London Eye

“Okay then,” the healer said. “But you're not going to like it.”

“Tell me something new,” Jack said.

Sparky laughed softly. “The world's gone to shit.”

Rosemary started talking.

She told them all about Reaper. Emily glared at Jack.

“She only mentioned it just before she went,” he said. “I'd have told you.”

Her glare softened. “He's alive. Anything else doesn't really matter right now.”

“I'm afraid it does matter,” Ruben said. “Reaper is like those Superiors you met at the hotel, only much worse. He barely acknowledges that we exist, and as for outsiders…I've no idea how he'll react. He might just kill you, I suppose.”

“But he's our father,” Jack said.

Rosemary shook her head slowly. “Jack, Emily, his time as your father ended two years ago. The virus Evolve altered his mind, just as it altered the minds of everyone else in London it didn't kill. But with him and the Superiors, it changed so much more. He's a different man now. He'll know you, perhaps, but that might not mean anything. Although we hope…” She trailed off and looked across at Jenna, lying peacefully asleep with her head resting on Sparky's thigh.

“You never came looking for her dad, did you?” Jack asked. “You obviously knew about what he'd done, and what he'd had done to him. But you came looking for me and Emily.”

“Yes,” Rosemary said. “Because of Reaper, and because of what you might be able to make him do.”

“But you're telling me I can't make him do anything! He'll barely know us, that's the impression you're giving. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“He's my daddy,” Emily said, and Jack could see that the raised voices were upsetting her. But this was something that he could not leave alone: another lie, another deception, and now he needed to know the truth. Lucy-Anne was gone, Jenna had almost been killed, and the time for being blind was over.

“We're desperate,” Ruben said, and the fat man looked suddenly vulnerable and hopeless. “The Choppers pick us off the streets one by one, take us away, and cut us up to…to look for what makes us what we are. We're just lab rats to them, not humans. Sometimes they capture a Superior, but usually it's us Irregulars.”

“Because the Superiors put up more of a fight?” Jack asked.

“Yes, because they're able to,” Rosemary said. “Many of us have powers that are benevolent by their very nature. Mine, Ruben's. But the Superiors…well, you've seen what some of them can do. And there are more.”

“So have you tried to hook up with them?” Sparky asked. It seemed so obvious to him. “Join forces to take on the Choppers? From what I've seen round here so far, you lot just hide out in little groups or alone, sneak around at night like bloody rats trying not to get trapped. Get active, not passive.”

“We tried fighting back on our own, first of all,” Ruben said. “Six months after Doomsday, all of us still trying to come to terms with what had happened to London, what had happened, and was still happening to us-”

“Still happening?” Jack cut in.

“Our talents are getting stronger all the time,” Rosemary said. “And that's scaring them. Their efforts to capture us are speeding up, and sometimes becoming more desperate.”

“So there we were,” Ruben continued, “cut off from the outside world, many of us separated from families outside or…bereaved.” He looked away, remembering someone Jack could never know.

“I'm sorry.”

Ruben shrugged. “There's been so much loss that, in a way, personal grief is even more tragic. Anyway…we tried. A group of us got together, and when the Choppers next sent in their armoured column we attacked them. Fire bombs, a few guns we'd found lying around, homemade explosives. And Peter. Remember Peter?”

Rosemary smiled, and Jack could tell that more sadness was yet to come.

“Peter was a young boy, a couple of years younger than you, who could direct bursts of energy from his mind. It cooked electrical circuits, blew computer chips. He called it his Mind Blower. He helped us, trying to take out the armoured vehicles’ navigational computers and communications. And it worked. But only until they shot him.”

“The attack went on,” Rosemary said, “and when they left we thought we'd driven them away.”

“Until the next morning,” Ruben whispered. “Gordon found him. You met Gordon. And I'm not sad that Gordon's gone now, because he never could really come to terms with what they'd done to Peter.”

Rosemary glanced at Emily.

“She's my sister,” Jack said. “She needs to know what we know.”

“Okay,” she said. “Gordon found Peter crucified on the front facade of Harrods. They'd used nail guns to pin him to the wall. Arms, legs, feet. Gordon was sure he must have still been alive when they did it, dying from his gunshot wound, because there was so much blood.”

“They took his brain,” Ruben said. “Cut off the top of his head and just…took it.”

“A warning?” Sparky asked.

Ruben snorted. “Yes, right. Just to tell us how little we mean to them as living things, but as carriers of all these new gifts…we're priceless.”

“So now most of us run, like you said, Sparky.” Rosemary nodded. “We run, and we hide, alone or in small groups. Trying to avoid the Choppers because we know what they do with those of us they capture.”

“You told me you wanted exposure,” Jack said. “That if we came in, saw everything, took some pictures and film, we could go back out and blow it all wide open.”

“There's no way they'd allow that,” Ruben said.

“But we have to try!”

Rosemary shook her head. “They can cover up what's happened here from the rest of the world. They can hide the existence of the new talents created on Doomsday-an evolved humanity, how incredible!  — and the fact that those talents are growing every day. They can do all that, and keep the rest of the country ignorant of the truth, so do you really think a few pictures and bits of film will be believed?”

“Get them to the right places, sure,” Sparky said.

“Do you believe everything you see on TV?” Rosemary asked.

“’Course not. Load of bullshit.”

“That's my point.”

“But…” Jack shook his head, angered by the Irregulars’ lack of faith and belief in what was right, but unable to see a way through. “There's hope,” he said. “You have to hang onto that.”

“I lost it long ago,” Rosemary replied. “At least, until we found out about you. Because the only hope for the people left alive in London-several thousand of us, perhaps-and the powers we have, is for all of us to unite and fight our way out.”

Sparky laughed. “You're joking, right? Get together, you and all those Superior superhero wannabes, and start a war?”

“Not start a war,” the woman replied. “Finish one.”

“And can you give us any alternative?” Ruben asked.

“Not off the cuff, but I can tell you it'll end up with them killing you all,” Sparky said.

“And you want me to go to my father, this Reaper you talk about, and persuade him to do this?” Jack asked.

“In a nutshell,” Rosemary said. “We tried, and he turned us down. You're our last hope.”

“But you don't believe he'll even care.”

“Not anymore.” She shook her head, wretched, tortured. “Our last hope is almost hopeless.”

Jack sat back against the wall and sighed. He looked at the ceiling and saw a fine network of webs, and in the corner sat a small, fat spider. It was waiting for unwary flies to become caught in its net. And if a dozen flies ganged up on it, the result would simply be a fatter spider.

“So how did you find out about Jack and Emily?” Sparky asked. “Someone with a people radar? Some bloke who can sniff paternal genes across hundreds of miles?”

“No,” Rosemary said, “their mother told me about them.”

“My mother,” Jack said, and he smiled. He thought of Sparky immediately and felt bad, but his friend was looking down at Jenna's face. Now that he knew his parents were still alive, the idea of exposing the lies of the Toxic City seemed even more pressing. Because if he had discovered they were alive only to lose them again-either to the Choppers, or if his father disowned them-Jack did not think he could mourn a second time.