“Our talents are getting stronger all the time,” Rosemary said. “And that's scaring them. Their efforts to capture us are speeding up, and sometimes becoming more desperate.”
“So there we were,” Ruben continued, “cut off from the outside world, many of us separated from families outside or…bereaved.” He looked away, remembering someone Jack could never know.
“I'm sorry.”
Ruben shrugged. “There's been so much loss that, in a way, personal grief is even more tragic. Anyway…we tried. A group of us got together, and when the Choppers next sent in their armoured column we attacked them. Fire bombs, a few guns we'd found lying around, homemade explosives. And Peter. Remember Peter?”
Rosemary smiled, and Jack could tell that more sadness was yet to come.
“Peter was a young boy, a couple of years younger than you, who could direct bursts of energy from his mind. It cooked electrical circuits, blew computer chips. He called it his Mind Blower. He helped us, trying to take out the armoured vehicles’ navigational computers and communications. And it worked. But only until they shot him.”
“The attack went on,” Rosemary said, “and when they left we thought we'd driven them away.”
“Until the next morning,” Ruben whispered. “Gordon found him. You met Gordon. And I'm not sad that Gordon's gone now, because he never could really come to terms with what they'd done to Peter.”
Rosemary glanced at Emily.
“She's my sister,” Jack said. “She needs to know what we know.”
“Okay,” she said. “Gordon found Peter crucified on the front fa?ade of Harrods. They'd used nail guns to pin him to the wall. Arms, legs, feet. Gordon was sure he must have still been alive when they did it, dying from his gunshot wound, because there was so much blood.”
“They took his brain,” Ruben said. “Cut off the top of his head and just…took it.”
“A warning?” Sparky asked.
Ruben snorted. “Yes, right. Just to tell us how little we mean to them as living things, but as carriers of all these new gifts…we're priceless.”
“So now most of us run, like you said, Sparky.” Rosemary nodded. “We run, and we hide, alone or in small groups. Trying to avoid the Choppers because we know what they do with those of us they capture.”
“You told me you wanted exposure,” Jack said. “That if we came in, saw everything, took some pictures and film, we could go back out and blow it all wide open.”
“There's no way they'd allow that,” Ruben said.
“But we have to try!”
Rosemary shook her head. “They can cover up what's happened here from the rest of the world. They can hide the existence of the new talents created on Doomsday—an evolved humanity, how incredible!—and the fact that those talents are growing every day. They can do all that, and keep the rest of the country ignorant of the truth, so do you really think a few pictures and bits of film will be believed?”
“Get them to the right places, sure,” Sparky said.
“Do you believe everything you see on TV?” Rosemary asked.
“’Course not. Load of bullshit.”
“That's my point.”
“But…” Jack shook his head, angered by the Irregulars’ lack of faith and belief in what was right, but unable to see a way through. “There's hope,” he said. “You have to hang onto that.”
“I lost it long ago,” Rosemary replied. “At least, until we found out about you. Because the only hope for the people left alive in London—several thousand of us, perhaps—and the powers we have, is for all of us to unite and fight our way out.”
Sparky laughed. “You're joking, right? Get together, you and all those Superior superhero wannabes, and start a war?”
“Not start a war,” the woman replied. “Finish one.”
“And can you give us any alternative?” Ruben asked.
“Not off the cuff, but I can tell you it'll end up with them killing you all,” Sparky said.
“And you want me to go to my father, this Reaper you talk about, and persuade him to do this?” Jack asked.
“In a nutshell,” Rosemary said. “We tried, and he turned us down. You're our last hope.”