“What did you see?” Rhali asked. She was sitting on a bench, looking weak and drained. He wondered whether he had taken anything from her.
“They…” Jack paused, knowing that they were all listening, but unable for a moment to continue. “They'll still human, deep inside, though barely. Still have their loves and lives, hopes and fears. And yet…so different. Changed so much. And it hurts them.”
“Good!” Lucy-Anne said. Her blank expression did not change, though her voice was filled with venom.
“They can't help what they've become,” Jack said. “And they're doing their best. To survive. To find the bomb, and stop it.”
“They know where it is?” Sparky asked.
Jack nodded. “South of here, across the river. I saw their destination, and I think I recognised it. Visited it with school a few years back. Imperial War Museum.”
“So they're all going there to stop it,” Jenna said.
“To try.” Jack nodded and stood up, looking across the silent, dying city. “They barely have a concept of outside. London is their only home now, and they're doing their best to save it.”
“Can they?” Jenna asked. “I mean, those women we saw didn't seem, I dunno…intelligent.”
“I saw gargoyle people,” Lucy-Anne said. “Trying to fly. They had claws. And a woman like a dog, pissing against a tree. A man like a monkey. And the worm.” She looked up, but her expression did not change. “There was the worm that ate Rook.”
“So he is gone,” Jack said softly.
“I dreamed him well again, but it still took him in the end. I dream the future. Change it. And it only changes back again.” She frowned and ran her hand through her short hair. “I think that's what happens, at least.”
“Did they kill your brother too?” Sparky asked gently. His own brother was dead in London, and Lucy-Anne would know that. Such loss was something else that had forged their friendship.
“Oh no, Andrew's still…he's still around.” She glanced around the boat as if expecting him to appear. “He said he dreamed himself alive, so when he did die, he didn't quite go.”
“He's a ghost?” Jenna asked.
“I guess.” Lucy-Anne fingered a chain around her neck, looking out across the river.
Jack had seen so much that he had little trouble believing in ghosts. But right now, wherever or whatever Andrew was did not matter.
“Knowing where it is doesn't help us much,” he said. He looked at Fleeter sitting at the bow of the boat. She had been taking all this in without comment, smiling her annoying smile. “You're sure Miller's still at Camp H?”
“No,” she said. “It was just an idea.”
Jack felt anger rising, but he drove it down. He needed calmness now more than ever.
“Fifteen minutes,” Breezer said. “We'll know soon enough, one way or another.”