London Eye: 1 (Toxic City)(25)

“Oh, that's pleasant,” Sparky said. “Reminds me of Lucy-Anne's armpits.”

Lucy-Anne did not reply. Sparky looked at her and she raised an eyebrow, and that was enough to make him smile.

“Rats everywhere,” Jenna said. They did not seem to bother her, but Emily remained close to Jack, even while she trained her torch around the walls and filmed what it revealed.

“You'll see a lot more,” Rosemary. “But there's always a balance. Lots of wild cats in London now, and they keep the rat population down.”

She headed off, confidently aiming for one of the large sewage pipes.

“We walk through there?” Lucy-Anne asked. She hated this; she had never been afraid before. She could not prevent herself from shaking, and she'd seen the way Jack had been looking at her: concerned and confused.

“Not for long.”

The pipe swept this way and that, branching left and right, but Rosemary did not hesitate at all. She took one branch that narrowed considerably, but they were happier to bend almost double, accepting the burning pain in their knees and back, rather than crawl. There was dried stuff here, sewage and dead rats and other things they could not so easily identify.

And at last Lucy-Anne found something to cling onto and calm her, and that was the memory of her family. Their smiles and voices drove away the threat of forgotten nightmares. Whatever happened in the near future, she was determined of one thing: she would discover the truth.

That's what drove them all, she was sure. Not the sense of injustice, and the knowledge that the government had lied to them day in, day out, since Doomsday. It was family that made them able to do this. Jack's and Emily's parents, and Sparky's brother. Even Jenna, who had lost no one on Doomsday, was coming here to avenge what they had done to her father since then.

She felt a momentary flush of hope and determination, and pride in her friends. If they weren't half-crawling through a pipe coated with dried shit and dead rats, she'd have hugged them all.

She could imagine Sparky's reaction to that.

Lucy-Anne giggled. She tried to stop, but couldn't. Her torch light shook as she laughed, and they all paused because they thought something was wrong.

“No!” she said, shaking her head even though none of them could see much down here. “No, it's okay, its…” Her laughter turned manic.

“Gas down here sometimes,” Rosemary said, her voice low with concern.

“Nobody strike a match,” Sparky said, and that only made Lucy-Anne laugh louder.

The sewers ended in another large chamber, and in this one they found a dead body.

It was a woman, sitting back against the wall, long hair tangled across her face and down one side of her head. She wore jeans and a heavy ski jacket, and rats had eaten her eyes.

That's what Jack noticed first, and what he could not help looking at again and again. He jerked his torch back at her face, knowing he should not, knowing that he should be turning the other way and leading Emily across the chamber and into whichever sewer they had to walk along next…and rats had eaten her eyes!

“Oh,” Lucy-Anne said, backing away against the wall of the chamber. But she kept her eyes open.

“Rosemary—” Jack began, but she cut in.

“Not when I came through!” she said. “She wasn't here when I came through.”

“You know her?” Jenna asked.

Rosemary went closer, stepping carefully across the lower part of the chamber, dodging still-wet pools of raw sewage.

“Jack…” Emily said. She lowered the camera. “I don't think I want to film this.”

Jenna was with them then, holding Emily's hand and turning around so that they both faced away from the body.

“No,” Rosemary said. She had lifted the woman's hair from her face and stepped aside, allowing torchlight to fall there. “I don't know her.”

“Then what the hell is she doing down here?” Sparky said. “You said you're the only one who knew this route, you said that Philippe bloke told you the way, and—”

“Lots of Irregulars come down below London,” Rosemary said. She turned her back on the body, hiding it from view. “To escape, to hide. There are some that can't handle what's happened to them, and…” She shrugged.

“She killed herself?” Jack asked.

“Maybe.” Rosemary returned to them, leaving the dead woman behind. “Or maybe she was dying anyway, and she wanted to do it alone.”