“So, yes, it's safe,” Rosemary said, sighing sadly. “I think we should stay here tonight, give Jenna a chance to get her strength back.”
“But you've cured her,” Emily said. “Why can't we just go and find Lucy-Anne, then look for my mum and dad.”
Rosemary and Ruben swapped glances, and Jack saw their loaded look.
“What?” he asked.
“I've cured her, but she's tired from what she's been through,” Ruben said. “She needs a rest.”
“Not that,” Jack said. “There's something else, isn't there?”
“Your parents,” Ruben said. “Rosemary told me who you are, though I wasn't aware she'd gone out to get you.”
“Do you really want her to hear this?” Rosemary said, nodding at Emily.
Jack went to say something, but Emily beat him to it. “I'm older than I look.” She stood, left the sofa, and sat beside Jack on the floor.
“Okay then,” the healer said. “But you're not going to like it.”
“Tell me something new,” Jack said.
Sparky laughed softly. “The world's gone to shit.”
Rosemary started talking.
She told them all about Reaper. Emily glared at Jack.
“She only mentioned it just before she went,” he said. “I'd have told you.”
Her glare softened. “He's alive. Anything else doesn't really matter right now.”
“I'm afraid it does matter,” Ruben said. “Reaper is like those Superiors you met at the hotel, only much worse. He barely acknowledges that we exist, and as for outsiders…I've no idea how he'll react. He might just kill you, I suppose.”
“But he's our father,” Jack said.
Rosemary shook her head slowly. “Jack, Emily, his time as your father ended two years ago. The virus Evolve altered his mind, just as it altered the minds of everyone else in London it didn't kill. But with him and the Superiors, it changed so much more. He's a different man now. He'll know you, perhaps, but that might not mean anything. Although we hope…” She trailed off and looked across at Jenna, lying peacefully asleep with her head resting on Sparky's thigh.
“You never came looking for her dad, did you?” Jack asked. “You obviously knew about what he'd done, and what he'd had done to him. But you came looking for me and Emily.”
“Yes,” Rosemary said. “Because of Reaper, and because of what you might be able to make him do.”
“But you're telling me I can't make him do anything! He'll barely know us, that's the impression you're giving. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“He's my daddy,” Emily said, and Jack could see that the raised voices were upsetting her. But this was something that he could not leave alone: another lie, another deception, and now he needed to know the truth. Lucy-Anne was gone, Jenna had almost been killed, and the time for being blind was over.
“We're desperate,” Ruben said, and the fat man looked suddenly vulnerable and hopeless. “The Choppers pick us off the streets one by one, take us away, and cut us up to…to look for what makes us what we are. We're just lab rats to them, not humans. Sometimes they capture a Superior, but usually it's us Irregulars.”
“Because the Superiors put up more of a fight?” Jack asked.
“Yes, because they're able to,” Rosemary said. “Many of us have powers that are benevolent by their very nature. Mine, Ruben's. But the Superiors…well, you've seen what some of them can do. And there are more.”
“So have you tried to hook up with them?” Sparky asked. It seemed so obvious to him. “Join forces to take on the Choppers? From what I've seen round here so far, you lot just hide out in little groups or alone, sneak around at night like bloody rats trying not to get trapped. Get active, not passive.”
“We tried fighting back on our own, first of all,” Ruben said. “Six months after Doomsday, all of us still trying to come to terms with what had happened to London, what had happened, and was still happening to us—”
“Still happening?” Jack cut in.