“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.