Contagion

which she communicated to the others.

“I think some of them are Choppers,” she said. “And some of them are just…normal people. Like you.” She nodded at Breezer.

“Irregulars,” Jenna said.

“Whatever name they wish to use,” Rhali said dismissively. “But some of them—a lot of them—are strange. Changed. Like those women we saw. And they’re tortured.”

Jack glanced at Rhali.

“Not like me,” she said. “I mean they’re in pain from what they have become. Imagine changing so much. Imagine what such physical changes must feel like?”

“They’re going the wrong way to be fleeing the city, even if they know about the bomb,” Jack said. “They’re coming south for something else.”

“They do know,” Lucy-Anne said. “And Nomad told me they’re not so monstrous. I think she meant that they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re intelligent.”

“Great,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Sparky said. “Long as what they’re doing doesn’t involve eating us.”

Lucy-Anne started crying, grasping her friend, burying her face in his jacket. Jack had never seen her so vulnerable. Whatever had happened to her, whatever she had seen, must have been terrible. He wondered what had happened to the boy Rook.

But he feared that finding out would only add to the weight of responsibility he felt. He had no power to counter that, no unknown star in his new universe that could temper the fates being piled on him. Rhali, the poor girl who’d had terrible things done to her, and he’d not even had the time to ask what. Lucy-Anne, his old girlfriend, confused and suffering and with so much to tell. Sparky and Jenna, still with him because they valued their friendship so much. Breezer. Even his father. That bastard Reaper, following him and protecting him, or perhaps merely playing with him now that Miller was no longer such an exciting plaything.

The bomb, London, Nomad, his expanding starscape of wonders, and his potential for contagion.

He wished he could shrug them all off and be on his own, unhindered and free. He closed his eyes but it didn’t work. He hadn’t chosen all this at all; it had been thrust upon him. Nomad was to blame.

When he opened his eyes Jenna was staring at him, and he thought of reaching out and touching her, as Nomad had touched him. His vision swam red. Red, for danger. What would I give her? he thought, and then his musings were interrupted.

“Where it all began,” Sparky said. He had moved into the boat’s open bow and was staring to starboard, and they all watched as the London Eye came into view around a bend in the river. It was still quite awesome, even with everything it represented. The scar in its upper reaches was charred black and angry, and somewhere behind it on the embankment lay the remains of Nomad’s helicopter. She had been Angelina Walker back then, a normal human being. She had changed everything.

“Maybe twenty minutes from here,” Breezer said from the cabin. “Make the most of the rest.”

The strange new smells of London, the sights, and occasionally the sounds—today this truly was the best view anyone could have of London, from the river at least. The Houses of Parliament remained as impressive and imposing as ever. Next to them, the clock on Big Ben’s tower was frozen at a moment in time, the bell now silent. The moment meant nothing but the end of the clock’s constant round of maintenance.

The quiet and stillness along the river was as unnatural as in the rest of the city, because this was a place built for life, bustle, and commerce. The only movements were the bow wave from their boat blurring the water’s surface, and the flights of birds startled aloft by the engine. Sunlight reflected from dusty windows, hiding grotesque truths inside. Uneven huddles of clothing along the north and south embankments were too distant to make out fully, and for that Jack was glad. He knew they were bodies, but not seeing them meant he could pretend they were something else.

The stillness could not last forever. Jack saw the first movements just as they passed beneath Waterloo Bridge, and for an instant he was afraid they were Choppers. They’d be drawn to the noise for sure, but he’d hoped their journey would be so rapid that they’d be out of the boat and gone before anyone arrived. It could be that Reaper was still shadowing them—Fleeter didn’t seem concerned with sharing that information, and Jack was not going to humour her by asking—but Jack would still ready himself to protect them. Reaper played games.

“See them?” Rhali asked.

“How long have they been there?” Jack asked.

“I first sensed them just a few minutes ago. They’re not following us, I don’t think. They’re just coming to cross the river.”

“Like those weird women.”

“Yes.”

“So what is it they suddenly want south of the river?” Sparky asked.

Jack glanced at Lucy-Anne, but she seemed not to be listening. Eyes open, she was somewhere else.

“Maybe they know the bomb’s in the north and they’re running from it,” Jenna suggested.

“Maybe,” Jack said. He was watching the movement on the north bank, trying to make out who or what they were. Everyone left alive in London had been touched by Evolve, but now he had discovered a new dimension to Doomsday’s curse—physical change. Nomad might have said they weren’t monstrous, but neither were they natural.

He sensed Sparky and Jenna watching him, and knew exactly what they wanted. He sighed. A brief burst of anger set his limbs tingling, and he rounded on his friends ready to confront them. I can’t magic our way out of everything! he wanted to shout. Not with everything else! Why don’t one of you do something? And he could have reached out and touched them, given them the chance.

But Rhali was looking at him as well, and everything she had been through seemed to reflect London’s fate. Misused, tortured, abused, she was not what she should have been. His heart sank and he felt an intense sickness at the unfairness of things. She’s so pretty and bright, she shouldn’t be anything but beautiful.

“I’m never going to let anything bad happen to you again,” he said to the girl. Her eyes glimmered with tears, and he looked at everyone else in the boat. He was surprised, and humbled, to see that they already felt included in what he’d said.

He tasted Nomad on his tongue, and he heard her voice telling Lucy-Anne that they were not so monstrous. But he was not at all certain of that.

Rhali’s gift came to him quickly. Holding her hand, he easily homed in on her point of light and plunged in, her talent blooming in him like an ever-expanding sun. It was both terrifying and beautiful, and he realised that he revelled in this. His new universe scared him, but he would have been inhuman if it did not. Yet he also found it wonderful.

He cast his senses up and out and felt the movement of groups of people close to where they were, projected onto his perception as warm glows on a sea of ice. Those nearby were clear, while further away they became smaller and more remote. But it was the closer movements that interested him.

Jack took hold of what he felt and travelled once again. He quickly focussed on one mass movement. There were perhaps eight of them, travelling in a loose group along the path of the river towards a bridge. He homed in on one, attaching himself to its heat and light and life.

He found the star he sought and plunged towards it. As he did so, it became the mind of another.

Jack had planned questions, sought answers, but both became abstract. This was like nothing he knew or understood, and for what felt like forever he tumbled and swirled in this alien place, trying to grab and hold onto something, anything, that made sense. It was only when he accepted that there was little sense to be made that his fall became more controlled.

This was such an alien mind that he might as well have tried conversing with a tree, or a river. But there were still images here that he could perceive, and with some concentration, understand.

He knew what it sought.

“Jack? Jack!”

Slap!

Reality rushed in, a sickening sensation that was nothing like the gentle flow of waking up. Everything hit home, and when he quickly sat up sickness flooded his mouth. He leant sideways and spat it out, breathing