by Steve Feasey
Now they were in the lounge together, sitting across from each other on the vast cream-coloured couches her mother had chosen for the room a few months before she’d died. It felt odd to be back here. Staring at the lavish surroundings, Tia marvelled at how much she’d simply taken for granted before her spell of exile beyond the Wall. Here she was, having bathed in delicious hot water for what felt like hours, sitting in new clothes that had been sent out for, scrunching thick carpet pile between her toes. This had been her life for so long. So why couldn’t she just slip back into it, if only for a little while?
‘Daddy.’
Her father looked up at her, still wearing the same haunted expression he had back in the cell.
‘There’s something you need to know. About President Melk. Some friends and I have discovered something truly terrible. He’s –’
Her father surprised her by holding up a hand and shooting her a warning look. When he turned the screen of the omnipad he had in his lap to face her, she leaned forward so she might read the message he’d written there:
If this is anything you don’t want ‘others’ to hear, please stop talking right now.
Then he pointed to the collar around his neck and made a gesture of cupping his ear, as if he was listening to something.
She stared at him, then nodded, letting him know she understood.
‘– We found out he’s not a nice person.’ It was a silly, crass comment. The first thing to come into her head, which was swimming with a thousand different thoughts.
‘I know,’ was her father’s response. ‘But he’ll get what is coming to him soon enough.’ He paused. ‘Your mother would have been so proud to see the way you turned out, Tia.’ A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. ‘When we knew we were going to have you, we were scared and excited about what kind of person we were bringing into this world. We needn’t have been. You’re everything we had hoped for and more.’ He got to his feet. Once again she was struck by how thin he was. ‘I’m very tired. I think I’ll go and have a lie-down for a while. Do you mind?’
‘No, of course not.’ She watched as he made his way to his bedroom. He paused in the doorway and turned back to her.
‘I love you very much,’ he said.
‘I love you too, Daddy.’
Her father gone, Tia simply sat on the couch, taking the occasional sip of iced water from a glass on the coffee table. It made sense that Melk would use the collar not just to silence her father, but also to hear anything he might be saying in secret to others opposed to the president. Her thoughts and concerns inevitably turned to Rush and the danger he had put himself in, and her heart clenched at the thought that something terrible might have happened to him. She forced the thought down, refusing to consider the possibility. No, somehow Silas and the others would meet up with him, and they would discover a way to put a stop to Melk’s murderous plan. When she closed her eyes she could see how it would play out: her little friend Flea would use her incredible speed to get them access wherever they needed; Jax would confuse everyone into believing they weren’t really seeing what they thought they were; Rush would use his telekinesis to deal with any bad guys who didn’t fall under Jax’s spell, and if any of them were accidentally hurt? Well, Brick would be there to heal them – patch them up as good as new so they could finish what they’d set out to do. She wondered if Anya had returned, and hoped for the sake of the group that she had; the polymorph was every bit as awesome as the other members of the group, and Tia had little doubt they would need her if they were to succeed.
And when they had thwarted Melk’s scheme, what then? What would be the ultimate price? The mutant population had a right to know what had almost befallen them. And once aware, what would their reaction be? She knew how the people of the Six Cities would respond had it been the other way round. Melk and his military commanders wouldn’t hesitate to use such a thing as an excuse for war. And if it came to a war, whose side would she be on? Could she find a way to help her mutant friends without endangering her father?
The last time she and her friends had all been together, Tia had heard Tink talk to Silas of war. She’d been in a corner, trying to get some sleep, when the pair had entered. Half dozing, she’d not been able to announce her presence in time to avoid overhearing them. Tink had explained how, in one of his extraordinary visions, he’d seen Pure and Mute clash in a way that might settle the future of Scorched Earth once and for all. Tensions between the two sides had been stretched to breaking point, so it required no great leap of the imagination to believe that this latest diabolical deed could be the spark to ignite a revolt in which the mutant population rose up against their oppressors.
That was something her father would have fought against. Will, she corrected herself. He will fight against such injustices. He just needed a little time. But time suddenly felt precious to her, and she had the horrible feeling it was running out for all of them.
Rush, Brick and Jax
The three mutants moved along an elevated walkway circling the auditorium, keeping to the shadows as best they could to avoid being spotted. Despite their caution, they knew they had to hurry. A klaxon had blared out a few moments earlier, the deafening noise followed by an announcement that there were ten minutes until ‘induction’. Induction surely meant something terrible. Way below them, visible through the gaps in the steel lattice floor, more and more of their fellow Mutes poured into the assembly space, their excited hubbub filling the place. There was hope in those voices; Rush could hear it and it filled him with rage and fear. The voices belonged to people keen to begin their new lives in this place, voices that would soon be silenced forever if Rush, Brick and Jax failed.
As they rounded the section of the walkway they were currently on, the two guards they’d spotted on the security screens came into view, but the three mutants didn’t falter in their progress. Jax was using his psychic powers of misdirection, putting all his effort into making it appear, through their eyes, as if three fellow ARM agents were approaching them. As they neared the men, Rush was horrified to see how cheerful both appeared to be. As if they were standing around waiting for the end of their shift, and not about to witness the start of a genocide.
The pair straightened up as the newcomers approached, the one on the right calling out, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing here? This is a no-go area until all this –’ he gestured at the crowds below – ‘is over. Didn’t you hear the klaxon? Everything has been activated. The countdown has begun.’
Keep moving. Jax’s voice was inside his friends’ heads, but his lips formed real words as he spoke to the guard. ‘Yeah, we know. But they sent us here to tell you there’s been a problem with the –’ He didn’t get any further because Brick snaked two enormous hands out, grabbing the two men and cracking their heads together with a sickening crunch, the men’s eyes rolling back a split second before they collapsed to the floor.
The groan that escaped Brick told Rush precisely what his friend felt about having used violence in this way. The younger mutant stretched up and put a reassuring hand on the big guy’s shoulder. ‘It needed doing. Don’t feel bad. If you want, you can fix them up after we’ve got this all sorted out.’ He turned to Jax. ‘Did you hear what that guard said? “Everything has been activated.” Some sicko has already pressed the button.’ He wondered how many precious seconds had passed since the ten-minute announcement, and his thoughts turned to the millions of deadly microscopic nanobots he’d allowed himself to be injected with.
They were standing in a tubular steel archway suspended from the roof by thick metal cables. The grid-like metal catwalk between them and the control room on the far side stopped just beyond the arch. The gap between the two sections hadn’t looked so big on the screens in the security room, but standing on the edge now, it appeared enormous. It must have been twenty metres wide, and the drop at least three times that. The two guards had been so lax because the brightly lit, glass-sided room didn’t need protecting in the traditiona
l sense. The only access was via a retractable skywalk. And that had been withdrawn from the other side some time ago.
Rush swore under his breath.
‘There,’ Jax said, pointing a long, pale finger at a small wall-mounted box on the far side. ‘That must be the control switch for the skywalk. Can you activate it?’
Rush stared at the thing. On the front was a large red rubber button. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his mind, gingerly at first, then with more urgency – he and the red button ‘connecting’ until the thing was as much a part of him as his own hand or foot. At a molecular level he entwined with the inanimate object, and now he willed it to activate.
It wouldn’t go down. Something was stopping it. A sense of panic welled up inside Rush and he tried again, small frown lines forming on his forehead as he put more effort into it. Nothing. He gave a little whimper.
‘Wait,’ Jax said in a tone that said he knew what the problem was. Rush opened his eyes again. Above the screen, floating above the control box, was a holopad that had appeared as soon as Rush attempted to activate the button. The two stared at the thing, coming to the same conclusion at the same time. It was Rush who put their thoughts into words: ‘Even if you could pluck the code out of somebody’s head, there’s no way I can enter it on that thing.’
‘Seven, seven, nine, one.’ Jax said, narrowing his eyes at one of the people in the room, all of whom were still completely oblivious to their presence.
Rush swore. ‘Why couldn’t it have been a physical keypad!’
‘You’ll have to get across, Rush. You can activate the skywalk from there, and Brick and I will come across with the –’
‘Are you insane?! Get across? Have you seen that gap? We haven’t got any rope, and even if we did, we don’t have the time. What do you propose? That Brick throws me over there?’
‘You can get there.’
‘How? Hmm? How can I possibly get across?’
‘If I had a stone and asked you to throw it and hit that button, you could, couldn’t you?’
‘You know I could.’
‘Because?’
‘Because, unlike that damn keypad, a stone is something physical, something I can control with my power.’
‘And what are you? Aren’t you “something physical”? Why can’t you be the stone?’
Rush stared back at his friend. He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again, unable to think of an answer that countered Jax’s logic. What Jax was suggesting was, in the face of it, madness. But in truth Rush had considered this very thing on a number of occasions in the past. If he could use his mind to influence inanimate objects, why not animate objects too?
‘You know you can do it, don’t you?’ Jax said.
‘No.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘I’ve looked inside your head many times since you were born, Rush. I don’t think you understand a fraction of what you’re really capable of.’
‘And I’m capable of this?’
‘I think so.’
‘You think so?’ Rush assessed the gap and the drop again, his insides clenching at the thought of even attempting such a jump.
A speaker positioned just over their heads went off, the sudden klaxon alarm making all of them jump in fright. As the noise died away the giant vis-monitors mounted on the central column flickered into life, revealing the face that went with the saccharine-sweet voice of the woman.
‘Welcome. Please remain where you are. We will commence your induction talk in three minutes. The outer doors are about to close for your comfort and safety.’
The announcement was accompanied by four loud booms as the giant auditorium was sealed shut, trapping everyone inside the place. A nervous babble of excitement rose up to the trio from below.
Three minutes.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Rush mumbled, shaking his head. Even as he said the words he was stepping backwards to give himself a small run-up.
Brick, watching all this, seemed unsure what was going on until that moment. When it suddenly dawned on him what Rush was about to do, he cried out and would have grabbed him, had Jax not thrown himself at the giant mutant.
Three strides. Three hurried strides as Rush’s mind screamed at him not to do this. Three strides and one leap, and he was sailing out into the void.
The terror he felt in those first fractions was all consuming. A fear so great it made him cry out, but then, out of nowhere, there came a sensation of inner peace that utterly vanquished the fear. He was not calm – that emotion, like his panic, no longer had any meaning. There was the moment, and there was him, and nothing else existed. At some level he knew that he was no longer ‘Rush’. Instead he was an infinitely complex mass of molecules, held together by forces he had no hope of understanding. I’m just a physical thing. Just a stone being thrown across this gap. A stone, nothing more … What he did understand was that Jax was right: he really was more powerful than he’d ever imagined. He had a notion of where he was in space and time, and a notion of where he wanted to be. Once he understood that, it was merely a matter of moving one of those things towards the other.
Jax and Brick, clutching on to each other, watched as Rush flew out into the air, his arms windmilling once before he brought them together, stretched out, in front of him. To his watching friends, he seemed to wink out of existence for a fraction of a second, but they would both later doubt that they had really seen that. What they did see was Rush shoot through the air like an arrow being shot from a bow. He crossed the space in the blink of an eye, until, at the last moment, he tucked his shoulders and curled his body, performing a perfect forward roll on the far walkway so that he was up and on his feet instantly.
You did it, Jax said directly inside Rush’s head.
Rush shook his head and looked back across the void he’d somehow crossed. Had he just … flown?
Rush. The control box.
Forcing himself to focus, Rush hurried over to the box on the wall and entered the activation code into the floating keypad, a surge of relief filling him when he heard a loud clank as the skywalk began to stretch out across the gap towards his friends.
Three minutes. No, it must be less than that now. How much less?
He had to get moving. There was no time to wait for Jax and Brick. He walked towards the control room just as the three people in there, hearing the racket, became aware that the footbridge had somehow been activated.
Rush felt different, more powerful somehow, able to master this situation in a way he hadn’t since setting foot on the train that brought them here. The people in the control room turned to stare at the young mutant boy striding towards them. All three, two men and one woman, were armed, and each of them reached for their weapons at the same instant. Again there was no panic, no fear in Rush. That inner peace he’d felt as he surged through time and space was still with him, and he simply lifted his hand, palm out, and blew the glass walls in so that a deadly volley of glass shards crashed through the air, the effect being that the room’s occupants forgot about such trifling things as guns and hit the ground, heads bowed and shoulders hunched in an attempt to avoid being eviscerated by the airborne hail.
Glass crunching beneath the soles of his shoes, Rush calmly walked through the door and looked about the place. Projected into the air above a large desk of buttons and monitors was a countdown timer, its numbers clicking down before his eyes. There were less than two minutes left.
‘Now listen up,’ he told the scared and bloodied ARM officers on the floor. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay exactly where you are. If everything goes as planned, I’ll have somebody fix you up as good as new in a short while, but for now do exactly as I say.’ The guns they had dropped skittered across the glass-strewn floor into the furthest corner. Nobody budged so much as an inch.
‘Wh-who are you?’ one man, with a badly bleeding head, stammered.
‘What do you know about –’
‘Answer me! How do we switch it off?’
‘You can’t. Once the sequence was initiated from City Four we no longer had any control over it.’
‘It was activated from C4?’
‘President Melk himself pressed the button as soon as the first train pulled in.’
There was the sound of hurried footsteps on the stairwell. Then Jax and Brick came pouring through the door.
‘He says they can’t stop it,’ Rush told the albino.
Jax narrowed his eyes at the man. ‘He’s telling the truth. Quick, the bag,’ he said, pulling it from Brick’s shoulders and dragging out the device so he could place it on the floor.
‘How does it work?’ Rush asked.
‘I have no idea, but there are only two buttons, and they’re marked one and two. How difficult can it be?’
‘We have a little over one minute,’ Rush said, pointing to the countdown timer above the console.
The pair stared down, hesitating. Both were taken by surprise when a huge ham fist reached over their shoulders and pressed the button labelled with a one, the action accompanied by a low grunt. The domed light above the button came on, glowing red. Beneath it, again only visible now the thing had been activated, were two words: CHARGING, and beneath that, WAIT. There was a shrill tone that got higher and more piercing, but the light remained red.
‘Dammit!’ Rush said, looking up at the timer again. Fifty-four seconds. ‘Didn’t Juneau tell you that this thing needed time to function?’
‘NOBODY MOVE!’ a familiar voice boomed out from behind them all. ‘If you so much as twitch a muscle, any of you, I’ll blow you to hell. Now turn around.’