by Tim Lebbon
“I’m sorry,” Nomad said, and the wretchedness did not sit well with her strength.
But things had already changed.
“I dreamed of you,” Lucy-Anne said, “and you won’t kill me here.”
The woman frowned, then—
—she opened her hand. But everything had suddenly changed. The power she had been nurturing in her fist ready to blast the girl and her bird-boy to nothing but memory had become something else; a swarm of flies, flitting to the air and dispersing from view. And Nomad was glad.
The fear she had felt whenever she thought or dreamed of the girl had changed into a stunned fascination. And she was pleased.
The girl has to die, she thought. She closed her eyes briefly and recalled the visions from her dream—the mushroom cloud, the blast-wave levelling what was left of London, and her boy Jack meeting his end before he had even touched a fraction of his potential.
She felt herself steered towards other actions. She experienced a flush of déjà vu, as if she had dreamed this same scene a thousand times. Now I walk forward and squat in the grass, the boy cannot accept me because I trouble him so, but the girl talks to me. We exchange information, discuss plans. We are like friends. Yet she had never dreamed of this meeting before. Not like this, and not with this result. The girl had been a horror in her imagination, but now she was rapidly becoming something else.
Nomad lowered her hand and walked towards the girl. She was confused, frowning. Shaking her head. I am my own woman, she thought, but the startling déjà vu remained. She grasped onto it for as long as she could, because for the first time in years Nomad did not feel responsible. She was not master of her own actions, and she could allow a small weight, at least, to lift from her shoulders.
In that moment of clarity she understood that her guilt would have killed most people, but she had borne it with madness. Perhaps because she sought a way to put everything right.
Maybe she is the way.
“But no one knows me,” Nomad said.
“It doesn’t matter,” the girl said. “My name is Lucy-Anne, and I think you can help.”
Nomad went to her knees and ran her hands through the long grass, really connecting with the world. Heat grew behind her face. For the first time since she had become Nomad, she began to cry.
Rook stayed close to Lucy-Anne for a few more moments. She could hear his heavy breathing, sense his fear, and when he reached for her hand she took it and squeezed. His rooks were circling high above, and many had landed in the tree bordering this open land to the north. She had never seen them so far away from him.
“I need to…” Rook said. He let go and turned his back on the woman, retreating a dozen steps before sitting down and looking out over London.
“He doesn’t believe in me,” Nomad said. Her voice was smooth, authoritative, even though Lucy-Anne had seen the glimmer of tears.
“I’m sure he does, otherwise he wouldn’t be scared.”
“I saw you,” Nomad said. “In dreams.” There was more, but the beautiful, terrifying woman frowned and fell silent.
“Me too,” Lucy-Anne said. “And every time I saw you, the world blew up.”
“Yes,” Nomad breathed.
Lucy-Anne went almost close enough to touch and then kneeled before her. They breathed the same air. She could smell fire and death, and the scent of London turned to dust. But she could not be afraid.
“I don’t know if this changes anything,” Lucy-Anne said. “Don’t know if I can alter something that big.”
“Alter?”
“In my dreams.” Lucy-Anne blinked and caught a brief, terrifying image of the world behind and around Nomad aflame, rolling waves of fire and destruction sweeping across Hampstead Heath and reducing the weird sculpture behind her to splinters, and ash.
“You’re very special too,” Nomad said.
“That’s why you came to kill me?”
“I came to…I did. But no more.”
“It’s bigger than us both,” Lucy-Anne said. “But where does it come from? What is it? Is that their final way of getting rid of their London problem forever?”
“It’s my London problem.”
“Don’t kid yourself. While you wander around being all new-age, the Choppers are using everyone and everything. Maybe the bomb…maybe it’s what happens when they’ve nothing left to find out.”
“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 sa
w 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.
Andrew emerged from the folly. He stepped through the solid stone blocks filling the doorway and dropped gently to the ground.
“You’re dead,” she said, wondering how this could be. Nomad had been a scientist, and she had never believed in ghosts.
“No,” he said. “I dreamed that I would never die. Who are you?”
“So you’re a ghost. I’m Nomad.”
“I’ve heard of you. And I don’t think there’s a name for what I am. My dream keeps me alive, and everything I was, apart from my body, persists here.”
“Where is that body?”
“Gone.”
“Lucy-Anne looks for you.”
He glanced away.
“She thinks you’re still alive. She says you’re all she has left. Your parents are dead.”
Andrew blinked at something out of sight.
“You should come with me. Talk to her.”
He looked back at her, faded eyes flickering, but remained silent.
Nomad sighed, deciding to change tack. “What were you doing in there?”
“Hiding. Why aren’t you hiding too?”
“Why should I hide?”
“Because the end is close.” He walked down closer to her, and she could almost see through him. “Surely you of all people can feel it?” he asked.
“Tell me, Andrew.”
“If you promise not to tell her about me,” he said. “I don’t want her to know me like this. Lucy-Anne. Lucy-Anne.” He seemed sad as he tried her name, perhaps for the first time in years.
“I promise,” Nomad said. “Though perhaps she will dream the truth from me.”
He pointed down at a fallen stone across the hillside. “I crawled there. Among my remains you’ll find…something to give her. My sweet sister.”
Then he closed his eyes and told her the terrible truth.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OUT WITH THE OLD
It took Jack a few moments to gather himself. Dust motes hung in the air and the sound of his breathing seemed echoless, lifeless. Even the taint of Nomad in his mouth seemed old and strangely lifeless. Then he crawled to the edge of the stack of three containers and scrambled carefully to the ground.
Around the corner, he saw Fleeter already running past Sparky and the others.
“Wait!” Jack called, but it was like shouting underwater. So he ran instead, only glancing at his two frozen friends as he dashed by. Jenna’s eyes were half-closed in a slow, long blink, and Sparky’s were turned to the left, looking right at Jack. He knows I’ll be passing by, Jack thought. It was strange, feeling his friend’s eyes upon him yet knowing he could not see. Of all the powers Jack had tapped into, this was the most staggering. He felt a moment of awed terror at what he was doing, and an intense, shattering certainty that all this was very, very wrong. But he could not stop now.
Everything depended on the next few moments.
Jack caught up with Fleeter as she paused by one of the Chopper vehicles. He grabbed her arm tightly, and when she looked back she was grinning, looking down at his hand with eyes wide, excited. He wondered whether she had done anything other than murder during her slowed-down existence, then shook the idea away.
“You’re slow,” she said. “Come on. Not long.”
“We’ve got—”
“Got to be quick,” she finished for him. She nodded back at Sparky and the others. “They might only have seconds.”
“But the Choppers have dropped their weapons.” And it was true. The soldiers all looked confused and shaken, probably in the middle of wondering why they had suddenly dropped their machine guns.
“Not all of them,” Fleeter said. “Only the ones he could see.” She nodded up at the surrounding piled containers where they had seen a sniper, and where more might be hiding.
They ran. Across the rough concrete, past the Land Rovers and two vans, and as they approached the larger of the container arrangements Jack had a sudden pang of terror. What would they find inside? He hoped his mother and Emily. But he could not help fearing the worst.
Fleeter paused by a couple of wooden boxes that had been laid to form steps.
“What?” Jack asked.
“Door,” she said, pointing up. The side of the container was swathed in canvas, but a sheet of it was pinned aside, showing the gleaming bottom third of a metal doorway formed in the unit’s wall. “More than meets the eye.”
“You can open it?” he asked.
“Dunno. You got a special finger-shaped-like-a-key power, Jack?”
Jack ignored her and stepped up to the door, shifting the canvas aside and searching for a handle. He found it, pushed down, and was surprised when the door clicked open.
“Oh, that’s careless,” Fleeter whispered. She climbed the boxes to stand close beside him. “We won’t have long. Opening the door will cause a storm inside at their speed, because the pressures will rapidly change. Then they’ll just start shooting.” Fleeter’s previous flippancy had vanished and now she was all seriousness. Jack should have been pleased. But the shock of what was revealed as Jack hauled the door open excluded anything else
The connected units still formed several compartments, with a corridor running along one side. They were staring now into the corridor and the first compartment, and it was an operating theatre. At least that was what Jack thought at first. But closer examination revealed greater, more terrible detail, and it was only Fleeter’s hand against his back that prevented him from tumbling back down the impromptu steps.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, he thought, and the terror of what he saw conjured images that strove to still his heart and steal every ounce of determination and resolve he had. Operating theatres were clean, caring places, their sterile atmospheres filled with good intentions and positive thoughts. There might be blood, but it was quickly mopped up. There would be tools that looked severe and even grotesque, but they would be perfectly, caringly manufactured to make lives better. Not to take lives. Not to torture.
The operating table was a slab of metal with a drainage channel around all four sides, pipes venting into several large plastic containers beneath the table. They were opaque, but Jack could still see that they were half-filled with a dark fluid. Blood also still smeared the table and was
splashed across the floor, drying in boot-print patterns. Along the far wall was a metal counter propped on thin legs, and it was scattered with an array of tools. He could make out several saws of varying sizes, heavy knives, scalpels, and a couple of chunky devices with thick springs and wide clamps. Other were beyond identifying. Some of the tools looked all too familiar from his father’s work shed at home, and the room took another leap away from being an operating theatre. This was a dissection suite.
A man dressed in jeans and a canvas jacket was bent over by the head of the table. He was picking something up from the floor and depositing it in a bag, the bag already bulging with other things. He was almost motionless, and the slowness of his movement—as invisible as the shifting minute hand of a clock—gave the scene a strangely fluid property.
Other things in the bag, Jack thought, still struggling to comprehend the awfulness of this, and some of those things could have belonged to Emily or his mother. Because as he stepped inside to get a better view of the torture chamber, he could see the pink fleshiness of the object in the man’s hand.
“We should kill him,” Fleeter breathed, and Jack wanted to, more than anything else right then—more than rescuing his family, if they were still alive; more than doing something good and strong that might help London’s survivors find a safer, calmer future—he wanted to kill this man. But as Fleeter crossed the room, stepping over blood and moving more gracefully than Jack had yet seen, reality hit home.
“Fleeter,” he said, his voice deadened by whatever enabled them to do this. “The girl.”
Jack turned from that awful room and walked along the corridor. It ran the length of the four containers, and he could see three more doors leading off to the right into other, smaller rooms, as well as one at the end. There was also a woman in the corridor. She was pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, her other hand resting on the door handle closest to Jack as she prepared to enter.
