by Tim Lebbon
“Your father's a monster.”
Jack bristled for a moment, but then remembered what his father had done in that suburban London street—the men and women he had killed, brutally, in cold blood. And he could hardly deny Breezer's assessment.
“He's no longer the father I knew,” Jack said.
Breezer did not answer. He looked at all three of them again. Then he inclined his head and said, “So, let's eat. I'll bet you're hungry?”
Sparky nodded.
“Ahh,” Breezer said. “A fan of a decent burger, Sparky?”
Sparky smiled.
“Good. Follow me. And while we're eating, we can talk about what might happen next.”
They emerged into a brightly lit corridor. At the end of the corridor stood a floor-to-ceiling window offering a view out over London. The window was not far away, and Jack suffered a moment of dizziness when he realised how high they were. In the distance he could see the green chaos of a large overgrown park, and closer by stood the unmistakable silhouette of Nelson's column.
“I was sure you'd taken us underground!” Jenna said.
“We're in Heron Tower,” Breezer said. “The Choppers treat us like rats, and that's their greatest mistake. Here, we can hide in plain sight. And just in case we're compromised, there are various escape routes below and above.”
“Above?” Jack asked.
Sparky stepped towards the window.
“Don't!” Breezer said. “We try to stay away. Don't want to risk casting shadows.”
“Right,” Sparky said. He looked for a moment longer, then turned around. “You mentioned burgers?”
Jack's query unanswered, Breezer walked back along the corridor, and Jack and his friends followed.
They entered a large former office area. The desks were now pushed against one wall, and dividing screens had been ranked a few feet from the panoramic windows. Plants in large square pots had long ago withered and died, brittle sculptures to a forgotten past. The windows themselves were dusty, filtering sunlight and blurring the views beyond.
There were still some touches that saddened Jack, office workers’ attempts to personalise their space—kids’ drawings stuck to some of the regular concrete columns, photographs of drunken office outings, and on one desk a collection of old, stained mugs. Whatever purpose this office had served seemed pointless now.
There were several Irregulars in the large open-plan area. Most of them sat in swivel chairs reading or staring from the windows, and two were hunkered over an enclosed metal gas barbecue. Heavenly smells were issuing from there, and Jack's mouth started to water.
“Right then,” Sparky said, and he walked on ahead of them.
Jenna surprised Jack by taking his hand. “We'll be all right,” she said. “All of us.”
“I wish you could see the future,” Jack said, smiling at his friend. She smiled back and kissed him on the cheek.
They gathered around the barbecue, and Jack was surprised to see no flames, and smell no gas. There was not even a gas bottle in sight. Then he saw that one of the Irregulars had her hand pressed to the metal container's underside, and she was frowning in concentration.
“Medium rare, please,” Sparky said, grinning at Jack and Jenna. Jack laughed out loud, and it was a release of tension that felt so good he did it again. Jenna laughed too. Breezer smiled uncertainly.
The barbecue was opened and food served onto scratched china plates. The several Irregulars melted away then, leaving Breezer alone with them. They ate in silence for a few minutes, and Jack could not help smiling. Such a surreal scene. London bathed in summer sun beyond the windows, so distant that it might have been back to normal. And they were eating human-heated burgers in an office block.
“Delicious!” Sparky said through a full mouth. Grease dribbled down his chin and caught in his fuzzy stubble. “Best beefburger I've tasted in ages.”
“Thank you,” Breezer said. “We do what we can.” He took a delicate bite of his own meal and chewed for a few moments. “It's not beef.”
All movement froze. Jack looked from Sparky, to Jenna, to Breezer. Then Sparky shrugged and took another huge bite, making appreciative noises with each munch.
“What are you doing here?” Jack said. “You seem to be in charge, and—”
Breezer's high laugh surprised them all. “I'm not in charge!” he said. “Jack. You make us sound like Superiors.”
“Well…” Jack nodded after the people who had left the large room.
“We're surviving,” Breezer said. “Doing our very best, that's all. There's not much trust about these days, so when a few people find others they can trust, they tend to stay together.” He looked at his food, no longer seeming hungry. “It's not quite family. But as close as we have.”
“You have family outside London?” Jenna asked.
“Wife,” Breezer said. “My two sons. I lost some more distant relatives on Doomsday, but not my close family. They're out there somewhere. Think I'm dead.”
“And haven't you ever wanted to try to get out to them?” Jenna asked.
“Of course! In the beginning escape was all any survivor wanted. But the government quickly threw a cordon around London, and the Choppers blasted whole districts to rubble so that—”
“Yeah, we saw that,” Jack said.
“Right. Well, there was so much confusion. The huge numbers of dead started to decompose, stinking the city up. There was disease, and carrion creatures—dogs, cats, rats. Lots of rats. Everyone was grieving for someone, everyone was confused and scared. No one knew what the hell had happened, and why the authorities weren't trying to help. There were a lot of suicides. And on top of all that, we started to feel…different.”
“The powers,” Jenna said.
“It drove a lot of people close to madness. Some still are, and you'd do best to avoid those. But a lot of people tried to escape, yes. Overground, underground, covertly, aggressively. A few even tried air balloons. They were all caught and executed. Sometimes the Choppers left their bodies on display. Once, fifteen corpses rotted on lamp posts in Oxford Street. That was Christmas of the first year.” Breezer trailed off as he remembered terrible things.
“But you could burst out, couldn't you?” Sparky asked. “Combine, use powers to find a weak spot, an escape route like Rosemary did. Get out and spread the word about the deception.”
“They'd know,” Breezer said.
“But we came in through tunnels,” Jack said. “Five of us and Rosemary snuck in.”
“Six of you?” Breezer said, nodding. “Yeah, it's possible they knew that, too.”
“But how?” Jenna asked.
Breezer glanced from one to the other of them, as if waiting for something.
“‘Cos they've got one working for him,” Sparky said. The blond boy was staring at the open barbecue and the spare burgers steaming there, but he no longer looked hungry. He looked furious.
“No,” Jack said, shaking his head. “No! With everything they've done? All the people they've captured and chopped up?”
“It's not for sure,” Breezer said. “A rumour that has only just surfaced. But it's said there was a child in the beginning who could feel the weight of people moving around London. Don't ask me how. How can I tell your truth from your lies? But if she was in Kensington, she could tell if a group of people were walking across Piccadilly Circus. She called it following the city's pulse, so it's said. And three months after Doomsday, the Choppers took her.”
“But they didn't kill her,” Sparky said.
“Why doesn't she find you lot?” Jenna asked.
“We live here together, but are careful only to gather in threes or fours. And it's said she only tracks moving people, not those just…”
“Just living somewhere,” Jack finished for him.
“Bloody hell,” Sparky said.
“Yeah.” Jack was nodding slowly.
“So if you form an army…” Jenna began, but she did not need to finish.
“And now even that option is being taken away,” Jack said, and he stared Breezer in the eye. “Because you're all dying.”
Breezer nodded, turning grim. “You saw Milton down in the street. Until a few weeks ago he was as strong as you or me, and now…well, he's mad, and fading fast. None of us knows what the illness is, where and when it will manifest. No healer can touch it. It's a mystery.”
“Do the Superiors suffer from it as well?”
“I don't know,” Breezer said. “There are so few of them, and they have little contact with us. Sometimes I think they view us as low as the Choppers.”
“But you have an idea of what it is,” Jenna said, a statement more than a question. Jack smiled secretly. She'd always been good at steering conversations.
“I've been studying it,” Breezer admitted. “Questioning as many Irregulars as I can.”
“Seeing through lies,” Jenna said.
“Finding the truth.”
“Which is?” Jack asked.
“Well, you know the basics. Evolve killed most of those it touched, and those who survived quickly developed a range of powers and abilities. Almost all of them were psychological. Some…almost supernatural. That's Evolve's first mystery. What I do think is that whether a person now calls themselves Irregular or Superior depends upon how dramatic the power they're developed. Superiors tend to have destructive, or more physically powerful abilities. Less human, some might say. The far more numerous Irregulars are healers, truth-seers, way finders. Other things, too.”
“I'd figured that one out myself,” Jack said, thinking of what his father had become—Reaper, a man who killed with his voice—and those accompanying him. “The woman who brought us into London wanted the Irregulars and the Superiors to unite. Force their way out, and expose themselves to the world.”
“I know Rosemary well,” Breezer said, nodding slowly.
“You don't agree with her?” Jenna asked.
“On the contrary, I was one of those who suggested the possibility in the first place. And I knew who she was creeping out of London to find. I'm convinced the only way anyone will leave London alive is if the Superiors join with the rest of us. It was a long, long shot, thinking that bringing Reaper's children in would change the way he is. Persuade him to cooperate. But now…” Breezer looked at Jack with hungry eyes, and Jack glanced away to Jenna and Sparky. They were tensed, more alert. Worried. They all sensed a change in the conversation.
“Now what?” Sparky asked.
“Now that you're changing, Jack, maybe you'll be the one to lead us out. And I truly believe that the only hope of curing what's slowly killing us is to appeal to people outside. There are amazing people in London, but we need doctors and scientists, not diviners and fire starters.”
“You need normal people,” Jenna said.
“Yes,” Breezer said. “The world has to know the truth, because we need their help.”
“Then our plan stands,” Jack said. “Escape London, expose the lie that everyone outside has been told. Reveal the truth.”
“Tell everyone that London isn't just inhabited by monsters,” Sparky said.
“Well, mostly,” Jenna said.
“We'll help you in any way we can,” Breezer said. “But the sickness is spreading, and more and more people are succumbing. Everything's against the clock now, Jack.”
“Not without my mother,” Jack whispered. “And not without my sister.”
“But you can lead us! No one has ever been touched by Nomad. Few people have even seen her, and most still consider her a myth! Your powers might be—”
Jack slammed his hand on the table. Cups jumped and spilled water, a plate shook to the floor and shattered. The impact echoed around the office, a haunting sound that slowly faded before anyone spoke.
“I didn't come to start a war,” Jack said. “I'm no leader, and whatever's happening to me…” He was both angry and scared, so he concentrated on something solid that he felt could hold him firm—love. “I'm going for my mother and sister. They're what matters to me. And perhaps at the same time we can stop the girl. Blind the Choppers. Then you won't need anyone to lead you out.”
“But no one knows where Camp H is,” Breezer said. “And even if you did, there's no way—”
“There is a way.” Jack thought of Reaper, and the sense of fatherhood he'd sensed still within him. He had shunned Jack and sent him away to be hunted by Choppers, and yet Jack would as much give up on his father as he would his mother and sister, Emily.
He stood, and his friends stood with him. “We need to rest,” Jack said. Breezer nodded. But the air had chilled, and the silence that accompanied them back to their room was loaded.
“Are you crazy?” Jenna said. “He abandoned you, Jack. Sent you and us away, a ten-minute head start before he let the Choppers come after us again. He doesn't give a shit about you or us. And you want to go out there and find him again?”
Jack nodded.
“Maybe he'll just kill us next time,” Jenna said. “And do you think he'll be that easy to find?” She was standing by the closed door to the small office. Jack leaned in the corner, and Sparky had taken the only seat, plate balanced on his lap with the remains of another burger cooling on it.
“I think I can find him, yes,” Jack said. He breathed deeply, trying to open himself up and not fear anymore. And with the memory of Nomad's finger on his tongue came a rush of startling sensations. Seeds of potential sparked in his mind like stars being born to an empty universe. He let them shine, and chose one.
The ability was shocking and felt unreal, not his to own. And yet one look at Sparky set his friend sweating, gasping for air and loosening his collar. Sweat dribbled down his forehead and cheeks, and as his eyes drooped Jack pulled back, not wishing to make his friend faint.
Sparky spilled his burger to the floor. “That was you?”
“Yeah.” Jack closed his eyes and glimpsed his expanding universe. It was utterly terrifying, and exhilarating. Nomad's touch had been the big bang, and now his inner perception was shatteringly huge, filled with swirling clouds of light coalescing into points of potential. He could move in the blink of an eye, and from one moment to the next he would be orbiting one power, or another. He knew them, and knowing scared him. This was so new. Still chaotic. Dangerous.
“Well, I'm with Jack,” Sparky said.
Jenna looked frightened, uncertain.
“Don't be scared,” Jack said, moving towards her.
“I'm not,” she said, but she waved her hands at him, urging him back. “Well, I am, I am scared. But we're together. That's it, I suppose. We're together, and nothing comes between us. So if you think you can find him and get him to help, that's what we do.”
“Yeah!” Sparky said. “Friends forever! We should cut our thumbs and be blood brothers. And sister.”
“Oh, Sparky,” Jenna said, shaking her head.
They just smiled at each other instead.
I see a woman laughing in the face of a mushroom cloud. Lucy-Anne wished she could say this to Rook, and make him understand her confusion and desperation. But it was only a dream. And surely not all dreams could come true.
Besides, it was thoughts of her brother that drove her. With her parents dead, and likely buried in those mass burial pits that she and the others had walked across only days ago (and that was something she'd dreamed as well), he was all she had left.
Andrew. Five years older than her, he'd always been the sensible one, the apple of her mother's eye even though Lucy-Anne knew that her father had a soft spot for her own mild rebellious streak. When Andrew was revising for his exams, Lucy-Anne would be out with her friends, choosing makeup her mother never liked her wearing and clothes that were really too adult for a thirteen-year-old. He played football for his school. She played hooky from school. Deep down he'd made her jealous, and she'd annoyed the hell out of him. But she'd never loved him as much as she did now that he was gone.
Rook
had taken them down to the river, and now they were working their way west. He'd told her there were easier routes north from that direction. The Thames was sluggish and thick as gravy, and Lucy-Anne tried to see aspects that did not remind her of her dream. There were no bodies floating in the river today, for a start. It was also unmarred by fallen buildings. There were several half-sunken boats, and in the distance she could see a logjam of ruined craft piled against a bridge's central upright. But it was the movement of water that troubled her. Unstoppable, uncaring of what had happened in London, the water flowed towards a future she hoped she did not know.
“When do we go north?” she asked again. She'd been asking Rook the same question for the last hour, and after the first couple of times he'd stopped answering. Now he turned around and sighed, and for a moment his eyes were as black as the rooks that followed him.
“Soon,” he said. “Need to see someone first.”
“Who?”
“You want my help?”
Lucy-Anne nodded.
“Then let me do it my way. You don't know London, and have no idea of the dangers.”
“Oh, I do have an idea, you know what happened—”
“You have no idea.” He spoke softly, the words filled with such dread and certainty that Lucy-Anne could not reply. What has he seen? What does he know? Rook had been trapped alone in London for two years, surviving, living with the strange gift thrust upon him, and she knew so little about what his life had become, and what had come before. She silently vowed that she would find out.
“This way.” Rook nodded along the embankment path, then glanced up at the summer-blue sky. Rooks floated on air currents high overhead. Others fluttered from building to building. Lucy-Anne could only see a dozen birds, but knew there must have been many more out of sight.
“Don't they give you away?” she asked.
“Most keep their distance until I need them.”
“Most?”
Rook nodded up at the birds circling high overhead. “Some become so…obsessed that I can't shake them.”
“Obsessed with you?”
Rook smiled. It was the dangerous and deadly face she had first seen, and somehow it comforted her more than the Rook mourning his lost brother. It made her feel safer.