The audible click snapped me out of slumber.
I hadn't meant to fall asleep, I'd slept already, after all, but the night's events had exhausted me and, I had to say, it had felt okay to let down my guard with him. In fact, it had felt better than okay. It had felt amazing to lay my head against his chest and let him put his arms around me and just let go.
But the click came nevertheless, and I shot up in bed to see Tom standing over his open rucksack, a SIG Sauer pistol in his hand, one of the items looted from the Saudi Embassy secret arms cache.
I stiffened, bunching up handfuls of bedcover in my fists.
'Tom?'
Tom slid the magazine back into the gun and it clicked into place. When he turned his head to look at me, for a split second, there was coldness and a distance that made my heart judder because it was so unrecognisable from the Tom of last night and everything I hated and expected to see from the Grey he was underneath.
He smiled and the alien coldness was gone in an instant, but I'd seen it and he was still holding the SIG.
Tom's smile faltered when he realised I wasn't smiling back and instead, was now frozen in place, staring at the gun in his hand. He blinked.
'Sorry,' he said, quickly turning to place the gun carefully back inside the open rucksack. 'I was just...' When he turned to glance back at me, he looked embarrassed – Tom, so Tom – and grinned sheepishly. 'I was just looking.'
'You seem pretty comfortable around guns.' I couldn't relax the tension out of my shoulders. Why couldn't I just relax around him?
Tom hesitated, a flicker of something indiscernible – what was that – in his eyes.
'Well, I've had plenty of time to practice,' he said, walking to the side of the bed and reaching for his shirt which was still on the floor. My gaze flitted over his chest, his shoulders, his arms, remembering everywhere my lips had touched last night. I didn't realise I was staring so much until my eyes met his and his mouth twitched with amusement. Maybe he was remembering too, or maybe his amusement was for another reason?
Stop it, Evie. Just stop.
'We should get out of here, while we can,' he said.
I turned my head to look at the windows where the drapes still hung heavily over the glass.
'Have they gone?' I asked, surprised at how easily I'd almost forgotten the Greys were the reason we'd ended up in the room in the first place.
'It looks pretty quiet out there,' he remarked, sitting down on the edge of the bed so he could pull on his boots. 'I doubt there'll be a better time to chance it. Anyway, we can't stay locked away in here forever, can we?'
He glanced at me, his eyes momentarily locking with mine, and a mad notion of us never leaving this room suddenly filled my head and I had to break his gaze to stop myself from feeling dizzy.
I hated being holed up anywhere. That sense of being trapped always gave rise to a horrible, gnawing feeling of claustrophobia, but despite the fact that just hours ago the streets outside had been inundated with Greys and we'd had no way to escape, this room had come to feel like a welcome sanctuary, and not a prison. The thought of leaving here now gave rise to a small knot of trepidation in the base of my stomach. Leaving meant returning to reality, that cold, harsh world where everything was different and where I was a human and he was a Grey.
Reaching down, I grabbed at my clothes, and began to dress; shooting surreptitious glances at him every now and then as he returned to the backpack and began zipping it up. When I was done and had managed to tie back my hair into some semblance of a ponytail, I retrieved my own backpack that I'd left at the foot of the bed.
'Here,' Tom said, handing me his bottle of water. 'Have the rest.'
I took it from him gratefully, noting how his lips parted when our fingers brushed and how it stirred a tiny spark of electricity inside me.
Unscrewing the cap, I took a sip, studying him as he went back to sorting out his bag. Visions of Tom organising his bag for work swam into my mind, meticulously loading it up and double-checking he had everything he needed. I pushed them away. Tried to force them under the surface. I needed to be free of that now, so I could think clearly.
'Something bothering you, Evie?'
I glanced up, unaware that I'd even been standing there, rooted to the spot, scratching at the paper label on the water bottle.
Tom's gaze was unsettlingly calm in contrast to my chaotic thoughts. I wasn't sure I even wanted to say anything. It would have been easier to let it go, to bask only in the night before, but if we were about to venture back into the outside world where reality was waiting to haunt me again, then I might as well ask that which was still left unanswered. Even if that meant inviting reality back into my life before we'd even left this room.
I edged closer, leaning against the dresser top. 'When we were talking last night, remember when you said that when you first came here, the Hive didn't hate us? You said it wasn't about hate, but power and dominance. Does that mean they hate us now?'
The coldness in him arose again, brief, fleeting, but it made goosebumps cascade over my skin to see it.
'The Hive despises humanity. Or at least, it did when I was a part of it. I would assume nothing has changed,' he said. 'They hate what they don't understand and they don't understand how some of us can choose to remain in human form.'
I frowned. 'So, they hate us over something which isn't our fault? We can't help what murdering humans and stealing their identities has done to some of you.'
I almost regretted the jibe as soon as it left my mouth, but Tom appeared non-plussed and shrugged in response.
'What makes you think hatred is always rational? Fear makes hatred flourish,' he said.
'Fear of what?' I replied.
'The Hive is afraid, Evie, and we learn to hate what we fear, right?'
'They're afraid of us? How can they be afraid of us?' I said, more than a little stunned. 'What does it matter that the experiement wasn't completely successful? So what if some of you have chosen your human targets over your natural form? Surely that's still a minority of Greys? They've reduced us to nothing. Look at the way we live! At how we have to survive! We survivors live underground. In dark holes and tunnels with the rats and the bugs. We fight over scraps. We're scavengers on our own planet. We're weakened.'
'No,' he said, insistent. 'We are weakened. The way the Hive see it, humanity has infected us. Humanity is a virus they have to wipe out and the only way they can be sure of wiping out that virus is by remaining here until every last human is dead or taken. They can't afford to leave anyone alive on this planet, because any one survivor could be a Grey and a Grey in human form is evidence of our failure.' He stopped to take a breath and I stared at him, conscious of how it had sounded like some kind of propaganda speech, a throwback from his time before Tom.
'You almost sound like you agree?' I said.
Tom exhaled tersely, his jaw tensing. 'Of course I don't agree. Shit, Evie, it's madness, all of it, but I was part of that madness, don't forget. I still remember how it felt to think like that. I'm not as lucky as those who've managed to escape their memories.'
A note of bitterness crept into his tone and he looked away briefly, before sighing and raking his fingers through his hair, pushing it back away from his forehead. I resisted the urge to reshape an unruly curl.
'Look, the Hive are afraid,' he said. 'As unbelievable as that might sound, they are. They're afraid of what humanity is doing to us. We're a superior species. Or at least that's how we see it. The distance we have travelled, the worlds we have destroyed, the efforts we have gone to... all to cement our power as indisputable fact. Whole galaxies tremble when they speak our name. We are woven into history. Species tell their younglings about us as if we are myth and legend, yet all the while fearing the day we turn our eyes upon them. Can you imagine being that powerful and having a species so poorly developed as humans, being the ones to stop you in your tracks?'
'Poorly developed?' I raised a brow at him.
'In comparison to many, yes.' Tom nodded.
'I still don't get it,' I said, stubbornly. 'It all seems a bit extreme, if you ask me. Okay, so I get the Greys are all arrogant as fuck and they jolly around the galaxies wiping out whole worlds just so they can prove how amazing they are. But there's barely anything left of humanity. We can't get back what we once had. All of that, everything we knew is gone. It'll take an eternity for us to crawl back out of the tunnels and rebuild. Some of us might survive this, but the human race that once existed is gone forever.'
'Yes, it is,' Tom agreed.'But it's the new human race they're worried about, not the old one.'
'What new human race?'
Tom stared at me a little too long, a little too hard and I wanted to recoil from it. The morning light was already fiercely strong as it pushed through the gaps in the curtains, but there was too much shadow in Tom's face, too much darkness haunting his features.
'The one born of alien and human,' he said. 'A hybrid race, Evie. That's what the Hive is most afraid of. They're afraid of humanity diluting what we are.'
I gasped, the jolt of his words hammering hard in my chest. 'Wait, you're telling me they think that humans and the Greys who've chosen to remain in human form, will create a new species?'
Tom wet his lips with his tongue. 'They don't think. They know.' He stepped closer; his eyes troubled, his hand finding mine, his fingertips brushing against my palm. 'It's already happened. The hybrids exist. That's why the Hive cannot leave. They need to find them. They need to find them all.'
My mouth dropped open. My stomach lurched.
'Wait... are you...?'
Tom's eyes widened. 'Me?' He looked stunned for a moment, before his shoulders dropped and he chuckled softly. 'No, Evie, I'm not a hybrid.'
My mind raced. Raged. Why wouldn't it be quiet? I needed to think. I needed to hunt for the answers that I knew were in here somewhere, jumbled up with the dark thoughts and the voices that screamed out to be heard.
Zero. Zero. Zero. That was it. I remembered what Tom had said about Zero and his family. About how he'd been part of the team sent to hunt them down.
'You're not a hybrid,' I said, almost to myself as I tried to work it all out. 'But you were part of the team that came here to find the hybrids. Zero's target had a wife. They fled together with their child.'
Tom's steady gaze found mine and I could see it all so clearly then.
'The child was born after Zero transformed into his human target. Their child was a hybrid. Oh, my God, I'm right, aren't I?'
Tom said nothing, but I could see instantly I'd guessed correctly. It hit me then, just how cruel the act of forcing a Grey to reconnect with the Hive really was. Everything they had learnt, everything they had experienced, everyone they had loved would have been wiped clean from their memories – and that included any child they might have created when living as a human, but not before experiencing the pain of knowing that child was going to be killed by the Hive. Maybe even witnessing it. I felt a sudden sharp stab of grief for Zero, imagining the torture he must have felt at turning the trigger on his own wife and child, just so their deaths could be quick and merciless, instead of the suffering they might have experienced at the hands of the Greys.
I looked into Tom's face, my eyes narrowing, scrutinising his expression.
'Did you ever find any hybrids?'
Even as the words fell from my lips, I wasn't sure I even wanted to know. The Grey had been sent here for a reason – to hunt those like Zero and to hunt any hybrid children. The idea of Tom – my Tom, the one who'd spent his life educating children, looking after them, caring for them – killing any child was too much to bear. Of course, he wouldn't have been Tom at the time, but knowing the person standing in front of me had been capable of that was nauseating.
'Did you?' My voice was louder, shaky, but insistent. I had to know.
'Just one.'
'And?' I said, gripping his hand. 'What did you do?'
Tom smiled then, a small sad half-smile that did little to stop my heart from pounding in my chest.
'Nothing,' he replied. 'I did nothing. I didn't have to. Zero did it himself.'
***
It was hard to push away everything Tom had said as we travelled back to Green Park Tube.
Instead of finding answers, I had only found more questions, more chaos rising out of this already tangled mess of a world.
I was sad for Zero. Sad for what he'd had to do to try and escape the true nightmare of what he really was. Sad for his wife and child. Had they even known? Had they looked upon him with horror when he'd pointed the trigger at them? Had they asked why, as the one person who had tried to protect them, became their killer? Had they begged for their lives?
And yet, I was angry too. Angry that this all could have been over before now. Angry that it was ironically a glitch in the Greys own DNA – their great, supposedly-all powerful cloning system that allowed them to sneak onto worlds and take over – that had caused them to remain here longer than necessary, all because some of their kind had chosen to stay, to be something other than what they were. I was angry at the ones who had caused this, all because they wanted to be – or at least, try to be – human.
And, inevitably, I was confused.
Confused because Tom was one of those Greys. The Grey had chosen Tom, turning against everything he was, rejecting the Hive even when he had been sent here to slaughter hybrid children and bring an end to their extended invasion and occupation of Earth. I was confused because I should have wanted him to go, and yet, the thought of that – of him leaving me for a second time – left me cold and empty and numb and I wasn't sure I could survive that again.
We picked our way through the streets, keeping close to the buildings, keeping close to each other. All the way the hair on the back of my neck prickled, not only with the usual weight of a silent city pressing down upon me, but with the knowledge now that if the group discovered what Tom really was, the outcome was going to be even worse than I had initially imagined. I wondered whether I could do what Zero had done and turn the gun on Tom so easily now, allowing him a quick and merciful death at my hands, instead of what the group would do to him. If I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger out of hate, how could I possibly pull it out of love?
I said barely nothing as we trudged carefully through the gloomy tube tunnels from Green Park, and the closer we got to the old Strand station, the more my mood deepened, until it felt as dark and oppressive as the expanse of dank, black tunnel ahead of us. Critters moved in the shadows, shrinking away from the torchlight of our rifles, except for the rats, of course, who remained as brazen as ever, their eyes glinting malevolently as the light reflected off the floor and walls.
Not far from the bend that marked the approach to the station, Tom came to a halt and grabbed my hand, pulling me towards him. He rested his forehead against mine, skin slightly dampened from the heat of the tunnel and the arduous journey, but his breath, which was warm and soft, still felt good against my face. I clutched onto the waistband of his jeans with my free hand, enjoying those few seconds of holding him close, his hand brushing the base of my spine.
'It's going to be okay,' he whispered. He knew. Of course, he knew. He had always had this weird sixth-sense of knowing what I was thinking.
'Don't say that. You always say that.'
He chuckled, softly. 'Always better to have a glass half-full, right?'
'You always say that too.'
'I say a lot of things,' he said, his lips tracing over my forehead, down the line of my nose, my mouth. Soft kisses in the dark. My heart beating hard, like the constant rumble of a train over the tracks. 'I love you. Can I say that?'
I smiled, even though my lips trembled as I did so.
'Yes. You can say that. You can always say that.'
He kissed me again. Longer. Deeper. 'Then, I love you. And it really is going to be okay,' he added.
A sharp sound echoed from around the curve in the tunnel and our heads shot up, our rifles instinctively raised in the direction of the noise. Multiple beams of light erupted out of the gloom, as rifle torchlights were activated, and small red laser points danced across the tunnel walls until they came to rest upon us. Blinded by the lights, I squinted, trying to make out those who had laid in wait for us ahead. The beams of light parted, making way for a darkness which pushed between them, a huge, shifting mountain of shadow that came with a voice that sent a shiver along my collarbone and a sinking feeling of dread churning up a storm in my stomach.
'There I was, thinking this might just be the largest tube rats the dear Lord had the audacity to put on this Earth and instead I find you, Evie,' Levi said, stepping closer until I could see the glint in his eyes, madder but no less malevolent than the rodents that continued to scurry around our feet.
He leaned forward, his smile wide, that small silvery scar stretching across his cheekbone as he grinned.
'Would it be awfully clichéd of me if I were to say take me to your leader?'