They weaved through the streets, past traffic stalled for two years, seeing evidence here and there of more recent activity, and all the while the weight of Lucy-Anne’s gift—or curse, she had yet to decide—pressed upon her.
She remembered those dreams she’d had of Nomad. The first was close to the London Eye, seeing Nomad and then the flash of the explosion silvering the scene, heat singeing trees to stark black sculptures and stripping her flesh away, while Nomad turned and smiled, untouched. And another dream of meeting her in the park and the same flash, the same skeletal outcome.
Reliving them now, Lucy-Anne tried to change them. Nomad turns to smile at her, and the explosion does not come. Instead, Lucy-Anne invites her to sit and talk, and they discuss Rook and what might have been.
Lucy-Anne caught Jack looking at her strangely, and she realised she was smiling. But changing her memory of dreams was nothing like changing the dreams themselves. It felt random and ineffectual, whereas lucidly altering her own dreams felt…godlike.
“What?” Jack asked.
“Just thinking,” she said.
“What about?”
“The future.”
They walked on in silence, and she knew that they’d all heard the brief exchange. She wondered what they were thinking right then, of a future that seemed so short.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SIX
“Six hours,” Jack said. “We’d better hope this is all true.” It had not escaped him that they had put their futures in the hands of a ghost. And that they were following him, or it, to where he said the saviour of that future now hid.
“Yeah,” Sparky said. “We’d be hard pushed to get to a safe distance now, anyway.”
“Jack could,” Jenna said. There was no accusation in her voice at all, but Jack knew exactly what she was insinuating: that he could pass on a power to help them all escape.
And he was still fighting with that. He wasn’t sure exactly what delving into that bright red star of potential would do. He was fairly certain that he could bestow powers, though he was not sure how he could choose which ones to give, nor the control he’d have over them. But he also thought it likely that he would pass on the contagion itself, just as Nomad had to him. Even thinking about it planted the taste of her finger on his tongue. In him, the threat of contagion was a bright red promise, yet it was contained. If two people possessed it, that containment was no longer assured. And if he passed it on to all of his friends…
That red star could change the world, and Jack did not feel that he had any right to do so.
But would he let his friends die? If it came down to it and they were an hour away from the explosion, would he not touch them all, give them Fleeter’s power, and flee from London with them?
He wasn’t at all sure. He saw the way Lucy-Anne looked at Andrew’s wraith, and knew that there were some things worse than death. And if all went well, he would not even be faced with such a decision.
“We’re close,” Andrew said.
“Look,” Rhali said. She had been silent since crossing the river, almost ghostlike herself. Now she pointed along the road, and only then did Jack see the movement. Perhaps Rhali had sensed it for some time.
A group of three strange people were passing across the street, emerging from a narrow side-road and clambering over stalled cars. Creatures from the north.
They ducked down low.
“Rhali?” Jack whispered.
“They’re heading for the museum,” she said. “There are many more there already, and even more still travelling.” She frowned, her thin face pinched. “And there’s something else.”
“What else?” Sparky asked.
“Choppers,” Rhali said. “At least, I think they’re Choppers. They’re moving as I’m used to seeing them moving.”
“And how’s that?” Jack asked.
“Quickly.”
“Could be more of them,” Jenna said, nodding towards the shapes. A man loped like a wolf. A woman seemed to flow across the road, trailing gossamer limbs that barely touched the ground.
“So where’s this man?” Jack asked. No one answered, no one moved. “Andrew!”
The wraith turned its head, and Andrew’s ghost seemed to be dreaming.
“I said where’s the man who can stop all this?”
“His name’s Hayden,” Andrew said, pointing along the road at a multi-storey car park. “And I left him there, hiding.”
“Let’s hope he listened to you,” Jack said. “If he tried to move on alone, he’ll probably be dead.”
As it turned out, he had not listened.
They climbed the concrete staircase, and Andrew showed them the Range Rover where he’d told the man to wait. It was empty, doors open. There were no signs of violence, but neither was there any sign of Hayden. Wherever he’d gone, and why, he had left them no message.
“Shit!” Sparky said. “So now what?”
“Now we look for him,” Jack said.
“Something spooked him,” Sparky said. “This place sure as shit spooks me.”
Jack nodded in agreement. The car park was half-filled with cars, all of them left here two years ago by people who’d all expected to return.
“So where would he have run if he was spooked?” Jenna asked.
“Up,” Jack said. “Further away from the street.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Sparky said. He slapped Jenna’s butt and ran back towards the staircase door.
“We’ll take the other staircase!” Jack called after him, and Sparky waved over his shoulder. Jenna followed him. She looked scared as she smiled at Jack, and he knew why, because he felt it himself. I don’t like us being split up. Not this close to the end, whatever that end might be. He watched the door swing closed then led the way up a ramp towards the car park’s opposite corner. He didn’t want to miss Hayden by letting him slip down one staircase while they climbed another.
The car park was built on a series of split levels with wide up and down ramps at either end. Jack had been in scores of places like this with his parents, and as a kid he’d loved them, and had even had a model car park at home in which he stored his large collection of toy cars. He didn’t love this one. The parked cars were testament to lives ruined or lost, and now it had become a vertical maze in which their one last hope might be hiding.
But what if he isn’t? he thought. What if he fled an hour ago and is out there in the streets? Jack tried to shake the idea, but his imagination was running riot. Even though he hadn’t yet met Hayden, he saw him being chased along streets by misshapen people, their teeth bared, hunger giving them energy and pace. They would catch him and rip him apart. And somewhere in the mess of brain matter spattered across the dry gutter would die the memory of how to stop the bomb.
“Hurry!” he said to Rhali and Lucy-Anne. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry!” He barged through the door into the stairwell and started up, and then came to a sudden standstill. Rhali bumped into him.
“What?” she said, startled.
“The ramps,” Jack said. “Stupid of me! He could easily just slip down the car ramps while we’re trying to find him.”
“I’ll stay,” Rhali said. “I’ll wait on this level, and if I see him I’ll shout as loud as I can.”
“But what if—?” Jack began.
“I don’t think he’s a threat,” Andrew said. His voice was chilling. “He only wants to do what you want to do and stop the bomb.”
Jack didn’t like any of this, but could only nod in agreement. He watched Rhali walking back between the parked cars as the door swung closed, and he couldn’t help thinking that he would never see her again.