's hand, nodded. “Good. Right. Let's go.”

None of them spoke. There was a stiffness and soreness in Jack's right eye. It felt like someone had punched him there and it was swollen, but when he closed his left eye he could still see, though his vision was blurred.

And his head hurt like hell.

“But…” Lucy-Anne said.

“Mate,” Sparky said.

“What?” Jack went to stand, but Jenna pressed her hand gently on his shoulder.

“For a moment we thought you were dead,” she said. “Then it looked like your eye had been gouged out. And Hayden thought you had a fractured skull, and we weren't sure whether you'd even wake up or not. There was so much bleeding. You were shaking, and muttering things. And we just…didn't know.”