“Is this where he lives?” Jack asked.
“I need to go and fetch him, and I'll be faster on my own.” She glanced at Jenna. “And you two can't carry her much further. She's losing a lot of blood.”
They went inside. The living room had a wide window looking out onto the wild back garden, and they laid Jenna on the sofa. She stirred, groaned, and then relaxed again. Her face was pale and sweat soaked her hair into thick, dark strands.
“Pain killers in the kitchen cupboard,” Rosemary said. “Don't unlock the front door to anyone but me. If there's a knock, or any sign of the Choppers, get out the back door and run as fast as you can. Key's in the lock. There's a gate at the bottom of the garden, and-”
“We can't run anywhere with her,” Sparky said.
“No, you can't.” Rosemary looked grim, and Sparky stepped forward, about to vent his fury. Jack was pleased to see the old Sparky back again.
“We're not going anywhere,” Jack said. “Just find this person you say can help.”
“His name's Ruben,” Rosemary said. “And I'll be back with him soon.” She left the room and strode for the front door, gun slung over one shoulder like a novelty handbag. Jack followed her and grabbed her arm.
“The Superiors,” he said. “My mother. My father. You need to tell me now.”
“There's no time.”
“Please!”
She was holding the front door handle, ready to open it and go out into this dangerous new world once again. She looked exhausted.
“What if you're caught?” he asked. “What if you're killed?”
“I can't explain everything right now, Jack, and if I tell you some of it, you'll want it all.”
“They're alive,” he said, a statement more than a question.
“Yes. Your mother's a healer, similar to me.” She smiled. “I know her well. She lives in a makeshift hospital deep in an old Tube station. Susan's a good woman, Jack, and she talks about you and Emily so much that…I almost feel as if I've known you forever.”
He closed his eyes and tried to recall a memory of his mother from before Doomsday. But he could not. He could only imagine her thin and pale, wasted and in despair, that tatty photograph in his back pocket come to life.
“And Reaper?” he said, looking at Rosemary again. “My father?”
“Your father,” she nodded. “Jack-”
“Please, just tell me the basics.” He kept his voice down because he did not want Emily hearing any painful truths, not yet. Not so soon after seeing people killed. And not from anyone but him.
“The Superiors are Irregulars who have utterly embraced their powers.” Rosemary sighed. “They shun everyone else, spurn humanity, and see themselves as the future. They set themselves apart. As you've seen, they can be brutal, and they're driven. There are those who say they have plans-escape, domination, control-but that their powers haven't yet developed enough to implement them.” She looked down at her feet.
“And?”
“And Reaper is their leader.”
Leader? He blinked, trying to imagine his father-softly spoken, tall, and loving-resembling Puppeteer in manner or intent. “What can he do?”
“He kills people with his voice.”
“He's killed people? What does-”
“I told you there's no time right now! Jenna needs help, and soon. Let me go, Jack. Please.”
He lowered his head. Without another word, and without a backward glance, Rosemary left. Jack wondered what she felt most: guilt, or relief.
Back in the living room, Emily and Sparky glanced up when he entered, and perhaps they read something else in his grave expression.
“Is Jenna going to die?” Emily asked.
“No!” Sparky said, and he had truly returned, Jack's angry, wonderful friend. “No, she isn't! Not on my bloody watch.” He sat next to Jenna on the sofa and took her hand. “You die, you'll have me to answer to.” Only death would make him let go.
Jack shook his head. “Rosemary's going to do her best,” he said. And though there was so much more to tell, he did not have the energy to do so right then.
“I'm hungry,” Emily said, and Jack realised that he was as well. However ridiculous that it may have seemed after what they had been through, and what they had seen, hunger gnawed at his stomach. He looked at Jenna's constant pained movements, her blood, her pale face, and he left the room to find the kitchen.
Jack felt dizzy. He leaned against the worktop and pressed his hands to the surface, casting prints in dust. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and tried to see past what had happened. But all he could see was red. It's much worse than we ever thought it could be, he thought. So much worse.
“Is it a war?” Emily said quietly. She'd crept in behind him, and Jack turned and hugged her to him, resting his chin on top of her head.
“I think so,” he said. “And I'm not sure anymore that we've done the right thing. Jenna might be…” He gasped, unable to say the word. “And Lucy-Anne's gone, none of us know where, none of us have any idea what's happened to her, who's got her, where she is…” He cursed, and this time it was Emily's turn to hold him. “I just can't believe it's all gone so bad like this!” he growled, and every word hammered the guilt deeper.
“It's not your fault,” Emily said. “It's their fault.” Them, they, their, he and his friends had used those words so much to signify the devious government and military that perpetuated the myth of a dead, toxic London, and Jack had never been sure that Emily knew exactly who or what they were. Now he was sure, and he felt ashamed at ever doubting her.
“I don't want any more people to die,” he said.
“Mum and Dad?” Emily asked quietly.
“They're alive, Emily.”
She pulled back and looked him in the eye, picking up on his hesitation. “Rosemary told you?”
“Yeah. Mum's a healer, like her.”
“And Dad?” she asked, his beautiful little sister, wide-eyed and confused.
“Alive, but she doesn't know him.” He couldn't tell her yet. There was so much he didn't even know himself.
“Then that's good, isn't it?”
“Yeah, Ems, it's good.”
“Don't call me Ems, Tobes.”
“Whatcha gonna do about it?”
Emily hugged him again, and they stood together in the kitchen of a dead stranger's house.
They looked around for some food, but there was nothing here to eat. If Rosemary and some of her friends used this as a safe house, they certainly didn't keep it stocked. They did find some bottled water, however, and they all swigged down most of a bottle each. Sparky gently lifted Jenna's head, while Emily poured some into her mouth, but it dribbled out when she winced in pain, soaking her neck and the sofa beneath her.
“We can't let this happen,” Sparky said. “It's not fair.”
“Rosemary will do her best,” Jack said.
“We need to do our best, too. We've lost Lucy-Anne, Jack. We just let her go, get lost, and we left her back there.”
“We didn't have a choice.” He could see that Sparky understood, but Jack felt impotent and helpless. “You do know that, don't you? We could have-”
“She could be dead, Jack.”
“We could have all been killed in there, and no one would ever know.”
“Yeah,” Sparky sighed. “No one's ever going to know about Stephen. How he died, where. Why. Even Mum and Dad won't give a shit, if I ever get out and manage to tell them. They won't believe me, or they won't care. He died much longer ago for them than for me.”
“He knew you were a good brother, mate.”
“You think so?”
“Definitely.” Jack sat in an armchair across from the sofa, looking at their dying friend.
“She won't be long,” Emily said.
“She can't be.” Sparky was still holding Jenna's hand.