Tim Lebbon - London Eye

“Dad,” Jack said. “Reaper. Please! He has Mum and Emily.”

“I don't know those names,” the Superior said, but this time he did not meet Jack's gaze.

“But I do,” Jack said. “And whether you recognise them anymore or not, you wouldn't kill your own wife and daughter, would you? After everything that's happened?”

Reaper stared at Miller, who stared at Jack. Jack shivered. A rook cried out and Lucy-Anne shifted slightly, a bird on her head fluttering away as though called somewhere else.

“Please, Dad,” Jack said, lifting his voice above the roar of the spreading flames. The air was redolent with the stench of cooking flesh, and he felt sick. But he had not come this far to lose everything, and everything now rested on his father's shoulders.

On Reaper's shoulders.

“Those two,” Reaper said quietly, and a blink later the soldiers either side of Miller both slumped to the ground with knives protruding from their throats. One of them gurgled and clutched at the blade with his good arm, but the blind Superior's aim had been true, and they died quickly.

Miller gasped and stood up, staring defiantly into Reaper's eyes.

“Ready?” Reaper said, grinning. Miller did not respond.

“You're a monster,” Jack hissed. “A beast, worse than him, worse than all the Choppers. You can save people who love you, here and now. But what do you choose, Dad?”

His father did not react. Jack felt movement around him, and he knew that Shade was somewhere close by, ready to strike.

“Reaper! What a name. Who chose that? You should be wearing your underpants on the outside and have a good reserve of one-liners.” Jack snorted. “You're dressed in black, I'll give you that.”

“Don't mock me, child!” his father cried, and Jack gasped at the effect of his father's voice. It struck him like something solid, knocking air from his lungs and sweeping his legs from beneath him. Jack hit the ground on one arm, managing not to cry out at the sudden pain.

But Reaper was frowning at him now, and there was something going on in his mind other than violence. Jack could see it. He could sense it. And as he closed his eyes, he felt his father's confusion as past struggled with present, to define the future.

He felt it.

I can feel what he's thinking! Jack thought, and the taste of the Nomad's finger flooded his mouth. But now was no time for wonder.

“Your friends?” Reaper asked, nodding at Sparky and Jenna.

“Yes. My friends.”

“Ten minutes.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked, standing slowly.

“You have ten minutes. I'll wait here with my friend Miller, chat to him, perhaps try and persuade him to tell me a few things I've been wondering about for some time. And in ten minutes I'll let him go. By then his people will be coming for him, and they'll be after you. All of them.” He nodded at the Chopper, looking him up and down like a cut of meat. “And look at him. He's hungry for you.”

“We think Nomad touched him,” Miller whispered. He looked at Jack, and Jack could taste the Nomad, and feel the excitement in the Chopper's mind as if it were his own. He sees something in me.

“There is no Nomad,” Reaper said.

“You of all people-”

“She's a myth!” Reaper whispered, a terrible sound.

“I lured you in,” Miller said to Jack. “That nice picture of your mother?” He feigned taking a photograph. “And I thought you would be enough, but now that you've been touched by her …” He was amazed, and terrified, and there was suddenly so much more Jack needed to know.

Jack ran his tongue around his mouth. And deep inside he could feel a dreadful, wonderful change already beginning.

“Dad, please will you-”

Reaper glared at him, and there wasn't a hint of anything other than malice in his eyes. “Nine minutes, fifty seconds.”

“You're not my father,” Jack said, and Reaper only shrugged.

“Come on, Jack,” Jenna said.

But there was one more thing to try, one last time. “Lucy-Anne, are you sure?”

She shook her head and drew closer to Rook. “My brother. But I'll do my best to dream the best for you.”

Jack frowned, because he did not understand. But at least the guilt of leaving Lucy-Anne had been lifted from his shoulders. And it was a good thing, because the responsibility already weighing on him would crush him, given half a chance.

“Jack,” Sparky said. He and Jenna were already retreating along the street.

“Nine minutes, forty seconds.”

Jack walked quickly through the line of Superiors-the blind knife-thrower, the shadow man, Reaper-until he was standing face to face with Miller. The man's eye and nose were bleeding, but he did not flinch.

“Rosemary is yours,” Jack said.

Miller snorted, shook his head. “I don't conspire with freaks.”

“Someone's been giving us away.”

Miller only shrugged.

“Fair enough,” Jack said. “But if Reaper does what he says and decides to let you go, remember this: I swear, before everyone standing here, that if you or any of your scumbag friends lay a hand on my mother or sister, I will fucking kill you.”

Miller blinked and looked down at his feet.

“Nine minutes, twenty seconds,” Reaper muttered.

“All right!” Jack shouted, spinning and walking past his father. “We're going!”

He followed Sparky and Jenna as they jogged along the street, and every fibre of him was screaming to look back. But he and Lucy-Anne had said their goodbyes. Miller had Jack's vow fresh in his mind. And his father…

His father was dead.

Nine minutes , Jack heard as they rounded a corner and ran, the three of them sprinting as fast as they could. They passed dead things and living things that had fed on the dead. They smelled cooking meat on the air from the people they had just seen killed. They had no idea where to go next.

Still running, Jack pulled the bloodstained photograph from his jeans pocket. Knowing it had been taken by Miller or his Choppers made it feel tainted. He turned it over, felt around its edges, his suspicion already hardening into certainty. And without actually feeling or touching it, he sensed the small metal square cast into one corner of the card. It was like a smell in his mind, a taste on his vision. He ripped the photo in half, ignoring the sight of his mother's face cut in two.

“What're you doing?” Sparky panted.

Jack tore and tore again, then held up the thin metal device. He did not have to tell either of his friends what it was.

The sound of helicopters grew in the distance, and Jack threw the tracking chip through a smashed shop window.

Once the hunters, now the hunted, the three friends ran deeper into the Toxic City.

When the ten minutes were up, still they ran. Helicopters buzzed overhead, motors echoed around street corners, and they were the centre of attention.

The pain in Jack's injured ankle was awful, and as he ran, the Nomad's taste came to him again. The pain ended, and he coughed up something that looked like black rice. Spitting it out, he wondered, What the hell's happening to me? But really he knew.

Sparky lifted a grating in the pavement outside an old greengrocer's, and Jack and Jenna slid down the steep chute. Sparky lowered the grating and followed them down.

In the darkness, they huddled together at the rear of the basement. It was empty and unused, and there was the faint scent of old decay from one dark corner. They kept away from it; they had seen enough dead things.

“You think it was only that photo?” Sparky asked.

“We'll soon find out,” Jack said. He felt so lost and alone, and he could not help imagining what Emily and his mother were going through right now. Whenever he blinked, he was presented with terrible possibilities: Emily strapped down with probes being driven into her eyes; his mother on her back, chest plate cracked, and her heart beating in her open chest. He wanted to cry and rage at the visions, but he knew that for now, silence was their friend.