When Earth is conquered by the sinister Greys and the alien who killed Evie's husband returns seeking her help, she must find a way to enact her revenge and fight the growing feelings for the creature who is an exact replica of the man she loved.
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The journey back to Green Park Tube Station was eerily quiet and without incident.
Any mission topside was eerie, now that London was dead, its carcass still barely ripe for picking, but it was rarely without incident. Even now, when Grey activities within the city seemed somewhat scaled back, it was unusual to venture anywhere without at least one sighting.
Today, it was as if they were no longer here. As if they had upped and left in the night.
The only sign that they were very much still here, was the ominous dark wall of cloud that marked the edge of the Black Zone. Even on a searing hot summer's day, the cloud remained, a thick ashen barrier surrounding the outer limits, blocking visibility of their giant monolithic crafts hanging in the air over Westminster and Buckingham Palace. It wasn't impenetrable by any means, as Lena and Tom had testified in their account of venturing close to Central Hall, but just the sight of it was enough to stab an icy cold shard into your chest.
It looked similar in height and depth to a shelf cloud, a strange weather phenomenon that usually marked the start of an oncoming thunderstorm, only there was no storm coming our way this time.
The storm was already here, hidden inside, obscured from view.
Ordinarily, the Black Zone cloud was the blot on the landscape, the one thing I tried not to look at because of the uneasy feeling it stirred in my stomach, and yet I was unable to banish it from my field of vision. No matter how hard I tried, it was always there, an ever-present darkness in the corner of my eye.
Today, however, it wasn't the cloud that darkened my line of sight.
It was him.
The Grey.
I felt haunted by him. I felt haunted by the ghost of my husband, knowing that he was dead and yet not dead, his face and body stolen by the ghoul by my side, that seemed intent on dogging my every step. Every time I looked at him - which I was trying desperately not to do – it was like being thrown back in time two years, before the Final Wave, before my life fell apart, before he was killed.
The Grey's closeness unnerved me in the same way the cloud did. It felt wrong and portentous, an omen of bad times to come – of an oncoming storm I was walking towards, unable to stop even though I could see the thunderclouds rolling all around me, tumbling and growing, threatening to engulf me and swallow me whole.
He had to stay close to my side. Of course, he did. After all, what husband, estranged for so long and adrift in a nightmarish world without his wife, would keep his distance from the one person he had hoped to find? And what wife would seek to distance herself from him, or keep him at arm's length when she had lost all hope that she would ever see him again?
The pretence was killing me. Each step with him at my side like the cruellest torture.
A couple of times, as we moved stealthily from hiding place to hiding place, our hands had brushed briefly together. The first time had been like an electric shock, a static strike that had shot up my arm like wildfire and I'd jerked away, noting Jace's frown and cursing myself for being so quick to react. The second time, I'd bore it with gritted teeth, refusing to look at Tom even though I sensed his eyes on me, his scrutinising gaze waiting to see if I'd finally crack and give up our horrible, nasty little secret.
