Tim Lebbon - Reaper's Legacy

“Well?” Reaper asked, his voice deep. Shattered glass clinked across the pavement, and along the street the flames from the burning motorbikes wafted in the breeze.

Rika whispered to Breezer, and he nodded grimly.

“Breezer,” Jack said. “We’re all in this together.” Breezer glanced from Jack to Reaper, then up at the drone silently circling high up.

“We know,” Breezer said. “Camp H isn’t really a camp at all. It’s located in the centre of a container park.”

“A what?” Jack asked.

“Transport containers,” Sparky said. “The big metal ones they use to ship stuff overseas. I’ve seen them stacked five high in yards the size of football fields.”

“Bigger,” Breezer said.

“They’re hidden deep,” Rika said. “Confusing even for me to see.”

“And you know where it is?” Reaper asked.

“Yes,” Breezer said.

Reaper tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. Everyone in the ruined street—Jack and his friends, Irregulars, Superiors, even those Choppers fearing what the immediate future might bring—watched Breezer expectantly.

This is when all the victims of Doomsday form an alliance or go to war , Jack thought, and the others knew that too.

“It’s in the Docklands,” Breezer said. “A big distribution centre.”

Reaper did not smile, but Jack saw a slight relaxing of his shoulders.

“We have to be quick,” Jack said. “Element of surprise.”

Silence fell over the street. It was a strange silence, one loaded with promise, and Jack felt himself circling the bright points of his talents, both those already known and those he had yet to touch. He felt one step removed from everything.

Reaper gestured across to where Shade was guarding the Choppers. “Get rid of them.”

“No!” Jack shouted. From the corner of his eye he saw Breezer and the other Irregulars tense, but none of them came forward. They had nothing with which to stand up to Reaper. “No!” Jack cried again, louder and more determined.

Reaper turned away, not even looking at him.

Not long, not long, I don’t have long …

Jack closed his eyes, felt through his inner universe, and let a star explode.

In the clothes store where seven Choppers were about to meet their end, a bright light bloomed. It grew and grew, and Shade stood out silhouetted against the light, his arm thrown up and hands pressed against his eyes. The light seemed to bleed through him as if he was not entirely there, and when it began to fade, he slumped to his knees and leaned slowly forward until his forehead touched the ground. Shade had been illuminated.

Reaper turned and started back towards Jack, thunder in his eyes.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake !” Jenna shouted. She stood beside the fallen Chopper and held up her hands, palms out, in pure despair. “Are you all so stupid ? This isn’t a ‘who’s got the biggest dick’ contest, is it? Jack said it to Breezer—we’re all in this together. We’ve come together and found out something that no one has been able to find out before. Not even you!” She pointed at Reaper then turned her back on him, dismissive. “And the best way to move on from that is…what? More murder? More killing?”

“Stay out of this,” Puppeteer said, and he raised one hand. Jack tensed, ready to do something, anything, to prevent him from hurting Jenna. But right then he could find nothing. Countless stars were around him, but he floated in the deep spaces in between.

“Oh, grow up,” Jenna said.

“That’s my girl!” Sparky laughed out loud. “That’s my Jenna!”

“Seriously,” Jenna said. She looked down at the woman at her feet, then walked across towards the clothing shop. The Choppers there were gathered against one wall, drawn back from where Shade knelt slumped down on the floor. He had yet to look up, but already he was looking less there to Jack. Fading back to the shadows.

“Can’t we lock them away somewhere?” Jenna asked. “Or, like…freeze them, or something?”

Reaper stood on his own in the middle of the street, expressionless, motionless. Jack knew that he could probably kill every surviving Chopper with one shout. But there was something going on behind his eyes that Jack recognised.

His father was thinking.

“Breezer?” Reaper asked after another few seconds.

Breezer shook his head, shrugged.

“I can do this,” Jack said. “Sparky, Jenna, give me a hand. If everyone else can just make sure they don’t try anything?”

He and Sparky approached Jenna and the shop, and as they drew close Jack grinned at his friend. She raised an eyebrow and propped a hand on one hip.

“So what are you going to do, Superman?” she asked quietly.

“Just watch.”

Ten minutes later they had split into three groups again, after arranging where to meet to execute their assault on Camp H. It had to be quick. It had to be soon. And Jack knew that his mother and sister’s lives depended upon whatever plan they all came up with being a success.

“That was pretty cool,” Sparky said.

“What, locking them in the basement?” Jack and his friends had ushered the Choppers down into the shop’s basement, and Jack had melted the hinges and lock mechanisms of the two sets of doors between them and the staircase. They’d break their way out, given time. But Jack’s final words to them, telling them that if they did break down the door there would be something waiting for them in the darkness, probably doubled the amount of time they’d stay down there.

They might be Choppers, but they were also people. They valued their lives as much as anyone.

“Huh?” Sparky said. “Oh, that. The doors. Nah, that wasn’t cool, that was just heat. I mean you! ” He leaned into Jenna and slung a hand around her shoulders, and she giggled like a schoolgirl.

“I’ve got to admit, you’re right,” Jenna said. “I was pretty cool.”

They moved quickly, descending from the streets and travelling between Underground stations. Twenty minutes later they were a mile from Covent Garden, and they had an hour to wait until their rendezvous with Breezer and Reaper.

They sat on the old station platform, darkness around them made deeper by the flashlights they’d lifted from a station office. None of them felt like eating, and Jack could not shake the notion that they were wasting time. But they could not risk another confrontation with a larger, heavier-armed troop of Choppers.

Time ticked by, the darkness loomed, and they chatted about lighter, happier times.

“One thing,” Jack said to Reaper when they met again that afternoon. “Why did you let Miller live?”

Fleeter accompanied Reaper, and Sparky and Jenna were with Jack, as always. Other small groups of Superiors and Irregulars were moving towards their rendezvous point three miles to the east, from where their assault on the container park would commence. They hoped to leave it to the very last moment before giving away their presence.

Jack had reluctantly admitted that it was Reaper’s people who should lead the assault. They were the ones with the most disruptive, destructive powers, and there was no telling how long it would take to find the relevant containers.

“I told you before, he interests me.” Reaper and Jack were in the lead, but it could not be said that they walked together. Even if they were shoulder to shoulder, Reaper’s dismissive aura would have meant he walked alone.

“It seems like a strange sort of mercy to me,” Jack said.

“It’s not mercy. I have none for Choppers, and less so for the monster who leads them.”

“They why? You had him kneeling before you, defenceless. Yet you let him live, and allowed him to pursue me and my friends.”