by Tim Lebbon
“Huh?” Sparky asked.
Jack pulled the folding knife from his pocket and flipped open the blade. He scored a long, deep line down the wall from face to waist height, and a drift of fine plaster fell out onto the bare concrete floor. He glanced back at Sparky and Jenna, grinning.
“Won't take long.”
Jenna pulled her own knife and started two feet along the wall from Jack. They worked gently and deliberately, until Jack held up a hand and bent to look through the cut he'd formed. It was pitch back, but he realised it was a double-sided partition.
With a soft shove, Sparky pushed out and pulled away the section they'd outlined and set it aside, exposing metal studding and the back side of the opposite wall surface.
Twenty minutes later he pulled out a second square of plasterboard. Let this be easy, Jack thought, and they all held their breath.
The room beyond was much like the sparse office they had been locked into, except that the door stood ajar. Beyond, the sunlit corridor.
“Quietly,” Jack said.
“Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey,” Sparky whispered, lifting himself up through the hole.
Moments later they were in the second office. Jack felt time ticking by. Breezer will be waiting to talk to us, persuade us to his way of thinking. He'll be keen to see me again, because it's me he's interested in. He felt a flush of pity for Breezer, but he was more and more determined—his mother and Emily came first, and Reaper was the only sure way to rescue them alive.
London, the survivors, the Choppers, the lies being fed to the public, even his own strange, growing powers…they all came second.
Jack peeked into the corridor. A man sat on the floor outside the door to the room they had just left. He had no weapon, and looked harmless. But the longer they avoided detection, the better their chances at escape. So far Breezer had only locked a door; there was no saying how much farther he would go to keep Jack from fleeing.
Jack moved back from the door and pressed his fingers to his lips. Jenna and Sparky nodded, eyes wide as they watched their friend. Jack knew they would always be a little afraid of him now, and he could hardly blame them. He was a little afraid of himself.
He delved inside, sensing for the star-scape of his burgeoning powers. They were chaotic and uneven, a miasma of possibilities, and suddenly he was confused. If he touched this star, what would happen? Who would he hurt, who would he kill? If I make the wrong choice, might I become like my father? He reached out but withdrew again, trying to sense his way through this troubling constellation.
This one. He grasped a spark and pulled back, and as Jenna took his arm and he slumped, he could sense the strong pulsing of her heart and the flow and ebb of her life force.
“Wrong one,” Jack said. “It's…no…wrong one. Hang on, I…”
“We've all got special powers,” Sparky said. He pulled something from his pocket, glanced outside, then flicked it along the corridor.
Jack heard a small metal clang, then Sparky turned to the two of them. “Got maybe ten seconds,” he whispered, and he pulled the door open.
Jenna hauled Jack upright as Sparky slipped through the door and across the corridor. By the time Jack and Jenna stood by the open doorway, Sparky was holding open the door to the staircase, beckoning them over.
Jenna pulled Jack out and he had to follow, treading lightly, clasping her hand, only glancing to his right as he felt the coolness of the stairwell embracing him.
The man was fifteen feet along the corridor, his back to them and head tilted. He had yet to find the coin, take a while to think about that, unlock the door, check inside the office, find them gone—
“Now maybe we've got half a minute,” Sparky whispered as he eased the door closed. “Come on!”
They started down the staircase, and it reminded Jack of fleeing that terrible hotel only days before. Then he had seen a man have his head blown off, grenades had exploded, and Jenna had been shot in the stomach. It was only Rosemary and her healer friend who had saved Jenna, delving inside her for the bullet and then knitting her wounds from the inside out.
If one of them was injured now, there was no one to help.
No one but me, Jack thought. But his fledgling powers still confused and scared him. He felt like a Neanderthal man given access to Apple's research and development department. He had toyed with some powers, but maybe that had been a fluke.
Maybe the powers were toying with him.
Jack reckoned they had about fifteen floors to descend. That was thirty flights of stairs. On the ground floor there would doubtless be someone keeping watch, but they would tackle that problem when they got there.
Sparky led the way, taking each flight in four long strides, then crouching on the landings and half landings, listening, before heading off again. Jenna seemed to flow rather than walk, her natural grace giving her stealth and fitness. Jack panted from exertion and fear. He was worried for himself, but more worried for Sparky and Jenna. Breezer claimed not to be a Superior, but there was no saying how he'd treat Jack's friends if they were recaptured. It was Jack he was interested in.
And Superior, Irregular…they were only names. Actions made a person, not what they chose to call themselves.
As Sparky jumped three steps onto a landing a door opened, and a man with bright ginger hair stepped through. He was carrying a tray of cups and bottled water, balanced on one hand while the other held the door open.
He looked at Sparky, his expression one of complete shock.
“Ha!” Sparky said.
The man drew in a breath to shout and Sparky punched him in the mouth. He dropped the tray and staggered back against the door jamb, banging his head and crying out.
“Sparky!” Jenna said, but Sparky ignored her and punched the man again. He went down in a heap. His splayed legs kicked cups across the landing, and they passed beneath the railings and clattered down the stairwell, shattering, skittering across concrete. There could not have been a more effective alarm.
“Karl?” a voice called.
Sparky looked back and forth between Jack and the fallen man.
“Came from down there,” Jenna said, stepping back from the railing.
Sparky pointed through the door. The fallen man was moaning, holding his mouth, shaking his dazed head slowly, and his crumpled body held the door open.
“We go through there and we'll be trapped on this floor,” Jack whispered.
“Karl? What's happening. You all right?” Footsteps from below, at least three sets, rapidly climbing. Shattered crockery was kicked aside.
Breezer had said they had escape routes from above as well. Zip wire? Window cleaners’ cradle? Jack didn't know. But right then it seemed the best idea. It was away from pursuit, it kept them in the stairwell…and no one would expect them to do something so foolish.
“Up,” Jack whispered, gesturing with his thumb. He turned and started climbing, not waiting for his friends’ objections. Eight steps up he paused and glanced back. Sparky and Jenna were frozen there, and the fallen man was swaying on hands and knees, spitting blood.
“Trust me,” Jack said.
It took a minute to draw level with the door to the floor they'd escaped, and Jack sprinted past it, expecting it to burst open at any second. He heard shouting from below—more than one voice now—and he feared what they might use against them. Would they freeze their muscles, steal their air, make their blood boil? He sought the memory of Nomad so that he could access his own sparks of power, but the running and fear conspired to confuse him. All he had was what he'd always had—himself. That would have to be good enough.
They ran, and doors burst open below them.
“Jack, you'll doom us all!” Breezer shouted. Jack slowed on a landing and glanced back, but Sparky and Jenna were right behind him, faces stern as they shook their heads.
“We're away now, mate,” Sparky said.
“Door.” Jenna nodded past Jack, and they found themselves on the final lan
ding facing a bolted steel door. The padlock was heavy, but hung open.
“Escape route,” Jack said.
“But to where?” Sparky asked.
Jack knocked the padlock aside and pushed the door open. There was a dark boiler room beyond, and a small hooped ladder leading up to a ceiling hatch.
“What, do heights scare you as much as chickens?” Jack asked.
“Squaw! Squaw!” Jenna said, flapping her arms as she pushed past Jack and setting the three of them laughing. Nervous, panicked laughter, but it felt good nonetheless. Jack felt a rush of intense love for his friends.
“Sparky, padlock,” he said as he slipped through the door. Sparky picked up the padlock and followed, and then they slammed the door closed.
Even through the metal they could hear footsteps pounding up the staircase beyond.
“Couple of floors down, do you reckon?” Sparky asked.
“Yeah. Jenna, get the trap opened.” Jack glanced back and saw that she was already there, forcing back bolts and opening the trap, sunlight flooding the room like a burst of hope. Jenna stuck her head up through the trap.
“Oh, shit,” she said.
“What?” Jack called. He was frantically scanning the door, searching for a hasp and staple through which to lock the padlock.
“You guys are gonna love this.”
“Go!” Jack said, shoving Sparky towards the ladder.
“Don't be stupid,” Sparky said, and in those words was complete understanding. It was Jack they wanted, and Jack who was important here. “Jack, what you did to me.”
“Huh?”
“The heat. Made me sweat.” Sparky tapped the door's handle. “Never know.”
Jack frowned, sensed inside for the power he had used on Sparky…and found it, as available to him as speech or thought. He pointed at the door's lock and concentrated, thinking the metal hot, thinking the catch orange and molten.
“Shit!” Sparky said, backing up to the ladder. “Mate, I can feel that heat. You could have melted the bollocks off me!”
“Could have,” Jack said, smiling.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs beyond the door, and Jack was about to shout a warning when he heard a scream. Someone had grasped the handle. They wouldn't do so again anytime soon. Jack felt a twinge of guilt, but then he pointed again and concentrated some more. It was a strange feeling, as if heat formed in his mind and left him untouched, flowing across the space between his hand and the door and super-heating the metal. He had the idea that he could melt the door if he really wanted. He could turn it to gas. The power was startling and frightening, but he felt fully in control of it. He could have melted the bollocks off Sparky…but he'd chosen not to.
“Yeah,” Jack breathed, flushed with the power.
“Come on!” Sparky whispered. “Jenna was right. You're gonna love this.”
“Sorry!” Jack shouted through the door, and then the banging began.
Up the ladder and out onto the rooftop, Jack slammed the hatch shut again before standing and joining his friends.
“You've gotta be kidding,” he said.
“Nope,” Jenna said.
Sparky seemed delighted. “Cool. Cool!”
There were three hang gliders on the roof. Two were folded and dismantled, but one appeared to be fully assembled, its wheels and wings tied down to prevent any errant breezes from stealing it away. A single seat was suspended beneath it. Twenty feet from its front wheel, a section of railing had been cut away to allow launch.
“Have you ever…?” Jack asked, but he didn't need to finish. He knew that neither of his friends had ever done anything like this. That didn't stop Sparky. He delved into Jenna's jeans pocket, blowing her a kiss as he probed for her penknife.
“Come on!” he said. “Got seconds. Come on!”
“Maybe we should…” Jenna said.
“Wait?” Jack asked. He could still hear banging from the plant room beneath them as they tried to break through the door and its super-heated catch. “There won't be another chance. They catch us, and Breezer will make sure we won't get away again.”
“Yeah, but this?” Jenna pointed at the aircraft Sparky was freeing. Four cuts from the sharp knife and he was wheeling it towards the roof's edge, looking back at them expectantly.
“Breezer wants me,” Jack said. “Jenna, I'm afraid what he might do to you two.”
“He's no monster. Not like…”
“Reaper? Dunno. We just don't know.”
Something changed below them. The banging ceased, and then a different sound came—the metal door swinging open and impacting the wall.
“Come on!” Sparky shouted. He was already jumping into the seat.
“For Mum,” Jack said. “For Emily.” He grabbed Jenna's arm and ran across the rooftop to the hang glider.
He'd once taken a trip to South Wales to visit relatives with his parents. It was soon after Emily was born, and he remembered eating an ice cream in a car park in Abergavenny and watching dark specks drifting down from a hilltop in the distance. They'd waited in that car park long enough to see the first giant winged shape grow larger and pass almost overhead, heading for a field by the river which was their favoured landing point. There had been one person strapped into the seat. Only one.
“This isn't a bloody passenger aircraft,” Jack said, but Jenna was already pushing. Sparky was braced in the seat, lifting himself up so that the straps that should have held him in splayed to either side.
“Close enough,” he said. He was breathing fast, excitement and fear, and Jack closed his eyes for a moment. Just a second, to gather himself.
He was terrified.
They were twenty floors above the ground. If he'd taken time to look he could have identified a handful of buildings and landmarks, but he felt sick to the pit of his stomach. They didn't have a clue what they were doing, whether this thing was air-worthy, whether three of them would be too heavy and it would plunge to the ground. Maybe Breezer was waiting at a window a few floors below even now, someone else with him ready to fold wings or snap struts with their mind.
If he can't have me, maybe he'd rather see me dead, Jack thought.
But then Sparky was dragging them the last few feet to the edge of the roof with his feet, and Jack and Jenna jumped onto fibreglass struts on either side of the bucket seat, wrapped their arms around framing, and grasped the loose straps.
“Bloody hell,” Sparky muttered as the front wheel dropped over the edge of the building.
“Yeah,” Jack said.
They fell.
Jack had never been so scared. The aircraft's frame shook and rattled, the canvas wing snapped and slapped, the wind blasted against his face and took his breath away and blurred his vision, and they were plummeting towards the ground, nose dipped down and the vehicle-strewn street rapidly approaching.
“Pull it up!” Jack shouted, but his words were stolen away.
Jenna was hugging the strut, eyes squeezed shut, strap twisted around her arm and biting into her skin so hard that blood dribbled, whipped away by the wind.
Jack leaned in towards Sparky, not daring to let go, and shouted again. “Sparky!”
Sparky turned to look at Jack, eyes wide and his spiked blond hair pressed flat across his head.
“Pull…up!”
Sparky nodded and grabbed the control handles. They were linked via wires and metal connectors to the wing above them, and though Jack had no idea how it worked, there must have been some element of control. Sparky pulled the handles, and immediately their nose rose, almost flipping them up onto their back.
If that happens we'll stall and then just fall, Jack thought, and he risked letting go of the strut. He fell forward across Sparky's arm and grabbed one controller, easing back and feeling Sparky's immediate understanding. The hang glider levelled…and then they were drifting, and flying.
“Yeaaaahhhh!” Sparky screamed.
Jenna's eyes opened a crack, then squeezed shut again.<
br />
As if finding its own level, the aircraft suddenly stopped shaking, and the breeze pressing against Jack's face lessened. He still gripped tight, but for a moment he felt safer. Safe enough at least to glance around, see where they were heading, and spot a hundred dangers in their path.
They'd dropped at least half the building's height before levelling out, and now other buildings loomed, and aerials on lower structures reached for them.
Jack looked back, but they were already too far away from Breezer's skyscraper to make out any details.
“Got to make some distance!” Jack shouted. Sparky nodded once, all his concentration on the control handles. Jack could see his friend tweaking the handles here and there, muscles in his arms flexing and his brow furrowed as he slowly got the feel of the aircraft. The glider dipped and rose, and then as they drifted to the left and approached a bland grey concrete and glass monolith, they rose and barely passed above it.
Sparky beamed in delight. Jenna opened her eyes once more, then closed them again.
“We're okay!” Jack shouted to her, but she merely pressed her lips tighter together.
They passed over a green square with several bombed-out buildings marring its northern side. Jack wondered at their story. Shapes moved across the square's overgrown lawns, pale faces looking up, and he tried to make out what they were wearing—royal blue Choppers, or the more rag-tag clothing of London's survivors—but they passed overhead too quickly. If there were voices or gunshots, the wind swallowed them.
Jack closed his eyes and tried to sense back the way they had come, but he could not grasp any power that enabled him to do so. The potential within him was staggering, but much of his fear came from his erratic ability to source it at will.
“We're flying!” Sparky shouted. He let his natural exuberance loose, whooping and shouting, but always maintaining gentle control.
Jack could not help grinning. Ask nine out of ten people what their secret power would be, and they'd say flying. He'd not yet seen or heard of anyone in London who could do this unaided—and he doubted he ever would, because Evolve seemed to have worked more on minds than on bodies—but this was as near as it could be. They were flying, and for the first time since entering London through tunnels and sewers, Jack felt completely free.
