Contagion (Toxic City)

Miller's one good eye swivelled and settled on Jack. Then he shrugged. “It doesn't matter.”


“You're probably right. But what does matter is helping anyone left alive in London. You can do that.”

“Me? You see what's left of me, boy? I'm barely human anymore.”

“You haven't been human for a long time,” Breezer said.

“I'm a scientist, and—”

“You're a murderer!” Breezer stepped forward, and Jack was surprised to see Miller jerk back in his chair. Filled with bravado, still he was in pain, and scared. Good. That might make what came next much easier.

“I'll only ask once,” Jack said. “We need you to provide a safe route out of London. We know if we just storm the Exclusion Zone it'll be a massacre. We'll be cut down, bombed, slaughtered. But you can call them off. You can tell the Choppers to stand down and let us out.”

“I could,” Miller said. “And then all this would be released to the outside world.”

“The only thing released would be human beings with remarkable abilities,” Jack said. “All this murder and chaos and hatred…that's your doing.”

Miller chuckled again. It shook his body, and his pain was obvious. “I don't care anymore,” he said. “I want to die. Look at me! Look what he did to me! My only wish now is for your bastard father to die with me.”

“You might want to die,” Breezer said, “but what about—”

“You're all monsters,” Miller said. “The Evolve was my creation, so you're all my children. And I condemn you to death.”

“That's…” Breezer shook his head, then looked at Jack.

Jack nodded.

Breezer turned Miller's chair and wedged it against the metal examination table, locking its brakes, holding Miller's one good arm down against the side of the chair. The mutilated man laughed, but Jack could not tell whether he was afraid or purely mad. His remaining, lidless eye was wide open, either way.

“Like father, like son,” Miller said.

“No,” Jack said. “Not at all.”

He stepped forward and pressed his hands to Miller's face.

The same ruins, the same day, the same tumbled wreckage of the London Eye. Lucy-Anne has seen the Eye since her last dream, so this time it is different—less damaged, only scarred high up with the impact site, with charred and broken pods further down where the helicopter tumbled and exploded. The aircraft's blackened remains straddle a safety barrier next to the burnt-out ticket office. Lucy-Anne cannot understand how Angelina Walker survived that wreck to emerge as Nomad. Perhaps she also dreamed herself to life.

As she thinks of her, Nomad appears. She climbs from the helicopter's ruin and jumps down to the ground, landing with barely a touch. She starts to walk away from Lucy-Anne, and it is the dream of destruction once again. In the distance the light will soon bloom, a bright flash that for an instant will look like creation, but will bring destruction.

But Lucy-Anne wonders, Isn't all creation a violent event? The Big Bang, life from no-life, and London's evolution?

But there is a difference. The bomb about to erupt is meant purely for destruction, and in its place it will leave a sterile, dead place.

Lucy-Anne follows Nomad, frantically trying to shout for her, but she has no voice. Any time now, any time now…

And then Nomad turns back to face her and lifts her hand, points, two fingers aiming at Lucy-Anne like a gun. “You and me,” she says. “You and me together.” She starts running at Lucy-Anne and the surroundings change in the blink of an eye.

A street, burning, shooting, screaming, bodies, flames and smoke, and Nomad leaps a burning motorbike and drives Lucy-Anne to the ground, straddles her, and drives her pointed fingers down into her throat, silencing the words that were building there—a cry for mercy, a scream of anger, and a question:

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