Contagion (Toxic City, #3)(53)

Lucy-Anne felt apart from herself. The unbearable pain was borne by someone else. She might have been dying. Nomad knelt beside her and she looked different somehow, less than what she used to be. She was bleeding.

I came here for you, Nomad said in her mind, but Lucy-Anne could not be sure whether the woman had really said it, or if she'd imagined those words.

Lucy-Anne tilted her head to the side and tried to scream at the agony, but she could make no sound. Her body was no longer hers; pain was its master now.

There, she thought, returning Hayden's gaze as he stared down at her in frank fascination. There's our only hope. And I've never dreamed this far.

And Hayden's shocked expression vanished in a haze of blood and bone as he danced to gunfire's tune.

“No!” Jack shouted.

Instinct—

He crouched and turned, reaching out and lifting the two surviving Choppers from the rooftop. Even as he was suspended in mid-air one of them swung his rifle, and Jack super-heated the weapon, melting it and the man's hand to a slick mess. The man screamed.

Jack heaved them over the rooftop and they disappeared beyond, falling and dying out of sight.

Jack dashed past Lucy-Anne and Nomad and knelt beside Hayden, reaching out ready to clasp and heal, hands heavy with powers he had only just begun to understand. But there was no healing these wounds. No powers on earth could gather these scattered brains, bring them together, make sense of them again. Their chance at stopping the bomb—their hope for the future—lay dead in a bloody mess across the road's surface.

Jack closed his eyes and searched, harder than he ever had before. But there was no trace of Hayden. He had been living and now he was dead, and there was no point in between from which Jack could gather any knowledge that might help.

It had all gone to shit.

The taint of pointless deaths forever staining his soul, he slumped down in the street, lost.





“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.