Reaper's Legacy: Book Two (Toxic City) (5 page)

“Outside,” the woman said. “
Out
side?” She raised her head and took in a deep, loud breath.

Lucy-Anne felt suddenly dizzy, leaning sideways against an old vehicle and blinking at stars bursting across her vision. In the distance she heard the woman saying something, and then hands grasped her beneath the armpits and she was lowered gently to the ground.

Don't go don't go
, she thought, but then her vision darkened, and all sounds receded until they were little more than echoes.

She can smell blackberries, and she looks down at her hands, expecting the familiar purple stains from when she'd used to go blackberry picking when she was a little girl. That had been when Andrew was barely a teenager and her parents had loved them both equally. But her hands show no sign of berry juice, and the sun is scorching her scalp. It is still the height of summer, the wrong time for blackberries.

She cannot not see very far because of the bushes and trees. Her surroundings are wild and overgrown, yet there is a definite sense that this was once a maintained, ordered place. A large back garden, perhaps, or a park. There is a wooden bench subsumed beneath one wall of shrubs, and a spine of coiled wire splayed across the ground, once used to mark the edge of a planting bed.

Something swings down from one of the tall trees. It is a man, naked, smeared with some sort of dye, and wearing twigs and leaves in his hair. Plant fronds seem to turn towards him as if he is a new kind of sun. He swipes at her, she ducks, and then he is away through the branches.

A woman sniffs along the ground like a clothed dog. Her nails are incredibly long, and she squats by a tree and urinates. She glances up suddenly, growls, then lopes away.

Rook appears from the shadows and rushes towards her. She knows that he is in danger, she can sense it, yet when she raises a hand to warn him back he only waves. His birds flit around him. At the last moment she finds her voice, but what emerges is a name rather than a warning.

Nomad!

The ground crumples and Rook falls into a deep pit. She hears his cry, and knows as she rushes forward that he is already dead.

What she does not expect is the sight of what is eating him.

She screams—

—and jarred awake, sitting up, panting hard, hand fisted against her chest and feeling her heart's terrified sprint.

“Calm down, calm down,” a woman's voice said. It was loaded and distant.

Lucy-Anne was on the floor of an old bus, and in the seat beside her sat Rook. He only glanced at her as she caught her breath.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You fainted,” the woman said. “I took you in.” She was sitting on the stairs heading to the top deck, gun leaning against the wall beside her. She stared intently at Lucy-Anne.

“Took me in?” Lucy-Anne looked around, more to escape the woman's gaze than out of curiosity. It took only a moment to ascertain that the woman lived here. One double seat was piled high with a ragged assortment of clothing, another with blankets and pillows. There were plastic bottles filled with water, tins of food, and farther along the bus she thought she saw a pile of stuffed toys peering over the metal railing of a seat's back.

“Yeah,” the woman said. “Hey.”

Lucy-Anne looked back at her.

“You're seventeen,” the woman said. “Looked after yourself since Doomsday. No virgin, but you haven't loved for a while. Time of the month in…” she shrugged. “Six days.” Her eyes narrowed and she glanced aside, displaying the first sign of emotion. “You just found out your parents are dead.”

“And my brother's alive!” Lucy-Anne said. “That's why Rook brought me here, because you can help.”

“Somewhere to the north,” Rook said.

“Yes. The north. And you'll not want to find him,” the woman
said. “Better off dead. Ever heard that saying, girl? I think it all the time, but don't have the fucking guts. Huh.”

“Lucy-Anne, meet the charming Sara.”

“I
do
want to find him!” Lucy-Anne said. “And if you know where he is you have to—”

“Have to nothing,” Sara said. She stood and climbed the stairs, disappearing quickly from sight.

“What is this?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“She can scent information,” Rook said.

“So she can sniff out Andrew?”

“I think she already did.”

Lucy-Anne stood and started up the stairs, ignoring Rook's half-hearted attempt to call her back.
He fell he was down the hole he wouldn't listen when I called
. On the top deck she paused and looked around in surprise.

Every seat was taken by a shop mannequin. They were all dressed, some extravagantly, others in jeans and tee shirts. She couldn't help feeling every eye upon her.

“You met Nomad,” Sara said. She was sitting three seats along the bus, a plastic man beside her sporting a running top and waterproof coat.

“No,” Lucy-Anne said.

“Sounds like you did.
Smells
like you did.”

“Only in my dreams.”

“Hmph.” Sara looked her up and down. “You're an odd one. That hair, those clothes. And from outside. I didn't think…didn't let myself believe that outside existed anymore. There's just London, and death, and sometimes one becomes the other. Interchangeable. It's not a nice place.”

“Tell me about it,” Lucy-Anne said. And when Sara seemed to take that as a cue to talk, she did not interrupt.

“He
is
to the north. Hampstead Heath, or whatever it's called now. But, girl…that's a dead place. You think London's bad, that's somewhere else. Removed by what it's become.” She nodded at the stairs. “Even those so-called Superiors don't venture there. It's a no-go place, and if
you
go there, you'll die.”

“What's there?”

“Bad people, hungry and cruel.”

“I'm going anyway.”

Sara watched her, suddenly growing immensely sad. “I had a daughter, few years older than you. She'd moved away a couple of years before Doomsday, we'd had a row, hadn't talked in over a year. I wonder…” She stared into space, then turned to look at the mannequin beside her. Perhaps she talked to them. Maybe they were her family now.

Unable to think of anything comforting to say, Lucy-Anne descended the stairs to find Rook still sitting where she'd left him.

“Hampstead Heath,” she said, and his dark expression only echoed what Sara had said. Lucy-Anne didn't care. She was going, and she knew that Rook was intrigued enough to accompany her.

She tried to forget seeing him fall.
Not all dreams come true
.

As soon as Jenna could not open the door, Jack knew that they were in trouble.

“Now what?” Sparky said. He stood and rattled at the handle, as if his own strength could undo it when Jenna's could not.

“It's locked, Dumbo,” Jenna said.

“Yeah? Watch this.” Sparky took two steps back and braced himself, ready to shoulder-bash the door and probably break a bone in the process.

“Sparky!” Jack said. His friend paused, then relaxed.

“They've probably got a guard out there,” Jenna said.

“So what the hell's going on?” Sparky asked.

“Me,” Jack said. “Breezer wants to see what's happening to me.”

“And what is?” Jenna asked softly.

“A change,” Jack said. He searched for something else to say, to explain, but he could not. Tears threatened. “I'm really scared, guys.”

“Still a pussy,” Sparky said. But he clapped Jack on the shoulder, then ruffled his hair like a parent comforting a kid.

“So how do we get out of this one?” Jenna asked.

“Yeah,” Sparky said. “Can't you, like, magic the door open, or something?” Jenna nudged him in the ribs, and he feigned hurt. He pinched her rump, she slapped his face.

Jack turned away, pursed his lips, thinking. He felt a flush of anger at Breezer—he'd taken them in to protect them, now he held them prisoner—but the man was only doing what he thought was best. That didn't mean he could be reasoned with.

And there was no guarantee he would not use physical force to keep them there.

“This is an office block, not a prison,” Jack said. “Thin walls. Plasterboard. We know there's probably someone watching the door out there.” He turned around and pointed at the wall behind him. “So we go that way.”

“Huh?” Sparky asked.

Jack pulled the folding knife from his pocket and flipped open the blade. He scored a long, deep line down the wall from face to waist height, and a drift of fine plaster fell out onto the bare concrete floor. He glanced back at Sparky and Jenna, grinning.

“Won't take long.”

Jenna pulled her own knife and started two feet along the wall from Jack. They worked gently and deliberately, until Jack held up a hand and bent to look through the cut he'd formed. It was pitch back, but he realised it was a double-sided partition.

With a soft shove, Sparky pushed out and pulled away the section they'd outlined and set it aside, exposing metal studding and the back side of the opposite wall surface.

Twenty minutes later he pulled out a second square of plasterboard.
Let this be easy
, Jack thought, and they all held their breath.

The room beyond was much like the sparse office they had been locked into, except that the door stood ajar. Beyond, the sunlit corridor.

“Quietly,” Jack said.

“Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey,” Sparky whispered, lifting himself up through the hole.

Moments later they were in the second office. Jack felt time ticking by.
Breezer will be waiting to talk to us, persuade us to his way of thinking. He'll be keen to see me again, because it's me he's interested in
. He felt a flush of pity for Breezer, but he was more and more determined—his mother and Emily came first, and Reaper was the only sure way to rescue them alive.

London, the survivors, the Choppers, the lies being fed to the public, even his own strange, growing powers…they all came second.

Jack peeked into the corridor. A man sat on the floor outside the door to the room they had just left. He had no weapon, and looked harmless. But the longer they avoided detection, the better their chances at escape. So far Breezer had only locked a door; there was no saying how much farther he would go to keep Jack from fleeing.

Jack moved back from the door and pressed his fingers to his lips. Jenna and Sparky nodded, eyes wide as they watched their friend. Jack knew they would always be a little afraid of him now, and he could hardly blame them. He was a little afraid of himself.

He delved inside, sensing for the star-scape of his burgeoning powers. They were chaotic and uneven, a miasma of possibilities, and suddenly he was confused. If he touched this star, what would happen? Who would he hurt, who would he kill?
If I make the wrong choice, might I become like my father?
He reached out but withdrew again, trying to sense his way through this troubling constellation.

This one
. He grasped a spark and pulled back, and as Jenna took his arm and he slumped, he could sense the strong pulsing of her heart and the flow and ebb of her life force.

“Wrong one,” Jack said. “It's…no…wrong one. Hang on, I…”

“We've all got special powers,” Sparky said. He pulled something from his pocket, glanced outside, then flicked it along the corridor.

Jack heard a small metal
clang
, then Sparky turned to the two of them. “Got maybe ten seconds,” he whispered, and he pulled the door open.

Jenna hauled Jack upright as Sparky slipped through the door and across the corridor. By the time Jack and Jenna stood by the open doorway, Sparky was holding open the door to the staircase, beckoning them over.

Jenna pulled Jack out and he had to follow, treading lightly, clasping her hand, only glancing to his right as he felt the coolness of the stairwell embracing him.

The man was fifteen feet along the corridor, his back to them and head tilted. He had yet to find the coin, take a while to think about that, unlock the door, check inside the office, find them gone—

“Now maybe we've got half a minute,” Sparky whispered as he eased the door closed. “Come on!”

They started down the staircase, and it reminded Jack of fleeing that terrible hotel only days before. Then he had seen a man have his head blown off, grenades had exploded, and Jenna had been shot in the stomach. It was only Rosemary and her healer friend who had saved Jenna, delving inside her for the bullet and then knitting her wounds from the inside out.

If one of them was injured now, there was no one to help.

No one but me
, Jack thought. But his fledgling powers still confused and scared him. He felt like a Neanderthal man given access to Apple's research and development department. He had toyed with some powers, but maybe that had been a fluke.

Maybe the powers were toying with him.

Jack reckoned they had about fifteen floors to descend. That was thirty flights of stairs. On the ground floor there would doubtless be someone keeping watch, but they would tackle that problem when they got there.

Sparky led the way, taking each flight in four long strides, then crouching on the landings and half landings, listening, before
heading off again. Jenna seemed to flow rather than walk, her natural grace giving her stealth and fitness. Jack panted from exertion and fear. He was worried for himself, but more worried for Sparky and Jenna. Breezer claimed not to be a Superior, but there was no saying how he'd treat Jack's friends if they were recaptured. It was Jack he was interested in.

And Superior, Irregular…they were only names. Actions made a person, not what they chose to call themselves.

As Sparky jumped three steps onto a landing a door opened, and a man with bright ginger hair stepped through. He was carrying a tray of cups and bottled water, balanced on one hand while the other held the door open.

He looked at Sparky, his expression one of complete shock.

“Ha!” Sparky said.

The man drew in a breath to shout and Sparky punched him in the mouth. He dropped the tray and staggered back against the door jamb, banging his head and crying out.

“Sparky!” Jenna said, but Sparky ignored her and punched the man again. He went down in a heap. His splayed legs kicked cups across the landing, and they passed beneath the railings and clattered down the stairwell, shattering, skittering across concrete. There could not have been a more effective alarm.

“Karl?” a voice called.

Sparky looked back and forth between Jack and the fallen man.

“Came from down there,” Jenna said, stepping back from the railing.

Sparky pointed through the door. The fallen man was moaning, holding his mouth, shaking his dazed head slowly, and his crumpled body held the door open.

“We go through there and we'll be trapped on this floor,” Jack whispered.

“Karl? What's happening. You all right?” Footsteps from below, at least three sets, rapidly climbing. Shattered crockery was kicked aside.

Breezer had said they had escape routes from above as well. Zip wire? Window cleaners’ cradle? Jack didn't know. But right then it seemed the best idea. It was away from pursuit, it kept them in the stairwell…and no one would expect them to do something so foolish.

“Up,” Jack whispered, gesturing with his thumb. He turned and started climbing, not waiting for his friends’ objections. Eight steps up he paused and glanced back. Sparky and Jenna were frozen there, and the fallen man was swaying on hands and knees, spitting blood.

“Trust me,” Jack said.

It took a minute to draw level with the door to the floor they'd escaped, and Jack sprinted past it, expecting it to burst open at any second. He heard shouting from below—more than one voice now—and he feared what they might use against them. Would they freeze their muscles, steal their air, make their blood boil? He sought the memory of Nomad so that he could access his own sparks of power, but the running and fear conspired to confuse him. All he had was what he'd always had—himself. That would have to be good enough.

They ran, and doors burst open below them.

“Jack, you'll doom us all!” Breezer shouted. Jack slowed on a landing and glanced back, but Sparky and Jenna were right behind him, faces stern as they shook their heads.

“We're away now, mate,” Sparky said.

“Door.” Jenna nodded past Jack, and they found themselves on the final landing facing a bolted steel door. The padlock was heavy, but hung open.

“Escape route,” Jack said.

“But to where?” Sparky asked.

Jack knocked the padlock aside and pushed the door open. There was a dark boiler room beyond, and a small hooped ladder leading up to a ceiling hatch.

“What, do heights scare you as much as chickens?” Jack asked.

“Squaw! Squaw!” Jenna said, flapping her arms as she pushed past Jack and setting the three of them laughing. Nervous, panicked laughter, but it felt good nonetheless. Jack felt a rush of intense love for his friends.

“Sparky, padlock,” he said as he slipped through the door. Sparky picked up the padlock and followed, and then they slammed the door closed.

Even through the metal they could hear footsteps pounding up the staircase beyond.

“Couple of floors down, do you reckon?” Sparky asked.

“Yeah. Jenna, get the trap opened.” Jack glanced back and saw that she was already there, forcing back bolts and opening the trap, sunlight flooding the room like a burst of hope. Jenna stuck her head up through the trap.

“Oh, shit,” she said.

“What?” Jack called. He was frantically scanning the door, searching for a hasp and staple through which to lock the padlock.

“You guys are gonna love this.”

“Go!” Jack said, shoving Sparky towards the ladder.

“Don't be stupid,” Sparky said, and in those words was complete understanding. It was Jack they wanted, and Jack who was important here. “Jack, what you did to me.”

“Huh?”

“The heat. Made me sweat.” Sparky tapped the door's handle. “Never know.”

Jack frowned, sensed inside for the power he had used on Sparky…and found it, as available to him as speech or thought. He
pointed at the door's lock and concentrated, thinking the metal hot, thinking the catch orange and molten.

“Shit!” Sparky said, backing up to the ladder. “Mate, I can feel that heat. You could have melted the bollocks off me!”

“Could have,” Jack said, smiling.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs beyond the door, and Jack was about to shout a warning when he heard a scream. Someone had grasped the handle. They wouldn't do so again anytime soon. Jack felt a twinge of guilt, but then he pointed again and concentrated some more. It was a strange feeling, as if heat formed in his mind and left him untouched, flowing across the space between his hand and the door and super-heating the metal. He had the idea that he could melt the door if he really wanted. He could turn it to gas. The power was startling and frightening, but he felt fully in control of it. He
could
have melted the bollocks off Sparky…but he'd chosen not to.

“Yeah,” Jack breathed, flushed with the power.

“Come on!” Sparky whispered. “Jenna was right. You're gonna love this.”

“Sorry!” Jack shouted through the door, and then the banging began.

Up the ladder and out onto the rooftop, Jack slammed the hatch shut again before standing and joining his friends.

“You've gotta be kidding,” he said.

“Nope,” Jenna said.

Sparky seemed delighted. “Cool. Cool!”

There were three hang gliders on the roof. Two were folded and dismantled, but one appeared to be fully assembled, its wheels and wings tied down to prevent any errant breezes from stealing it away. A single seat was suspended beneath it. Twenty feet from its front wheel, a section of railing had been cut away to allow launch.