Mutant Rising

by Steve Feasey

  She crept over to the entrance and slipped noiselessly down the stairs.

  It was darker than she’d expected. Only one of the lights was on, and from the sound of the generator – they always made more noise when they were first started – it had not been on for very long. She needn’t have bothered being so stealthy – there didn’t appear to be anyone down here.

  Had she not been so hell bent on revenge, Anya might have stopped to consider where Silas was – he rarely left the site – but the thought didn’t even cross her mind. Instead she set about carrying out what she’d come here to do. She strode over to where the group kept their food: a storage area on the far side of the former ticket office. Opening the door, she pulled out the foodstuffs – many of which had been liberated from ambushed vehicles – ripping at the packets and cartons with her clawed hands and throwing everything on the ground. On to this she poured the drinking water from the big containers stored in the same place, producing a sodden mess which she finally kicked here and there, mixing it with the muck and dirt of the ground until it was utterly spoiled. She kept one vessel of water back, and this she carried across to the generator fuel tanks that powered the lights. She would have liked to torch the place, set fire to the fuel and watch it burn, but she was far from certain that her beast claws had the manual dexterity to create a flame without causing harm to herself. Instead, bypassing the one with the working light, she opened the tanks and poured the water in. It wouldn’t necessarily ruin the machines, but it would cause damage in the short term until Silas had a chance to clean them out and fix them. Petty, she knew. But it felt good nonetheless.

  Finished, Anya looked about her at her handiwork. The damage she’d done hardly seemed an adequate response to the group’s ostracising of her, but it was better than nothing. Silas would quickly figure out who was responsible, and her only regret was that she wouldn’t be around to see the look on his face. Still, she was satisfied that she had made her point. She planned to go back to the mountains far away from here. Not the hills she’d just come from, but those where she’d grown up. How she’d hated that place when she was small, but now its isolation and solitude seemed just what she wanted. Kerin might still be there. Anya and her guardian had not seen eye to eye before she had left, but she thought the woman would have her back – and maybe, eventually, help her find a way to transform back into her human self as they’d done in the past.

  She approached the only remaining working light and turned it off before setting about spoiling that generator too. She would have to find her way out again in the darkness, but she was confident she could do so and …

  The glow in the murk made her stop. Straightening up, she looked behind her in the direction of the stairs leading down to the tunnels. The light was coming from down there. Not the consistent illumination that the arc lights up here emitted, but a shifting, wavering glow that could only be a flame. If somebody was down there, the sensible thing to do was leave immediately, but her curiosity was piqued, and she approached the escalators.

  Something had happened. Not only were the stairs strewn with rubble, but the area at the bottom also appeared to be covered in the stuff. She stared up at the large hole in the ceiling, trying to imagine what might have caused such an isolated rockfall. It explained the dust everywhere. Maybe there had been an earthquake. She shrugged. It wasn’t her problem. Nothing that happened here any longer was her problem. As she turned her back on the scene to make her escape, she heard the groan. Somebody was down there in the murk, and from the sound of things they had been hurt.

  Without knowing quite why, she carefully began to make her way down through the mess, struggling with the water container she still held in her hand, until eventually she made it to the bottom. Illuminated by the flickering flame of a burning torch jammed into a crack in the floor, she stared at the source of the noise.

  The thing had been tied up. Loop after loop of strong thick wire had been used to truss up the prone figure, so there was no chance of it moving, let alone escaping. In addition, a black sack had been placed over its head. But Anya hardly registered these things because her eyes were immediately drawn to the legs, made as they were out of a dull brushed metal. She extended a foot and kicked at one, her claws making a harsh noise on the surface, noting how solid and heavy the things were. The right arm, pinioned to the side of the body with wire, appeared to be made of the same stuff, but this had been battered and damaged in places; deep scratches and dents were evident towards the top of the limb, and the same maltreatment had been meted out on a small device mounted on top of the shoulder; the thing – crushed, bent and ruined now – appeared to have been a gun of some kind. The cyborg – she was sure that was the correct term for it – was covered from head to toe in dust and dirt and had clearly been involved in the cave-in.

  She jumped when another groan came from beneath the heavy black sack. Reaching forward, she took hold of the material and pulled it away, revealing the full man-machine.

  Anya let out a small gasp. She recognised him. At least she recognised half of him. He had not been half man, half machine the last time she had seen him, but it was definitely the same person who had burst through a door into an alleyway back in Muteville and captured Brick. He had almost got Rush and Jax too, and would have, had Anya not helped them escape by wrecking the aerial spy drones put up by the ARM to assist them in their mission. Silas and his pathetic gang of renegades had needed her then, hadn’t they? They had been happy to keep her around while they had a use for her, only to shun her now. And here was this … man-thing again, no doubt sent out by Melk and his people to complete the job he’d failed at last time. If that was indeed the case, it appeared as if he’d once again been unsuccessful.

  An idea formed in Anya’s mind. She’d been disappointed by her efforts upstairs. Despite destroying their den and food supplies, she had wanted to make more of a statement – show them what she really thought of them all, her mutant so-called brothers and sisters. Now this cyborg, trussed up with wire and left here near the tunnels, might be her way of doing just that.

  She looked down at the water container in her claw. Lifting it, she poured its remaining contents on the cyborg’s head, watching as he coughed and spluttered back to consciousness.

  ‘Hrngh? What the hell?’ Steeleye spat into the dust at his side before turning his attention to the chimera looming over him. The creature was part snake, part ape, part human, with huge bat-like wings folded along its back. It was staring back at him. Despite the fog in his head, he guessed it was the shape-shifting polymorph he’d previously encountered. There was nothing friendly about the look the thing gave him, but he defiantly held its gaze.

  ‘What you waitin’ for?’ he said. His lips, smashed and bruised, struggled to form the words properly. ‘Get it over with.’

  The creature made no move towards him. Hell, there was nothing he could do even if it had, trussed up like he was. And even if he’d not been bound tight with wire, every flesh-based part of him was in pain, a pain that increased tenfold at even the slightest effort. The ‘other’ aspect of him – the machine part – seemed to have fared little better. Inside his head, his HUD, blinking on and off sporadically, was a rolling stream of warnings and alerts – a sea of red accompanied by alarms – that he swiftly shut off to stop himself from going mad.

  The thing still hadn’t moved.

  ‘You know,’ Steeleye slurred, ‘if you’re gonna kill me, the least you should do is let me see what you really look like. Hiding in the body of a creature like that is kinda cowardly, don’t you think? Like the axemen of old concealing their identity with a mask.’ He spat again.

  There was a low cough and then the thing spoke in a weird hissing voice that was every bit as unnerving as its appearance. It was clearly struggling to form the words. ‘If I were you, I’d be quiet,’ it said.

  Had he imagined it, or was there something about the way the creature reacted when he’d spoken about transforming ba
ck? He paused, thinking things through. In his previous life, as a gangland boss, he’d learned a thing or two about unspoken communication. Everybody around him lied and deceived, and Steeleye had become very adept at interpreting body language and facial expression to gauge the truth behind people’s words. He narrowed his eyes as he studied the monster.

  ‘Perhaps you’re not a coward. I might have been a little hasty there.’ He was talking aloud, shooting his mouth off in the hope that he might buy himself some time to figure a way out of this mess. ‘Maybe you’re ashamed. Ashamed at what you’ve been tasked to do, so you don’t want me to see the real you?’ No, that wasn’t it. ‘Or maybe you can’t change back, and you –’

  ‘I said, shut up!’

  Aha! He’d hit upon something. The only question now was, how could he use the information to his advantage?

  He narrowed his eye at the thing. ‘I know that look,’ he said, nodding at her and instantly regretting the action as a new wave of pain ignited behind his eyes. ‘I should do – I’ve been wearing it ever since I had half my body hacked off and replaced with these machine parts.’ He paused. Anya. Her name popped into his head from nowhere. Melk had spoken about the rebel children, and Steeleye was certain that Anya had been the name of the shape-shifting girl. ‘You’re stuck in that body, aren’t you, Anya?’

  The thing looked over its shoulder up the escalator – the gesture alerting Steeleye to even more about what was really going on here.

  ‘And they don’t know you’re here, do they?’ He paused, then continued, hoping to get a response. ‘I bet it was something to do with that Silas guy. After all, he’s the boss here, isn’t he? He’s the one calling the shots. What happened, eh? They kick you out because you did something to upset them?’ He shook his head, tutting.

  ‘You and I are alike, you know that? You’re stuck in that body, I’m in this one, and we’re both where we are because of those freaks up there. They put us in this mess. They attacked me and left me for dead in that alleyway all those months ago. You know that’s true – you were one of them. Of course, you didn’t attack me personally. You were in charge of taking down the “eyes in the sky”. But those others – that Jax guy and the one called Rush? – they smashed my old human body up pretty bad. They’re responsible for me being this way, just as they made you what you are right now. Am I right? Well, am I?’

  He let his words hang in the air, hoping that something would have had the desired effect on her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and tears began to form in those reptilian eyes. Whether they were tears of sadness or anger or impotence was difficult to tell, but he guessed they were a combination of all three. She’d been abandoned by her friends, and that could only be a good thing for him.

  ‘We should pair up,’ he said quickly. ‘We could escape together and work out a way to get back at them. Look what they did to me. Look what they did to you! They care nothing for anybody but themselves, and we clearly don’t fit in their little clique.’

  She made a little growling hiss noise, and he knew he’d hit upon something. Something that he might be able to use to save his hide. Now he just had to press home his advantage.

  ‘You don’t have to be alone, Anya. I can help you. And if you want to get back at them, I can help with that too.’

  He considered going on, but realised he ran the risk of sounding too pleading and needy if he did so. She might see that as weakness and decide she didn’t want anything to do with him. Instead he shut up and stared up at her. The reptilian eyes were impossible to read, and he was starting to wonder if he’d wildly misinterpreted her presence here when, with one last hiss, the creature bent forward and with a scaly talon began to undo the wire holding the cyborg prisoner.

  Melk

  President Melk was only vaguely listening to the military officer as she finished her report. It was hot in the room, and despite already having undone the top button of his shirt he was sweating again, the heat and the boring woman’s droning voice made him want to simply get up and leave. He knew he should be concentrating, but found it impossible. He seemed in a permanent fugue state of late, unable to focus his thoughts in the way he’d always been able to. He put it down to the lack of sleep. Pills didn’t seem to help any longer, and when he did manage to drift off he invariably jolted back to wakefulness within a few moments, convinced that somebody – or something – was in the room with him. He’d taken to leaving a light on, but it didn’t help. The thing was still there, a malevolent presence that –

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Fretz, the man who had called this meeting, was staring at him. Melk didn’t like him. He was a worm, always sidling up to him and making stupid remarks about things he knew nothing about. Either that, or he would try to tell Melk jokes. Jokes! When Melk’s ancestors had formulated the idea of repopulating Scorched Earth with a new, pure race of humans, they surely had not been thinking of the likes of Fretz. The man would have to go. Him and a number of other ‘parasites’. He cast his eyes around the other people sitting at the table, some of whom were shifting about uncomfortably in their seats.

  ‘We wanted to know how you wished to proceed.’

  ‘With?’

  General Razko stepped in. ‘They want to know what you would like us to do next about the cyborg. As Captain Mayer here has just reported, we know he’s responsible for the deaths of the ARM team sent to assist him with this mission, and now we have lost all contact. We need –’

  ‘Why do I surround myself with the likes of these people?’ Melk spat, glaring around him before turning back to his general. ‘Hmmm?’

  The sudden change in the president’s mood was so unexpected that the woman sitting diagonally across from him tittered.

  Maybe she thought it was some kind of joke. Perhaps one of Fretz’s ‘funny’ stories.

  One look from the leader of the Six Cities told her otherwise, and the sound died on her lips as quickly as it had started.

  Melk reached up to wipe away the sweat that had formed on his top lip. ‘I assumed, wrongly it seems, that you people might have the mettle to make important decisions, to prove to me that you were made of the right stuff. The stuff that will be needed in the months and years ahead if we are to truly fulfil our destiny and become the one true race on Scorched Earth. But all I seem to be surrounded by is INCOMPETENCE!’

  ‘Sir –’

  ‘Why was I not informed of this earlier?’

  Razko didn’t get a chance to tell him that he had been told of the cyborg’s actions because the president went on without waiting for a response.

  ‘This is the sort of thing that will bring our dreams of a New Earth crashing down around our ears, you know that? You, all of you – with the exception of Razko here – are weak. Yes. Weak. Inept. BUNGLING! INCOMPETENT!’ Wild-eyed, spraying flecks of spittle, Melk stared about him at each of the people in the room in turn, the feral look in his eyes striking fear into every heart.

  ‘With all due respect, Mr President –’

  Melk glared at the speaker. Fretz again. The imbecile didn’t know when to shut up.

  Melk imagined himself with his hands around Fretz’s neck. Squeezing and squeezing until …

  Concentrate, Melk! Concentrate, dammit!

  ‘The mutants are out there,’ the president said, although in such a low voice that those across the large table struggled to hear his words. ‘Out there … breeding. Every second we fail to do something about them, they are producing more of their filthy offspring.’

  A short silence followed, broken only by the ticking of a clock. Somebody cleared their throat.

  Razko took the reins again. ‘Sir. The cyborg?’

  ‘Cyborg?’

  ‘Commander Mange. You … We sent him out to find the terrorists.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘Either he’s gone rogue or he’s been eliminated.’

  ‘Gone rogue?’ The president slowly shook his head. The wild look was
melting away, much to the relief of everyone else in the room. They watched as their leader appeared to pull himself together again. He spoke only to Razko, treating the others as if they were not there. ‘What makes you think such a thing?’

  ‘Well, as Mayer has pointed out, there has been an incident between the ARM agents and the cyborg. Our data shows that an illegal rifle in the ARM vehicle was fired, so it’s far from clear who started the whole thing.’

  ‘Bring the cyborg back in and make him talk. Torture him if you have to.’

  ‘That’s the problem, sir. We don’t know where he is. The tracking systems have gone down.’

  Melk closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  Father …

  ‘Not now,’ he mumbled. ‘Please … not … now.’ Melk hardly dared open his eyes in case the bloody spectre of his dead son was there on the other side of the room, staring back at him with his own face.

  ‘Mr President?’ Razko reached out and almost put a hand on Melk’s arm, but wisely stopped short. The general had thrown his lot in with Melk, and his future was intimately tied up with the other man’s. At first it had been the obvious choice: Melk controlled the Principia in a way no one before him had. But the man’s behaviour of late had the soldier doubting not only the politician’s abilities, but his very sanity. Whispers about his mental state had been heard in the corridors of power, and added to this were the rumours of damaging evidence that might come to light if Towsin Cowper wound up in court. Maybe it was time to think about jumping ship. If Melk couldn’t be relied on to keep him in power, Razko had to consider who could.

  Melk’s eyes snapped open and he looked about him as if he’d come out of a daze.

  ‘You,’ he said, pointing at the officer, Mayer. The woman visibly flinched in her seat, dreading what was coming. ‘I assume you have reliable intelligence on the last known location of our cyborg?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’