London Eye: 1 (Toxic City)(55)

“You never came looking for her dad, did you?” Jack asked. “You obviously knew about what he'd done, and what he'd had done to him. But you came looking for me and Emily.”

“Yes,” Rosemary said. “Because of Reaper, and because of what you might be able to make him do.”

“But you're telling me I can't make him do anything! He'll barely know us, that's the impression you're giving. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“He's my daddy,” Emily said, and Jack could see that the raised voices were upsetting her. But this was something that he could not leave alone: another lie, another deception, and now he needed to know the truth. Lucy-Anne was gone, Jenna had almost been killed, and the time for being blind was over.

“We're desperate,” Ruben said, and the fat man looked suddenly vulnerable and hopeless. “The Choppers pick us off the streets one by one, take us away, and cut us up to…to look for what makes us what we are. We're just lab rats to them, not humans. Sometimes they capture a Superior, but usually it's us Irregulars.”

“Because the Superiors put up more of a fight?” Jack asked.

“Yes, because they're able to,” Rosemary said. “Many of us have powers that are benevolent by their very nature. Mine, Ruben's. But the Superiors…well, you've seen what some of them can do. And there are more.”

“So have you tried to hook up with them?” Sparky asked. It seemed so obvious to him. “Join forces to take on the Choppers? From what I've seen round here so far, you lot just hide out in little groups or alone, sneak around at night like bloody rats trying not to get trapped. Get active, not passive.”

“We tried fighting back on our own, first of all,” Ruben said. “Six months after Doomsday, all of us still trying to come to terms with what had happened to London, what had happened, and was still happening to us—”

“Still happening?” Jack cut in.

“Our talents are getting stronger all the time,” Rosemary said. “And that's scaring them. Their efforts to capture us are speeding up, and sometimes becoming more desperate.”

“So there we were,” Ruben continued, “cut off from the outside world, many of us separated from families outside or…bereaved.” He looked away, remembering someone Jack could never know.

“I'm sorry.”

Ruben shrugged. “There's been so much loss that, in a way, personal grief is even more tragic. Anyway…we tried. A group of us got together, and when the Choppers next sent in their armoured column we attacked them. Fire bombs, a few guns we'd found lying around, homemade explosives. And Peter. Remember Peter?”

Rosemary smiled, and Jack could tell that more sadness was yet to come.

“Peter was a young boy, a couple of years younger than you, who could direct bursts of energy from his mind. It cooked electrical circuits, blew computer chips. He called it his Mind Blower. He helped us, trying to take out the armoured vehicles’ navigational computers and communications. And it worked. But only until they shot him.”

“The attack went on,” Rosemary said, “and when they left we thought we'd driven them away.”

“Until the next morning,” Ruben whispered. “Gordon found him. You met Gordon. And I'm not sad that Gordon's gone now, because he never could really come to terms with what they'd done to Peter.”

Rosemary glanced at Emily.

“She's my sister,” Jack said. “She needs to know what we know.”

“Okay,” she said. “Gordon found Peter crucified on the front fa?ade of Harrods. They'd used nail guns to pin him to the wall. Arms, legs, feet. Gordon was sure he must have still been alive when they did it, dying from his gunshot wound, because there was so much blood.”

“They took his brain,” Ruben said. “Cut off the top of his head and just…took it.”

“A warning?” Sparky asked.

Ruben snorted. “Yes, right. Just to tell us how little we mean to them as living things, but as carriers of all these new gifts…we're priceless.”

“So now most of us run, like you said, Sparky.” Rosemary nodded. “We run, and we hide, alone or in small groups. Trying to avoid the Choppers because we know what they do with those of us they capture.”

“You told me you wanted exposure,” Jack said. “That if we came in, saw everything, took some pictures and film, we could go back out and blow it all wide open.”