As they walked through the twilit streets of a changed, ruined London, Jack started to experiment with the universe of possibilities he had been given. Each time he probed in towards the sparks of potential inside he tasted Nomad's finger on his tongue. It was an exotic, scary taste, and he thought perhaps he might become addicted.
Fleeter led the way, incongruous with her blood-spattered hands and party dress. Sparky and Jenna followed her, walking close together. Jack brought up the rear. He had not asked Fleeter where they were going. He and his friends were exhausted—since entering London they had been pushed from one trial to another, with barely any time to rest—and he craved some peace. If Fleeter kept her words to take them to Reaper, perhaps they would find some.
Or maybe everything would get worse.
They were walking along a narrow residential street. Dark windows observed their progress, and Jack grasped a spark, letting it seed in his mind and grow into something amazing. He probed towards one house and felt his way inside, tasting the happiness that had once dwelled there. He heard children laughing, adults loving, a dog barking as it played with a young boy, and the chiming of a music box in a little girl's pink room. He smiled…but then felt suddenly queasy when the reality of that house now hit home. The parents sat dead and decomposed in the living room, and the children were not there at all. The family had died apart.
Wiping tears from his eyes, Jack snatched at something else.
His fingers tingled. Sparks jumped beneath his fingernails, lightening his quicks and shadowing the bones of his hands against red flesh. He touched one of the cars still parked neatly along the kerb, and the sizzle of electricity snapped at the metal chassis, cracking the windscreen and drawing smoke from the half-flat tyres.
Sparky and Jenna jumped and span around, eyes wide. Seeing what he was doing did nothing to lessen their shock. Lightning danced across the car's roof and bonnet, and illuminated the dank insides.
“Come on,” Fleeter said, feigning boredom. But he saw the interest even in her eyes.
Jack snapped his fingers and sparks jumped from them, fading in the air around his head. Sparky and Jenna were watching, and he smiled. They smiled back, but their uncertainty was clear.
As they walked, he tried to dip in to other abilities. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. He heard his friends’ heartbeats from a dozen paces away, but when he tried to lure a kestrel down from above the bird ignored him. He sensed an Irregular watching them from behind a dusty window, felt the woman's sadness and fear, and he could almost taste the sickness settling upon her. But when he attempted to grasp the star that might enable him to communicate with her—to tell her, without speaking, that he promised to do what he could to help—he failed. Feedback squealed in his own mind, voice distorted and pained.
Uncertainties haunted him. Incredible powers were his, but so too was doubt, and a fear that when the time came to access these powers to save his friends, or himself, he would fail. The vast scope of potential within him was growing, but perhaps he could not move fast enough to keep up.
Jack jogged past his friends until he walked level with Fleeter.
“So where are we going?” he asked.
“To Reaper, just as you asked.”
“You're sure? You're not taking us somewhere else, like…a trap. Trick us, lock us away for a while?”
“You don't trust me?” she asked.
Jack said nothing. He wasn't sure of the answer.
Fleeter chuckled. “You'd just pick the lock anyway. Or melt it, snap it, or make it not there.”
“I don't know,” he said.
“I've never seen anyone like you,” she said, but she trailed off, moving quickly ahead.
“But you've heard about someone like me,” he said. “Nomad.”
Fleeter gave no sign that she'd heard. At the road junction she turned left, then cut a quick right through an alleyway.
“Where are we going?” Jack asked again.
“Trust me,” Fleeter said.
“I don't trust her as far as I could throw her,” Sparky said aloud, and Jenna laughed.
“I don't think you'd ever get close enough to try.”
“You two okay?” Jack asked.
“Yeah,” Jenna said.