Reaper blinked a few times, frowning. Then he slammed the bottle down on the table. “So?”
“Just water,” Jack said. Reaper lobbed him a bottle and he caught it one-handed.
“I'm not surprised you came back,” Reaper said. “I'm trouble. You seem to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame.”
“Fleeter been reporting back to you?”
Reaper nodded.
“Worried about me?”
“No. You interest Miller, and he interests me.”
“He's not dead?”
Reaper smiled, and it was horrible. “Oh, I didn't kill him. He won't forget me in a hurry, though.”
“So this is a war room,” Jack said.
“Just somewhere to hide away,” Reaper said. He took another drink of whiskey, and when Jack blinked he lived another memory. But he did not want to push just yet. Reaper was canny, and he might suspect Jack of doing something.
“But the map, the flags. Chopper locations?”
Reaper regarded him for a while, looking him up and down as if he'd never seen him before. It made Jack uncomfortable; a father should know his son so well. “It's a guerrilla war,” he said. “Good to keep track of things.”
“So if you know where all the Choppers are, why not kill them all?” Jack asked. The idea of it was reprehensible, but he was trying to understand the man his father had become. Or the thing.
“Wendy's talent only goes so far,” he said.
“Wendy's the woman working the table out there,” Jack said. “She doesn't look like the rest of you. Fleeter. Puppeteer. That shadow guy was out in the tunnels, and I'll bet Scryer isn't that far away.”
Reaper gave nothing away.
“Wendy's not a Superior like you, is she? She doesn't think of herself as one anyway.”
“She does, actually,” Reaper said, leaning back against the table and smiling. “She quickly tired of wandering London, aimless and alone. Sometimes the Irregulars get together in pairs or small groups, but mostly they're just surviving. Not moving on. Evolving.”
“Is that what you're doing?” Jack waved one hand at their surroundings.
“We're making plans,” Reaper said.
“For what?”
“And why would you need to know that?” Reaper took another drink. This was not the man Jack had expected to find. His father had enjoyed a drink, yes, but Reaper had seemed to be someone different, projecting a disinterest in normal human things. He called himself Superior, yet here he was taking to the bottle.
“Because I need your help,” Jack said. “They have Emily and Mum at Camp H.”
“Or so Miller told you.”
“You think they're somewhere else?”
Reaper barked a loud, mocking laugh. “I don't give a damn where they are, boy! But you can trust Miller as far as you can throw him.”
That might be a very long way, Jack thought, because there was a universe inside he had yet to explore. But for now he was enveloped with one power, and he felt it haunting his memory like a name on the tip of his tongue. Soon he would push it to the fore again.
“Here's why I really came back,” Jack said. He sat down on one of the folding chairs and stared at his father, trying to see the man he loved. Even his physical features seemed to have changed—hardening, growing grimmer. “The Choppers have Mum and Emily prisoner. They're at Camp H. I have to rescue them, and for that I need your help.”
Reaper did not even respond. He snorted a soft laugh and took another drink.
“While we're there, we release everyone else they're holding. And they've got the girl. The Irregular who works for them, spotting any large groups moving around London.”
Reaper hid his surprise well at how much Jack knew. He snorted a laugh again, but Jack saw through the fa?ade, and for a flicker his father was there before him. His eyes opened a little wider, and he scratched at one ear.
“You could stop her,” Jack said. “That'd give you London.”
“I have London,” Reaper said. His voice was quiet, but loaded with the awful potential of his murderous power. One growl and he'll crush me and this chair into a bloody metal mass, Jack thought.