Brave Fear (boyxboy)

Chapter 29

Zane watched London grow through the wide windshield.

He saw the rooftops as they drew nearer, the ancient chimneys sprouting from the old roofs like tiny saplings. Dotted trees became brighter and more vibrant as their color differentiated itself from the white blankness of the clouds. Broken asphalt streets rose up like monsters, cracks snaking across them, old cars careening down them. Zane saw a multitude of flowers in a variety of colors, and thought that it was what Joseph's mom's garden must have looked like: a pinwheel of rainbows.

Despite the magnificence of the older locations in London, the shiny new additions lured his eyes. Magnificent structures formed completely of glass. Aside from certain rooms that demanded privacy, of course. Zane caught glimpses of people scurrying through the enormous office buildings like ants in a jar.

The tallest skyscraper reached for the clouds, its pointed tip just grazing the white emptiness. Zane never heard Mallory walk up beside him.

"The Foreign Embassy for Preservation of the Environment," she said. "FEPE, for short."

"It's magnificent," Zane whispered, his eyes never leaving the structure.

"Climate change wasn't something they could overlook anymore," she said. "FEPE has managed to slow humans' greenhouse gas emissions and supplement nearly every fossil fuel with renewable energy like wind or hydro. Just off the coast is an enormous open-sea turbine farm, large enough to power London and most of the nearby areas."

Zane whistled. "I've been living under a rock," he said sadly. He sighed. "The world is far larger and more complex than I ever imagined."

Mallory crossed her arms. Her eyes gazed into the city streets, where people could be seen pointing up at the jet in confusion. "New Vancouver was completely self-sufficient," she responded. "You had no reason to know of the outside world."

"I never knew there was an outside world,"

"Dude, seriously?" Mallory looked at him, her black hair swinging in motion with her head. "Nobody ever told you there was a whole world out here?" Her nose piercing flashed. How she'd gotten it back, Zane would never know. Maybe she'd had more than one.

"Nope," he told her. "But I intend to take this new world by storm, and show it who I am."

"That's the attitude," Mallory approved. She punched him softly on the shoulder before walking away. He rubbed the shoulder absentmindedly, his brain struggling to comprehend the ancient structures as well as the sparkly new skyscrapers. London was a blend of old and new with no in-between.

His thoughts drifted, and he found himself realizing just how far he'd come in the past two days. Forty-eight hours ago, he'd been in a damp tunnel with a bullet wound in his leg. Now, he was on a jet landing in London. It was almost impossible to comprehend the changes in his life.

He had healed himself of a major, possibly lethal gun wound. They had stumbled across Daisy's twin sister and a fellow experiment of Wawrzynski's. He had used his unnatural abilities to incapacitate soldiers whose vast numbers would have been impossible to defeat in normal circumstances. They had stolen a jet and exploded two planes that launched nuclear missiles at them.

And Joseph had kissed him. It was the most bizarre event of all. He'd never been kissed before, and he'd never felt anything so strong as his desire to kiss Joseph again. He wanted to kiss Joseph again and never stop, forget about Wawrzynski and London, and just feel Joseph's lips against his forever.

It was a confusing feeling for Zane. Not confusing in a physical or emotional way, but in a mental way. Still effortlessly hardwired into his brain was the quota of children he would be required to fill in New Vancouver, and the woman he would be forced to marry to meet those demands. He couldn't shake off the feeling of complete betrayal on his part, but he didn't care anymore. It was always in the background, but he refused to acknowledge it. He was not in New Vancouver anymore. His choices were his and his alone.