“But you don't believe he'll even care.”
“Not anymore.” She shook her head, wretched, tortured. “Our last hope is almost hopeless.”
Jack sat back against the wall and sighed. He looked at the ceiling and saw a fine network of webs, and in the corner sat a small, fat spider. It was waiting for unwary flies to become caught in its net. And if a dozen flies ganged up on it, the result would simply be a fatter spider.
“So how did you find out about Jack and Emily?” Sparky asked. “Someone with a people radar? Some bloke who can sniff paternal genes across hundreds of miles?”
“No,” Rosemary said, “their mother told me about them.”
“My mother,” Jack said, and he smiled. He thought of Sparky immediately and felt bad, but his friend was looking down at Jenna's face. Now that he knew his parents were still alive, the idea of exposing the lies of the Toxic City seemed even more pressing. Because if he had discovered they were alive only to lose them again—either to the Choppers, or if his father disowned them—Jack did not think he could mourn a second time.
“I need to see her first,” he said. “You can take me down to where she is?”
“Tomorrow,” Rosemary said, her face flushed. “So you'll do it? You'll go to Reaper?”
“I'll go to my father, yes. How will you find him?”
“He's not difficult to find.”
“Then why don't the Choppers come and take him?” Emily asked.
“They've tried,” Rosemary replied. “Often. None of them ever come back.”
My dad's a killer, Jack thought, but the idea was not as reprehensible as it should have been. Perhaps in his mind, he was already viewing his father as a radically changed man. It had been two years, and when they met they would be strangers. Maybe that was the best way for whatever future there was between them to begin.
“Thank you,” Ruben said, his gratitude heartfelt.
“And I'm sorry for…” Rosemary said, but she trailed off.
“All the lies?” Sparky suggested.
Jack laughed. “We're used to them. Didn't you know it's now lies that run the world?”
As the sun settled red across the London rooftops, they heard the sound of a wolf's howl in the distance.
“Is that really what I think it is?” Sparky asked.
“I saw one once,” Rosemary said. She was sitting on the small sofa beside Ruben, eating tinned tomatoes from a large bowl. She'd fetched the food from a house further along the street, saying that keeping safe houses well stocked would take away the safety. “Hyde Park, about a year ago. That's a wild place now. The trees and bushes have gone mad, the grasses come up to your knees, and the first of the mass graves is there. Lots of it was dug up by wild dogs and other carrion things just after the authorities withdrew from London, so there are bones scattered everywhere. And I found somewhere where the bones had been arranged around a copse of trees like some sort of…symbol. I went closer to the bushes, and a wolf came out. It was beautiful. So powerful, so of nature, that I felt…insignificant. Here we are, humans being inhumane as we always have done, and the wolf survives.” She nodded, staring at the wall opposite and seeing into her past.
“Wolves placed the bones?” Sparky asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. I'm more inclined to think it was some sort of offering or worship of the pack.”
“By people?”
“By people. There are some…you haven't met or seen any yet, but Jack, when I take you down to your mother you'll see some of the people she looks after. Mad. Worse than mad…an unnatural insanity, because what happened to us is entirely man-made. And some people haven't been able to handle the talents they've developed.”
“And Mum heals them?”
“She looks after them. They can't be healed because there's nothing wrong with them. It's just that their bodies and minds can never accept the sudden change.”