Contagion (Toxic City, #3)(63)

“And we'll tell her her daddy's dead,” Sparky said.

Lucy-Anne was shocked for a moment, remembering Reaper slinking away into the shadows after bringing Rhali back to them. But after everything he'd done—and she had only seen and heard about a fraction of it—that was nowhere near redemption.

No one objected to Sparky's suggestion.

“Where do you think we'll find them?” Jenna asked.

“Knowing Emily, it wouldn't surprise me if they found us,” Sparky said.

Lucy-Anne looked back across the bombed Exclusion Zone towards the distant, dark London. There were no lights over there, and the starlight gave only a surface silvery sheen to what she could see of the city.

She knew that however strong Jack's dreaming, the darkness could not last all night.

He sees Lucy-Anne again. It is a beautiful moment, even though he knows it is only him benefiting from the sighting. This is Nomad's dream he is redreaming, and retelling, after all.

He has a second to dwell on her beauty. Not only on the outside, because her rebellious, perky attractiveness has always been obvious to him. But on the inside as well. She has lost so much, but even so she did not allow the madness to carry her away. It stole her for a time. But she triumphed.

And then the flash behind him. London is bleached, as if the explosion's power is already erasing the city before its heat and shock blasts can do the real work. The skin on the back of his neck stretches.

Lucy-Anne's eyes go wide and her face drops. And then he sees her eyeballs melt as—

He dreams it all back to normal. He dreams it…back…to normal.

London displays its true colours again, and the pigeons in the trees coo plaintively.

Across the Thames, a building is burning.

Lucy-Anne raises her hands to her face, and as the scream forms in her throat—

Jack woke up. Shook his head. Pushed away Angelina's hands as they flapped at his face, holding one cheek and slapping the other.

“Not long,” he said. “I can't do it for long. Maybe Lucy-Anne could have. I'm sure she could. But I…”

The tank's bodywork seemed to vibrate, filled with barely restrained energy.

“Maybe next time,” Jack said.

“It's not fair,” Angelina said. She was crying.

Jack could find nothing to say to her, so he leaned back and closed his eyes, thinking of his friends.





They hitched a ride with a family in a camper van. There was a man, a woman, and a young boy. They'd come to find their daughter, but there had been no sign of her.

“Did you see Annabelle?” the desperate mother asked. “Seventeen, blonde hair, denim jacket? We've thought she was dead all this time, ever since Doomsday, but now we hear about all this…all these lies…and we came to find her. Do you know her? Did you see her?”

Everyone shook their heads, and Lucy-Anne was glad for her wounds, because she could not say what she was thinking. She's probably dead, buried in a mass grave somewhere. Or if she did survive Doomsday, she might have developed an amazing power. In which case she's likely dying from the illness Evolve also gave everyone. Or she might be a murdering Superior. Or maybe the Choppers dissected her to see what made her tick. So no, we haven't seen your daughter. Concentrate on your son.

The family were very kind to them, giving them food and drink they'd brought along in their camper van, and they volunteered to take them to a hospital. The hospitals were already overflowing with people who'd come out of London, they said, and they had a long way to go before they gave up on their little girl.

In this family's outlook, Lucy-Anne found hope. They seemed so accepting of the people who'd emerged from London after so long. They spoke of a huge charity push that was being organised, led by a core of movie stars, musicians and actors, and which aimed to raise a hundred million pounds in the first year for rehabilitation and treatment of London's survivors.

They spoke of the government, and how the Prime Minister had already stepped down. Foreign reaction, and how other countries were being accused of complicity. The mood of the general populace now that the truth was out. The people had been deceived and fooled by those in charge, and never had the gulf between ruled and rulers been so wide and deep. “There'll be chaos for a while,” the man said. “The likes of which Britain hasn't seen before. But there's a real pulling together of people at the moment. It's the people who were lied to. It's us who are going to make things change.”

They spoke a lot more, but Lucy-Anne drifted in and out of consciousness.

And she dreamed.

She runs along the South Bank and sees Nomad before her. Calls her name. Nomad turns, and smiles, and then it is not Nomad at all, but Jack smiling back at her. She can see the pain in his eyes, both the good and the bad one, because his injuries are apparent in the dream. As is his tiredness, and his strain. His smile is pure and unforced, but Lucy-Anne can tell that it is taking every ounce of physical and mental strength for him to hold the dream together, in peace.

She smiles back, her expression conveying so much. She tells him that they are safe and he can let go now. He can let go.

And then there is light.

Lucy-Anne jerked awake, breathing hard, gasping for breath. “Bad dream!” she said. “I had such a bad—”