“Dad,” Jack said. “Reaper. Please! He has Mum and Emily.”
“I don't know those names,” the Superior said, but this time he did not meet Jack's gaze.
“But I do,” Jack said. “And whether you recognise them anymore or not, you wouldn't kill your own wife and daughter, would you? After everything that's happened?”
Reaper stared at Miller, who stared at Jack. Jack shivered. A rook cried out and Lucy-Anne shifted slightly, a bird on her head fluttering away as though called somewhere else.
“Please, Dad,” Jack said, lifting his voice above the roar of the spreading flames. The air was redolent with the stench of cooking flesh, and he felt sick. But he had not come this far to lose everything, and everything now rested on his father's shoulders.
On Reaper's shoulders.
“Those two,” Reaper said quietly, and a blink later the soldiers either side of Miller both slumped to the ground with knives protruding from their throats. One of them gurgled and clutched at the blade with his good arm, but the blind Superior's aim had been true, and they died quickly.
Miller gasped and stood up, staring defiantly into Reaper's eyes.
“Ready?” Reaper said, grinning. Miller did not respond.
“You're a monster,” Jack hissed. “A beast, worse than him, worse than all the Choppers. You can save people who love you, here and now. But what do you choose, Dad?”
His father did not react. Jack felt movement around him, and he knew that Shade was somewhere close by, ready to strike.
“Reaper! What a name. Who chose that? You should be wearing your underpants on the outside and have a good reserve of one-liners.” Jack snorted. “You're dressed in black, I'll give you that.”
“Don't mock me, child!” his father cried, and Jack gasped at the effect of his father's voice. It struck him like something solid, knocking air from his lungs and sweeping his legs from beneath him. Jack hit the ground on one arm, managing not to cry out at the sudden pain.
But Reaper was frowning at him now, and there was something going on in his mind other than violence. Jack could see it. He could sense it. And as he closed his eyes, he felt his father's confusion as past struggled with present, to define the future.
He felt it.
I can feel what he's thinking! Jack thought, and the taste of the Nomad's finger flooded his mouth. But now was no time for wonder.
“Your friends?” Reaper asked, nodding at Sparky and Jenna.
“Yes. My friends.”
“Ten minutes.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked, standing slowly.
“You have ten minutes. I'll wait here with my friend Miller, chat to him, perhaps try and persuade him to tell me a few things I've been wondering about for some time. And in ten minutes I'll let him go. By then his people will be coming for him, and they'll be after you. All of them.” He nodded at the Chopper, looking him up and down like a cut of meat. “And look at him. He's hungry for you.”
“We think Nomad touched him,” Miller whispered. He looked at Jack, and Jack could taste the Nomad, and feel the excitement in the Chopper's mind as if it were his own. He sees something in me.
“There is no Nomad,” Reaper said.
“You of all people—”
“She's a myth!” Reaper whispered, a terrible sound.
“I lured you in,” Miller said to Jack. “That nice picture of your mother?” He feigned taking a photograph. “And I thought you would be enough, but now that you've been touched by her…” He was amazed, and terrified, and there was suddenly so much more Jack needed to know.
Jack ran his tongue around his mouth. And deep inside he could feel a dreadful, wonderful change already beginning.
“Dad, please will you—”
Reaper glared at him, and there wasn't a hint of anything other than malice in his eyes. “Nine minutes, fifty seconds.”
“You're not my father,” Jack said, and Reaper only shrugged.
“Come on, Jack,” Jenna said.