They moved quickly, descending from the streets and travelling between Underground stations. Twenty minutes later they were a mile from Covent Garden, and they had an hour to wait until their rendezvous with Breezer and Reaper.
They sat on the old station platform, darkness around them made deeper by the flashlights they'd lifted from a station office. None of them felt like eating, and Jack could not shake the notion that they were wasting time. But they could not risk another confrontation with a larger, heavier-armed troop of Choppers.
Time ticked by, the darkness loomed, and they chatted about lighter, happier times.
“One thing,” Jack said to Reaper when they met again that afternoon. “Why did you let Miller live?”
Fleeter accompanied Reaper, and Sparky and Jenna were with Jack, as always. Other small groups of Superiors and Irregulars were moving towards their rendezvous point three miles to the east, from where their assault on the container park would commence. They hoped to leave it to the very last moment before giving away their presence.
Jack had reluctantly admitted that it was Reaper's people who should lead the assault. They were the ones with the most disruptive, destructive powers, and there was no telling how long it would take to find the relevant containers.
“I told you before, he interests me.” Reaper and Jack were in the lead, but it could not be said that they walked together. Even if they were shoulder to shoulder, Reaper's dismissive aura would have meant he walked alone.
“It seems like a strange sort of mercy to me,” Jack said.
“It's not mercy. I have none for Choppers, and less so for the monster who leads them.”
“They why? You had him kneeling before you, defenceless. Yet you let him live, and allowed him to pursue me and my friends.”
“I knew he'd never catch you,” Reaper said.
“What?”
Reaper glanced over at Jack, and a ghost of something passed from his face, leaving only his brutal expression behind. What the hell was that? Jack thought. It sounded for a moment like he cared.
“Miller is a man obsessed,” Reaper said. “London is his playground, and Irregulars are his test subjects. You know all that. He yearns to get his hands on Superiors, too. See how different we are.” Reaper tapped his head.
“He's never caught one of yours?”
“Some. They haven't been seen since.”
“Probably dead, then,” Jack said coldly.
Reaper shrugged as if unconcerned. “As to why I left him alive? London is much more my playground than his. And he is one of my toys. Get rid of Miller, and things around here won't be as…exciting.”
“You mean that,” Jack said. “You really mean it.” Reaper walked on ahead and Fleeter followed, walking close to the tall man in black. She touched his arm, slid her hand down, and for the briefest moment they entwined fingers. Then Reaper shook her off, and Fleeter hung back to let him walk ahead.
Jack looked away. That was his father, with another woman. A deep sadness engulfed him, for his mother and Emily, and also because he was not surprised. Reaper projected himself as a heartless, superior man, but he drank whiskey like water, and now it appeared he and Fleeter might be an item. The more Jack saw brief flashes of his father in Reaper's expression and demeanour, the greater the distance seemed between them.
“What about this time?” Jack asked. “Will you kill him now?”
“That's down to Miller,” Reaper said without turning around. “It always is.”
They walked on, following the course of the Thames. Fleeter flipped now and then to scout their way ahead, and once she told them to change direction and divert around the charred remains of a school. She did not say why, and Jack and his friends did not ask.