Tim Lebbon - Reaper's Legacy

Fleeter helped. She threw cage doors open and looked inside, moving on to the next, and the next. Jack realised that she was searching for someone.

Emily stood and gripped hold of him. She buried her face in his shirt and cried, and then he felt his mother’s arms about both of them. He closed his eyes and lost himself in her feel and her smell, and for the briefest moment he was eight again and they were back at home, happy.

“Damn it!” Fleeter said. Jack opened his eyes. She was shoving past people standing uncertainly, finding their feet after incarceration in these tiny cages. One man cried out and slipped to the floor, but Fleeter did not apologise or help him up.

“We’ve got them,” Jack said. “Come on.” But he already knew that this was something else.

“You go,” Fleeter said.

“There,” Jack’s mother said. “They’re through there, in the next one. They torture them often.”

Jack looked down into his sister’s haunted face, and then the other prisoners, all of them staring towards the dark opening into the next container.

“You go,” Fleeter said again to Jack.

“What’s back there?”

She came close to him, and she was more human than he had ever seen her. She reached out and touched his cheek. “Take your family, sweetheart,” she said. “Get out. Run. This is all going to go bad.”

“No,” Jack said. “No, this is the changing point. This is when peace begins.”

“Peace?” Fleeter asked. Her grin returned. “Who wants peace? This is too much fun.” She pulled a pocket torch and went through into the next container. Jack saw the heavier bars of larger cages beyond, and then Fleeter was fiddling with padlocks and locks.

“Son,” his mother said. “There’s nothing good back there. You’re a brave, good boy. Lead us out.”

“But I can do things, Mum,” he said. “Amazing things.”

“So I see. Then amaze us all away from here. This place is evil.”

Jack led them out. Miller had been moved down the ramp now, and Reaper stood behind his wheelchair, looking for all the world like someone taking a sick friend for a walk. His hands rested on the chair’s handles. Miller looked scared, but defiant.

“Where are they?” Reaper asked.

“Here,” Jack said. He jumped down and lifted Emily down to the ground, then held out his hand for his mother.

“Daddy!” Emily said. Their mother did not speak, because she already knew the truth.

“Where are they?” Reaper asked again. He had barely glanced at his family, and as the other freed prisoners started climbing down, wincing against the dusky light, he virtually ignored them all.

“Fleeter’s getting them,” he said. “Mum said there are two left.”

“Only two,” Reaper said. He looked down at the wasted man before him, and Jack thought he was going to destroy Miller there and then.

But Miller was a man for whom survival had become an art.

“You’re all going to die,” he said. He looked at Jack, then down at Emily. “Every single one of you.”

“And you’ll be the first,” Jack said. He drew the pistol. It seemed fitting, somehow, to kill this murdering bastard with a bullet instead of a special power.

“Er, Jack?” Sparky said. He was standing to one side, and Emily dashed to him and hugged him, seeking refuge.

“Jack,” Reaper said. “This one doesn’t die.”

“Won’t killing him be the victory you want?” Jack asked. He pointed the gun at Miller’s face. The man’s smile barely wavered.

“Kill? If you think that means anything anymore, you really don’t understand what London has become. No, like I said…this one doesn’t die.” Reaper rested a hand on Miller’s shoulder, and the mutilated man’s smile fell at last. “I get to play with him some more.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked Miller. “What’s happening? What have you done?”

“Fail-safe,” Miller said. “Big Bindy.” He laughed again. “I named it myself. Bindy was my wife, and she was big, and she was…destructive.”

“Tell us,” Reaper said.

“Who’s Big Bindy?” Scryer asked.

“She’s a bomb designed to destroy what’s left of London,” Miller said, frowning as he gushed the truth. “A nuclear bomb. Buried. Fifteen megatons.”

“Where?” Scryer asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They don’t let anyone into London who knows. I’m just…”

“Expendable,” Reaper said. “Like all of us.”

“None of you are expendable,” Miller said. “You’re already spent. Dead people walking. You’re memories, and no one outside will miss you when you die, because you’re already dead.”

“You’ll die too,” Jack said. “If they blow the bomb, you’ll all die.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Miller said. “I’ve just pushed the button. Tick-tock, Jack. Tick-tock, tick-tock…”

“Reaper!” Fleeter called from the doorway, excited. “They’re drugged and tied.” She look at Jack, surprised that he was still there.

Puppeteer climbed up next to her and entered the darkness, and moments later two people floated out through the doorway, lowering gently to the ground. A man and a woman, they were bound in heavy chains, limbs tied behind them, gagged, and their skin was pale and slick. They both looked dead, but Jack knew better.

“Who are they?” Jack asked.

“Friends,” Reaper said. He knelt beside the prone woman and touched her face, and one of her eyelids flickered open. Her eye was a startling blue, and her breath misted the air.

“And what can they do?”

Reaper ignored him. “The others?” he asked Fleeter.

It was Miller who answered. “We cut them up. Dissected their brains. Threw their remains out for the wild dogs.”

Reaper tensed, his face thunderous. “You should leave,” he said to Jack. “All of you.”

“Dad—”

“This is no place for you.”

“Daddy?” Emily said.

“This is no place for you!” Reaper’s voice did not rise in volume, but the side of the container behind them caved in, metal shrieking, rending.

“No,” Jack said. “Not like this. We’ve got a chance, here.”

“Against him and his like?” Reaper asked, nudging Miller.

“Peace is the only answer,” Jack said. “If we leave now, and you kill everyone here, what do you think happens next?”

“Big Bindy,” Reaper said. “But we’ll find it and disable it. They’d have left themselves time to get all the Choppers out of London. We’ll have a day, maybe more.”

“And if you can’t disable it?”

“We will,” Reaper said. “London is ours. Our playground, and our home. It’ll always be ours from now on, and him and his like…amusing distractions.”

“Distractions that will catch you and cut you up,” Jack said. “Like they did to Rosemary. And so many others. And they released the sickness, Dad. Are you sure it won’t touch you? Your Superiors? Allow peace, and maybe they’ll release the cure.”

“I’ve released nothing,” Miller said.

“But they’re dying,” Jack said.

“So will you, boy. And everyone who uses their unnatural, unholy powers too much. Your brains can’t handle it. Evolve is imperfect . The more you use your talents, the closer you take yourselves to death.”

“How can you know that?”

Miller smiled but did not reply.

“Because he’s looked at a lot of brains,” Sparky said.

“And because he created Evolve!” Breezer said, amazed, and yet with a certainty assured by his own talent. “It was him! Angelina Walker released it, but it was always Miller’s baby.”

“And they’d never let me test it. Not on humans, at least. Can’t blame them.” He chuckled. “Dear Angelina and I talked about releasing it, but I never believed she’d go through with it. I wouldn’t have. But then she did, and…” He smiled, because they knew the rest of the story.