London Eye

When the woman reached them at last she continued walking, snaking through and around their small group. Jack thought about moving, but decided against it. None of them moved. Maybe none of them could.

Rosemary was shaking with fear. She had closed her eyes, and she uttered unheard words to herself. Perhaps she was singing a song, or speaking to someone she had lost, anything to take her someplace else.

Is she so terrible? Jack thought, looking at the Nomad as she passed before him. She gave him a coy glance, and he felt a warm glow in his chest. He did not recognise it: Fear? Calmness? Lust?

“Are you really the Nomad?” Jenna asked.

The woman gave the girl a slow nod as she walked in front of her.

“So are you an Irregular? A Superior? I heard you have many powers, and that-”

“I've no need to name myself other than Nomad.”

Emily was filming. She seemed unafraid. To have her sense of innocence, Jack thought.

“No one can touch you,” Jenna said, and she displayed no fear. Only wonder. “The Choppers can't catch you, the Superiors can't take you. And now I see you, I recognise you, and it's all true. You're Angelina Walker. You're the scientist who crashed into the London Eye and spread the infection.”

“I'm the first vector, if you need to name a first.”

“No need,” Jenna said. “I would ask you why, but…”

“She's moved on,” Jack said. He glanced at Rosemary again, and the woman was still trying to be somewhere else.

Nomad continued to weave around them, and every time she passed before Jack she would give him that strange smile. She seemed to be moving through water.

The air around him felt heavy and thick, and he was not sure he could move even if he wanted to. Nomad performed an occasional, strange dance with her hands, and perhaps she was snatching their breaths from the air. Jack's mind felt open to view, and though there was no sense of being invaded, still he felt exposed and vulnerable to some far greater force.

She passed him again, smiled, moved on.

Emily continued to film. Nomad seemed not to mind, though Jack doubted there would be any recorded image of her when they viewed it back.

The aura she exuded was one of great power. Every one of Jack's senses-normal, unaltered, innocent of the touch of the Toxic City-thrummed with the idea of what Nomad possessed. He saw her movements and her smiles, and her knowledge was so much more. He smelled a sweet, mysterious scent on the air, like perfume from another world. The air tasted of somewhere he'd never been, the sound of her voice was a secret to unfold, and his whole body tingled in her presence, as though touched by colours he had never seen. She was beautiful, wondrous, and terrifying.

“I have a friend,” Jack said, “Lucy-Anne. We lost her. Do you know where she is?”

Nomad paused before him and changed direction, passing so close behind him that he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “She's a wild girl with the birds,” Nomad said.

“What does that mean?” Jenna asked.

“Not dead,” the strange woman sang. “Just wild.”

Jack sighed in relief, and he felt a grey mass of guilt lifting from him. The air seemed to swallow it away.

“Unchanged,” Nomad said, “apart from the healer. All of you…so pure and untouched.”

“I'm Reaper's son,” Jack said.

“Reaper? Just another name. Nothing to me, when I walk to spread the word.”

“What word?” Jack asked, and he thought, To some of them, she's a god.

“The word of change.”

“You've changed everything anyway,” Jenna said. “You were the one. You were the terrorist.”

“Terrorist?” Nomad's flowing walk continued, and she seemed to be tasting the word, considering its meaning. “It was all about freedom,” she said. “And it's only just begun.”

Jack tried to step forward but could not. Rosemary seemed to have entered a trance-like state, still muttering words none of them could hear. “Why is Rosemary so scared of you?” she asked.

“People are scared of what they cannot know.”

“I'm not,” Sparky said.

Nomad did not answer, and Jack saw Jenna reach out and take Sparky's hand. He did not know whether it took a strength of will, or if Nomad allowed them the contact.

“I think you're the one I want,” the woman whispered in Jack's ear. He felt her breath against his neck and a sexual thrill warmed through him. But when she paused before him, halting at last, he knew this was much more than that. Beneath the sexual excitement nestled a fear he had never known before. A fear of the unknown, not without, but within.

“Me?” he said.

“Jack?” Emily said. His sister was scared, but he could not even turn to look at her. This woman, this Nomad, held his complete attention in the palm of her outstretched hand.

“I always knew I'd need help,” she said, slipping her index finger into her mouth. Then she reached out, pointing at Jack's mouth. He pressed his lips closed, but still they opened. He leaned back, but stretched forward. He closed his eyes but saw, and he understood that none of this was her. It was all him. Whatever it was she offered, he wanted it completely.

Her finger passed across his tongue and it tasted unknowable. When she withdrew it the taste was gone. But he would know it forever.

“Jack?” Sparky asked.

“It's okay,” Jack said, to all of them. “I'm fine.”

Nomad gave him that coy smile one more time, and then without another word she walked past them and along the street.

They turned to watch her go. Rosemary slumped down and started shaking, but the others could not take their eyes off the strange woman. She drifted away. Even when she turned out of sight along another road they watched, as if the ghost of her passing would always be here.

“Well, that was weird,” Sparky said. He was looking at Jack. “What was all that about?”

“Don't know,” Jack said. He moved his tongue about his mouth, and still recalled the taste of that alien touch. He had no idea what she had done, only that she had done something.

“That was Nomad,” Jenna said, amazed. “Even after all this time, I was never really sure. But to be here, and to see her…” She looked at Jack as well, and he thought he saw a flash of jealousy in her eyes.

“Bugger,” Emily said. She was looking at the display screen on the back of her camera, pressing buttons to snap between pictures and bits of film. “It wasn't filming.”

“Rosemary's coming to,” Jenna said. The woman was looking around, seeing them as if for the first time.

“Is it gone?” she asked.

“Nomad?”

“Is it gone?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “She's gone.”

“Which way?”

Jack pointed along the street, back the way they had come.

“Then we go that way,” Rosemary said. She pointed in the opposite direction.

When they started walking again, Rosemary would not answer any of their questions. She shook her head when they mentioned Nomad, refused to elaborate on her fear, said nothing when Jenna talked to her about the strange woman. Jack felt angry, but he let his anger filter away, carried on his own thoughts of Nomad.

A few minutes later, still walking in silence, they paused in an old garage forecourt while a group of a dozen people ran by. They were dirty and wild, some of them naked, others dressed in scars. A few growled or whimpered as they ran, and several dribbled blood and mucus from their mouths.

Some loped like animals.