Reaper's Legacy: Book Two (Toxic City)(6)

“Right,” Sparky said. “Great. So now what do we—”

A whistle, a whisper, a piercing pain in Jack's neck. As his vision quickly clouded he saw more shapes emerging from the shop and coming towards him. His friends fell. And he fell too, watched all the way by a presence inside that was so very far from human.

And so he sleeps. The gravity of his future draws him onward, and it frightens him. But that's fine. It should frighten him, for a time. But soon it will entrance him as well.

Nomad moved from one street to the next, casting her senses about now that Jack was asleep. If danger rose she would go to him, but not unless it was extreme, and not unless he could do nothing to counter it himself. He had to learn, and she was afraid of steering him the wrong way.

Afraid of encouraging in him the same madness that had taken her.

But I was different. I am the first vector, and I was there at the beginning. Evolve was so much stronger then, so much a concentrated mass of change. Confused, like an infant unsure of its abilities and potentials. Now, I am sure. I've been practising.

From where she rested, she saw.

In Peckham, a man smashed his way into a locked house and rifled through a dead family's photograph album. He cried, even though he did not know them. Nomad felt his sadness and cried with him, and the man's head snapped around as he heard the sound of a weeping woman.

In Soho, three women used their combined powers to stalk a deer. There were only seventeen wild deer left in London—Nomad knew every one of them, and could place them all given the time and peace to concentrate. But she could not deny these women the fresh meat they craved. They were all pregnant, and their children would be important. Nomad knew that, and she tried to tell the embryos so. The women paused and gasped as their children kicked against the unfairness of things, and the mothers all felt a brief, intense moment of wretchedness.

The deer escaped.

She tasted blood on the air, and traced it back to a pub in the East End. An empty bottle of whiskey, a smoking cigarette, the taste of hopelessness on the air and the tang of sharpened steel, a knife on the floor, a man bleeding his last. Another precious one gone, and Nomad's fresh tears matched his own.

Deep underground, a group of people were trying to make a home.

Seven miles to the north, a spirit haunted a deserted tower, and wondered why it was there.

Nomad moved on, passing through the toxic city she had brought into being. Every now and then she paused to lean against a wall. Inside her, something else was growing. This sickness was the only thing she could not touch or smell, see or know.

It was a mystery to her, and Nomad was no longer used to mysteries.

Jack thought perhaps they had blinded him. There were Choppers in the shop! But that did not make sense. The people in the shop had been Irregulars, their rendezvous had been arranged, and now he was bound and sightless, yet moving.

They were carrying him on some sort of stretcher. He struggled against his binds, but his hands and legs were tied tight. He blinked and felt no pain, yet he still couldn't see.

His memories swam, perception awash.

I'm special now, he thought, and he searched for some way to probe outward, see what was happening and try to stop it. He found nothing. For now he was just a normal boy who felt like he was going to puke.

Deep inside had been that presence, and he searched cautiously for it again. It was gone. It had left behind the scent and the sense of Nomad, and at that thought Jack realised that a hood covered his head, and he was not blind at all.

He tried to speak, but something had been taped over his mouth.

He heard voices. The stretcher was put down, and then someone spoke very close to his right ear.

“Don't be afraid, Jack.” It was barely a whisper, androgynous. “We're going up, and you and your friends will be safe. There will be fear. You'll be scared. But trust me, there's no danger.”

With a jolt they started carrying him again, and Jack prepared himself. When Rosemary had taken them down into the subterranean hospital to find his mother, a pair of twins had guarded the place, manifesting terrors in the minds of anyone who approached as a defence against the hospital being discovered. Jack had seen huge scorpions, Emily had seen moths, and Sparky for some reason had imagined giant, deadly chickens.

But the sense of fear that settled quickly over him now was terrible and all-consuming. He would have cried out, had his mouth not been bound. He writhed, then froze. His heart hammered. Everything he couldn't see was going to eat him, everything he couldn't feel or hear would crush him, consume him. The anticipation of this was more terrible than the act itself might be, and he moaned so hard against his gag that he thought his brain would erupt.

“It's safe, it's safe,” that calming voice whispered, but the darkness pressed into Jack, trying to drown and crush him down.

It's safe, it's safe, he told himself. He sought something extra—a new sense, a burgeoning power—but he was simply Jack. Scared, lonely, worrying about his mother and sister held in the Choppers’ Camp H, fearful of his father, the dreadful Reaper. Scared little Jack. He started to cry, wishing his mother were there to hold and calm him as she had been for most, but not all of his years.

I've only just found her, I can't lose her again!

“We're there,” the voice said, and the hood was removed from Jack's head, his limbs unbound, and tape was ripped from across his mouth.