by Tim Lebbon
“Only two,” Reaper said. He looked down at the wasted man before him, and Jack thought he was going to destroy Miller there and then.
But Miller was a man for whom survival had become an art.
“You’re all going to die,” he said. He looked at Jack, then down at Emily. “Every single one of you.”
“And you’ll be the first,” Jack said. He drew the pistol. It seemed fitting, somehow, to kill this murdering bastard with a bullet instead of a special power.
“Er, Jack?” Sparky said. He was standing to one side, and Emily dashed to him and hugged him, seeking refuge.
“Jack,” Reaper said. “This one doesn’t die.”
“Won’t killing him be the victory you want?” Jack asked. He pointed the gun at Miller’s face. The man’s smile barely wavered.
“Kill? If you think that means anything anymore, you really don’t understand what London has become. No, like I said…this one doesn’t die.” Reaper rested a hand on Miller’s shoulder, and the mutilated man’s smile fell at last. “I get to play with him some more.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked Miller. “What’s happening? What have you done?”
“Fail-safe,” Miller said. “Big Bindy.” He laughed again. “I named it myself. Bindy was my wife, and she was big, and she was…destructive.”
“Tell us,” Reaper said.
“Who’s Big Bindy?” Scryer asked.
“She’s a bomb designed to destroy what’s left of London,” Miller said, frowning as he gushed the truth. “A nuclear bomb. Buried. Fifteen megatons.”
“Where?” Scryer asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They don’t let anyone into London who knows. I’m just…”
“Expendable,” Reaper said. “Like all of us.”
“None of you are expendable,” Miller said. “You’re already spent. Dead people walking. You’re memories, and no one outside will miss you when you die, because you’re already dead.”
“You’ll die too,” Jack said. “If they blow the bomb, you’ll all die.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Miller said. “I’ve just pushed the button. Tick-tock, Jack. Tick-tock, tick-tock…”
“Reaper!” Fleeter called from the doorway, excited. “They’re drugged and tied.” She look at Jack, surprised that he was still there.
Puppeteer climbed up next to her and entered the darkness, and moments later two people floated out through the doorway, lowering gently to the ground. A man and a woman, they were bound in heavy chains, limbs tied behind them, gagged, and their skin was pale and slick. They both looked dead, but Jack knew better.
“Who are they?” Jack asked.
“Friends,” Reaper said. He knelt beside the prone woman and touched her face, and one of her eyelids flickered open. Her eye was a startling blue, and her breath misted the air.
“And what can they do?”
Reaper ignored him. “The others?” he asked Fleeter.
It was Miller who answered. “We cut them up. Dissected their brains. Threw their remains out for the wild dogs.”
Reaper tensed, his face thunderous. “You should leave,” he said to Jack. “All of you.”
“Dad—”
“This is no place for you.”
“Daddy?” Emily said.
“This is no place for you!” Reaper’s voice did not rise in volume, but the side of the container behind them caved in, metal shrieking, rending.
“No,” Jack said. “Not like this. We’ve got a chance, here.”
“Against him and his like?” Reaper asked, nudging Miller.
“Peace is the only answer,” Jack said. “If we leave now, and you kill everyone here, what do you think happens next?”
“Big Bindy,” Reaper said. “But we’ll find it and disable it. They’d have left themselves time to get all the Choppers out of London. We’ll have a day, maybe more.”
“And if you can’t disable it?”
“We will,” Reaper said. “London is ours. Our playground, and our home. It’ll always be ours from now on, and him and his like…amusing distractions.”
“Distractions that will catch you and cut you up,” Jack said. “Like they did to Rosemary. And so many others. And they released the sickness, Dad. Are you sure it won’t touch you? Your Superiors? Allow peace, and maybe they’ll release the cure.”
“I’ve released nothing,” Miller said.
“But they’re dying,” Jack said.
“So will you, boy. And everyone who uses their unnatural, unholy powers too much. Your brains can’t handle it. Evolve is imperfect. The more you use your talents, the closer you take yourselves to death.”
“How can you know that?”
Miller smiled but did not reply.
“Because he’s looked at a lot of brains,” Sparky said.
“And because he created Evolve!” Breezer said, amazed, and yet with a certainty assured by his own talent. “It was him! Angelina Walker released it, but it was always Miller’s baby.”
“And they’d never let me test it. Not on humans, at least. Can’t blame them.” He chuckled. “Dear Angelina and I talked about releasing it, but I never believed she’d go through with it. I wouldn’t have. But then she did, and…” He smiled, because they knew the rest of the story.
“And London became your own ready-made lab,” Jack said.
“Finish him, Reaper,” Fleeter said.
“No.” Reaper looked up, and Jack saw the fire in his eyes. “I’ve only just begun with him.”
This was my greatest hope, Jack thought. And now it’s going to explode. His mother and sister were with him, but his father had become a monster. The future hinged on this moment, and yet even though he had helped bring things this way, Jack realised he had never had any control. This was all Miller and Reaper, and the awful game they played—Miller experimenting; Reaper revelling.
“Let us go first, Dad,” Jack said, and in one last attempt, one final plea, he forced a memory into his father’s head.
The four of them walk around a castle in North Wales. Emily is a toddler, singing her own song as she explores the nooks and crannies. Jack is not quite a teenager, and he’s taking rubbings from some of the stone detail. His mother and father are holding hands. Jack has caught them kissing at least twice today, and he looks back frequently. They look so happy. It’s starting to rain.
“Don’t…do…that,” Reaper said, and all across the camp people shivered. That’s it, Jack thought. That’s all I can do.
“Mum,” Jack said, turning around. “We have to leave.”
His mother was looking at Reaper, and for a moment Jack saw a flash of love from his memory. But reality had hardened his mother. Whatever his naive hopes had been, she had always known the truth.
“Go with them,” he heard Reaper say. He glanced back, and Puppeteer and Fleeter were looking at Jack, waiting for him to leave. He was surprised, but he didn’t express it. He didn’t even thank his father.
They trooped from Camp H, collecting Jenna and the weak girl on the way. Sparky helped Jenna support the girl between them. Jack and Emily held hands. His mother and some of the released prisoners followed, and Breezer and his Irregulars followed on behind. Puppeteer hurried on ahead, seemingly keen to not walk with them, and Fleeter flipped out with a crack!
“So the New ends here,” Jack said to Breezer walking close by.
“Don’t think it ever really began,” Breezer said. “Like I told you when we first met, your father’s a monster.”
“The bomb?” Jack asked.
Breezer shook his head. “First I’ve heard of it. But he was speaking the truth.”
“So we have to get out,” Jack said. “All of us.”
“Reaper was right. There’ll be time. I’ll gather as many Irregulars as I can, but…”
“But they’ll only let out the Choppers.”
“And the way we came in is known to them now,” Jack’s mother said. “That’s where th
ey caught us. Us, and poor Rosemary. She fought so hard.”
“She saved my life,” Jenna said sadly.
“I can get us through,” Jack said.
Behind them, someone screamed.
“Let’s go!” Sparky said. They all started to run, but Jack could not flee without seeing. He had to know. Had to see what games his father and Miller were really playing, and why such potential that the New had presented must be squandered. He stopped at the entrance to the route back through the storage park and turned to watch.
Using our talents kills us in the end, Jack thought. Miller could have very good reasons to lie about that—to make them all afraid of using their talents. But there was also a good chance it was true.
The bomb. The sickness. The end of Camp H. Everything was drawing to a close, and the only way he could salvage anything from the tragedy of Doomsday was to make the end a new beginning.
He watched as Shade and the others forced the Choppers together into a group before the larger of the two container units. The soldiers were plainly terrified, but the Superiors were unconcerned. They were smiling. Enjoying this.
Reaper moved from behind Miller and knelt again by the bound woman’s side. He sat her up and allowed her to lean back against him, whispering to her, smiling when she nodded, stroking her matted hair. Puppeteer grimaced with concentration as he used his power to bend and break chains, and twist ropes until they frayed and snapped. In his chair, Miller looked like a shrunken old man now, head bowed, all the bluster gone from him. It was he who had screamed—blood coated the side of his head, and Jack thought perhaps his father had torn off an ear.
He’s no longer my father. For the first time, Jack really meant that. His heart beat in fear at what he was about to see. He could close his eyes. He could leave. But everything he had been through already meant that it was important to bear witness.
Jack glanced back at the others—strangers, and people he loved. He raised a hand with two fingers up: two minutes. But he didn’t think it would take that long.
The Superiors backed away from the group of twenty or more Choppers. Still propped against Reaper’s side, the woman raised her newly released hands and pointed. The air around her head misted as she breathed out. The chains still gathered around her legs glimmered with frost.
One of the Choppers screamed, because she knew what was going to happen. And when she ran, she did not get far.
Even from where he watched, Jack felt the gush of cold air. It tickled his nose and burned his skin, and the woman who’d tried to run ground to a slow, painful halt. It was like watching a film of someone slowed down, and then…Freeze-frame.
Reaper smiled, then whispered, and the power of his voice shattered the frozen woman.
Other Choppers ran. The woman shouted. The luckiest made twenty paces before their flesh started to freeze, muscles cramping and then tearing at the sudden, impossible temperature change, blood coagulating, and every scrap of agony was visible on their stilled expressions. Several of them fell and broke apart as they struck the ground, and Jack could not help wondering whether they remained conscious of what was happening to them, just for a moment.
In his chair, Miller sat with Shade grasping his head. He’d been made to watch every moment.
Mass murder complete, Reaper looked across at Jack. He smiled. He’d known all along that his son was watching.
Then Reaper let the woman gently lie down and turned to Miller, and as Jack ran for his friends and family, he heard the wretched man screaming again, and his father’s laughter.
For the first time in two years, Nomad was as close to a normal woman as she could be.
He’s doing his best for the people he loves. He’s brave. But Jack will soon realise that his responsibilities have expanded. His is a wider outlook now, and he’ll only see that when he stops seeking inward for all those new potentials. That part will soon become as natural as breathing. For me that universe is a wild, violent place filled with chaos and uncertainty…difficult for me to grasp…too filled with pain.
But for Jack it will be beautiful.
She took in a deep breath and felt the pain in her chest, so real and there that it surprised her again with each inhalation. Even stretching her senses out to Jack was starting to hurt. She had reined in everything else she was so used to doing, because it was all starting to pain her more—knowing London through movement and scent, avoiding detection when she so desired, sitting motionless in the river of time while moments passed her by. She concentrated on Jack and one other, because the future of London was with them both.
This is his greatest challenge yet. It will be the making of him, or his undoing. And her purity can only help. The bomb is hidden away so well that…even I…
Nomad sought again, but she felt a warm trickle across her lips and tasted blood. The world swam. She floated in it, and now and then was aware of glances from those few she passed by—deeply knowledgeable from those she had once thought of as monsters; confused, scared, from the rest of London’s people.
They see change in me and that frightens them. And so it should.
It certainly frightened Nomad.
Miller. Did you know? Were you aware that Evolve was far from perfect?
The potential for perfection lay in Jack. And in Lucy-Anne, suffering from another dreadful blow and yet still the one who might save them all. Pure and untainted by Evolve, her own unique talent was already growing larger, and larger.
If Jack and Lucy-Anne failed, or let their true aims die beneath human concerns, then London would be finished.
And I will willingly let it go.
Whether Nomad would go with it, or persist like the spirit-man she had met in the north, there was only one way to know.
“I can’t leave,” Jack said. Night had fallen. They were close to the bombed wastelands of London’s borders now, ready to go down and through the network of tunnels and sewers to the outside. The Irregulars they had rescued had drifted away, back into the ruined city they now called home. Breezer and his people had gone to spread the word about Big Bindy, and Puppeteer had vanished without warning several hours before. Fleeter remained, but at a distance.
With everything that had happened to him, Jack was suddenly scared at the normality beyond London’s borders.
“I never thought you would,” his mother said.
“Gotta find Lucy-Anne,” Jenna said.
“Yeah.” Sparky chuckled. “And, you know, we’ve had such a lot of fun here, why would we leave?”
“Idiot.” Jenna poked him in the ribs, and it turned into a hug.
“You’ll make sure they get through safely,” he said to Fleeter.
She nodded, eyes glittering. “Then I’ll be back.”
“Of course. Lots more Choppers to kill.” Jack’s sarcasm was heavy, but he knew it was the truth. He understood that, now. The Superiors saw this as a game, and the Irregulars and Choppers were their pawns.
But London’s future was now shrinking with every second that passed, and Jack had no idea what that might mean for everyone still here.
“We’re not going either, Jack,” Jenna said.
“Jenna—” Jack began, but Sparky grabbed him in a neck-lock. Jenna stepped forward and dragged her knuckles back and forth across his scalp, and Jack snorted in pain and pleasure. They were playing.
“Well, now, you gonna use your special powers to make me go?” Sparky asked.
“I could,” Jack wheezed.
“Yeah. I don’t doubt that.” Sparky let him go, and Jack rubbed his neck as he looked around at them all.
“You’re special, too,” Jack said to Sparky and Jenna. “Both of you. It’s both of you who’ve stopped me going mad with all this. You’re my…reality.”
They were all silent for a moment, and then Sparky said, “Pussy.”
Jack grinned, then turned to his sister. “Emily, you need to retrieve that camera you hid before you were caught. Start spreading the news. Mum, don�
�t go home. Cornwall, West Wales, somewhere like that. Be careful whom you tell and how, but start getting those pictures out onto the net. Emily is…well, you’d be surprised at how good she’s become at computer stuff.”
“I’m not at all surprised,” his mother said, smiling lovingly at her daughter. She was thinner than she’d ever been, face drawn, and she’d aged ten years in two. But she was filled with love for her children, and that made her glow.
“What about me?” the girl said. She’d recovered her strength quickly as the drugs had started working from her system. Her name was Rhali.
“You’re welcome to come with us,” Emily said.
Rhali looked back and forth between them, but her eyes always settled on Jack.
“I think perhaps I’ll stay with you,” she said. Jack nodded. He would take any help he could get.
“Jack—” his mother began.
“Mum, I’ll be careful,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to say that, son. I was going to tell you how proud I am.”
Jack pursed his lips and nodded, trying not to cry. There had been too many tears. They all hugged silently, and then it was time.
He, Rhali, Jenna, and Sparky watched Fleeter leading Emily and his mother through the darkness and underground. Jack felt an awful tug watching them go. He had been desperate to find and rescue them, and now that he had he was letting them go again. But he also had every confidence that Fleeter would see them safely through and out of London. Outside, they had their own work to do. And in London, he had his.
“Right then,” Sparky said, clapping his hands together. “Reaper’s at war, Miller’s pushed the button on a nuclear bomb that’ll explode at any time and flatten London, any Choppers left are out to avenge their dead friends. And I’m bloody staving. So what’s next?”
The four of started walking back the way they’d come, but no one answered Sparky’s final question.
None of them could know.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks as always to my agent Howard Morhaim, and to my editor Lou Anders.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had almost thirty novels published to date, as well as dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. His most recent releases include Coldbrook from Arrow/Hammer, London Eye (book one of the Toxic City trilogy) from Pyr in the United States, Nothing as It Seems from PS Publishing, and The Heretic Land from Orbit, as well as the Secret Journeys of Jack London series (coauthored with Christopher Golden), Echo City, and the Cabin in the Woods novelisation. Future novels include Into the Void: Dawn of the Jedi (Star Wars) from Del Rey/Star Wars Books. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Awards.