‘What’s up with him?’ he said.
‘He’s worried about June.’
Alex burst into the first room, calling June’s name.
A breath rushed out of Anya when she entered the room and saw June was okay. Jacob, Carissa, Charlie, Vanessa, Dom and Sheila had surrounded her. She was sitting on the floor in front of something—or someone. She couldn’t see what.
‘June!’ said Alex.
She turned and her face lit up. ‘Oh my God, you’re okay.’
She scrambled to her feet and crashed into Alex, hugging him tight.
Alex stroked her hair, but his eyes searched for something. ‘Where is it?’
A smiling June pulled back from him. ‘She’s okay.’
‘She?’ said Anya.
June nodded at her. ‘We had to use the growth machine.’
Anya stepped closer to the machine, its vials of orange liquid now half empty. Inside the machine and behind a Perspex window was a child sitting on the floor, looking about twelve months old. She had black hair and her eyes were a vivid blue. She looked nothing like June.
‘Meet my daughter,’ June said.
Alex fell to his knees in front of the child, as though in awe. He touched the Perspex glass between him and the child. The quiet child, reminding Anya of the children she and Dom had seen on the eighth floor in Arcis, regarded him curiously.
He waved at her. She waved back. ‘She looks so real...’
June giggled. ‘She is. Flesh and blood.’
Alex turned and grinned. ‘Flesh and blood.’
10
Dom
‘Where did you find them?’ Dom asked Anya. He’d pulled her away from the others, who were fussing over the child.
She kept her eyes on Alex. ‘In our room.’
Dom’s heart twanged with jealousy. He still didn’t know what exactly had gone on between the pair. It hadn’t been that long since everyone had escaped the city. Alex and Anya clearly had unfinished business if she was referring to it as “their room.”
Anya blinked and looked up at him. ‘Our old room, I mean. It wasn’t really ours. I never felt good there.’
He appreciated her attempts to ease his mind. Was he worried? No. His Anya was back. Was he jealous? Always. While Dom had been fighting for his life, Anya and Alex had been getting to know each other. It bothered him that they might have seen each other naked.
Dom shook his head to rid himself of the pessimistic thoughts. He always looked for the worst in any situation.
Anya was staring at him, her deep-blue eyes round.
‘If it helps,’ she said softly, ‘I thought he was arrogant at the start.’
‘And now?’
She looked back at Alex; he was smiling and cooing at the child. ‘Now he’s just... Alex.’
When she turned back around, a deep frown marked her forehead.
‘What’s wrong?’
Anya blinked and smiled. ‘Nothing. I just didn’t know Alex liked babies so much.’
‘Maybe it’s June he likes. The baby is just a bonus.’
She shrugged. ‘Yeah, maybe that’s it.’
Dom wished he knew what she was thinking. But too much had happened since the return of Anya’s memories for him to push her. Jason had died. Max, too. Even Warren, the weird boy who’d caused trouble in Arcis, would be missed by some. A muted version now stood where his vivacious and plucky Anya used to. He hoped to find her again, and pull her out of her grief.
Dom settled for gripping her hand and squeezing it once. She looked up at him, her eyes filled with a new energy. Then that energy vanished and she looked away.
Someone cleared their throat. Charlie. He, Jacob and Vanessa were looking at Dom.
‘Son, what now?’ said Charlie. ‘June is out of danger and the child is fine. We need to move to the next step in our plan.’
His former guard was not in the room and could not hear him. But Dom lowered his voice anyway.
‘Now we search the city, see if we can find the coordinates to the Beyond.’
‘What about food?’
He hadn’t thought about it.
‘I don’t know where to look.’
‘Carissa?’ Jacob asked the girl.
She looked up at him, wide-eyed. ‘There is a storeroom close to the shops in the Business District. I don’t know what’s in it.’
Charlie nodded. ‘That should be our first place to check.’
Yes, their supplies were low, but Dom’s plan had always been to get out of here as soon as possible. Meeting opposition had diminished his hope of that happening. Maybe they should stock up the trucks. They believed the rebel Janet, whom Anya’s parents had helped, to have hidden the diary containing coordinates for the Beyond somewhere in the city before she was captured by the Collective. But everything they had to go on was hearsay. They could be here for a while.
Anya squeezed his hand sharply. It knocked him out of his thoughts and he blinked.
‘No, we brought food with us. We will stock up later. Our priority now is to find the coordinates.’
‘Okay,’ said Charlie with a nod. ‘We try and locate all the hidden tunnels. To do that, we’re going to need schematics.’
Jacob said, ‘Carissa can help. She has cached copies of all the files. We’ll be able to access them using the diagnostic machine in my workshop—assuming it’s still there, of course.’
The reprogrammed orb had shown blast damage near Jacob’s workshop.
‘But Carissa’s files may not list the tunnels we need,’ said Anya. ‘If the tunnels are hidden, that means from the city, too.’
‘We have our own set of maps,’ said Vanessa, patting the bag she carried that contained their efforts so far. ‘If we compare both sets, we can concentrate on the areas the Collective doesn’t know about.’
It was their best chance. But the lack of Copies in a city that had been teeming with life just days ago still bothered Dom.
