PROLOGUE

Becky looked so fragile.

Johnny watched her twisting and turning on the bed, sheets gathered at her feet like crumpled foil.

She’d been zoned out for the last week. She was lucid now, no longer wired, the VR coil hanging by her bed like a dead snake.

There was a nurse in the room with them. She was pretty and Johnny felt awful for even thinking that at a time like this.

A doctor was there too. His arms were folded, the watch on his wrist horribly visible. Yet part of Johnny still waited for a miracle cure: some new and radical medicine to be sucked into a needle and injected into Becky’s bloodstream, saving the day. It wouldn’t happen.

The nurse bent over the bed, wiping Becky’s forehead with a damp cloth. Johnny could see her face now. She wasn’t as pretty as he had thought and he felt slightly better for knowing that. Becky was the only one allowed to be pretty. Valiantly fighting for each breath on the bed before them, patchy hair peppered over her skull like ash. Her bones sharp and brittle, her skin like a veil, freckles all but gone. But her eyes . . .

A sharp gasp escaped her mouth.

The doctor whispered something to the nurse and Johnny realised it was time.

He felt a sudden rush of blood. His pulse was racing.

He hadn’t prepared anything. Sure, he’d spent the last thirty-six hours at her bedside, but he wasn’t ready for Becky to die. Not now. Not here: in this metal bed with the not-so-nice doctor and the (not-so?) pretty nurse.

He reached for Becky’s hand.

Her nails, still sharp, dug into his moist palm, breaking skin. She made a noise that Johnny would never forget; a high-pitched whine as air escaped from her frayed lungs. Her arms suddenly spread out wide as if some part of her was trying to crawl out from this ravaged little body, to be set free after weeks of fighting and struggling and suffering.

She was fading fast.

Her eyes swelled, damp but still beautiful. The whining noise was softer now as her breathing paled. And then, after one final gasp for air, Johnny Lyon watched and held on and cried as his wife gave up and died.

Silence.

Johnny kept hold of Becky’s hand. Her arm had fallen limp but he wouldn’t let go.

The whining noise returned; Johnny realising it wasn’t coming from Becky, now, but the machine in the corner. He barely noticed it anymore. It was just another part of the room, like the metal bed or the tall windows or the plastic curtains. But now the machine’s sound was changing, as if the damn thing had been recording this whole scene for him and was now playing it back. A little something to remember her by, he expected the not-so-pretty nurse to say before syncing a vid marked ‘Becky’ to his cell.

But she didn’t.

She simply looked to the doctor, who looked at his watch before saying something that Johnny didn’t hear and didn’t want to hear.

It was finished.