They all looked, and for a moment Jack had trouble seeing who she meant. Then he saw the motionless shape on the small concrete island at the roundabout's centre, something he'd taken upon first glance to be a statue, and the breath was knocked from him.
There was something…otherworldly about the woman. She stood utterly motionless, and between blinks she was suddenly walking towards them, flowing, floating across the dusty tarmac like a ghost. Her feet are touching the ground, Jack tried to persuade himself. She is walking, not drifting. She seemed to be moving too quickly.
“Superior?” Jenna asked. None of them could take their eyes from the woman. Her movement was hypnotic, her face mesmerising.
“Rosemary?” Jack prompted. The woman was coming closer, and a pang of fear complemented his sense of wonder. Her loose jacket flowed behind her, though there was no breeze this morning, and her long hair flicked at the air. “Rosemary!”
“The Nomad,” Rosemary whispered, and she started backing away.
“Holy shit,” Jenna said.
Nomad? Jack knew the name, and the legend, but he had always thought it was just that: myth, not truth. A wondrous fable concocted out of the awfulness of what had happened. It spoke of a woman, the Nomad, who wandered the streets of the Toxic City untouched and untouchable. Rumour had it that she possessed all the powers of the Irregulars combined, which made her, so far as those interested in her believed, a god. And that was why Jack could never believe, because the need to have faith in something so amazing after events so dreadful just seemed too obvious.
Out of all of them, it was Jenna who researched and believed in the Nomad the most. Having lost no one to Doomsday, her interest was otherwise.
“Nomad, indeed,” a woman's voice said, and it was low and husky as though not used to speech. “No need to flee, healer.” She raised one hand and Rosemary stopped backing away, although it looked as if she was still trying.
When the woman reached them at last she continued walking, snaking through and around their small group. Jack thought about moving, but decided against it. None of them moved. Maybe none of them could.
Rosemary was shaking with fear. She had closed her eyes, and she uttered unheard words to herself. Perhaps she was singing a song, or speaking to someone she had lost, anything to take her someplace else.
Is she so terrible? Jack thought, looking at the Nomad as she passed before him. She gave him a coy glance, and he felt a warm glow in his chest. He did not recognise it: Fear? Calmness? Lust?
“Are you really the Nomad?” Jenna asked.
The woman gave the girl a slow nod as she walked in front of her.
“So are you an Irregular? A Superior? I heard you have many powers, and that-”
“I've no need to name myself other than Nomad.”
Emily was filming. She seemed unafraid. To have her sense of innocence, Jack thought.
“No one can touch you,” Jenna said, and she displayed no fear. Only wonder. “The Choppers can't catch you, the Superiors can't take you. And now I see you, I recognise you, and it's all true. You're Angelina Walker. You're the scientist who crashed into the London Eye and spread the infection.”
“I'm the first vector, if you need to name a first.”
“No need,” Jenna said. “I would ask you why, but…”
“She's moved on,” Jack said. He glanced at Rosemary again, and the woman was still trying to be somewhere else.
Nomad continued to weave around them, and every time she passed before Jack she would give him that strange smile. She seemed to be moving through water.
The air around him felt heavy and thick, and he was not sure he could move even if he wanted to. Nomad performed an occasional, strange dance with her hands, and perhaps she was snatching their breaths from the air. Jack's mind felt open to view, and though there was no sense of being invaded, still he felt exposed and vulnerable to some far greater force.
She passed him again, smiled, moved on.
Emily continued to film. Nomad seemed not to mind, though Jack doubted there would be any recorded image of her when they viewed it back.
The aura she exuded was one of great power. Every one of Jack's senses-normal, unaltered, innocent of the touch of the Toxic City-thrummed with the idea of what Nomad possessed. He saw her movements and her smiles, and her knowledge was so much more. He smelled a sweet, mysterious scent on the air, like perfume from another world. The air tasted of somewhere he'd never been, the sound of her voice was a secret to unfold, and his whole body tingled in her presence, as though touched by colours he had never seen. She was beautiful, wondrous, and terrifying.
“I have a friend,” Jack said, “Lucy-Anne. We lost her. Do you know where she is?”
Nomad paused before him and changed direction, passing so close behind him that he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “She's a wild girl with the birds,” Nomad said.
“What does that mean?” Jenna asked.
“Not dead,” the strange woman sang. “Just wild.”
Jack sighed in relief, and he felt a grey mass of guilt lifting from him. The air seemed to swallow it away.
“Unchanged,” Nomad said, “apart from the healer. All of you…so pure and untouched.”
“I'm Reaper's son,” Jack said.
“Reaper? Just another name. Nothing to me, when I walk to spread the word.”
“What word?” Jack asked, and he thought, To some of them, she's a god.
“The word of change.”
“You've changed everything anyway,” Jenna said. “You were the one. You were the terrorist.”
“Terrorist?” Nomad's flowing walk continued, and she seemed to be tasting the word, considering its meaning. “It was all about freedom,” she said. “And it's only just begun.”
Jack tried to step forward but could not. Rosemary seemed to have entered a trance-like state, still muttering words none of them could hear. “Why is Rosemary so scared of you?” she asked.
“People are scared of what they cannot know.”
“I'm not,” Sparky said.
Nomad did not answer, and Jack saw Jenna reach out and take Sparky's hand. He did not know whether it took a strength of will, or if Nomad allowed them the contact.
“I think you're the one I want,” the woman whispered in Jack's ear. He felt her breath against his neck and a sexual thrill warmed through him. But when she paused before him, halting at last, he knew this was much more than that. Beneath the sexual excitement nestled a fear he had never known before. A fear of the unknown, not without, but within.
“Me?” he said.
“Jack?” Emily said. His sister was scared, but he could not even turn to look at her. This woman, this Nomad, held his complete attention in the palm of her outstretched hand.
“I always knew I'd need help,” she said, slipping her index finger into her mouth. Then she reached out, pointing at Jack's mouth. He pressed his lips closed, but still they opened. He leaned back, but stretched forward. He closed his eyes but saw, and he understood that none of this was her. It was all him. Whatever it was she offered, he wanted it completely.
Her finger passed across his tongue and it tasted unknowable. When she withdrew it the taste was gone. But he would know it forever.
“Jack?” Sparky asked.
“It's okay,” Jack said, to all of them. “I'm fine.”
Nomad gave him that coy smile one more time, and then without another word she walked past them and along the street.
They turned to watch her go. Rosemary slumped down and started shaking, but the others could not take their eyes off the strange woman. She drifted away. Even when she turned out of sight along another road they watched, as if the ghost of her passing would always be here.