“If you’ll trust me, we’ll be safe,” Jack said.
They heard cautious footsteps and whispered orders, the crackling of radios, and in moments the Choppers would storm the alley. There would be no demands to raise hands, give in, kneel down. Only bullets.
“Safe here?” Fleeter said, gesturing around at the alley.
“There,” Jack said. He pointed at a door alcove, where two red-painted fire doors were locked shut.
“Yeah,” Sparky said. Jack could have hugged his friend for remembering, and Sparky’s confidence seemed to change something in Fleeter.
“You can do other stuff,” she said, surprised.
Sparky and Jenna were already in the alcove, squatting, nowhere near out of sight but ready for Jack to save them. He joined his friends there, already floating through his cosmos of fledgling abilities, reaching for one blazing star he already knew.
“They’re brothers and fathers, daughters and mothers,” he said softly. Fleeter seemed to vibrate, shimmering as though seen through a heavy heat-haze as she struggled with doubt—disappear into her own slowed-down time and continue with her cold-blooded slaughter; or trust Jack?
As Jack held his friends’ hands and breathed deeply, Fleeter joined them, pressing one warm hand to the back of his neck. It was sticky with blood, and when she whispered to him, her voice was heavy with the threat of more.
“This goes wrong, I’ll only save myself,” she said.
“Clear!” a voice shouted, and Jack and the others turned slowly to look along the alley.
Two Choppers stood just beyond the entrance, one crouched down and aiming a machine gun, the other peering around the wall. We’re in plain sight but a world away, Jack thought. The woman with the machine gun swung the weapon back and forth to cover the alley, its barrel drifting past the alcove where they squatted and back again. The barrel did not waver.
“Okay, quick and careful,” a voice said. Two more Choppers entered the alley and started moving along, guns always at the ready. Jack saw their wide, scared eyes. He could almost smell their fear.
Sparky and Jenna both squeezed his hands at the same time, and he squeezed back. He felt Fleeter’s blood-sticky hand resting on the back of his neck, and close to his ear she breathed a quick, sharp laugh.
We’re not here, he thought, the alcove is empty, no one hiding here, red doors, red doors…
The Choppers passed them, one stepping a foot away from Jenna’s right leg. Jack knew that though he could convince the soldiers that the alcove was empty, if they stepped on one of them, the game was over.
He tried not to think too much about what he was doing. He was aware that he was shaking—and that his friends were holding his hands tightly, unable to help but keen to show they were there—and he could feel the immensity of the power he was tapping into. In his mind’s eye he orbited the giant star of this ability, drawing dregs away for himself and all the while wondering what would happen if he plummeted inside.
“Wait!” a Chopper shouted, and Jack swayed where he knelt, his vision clearing, expecting to see a machine-gun barrel swinging his way and lining up on his face.
Something yowled along the alley and a shape scampered up a wall, leaping from sill to sill, back and forth across the alley as it gained height.
“Bloody cat!” a woman’s voice said. “Scared the crap out of me, almost shot—”
“Quiet!” someone hissed. “They might be nearby.”
The Choppers advanced, leaving two of their number at the alley’s entrance facing outward. Their fear was obvious, and Jack tried to put himself in their shoes—hunting strange people with powers they could not understand, and some of whom only wanted every Chopper dead. It was a war like no other. But Jack could not stretch to feeling sorry for them. Not after everything he’d heard about what they did.
And not now that they had his mother and sister.
He glanced up and back at Fleeter, and in her eyes he saw a glimpse of what he had been feeling. She looked down at him and raised her eyebrows. But he shook his head and relaxed down again, concentrating, knowing that soon they would be able to get away.
Murder could not be the answer. The more fighting and deaths, the harder it would be to set aside arms and rein in powers when the time came. The fighting had begun because people had changed, and it would only stop if everyone was able to change some more.
They waited there for ten more minutes, until the Choppers realised that they’d lost their quarry and ran back along the alley. The soldiers bickered and swore at each other, and a couple of them laughed. Jack knew they were venting, and perhaps also relieved that they’d lost their targets. Their comrades lying dead back at the crossroads were testament to what another contact might bring.
Fleeter moved away from Jack, and as he relaxed and breathed himself back to normal, she disappeared in a blur, air smashing in to fill the void where she had been standing.
“Who the hell is she?” Sparky asked.
“Fleeter. Reaper sent her to watch over us.”
“Your father?” Jenna said. “Why?”
Jack shrugged. “Don’t know. She might be watching us now, though. She can take herself out of phase with everyone else. Speed up, so that everything’s slowed down. She’ll be to the end of the street and back again while we can blink.”
“And now you can do it too,” Sparky said.
“Yeah.” Jack nodded, looked at his friends, and released their hands. They did not comment or back away, but he could still sense that strange distance between them. It made him incredibly sad.
“So what’s it like?” Sparky asked. Jack was so grateful to his friend for even asking, but before he could respond Fleeter was back. With a clap! she appeared before them, litter and dust swirling from the displaced air.
“They’re gathering their dead and leaving,” she said. She was a stern woman, her features seemingly sculpted rather than grown, and Jack could not help wondering who and what she had been. The short dress seemed incongruous on this woman; this killer.
“So now what?” Jenna asked.
Fleeter raised her eyebrows, looking at Jenna and Sparky properly for the first time. Then she stared at Jack again, and he could see confusion bubbling beneath her outward confidence.
“Now you take me to Reaper,” Jack said.
“What?” Fleeter said.
“Reaper. My father. You take us to him.” Jack stood, remaining close to his friends. “I’m sure he’ll want to see me. He sent you to watch over me, after all.”
Fleeter started glancing away, as if unable to hold Jack’s gaze. She’s scared of me, he thought. And though that idea did not sit comfortably with him—he had no desire to instil fear in anyone—he also knew that it might help.
“Thanks for saving us,” Jenna said. “They’d have probably killed us and taken Jack.”
“Probably,” Fleeter said. “He’s special. You’re not.”
“Everyone’s special,” Jenna said.
“I’m not,” Sparky said, trying to joke. But no one smiled.
“We’ve seen horrible things since we came into the city,” Jenna went on. “The stuff the Choppers do to Irregulars, and sometimes people like you. People who call themselves Superior. And we’ve seen what you do to the Choppers, too.”
“They deserve it!” Fleeter said.
“After what they did to my father, I shouldn’t argue,” Jenna said. She nodded at Fleeter’s questioning glance. “This reaches way beyond what’s left of London.”