Contagion

Choppers here for you to torture and kill. Perhaps you’re after us now?”

“No,” Reaper sighed, “I’m not after you. Not to torture and kill, and least.”

“Then why?” Jack asked. “And hurry. We’re in a rush.”

“A rush? Why? Anyone would think there’s a clock ticking somewhere.” Reaper stepped further back from the boat so that he could see everyone on board, and even before it happened Jack felt a warning niggle, a suspicion that he’d relaxed just a little too much. Perhaps pride was a factor, because he had seen off Puppeteer and Shade, and even Reaper seemed unsettled.

But he forgot that Reaper was a monster.

A single cough from the man who’d been his father thundered across the boat. Timber stretched and splintered, the glassed-in area shattered, and Jack was lifted from his feet and thrown back into the rows of benches. He heard the others crying out, and he saw Rhali with her hands pressed to her stomach, winded, eyes wide as she tried to catch her breath. Blood ran across his scalp, and pain bit into his right hip and shoulder. Anger flushed through him. Talents flickered before him, all of them powerful and destructive. He could have breathed out and set the boat on fire, or punched at the air and launched a compression wave that would crush metal. But he sensed also that this was a defining moment in his relationship with his new, wider universe of potential. If he let go to anger, chaos would reign.

So he remained on the deck while Reaper climbed aboard, and Shade flowed over the handrail, and the ice woman breathed out again, frosting the remains of glass in the boat’s viewing area and freezing the hull to the spreading ice.

With a crack! Fleeter appeared on the bridge support. She hurried across the ice and climbed onto the boat, glancing around to assess the situation. She grinned at Jack, but he did not return her smile.

“Bastard,” Sparky said. He was on his knees, fists clenched and ready to lash out at Reaper, and Jack had to grasp his ankle. His friend looked back at him. Jack shook his head.

“Now can we talk?” Reaper asked.

Sparky stood anyway, and Shade flitted across the deck towards him. Sparky threw a punch but it hit only air, and then he was flipped onto his back, the wind knocked from him.

“I’d prefer you all stayed lying down,” Reaper said. “Less chance of trouble that way. Less chance of any of you getting hurt.” He stared at Jack when he said this.

“You’ll hurt us anyway,” Jack said. “It’s in your nature.”

“To be honest, Jack, you’ve taught me a thing or two,” Reaper said. He nodded at Breezer, leaning against the smashed wheelhouse nursing a bleeding hand and a gashed cheek. “It used to be that I regarded people like him with disdain. Loathing, even. Given a gift, they do nothing with it. They let it fester and stew, and they exist apart from what they were given, not as a part of it. You can’t separate yourself from your true natures. You of all people should know that now.”

“This was forced upon me,” Jack said.

“Me also! But I relish it.” He walked forward and sat on a bench, almost within reach of Jack. “Tell me you don’t relish what you have, too.”

Jack did not answer.

“You feel the power. You know you’re different, and better than everyone else.” He waved a hand to indicate Sparky and the others. Behind Reaper, Fleeter was still smiling. Jack bristled.

“Different, yes. Very different. I’ve got abilities now…I could crush you with a blink.” He knelt up, and then stood, taller than his sitting father. Holding out his hand, he felt the heat-rush of a new star. “I could clasp your heart and halt its beat,” Jack said with wonder. “I could get into your head and destroy your sense of self. Make you…a robot. A hollow man.”

Reaper sat up straighter, his cruel face taking on its usual anger.

“Before you could even think about muttering one of your earthquake whispers,” Jack said, “I could heat your guts to the temperature of the sun and melt you where you sit.”

“Then do it,” Reaper breathed.

“No,” Jack said. “Because you’re right. I am different from all my friends. But I’m no better than any of them. I’m using what I have…I’m doing my best to help people. Not crush them. Not kill them.”

“But you’ve killed before,” Reaper said, smiling.

Jack glanced up at Fleeter, and she looked away. Her smile slipped. Was that shame, or fear?

“Yes, she’s been watching you for me. And yes, she saw you dispatch those three Choppers. Imagine their families now, Jack. A little son waiting to see his father again. A daughter, returning from school with a picture she’s painted for Mummy. Except Mummy isn’t coming home. Because you turned her into jam.”

“I have imagined, and I always will. And it hurts. Because I care and you don’t, and that makes you…” Jack shook his head, angry, shaking with frustration. “Worthless! You’re worthless, Dad. You have so much, and you mean so little.” He sighed. “It’s really so, so sad.”

Reaper stood. Jack tensed, but sensed no violence brewing in the man. Not yet. But he remained ready, each fingertip touching a different star. He thrummed with power, and he knew that if Reaper or any of the other Superiors made an aggressive move, he’d sweep them all away.

He wouldn’t kill them. He’d simply move them aside so that he and his friends could carry on. Stronger than he had ever been before, his greatest strength was understanding his place. A friend amongst friends. Special, but no more than them.

“Go, Dad,” he said.

“Come with us,” Reaper said. It still sounded more like an order than a request. “No one can stop the bomb, so we’re going to break out. And with your help, we’ll succeed.”

“Just me?” Jack asked.

“All of you.” Reaper glanced around the boat, never looking at anyone for long. He only really had eyes for Jack.

“What is this?” Jack asked. He laughed, looked at Fleeter, but she was silent. “Just what? Last time we met you were happy to stay here and torture what you left of Miller. You wanted only violence, even when the Irregulars and Superiors did have some kind of alliance. So what is this?”

“A new alliance to save us all,” Reaper said.

“You don’t need a healer, or a truth seer, to break out of London,” Jack said. “You’ve got all the firepower you need.”

Reaper stared at Jack as if trying to will the truth his way. But Jack still did not understand.

“We’ve chosen our own paths,” Jack said at last. “We’re going to find a peaceful way out, for everyone. You and your so-called Superiors can do what you want.”

“But they’re trying to kill us all!” Reaper said, and it was the closest Jack had heard him sound vulnerable and desperate. It was a plea.

But Jack looked around the boat at his friends, and he sensed their silent support.

“And that’s why we’ll escape London with the moral high ground,” he said. “Slaughter a thousand Choppers to get out, lose hundreds more survivors to the machine guns, and what way is that to expose ourselves to the world? People are going to be frightened enough of us. We have to show that we mean no harm.”

“And get blown up in the process,” Reaper said. “Very dignified. Very honourable.”

“Perhaps,” Jack said.

Reaper seemed ready to say something more, but he shook his head instead.

“You’ll see that our way is the only way,” Jack said. “Use violence to break out, and they’ll stop you eventually. Lock you up. Cut you into pieces, kill you.”

“You think we’re destined for anything else?” Reaper asked, almost defeated.

“Tell them,” Fleeter said. The moment froze, as if the ice woman had gasped and chilled the air.

“Tell us what?” Jack asked.

Fleeter seemed nervous, shifting from foot to foot. Her smile remained, and Jack realised that it was a natural part of her. It displayed neither humour nor mockery, but rather a grim acceptance of how things were.

“Reaper,” she said. “Tell them why you really want the Irregulars with you.”

Reaper glared at her.