London Eye

Jack expected monsters.

“Superiors”? What the hell are they?

As he ran along the plush hotel corridor in pursuit of Lucy-Anne's fading screams, he wondered whether he was now just following echoes.

I've never heard of them, Rosemary never mentioned them, and-

The door to the service staircase opened. Jack skidded to a halt. A woman stepped out. She was beautiful, but terrifying in a way Jack could not properly establish. Maybe it was the complete disregard she seemed to have for her appearance: tatty, loose trousers; a torn jacket; dirty sweatshirt. Or perhaps it was her eyes and the way they seemed to bore right through him from the second they locked glances.

“Where are you going?” she asked, and her voice came from inside his head as well as without. Jack slumped against the wall.

“I'm following Lucy-Anne to bring her back,” he said without thinking.

“Who's Lucy-Anne?”

“My girl…” He frowned, because that no longer seemed right. “My friend.”

“Where are the others?”

What others? Jack thought. He could not lead this person-this Superior-to Emily, Sparky, and Jenna.

“Room 602,” he said. Then he started backing away from this woman, because he had not intended to say anything.

“It's all right,” she said, smiling. “You couldn't help yourself.”

The door behind her opened again and a man stepped through, incredibly tall and exactly the opposite to her when it came to clothing. He wore an expensive suit, cuff links, a thin dark tie, and his shoes were shined to a mirror-like sheen. His face was very severe, and Jack's first thought was that the man would never be in danger of suffering laughter lines.

“Then I think you should go back to 602 to join them,” the man said. He raised his right hand, as if to point back along the corridor.

“But I'm…” Jack began. The man's fingers flexed. Jack's right bicep twitched and clenched, and the muscles in his thigh contracted, like the worst case of cramp he'd ever had. He groaned and took a step back, feeling as though he'd been shoved.

The woman was smiling at him. Her eyes shone.

The man came forward, and Jack saw that he was limping, one leg of his trousers torn and dark with blood.

“I'm going,” Jack said, and when the man lowered his hand the feeling of manipulation left.

Jack turned and ran. With every step, he listened out for more shouts and screams from Lucy-Anne. But she was either too far way for him to hear anymore, or she had at last seen or sensed the danger they were all in.

At the door to room 602 he paused and looked back. The woman was close, and behind her came the man, limping heavily but displaying no sign of pain in his expression. In fact, his grim face gave away nothing, and Jack had always been afraid of masks.

The door had not been closed properly, and just as the woman reached Jack it swung open, revealing Gordon and Rosemary standing just inside.

“We heard the noise,” the woman said. “We'd like to join the party.”

“You've no business here,” Gordon said.

“No business?” the tall man replied, talking over Jack's head. “No business in this fine hotel, in this dead city, where law no longer reigns?” He leaned across Jack, his voice lowered. “The likes of you don't decide whose business is whose.”

Jack could see panic in Rosemary's eyes, and he wondered just how dangerous these two Superiors were. He turned around. The woman was directly behind him, scruffy but beautiful, and she held him with her piercing gaze.

“We don't want trouble,” Jack said, his voice bled weak by the effect she had upon him. She blinked, slow and sensuous.

The tall man looked down at him then, his face so close that Jack could smell his stale breath. “If you don't want trouble, boy, why find your way into London at all?”

“They're not from outside,” Gordon said, “they come from-”

“Where are they from?” the woman asked.

“Outside,” Gordon replied. He frowned and looked away.

“You're Superiors,” Jack said. Perhaps if he could connect with them, things would not go so bad.

“And you're normal,” the tall man said, with evident distaste.

“Yeah, sorry,” Jack said. “I can't heal wounds or make people tell me the truth. No interest at all, me.” He could see between Rosemary and Gordon now, and Emily, Jenna, and Sparky were gathered together in the sunken seating area inside the room. They all looked scared. He wondered what they had been told.

“I think we'll still come inside anyway, just to check things over,” the Tall Man said. He pushed past Jack and into the hotel room.

Jack looked at the woman. She seemed to wear a permanent, cute smile. “After you,” she said.

When they were all inside the room, the woman shut the door and locked it behind them.

“I'm Puppeteer,” the tall man said.

“And I'm his beautiful assistant, Scryer.” The woman by the door performed a small curtsey, lifting an imaginary skirt hem.

“Oh, very imaginative,” Jack said.

Puppeteer glanced at him, then away again, as if dismissing Jack entirely from his consideration. He looked around the extravagant hotel suite, and then his attention rested on Jack's sister and friends. “Three more boring, unimportant people from outside, yes?”

“No, we come from-” Jenna began, but Jack stepped forward, taking the opportunity to join his friends. The air stank with danger.

“Don't bother,” he said. He pointed at Scryer. “She can make you tell the truth.”

“I can,” the woman said, slinking across the room. Jack was amazed how sexy a woman could look in such innocuous clothing. “You told the truth about your ex-girlfriend, didn't you?”

Jack went cold. Such personal thoughts, exposed now for everyone. Scryer may have a lovely smile, but he could see the brutal potential in her ability.

“What do you two do?” Scryer asked.

Gordon and Rosemary answered at the same time. “I smell bloodlines…” “Healer…”

“Great powers!” Scryer said. “I've met lots of healers, of course, but it's still good. You're still special.”

“But I'm not Superior,” Rosemary said. Jack was surprised at the conviction in her voice.

“And why wouldn't you want to be?” Puppeteer asked. “You do something now you couldn't two years ago, doesn't that make you feel-”

“I'm still a human. Look at you! What was your real name? Paul? Derek? Now you call yourself Puppeteer, like some comic book hero?”

“I've moved on,” Puppeteer said.

“Well, this is intense,” Sparky whispered behind Jack. When Jack glanced around, Sparky and Jenna were standing close, Emily just in front of them.

“We'll be all right,” Jack said.

“So what are outsiders doing in the Toxic City?” Scryer asked.

“Come to find my parents,” Jack said, because it was true. He leaned forward, mouth working as if chewing on air, ready to tell these Superiors the rest of the reason they'd come here. But he swallowed the words and turned away. So long as she gets something true, he thought. Scryer was looking at him strangely, the smile now gone from her eyes. And she knows that…she knows her limits!

“Normals,” Puppeteer sneered. “Just…humans.”

“‘Just’?” Jack asked. So what's my mother? he thought. What's my father? He looked at Rosemary but she would not meet his eyes.

“You're hurt,” Rosemary said to the tall man.

“Someone shot me.”

“Who?” Sparky asked. Puppeteer looked at him as though surprised he could even talk.

“A Chopper patrol, earlier today. We were playing with them, and they opened fire. Perhaps they forgot to have their coffee this morning.”

“Is the bullet still inside?” Rosemary asked.

Puppeteer seemed uncertain about whether to even answer. Jack could see where this was heading; he could also sense the tall man's discomfort.

“Passed right through,” Scryer answered for him.

“I can heal it,” Rosemary said, but she made no move. Waiting for permission, Jack thought. It's like Us and Them. Or Us, Them, and The Others.

Puppeteer glanced down at his leg, trousers torn and shoe shining with fresh blood. He lifted his foot and turned it, wincing slightly as he put his weight on it once again. “Very well,” he said. “I'll let you.”

Rosemary knelt at Puppeteer's feet, and it was one of the strangest acts Jack had ever seen. The tall man turned away and stared through the tall, wide window. While Rosemary lifted the trouser leg and bunched it around his knee, exposing the wound so that she could work at it, the man sniffed, hummed to himself, and generally acted as though nothing was happening. His companion sat in one of the large sofas and called Gordon across to her, asking him questions in subdued tones. Jack could not hear what she said, but it was obvious by her continuing smile that the man was giving her the answers she sought. She kept glancing past the Irregular at Jack-none of the others, just him-and he felt the dreadful power of her gaze.

I'd tell her the truth if she just looked at me, he thought. He looked down at his shoes and thought about Lucy-Anne, crying and alone elsewhere in the hotel, or perhaps even out there, shouting her way through strange streets. He should be searching for her. But he knew they would not be allowed to leave.

“What will they do to us?” Emily whispered. She stepped closer to Jack, and he felt the cool angles of her camera against his leg.

“Nothing,” he said. But he could not be certain of that at all. The Superiors pretended not to hear, but he was sure they had.

Rosemary knelt very still, apart from her fingers moving across and through the pouting wound. Jack could not see her face, but he had seen her doing this enough times before to know that it would be blank, cool, and in control. The man's hands hung by his sides, his fingers relaxed. Whatever powers he had were dormant, for now. But Jack could remember that alien sensation of his muscles twitching under someone else's command. Puppeteer, he called himself, and he thought himself Superior. Perhaps soon they would witness the full range of his abilities.

Jack glanced down again and realised that Emily was filming. The shock was cut through with respect for his sister. Clever girl! He looked up again, glancing from one Superior to the other, but he was certain she had not been seen.

He, his sister, and their friends had remained standing, frozen there by the Superiors’ strange presence and the power they seemed to exude. But Jack realised that a lot of that effect was produced by their own sudden fears of what the Superiors would be, and what they would look like. It was a name Rosemary had never mentioned, something else she had kept from them, and they could not help letting fear run their imaginations into overdrive. Now, here were the Superiors: strong, aloof, but still very human. Whatever Doomsday had done to their minds and bodies, their humanity was still beyond doubt.

Not monsters, he thought. No more than any other human being that does something inhuman.

So he sat down, making his own choice to not be so entranced that he could not use his own mind. Scryer glanced past Gordon once again, her smile broadening as she looked at Jack, and he felt the stirrings of lust. God, but she was beautiful! Could she enter his mind? Is that how she dragged the truth from him, and others, with every question?

Sparky sat behind him, Jenna and Emily to his left. Emily had to rest the camera on her knees so that it peered above floor level. Jack knew that she would be noticed, eventually, if they had not clocked her already. And he feared for her. But he saw her excitement and delight, and he could share in what she was feeling. Not so Superior, he thought she was thinking. Just people who think they're special enough to bully.

“So you were hounding the Choppers?” Rosemary asked as she worked. Puppeteer looked down in surprise, as if he'd forgotten she was even there.

“Just for fun,” he said.

“You hound them for fun, they come for us Irregulars. We're always easier to catch.”

“Yes, but they only hurt you if we kill some of them.”

“You really believe that?” she said. She stood and looked up into the tall man's face. “They take us and kill us as and when it pleases them. We're part of a research programme for them, right now. But when you and your Superior friends kill some of them, it becomes more than research. It becomes revenge!”

Puppeteer shrugged. He really did not care.

“Your leg's fixed,” Rosemary said.

The tall man looked down at his leg, the gaping bullet wound now little more than a bruised patch on his skin. “Pity you can't fix suits. This one was expensive.”

“You bought it?” Jenna asked. Jack drew in a sharp breath, but he also had to hold back a smile. This man's posturing, his arrogance, his disdain for those he saw as beneath him, all reminded him of a bully they'd once had in school. His name had been Kelly, and he'd delighted in throwing around his superior weight and pet-level intellect to hurt those smaller than him. Trouble was, everyone had been smaller than Kelly. At one time or another, virtually everyone in school had a run-in with him, boy or girl, first-year or sixth-year. He'd punched Jack once as he came down a staircase and Jack was walking up, giving him a swollen black eye and a dented pride. Jack, of course, had not struck back.

But every bully meets his match. Six boys caught Kelly after school one day, held him down, and beat him so hard they say he pissed blood. The violence shocked Jack, but Kelly seemed to shrink after that, though his rapid weight increase led to his nickname being changed to Bloater. Even Jack had called him that, and to his face as well. Small revenge, but sticks and stones…

Puppeteer looked at Jenna for some time, weighing up how, or even whether, to respond. “I'm a new man,” he said at last. “I have no name other than Puppeteer. You can all hold onto the past, if you must. Old names, old values. So no, I did not buy this suit, little girl. I took it from a fine tailor's just off Oxford Street, and the owner was not there to object. If he or she had been, I would have moved them out of the way.”

“Asshole,” Sparky muttered.

Puppeteer lifted his hands then, fingers hanging like the readied legs of two large spiders. “Stop filming me,” he said quietly, and his fingers flexed.

Emily was jerked up from her seat, the camera bouncing from a cushion and hitting the carpeted floor. Jack reached for her instinctively, but just as his hands closed around her ankles he felt a crippling pain in his upper arms, shards of agony thrust in from outside to slice through muscle and grate against bone. He fell back, and then Emily was above him, above all of them, held in mid-air and turning slowly, screaming, waving her arms and legs as she tried to swim back down.

“Jack!” she cried. “I can't…breathe! Can't…”

“Let her go!” Jack shouted, standing and spinning to face Puppeteer.

Rosemary had backed away, Scryer had stood from the big sofa-still smiling, still awfully beautiful-and the others were on their feet now as well, Sparky already trying to circle around past the bed so that he could get behind the tall Superior.

The little finger on Puppeteer's right hand twitched and Sparky cried out, his left leg cramping and folding beneath him. He grabbed his ankle and stared at the man, hate in his eyes.

Jack took one step forward and then Scryer was before him, a few steps away but close enough for him to see her excitement.

“Really want to get hurt?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes!” Jack spat. “For my sister, yes, and I don't need some shitty truth-witch to make me say that!” Scryer actually looked taken aback, and Jack felt a brief stab of delight.

Emily rose higher. Her head was almost touching the ceiling now, and her hands clawed at her throat. Her eyes were half-shut, and as she looked down at Jack a tear ran down her cheek.

“Please!” he said, trying to see past what Puppeteer had become to the humanity that must lie beneath.

But the man was enjoying this. He looked around the room, revelling in being the centre of things, not even needing to look at Emily to keep her suspended.

“Puppeteer, that's Reaper's daughter,” Rosemary said quietly.

For the first time, doubt clouded Puppeteer's eyes. He tried to hide it-turned away, looked at Emily, glanced across at the wide view of the Toxic City-but Jack saw something touch Puppeteer then, and it looked very much like fear.

“Reaper,” the man said.

Scryer's smile slipped for the first time.

“Who's Reaper?” Jack asked, confused.

Puppeteer dropped his hands and turned away, and Emily crashed to the floor. She gasped, a terrible, hoarse sound as she sucked in breath across her dry throat, and then she started crying.

“Bastard!” Jack shouted. Right then, if he'd had a gun he'd have fired it, if he'd had a knife he'd have thrown it. But he had neither, so he went to his sister and gathered her in his arms, nurturing the hate and letting it settle somewhere deep inside.

“Reaper,” the man said again. He looked at them, shaking his head slowly. “Does he know?”

“Of course not,” Rosemary said.

“We have to take them to him,” Scryer said. “A gift. An honour!”

The tall man nodded.

“Who the bloody hell is Reaper?” Jack asked again.

Rosemary turned to him, glanced at Emily.

“Shit,” Gordon said. “Shit, shit, now we're in even bigger trouble.” He had moved across to the window, face raised as he sniffed at the air flowing through the fanlights.

“What is it?” Scryer asked.

“Choppers. Lots of them. And they've got a mobile lab wagon with them.”

The scene in the posh hotel suite froze. The surreality of what was happening struck Jack, but he accepted it all. The Superiors, their strange powers, the old woman who could heal, Emily's harsh breathing, Sparky's anger still burning red in his cheeks. He accepted it because the world had changed so much. He'd known that since soon after Doomsday. Being here only crystallised that knowledge in his mind, and everything that happened now he would view through that altered perception.

“How do they know we're here?” Puppeteer asked.

“I don't know,” Gordon said. He nodded at Scryer. “Why don't you get her to ask?”

Rosemary dashed to Emily's side, touching her throat and chest to see whether any healing was needed. The girl's eyes were open, her breathing becoming less harsh, and she groaned as she tried to talk.

“Okay…I'm okay…”

Jack hugged her tightly and kissed the top of her head. “Who's Reaper?” he asked Rosemary quietly, and she sighed.

“They're coming!” Scryer said. She was crouched at the window, and in the brief silence following her warning they could hear the sounds of engines.

Puppeteer looked at Jack and Emily, then stood up straight and smoothed down his suit. “They're everyone's enemy,” he said, “so if you all listen to me, and do as I say, we may yet be able to escape.”

“That's nice of you,” Sparky said.

Puppeteer pointed at him, and Jack held his breath. Smash him against the wall? Launch him from the window? But as he held Sparky's full attention, the man spoke.

“If they catch you, they'll examine you to see why you have no trace of anything new. No powers, other than a big mouth. Got that, boy? They'll interrogate you first, then if they don't hear what they want to hear, they'll start cutting you up. Dissect your eyes and ears looking for any signs of mutation, your fingers and sexual organs, your heart. And then your brain. You do have a brain?”

Sparky glowered but said nothing.

“Good.” Puppeteer nodded. “They'll come in the front way, slow and careful, because they don't know exactly who's in here. So we go back down the service staircase and out through the basement refuse doors.”

“How do you know-?” Gordon began.

“We've been watching you for a while,” Scryer replied.

“Come on,” the tall Superior said. “Not much time.” He waved them past him towards the door, and when Jack and Emily drew level he dropped in directly behind them. Protecting us, Jack thought, and try as he did he could not object to the idea.

That's Reaper's daughter, Rosemary had said. He tried to thrust that from his mind. He was frightened enough, for now.

Scryer went first, followed by Gordon and Rosemary. Sparky and Jenna brought up the rear. As they reached the staircase, they heard the first sounds of doors being kicked in several floors below.

“Slow and careful?” Jack whispered. Nobody replied.

Scryer opened the door to the service staircase, peeked inside and started descending. Two floors down, she paused and held up her hand, listening. She turned to Gordon.

He sniffed the air and nodded, pointing down the stairwell and holding up two fingers.

And then the door exiting the stairwell onto the fourth floor burst open, and the shooting began.