The soldier’s gun vanished from his hands and then appeared again, barrel pressed against his forehead, held by a tall, stocky woman in a short dress.
“Where the hell did she come from?” Jenna asked.
“Out of thin air,” Sparky said. “Let’s hope she’s on our side, eh?”
“Drop it!” the woman said, but the third soldier spun, bringing his own weapon to bear on the newly arrived woman.
She grinned, flitted out of view again, and the third soldier’s head snapped back before the gunshot even sounded.
“Shit,” Jenna said, turning away.
The other two Jeeps’ doors sprung open and Choppers emerged, a dozen of them fanning out around their vehicles and quickly closing on the scene of slaughter.
“Shift!” Sparky said needlessly, and he grabbed Jenna’s hand as the three of them darted for cover.
But Jack was watching, trying to perceive what was happening, and at the same time a particular star began to shine in his mind’s eye. There she is, he thought, flooded with certainty that he would be able to follow the woman in the dress.
The last survivor from the crashed Jeep was pulling his sidearm, eyes on Jack, hatred on his face.
The woman had not reappeared, but from behind the vehicle came a startled cry, and then several guns started firing at once.
Sparky and Jenna reached a shop doorway and slid across the pavement until they were protected from the field of fire.
Jack breathed deeply. When Sparky turned to look at him, he smiled.
“J—!” Sparky shouted, and Jack let the power flood through him, scorching his veins, setting every nerve on fire with the thrilling potential of something he had never done before.
The world ground to a halt.
Jack caught his breath as every sense retreated to nothing. Sounds faded until all he heard was his own beating heart, and blood pulsing through his ears. The air was motionless. Smoke hung like Christmas decorations above the crashed Jeep’s front end. Blood dripped from the dead soldier on its bonnet, each drop barely moving, exclamations on the air.
Sparky reached for Jack, mouth hanging open and bearing his unuttered name. Jenna was suspended halfway through a fall to the ground, hair streaming behind her, hand held out to arrest the impact, her eyes on Sparky.
Jack looked around at the Choppers, all similarly frozen—
But not quite. “Not quite still,” Jack said. His voice did not echo, as if he’d spoken in an insulated chamber rather than in this bloodied London street. The Chopper pulling a gun on him was shifting slightly, his shoulder raising, hand tugging the pistol from its holster, movements as imperceptible as a minute hand on a clock. And Sparky’s mouth opened wider, wider, as he shouted his friend’s name in terror.
“Oh!” a surprised voice said. “Well. I thought I was the only one.”
The woman in the dress appeared from behind the crashed Jeep and strolled casually across to the standing soldier. She stepped over one of the bodies without looking down, though Jack had seen her shoot the terrified man in the face.
“Who…?” Jack said.
“Name’s Fleeter,” she said. She watched Jack curiously as she moved the soldier’s hand aside and pulled the pistol from his belt. Then she smiled, and it made her look manic. “I wasn’t told you could do this.” She stepped back and aimed the gun at the man’s head.
“Wait!” Jack said, his word cut off by the gunshot.
“Why?” the woman asked, all innocence. As she walked towards Jack, he saw the most terrible thing.
The bullet struck the Chopper’s face in slow motion. It impacted his skin, entered just below his left eye socket, and sent a ripple of imminent destruction through the man’s face.
Jack turned away, not wishing to see any more.
“So,” the woman said, circling Jack so that she could see his face. “You want to help me with the rest of them?”
“No!” Jack said. “Who are you? What are you?”
“Reaper sent me to keep an eye on you. Make sure you didn’t get into trouble.”
She had already turned and was walking towards the other soldiers, her wide hips swaying the short skirt. She wasn’t pretty, but she was striking. In Jack’s eyes right now she was also monstrous, and he was desperate to prevent her continuing the slaughter.
Whatever these Choppers might do, they were still people, each with families and individual stories to tell.
“Why would he worry about me?”
The woman who had called herself Fleeter shrugged. “I just do as he tells me.”
“Just following orders, eh? That’s what these Choppers do. Hey. Hey!” She was approaching more of the soldiers and raising the stolen pistol.
Fleeter turned and looked over her shoulder, eyebrows raised in surprise. “What?”
“Don’t,” Jack said.
She pulled the trigger. The sound was a crushing impact and then an extended, deafening roar, like a train bursting from a tunnel and then receding. He saw the bullet leave the gun and strike a woman in the eye.
“Don’t!” he shouted. He ran at Fleeter and she stepped aside, tripping him up. As Jack struck the ground his anger grew, and the pain from knees and elbows fed it. He delved deep and stood again, turning to the woman, sending a thought, spasming her thigh muscles so that she groaned and stumbled, dropping the gun and hitting the road.
“I said don’t,” Jack said. The gunshot’s roar was a grumbling echo, fading, fading. “Now you can help me get my friends away from here.”
“Can’t,” Fleeter said through gritted teeth.
“Why not?”
“I don’t move people. I just speed myself up.” She looked up at him, still trying to massage the cramps from her muscles. “Like you.”
“You’re nothing like me,” Jack said. As he went to Sparky and Jenna he could feel the flow of time all around, moving like random currents in thick soup. I’ll carry them, he thought. Away from danger, hide somewhere, and then—
Something slipped. Everything fluttered and blinked, and then noise and chaos burst around him—gunshots, shouting, someone screaming one name over and over again: “Peter! Peter! Peter!”
“—ack!” Sparky finished shouting, and his eyes went wide.
“What the bloody hell?” Jenna asked. “How did you get from there to—?”
Jack fell into the doorway with them, overcome with sensory input after that brief respite. Everything felt wrong—the air, the noise, the feel of concrete pavement against his hands. He looked around quickly for Fleeter, but saw only the crashed Jeep and the Choppers now advancing quickly from behind it.
“They’ll kill us,” Jack said, because it was inevitable. They’d seen their comrades ambushed and murdered, and here were the kids they’d likely been looking for all across London. Shoot now, ask questions later.
The Choppers fell one after another, legs kicked from beneath them. They hit the ground hard as if shoved from above by a massive weight. Bones broke.
With a clap of displaced air, Fleeter appeared before them. She looked angry.
“Well, come on then,” she said. “Or I will have to finish them off.” She limped along the street without looking back, and Jack grabbed his friends’ hands.
“Come on!” he said, ignoring their questioning looks. “No time to lose.” He and his friends followed the woman along the street.
Moments later the shooting began. Bullets ripped into parked cars and across storefronts, ricochets sparking from the road, and Fleeter led them between two buildings, protected from the shooting but nowhere near safe. She skidded to a halt and looked back, angry.
“You’ll get me killed!” she said to Jack, and her fear was obvious. Desperate to use her ability to flit away, she had also been tasked with protecting Jack. By my father, Jack thought. But now was not the time to dwell on what that might mean.