Tim Lebbon - Reaper's Legacy

He smells coffee, thick and bitter; hears a long, low moan, and realises it is someone else in mid-sentence, their words slowed to an impossible crawl; sees two women across from him, one of them biting into a bar of chocolate, the other open-mouthed as she speaks, both cradling guns across their laps, the room lined with computers and wheeled chairs, a map on one wall, screens buzzing mid-flash. And in that other person’s mind which is more alien than Jack could have possibly imagined, a frozen image of what its owner would rather be doing right now. The stilled thought includes both women across from him.

Jack notices the grille in the wall behind the women, then, and the shadow outlined beyond. There is a weak light in that smaller room. When Jack shifts his perception he touches upon an incredible, tortured mind, and the pain within is—

—Jack pulled back through the door to himself, shivering as he reined in his senses. He panted heavily, rubbing his hands across his eyes as if that might clear him of another person’s distress and wretchedness.

“What?” Fleeter asked.

“Horrible,” Jack said. “The poor girl, the poor…”

Fleeter shoved him against the door. “What?”

“Three Choppers. Control room. The girl’s in a smaller room…a cell…and she’s—”

Fleeter slammed the handle down and entered the room. Jack went to follow but slumped against the cold doorframe, watching helplessly as Fleeter shoved the two women aside. When they struck the desks and floor, blood flowed. She tried the door but it was locked and bolted. When she glanced back at Jack, he was already moving towards her.

“Stand back.” He concentrated, and the two heavy hinges glowed red, white, then dripped and melted. Fleeter pulled the door again, and sweat flushed down Jack’s face as he concentrated some more. Then the door squealed open, molten metal pattering across the floor. Smoke hung lazily in the air.

And Jack saw the girl, who was no girl at all. She must have been eighteen. Pretty once, perhaps, now she was restrained by ropes tied around her arms and legs, her emaciated body wrapped in shapeless clothing, dark hair knotted and dirty. A waste bucket sat beneath her seat, and it was the indignity of this more than anything that stirred Jack’s rage. He’d seen body parts and blood, jars filled with dissected brains and other organs, and the evidence of the slaughter carried out here in the name of science—or perhaps simply in the name of fear and hate—was incontrovertible. But seeing this poor girl and the bucket she had to piss in brought it all home.

“Bastards!” he shouted. Fleeter glanced at him, her usual manic grin absent. She pulled a flick-knife from her pocket and sliced through the ropes. Then she lifted a thinner strand and held it up for him to see.

“What?” Jack asked.

“Drugging her.”

“Cut it.”

Fleeter did so, and as the girl slumped slowly onto her seat, the pipe started to swing away, dripping a hazy fluid across the floor. She moved to her own time, and Jack had plenty of time to catch her before she fell.

“Won’t it kill her moving her at our speed?” he asked. “She doesn’t have what we have.”

“It’ll hurt her,” Fleeter said. “But we need to get her back through there. Just be careful not to bump her against anything.”

Jack glanced behind at the three guards. Fleeter had shoved them all aside, and now they sprawled on the floor, still gradually shifting from the staggering impacts her contact had subjected them to. Maybe they were dead; right then, Jack did not care. He hated them enough to kill them himself, but every second they had was precious.

“Give me a moment, then bring her,” Fleeter said. Her voice had grown serious, and in her eyes Jack saw his own rage reflected. At the sight of the girl she’d lost some of her aimless anger, and now her fury was defined.

“Fleeter…” But she was gone, across the room and out into the corridor. He could have called her back. Could have prevented her from doing what he knew she was about to do. But his own fury held his voice, and as he lifted the poor girl into his arms he heard a sound like paper tearing.

Fleeter was waiting for him back at the door into the container. Jack only glanced into the torture room, and barely winced slightly at the sight of the man and his slashed throat. She’d used the same knife that had freed the girl, and there was some justice in that. But Jack was also unsettled that the sight of murder troubled him so little.

The girl was light, emaciated, hungry, and might well have been dead. But he could sense her life, and something about it was unbelievably strong. Without even trying—without clasping a talent—he could tell that she was alive, and furious, and that he would get to know her well. That was not some prescient thought, but a silent vow.

“They must be keeping my mother and sister in the other containers,” Jack said as he followed Fleeter down the boxy steps.

“If they’re not dead already.”

“We have to look.”

The scene was much as they had left it…but not quite . The Choppers across Camp H were all backing away, confused at whatever had compelled them to drop their weapons. Beyond, Sparky and Jenna had taken half a step forward, and Breezer, the Irregulars, and Puppeteer were all advancing as well.

Fleeter glanced across at the other conjoined containers, then up behind Jack. “Out of time,” she said, pointing.

From atop a stack, something was growing. Jack frowned, squinting against the light. Even the sunlight felt slow.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“They’ve started shooting,” Fleeter said.

“Shit.”

“We’ve got maybe a minute before—”

“You go,” Jack said, nodding down at the girl in his arms. “And take her with you.” He was now more convinced than ever that the other three containers formed a prison. A cattle truck, where they kept the subjects for their gruesome, inhuman experiments.

“You really want to play a lottery for whom that bullet’s aimed at?” Fleeter said. She was pointing up, and Jack could now see a metallic smear to the air ahead of where the flash of gunfire and smoke was blooming from high up. I’m watching a bullet travel through the air , he thought, amazed. It was just about the only thing visibly moving.

Neither of them knew whom the shooter had been aiming at.

“Damn it.”

They hurried back across the clearing towards their friends and allies, and as they reached them Jack saw a smear of blood hazing the air around the girl’s face and across her chest. She was bleeding from her nose and eyes, but he had no time to help her right then. He set her gently on the road.

“Hurry!” Fleeter said. Jack glanced back and saw the silvery trace of the bullet. It was already halfway between the sniper’s rifle and its intended target, and Fleeter was standing at Reaper’s side. “Remember, gentle,” she said. “Just ease them aside. It’ll hurt, but if you shove them over into the ground, the impact might kill them.”

“Did it kill those guards?” he asked, but Fleeter did not answer. She was guiding Reaper to one side, lovingly, reverently, and Jack had to look away. That was his father she worshipped. A man he loved, and now the most brutal person he knew.

No, not quite. That title now went to Miller.

He stood in front of Sparky and Jenna and turned to watch the bullet, tracking its path. “It’s him,” Jack said. “Fleeter, it’s my dad.”

“Safe now,” she said. “Kneel by the girl, flip back, make sure they see her.”

“You think we can stop this now the first shot’s been fired?”

She looked around more urgently. “Can’t see any more flashes. Come on. Flip.”