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Crouching at the far end of the high street is a person.

‘We’ve got company,’ GG says, then squeals in delight. ‘My God I’ve always wanted to say that!’ But then he looks at the stricken Moth and checks himself.
‘Sorry,’ he whispers in embarrassment.

‘Hey!’ Carrie waves to the distant figure. ‘Hey!’

‘Told you we weren’t alone.’ The Ape moves his weapon into both hands, gripping it tight. He’s not speaking as if he’s pleased or excited. He’s talking as if
this is not good news.

Johnson peers at the person crouching ahead of us. ‘Why isn’t he moving?’ he says.

‘Hello!’ Carrie takes a few steps towards the figure.

Billie waves behind her. ‘Hey!’ she shouts.

‘Billie!’ I hiss a warning to her.

‘Rev, it’s someone! There’s other people, we’re not alone. Hey, over here!’

The Ape glares at Billie. ‘Stop waving!’

Billie ignores him and pushes past us. ‘Hello!’

‘He looks familiar.’ Carrie is still walking forward, but Billie is moving faster and quickly passes her.

The person remains still – in fact he hasn’t moved since we spotted him.

‘It’s Lucas!’ Billie yells and increases her speed. ‘My God! It’s Lucas! Hey, Lucas!’

I am stunned into silence.

‘It can’t be. It just can’t be.’ My voice is tiny and hollow.

‘Did we miss something?’ asks the Ape turning to me.

‘Lucas!’ Billie calls out.

‘You cruel bitch,’ the Moth sneers back at me. ‘So not funny.’

‘But he was dead,’ I tell the stricken Moth, desperately hoping he will believe me. ‘Lucas was dead. Tell them, Ape!’

‘Dead as dead,’ he agrees.

The Moth looks at me with a barely controlled scorn. ‘What kind of a joke is that?’

‘He was hanging from the ceiling. Ape sent a photo.’

‘A photo!?’ The Moth recoils in disgust.

‘The three of you faked it, right?’ Johnson says, and I can tell that he’s disappointed in me.

Even the Ape can’t change Johnson’s mind. ‘He was dead, Jonno.’

Johnson doesn’t bother responding and I hate the way he looks at me now.

Billie is about two hundred metres away from the figure, with Carrie hurrying to catch her up.

I don’t understand what’s happening, but the harder I squint the more it looks like it really is Lucas. He rises to his feet, watching as GG sets off to join Billie and Carrie.

‘Well, hello, you hunk of hunks,’ he calls out.

‘I touched him, there wasn’t a pulse.’

The Moth ignores me completely. ‘Johnson, can you wheel me over there?’

I turn away, mouth dry and brain unable to differentiate between what I saw at Lucas’s house and what I’m seeing now.

Billie is closing the ground on Lucas when he backs up a step or two, and then without warning springs forward, using his powerful footballer legs to leap at least forty metres through the
air.

Everyone stops.

Lucas lands then leaps again, propelling himself forward, closing the ground on Billie in seconds.

GG comes to a screeching, frozen halt. ‘I didn’t know Lucas was
that
athletic,’ he says, but there’s no comprehension in what he is saying.

Lucas jumps again, soaring through the air past the health food shop, the phone shop, the cake shop and the shoe repairer’s, and lands right beside Billie.

He beams at her. ‘Hi, Billie.’

The Ape has his homemade weapon at the ready. ‘No wonder Chelsea want to sign him.’

‘It’s Arsenal,’ I correct, but it’s just an automatic response because every part of me is trying to rationalise what I just saw Lucas do.

Lucas looks past Billie and takes in the rest of us as we catch up with her. Lucas isn’t remotely out of breath from the massive jumps he has just done and I’m half thinking that
maybe he’s a ghost, that perhaps he wasn’t leaping but flying. It seems far-fetched, but who knows any more.

‘Where’s everyone else gone?’ Lucas asks us.

No one speaks – they can’t get the image of him leaping through the air out of their heads.

‘I thought I was alone.’ He grins out of relief and I catch sight of something in his mouth, a glint of metal. It could be a tongue stud. Which I don’t think squeaky clean
Lucas would ever have.

‘We all thought that at first.’ I try and play along, trying to keep as calm as I can, considering. ‘It’s uh, it’s good to see you.’

‘You too.’

Lucas seeks out the Moth and does a double take when he sees him.

‘Tim?’

‘Hey, Lucas.’ The Moth offers a wary smile.

‘Why are you in that wheelchair?’

‘What d’you mean?’

Beside me I can feel the Ape tensing.

‘We found you. Earlier,’ Johnson tells Lucas, remaining calm and keeping any level of surprise or shock out of his voice.

Lucas hesitates. ‘You found me?’ He frowns. ‘I don’t understand, I haven’t seen a single person since detention.’

‘Tell him, Rev,’ Johnson says.

‘Me and the Ape, we, uh, we came to your house earlier.’ I point lamely at the Ape and shrug. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know it’s not good.

Lucas looks confused. ‘That’s the Ape?’

‘Dazza,’ the Ape corrects.

Lucas leans closer, scrutinising us. ‘You look like him but . . . where’s the rest of you?’

No one knows what he means. I can feel the tingling in my shoulders returning. My personal alarm bell is ringing very loudly.

‘So how did you –
find me
– exactly?’ There’s another glint of metal in his mouth as Lucas asks questions of his own.

I sense GG take a subtle, involuntary step back from Lucas.

Lucas is coiling inside – I can feel the tension emanating from him. ‘Tim, get out of that thing.’

‘I can’t.’

‘C’mon, get up. We’re out of here.’ Lucas has lost any sense of calm or approachability. He’s starting to panic.

‘His little legs don’t work, remember?’ says GG.

‘Since when?’ he asks.

‘Since – well – you know, I’ve never asked. I mean it’s a little rude,’ says GG whose voice has gone an octave higher. There’s a tremble in it now.

Billie reaches for Lucas and I see her hand closing on his arm. ‘Lucas?’ she says quietly. ‘It is you, right?’

Lucas glances at Billie and appraises her for a moment. ‘It’s me. But is it you?’ he says.

Lucas’s whole body is tensing now and there’s something about his skin. It’s as if it’s hardening by the second, thickening. It ripples – it actually ripples like a
tiny wave.

Lucas steps back from Billie, out of her reach. ‘Don’t touch,’ he says, becoming increasingly agitated.

But Billie reaches for him again, speaks softly. ‘We’re all scared, but we just need to work a few things out here.’

‘Billie,’ I warn her.

Billie’s hand touches Lucas’s arm again. ‘Like, how can you jump like that?’

‘I warned you!’ The freaked out Lucas lashes out at Billie, sending her tumbling backwards.

‘Whoa!’ The Ape instinctively raises his weapon.

‘Who are you people?’ Lucas goes into a semi-defensive crouch and the metal glints in his mouth again.

I go to Billie but GG gets to her before me. ‘Billie, you OK?’

‘I told her to back off. And that goes for all of you.’ Lucas is becoming more threatening by the second.

‘Please, we just want to talk,’ I offer, keeping one eye on him while desperately searching my pockets for something to stem the bleeding.

‘Rev?’ Billie sounds dazed, almost numb.

‘I said, who are you?’ Lucas seems more like an animal now as he takes a few more steps back, head lowered, ready for fight or flight. I’m seriously praying that it will be
flight.

With GG’s help Billie gets to her knees. Her face is bleeding badly. She has gashes running down her cheek from where Lucas’s nails have gouged her. I find a tissue and press it hard
into the cuts, but the bleeding won’t stop.

‘It’s OK,’ I lie to her. ‘It’s OK.’

She looks at me blankly, clearly woozy and bewildered. But at least she seems able to stand up.

‘Are you on steroids?’ GG is trying to find a logical way through the growing anxiety that is emanating from all of us. ‘That it? You all souped up? That why you’re
hitting girls, you’ve got some chemical rage going on?’

‘It’s not the real Lucas,’ mumbles Carrie, completely bewildered.

‘Oh I’m the real Lucas.’ It’s as if he’s appraised us now and there’s a newfound confidence emerging from behind a broadening grin that I know I won’t
forget in a hurry. All of his teeth are sharpened to a point. And the metal I glimpsed in his mouth earlier is their tips. His skin has turned thicker than leather, and I get it now –
it’s some sort of armour. I look down to Lucas’s fingers. They are more like talons and the tips glint like steel, just like his teeth do. Some of Billie’s blood drips from
them.

The Ape has fallen very silent as he moves around Lucas, eyeing him, weapon clutched tight in his hands.

‘I’ve got this,’ he says.

Lucas turns and watches him, tracking the Ape’s movements. ‘You’ve got what exactly?’

‘This.’

‘You think?’

‘Oh, yeah.’

We’re all backing away now.

‘Who are you?’ asks Johnson.

‘Who are
you
?’ responds Lucas.

I try to bring some sense to the confusion. ‘We need to talk about this, we won’t get anywhere otherwise—’

Before I can finish the Ape swings his makeshift weapon as hard as he can at Lucas. ‘You can talk to this,’ he says.

Lucas is knocked backwards by the fierce blow and crashes to the ground.

‘Ape!’ I yell.

‘What the hell?’ Johnson can’t believe what the Ape has just done.

The Ape is proud of himself though. ‘That is not Lucas!’ he bellows, like his brain has finally caught up with the rest of us.

Lucas, or whoever it is, springs to his feet. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he snarls.

Lucas leaps for the Ape, but the Ape smashes him with his weapon again, sending him arching through the air. Lucas slashes at GG with his talons as he sails over him and GG screams and ducks out
of the way.

‘OhmyGod!’ Carrie yells.

Lucas rights himself as soon as he touches the ground and goes for the Ape again, talons glinting in the rising sunlight, but the Ape’s ready and hits Lucas in the side of the face with
his broom weapon, knocking his entire head to a crazy, impossible angle. A blow like that should break his neck, but Lucas gathers himself and then cricks his head and neck back into place. The
bones pop loudly as he does this.

‘No way!’ The Ape is momentarily frozen by Lucas’s near superhuman display.

Lucas is in his element now, skin as hard as diamond, coupled with an astonishing athletic ability. ‘That the best you got?’ He leaps for the Ape again.

‘Ape!!’ I scream. ‘Hit him!’ It isn’t lost on me how I’ve gone from peacemaker to warmonger in practically three seconds flat.

The Ape raises his weapon just in time and bats Lucas back. Then he hits him again and I’m not sure if he’s very brave or very demented, but either way the Ape goes to war with
Lucas, swinging and stabbing. He hits him over and over, smashing and lashing at him.

‘Come on then!’ he yells, cutting and slashing as he drives Lucas back. The blows rain down, but Lucas takes them all with a horrible ease. His eyes are trained on the Ape and I
sense that he is biding his time, waiting for a moment or an opening to attack.

‘Ape!’ I call out. ‘Ape, be careful.’

Johnson grabs my arm. ‘Move.’

‘What?’

‘GO, REV!’

I turn and see that the others are starting to run.

‘What are you doing?’ I yell at them.

‘That’s not real, Rev, that’s so not real,’ Billie calls out to me as she runs, blood still pouring from her face. Her fear is the only thing keeping her on her feet
right now.

I look back at Johnson. ‘We can’t leave the Ape.’

‘Get the Moth out of here.’

‘You’re staying?’ I ask him.

‘Take the Moth, Rev.’

I turn back to the fight and see the Ape smash Lucas with a bone-crushing blow that sends him tumbling backwards. ‘I so got this!’ He wades forward, swinging and heaving, bashing
Lucas again and again. But it’s futile as Lucas keeps snapping his rubbery bones back into place.

‘Rev, you’ve got to go.’ Johnson still has his hand on my arm. I can see GG racing for all he’s worth, while herding Billie and Carrie along.

‘Would someone please get me out of here!’ screeches the Moth as politely as he can, even though he’s in a total panic.

The Ape sends Lucas crashing back into a tailor’s shop window and the glass shatters down around him. Lucas instinctively covers his face and neck as shards plummet onto him. Some actually
embed in his skin, which makes me think he’s not totally invulnerable, but then he quickly shakes them out with a lizard-like wriggle.

‘Go,’ the Ape urges as he waits for Lucas to right himself once more. ‘I’ll catch up.’

It’s not what I want to hear but together Johnson and I take hold of the Moth’s wheelchair and start pushing him as fast as we can. I glance back and watch Lucas spring out of the
shop front and arc clear over the Ape’s head. The Ape swivels and whacks Lucas over and over, battering him with all of his might, unleashing even more hell upon him.

‘Don’t look back,’ Johnson tells me as we push the Moth as fast as we can. I realise he’s telling me that he doesn’t believe the Ape will beat Lucas, or whatever
that Lucas-thing is. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

Which makes me turn back and immediately regret it.

The Ape swings his makeshift weapon and looks stunned as it breaks in half on Lucas’s back.

I come to an abrupt halt.

‘He’s doing it for us, Rev,’ Johnson says, trying to urge me forward. ‘Buying us time, don’t let that go to waste.’

‘But—’

‘Rev, that is not Lucas, and whatever it is, it’s going to come for all of us.’

And as if to underline Johnson’s words I watch Lucas leap onto the Ape and take him down.

‘The train station! There’s a train there!’ GG has raced back to offer at least some hope. ‘C’mon, Rev, run. Move, move, move!’

All I really know is that a little bit of my heart has just died for the Ape and I barely feel the road under my pounding feet. I can taste iron in my mouth and my lungs ache horribly but I
don’t care. All I can think about is the Ape being leaped on by Lucas and it makes me want to weep.