“We’re being watched,” the woman said, standing and squeezing her eyes so tightly closed that her face became a mask of wrinkles.
“Yes,” Reaper said.
“No. I don’t mean your shadow man. I mean by someone from afar.”
“The girl the Choppers have working for them?” Jenna asked.
“Maybe,” Jack said. “But…I think I hear something.”
One by one, they all looked up. A drone buzzed so high up that its sound was a whisper, its shape and form little more than a flash of reflected sunlight.
“Checking us out,” Sparky said, giving the thing the finger.
“And when they see who’s here, the Choppers won’t be far behind.”
“Reaper,” Jenna said.
“And Jack,” Sparky said. “Mate, no risks, huh? That Miller bastard, he was looking at you like he wanted to chop you up.”
“Miller won’t be chopping anyone else up,” Reaper said. He’d drifted closer to them, and now he stood almost as if he was part of the group.
“So what now?” Breezer asked.
“Now we wait,” Reaper said. He cocked his head, smiled. “But not for long.”
They came four minutes later. Not the royal blue Land Rovers that Jack had seen before, but smaller, faster shapes moving along the streets like errant shadows. They were almost completely silent but for the
“Into the cafe!” Jenna shouted, grasping Sparky’s hand and waiting for Jack.
Guns fired, bullets ripped along a shop’s facade, glass shattered, someone screamed.
Reaper held Jack’s arm, and when Jack looked at him the man was smiling. “No need to run,” Reaper said.
And he was right. Jack had always counted that Reaper would not be coming on his own, but for the past few minutes he had been worrying that his father was not going to hold up his side of the plan. Shade was there, hiding somewhere out of sight. But Jack had seen no one else from Reaper’s retinue.
With the Choppers attacking, they made themselves known.
Several motorcycle wheels exploded into flames and burst, scattering blazing rubber across the street and spilling riders. The bikes flipped over the kerb or collided in the road, and for a few seconds the scene was one of chaotic, deadly movement. Another bike was lifted from the ground and held motionless in mid-air, its rear wheel still spinning frantically, its rider struggling to unsling a machine gun from his shoulder.
Three bikes skidded to a stop along the street and their riders levelled their guns. Jack saw Reaper draw in a huge breath.
“Dad!”
Reaper roared. He was looking at Jack as he did so, but he held nothing back. Shop fronts erupted, paving slabs cracked and shattered, cars immobile for two years slid along the road on flat tyres, and the three motorcycles and riders came apart as the wave of destruction hit them, flesh and metal, blood and plastic merging in a cloud that splashed down along the street and across the front of an old pizza restaurant.
As quickly as it had begun, Reaper’s storm ceased. The street held its breath as Superiors emerged from where they had all been hiding. A woman stepped from a rooftop and floated down to the ground, flames playing around her fingertips and at her throat. Her hair seemed to be ablaze, and she looked at Jack with fire in her eyes. Puppeteer stepped from a shop doorway farther along the street, Scryer close behind him. And there were several other, all possessed of a silent, aloof confidence as they claimed the street and the scene of destruction as their own.
Puppeteer held up both hands, and along the street at least eight Choppers were held aloft six feet above the ground. They struggled, but to no avail. One of them shouted as she fought against the hold, struggling to bring her gun to bear, and Jack realised with a sick feeling who was in her sights.
“Jenna, duck!” he shouted. But Sparky had seen at the same time. He shoved his girlfriend aside and fell on her, smothering her with his body and limbs, and Jack thought,
But when the woman’s finger squeezed the trigger, it was her own head that the bullet smashed apart. Puppeteer grunted in satisfaction and flicked his hand at the air, sending the woman’s corpse crashing against a coffee shop’s window and sliding to the pavement. The look of surprise was still etched on her blood-spattered face.
“Don’t kill any more!” Jack shouted. “Get them down, take their weapons, but don’t kill any more!” He looked over to where Breezer and the other Irregulars were huddled down on the pavement and he couldn’t help thinking that this was all going wrong. Brutality was a tool of the Choppers and a weapon of the Superiors, but Breezer and the others did their best to exclude it from their lives.
“Bring them down,” Reaper said. His voice was so powerful and held such command that the street itself seemed to be listening.
One of the men with Breezer stood and moved forward. He lowered his head so that he was looking at his feet, and Jack watched, intrigued. Then he said, “Drop your weapons,” and there was a clatter of metal on concrete and tarmac as the Choppers all obeyed immediately.
“Nice,” Scryer said from where she stood beside Puppeteer. “What do you call yourself?”
“Guy Morris, same as I always have,” the man said.
Puppeteer dropped the men and women to the ground. They landed with grunts and cries, quickly stood, and drew together into two groups.
Sparky and Jenna were standing again now, Jenna shaking slightly, Sparky with his arm around her shoulder.
“I’ve been shot before,” she said softly when Jack looked at her.
“I remember,” he said.
“It hurt.”
“Yeah.” Jack looked across at the crumpled Chopper, a pool of blood spreading around her head. “Her fault.”
“Precisely,” Reaper said. “What these bastards never learn is that we are better than them, and we will win.”
Jack’s heart thumped, blood pulsing in his ears. He knew that this could turn bad very quickly.
“We won’t have long,” Sparky said.
“Then let’s not waste any more time,” Reaper said. He walked closer to one group of Choppers, and two who had discarded their helmets looked at him with unashamed terror.
“No more murdering,” Jack said. “We can use them.”
“And use them we will,” Reaper said. “So. Which one do we interrogate first?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HAMPSTEAD HEATH
Each time she blinked, Nomad saw the girl’s face. Young, pretty, yet aged with tensions and experiences that were etched into her eyes like memories on view. Her purple hair might have been a bruise. The explosion and the girl were one and the same.
