“Not really,” Logan admitted. “You’re saying the man in the tent we found. The body. You brought someone up here, and you killed them so we’d think it was you?”
“And now I’m him. I’m nobody,” Alan concluded. “I can go sit on the street like him. People will pass me by and not even notice. Not even look. They won’t see me sitting there. They won’t know what I’ve done, or why I’ve done it.”
“Except, now we do know, Alan,” Logan pointed out. “We know everything, so you can’t disappear anymore. You can’t run away and pretend you didn’t do this. All you can do is try to fix what you still can. Do what’s right, Alan. For Lucy’s sake. Don’t be someone else, be you. Be her dad.”
For a moment—but just that, and no longer—it looked like he was buying it. It looked like he might let the girl go.
And then, as if a switch had been flicked, his expression changed. His grip tightened, and his eyes blazed with fury.
“You’re them, aren’t you? You’re like the rest of them. You’re fucking lizards, both of you!”
Jameelah cried out in fright as he shoved her right to the edge. Her foot slipped, and her hands, which were bound in front of her, grasped at Alan’s ragged clothing, searching for something to hold onto.
“Alan, don’t do this!” Logan barked. “Please. Let’s keep talking. Let’s—”
“Shut up! Stop talking! I don’t listen to lizards! I don’t let lizards tell me what to do!”
Tyler stepped forward before Logan could respond. “Wait, you’re right! You’re right!” he cried. Logan and Alan Rigg both turned to him, eyes narrowed. Tyler swallowed, and shuffled past the DCI, hands still raised in surrender. “We’re lizards. Under this.”
Alan’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut again, his jaw clenching until the veins on the side of his head looked like they might go pop.
“I knew it,” he whispered. “They said it was in my head, but I knew it.”
“I can prove it,” Tyler said. “I can show you.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Logan whispered, but Tyler took another half-step onwards, leaving him behind.
“You can feel the scales. Under my skin,” he said, pulling up his shirt sleeve to reveal the underside of his bare forearm. “You can feel them for yourself. I’ll give you my phone. You can take pictures. You can finally prove it. You can finally prove you’ve been right all this time.”
Alan was focused on nothing else now but Tyler’s arm. His face twitched, like each individual muscle was alive and engaged in some sort of complicated dance that none of them had thought to rehearse.
“What does it… What’s it like?” he asked. “What does it feel like?”
“It’s… I can’t really explain. It feels normal to us,” Tyler said. He moved closer. Twelve feet now. Ten. “But you can feel it. See what you think. And we’ll tell you everything.”
Alan’s lips moved, repeating that last word in silence.
“Anything you want to know, we’ll tell you. About the Earth. About the government. About the Royal Family. Everything we’ve done, we’ll tell you.”
Nine feet.
Eight.
The intrigue and uncertainty that had started to fog over Alan’s gaze lifted in the blink of an eye. His head snapped up, meeting Tyler’s gaze. His lips drew back, becoming a snarl.
“You’re lying!” he hissed.
And with that, he pushed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Tyler sprang forwards, grabbing for the girl’s outstretched arms. His fingers brushed against her, nails scraping white lines up the dark skin of her forearm, and then he found purchase on the rope around her wrists just as she plunged over the edge towards the rocks below.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Tyler cried, her momentum pulling him, dragging him over. He held on, looking down at her, and at the thunderous waves swirling and crashing impatiently below.
The world lurched. His centre of balance shifted inexorably forward. There was nothing he could do but go down with her, take the fall, take the hits, try to be alive enough at the bottom to keep her head above water. To keep her from drowning in the—
A hand caught him by the back of the trousers, jerking him away from the edge and setting his recovery from his testicular cancer operation back by at least a fortnight.
“I’ve got you, son,” Logan announced, planting his feet and becoming something solid and immovable. “Hold on.”