by Steve Feasey
After burying the bodies, the albino and his friend formed two stone cairns. On top of one they placed a large, pure-white rock that Jax found. On the other, Flea’s flower bracelet.
‘At least they’re together,’ Brick said, and he stepped forward. Kneeling in the space between the graves, he gently placed the wind-up torch he’d taken from his pocket on the ground. He stood, noting the confused expression on Jax’s face. ‘Don’t want them to be in the dark out here.’
‘What about you? Won’t you need it?’
The big guy took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘Worse things to be scared of than the dark. Time Brick realised that.’ And with that he left his friend to say his own goodbyes and moved off in the direction of the transporter that they were to take back to City Four.
Rush
He was second in line now. It seemed that most of the inhabitants of Muteville had already completed their registration, and the remainder were either reluctant stragglers hounded into the undertaking by their loved ones, or those who had, for whatever reason, been unable to do so until now. Like Rush, the people around him seemed tired of the long wait they’d had to endure. Unlike him, they stood in the line oblivious to the ultimate consequences of the thing they about to undertake. Like lambs to the slaughter, he thought. A part of him wanted to shout out to tell everyone what was going on, but he knew that wasn’t an option. Almost all of Muteville had been injected now, and he couldn’t hope to get around the thousands of people inhabiting the slums. No, he had to find a way to stop the killings happening at source, and that meant playing dumb and going along for the ride.
The security had become more obvious the closer he got to the front of the queue, and the nearer he got to the guards and ARM agents, the more Rush was sure one of them would somehow realise who he was and arrest him. He doubted that his dyed hair or the cap he wore were really going to fool anybody, but he’d refused Juneau’s offers to surgically alter his face a little – ‘Nothing major, just a little reconstruction to your cheeks and jawline’ – trusting that the sheer number of people they had to deal with would mean the security forces were too stretched to pay any real attention to any one individual.
The man behind him gave him a nudge. Turning, he was surprised to see a hunk of bread thrust in his face.
‘Go on, take it,’ the man said with a nod. ‘You’ve been in this line as long as I have, and I haven’t seen a crumb pass your lips.’
Rush was touched. Food, any food, was scarce in the slums. ‘That’s kind of you, but I’m –’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ The man pushed the piece of bread into Rush’s hand and went back to talking to the woman he was with. ‘Besides, there’s supposed to be food aplenty where we’re going. They say there’s land that’s fertile enough to grow on, and that those who want it will be allocated plots. They say –’
‘Next!’
Lost in his thoughts, Rush hadn’t realised he was now at the front. Stuffing the food into his mouth, he hurried forward past the guard and entered the registration building.
‘Pull your sleeve up,’ a stern-looking blonde woman said. Everything was white inside the makeshift medical centre, the place all the more stark thanks to the bright strip lights hanging from the ceiling. There was a harsh, acrid smell of cleaning product that made Rush’s nose itch.
‘Your sleeve?’ she repeated, raising her right eyebrow and reappraising him as if she thought he might be a little slow. In her right hand, the woman – Rush assumed she must be a nurse – held a syringe full of an all-too-familiar blue substance, and his pulse began to race even at the sight of it. If he’d believed he could control his fears about what was about to happen to him, he’d been wrong. Every part of him screamed out that he mustn’t go ahead with this lunacy, but he had no choice. Registration would get him on to whatever transport Melk had planned for his victims, and if Rush was going to help, he needed that access. Just how he was going to help was still not clear, but he knew this was the first step he had to take.
‘Scared of needles?’ the woman asked. ‘You’re not the first. Best thing to do is close your eyes. You’ll feel a small pinprick and it’ll all be over.’
‘Just explain to me why I have to have this injection again?’
Her face changed. Impatience replaced the faux concern she’d projected seconds up until now. ‘Your registrar should have explained all this to you, Mute. The injection is to protect you and your fellow resettlers against any communicable diseases.’
‘One injection protects everyone from all contagious diseases?’
‘You’d be amazed at the things the scientists can do these days.’ She smiled at him, but there was nothing friendly about the look. ‘Now pull up your sleeve, please.’
Rush took her advice and closed his eyes. As he did so, he remembered the feeling of Tia’s lips pressed against his, her warm breath on his cheek, the smell of her soft skin. That last time, he’d opened his eyes to find her own staring back at him, now he opened them to the sight of the stern woman jabbing a needle into his arm. He wanted to see Tia again, not be sitting here in this den of lies having microscopic death machines introduced into his bloodstream.
The nurse frowned down at the syringe. Despite her applying pressure with her thumb to the plunger, the thing wouldn’t go down.
‘That’s odd,’ she said.
A bead of sweat broke out on Rush’s forehead.
Stop it, he told himself. You knew what you were doing when you came here. This isn’t about you, and it isn’t about Tia; it’s bigger than that. Nevertheless he found it hard to relax his mind and relinquish his hold on the syringe. But as he did so, the woman’s thumb pressed the plunger and the deadly blue liquid slid down the steel shaft and into Rush’s body. The syringe was consigned to a yellow container. He noticed how the thing was half full with them.
‘Your registration card,’ she said, holding out her palm.
Rush couldn’t stop the trembling of his own hand as he handed the transparent plexicard over, watching as the woman entered it into a machine before handing it back to him.
‘I don’t suppose you can read, can you, Mute?’ she said, giving him a surprised look when he told her that, yes, he did in fact possess that skill. ‘Well, that makes this part a whole lot easier then.’ She nodded at the card in his hand. ‘The details of your transportation are on that card. The first group will be leaving tomorrow morning. There are no allocated spaces, and places are on a first-come, first-served basis. Don’t worry if you miss one – the Principia have seen to it that there are plenty of vehicles, and you’ll be able to get on a later one. However, we do recommend you try to get to the reservations as quickly as possible, before all the best accommodation is taken up. Enjoy your new life, Mute.’
She turned away and began to enter data into a screen. Despite this clear signal for him to leave, Rush stayed sitting on the bench for a few moments more.
‘Nurse?’
The woman looked back at him, clearly peeved that he had not already left.
‘How many of these injections have you given?’
‘I don’t know, hundreds, maybe a thousand.’
‘And you believe that they are for the benefit of the mutants you’re giving them to?’
She seemed genuinely flummoxed by the question.
‘Of course. Why?’ She sighed. ‘Look, you people need to take this opportunity for what it is: a chance for both Pures and Mutes to make a fresh start. The mutants get a new place to live; the citizens of the Six Cities get rid of the terrible slums on the other side of the Wall. And you and the other Mutes going to the very first reservation will be the pioneers! Why, I would have thought a handsome young man like you would jump at the chance to live in a place like that.’ She did that thing with her eyebrow again.
He scanned her features, looking for any sign she might be lying. There was nothing. It seemed the Pures of C4 were as much in the dark about Melk’s plans as the Mutes. Rush stood up
and gave the nurse a sad smile, realising that she too had been duped in all of this. If the president’s plans succeeded and the Principia were unable to cover up the truth about the killings, this poor woman would have to live the rest of her life in the knowledge that she, and others like her, were responsible for injecting countless innocent people with those needles.
Of course, Rush had other more pressing reasons than the nurse’s guilt to hope Melk’s plans were thwarted, the main one being that if they weren’t, he’d shortly end up dead.
Steeleye
Captain Mayer pulled to a halt in the underground space below the ARM headquarters and peered out at the dozen agents surrounding her vehicle, all of whom were pointing weapons in her direction. It occurred to the captain that this would not be a good time to exit the transporter. Moving slowly and keeping her hands in plain sight in case one of the armed guards was a rookie with an itchy trigger finger, Mayer followed the instructions given by the leader of the little welcome party.
‘The cyborg and the mutant?’ the man asked as she approached him.
‘In the back.’ She glanced at the gun, noting how the thumb dial next to the stock was right up to maximum. ‘There’s no need to be quite so nervous, Lieutenant. They won’t give you any trouble.’
As soon as she had been close enough to C4 to get a signal, she’d radioed ahead. Told to wait, she was caught a little by surprise when General Razko’s distinctive voice came over the airwaves, asking her for an update on the outcome of her mission and an ETA. Now all she wanted was to hand the pair over, get out of her uniform, into a bath and do her best to forget the entire episode.
‘Commander Mange,’ the lieutenant called out, throwing the doors at the back of the vehicle open. Mayer noted how the man still used Steeleye’s official rank, although the word seemed to stick in his throat. ‘You and the mutant accompanying you are to step out of the vehicle. We are instructed to take you to …’
The man failed to get any more words out. The sight of the cyborg and the hellish monstrosity alongside him shocked him into silence, and it was clear from the gasps of the other men and women in his unit that they felt the same way. The cyborg looked out at them. Despite the pain he was clearly in, his one eye swollen almost completely shut in a face covered in bloodied cuts and grazes, the man-machine grinned and threw the assembled soldiers a lazy salute. This seemed to bring the ARM officer back to his senses.
He straightened up. ‘All right, everyone, let’s do what we were sent here for.’ He nodded to the group closest to him. ‘Take the prisoners –’
‘Prisoners?’ Steeleye interrupted, speaking for the first time. ‘Let me tell you something, soldier. We are not your prisoners, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t refer to us as such. Anya and I are here of our own free will. I’d like to speak to the president right away.’
‘In that case, you’re in luck. Because President Melk and General Razko are eager to see both of you too. So if you’d like to follow my colleagues here, we can arrange for that meeting to take place.’
Steeleye muttered something under his breath but complied, limping off after the ARM lieutenant and his men, closely followed by Anya.
Razko and Melk sat on the opposite side of a long table from the cyborg and the shape-shifter. Since telling them to take a seat, the politician had not said a word and seemed unable to tear his eyes off the girl/creature, making her squirm in her seat.
Despite the injuries and damage Steeleye had sustained, the man seemed positively buoyant since they’d arrived in the city. Anya by contrast seemed scared half to death, the sights and sounds she encountered at every turn making her jump and stare around her in alarm.
Eventually Melk broke the silence. ‘I would urge you, Commander Mange, to consider carefully your responses to the questions I am about to ask you. My initial reaction, upon hearing certain reports about your mission, was to have you eliminated on sight –’ he held up a hand as Steeleye looked set to interrupt – ‘but the general here convinced me that, as an officer of rank, you should be dealt with by the military courts.’ His eyes took in the mutant girl-thing. ‘But your turning up with this creature here leads me to believe that even that might not be necessary.’ The look he gave Anya did nothing to lessen her discomfort. ‘My, how you’ve grown.’ He smiled when the thing hissed back at him. ‘I sympathise with the frustration you’re feeling right now. Even when you were a baby, it was clear to me and the other scientists that your “gift” – cellular metamorphosis, they labelled it – was difficult to control.’ He paused, frowning a little. ‘If I remember correctly, and unfortunately all my data from the place where you were created was destroyed – the more complex the form you chose to transform into, coupled with the length of time you spend in that body, means that you sometimes have a hard time reverting back to your original form. Do I have that right?’
Anya nodded, twisting her mouth to form the word ‘yes’.
‘Hmmm. Well, I think I can help.’ His voice was different now, like a benevolent older relative talking to a young charge. ‘Here at Bio-Gen we change people all the time. In the bad old days, we would use surgical methods, but now we have other means – we can tinker with the cells at a molecular level. Eye colour, skin tone, rate of hair growth –’ he waved his hand in the air – ‘we can alter these and more. But people here are fickle, and after they’ve had these changes tend to want to go back; they want their old bodies and faces returned to them. So we’ve developed a rather clever machine that detects changes cells have recently undergone and reverses them. It was originally designed as a treatment for cancers, but as with most things in the Six Cities, somebody has found a more asinine use for it.’ He made another vague gesture in the air. ‘Not really my field of expertise, but I’m told it is not only effective but is completely painless. I believe it would be worth your trying it out to see if your latest cellular “reimagining” can’t be reversed.’ He gave her a smile. ‘I’m hoping it works – I’d rather like to see how you look after all this time.’ The smile was that of a kind old uncle. ‘So when some of my people turn up at that door in a moment, I’d like for you to go with them. Will you do that? Will you give it a try?’
The bat-snake-human thing managed another strained ‘yes’.
No sooner had the word left her serpent mouth, than there was a knock.
‘Ah! Perfect timing.’ Somewhere beneath the table, Melk pushed a button, revealing the scientists waiting at the door. A woman walked in. She was tall and elegant, her hair piled up on top of her head in a tight bun. She peered over the top of her glasses at Anya. If she was shocked by what she saw, she made a good job of covering it up. ‘Come along … er, young lady,’ she said.
Anya glanced over at Steeleye for encouragement. The cyborg gave her a nod and she got up and followed the woman out of the room.
The door slid closed again, and as it did, so too did the smile slip away from Melk’s expression. The look the politician gave Steeleye was anything but friendly. ‘Now, Commander, perhaps you’d like to tell me what the hell is going on? Maybe you’d like to start with why you murdered every member of the ARM unit I sent out to accompany you on your mission? And after that, you can explain how, one –’ he held a finger up – ‘you appear to have wrecked the bionic augmentations we, at enormous expense, fitted to you, and two –’ another finger – ‘why I appear to have only one of my hybrids back here. I’d have expected at least the heads of the others if you were forced to kill them.’
Steeleye paused for a moment. ‘Can I talk now? That OK?’
Melk bit his lip, but managed a curt nod.
‘First of all, I’d like to say thank you for the warm welcome. You know, I was almost moved to tears at the sight of the armed response team sent to escort me safely from the vehicle that I came back in. Although, I think next time we might consider having them line up facing each other so they can throw flowers at my feet?’ He sniffed, before continuing: ‘Now, to answer your questio
ns. The first one is simple enough. Your ARM agents’ untimely deaths. What happened to those fools was as a result of them attacking me. Now I tried to warn you there might be some “friction” between us – I suggested as much to you before we left – but you and the general here insisted that they accompany me. Despite my reservations, I didn’t for one second expect them to turn on me the way they did. Oh no. They bushwhacked me good and proper. This –’ he indicated the huge dent in the metal part of his skull – ‘is a result of that cowardly attack. They shot me with an antique of some kind! A bullet!’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Can you believe that? In this day and age? A bullet! What choice did I have but to launch counter-measures in order to protect myself?’
Razko spoke. ‘How do you know they were all in on it? Maybe there was a lone shooter and the rest were innocent of that person’s intentions?’
Steeleye tapped at the dented metal with the tip of his finger. ‘There are – correction – there were some pretty sophisticated gadgets and gizmos working in here before it all got smashed up. I launched a probe. It showed the shooter in the vehicle and the rest of your beloved agents creeping up on both sides of me in a pincer movement. I think it’s pretty safe to say they were all in on the gig!’
Melk looked pointedly at his military advisor. The general gave a small shrug. ‘His account does seem to concur with what Mayer found at the site of the skirmish.’
‘There you go then,’ Steeleye said, sitting back in his seat a little.
Melk looked at the cyborg closely. Although the man was trying his best to hide it, there was something in his attitude that made the politician a tad uneasy. It was as if Steeleye was only just managing to hold himself together. Anger, that’s what he was sensing. The ’borg was angry and doing his best to keep a lid on things.
‘OK, so let’s assume we buy in to your little tale about being attacked. What happened next?’