“This changes everything,” Kian piped up, looking at me like I’d grown an extra head. “That’s why they made everything harder for you. You’re not limited the same way everyone else is.”

  “We don’t know that. We don’t know what advantages the other Champions have.”

  “Does it matter? Sure, you can’t take them on just yet, but if you can pick any ability and enhancement, then we just need to ensure you level up as quick as possible. You’ll be unstoppable.”

  “For now,” Charlotte chimed in, looking at her boyfriend, “at the lower levels, but River’s right – we don’t know what the others can do.” She turned to me. “But Kian’s also right. We need to help you get stronger asap. With this information, it would be better to…” she didn’t want to finish the sentence.

  Carmen did instead. “…hunt and kill?”

  “Yes. We need to find mobs to kill.”

  I didn’t really have much that I wanted to say. I wasn’t the sort that always needed to have something to say, but I had already concluded what Charlotte had said. Let’s face it. I’d somehow stumbled into the position I was in, and I was only still alive because I couldn’t die. At least, not when I was in control of the reset. But sooner or later, stronger opposition would find me. They’d kill me.

  And that included others on Earth. I was under no illusions that every single person on the planet would want to protect me. There were always those rogue elements. I already knew of two. Those types wouldn’t care about screwing the world over, as long as they got theirs. If they became strong enough, along with the other world’s Champions, I would be in more danger than I could handle.

  The best thing was…to kill. In a way, I wasn’t too bothered. Like the wolves earlier, it was kill or be killed. Even with Darren and Michelle, the principle applied. But now, the best course of action would be to seek mobs out to kill. There was a part of me that was slightly uncomfortable with the notion. And then there was a part of me that wasn’t surprised. That was what the USP was at the end of the day. A universal battle royale. Sure, it was mobs now, but sooner or later, it would be other people. Or whatever races the other worlds were. I quickly glanced around my friends. We would all need to get used to the idea. Might as well get a head start.

  “Let’s stick with the plan for now. Head for the military. We’ll still need their help to defend, but we’ll find the time and space to level up. We’re gonna make a slight detour to my place first though.”

  “The flat? Why do you need to go back there?” Charlotte asked.

  “Not the flat. My parent’s place.”

  All three of them looked me in the eyes.

  “Why?” Kian asked. Of the three, he was the one who really knew how much I hated my brother and father. It was a weird dichotomy. I could be concerned with how much I would need to kill but still want death upon people that most others would suggest should always be loved. But I knew firsthand that the bonds of blood could be far more dangerous than any others. There was a loyalty to blood that allowed the cruellest of crimes to go undetected. Everyone else saw a happy family, never once suspecting what happened behind closed doors.

  And yet, I’d realised that I couldn’t do what needed to be done to those two. Not yet. But I still wanted to check on them. Was it some lingering effect of the familial bond? Was I wanting to know if they were okay? Or if they were dead? I couldn’t tell, but either way, I needed to know.

  Maybe my thoughts showed in my face, because Carmen reached out and held my hand in hers and gave it a little squeeze. I smiled at her and looked at Kian. “I just need to know.”

  He nodded at me. “Charlotte, you follow us.” He walked around to the side of his car and spoke with Kaelyn, who made her way back to Charlotte’s car, then he looked at us. “Well, come on. Don’t got all day.” Then he slid into the back of his car. Charlotte walked back to hers, as Carmen and I got back into ours.

  As we set off again, the sky lightening a little as the night approached its last hour, Kian spoke from the back. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  I glanced over my shoulder from the passenger seat. “I’m not planning to.”

  “Why do you even need to go? What is it you’re hoping to find?”

  I remained silent as I thought about it some. I wasn’t one to become sad and solemn and melancholic. It wasn’t like I was hoping for any sort of reconciliation with them. But I guess it was like that best friend from high school that you fell out with. That you might find yourself thinking about once in a while. And then you get an opportunity to find out what they’re doing now.

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  It has nothing to do with you, and you almost couldn’t care less, but you just needed to know. Knowing – especially if it was a really bad fall out – how they’re doing now might bring some peace so those odd moments when you find yourself thinking of them would go away. Or at the very least, at least you’d find comfort in knowing things had turned out exactly as you’d hoped for them. Yeah, I wasn’t above pettiness or cruelty. Not for those two. I knew what I hoped to find, so that I never needed to think about them again. “I guess some sort of peace.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find peace, bro.”

  “How long has it been since you saw them?” Carmen asked.

  “Ten years since I’ve been home. Three years since I stopped talking to them.”

  “You always told me you’d stopped speaking to them before we met.”

  “I didn’t really want to talk about them.”

  She didn’t press it as she concentrated on the road ahead. I would need to sit down with her one day. Have those conversations we needed to have. Her infidelity. My gambling. My mother.

  I won’t lie. That’s what made it work so well with her. Despite the obvious problems, and the secrets we kept, we never did fall out over them. The odd argument here and there, but nothing major. We kind of just accepted that sometimes we did things that couldn’t be explained and had no justification. Wasn’t that what love was? Loving someone despite those things. Or maybe that was just my warped understanding of love. Because that was the kind of love I’d ever known.

  As we got deeper into London, we could see why people were trying to evacuate. We were on the western side of the city, going past Uxbridge and Northolt – quieter, leafy suburbs within the boundaries of Greater London. The fires that had broken out the previous night seemed to have multiplied, distant smoke drifting on the horizon in all directions.

  Dawn was breaking as Carmen pulled off the A road we were on, heading towards my parents place, and that’s when the damage was apparent to the homes and buildings we went past. The streets were in chaos, people still trying to grab what they could salvage and get out of the city. Police, fire, ambulance doing what they could, but I could see in their faces that they would rather be anywhere but here.

  Here and there were the dead carcasses of various creatures, large and small. There weren’t just things we recognised – albiet, evolved – like rabbit-sized flies and mosquitoes but I saw rock-like beings, shattered arms or legs scattered across the road, Carmen doing her best to weave in between them. There was a large black and brown being, all jagged edges with wisps of fire and smoke, resting against the corner of a three-storey building. A bed of sunflowers that had sprouted in the middle of a chain of high-street shops. The roads themselves were in a state of disrepair, the tarmac pulled up or cracked, the SUV bouncing as Carmen guided it over the humps. There were other cars around, but we were the only ones headed in the wrong direction.

  I also noticed military personnel had been deployed to help with the evacuations. A soldier, one hand on his weapon, held the other out to flag us down. Carmen came to a stop, Charlotte right behind her. Carmen put her window down. The soldier looked inside. Kian’s weapon was back in his car, but mine was resting against my seat. I put my body in a position to hide it as best I could, as I pulled my hood down over the gem, and pretended to be sleeping. The soldier didn’t seem to see it.

  “Where you headed?” he said in a gruff voice.

  “We’re just going to pick up my fiancé’s father,” Carmen replied.

  “The city is being evacuated. We’re not allowing people to come in.”

  “Please, sir,” Carmen said. She’d increased the pitch of her voice, made it higher. I’d heard that voice when she was trying to entice me into something. That was another trick women had. It didn’t always work. “The house is literally just over there. A couple of minutes away. He’s a really old man. I’m sure you’re all hard at work to get everyone evacuated, but we just have to make sure he’s okay. Please.”

  The soldier hesitated for a moment, but miraculously, it had worked. He waved us through.

  Carmen hadn’t been lying. The house was only a couple of minutes away and it wasn’t long before we drove slowly down the quiet, narrow street, semi-detached houses on either side. Some had garages converted into extra rooms, and others had loft conversions. They were the sort of homes that were affordable in the eighties, but out of reach except for the millionaires now. Many had been converted from the family homes they used to be into two or three flats as rental properties.

  Most looked uninhabitable now though, walls crumbling, windows broken, doors shattered. Carmen visibly winced and shuddered as she drove around one of the spiders that littered the streets. There were so many of them, in a variety of sizes but none the size that we would expect. I quite liked spiders – they kept your homes free of flies and other pests. But not these spiders – the smallest I could see was the size of a small dog, the largest, the size of a hatchback car. I shuddered too. I liked spiders, when they were small and cute and could be squished.

  I recognised the place I had called home. A two-floor semi-detached with a garage, though the garage had been converted into another room it seemed, since I had last been here.

  I’d left at eighteen, as soon as I could. Four years too late, in all honesty. It had been four years after my mother had died, but those four years had probably been the unhappiest of my life. My mum wasn’t around to protect me, and boy, had I needed protection.

  In my younger years, I hadn’t truly known how much more she had endured, until she was no longer around and the target of those two’s venom had needed to change. I’d stuck around for a number of reasons. I was young. I was scared. It was better to deal with the monsters in front of us, than the monsters we couldn’t see. I was hoping things would get better. That those two would realise I’m their son, their brother, their blood. They never did. And once I’d left, I’d never looked back. Never returned. Until now.

  I told Carmen to stop in front of the house and took a deep breath as I exited the car. I took the assault rifle, just in case. There were a couple of arachnids in the front garden, overturned, eight legs reaching towards the sky. There was some damage to the brickwork where they’d fallen, a broken downstairs window. The front door was open.

  Kian opened his door to join me.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  I walked to the front door and stepped inside, to see if the nightmares were still alive.