Hurrying through the streets towards Trafalgar Square once more, Jack felt the weight of responsibility press down on him. He'd seen the way Jenna had been glancing at him, and he knew what she would have to ask again soon: Why can't you warn everyone? And he was trying. He truly was. Now that he knew the mystery of that huge red star he was more at peace cruising his internal universe of potential. But that didn't mean he was no longer afraid of it. Perhaps he even feared it more.
He moved from here to there, acknowledging powers he had already tapped, searching for those that might help him now. He discovered amazing things—the ability to implant false memories; cold breath that could freeze; a touch that could turn any solid into a liquid, and then a gas, without heat—but there was nothing to communicate en masse to everyone left in London. The more he looked, the more hopeless it seemed.
Jack wished everything was the way it had been before coming to London.
He thought of Camp Truth, their place in the woods where he, Lucy-Anne, Sparky, Jenna, and sometimes his sister Emily used to gather, collecting scraps of information about London left to them by similarly minded individuals. They'd sit there for long hours, talk, make plans, and then go home to the respective houses to dream away another night. Sparky would work on the old Ford Capri that reminded him so much of his brother, his parents ghosts of what they had once been. Jenna would try to talk to her father, but he was cold now, changed by whatever had been done to him. Lucy-Anne went from home to home, never settling because dreams of her parents and brother would not let her. And Jack would return home to look after his sister Emily. There was help for orphaned families, but there could not be homes for all of them. Doomsday had made too many. So Jack and Emily lived in the home they had shared with their parents, and it was only since leaving that Jack realised that it had really been Emily looking after him.
He could wish for those simpler times, but he did not really want them. Not now he had found his mother and she had escaped London.
And not with what he had now. A curse, perhaps. But some of the things he could do…
“I can't,” he said, answering no one in particular. But they all seemed to know what he meant. “I'm looking. But there are limits. It's still confusing.”
“Maybe we need to be a bit more creative,” Sparky said.
“What do you mean?” Rhali asked.
“Dunno. Lateral thinking.”
“So let's think laterally while we walk,” Jenna said.
Fifteen minutes later they heard motors and ducked into a pub doorway. Jenna tried the handle—locked—and Jack grasped it, eyelids drooping as he delved inside, and he heard the lock's tumblers rolling and clicking. He pulled the handle and the door fell open. They tumbled inside. Sparky shut the door gently, then peered through a dusty window as the engines drew closer.
“You picked the lock with your fingers,” Rhali said. “That's pretty amazing.”
Jack smiled, blew on his nails, polished them on his jacket.
“Four Land Rovers,” Sparky said from the window. They all ducked down and fell motionless. “Choppers. Couple of them are sitting on the Rovers’ roofs. Got rifles. They look…odd.”
“Odd how?” Jack asked. The vehicles passed by without slowing, and Sparky waited until the engines were fading before answering.
“Like they haven't washed in a while. Dishevelled. You know?”
“Smelly, like you,” Jenna said.
“Yeah,” Sparky replied. He looked troubled.
“Desperate,” Rhali said. Jack realised that she was hunkered down beneath a table, shivering, and he sat beside her. Her eyes were wide and fearful.
“They've gone,” he said softly.