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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Reaching our base below the old Aldwych station usually felt like a blessed relief from the pressing gloom of the tunnels.
No matter how many times I travelled in darkness under the city, it still knotted my muscles into a mesh of tightly woven coils. The tension seemed so normal now, that sometimes I didn't even realise how much it took its toll on my body until I reached the sanctuary of the base and felt that mesh begin to unravel. Because that's what we survivors did now. We just bore the pain. Whether it was the pain of losing those we loved, the pain of grieving for a world we had always taken for granted and would now never get back, or the pain that plagued our bodies for constantly feeling on edge, we had grown accustomed to it all.
This evening, however, the usually welcome sight of the base and those I knew did little to uncoil the tight springs of my muscles. If anything, it just wound them tighter still, almost knocking the breath from my body as we escaped the tunnels. I saw their faces, those I had come to consider my family – if family still existed in this dead and barren world – and all I could think was, I have killed you all, I have brought the Devil to your door and I have killed you all.
It didn't help that the first face I saw was Abby's. Abby, the one who had befriended me without question, the one who never judged anyone, the one who always had a smile for me and an intuitive way of knowing when I was troubled. Of course, it had to be her.
'Shit, Evie... Jace...' She jumped up from where she was cleaning her rifle, wiping the grease from her fingers with a white rag and running to greet us both with one of her infamous hugs.
I clung onto her longer than I usually would – I wasn't known for my love of personal contact – and when she pulled away, her eyes clouded with question, only for them to widen knowingly as she spied Tom over my shoulder. I stepped to one side as she straightened her shoulders, lifting her chin as she sized him up. Abby had a real knack for getting the measure of people within seconds. She often said it was living on the streets that had enabled her to have this intuition that others didn't.
'You learn fast,' she had said to me one day, 'or you wind up dead. Ain't no lesson like being on the streets.'
She looked from Tom to me, and all at once I was torn. I wanted her to know. I wanted her to see, because that would have meant the end. Right then and there, it would have been over before it had barely begun. But I also knew what that would mean for me and I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready to put myself back where I'd been before the Final Wave.
'Well,' she finally said, with a smile and shaking her head. 'I know you never told us much, Evie, but you could have at least told us your husband looked this good.' She held out her hand to him. 'Welcome, Thomas. Do you mind Thomas?'
The Grey stared at Abby's hand, a split-second of confusion in his eyes, but I could see his thoughts racing, almost as if he was desperately trying to rummage through Tom's head for something. He grasped Abby's hand in his.
