Wastelands: A Broken World

CHAPTER 5: SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES

Abby grinned humourlessly. 'At your service, as always, Superstar.'

Gav sucked his teeth and rolled his eyes. The Superstar tag was a running joke between him and Abby, but I knew he didn't really mind it. In the Old World, Gav had been a pro-footballer, a rising star in the Premier League. I'd never been that much into football myself, but even I had heard his name and knew who he was when I first met him. Back then, he'd been a mess of arrogance and self-obsessed privilege, typical of that cocky underclass – a poor-boy-done-good who'd been dragged up on the streets of Lewisham by a single mother, only to suddenly find himself with more money than he knew what to do with. The New World had left him bitter, and sometimes, I thought, more distraught at losing his dream and all that had come with it, than he had been at losing every single person he knew. Since then however, harsh reality had bounced him off the walls and the hard-edges of his privilege had softened a bit, but he could still be an arrogant little shit sometimes.

Abby helped to roll out those last remaining touches of arrogance whenever they appeared. Almost twice Gav's age, she had become a sort of mother-figure to him, and her experiences in prison and on the streets, helped to ground him whenever his star-status re-surfaced. I liked Abby. She was hard, resilient, honest and had been through shit I didn't even want to imagine, but sometimes she got too close – or at least, tried to – and I had to push back on it and keep my distance. The ex-con and ex-sex worker was too intuitive for her own good, and I always got the sense that she knew I was only telling half the story about my past.

I followed not far behind Gav, resisting the urge to look behind at Jace, who had hung back to act as look-out as we snuck in the Charing Cross entrance. We hadn't spoken since we'd met Gav and Abby, and had to explain one, why the Hell we'd taken so long and two, why we were both splattered in blood. I'd stayed silent throughout much of the exchange, still reeling from what I'd done and still disturbed at the thought of Tom's killer's presence in Quadrant Two not being a coincidence at all.

I could tell my actions had stunned Jace, and as we carefully climbed down the escalator, I could feel his gaze burning a hole in my back, the weight of his troubled thoughts resting heavy on my shoulders. Not that I could blame him. Having your mate blow a Grey's brains out right in front of you with no warning is bound to unsettle anyone, especially when that Grey probably could have been persuaded to offer more information about their infiltration of Lena's crew and what happened to them all. Now, we'd most likely never know, unless we happened to find Lena for ourselves and after discovering Rico hadn't really been Rico after all, I knew I'd destroyed any chance of that when I'd put a bullet in his bastard head.

Reaching the bottom, I jumped down, feeling the tug in my shoulder and a loosening in the skin, which probably meant a few more stitches had torn. Abby swung her torch near me, as I pressed my palm to the wound, her worried gaze making me look away. I couldn't deal with her concern today or the way she often looked at me as if all my secrets were laid bare on my skin.

'You need that looking at,' she said, brushing wisps of her ash-blonde hair off her face, 'we'll go see Ivy as soon as we get back. She'll get it stitched up again in no time.'

Jace climbed down from the escalator and, I noticed, kept his eyes fixed firmly on everything butme. A creeping unease settled deep in my stomach. His withdrawal felt like a punch to the gut, almost as if he'd raised the barrier again, the one he'd built around himself before he'd joined Taj and the rest of us. I mean, sure, I'd constructed a barrier of my own too, because of what had happened with Tom, but I think Jace and I saw something familiar in each other back then and our connection had formed easily. I couldn't bear the thought that I'd ruined that now, that I'd let Tom's killer come back into my life and wreck everything all over again.