by Steve Feasey
‘Treason.’
‘What?!’
‘Melk’s had him declared an enemy of the state, and has accused him of being in cahoots with the terrorists who bombed C4.’
‘That’s absurd! Melk can’t do that. The people of the Six Cities won’t stand for it!’
‘Things have changed while you’ve been outside the Wall, kid. Even those citizens who might once have been sympathetic to the Mutes have hardened towards their neighbours.’ He gestured to himself. ‘Your father must have sensed this. He broadcast a feature in which he suggested those inside the walls deserved what they’d got, that the explosions were the fault of Melk’s ongoing inhumane treatment of the mutant underclass. Some of the things in the piece appear to have angered a whole bunch of people. And you know Melk: never one to let an opportunity slide, especially if that opportunity gives him a chance to silence one of his biggest critics.’ The bioengineer gave her a sad smile. ‘The trial is in a couple of weeks.’
Tia stood perfectly still for a few moments as she took this in. It was clear the revelation had rocked her to the core.
It was Rush who finally broke the silence by coming up with a possible solution. It was simplicity itself, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Tia grabbed him as if he was a life preserver thrown out to a drowning woman.
‘Your film,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The documentary you made of everything that happened in the build-up to the bombings. That’s the proof your father needs to expose Melk as the monster he is. You’ve got a Get Out Of Jail Free card, Tia. You just have to find a way to play it.’
She turned to Juneau. ‘You know how rich my father is, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll triple my original offer. Thirty thousand credits, if you can get me back into the City.’
‘I just told you, your dad’s –’
‘You get me in, I’ll get him freed. Then the money’s yours, Juneau.’
‘Us,’ Rush said. ‘Get us in. I’m going with her.’
‘Rush, you can’t. You –’
‘I look like a Pure. Dammit, I almost am one! Wasn’t I created from an embryo taken from the City Four stock?’
‘What’s all this about? Who is this kid?’ Juneau asked.
Ignoring him, Rush continued. ‘Get me some citizen clothes, and I’ll pass for one of them every bit as easily as you.’ It was true. As far as looks went, Rush could easily have been born inside the Wall. His expression told her there was no talking him out of his decision, and he watched as her resolve crumbled. She nodded before turning back to Juneau.
‘So how about it? Do we have a deal?’
‘Twenty-four hours. That’s all I can give you. And it’ll be fifty thousand credits. I don’t quite know what you two kids are up to, or what this film you have contains, but if I’m going to risk my neck re-chipping the two of you for what sounds like a crazy scheme, I need it to be worth my while.’ He paused as if expecting them to protest.
‘Why the time limit?’ Tia asked.
‘The CivisChips I’ll be embedding in your thigh bones? They have that time constraint.’
‘Why?’
‘They’re from dead people.’ He held up all four hands when Tia started to protest. ‘It’s the only way! And don’t ask me how I come by them, because you don’t want to know. All you need to know is that when a citizen dies it takes the authorities roughly two days to deactivate the CivisChip. If it’s removed quickly enough from the corpse, it can be reused during that period. However, it usually takes about a day for me to get my hands on them, so the best I can offer you is about twenty-four hours. Take it or leave it.’
‘You’ve done this before?’ Rush asked. He tried not to show it, but he was more than a little freaked out by the prospect of having a dead person’s private microchip installed into his skeleton.
‘Plenty of times,’ Juneau said with a wink. ‘How do you think I got all this scientific equipment? Mutant Santa Claus?’
Steeleye
The mutant known as Steeleye Mange sat on the edge of the metal examination table, looking towards the doorway. Superimposed over the image of the steel door transmitted to his brain via his human visual apparatus was a constant stream of data from the heads-up display installed in his right eye socket. The visual data, like the feedback from his other bionic augmentations, had become so much a part of him he hardly noticed it any longer. It was like background noise, filtered out most of the time until it was needed. When he did tune into it, the range and depth of information available to him was astonishing.
Having scanned the areas beyond the entrance – his ability to use microwave to do this, like so many of his other abilities, no longer filled him with wonder – he knew that Melk, Razko and Dr Svenson were out there, and the presence of the last person in this trio was enough to put him on edge. Like a dog who’s been kicked and beaten by an unkind owner, the mere thought of the female doctor sent a shiver of fear running through him. Svenson. Of the three doctors responsible for his ‘rehabilitation’ over the last five months, she was the worst. Tall and beautiful, with dark, curly hair and model’s cheekbones, she looked – like so many of her fellow citizens – a picture of perfection. On the outside at least. However, as the surgeon of the team, she had shown herself to be a brutal sadist. It wasn’t enough that Svenson had initially been responsible for chopping him up and putting him back together again: minus both his old legs, his left arm and half his face and head. She’d then gone on to perform her very own special brand of Frankenstein surgery on him at every opportunity. ‘Mech and tech upgrades,’ she called them. To her, he was nothing but a plaything. Like a child with a toy doll she could pull apart and put back together in new and wonderful ways. So each time the manufacturers came up with a better, newer bionic augmentation, she didn’t hesitate to put him back under the knife. Steeleye had no say in these matters. At first he’d protested, raging against those sent to fetch him. But they would ‘shut him down’ and drug him, and when he woke up in a world of pain and discomfort he knew that she’d tinkered with her plaything again. Svenson was always there at his side when he came round. She would loom over him, her face expressionless as she fired questions at him, recording his responses on her omnipad. Then later they’d take him down to a testing area, where they’d put him through his paces.
She’d be the first. Steeleye had promised himself that. If – no, when – he could get his hands on his three white-coated torturers, Svenson would be the first to go. He’d show her what his robotic arm could really do by ripping her pretty head clean off her shoulders. He might use the offending article to beat the other two to death. A warning flashed across his HUD, the information accompanied by a high-pitched noise. He looked down. Oblivious of doing so, he’d curled his titanium-and-steel left hand around the edge of the thick slab of metal that was the examination counter, and now it was a ruined and twisted mess. The warning was to let him know the bionic hand was approaching the peak pressure it was able to exert; any more and he was in danger of damaging it, and if he did that, Svenson would have another excuse to chop him up with her scalpel and her cutting saw.
He stood, eyeing the walls of the place, frustrated in the knowledge that they stood little chance of holding him if he really made a concerted effort to escape. A few kicks and blows and he could smash his way out of this room. He knew because he’d tried. The problem wasn’t the walls or the doors of the rooms he was confined to – it was the safety mechanisms Svenson and her colleagues had installed inside him so they could ‘shut him down’ – either through a spoken command or via one of their fancy gadgets – at any point. Not just that, but the shutdown was automatically activated whenever he was in an area he was not supposed to be in, and that meant just about everywhere in this place. He was a prisoner. A very expensive one, but a prisoner nonetheless.
He turned as the door opened and the three walked in, the examination table separating him f
rom them.
‘Ah, Commander Mange!’ Melk greeted him as if they were long-lost buddies. The old man stood, his head tilted a little to one side as he took in the cyborg. ‘You look … formidable.’ It was true. The former mutant mobster had been an imposing figure to start with – at nearly two metres tall, with long hair plaited halfway down his back, one eye socket filled with a ball bearing and every inch of his skin covered in tattoos, he’d always had the ability to strike fear into the hearts of his erstwhile enemies. Now, with more than fifty per cent of him machine, ugly hydraulic pipes exiting flesh and entering metal, riveted sections where flesh met steel, he was a thing straight from the pages of a horror story.
Steeleye gave Melk a stony look. ‘And you look like the liar I’ve come to know you are,’ he said.
‘Now don’t be like that, Commander.’
There it was again, that title. Commander? Commander of what? And the way the loathsome politician said it with no sign of humour on his face made Mange want to crush him. Steeleye gauged the distance between the two of them, calculating whether he could get his hands on the president before Svenson managed to shut his systems down. He decided to bide his time.
‘Five months. That’s how long I’ve been kept here. That was not our agreement, Melk. You said you’d let me have my revenge, not lock me up here to be the ongoing experiment of this psychopath.’ He pointed at the surgeon, but his eye never left Melk.
If Svenson was at all bothered by being referred to in this way, she didn’t show it. She didn’t even look up in his direction, just stared down at the device in her hands as if he didn’t exist. Maybe he’d tear her arms off first. Then her legs. Then –
‘It’s taken longer than we all anticipated, I’ll grant you that. But the good doctor here tells me that you are now fully operational and glitch-free.’
‘Actually,’ the white-coated surgeon said, finally lifting her head, ‘I said that there were –’ She stopped almost as quickly as she’d begun when Melk lifted a hand and shot her a withering look.
‘I thought we’d agreed you wouldn’t speak, Doctor,’ the politician said, turning his smile back on the Mute. ‘Now, remind me again, Commander, what it is you want so badly.’
‘Besides my real arm and legs back?’
The politician remained silent.
‘I want out of here.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why.’
‘Indulge me.’
‘I want revenge. I want to know that the operations, hard reboots, software upgrades, equipment checks I’ve had to suffer at the hands of that … woman over there have been worth it. I want –’ now he’d started speaking he found it hard to stop; the bitterness and rage that had been building up inside him could be heard in every word – ‘you to give me the chance to take care of those kids once and for all.’
‘Hmm.’ Melk nodded. ‘You must accept my apologies for the delay, Mange, but it was unavoidable. I’ve had the not inconsequential task of rebuilding my city.’ Melk paused, weighing up his words. ‘As a politician, I have to prioritise, and I can’t let my desires get in the way of my duties. The Six Cities come first. They always have and they always will.’ Well, equal first with my other secret project, Melk thought to himself. ‘I wouldn’t expect you, coming from the gutters of Muteville, to understand that, but it’s true.’ He paused and glanced around the room. ‘Not only that, but I was led to believe you were not fully functional, that there were difficulties with your systems and that the doctors –’
The words stuck in Melk’s throat as Steeleye lunged forward and smashed his arm through the top of the examination table. The limb passed through the metal slab as if it wasn’t there. It continued downwards, crashing through the heavy struts and hydraulic lifting mechanism beneath until the entire thing caved in beneath the force of the blow.
Svenson looked as if she was about to jab something on her omnipad, but she was halted again by a shake of the president’s head.
There was a whine of servo-motors and Steeleye jumped, coming down with all his considerable weight on the ruined counter, the remnants of which collapsed beneath him. Raising one leg, then the other, the mutant cyborg stomped at the metal, crushing it into the floor until it was almost unrecognisable. There was a moment of silence while the ’borg glared back at the two men from the ruined mess. ‘Does that look as if I’m not fully functional, Mr President?’
If Melk was intimidated in any way, he didn’t show it. Instead that smile slid into place again.
‘I’m glad to see you still have that anger in you, albeit a little … misdirected. I’m not your enemy. Neither is General Razko, or Dr Svenson. We are not responsible for you ending up here in this place. No, it was those children – the ones with the strange abilities, the ones who in trying to kill you injured you so badly that you’d be dead had we not intervened – they are the ones to blame for everything that’s happened to you, and it would pay for you to always keep that in mind.’ The smile fell away and the politician stared unflinchingly at the huge half-man, half-machine before him. ‘You are about to get your wish. In a moment we are all going to leave this place. You won’t be returning. I’m going to set you loose on this world with the mission of finding and destroying the very people you have to thank for being the way you are. Your wait is over, Commander Mange. It’s time to see what you can do.’
The eight ARM agents stared at the mutant cyborg who’d just been introduced to them as their new commander. Then they looked at each other to see if this might be some kind of joke. It wasn’t.
Steeleye scanned the faces before him to try to figure out who was going to give him the most trouble. He didn’t think he had too much to worry about. Despite their uniforms, they were just soft city dwellers. That was how he thought of them and their kind, because when you stripped away all their fancy high-tech gadgets and weaponry, they couldn’t hold a candle to most of the Mutes. Hell, his kind had survived the apocalypse topside, not hiding away for generations in underground Arks, sucking in each other’s recycled farts while the world above boiled and burned. Their hard-earned survival had made the mutants of Scorched Earth tough, and Steeleye reckoned he was the toughest of the whole damn lot. He cleared his throat and addressed the seven men and one woman who’d been assigned to him.
‘All right, listen up. Now I know you Pures might find it difficult to accept me as your leader, but believe me when I say that I want you along on this assignment every bit as much as you want me. That is to say, not at all. I would prefer to work alone, but I’ve been told I have to drag your sorry arses along with me on this mission.’ They were in a briefing room inside a wing of the ARM headquarters. Steeleye had been told to address the squad from the raised platform, and each step he took as he paced back and forth made the structure shake, the heavy, thumping footfalls providing a percussive accompaniment to his speech. ‘So let’s start this thing off as we mean to go along, lay out some ground rules. You are to stay out of my way as much as possible. The people we are going up against are extremely dangerous, and I do not want you screwing this mission up. My previous experience as part of an ARM unit did not go well. In fact, the reason I look the way I do now is because of the blundering ineptitude of that unit. So let’s be clear: if I need you, I’ll call on you. Otherwise, you stay back and let me get on with what I’m supposed to do.’
One of the agents barked a harsh laugh.
‘Something funny?’ Steeleye asked, rounding on the man; he eyed the insignia on the officer’s uniform. ‘Captain?’
‘Well, yes, Commander,’ he drew this last word out, leaving everyone in the room in no doubt as to what he thought of their cyborg guest. ‘Since you ask, this whole thing strikes me as funny. Because you have got to be joking if you think I’m taking orders from a freak Mute like you!’
A number of the other men began to grumble their agreement.
‘Is that so?’
‘You bet your metal arse that’s so.’
There was a high-pitched whirring sound, as a device on Steeleye’s shoulder swung round to point at the ARM agent. Without any warning, the small pulsed-energy gun fired, knocking the man backwards out of his seat and to the floor, where he lay perfectly still.
For a moment there was silence, and then the room exploded in uproar as the agents nearest the captain jumped to their feet and gathered round the prostrate figure. One man reached forward and checked for a pulse, he turned and stared at Steeleye. ‘He’s alive, but only just,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’ The ’borg gave a small theatrical sigh, tapped the energy weapon reproachfully and shook his head. ‘You know, I only had this thing fitted yesterday, and I’m having a bit of trouble getting used to the settings. Must have dialled it almost to max there by mistake. My bad.’
‘He needs medical attention.’
Another theatrical sigh. ‘You –’ Steeleye addressed one of the men – ‘take him to the infirmary. Tell them he was shot for disobeying orders. And tell them that there is no rush to get him patched up; he’s off the team.’
Mange turned to face the rest of the room’s occupants, his face, the human side of it at least, changed from one of feigned regret to menace. In a voice that left nobody in any doubt that he was indeed in charge, he ordered the remaining six agents to return to their seats. ‘Now, where were we? Oh, your erstwhile captain’s unwillingness to take orders. Does anybody else have the same problem?’ Except for the sound of a few shuffling feet, there was silence in the room. ‘Good. Who’s the lieutenant here?’
He grinned at the man who reluctantly put his arm up. ‘Congratulations. You’ve just been promoted. What’s your name?’
‘Blake.’
‘Well, Captain Blake, have this squad ready to leave in an hour. We’re heading out towards the wastelands between here and City Three. There’s a dangerous group of young Mutes that we have to find and eradicate. You will all travel in one of your fancy armoured troop carriers that is being equipped as we speak. Any questions?’