“No, baby. He's changed much more than anyone else I know, or have heard about. I saw Reaper once, from a distance, and though I recognised him, I also knew he was someone else. And everything they say about him…” She frowned and looked away.
“You're still wearing the locket he bought you,” Jack said.
His mother smiled sadly and fingered the jewellery. “Of course. My husband gave me this, and I loved him very much.”
“Rosemary left London to get me so that I could speak to Dad. Persuade him to join his Superiors with everyone else and fight their way out of London.”
His mother seemed genuinely shocked, and she sat back and stared up at the ceiling for a while. “Everyone's so desperate,” she said. “It's tragic. There's so much good in what's left of this place, but no hope at all.”
“I'll speak to him. I've already said I would, but I insisted on coming to you first.”
“I've no hope left for him, Jack. I've heard about the things he's done. He's very, very dangerous now. You understand? He's…” she trailed off again.
“He's killed people.”
“I cure, he kills.” She was going to ask him not to go, he knew that. The request would come soon. But the more his mother betrayed loss of hope for his father, the more determined Jack was becoming to talk to him.
“He won't hurt me,” Jack said.
“Your father died when I was lying beside him on that pavement. The man you might find, Reaper, is someone else. Please, son, don't—”
“Mum.” He noticed that Emily was asleep now, and he moved closer so that he could hug them both together. “I've got to try. You see that? I've spent two years trying to find my way here. I can't just abandon him now.”
“The Choppers, the soldiers, there's just no way out for any of us.”
“It's not for anyone else I'll be doing it,” he said. “It's for us: you, Emily, me. We need him. I need him. I need my dad.”
“He's not your dad anymore,” she said quietly. Then she sighed, put her arm around him, and hugged him back. The three of them sat there for a while, saying no more, content just to be with each other. Jack was overjoyed. But the joy was shadowed by the knowledge of what he had to do next and the terrible fear that he might fail.
Sparky and Jenna came down, and Jack introduced his mother to them as Susan. He told her they were his best friends.
Rosemary was with them, and when the women spoke it was with a reserve that perhaps had not been there before. That was not Jack's fault. And truly, he did not care. Rosemary had helped them and healed them when it was needed, but she had also led them willingly into danger and between the literal jaws of death. And the more he thought about how things had worked out so far, the more he believed she had used them all.
Jack took a moment to look around the hospital. After a few minutes, his mother finished talking with Rosemary and came to join him. Hidden away in the curtained area were several terribly sick people, and his mother said she had no idea what ailed them. Her gift was healing, but only physical alterations responded to her particular touch—wounds, cuts, and broken bones. Rosemary was slightly different in that she could also sense a sickness inside and, if it was something out of place, or something that should not be there, heal it. She had taken cancers from people, fixed faulty heart valves. But neither woman could combat the invisibly small invaders of infection.
“So aren't these all Irregulars?” he asked.
“Yes. Everyone in London now is an Irregular, apart from the Choppers and those in their employ. But they came in after Doomsday. Those of us who survived the Evolve virus…yes, all changed.”
“So what do they do?”
His mother pointed at an old man on a bed close to them. “Richard was a Pleader. In the right conditions, he could exert his will and desires on the chaos around us, and coax it in a certain direction.”
“Change the future?”
“In small leaps, and on a very small scale. But no more. Whatever he has is killing him.” She sounded very sad. “Over there, that big lady, she had hearing better than a dog's. Massive audio range. She's deaf, now.”