“You saved us all back there,” Jenna said, and she cut straight to the core of what was torturing Jack. Not the bomb, or Hayden’s death, or even Rhali’s disappearance. It was the fact that he had killed again that made everything seem so pointless. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t alter the way he thought. Even if everything worked out fine, he had killed to make it happen. A world where that was the price was perhaps not a world worth saving.
“Maybe,” Jack said. “Or perhaps I just made your pain go on a little longer.”
“What, you wish we’d all been killed?” Jenna asked.
“Screw that,” Sparky said. “And screw you. I’m going for the bomb even if you’re not.”
“Me too,” Jenna said. She was sitting beside Sparky, grasping his hand tightly in hers as if she would never again let him go.
“I’m so scared of myself,” Jack said. He looked at Nomad but she was still slumped beside Lucy-Anne, as if echoing the girl’s state. He’d started to hate the woman for what she’d turned him into. His gifts should have brought only good, but instead he’d become a killer.
Just like his father.
“Are you scared of me?” he asked Reaper.
“I’m scared for you,” Reaper replied. He looked like Jack’s father, but that was because he was trying. Stripped of his power, he was using other means to advance whatever his cause might be. Give him his powers again and he’ll be as much a monster as ever, Jack thought. He snorted and turned away.
Lucy-Anne was looking at him. He caught his breath and went to her, and when they saw she was awake the others gathered around as well. Sparky held Jack’s arm and Jenna pressed close to him, and he had to fight back a sob. His friends were loyal, and close, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for them.
Nothing.
Giving up could never be an option.
Lucy-Anne was trying to speak, and Jack could see the pain it caused her. They’d dressed some of her wounds with napkins, and Jack had stopped the worst of the bleeding. But the structural damage to her face was appalling.
“Don’t try to speak,” Jenna said, but Lucy-Anne grabbed at her friend’s jacket and squeezed tight, clenching her fist against the pain.
“Gu…idee…”
“Got an idea?” Jenna asked.
Lucy-Anne nodded.
“I’ll get you a pencil and paper,” Sparky said. “Hold on. Hold on!”
An idea. Jack and Lucy-Anne looked at each other, and he wished he could pluck the idea from her mind. Wished it was that easy.
Sparky returned.
As Lucy-Anne began to write her idea down, Jack was still dwelling on that thought.
Pluck the idea from her mind…
The pain was part of her dream, and in the strange places she wandered, no one knew what she was trying to say. The London of her dreamscape had a bland, washed-out look—all colour was bleached, the sky was a monotone grey, and the parks and avenues were filled with the memories of trees. People walked the streets, but their expressions were neutral. Even when Lucy-Anne tried speaking to them, they only broke into slight frowns. Children walked with parents without being naughty, or inquisitive, or children at all. The River Thames did not flow.
The only splash of colour and life was the woman she was following along the South Bank. Nomad! she tried shouting, but the woman did not seem to hear. Either that or Lucy-Anne’s voice was not working, because she could not hear herself.
I was shot. I can see, but not smell or taste. I can feel and wish I couldn’t. Some of this is true.
So she ran after Nomad instead, sprinting through her dream of a London that never was, and each footfall jarred up through her body and reminded her of the pain.
Nomad turned, smiled, and Lucy-Anne imagined them meeting and embracing and the bomb not exploding.
She approached Nomad and held out her arms, and the woman raised her eyebrows in surprise. They embraced. I think this is something I can do, for a while, Lucy-Anne said.
When she opened her eyes she was talking to herself, and that grey London was deserted. But it was still there. No heat blast, no mushroom cloud, and a future that might just be malleable, for a time at least.
Maybe for long enough.
“You really think you can do that?” Sparky asked.
“It’s all we have,” Jenna said quietly. She was looking at Lucy-Anne, smiling and nodding.
“But dream a nuclear explosion not happening?”
“What else would you do?” Jenna asked, not unkindly.
“Get the bomb onto a boat. Float it down the Thames. Into the North Sea, or something.”
“In…” Jenna glanced at her watch. “…less than two hours?”
Sparky frowned. He had no answer.
“It’s the only idea,” Jack said. They all looked to him, Reaper included.
“Getting pretty bloody desperate here, mate,” Sparky said, shaking his head.
“Yeah, we are,” Jack said. “That’s why Lucy-Anne’s right.” He looked around at all of them, and he had tears in his eyes. Sparky, feisty and hard, but with a good heart. Jenna, resourceful and kind. And Lucy-Anne, who might well have lost more than all of them, and who now might be dying.
“Nomad,” Jack said, pushing hard into her mind to make sure she heard. She raised her head.
Lucy-Anne tensed, trying to lift herself up, and Jack thought that perhaps she already knew. But hopefully that would not matter.
Hopefully.
Jack closed his eyes and flipped, and when he opened them again his friends were all but frozen where they stood, sat or lay.
“Jack,” Nomad said. She had flipped as well, just as he’d hoped.
“I won’t let anyone else die for me,” he said. He didn’t say what else he was thinking; not yet.
“And I’ll do anything I can to help you and Lucy-Anne.”
Jack moved across to Lucy-Anne, careful not to touch anyone else in case he hurt them. Haru exuded cold even now. And Reaper was in his way, raised a couple of inches from his seat. In that last moment before Jack had flipped out, Reaper had perhaps seen that he was scheming, and he had gone to stand and try to have some part in Jack’s plans. But he would not.
Jack paused before his father and stared at him. Like this, his features again resembled those of the man he had once loved, and still did. The memory of his father was rich and strong, because Jack had strived to keep such memories close for those two long, lonely years between Doomsday and now. And he only wished he could find it in his heart to feel forgiveness and grant his father another chance. That should be how this all ended; with redemption and hope.
But he could not.
He resisted the temptation to nudge Reaper aside and knelt carefully by Lucy-Anne.
“I think I know,” Nomad said.
“And you’ll not try to stop me?”
“Of course not. It means you and Lucy-Anne get out.” Her expression did not change, and there was no way he could read what she was really thinking. But even flipped out, he did not have time for a long discussion.
And I’ll help too, Andrew said. He emerged from shadows at the back of the club and drifted forward. Jack was surprised, but only for a moment. He’d been wondering where the ghost had gone, but had already guessed that he would not have abandoned his sister.
“She’ll be all right,” Jack said. “You need to get her out of London, to a hospital, and they’ll be able to fix her.”
“Probably,” Andrew said. “But shouldn’t I be helping you?”
“Nomad and I will be fine,” Jack said. For a second he thought that Andrew could see the truth. But the ghost said nothing.
“I’ll have to tell them,” Jack said. “When I flip back and get ready to leave.”