Tim Lebbon - Reaper's Legacy

With a smack against the dulled air, Fleeter grew dull and motionless in Jack’s vision.

He closed his eyes and did the same.

The gunshot and ricochet were deafening.

Jack gasped in a heavy breath, winded, and scooped the girl from the ground.

“Bloody hell!” Sparky said. “Where did you—?”

“We’ve got the girl!” Jack shouted. “And your torture doctors are dead! One more shot and the rest of you die too. Every…single… one of you!”

“Hold fire!” a voice shouted. It was electronically amplified, and Jack recognised Miller right away.

The rush of sound and input shocked Jack. The breeze against his face, his friends’ heavy breathing, the rustle of clothing, mysterious, distant noises from elsewhere in the huge container park or beyond…he heard none of these when he was flipped. I accelerate , he thought, but knew that was not quite right. He could not fully explain what he and Fleeter could do.

The girl moved in his arms. She moaned something, and whined, and blood was still flowing from her nose and eyes. She was much too light, and he could feel bones he should not be able to feel. In using her, they had also neglected her. It was so brutal that it made him want to cry, or rage.

He chose rage.

“One more gunshot, you bastards, and you’ll only kill one of us!” he shouted, voice echoing from stacked containers around the clearing. “That’ll leave the rest, and others you can’t see. Check on your torture hole. Check it!”

A rustle through the hidden loudspeaker, and then two Choppers jogged from different directions towards the doorway Jack and Fleeter had exited moments before. But they did not need to check. As they approached, a woman crawled into sight in the open doorway. She was on her hands and knees, bloodied head nodding slowly up and down, hair matted with gore. A high, soft keening came from her mouth, but Jack could not pity her.

“We’ll kill them,” Miller said. Faceless, voice crackling and distorted through speakers, he was more inhuman than ever. “The ones you want are still alive, but we’ll kill them the moment something happens. One of you moves, one of you even blinks , and they die.”

“We can be on you in less than a blink, Miller,” Reaper said. His voice was low and casual, but it echoed from metal walls, and grit vibrated across the ground. Jack could already hear the fury in his father’s voice. Good , he thought, elated. Good! He is here to help. He does want Mum and Emily .

The girl in Jack’s arms opened her eyes. “Jamie?” she said.

“No, I’m not Jamie. My name’s Jack.”

The girl blinked bloodily, slowly raised a weak hand and wiped at her eyes. She looked at Jack for a few seconds, so sad, so soulful. His heart sank. He could have fallen in love with those eyes in an instant. “Oh,” she said. “You’re not Jamie.”

He set her down, but kept an arm around her shoulder. Leaning against him for support, she felt dreadfully cold and weak.

“Every one of you,” Jack said. “Every one of you, Miller! You’ll be shooting at shadows, strangled by hands you can’t see, seeing things you can’t imagine. You think you know what the Irregulars can do, just because you’ve sliced them up and taken samples of their brains ? You think you have even an inkling of what the Superiors can do, because you lose Choppers to them every week? Do you…do you have any idea what I can do?” He felt the others watching him—his friends, in fear; the Irregulars, nervous and yet ready to fight. And his father, with what might have been respect.

The scene fell almost silent. Hidden speakers crackled with Miller’s doubt. Choppers stood tensed, uncertain, glancing down at their dropped weapons. Jack, Reaper, and the others faced them. And the girl leaned against Jack, starting to shiver with the knowledge that she had been released.

“We’re the New,” Jack said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “The fighting stops now. The killing ends here. You, Miller…you’re the old. History. The past. And you know how the saying goes.”

Beside him, Sparky chuckled softly then shouted, “Out with the old!”

“And in with the new,” Jenna said.

“You really think we’d stay in London, here, without protection?” Miller said. “Without an insurance policy?” Jack was sure he could detect a note of resignation in the Chopper’s voice.

“No good when you’re dead,” Reaper shouted.

“No more killing unless we have to, Dad,” Jack said. Reaper did not even glance at his son as he started forward.

Puppeteer moved Choppers aside. Others backed away of their own accord, leaving their weapons where they had fallen. Jack and his friends followed, Breezer with them, and the New moved across Camp H unopposed.

Yet Jack felt no sense of victory. Something was wrong. The girl by his side was a living expression of Miller’s inhumanity, and those rooms he had seen in the container buildings, the jars, the smears of blood and chunks of something—of someone —being cleared away….

With all that, could he ever really hope for peace?

As they approached the three joined containers, a door creaked open at the top of a gentle wooden ramp. Miller appeared strapped into a wheelchair, his terribly mutilated legs resting on footplates, his left arm ending in a stump just above his elbow. He looked thin and drawn, corpselike and lessened. Yet it was his smile that shocked Jack the most.

“Like your new chair, Miller,” Reaper said. “Maybe this time I’ll take your other arm, and your cock, and one of your eyes. Then how will you—”

Miller started laughing. He tilted his head back and guffawed at the sky, and Sparky and Jenna shot Jack a glance that said everything he was already thinking.

Something terrible was about to happen.

“We need to leave,” Rook said. “Really. Now. We’re going the wrong way, Lucy-Anne!”

“Leave if you want, I’m going the right way.”

They had been following Nomad since she had left. At least, Lucy-Anne had been leading them north. And soon after the strange woman had seemingly abandoned them, things had started to change. The wilderness around them had grown wilder, and more shapes and shadows made themselves known. They darted across hillsides and huddled beside lush growths of shrubs, and though the two of them kept to the open spaces, Lucy-Anne feared that soon they would meet more residents of the Heath.

Dusk approached, crawling across the hillsides like a living thing and driving the sun into the western expanses of London. Rook’s birds drifted along above them like echoes of night, turning and spiralling up into the sky before swooping down again. Lucy-Anne was becoming used to their constant flap and swoosh, and she feared not hearing that anymore. He’s scared, he’s terrified, and if he leaves me I’ll be just as scared.

Something burst from the trees ahead of them and came rapidly down the slope. Rook grasped her shoulder and pulled himself in front of her, squatted down, ready for a fight. He sent his birds and they angled in towards the shape, but then veered away at the last moment. Their caw-caws sounded panicked to Lucy-Anne, and she dreaded meeting what could scare them so much.

But it was Nomad, only Nomad, and she grew from shadows to meet them.

Lucy-Anne went to her knees. I’ve found him , Nomad had said, and if that were the case, where was Andrew now?

“I’m…sorry,” Nomad said. It was the most emotion Lucy-Anne had heard in her voice.

She took the gold chain and signet ring from Nomad’s hand. Their parents had bought Andrew the ring for his eighteenth birthday, and the chain had been a present from one of his first girlfriends. His parting with her had been difficult, yet for some reason he’d still worn that chain, and treasured it. She’d once asked him why, and he’d told her it was because it reminded him of good times, not bad. She loved that about him—his positivity, and optimism.