by James Axler
Brigid passed the second floor, but as she rounded the right-angle turn in the staircase, she faced a hunk of machinery that blocked any further progress. The machinery was cylindrical and reminded Brigid of a torpedo. It had come crashing through a wall above the staircase, and part of it was still teetering above her, poking through from the wall overhead, creaking as the wind moved it to and fro. She stopped on the staircase, staring at the blockage for half a minute. It was balanced precariously, pivoting on the fulcrum of the ruined wall. Although there was a slim gap beneath the unit, Brigid didn’t fancy her chances there. The balance was too exact, and if the machinery should slip it would crush or pin her in an instant.
“Time to find another road,” Brigid muttered as she backed down the staircase.
Turning back the way she had come, Brigid jogged along the darkened corridors of the building’s second story, keeping her breathing measured as she searched for another route. She didn’t hear the soft footsteps behind her, didn’t see the figure moving in the thick shadows by the damp walls.
* * *
PULLING THE DOOR CLOSED behind him, Kane found himself in an empty, unlit corridor in the Magistrate Hall of Justice. The walls were streaked with damp and the whole corridor had a dank smell. None of the bare lightbulbs overhead seemed to be operational. Whatever had hit the rest of the ville had hit this place, too; indeed, the carbon scoring that blackened the walls in a radial pattern suggested that this structure had been close to the epicenter, the thick black streaks running across the walls like isobars on a weather map.
Warily Kane edged into the corridor, listening carefully for any signs of activity. Shuffling noises came from nearby, but there were no voices, not from anywhere.
Making sure that the door at his back was locked—it wouldn’t do to learn that his playmate in the trash area had revived to sneak up on him—Kane made his way deeper into the Hall of Justice, eyeing the charred walls with distaste.
He was at a T-junction now, but with nothing lit Kane had trouble deciding which direction to take. Spotting two uniformed Magistrates turn the corner to his right forced his hand, and Kane hurried down the left branch, rushing along with a silent tread. Kane recognized the door on his right, an equipment locker. He shoved against it, conscious of the Magistrates pacing the corridor just twenty feet behind him in the darkness, but the door wouldn’t budge. It was locked.
* * *
THE HOSPITAL CORRIDORS WERE dark, the damp heavy in the air, clogging her breath. Brigid had been walking around for over ten minutes, trying to find a route up to the higher floors. The next staircase she tried was blocked off above the second flight where a ruined wall had left an impenetrable barricade of debris. After that, she had found a winding stairwell protected by a heavy fire door with a reinforced glass panel at its center. The door had refused to open, even when Brigid put her shotgun down and pushed her shoulder against it.
She moved on, looking for another way to ascend, passing the gloomy, burned remains of wards and X-ray facilities, lung function and recovery rooms. Sometimes, as she passed rooms where the overhead pipes had burst, she would see the figure standing there, his feet sinking in the pooling, stagnant water that carpeted the floor. She would turn away quickly, not acknowledging him, not wanting to see his face. She knew who he was—Daryl, waiting with his accusing gaze, ready to judge her for abandoning him. He wasn’t real, she reminded herself; he wasn’t here.
Magistrate East followed at a careful distance, tracking the red-tressed female as she did her manic dance through the corridors of the hospital. He knew this place from his old life and took alternative routes when he saw which direction Brigid was going. Sometimes East would cut through a ward, using the chief nurse’s office as a shortcut into another corridor that ran parallel to Brigid’s path. He had backup on the way; he could afford to be patient. Better to catch the living than to scare and thus lose her.
Unaware of her tracker, Brigid moved on, working her way logically through the stairwells until she located a bank of service elevators. There were two of them at the west of the building, hidden down a corridor that stood behind a decorative wall. The wall featured a painting of a wheat field in summer, but the yellows had been turned to gray and black from smoke damage, turning it into a nightmarish vision.
Brigid stopped before the twin elevators, their accordion doors wider than a normal elevator. To the far right, an unobtrusive door crouched in the wall, painted an off-white to match the paint job on the walls. Like much of the hospital, the paint on the door had blistered where some incredible heat source had brushed against it.
Tucking the radio receiver beneath her armpit, Brigid pushed at the door, finding its hinges creaked a little as she shoved it. The door swung open, revealing a pitch-black staircase within. Brigid squinted, trying to make sense of what little light trickled in from the corridor beyond. Here was a staircase that had not been blocked, leading up past the fourth and fifth floors of the building, apparently all the way up to the roof.
Brigid stepped inside, making her way carefully up the stairs in the near-total darkness.
Magistrate East saw Brigid step through the doorway from his hiding place at the side of the service elevators. Once she had disappeared from view, he began to follow, stealthily pacing forward, ball and toe, ball and toe, to ensure she would not hear his pursuit.
The door was still open where Brigid had entered, and the Magistrate peeked in, the darkness made more complete by the tint of his visor. He needed no sight of his prey; he could smell her, the hot blood rushing through her arteries, the sweat smell of her skin. The dead saw differently, their senses refined in new ways.
In a moment, Magistrate East was inside the stairwell, stepping silently up the stairs as he pursued his prey.
Outside the hospital, two personnel carriers had arrived with an accompanying patrol car, disgorging their long-dead occupants in the regen apparatus suits of the Magistrates. Twenty-eight Dark Magistrates waited at ground level, eyeing the hospital from the road.
* * *
AN ANGRY SNEER CROSSED Kane’s lips as he stared at the locked door to the equipment store. There was a keypad to the side, caked with grime, its numbers almost worn through. Back home in Cobaltville this keypad would work the magnetic lock into the equipment store. Kane glared at it—there was simply no way of knowing the combination. Behind him, the twin Magistrates were striding closer. Unable to see him clearly in the darkness, they had likely taken him for one of their own, and had not raised the alarm yet, but Kane knew it was only a matter of time.
“Fuck it,” he growled under his breath, punching in a code on the waiting keypad: 4-3-5-5
It was the same code he had used for the equivalent equipment locker in Cobaltville. And remarkably, it worked.
“Great minds...” Kane muttered as the lock clicked open and he slipped inside, out of the path of the approaching Magistrates. Strange, too, to find that the electromagnet that operated the lock was still functional. It meant that somewhere in this building there was a power supply. That was certainly interesting. Kane made a mental note to investigate that later.
Inside, the equipment room was stacked head-high with clothing and armaments. Stagnant water pooled in its darkest recesses. There were shelves of grenades, hand cannons and nightsticks, all stored behind protective grilles, each with its own lock. Kane ignored them, moving instead to the clothing area.
There were Magistrate uniforms there: helmets, leathers, boots and outdoor wear in various sizes. Kane grabbed one of the greatcoats, working his arms quickly through the sleeves until it sat on his shoulders. The coat was heavier than he remembered—clearly he had become used to the thin fabric of the shadow suit since his days as a Magistrate—and it stretched down past his knees to line up with the top of a Magistrate’s boots.
Buttoning up the coat, Kane found a pair of boot
s in his size then added a Mag helmet to the ensemble. Sure, he didn’t look half-past-dead, but he would pass for a Magistrate all the same, at least so long as no one peered beneath the coat.
After that, Kane scanned the lockers for things he could use. He broke two locks, nabbing a handful of grenades, which he shoved inside the pockets of the black coat, then snatched up a magnetic multikey.
A moment later, Kane was at the door, checking the corridor before moving out there. He was inside. And, if luck was with him, he could pass through the place unnoticed. Unconsciously, Kane brought his hand up to his face and brushed his nose with his index finger where it peeked out from beneath the Magistrate’s visor; it was the old one-percent salute, and he wished Grant was here to see it.
Chapter 25
Brigid breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped out of the pitch-black staircase. She had been in there less than a minute, trudging up the staircase in the darkness, but she had started to get the feeling she was being watched.
“Stupid,” she cursed herself. That nonsense with Daryl Morganstern had messed up her brain, put her on edge. This whole ville was empty, apart from a few spectral Magistrates wandering through the abandoned streets, and she had not seen one of them in hours.
She found herself in another boring corridor, its unimaginative paint scheme and lack of adornment a rather damning reflection of the practicality of the designers. If she had her bearings straight the mat-trans room was a little way ahead, located along a parallel corridor to her right.
Brigid trudged on, regretting her choice of the heavy shotgun as she made her way down another darkened corridor.
Behind her, Magistrate East peered from the darkness of the staircase, propping the door ajar with one emaciated hand. It was time.
Magistrate East took a step back into the stairwell, pushing the heavy fire door silently closed as he activated his helmet comm. The radio burst to life in a hiss of static, and East drew his lips back to reveal blackened teeth, unleashing a duo-tonal splutter of noise from deep in his throat.
Downstairs, waiting in the streets outside the hospital, twenty-eight dead Magistrates acknowledged his instruction as two more personnel carriers arrived.
* * *
KANE MARCHED DOWN A DIM corridor in the Hall of Justice, the Mag coat cinched tightly around his broad chest. That there were so many other Magistrates around surprised him—he had never seen so many Mags on duty, even during the busiest periods at Cobaltville. Kane strode past a half-dozen Mags hurrying toward the subbasement garage level located beneath the sector house.
He walked proudly, slipping into the almost military Magistrate stride without effort. He couldn’t be timid if he was to carry off his ruse, he knew. A timid Magistrate would stick out like a sore thumb, and the legitimate ones would be on him like a shot. So he kept going, striding in the opposing direction to the vast wave of movement, keeping his head tucked low to his raised collar.
As he passed a group of Magistrates on their way to the garage, he saw their skin where the helmets ended at the line of their nostrils. The flesh beneath their helmets was in varying states of distress, pocked and eaten as if ravaged by locusts. They spoke in screeches, like electronic static, cutting and starting without any discernible rhythm.
Up ahead, another group was marching in Kane’s direction, heading toward the subbasement garage as if they were answering a call.
Good, Kane thought, means there are less here to fool.
He ducked into a handy stairwell to let the group pass, his shoulder rubbing against the damp wall. Down, he told himself, descending the stairs. Find the cells. If Grant’s anywhere, that’s where he’ll be.
Kane hurried down the stairs, feet padding silently in the darkened stairwell. A moment later he was at the foot of the stairs, pushing open the heavy fire door. As he did so, he heard footsteps and voices, and he drew back into the stairwell, holding the door ajar and peering out. Unlit, it was like looking around one’s bedroom after being suddenly awoken. It took Kane’s eyes a moment to adjust. He saw the walls, droplets of water glistening on their surface. Someone was coming. Not just someone—lots of someones, a whole troop of them working their way down the corridor at a slow pace.
Kane stilled his breath, trying to make out the words. A supercilious-sounding voice was making proclamations, high enough that Kane was not sure if it was male or female.
He waited, tucked into the alcove of the stairwell, eyes fixed on the moving shadows in the darkness, learning everything he could from the first new voice he had heard since arriving in Quocruft.
* * *
IT HAD TAKEN A WHILE TO hook Professor Burton up for mobility.
Even so, Grant was still woozy as he walked along the unlit corridor flanked by Magistrates, hands cuffed behind his back. Baron Trevelyan was leading the way, discussing matters with Professor Burton as they strode slowly from the cells toward the elevators.
Burton walked with a perpetual stoop, his head bowed in supplication to his baron. The metal hose that had been attached to the ceiling of his cell was now connected to a box on wheels that he dragged beside him like a suitcase. The box came up to Burton’s hip and featured an illuminated display on its rear, along with a clear panel through which Grant could see cloudy liquid. The liquid was churning in the lights from the panels and was being fed through the hose via a small pump within the wheeled box, its repetitive hiss-gurgle a constant in the otherwise unlit corridor.
The corridors were grimy, streaks of dirt running across the walls and floor, the ceiling tiles stained brown where they had been marred with damp. There was water clinging to the walls, slowly running down them, beading there like sweat. It all smelled, stagnant and rancid, like a mixture of days-old food and disease.
“I expected him to be more...altered,” Trevelyan told Burton in his high, clear voice.
“I cannot explain it, my baron,” Burton replied fretfully. Burton looked over his shoulder at Grant for a moment, and Grant saw his expression was one of guilt. “How much did you say he was given?”
Trevelyan shrugged with a lack of interest. “He must have been under the water for three or four minutes at a time. I don’t know—how long can you humans survive without air?”
Irritated, Grant spoke up then, butting in on the conversation as one of the Magistrates worked the pull-back door of the elevator. “Hey, Baron Troublemaker—if you want to talk to me I’m right here.”
Standing before the elevator, Baron Trevelyan turned, shooting Grant a withering look.
“What?” Grant challenged. “You too frightened to talk to someone whose spirit you ain’t broke? Huh?”
“Do you see?” Trevelyan said, turning back to Burton. “The subject remains unaffected by guilt. He was under the water for a long time—he should have reacted by now. I am at a loss to understand it.”
“Maybe there are no reserves of guilt to tap in this man,” Burton suggested meekly as he stepped into the elevator. Grant and the Mags followed, and Grant saw that the only lighting inside the wide elevator cage came from the circular buttons that identified the floors. “Perhaps he has nothing to be guilty for.”
“That’s right,” Grant snarled. “I got no guilt. Whatever I did, I did in good conscience.”
The others did not seem to notice him speaking.
“Sure,” Grant growled, rolling his shoulders. “Just ignore me.” The cuffs were starting to chafe, contributing to his already bad mood.
It appeared to be a freight elevator, leaving ample room for the seven-strong group inside. Grant was muscled over to one corner, as far from Baron Trevelyan as it was possible to be. Trevelyan paid him no attention—if the thought that Grant might attack him crossed his mind, he gave no sign that he was afraid.
* * *
KANE ALMOST GASPED AS HE recognized Grant’s voic
e. He had not been able to see much from his hiding place behind the stairwell door, just a sliver of a gap through which he could peek. He had counted seven figures trudging toward him in the dark, but had not recognized Grant’s bowed form where the cuffs restrained him.
But Grant was alive. At least, for now. Things did not look good for him out there. Suddenly Kane was even more aware of the urgency of his mission.
But what could Kane do? He could try taking on the group, perhaps even use the darkness to his advantage. But the corridor was too tight; it created too much risk. Besides, the party was already entering the elevator, so that had power, too.
Kane waited, still eavesdropping on the conversation. “Just don’t shoot him,” he mouthed to the air in a silent prayer.
* * *
THE ELEVATOR DOOR CLOSED on its runners, and Grant waited in silence as the group ascended through the building. It was all starting to feel familiar to Grant. Very familiar. He was beginning to get a notion about this strange place where he had wound up.
“A human without guilt,” Trevelyan said in a mocking tone that belied his disbelief. “Could such a creature really exist?”
Professor Burton stared at the floor, defeated. “It’s only a hypothesis, my baron. With the right psychiatric tools and sufficient time, one might be able to prove or disprove it. Regrettably that’s not my field.”
“No,” Trevelyan acknowledged. “What did happen to that psychiatrist—Baird, was it? I think he was reassigned as Magistrate Nees. It would be in the logs.”