A rustle through the hidden loudspeaker, and then two Choppers jogged from different directions towards the doorway Jack and Fleeter had exited moments before. But they did not need to check. As they approached, a woman crawled into sight in the open doorway. She was on her hands and knees, bloodied head nodding slowly up and down, hair matted with gore. A high, soft keening came from her mouth, but Jack could not pity her.
“We'll kill them,” Miller said. Faceless, voice crackling and distorted through speakers, he was more inhuman than ever. “The ones you want are still alive, but we'll kill them the moment something happens. One of you moves, one of you even blinks, and they die.”
“We can be on you in less than a blink, Miller,” Reaper said. His voice was low and casual, but it echoed from metal walls, and grit vibrated across the ground. Jack could already hear the fury in his father's voice. Good, he thought, elated. Good! He is here to help. He does want Mum and Emily.
The girl in Jack's arms opened her eyes. “Jamie?” she said.
“No, I'm not Jamie. My name's Jack.”
The girl blinked bloodily, slowly raised a weak hand and wiped at her eyes. She looked at Jack for a few seconds, so sad, so soulful. His heart sank. He could have fallen in love with those eyes in an instant. “Oh,” she said. “You're not Jamie.”
He set her down, but kept an arm around her shoulder. Leaning against him for support, she felt dreadfully cold and weak.
“Every one of you,” Jack said. “Every one of you, Miller! You'll be shooting at shadows, strangled by hands you can't see, seeing things you can't imagine. You think you know what the Irregulars can do, just because you've sliced them up and taken samples of their brains? You think you have even an inkling of what the Superiors can do, because you lose Choppers to them every week? Do you…do you have any idea what I can do?” He felt the others watching him—his friends, in fear; the Irregulars, nervous and yet ready to fight. And his father, with what might have been respect.
The scene fell almost silent. Hidden speakers crackled with Miller's doubt. Choppers stood tensed, uncertain, glancing down at their dropped weapons. Jack, Reaper, and the others faced them. And the girl leaned against Jack, starting to shiver with the knowledge that she had been released.
“We're the New,” Jack said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “The fighting stops now. The killing ends here. You, Miller…you're the old. History. The past. And you know how the saying goes.”
Beside him, Sparky chuckled softly then shouted, “Out with the old!”
“And in with the new,” Jenna said.
“You really think we'd stay in London, here, without protection?” Miller said. “Without an insurance policy?” Jack was sure he could detect a note of resignation in the Chopper's voice.
“No good when you're dead,” Reaper shouted.
“No more killing unless we have to, Dad,” Jack said. Reaper did not even glance at his son as he started forward.
Puppeteer moved Choppers aside. Others backed away of their own accord, leaving their weapons where they had fallen. Jack and his friends followed, Breezer with them, and the New moved across Camp H unopposed.
Yet Jack felt no sense of victory. Something was wrong. The girl by his side was a living expression of Miller's inhumanity, and those rooms he had seen in the container buildings, the jars, the smears of blood and chunks of something—of someone—being cleared away….
With all that, could he ever really hope for peace?
As they approached the three joined containers, a door creaked open at the top of a gentle wooden ramp. Miller appeared strapped into a wheelchair, his terribly mutilated legs resting on footplates, his left arm ending in a stump just above his elbow. He looked thin and drawn, corpselike and lessened. Yet it was his smile that shocked Jack the most.
“Like your new chair, Miller,” Reaper said. “Maybe this time I'll take your other arm, and your cock, and one of your eyes. Then how will you—”
Miller started laughing. He tilted his head back and guffawed at the sky, and Sparky and Jenna shot Jack a glance that said everything he was already thinking.
Something terrible was about to happen.
“We need to leave,” Rook said. “Really. Now. We're going the wrong way, Lucy-Anne!”