Contagion (Toxic City Book Three)

by Tim Lebbon

  “What is this?” Jack shouted. Puppeteer turned away and started kicking for shore.

  “I'm not happy going under there,” Breezer called from the cabin. They were closing on the bridge supports now, and the shadow Jack had seen underneath was no longer there.

  “No choice,” he said. “Get us through as fast as you can.”

  “I haven't seen Reaper,” Sparky said.

  “No,” Jack said. “But I've got a feeling we'll be seeing him soon.”

  Lucy-Anne was kneeling at the boat's bow like some slinky figurehead, and she pointed beneath the bridge. “Look! What the hell is she doing?”

  Jack recognised the silhouette and the pose, and his heart sank.

  The woman was inhaling and exhaling quickly, so hard that they could hear her breaths from two hundred feet away. And the surface of the slow-moving river was changing. Its texture altered, and it started glimmering even within the shadow cast by the great bridge.

  “Better ease up,” Jack called to Breezer.

  “Why?”

  “’Cos this boat's not built for ice breaking.” As Breezer eased back on the throttle and their momentum carried them against the flow, the woman froze the river beneath the bridge's widest span. The surface became slushy at first, and then quickly grew into harder ridges, grinding against each other as the currents beneath played with the chunks of ice. Some of them parted from the mass and started drifting downriver, and they impacted gently against the boat's bow.

  “If you want to talk, why don't you just say?” Jack shouted. The ice woman continued breathing hard, and for a few seconds he thought no one was going to reply.

  But then he heard his father's voice. “Where's the fun in that?”

  Reaper appeared from beneath the bridge and walked out onto the river. He stepped from one block of ice to another, balancing confidently on the moving mass, and came towards the boat. Shade was with him, seeming to form shadows where none should be.

  “Your puppet guy's become a floater,” Sparky said. Reaper did not even respond. He was staring only at Jack, and Jack knew that he had already disregarded everyone else.

  The boat nudged against the expanding slew of ice, and the ice woman kept breathing, solidifying the ice floe so that it barely moved beneath the river's drift. Jack could not conceive of the energies required to do that, but he did blink into his own universe and find the star that would give him the power. He shivered, and his next breath condensed in the air before him.

  “We don't want you on our boat,” Jack said.

  Reaper raised an eyebrow. “I didn't ask your permission.” He reached up to the boat's handrail and grabbed hold, ready to board.

  Without thinking, Jack growled. The ice floe shook and cracked with several loud reports, and the ice woman paused, surprised, to watch.

  Reaper stepped back from the boat, arms out to maintain his balance as the ice moved beneath him.

  “That's not polite,” he said.

  “Piss on you,” Jack said. He had never, ever spoken to his father like that before. But this man was not his father. He might resemble him slightly, and some of the mannerisms were the same. But Jack had seen and heard too much of what he could do to feel any true connection.

  “That's definitely not polite. Shade?”

  Jack clasped inward, and became like Shade. He shifted while barely touching the space he passed, taking any hint of shadows to himself as camouflage, squeezing through hollows in the air and meeting Shade head-on as he tried to board the boat.

  “I…said…no!” Jack injected that last word with another taste of his father's own power. Shade was thrown across the ice to land on his back, sliding quickly into the shadow of a small ice ridge and standing, waiting, the shock evident on his face.

  Jack drew back to himself.

  “I don't want to fight you, Dad.”

  “Because you know you'll lose.”

  “Because I know you'll lose. And I don't want that on my conscience.”

  “So just what the hell do you want?” Jenna asked Reaper, trying to defuse the growing pressure. “No 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 temper
ature 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.

  “A distraction,” she said. She took a couple of steps towards Jack, a symbolic gesture that seemed to shift the whole balance on the boat. I still can't trust her for a second, Jack thought. But this was more confusing than ever. Was it a part of Reaper's play?

  “You can leave with him,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, get the hell off my boat,” Sparky said.

  Fleeter shook her head and came closer to Jack. He readied himself to flip, and at the first sign of her going he would do so. He wouldn't let her phase out, grasp him, knock him out, put him down. Everyone was depending on him, and that idea had been growing for some time. He was no better than any of them—he believed that deeply, because humility had always been a part of him—but they did rely on him. In these dangerous times, his own deadliness was their protection.

  “You're cannon fodder,” Fleeter said to Jack. “You and all the Irregulars. Cause a distraction, draw fire while we can…while Reaper and the Superiors can escape.”

  Jack saw Reaper tense, and then smile again. “Jack could have found that out for himself, I'm sure,” he said. “Asked me a question with one power.” He wiggled his fingers like a manic spider. “Delved inside my mind with another.”

  “I chose not to,” Jack said. Fleeter paused, slightly closer to him than Reaper. She was waiting for the violence her revelation might bring, or perhaps some sign of acceptance from Jack. She received neither.

  “It doesn't matter,” Reaper said. He nodded at Fleeter. “You don't matter. We'll still be ready when you are. Make your own ineffectual efforts to get out, and we'll be right behind you.”

  “If I thought there was an ounce of decency left in you, I'd ask you to be with us,” Jack said.

  Reaper chuckled softly, and the ice flow trapping the boat rumbled and cracked. “But there's not,” he said. He glanced up at the sun. “Nine, maybe eight hours left. And while we wait for you weaklings to make your move, there are still Choppers left to hunt.” With that he turned and jumped from the boat, and Shade and the ice woman followed.

  Jack could have stopped them. For a moment he even saw what might happen—the ice cracking in great convulsions, rearing up, smashing together with Reaper and his other Superiors trapped between the solid slabs, and then flowing quickly along the Thames. Anyone not crushed to death would drown. Anyone not drowned would be slaughtered by the Choppers stationed at the Thames barrier.

  He knew he could do it. But the moment when he considered that was over in a blink, and then Fleeter was sitting before him, almost contrite.

  “Right,” she said. “Right. Okay. I've just pissed off Reaper.”

  “I do it all the time,” Jack said.

  The others around the boat rose and sat on benches, nursing cuts and bruises and breathing a collective sigh of relief.

  “Intense,” Sparky said. “London is just way too intense for me. Give me a little village, country lanes, forests, a pub.”

  “Maybe soon,” Lucy-Anne said, and for a while no one said anything else.

  Maybe soon, Jack thought. But for the life of him he didn't know how.

  Fleeter sat on her own at the bow of the boat. Jack tended to Breezer—healing his wounds, easing the bruising he'd received across his left shoulder as he'd fallen—and then he moved up close to Fleeter to try and clear the ice. She looked ahead, beneath the bridge, even though he was close behind her. Either something about her had changed radically, or she was a good actress.

  Jack leaned over the handrail and dipped both hands into the cold water. The ice was already turning slushy without the ice woman there to tend it, and as Jack heated the water from one of his inner suns, the boat drifted away from the floe's grasp. Breezer started the engine and reversed the boat, aiming for the gentle arch closer to the north bank.

  Jack sat close to Fleeter and looked back at the others. They
were sitting close, talking quietly, tending cuts and bruises and trying to move on from the tense confrontation. Rhali more than anyone seemed quite calm, but she had not seen what Reaper could do. And what she had been through was worse than anything he could have dreamed up.

  “So,” Jack said.

  He heard Fleeter laugh softly, but they sat almost back to back. He knew that sometimes it was easier to speak honestly when you did not have to look someone in the face.

  “So,” Fleeter said, “Reaper was telling the truth. I've been following you ever since I got back from taking your mother and sister out of London. And though a big part of why I did so was because Reaper asked me, because he likes control and, well, I think somewhere inside he still cares a little…I also followed you for myself.”

  Jack wasn't sure what she meant. She'd flirted with him, but he'd put it down to her seeking a measure of control more than anything else. “For yourself?” he asked.

  She laughed again, and this time it sounded more heartfelt. “Don't flatter yourself. Well, maybe you're a cutie, Jack. Maybe you are. But I know you've got a good heart, and you've seen what I can do, and what I've done. I know you're still beating yourself up about those Choppers you had to kill. I must be a monster to you.”

  “No,” Jack began, but Fleeter turned around and grabbed his shoulder, hard enough to hurt. She pulled him around to face her. She was serious. Even behind the omnipresent smile, she was as serious as he'd ever seen her.

  “I saw outside,” she said. Her eyes went wide like a kid seeing Disneyworld for the first time. “When I took them through there was a sense of…release. Even though there were still houses and streets where we came out, it all felt so different. It felt like another world because it was another world, and I knew that. And for the first time in a long while I allowed myself to…to remember.”

  She trailed off, but Jack did not prompt her. This was a story she had to tell in her own time.

  “Almost as soon as Doomsday happened, my life became a dream,” she said. “I've always been a daydreamer. When I was a kid my mother said I'd sit in the garden with my dolls and plastic animals and…just…disappear. Into my own world. She told me she used to worry about it, but then she started seeing it as something wonderful. I'd sit there for hours just playing, totally immersed in my imagination, and those dolls and animals would come to life. She timed me once, and I was there for almost three hours without looking up. And when I did look up she said I looked blank, blinking, wondering where I was. Then I smiled at her…at my mummy…and…”