Reaper's Legacy: Book Two (Toxic City)(55)

“They'll always have more to find out,” Nomad said, voice strong with certainty. “They've barely scratched the surface.”

“Maybe they've scratched it and not liked what they've found.”

“And you,” Nomad said, looking her up and down. “What about you? Came in from outside. Weren't here. Untouched by my Evolve.”

“I've always had strange dreams,” Lucy-Anne said. “Since coming into London, they've been growing stronger.”

“You're in a place where you don't have to hold back anymore,” Nomad said.

“I've never held back. Not consciously. Just…never really understood.”

“You've been scared of what you can do. Now you're not so scared anymore. You're…" She leaned forward, breathing in as if smelling Lucy-Anne. “You're amazing. Everything I wanted to find, before this. Everything I wanted people to be. I knew you were out there, and those like you. With Evolve, I wanted to change everyone.”

“Without even asking them if you could.”

Nomad glanced away, perhaps distracted, perhaps shamed.

“I saw someone living in a pit in the ground, like a giant worm. A dog-woman pissing against a tree. And there must be others.”

“Other monsters, and so many dead.”

She carries such weight. Lucy-Anne could hardly question the woman's madness, because how else could she cope with the scope of what she had done?

But this was not about Nomad.

“I'm looking for my brother. Andrew. I've been told he's here on the Heath, and I need to find him. He's all I have left.”

“All? What about…?” Nomad pointed to Lucy-Anne's head, waved a hand around her own.

“The things we see?” Lucy-Anne asked. “They're just…things we see. Not all dreams come true.”

“But this one is dreamed by us both.”

Yes, she thought. I wish I could change my dreams.

“Please help me find Andrew. He'll be my strength. Then together, maybe we can find out what it means.”

“I'll do everything I can to stop it,” Nomad said. “Everything. I have to make amends, and my London needs to remain for me to do so.”

“Your London?”

They stared at each other for a while, both strong and determined, both troubled by visions neither of them really understood.

“Andrew,” Nomad said. “Let me see him.” She reached forward for Lucy-Anne's face, fingers splayed.

“You'll find him?”

Nomad touched her. Lucy-Anne felt a rush of memories of Andrew, from when they were younger all the way to the last time she had seen him. They fought and argued and loved like brother and sister, and her tears came strong and unbidden.

“I've found him,” Nomad said. She stood, turned, and before Lucy-Anne could say any more, she was gone.

Nomad ran. Flowed. Drifted. London moved beneath her, and she crossed the Heath like a memory.

Lucy-Anne's brother was a warm point in her mind; a collection of senses and echoes, a smear of colour, a splash of light. She was already closing in on him, and knew that he would be easy to find. Of course. She was Nomad.

As she moved, it began to feel like something fundamental about her had changed. In the girl, she had encountered something she did not understand, a talent she could not ascribe to the Evolve she had released across London. I went to kill her and came away her friend, Nomad thought. Though inexplicable, that was something that pleased her. But the change seemed deeper, and she extended her awareness to analyse it.

All around, the monsters moved. She saw them and felt them, and sensed how troubled they had suddenly become. What's this? she thought. She passed a gathering of shadows hiding beneath a copse of trees, and though they watched her, she was not the cause of their turmoil. There was something else, deeper.

They are not such monsters, she thought. And it came as a shock. Something else she had learned today, another surprise, and Nomad felt suddenly more human than she had for some time. There were things she did not know. Assumptions she had made. She slowed her run and spread her perception, and beneath the wild veneer she discovered a world of complexity and intelligence surrounding her, and echoes of continuing agony at the radical changes that were still taking place. Not such monsters at all.

She wanted to stop and examine. Their minds were suddenly deep and expansive, their thoughts and aims open to view, as if she had broken through the crust of their monstrousness to discover endless potential beneath.

Even Nomad, it seemed, was guilty of preconception.

But she did not have the time. Their true natures were open to her because something troubled them deeply, and their defences—that crust of camouflage—were down. They ebbed and flowed across the Heath, and she passed through the tides of their discontent, closing on the sharp image of the girl's brother. He suddenly seemed so very important, and this all felt connected.

“Everything is changing,” Nomad said. Something called out loud in agreement. Another voice added a growl. She saw the source of neither, and did not seek them out.

Soon, Andrew was close. She closed on a dilapidated folly tower on top of a gentle rise, and though the door had been bricked up decades ago, she knew that he was inside.

“Andrew,” she said, standing at the foot of the tower.