London Eye: 1 (Toxic City)(2)

“Oh, hell, I should have remembered.” She sat up straight, flushing with dismay at her bad memory, and Jack smiled and shook his head. But his smile turned sad.

“They'd always wanted a weekend in London on their own,” he said, and even though Lucy-Anne had heard this a dozen times, she would always listen again. “They were just…” He trailed off, and she pulled him into her embrace and hugged him tight.

They'd been together for almost two years. She would always remember the first time they met; she'd been a fifteen-year-old standing on a chair and offering the world out for a fight. They'd gone to the same counselling sessions for orphans of Doomsday—as the destruction of London had become known—and Lucy-Anne had taken it as a chance to rage against the authorities that put them there. Bloody lying bastards! were the first words Jack had heard from her mouth. Her hair had been green then, shaved to a half-inch buzz, and the leathers she wore that day were new, creaking, and obviously stolen.

The others in the group had retreated in fear, cried, or simply turned away, and it had taken the three counsellors half an hour to talk her down. She had sat there for the rest of that session, simmering, and swapping cautious glances with this new orphan.

“We should go,” Jack said. “Be dark soon.”

“It's always dark,” Lucy-Anne said, shivering. And in Camp Truth that was true.

Jack led the way up out of the basement. Lucy-Anne followed, and he wondered once again what had become of them. They'd been down in the basement for almost three hours, and there'd been little more than a quick kiss, and then her haunted sleep. A year ago they'd have spent their time doing a lot more. But things had changed between them, and he still tried to persuade himself that it was because they'd moved on from being teenaged lovers to the best of friends.

She was almost seventeen, but sometimes her grief made her look ageless: she'd lost her parents and brother in London. Her current hairstyle was purple spiked, formed into a carefully sculptured I-don't-give-a-damn mess, and her dark jeans and white tee shirt were tattered and ripped. Those rips weren't designer, Jack knew. Lucy-Anne had been left with her family's house, but very little else.

“Sun's going down,” he said. He stepped through the curtain of clematis they'd trained across the staircase entrance, and the red splash of dusk exploded across his skin.

Lucy-Anne looked cautiously up into the trees, as if expecting to see a cloud of birds descending towards them from any direction. But the trees were silent, and they were alone. “Red sky at night…” she began, and Jack went to her side and put his arm around her waist.

“Shall we check the drops on the way back?”

“Yeah!” She perked up, hugging him with both arms and giving him a kiss. He pinched her bum, she gave him a playful slap, and he welcomed the familiar relief at leaving their secret place.

They walked back through the forest towards their village of Tall Stennington, and on the way they checked the places where truth came to find them.

There were thirteen drops—a number not chosen intentionally, but which the four gang members were pleased with—where unknown people would leave them information about London. They checked them all: a hollow fence post, the space between two half-moon shaped stones, another hole in a fallen tree trunk. And it was only at the thirteenth that they found something.

Lucy-Anne dug the tin from beneath a crab apple tree's roots, lifted the small lid, and squealed in delight when she pulled something out. “It's from Jenna!” she said. She fumbled with the white, flower-painted envelope.

“What does it say?” Jack glanced around to make sure they were alone, always fearful that one day this would be a trap, and there would be soldiers waiting for them. He and his friends would fight to the last, but they could not win, and they'd find themselves taken where all the disappeared went. Into the Toxic City itself, some said. Into the heart of dead London.

“Lucy-Anne?”

“Okay, okay.” She unfolded the paper and read the note. “It says, ‘My house. I have a nice surprise.’”

Jack's eyes grew so wide that Lucy-Anne uttered a short, quiet giggle.

“We should go,” he said. ‘A nice surprise’ was the code the four of them had agreed upon for something earth-shattering.

And as they ran across the open field separating Tall Stennington from the forest, the moon began to emerge from the darkening sky.