“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.”