Tim Lebbon - London Eye

Jack glanced down again and realised that Emily was filming. The shock was cut through with respect for his sister. Clever girl! He looked up again, glancing from one Superior to the other, but he was certain she had not been seen.

He, his sister, and their friends had remained standing, frozen there by the Superiors’ strange presence and the power they seemed to exude. But Jack realised that a lot of that effect was produced by their own sudden fears of what the Superiors would be, and what they would look like. It was a name Rosemary had never mentioned, something else she had kept from them, and they could not help letting fear run their imaginations into overdrive. Now, here were the Superiors: strong, aloof, but still very human. Whatever Doomsday had done to their minds and bodies, their humanity was still beyond doubt.

Not monsters , he thought. No more than any other human being that does something inhuman.

So he sat down, making his own choice to not be so entranced that he could not use his own mind. Scryer glanced past Gordon once again, her smile broadening as she looked at Jack, and he felt the stirrings of lust. God, but she was beautiful! Could she enter his mind? Is that how she dragged the truth from him, and others, with every question?

Sparky sat behind him, Jenna and Emily to his left. Emily had to rest the camera on her knees so that it peered above floor level. Jack knew that she would be noticed, eventually, if they had not clocked her already. And he feared for her. But he saw her excitement and delight, and he could share in what she was feeling. Not so Superior , he thought she was thinking. Just people who think they're special enough to bully .

“So you were hounding the Choppers?” Rosemary asked as she worked. Puppeteer looked down in surprise, as if he'd forgotten she was even there.

“Just for fun,” he said.

“You hound them for fun, they come for us Irregulars. We're always easier to catch.”

“Yes, but they only hurt you if we kill some of them.”

“You really believe that?” she said. She stood and looked up into the tall man's face. “They take us and kill us as and when it pleases them. We're part of a research programme for them, right now. But when you and your Superior friends kill some of them, it becomes more than research. It becomes revenge !”

Puppeteer shrugged. He really did not care.

“Your leg's fixed,” Rosemary said.

The tall man looked down at his leg, the gaping bullet wound now little more than a bruised patch on his skin. “Pity you can't fix suits. This one was expensive.”

“You bought it?” Jenna asked. Jack drew in a sharp breath, but he also had to hold back a smile. This man's posturing, his arrogance, his disdain for those he saw as beneath him, all reminded him of a bully they'd once had in school. His name had been Kelly, and he'd delighted in throwing around his superior weight and pet-level intellect to hurt those smaller than him. Trouble was, everyone had been smaller than Kelly. At one time or another, virtually everyone in school had a run-in with him, boy or girl, first-year or sixth-year. He'd punched Jack once as he came down a staircase and Jack was walking up, giving him a swollen black eye and a dented pride. Jack, of course, had not struck back.

But every bully meets his match. Six boys caught Kelly after school one day, held him down, and beat him so hard they say he pissed blood. The violence shocked Jack, but Kelly seemed to shrink after that, though his rapid weight increase led to his nickname being changed to Bloater. Even Jack had called him that, and to his face as well. Small revenge, but sticks and stones…

Puppeteer looked at Jenna for some time, weighing up how, or even whether, to respond. “I'm a new man,” he said at last. “I have no name other than Puppeteer. You can all hold onto the past, if you must. Old names, old values. So no, I did not buy this suit, little girl. I took it from a fine tailor's just off Oxford Street, and the owner was not there to object. If he or she had been, I would have moved them out of the way.”

“Asshole,” Sparky muttered.

Puppeteer lifted his hands then, fingers hanging like the readied legs of two large spiders. “Stop filming me,” he said quietly, and his fingers flexed.

Emily was jerked up from her seat, the camera bouncing from a cushion and hitting the carpeted floor. Jack reached for her instinctively, but just as his hands closed around her ankles he felt a crippling pain in his upper arms, shards of agony thrust in from outside to slice through muscle and grate against bone. He fell back, and then Emily was above him, above all of them, held in mid-air and turning slowly, screaming, waving her arms and legs as she tried to swim back down.

“Jack!” she cried. “I can't…breathe! Can't…”

“Let her go!” Jack shouted, standing and spinning to face Puppeteer.

Rosemary had backed away, Scryer had stood from the big sofa-still smiling, still awfully beautiful-and the others were on their feet now as well, Sparky already trying to circle around past the bed so that he could get behind the tall Superior.

The little finger on Puppeteer's right hand twitched and Sparky cried out, his left leg cramping and folding beneath him. He grabbed his ankle and stared at the man, hate in his eyes.

Jack took one step forward and then Scryer was before him, a few steps away but close enough for him to see her excitement.

“Really want to get hurt?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes!” Jack spat. “For my sister, yes, and I don't need some shitty truth-witch to make me say that!” Scryer actually looked taken aback, and Jack felt a brief stab of delight.

Emily rose higher. Her head was almost touching the ceiling now, and her hands clawed at her throat. Her eyes were half-shut, and as she looked down at Jack a tear ran down her cheek.

“Please!” he said, trying to see past what Puppeteer had become to the humanity that must lie beneath.

But the man was enjoying this. He looked around the room, revelling in being the centre of things, not even needing to look at Emily to keep her suspended.

“Puppeteer, that's Reaper's daughter,” Rosemary said quietly.

For the first time, doubt clouded Puppeteer's eyes. He tried to hide it-turned away, looked at Emily, glanced across at the wide view of the Toxic City-but Jack saw something touch Puppeteer then, and it looked very much like fear.

“Reaper,” the man said.

Scryer's smile slipped for the first time.

“Who's Reaper?” Jack asked, confused.

Puppeteer dropped his hands and turned away, and Emily crashed to the floor. She gasped, a terrible, hoarse sound as she sucked in breath across her dry throat, and then she started crying.

“Bastard!” Jack shouted. Right then, if he'd had a gun he'd have fired it, if he'd had a knife he'd have thrown it. But he had neither, so he went to his sister and gathered her in his arms, nurturing the hate and letting it settle somewhere deep inside.

“Reaper,” the man said again. He looked at them, shaking his head slowly. “Does he know?”

“Of course not,” Rosemary said.

“We have to take them to him,” Scryer said. “A gift. An honour!”

The tall man nodded.

“Who the bloody hell is Reaper?” Jack asked again.

Rosemary turned to him, glanced at Emily.

“Shit,” Gordon said. “Shit, shit, now we're in even bigger trouble.” He had moved across to the window, face raised as he sniffed at the air flowing through the fanlights.

“What is it?” Scryer asked.

“Choppers. Lots of them. And they've got a mobile lab wagon with them.”

The scene in the posh hotel suite froze. The surreality of what was happening struck Jack, but he accepted it all. The Superiors, their strange powers, the old woman who could heal, Emily's harsh breathing, Sparky's anger still burning red in his cheeks. He accepted it because the world had changed so much. He'd known that since soon after Doomsday. Being here only crystallised that knowledge in his mind, and everything that happened now he would view through that altered perception.