by Tim Lebbon
But every bully meets his match. Six boys caught Kelly after school one day, held him down, and beat him so hard they say he pissed blood. The violence shocked Jack, but Kelly seemed to shrink after that, though his rapid weight increase led to his nickname being changed to Bloater. Even Jack had called him that, and to his face as well. Small revenge, but sticks and stones…
Puppeteer looked at Jenna for some time, weighing up how, or even whether, to respond. “I'm a new man,” he said at last. “I have no name other than Puppeteer. You can all hold onto the past, if you must. Old names, old values. So no, I did not buy this suit, little girl. I took it from a fine tailor's just off Oxford Street, and the owner was not there to object. If he or she had been, I would have moved them out of the way.”
“Asshole,” Sparky muttered.
Puppeteer lifted his hands then, fingers hanging like the readied legs of two large spiders. “Stop filming me,” he said quietly, and his fingers flexed.
Emily was jerked up from her seat, the camera bouncing from a cushion and hitting the carpeted floor. Jack reached for her instinctively, but just as his hands closed around her ankles he felt a crippling pain in his upper arms, shards of agony thrust in from outside to slice through muscle and grate against bone. He fell back, and then Emily was above him, above all of them, held in mid-air and turning slowly, screaming, waving her arms and legs as she tried to swim back down.
“Jack!” she cried. “I can't…breathe! Can't…”
“Let her go!” Jack shouted, standing and spinning to face Puppeteer.
Rosemary had backed away, Scryer had stood from the big sofa—still smiling, still awfully beautiful—and the others were on their feet now as well, Sparky already trying to circle around past the bed so that he could get behind the tall Superior.
The little finger on Puppeteer's right hand twitched and Sparky cried out, his left leg cramping and folding beneath him. He grabbed his ankle and stared at the man, hate in his eyes.
Jack took one step forward and then Scryer was before him, a few steps away but close enough for him to see her excitement.
“Really want to get hurt?” she asked sweetly.
“Yes!” Jack spat. “For my sister, yes, and I don't need some shitty truth-witch to make me say that!” Scryer actually looked taken aback, and Jack felt a brief stab of delight.
Emily rose higher. Her head was almost touching the ceiling now, and her hands clawed at her throat. Her eyes were half-shut, and as she looked down at Jack a tear ran down her cheek.
“Please!” he said, trying to see past what Puppeteer had become to the humanity that must lie beneath.
But the man was enjoying this. He looked around the room, revelling in being the centre of things, not even needing to look at Emily to keep her suspended.
“Puppeteer, that's Reaper's daughter,” Rosemary said quietly.
For the first time, doubt clouded Puppeteer's eyes. He tried to hide it—turned away, looked at Emily, glanced across at the wide view of the Toxic City—but Jack saw something touch Puppeteer then, and it looked very much like fear.
“Reaper,” the man said.
Scryer's smile slipped for the first time.
“Who's Reaper?” Jack asked, confused.
Puppeteer dropped his hands and turned away, and Emily crashed to the floor. She gasped, a terrible, hoarse sound as she sucked in breath across her dry throat, and then she started crying.
“Bastard!” Jack shouted. Right then, if he'd had a gun he'd have fired it, if he'd had a knife he'd have thrown it. But he had neither, so he went to his sister and gathered her in his arms, nurturing the hate and letting it settle somewhere deep inside.
“Reaper,” the man said again. He looked at them, shaking his head slowly. “Does he know?”
“Of course not,” Rosemary said.
“We have to take them to him,” Scryer said. “A gift. An honour!”
The tall man nodded.
“Who the bloody hell is Reaper?” Jack asked again.
Rosemary turned to him, glanced at Emily.
“Shit,” Gordon said. “Shit, shit, now we're in even bigger trouble.” He had moved across to the window, face raised as he sniffed at the air flowing through the fanlights.
“What is it?” Scryer asked.
“Choppers. Lots of them. And they've got a mobile lab wagon with them.”
The scene in the posh hotel suite froze. The surreality of what was happening struck Jack, but he accepted it all. The Superiors, their strange powers, the old woman who could heal, Emily's harsh breathing, Sparky's anger still burning red in his cheeks. He accepted it because the world had changed so much. He'd known that since soon after Doomsday. Being here only crystallised that knowledge in his mind, and everything that happened now he would view through that altered perception.
“How do they know we're here?” Puppeteer asked.
“I don't know,” Gordon said. He nodded at Scryer. “Why don't you get her to ask?”
Rosemary dashed to Emily's side, touching her throat and chest to see whether any healing was needed. The girl's eyes were open, her breathing becoming less harsh, and she groaned as she tried to talk.
“Okay…I'm okay…”
Jack hugged her tightly and kissed the top of her head. “Who's Reaper?” he asked Rosemary quietly, and she sighed.
“They're coming!” Scryer said. She was crouched at the window, and in the brief silence following her warning they could hear the sounds of engines.
Puppeteer looked at Jack and Emily, then stood up straight and smoothed down his suit. “They're everyone's enemy,” he said, “so if you all listen to me, and do as I say, we may yet be able to escape.”
“That's nice of you,” Sparky said.
Puppeteer pointed at him, and Jack held his breath. Smash him against the wall? Launch him from the window? But as he held Sparky's full attention, the man spoke.
“If they catch you, they'll examine you to see why you have no trace of anything new. No powers, other than a big mouth. Got that, boy? They'll interrogate you first, then if they don't hear what they want to hear, they'll start cutting you up. Dissect your eyes and ears looking for any signs of mutation, your fingers and sexual organs, your heart. And then your brain. You do have a brain?”
Sparky glowered but said nothing.
“Good.” Puppeteer nodded. “They'll come in the front way, slow and careful, because they don't know exactly who's in here. So we go back down the service staircase and out through the basement refuse doors.”
“How do you know—?” Gordon began.
“We've been watching you for a while,” Scryer replied.
“Come on,” the tall Superior said. “Not much time.” He waved them past him towards the door, and when Jack and Emily drew level he dropped in directly behind them. Protecting us, Jack thought, and try as he did he could not object to the idea.
That's Reaper's daughter, Rosemary had said. He tried to thrust that from his mind. He was frightened enough, for now.
Scryer went first, followed by Gordon and Rosemary. Sparky and Jenna brought up the rear. As they reached the staircase, they heard the first sounds of doors being kicked in several floors below.
“Slow and careful?” Jack whispered. Nobody replied.
Scryer opened the door to the service staircase, peeked inside and started descending. Two floors down, she paused and held up her hand, listening. She turned to Gordon.
He sniffed the air and nodded, pointing down the stairwell and holding up two fingers.
And then the door exiting the stairwell onto the fourth floor burst open, and the shooting began.
Stand by…stand by…stand by…
—Message on every UK radio and TV channel,
midnight—6:00 a.m. GMT, July 29, 2019
Your brother is alive north of here…
Lucy-Anne kept on running, enjoying the feeling of harsh breath in her chest, pain burning in her legs. She hit several doors that were
locked and bounced from them, falling twice and rolling across the carpet, never growing still, never halting in her headlong flight, trying her utmost to leave behind the grief that had held her in its grasp for so long.
Outside London, she had held it at bay by being rebellious and non-conformist, holding onto hope by giving it wings. And here, now, in the Toxic City, something strange was happening, and her nightmares were becoming real.
Even so, she had fought against the truth.
But now that she knew—she had seen the rictus grins of her dead parents in her mind's eye, and Gordon had confirmed her vision—there was at least something else for her to grab hold of.
So she ran north, instinctively aware of direction even inside the hotel. When she heard doors crashing open somewhere far below, still she ran. She had stopped screaming now, because good sense told her she would not get very far that way. And she slowed her sprint to a jog; danger had come to visit, and she might need all her energy to escape.
Your brother is alive north of here…
“Andrew,” she muttered, “I'm coming to find you.”
She was leaving her friends behind, but already their memories were growing distant. They were like old dreams fading away, while new nightmares became her whole life.
She descended a staircase, having to slip through a landing door and wait in a deserted corridor when she heard people coming up. They passed her by, scurrying up a few more flights, and the threat they exuded was palpable. Continuing on her way, she reached the ground floor and ran north again, entering the kitchens and pausing for a while by a fire exit.
Motionless, her parents’ dead faces flashed at her again.
“No!” She had to run. Had to move, never grow still, never stop until she and Andrew were together again, because he was all she had left in the—
From deep within the hotel she heard the sound of gunfire.
Lucy-Anne burst through the fire-exit doors into blazing sunlight, and the streets of the Toxic City resounded to the sound of her footfalls.
The Chopper soldier who had come through the door was kneeling, trying to turn his machine gun in the confined space. The one standing in the doorway behind him was far enough back to be able to aim properly, and they were his bullets that struck Gordon in the face and chest. The Irregular fell sideways and tumbled down the stairs.
Jack had only ever seen people killed on grainy internet images, and it was nothing like this. He heard Gordon's death, smelled it, tasted it as blood splashed the air and landed warmly across his face. He opened his mouth to shout, his voice adding to Emily's cry of horror.
Something blurred above his shoulder; Puppeteer's hand. His fingers flexed, knuckles seeming to ripple beneath the skin, and the kneeling soldier was snapped upright into his companion's line of fire.
Jack saw his second real-life death in the space of two seconds.
The standing soldier stepped back from what he had done, and the door swung shut until it rested against the fallen Chopper's hip.
Scryer, having dropped onto her stomach as soon as the door opened, threw herself across the dead soldier and fired a pistol through the half-open door. Jack heard a grunt and the sound of something hitting the carpeted floor beyond.
He turned around and looked up to the half-landing between floors 4 and 5. Sparky and Jenna were huddled there, pressed back against the wall, and Sparky's faced was dusted with plaster from where bullets had taken chunks from the masonry inches above his head. His eyes were wide with shock, but Jack could see that he was still alert.
Scryer crawled over the dead soldier, peered briefly into the fourth floor corridor, then ducked back into the stairwell. “More coming.” A burst of gunfire confirmed her statement.
“Why are they doing this?” Rosemary hissed. She was looking down at Gordon, angry rather than shocked, and Jack wondered just how many people she had seen killed. If they got away from this he would ask her. If they got away, there were many things he had to ask.
“Us,” Puppeteer said. He seemed to be agonising over something, staring at Jack and Emily and blinking rapidly. Then he bent down, snatched up the dead soldier's machine gun and offered it to Rosemary. “Take them down. We'll distract the Choppers. They probably don't even know you're here, so—”
Scryer fired into the corridor, ducking back and forth from behind the wall to loose two rounds each time.
“They might be coming up!” Rosemary said, pointing down the stairwell.
“That's why I'm giving you a machine gun.” He pushed the weapon at her and she took it. The tall man stepped past her and drew a pistol from a holster beneath his jacket.
Someone shouted from far away, someone else responded, and an object bounced through the door.
“Stun grenade!” Scryer said. “Cover your ears, open your mouths!” She kicked out at the grenade. It skittered across the landing, slipping beneath the stair railing and falling down the stairwell. Seconds later it exploded.
Jack had never heard anything so loud. The blast wave punched his head, his ears, his eyes, and for a moment afterwards all he could hear was his heartbeat, muffled and fast with the fear pumping through him. Then, with a whine, the sounds from around him came in again, shouting and shooting and someone calling his name over and over again. He opened his eyes and Sparky was there, not more than a hand's breadth from his face but his voice coming from miles away. Behind him Emily was sitting on a stair, slowly unravelling the carry strap of her camera, looking into the lens, checking every setting methodically as though their survival depended on it.
That brought Jack around, more than Sparky shouting into his face and slapping his cheeks. Emily was in shock, and he had to look after her. He crawled to his sister, grabbed her arm and pulled her quickly past the half-open door. Scryer was still there shooting into the corridor beyond, and Puppeteer watched them go.
There was so much that Jack did not understand. One minute the Superiors were treating him and his friends as less deserving than animals, now they were fighting Choppers to give them a chance at escape. He was certain it was not simply a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It had something to do with their father, and the person called Reaper, and from what Rosemary had said back in that room…
They were one and the same.
Rosemary was already heading down towards the third floor. She carried the machine gun like a baby, and Jack had serious doubts about whether she'd even be able to use it. But the most he'd ever fired was an air rifle when he was younger, and his head was still ringing from the stun grenade.
They passed Gordon, and they could not help stepping in his blood.
“Faster!” Sparky shouted. “Have to go faster!”
Gunfire, shouting, the stink of violence, Emily coming along behind him, seemingly back to reality now but still frighteningly blank-faced; Sparky and Jenna behind her; the tang of Gordon's blood on his tongue; a scream from above, androgynous in its pain…and they passed the third floor access door without pause.
Rosemary was setting a fast pace for an older lady, and Jack could not help being impressed. But her fear was obvious, and it transferred easily to him.
There was an explosion above them, and the stairwell sang with shrapnel. Something cold touched Jack's ear. Dust stung his face. He kept running, step after step, holding Emily's hand with the grim certainty that her survival depended upon it.
“Grenade!” someone shouted, and he heard the metallic clash of something bouncing from the stair railings.
Emily screeched and fell into him. He had no chance, tripping forward with his arms outstretched to break his fall. He struck Rosemary's back and she fell as well, striking the landing and twisting, rolling, and Jack was down with her, Emily clasping onto his back.
Clang…clang…the grenade still fell, and though he had no idea where it would explode, moving felt better than lying still.
Rosemary had found her feet and was starting down the staircase to the second floor,
and Jack and Emily were following, when the explosion came. It did not seem as loud as the first, but it blew him against the wall, snatching Emily's hand from his and spinning the world around his head. He was being struck from all sides, battered and thumped and cut; falling, or being hit by debris, he was not sure. When he gasped in a huge breath it was laden with dust and smoke. He opened his eyes, saw nothing, and for a few seconds he was terrified that he had been struck blind. But then someone wiped a hand across his face and Jack saw the blood.
“Jack?” Emily said, leaning over him, crying. He smiled and she cried even harder, and he thought, Do I really look that bad? More blood ran into his eyes and this time he wiped it away himself.
His head hurt. Everything hurt.
There was more shooting from up above, but it seemed to be receding.
Someone was shouting—Sparky—and the words faded in as if he was rushing in from a great distance.
“…outside and meet you behind the hotel, find somewhere to hide?”
“Okay!” Rosemary called from much closer.
Jack sat up, and used the wall for support as he found his feet. Looking up, he realised how lucky he was to be alive. The whole flight of stairs they had just come down had collapsed, sending a shower of concrete, tiles and reinforcement rods tumbling below. On the landing above the gap, Sparky and Jenna were already peering cautiously through the door onto the third floor. Jack wanted to say something, but with a quick glance back at him, Jenna was through and gone. She looked terrified, and there was blood on her neck.
“Can you walk?” Rosemary asked him.
“Of course.”
“Don't worry, dear,” she said to Emily, “it looks worse than it is. Head wounds bleed a lot.”
“Can you fix it?” the girl asked.
“Soon.”
This time it was Emily leading Jack. They went down to the second floor landing, then had to climb carefully over the ruins of the fallen flight to head for the first floor.
