Reaper's Legacy

They were carrying him on some sort of stretcher. He struggled against his binds, but his hands and legs were tied tight. He blinked and felt no pain, yet he still couldn’t see.

His memories swam, perception awash.

I’m special now, he thought, and he searched for some way to probe outward, see what was happening and try to stop it. He found nothing. For now he was just a normal boy who felt like he was going to puke.

Deep inside had been that presence, and he searched cautiously for it again. It was gone. It had left behind the scent and the sense of Nomad, and at that thought Jack realised that a hood covered his head, and he was not blind at all.

He tried to speak, but something had been taped over his mouth.

He heard voices. The stretcher was put down, and then someone spoke very close to his right ear.

“Don’t be afraid, Jack.” It was barely a whisper, androgynous. “We’re going up, and you and your friends will be safe. There will be fear. You’ll be scared. But trust me, there’s no danger.”

With a jolt they started carrying him again, and Jack prepared himself. When Rosemary had taken them down into the subterranean hospital to find his mother, a pair of twins had guarded the place, manifesting terrors in the minds of anyone who approached as a defence against the hospital being discovered. Jack had seen huge scorpions, Emily had seen moths, and Sparky for some reason had imagined giant, deadly chickens.

But the sense of fear that settled quickly over him now was terrible and all-consuming. He would have cried out, had his mouth not been bound. He writhed, then froze. His heart hammered. Everything he couldn’t see was going to eat him, everything he couldn’t feel or hear would crush him, consume him. The anticipation of this was more terrible than the act itself might be, and he moaned so hard against his gag that he thought his brain would erupt.

“It’s safe, it’s safe,” that calming voice whispered, but the darkness pressed into Jack, trying to drown and crush him down.

It’s safe, it’s safe, he told himself. He sought something extra—a new sense, a burgeoning power—but he was simply Jack. Scared, lonely, worrying about his mother and sister held in the Choppers’ Camp H, fearful of his father, the dreadful Reaper. Scared little Jack. He started to cry, wishing his mother were there to hold and calm him as she had been for most, but not all of his years.

I’ve only just found her, I can’t lose her again!

“We’re there,” the voice said, and the hood was removed from Jack’s head, his limbs unbound, and tape was ripped from across his mouth.

His vision swam from the tears, and he squinted his eyes against the glaring light.

“Oh, sorry.” The light levels lowered. A man was revealed before Jack, silhouetted against the strip lights in the ceiling. He was tall and thin with a wild head of hair haloing his face, but his expression was in shadow.

“Who are you?” Jack asked. He gathered his composure, grabbing onto the normality of what he saw after the terrors he’d been experiencing. “Why are you doing this to us?”

“Because I have to. And my name’s Breezer.”

“Oh. Right. So what’s your special power?”

The man chuckled and moved to the edge of the room, leaning against the wall. Across the room Sparky and Jenna sat up as they were released, and Jack locked gazes with them. Sparky looked angry, but Jack knew that they were safe. There was no threat here.

“No, that’s really my name,” the man said. “Bill Breezer. I’m fifty-four. I’m a heating engineer. Or used to be.” He glanced at all of them, and Jack thought perhaps his smile was always there. He looked like someone who smiled a lot. Which meant that he was difficult to read.

“Where are we?” Sparky asked. The people who carried them had retreated from the large room, though Jack saw two of them just outside the open door. The room itself was sparse—bare plasterboard walls, a polished floor with holes where something had once been bolted down. A few paler patches on the walls where frames had once hung. It had the air of somewhere abandoned.

“If I felt comfortable telling you that, we wouldn’t have knocked you out to bring you here.”

“Thanks for this anyway,” Jack said. “The Choppers almost caught us three times, at least. We can’t run forever.”

“No,” Breezer said. “And Miller really wants you, it seems. Because…” His smile dropped slightly and he took on a faraway look, staring through Jack rather than at him. “Ahh. Wow. Nomad touched you.”

“So you read minds,” Jack said.

“I see histories. It doesn’t amount to the same thing, but it can be more useful. You could have denied Nomad’s touch, but I would have still known.”

“You see through lies,” Jenna said.

Breezer nodded. “You’re all welcome here, of course. Even you, Jack.”

“Even me?”

“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