by James Axler
“No doubt,” Burton agreed.
“Important to keep records of one’s achievements,” Trevelyan said to the elevator cage, as if making a proclamation about his superiority. “I’m looking forward to logging the next world when we take it. All those little boxes to fill in.”
Grant listened to the conversation, his fury growing with every smug word. He would wipe that grin off the hybrid’s face if it was the last thing he did here.
* * *
KANE PULLED THE DOOR TO THE stairwell a little wider and let out the breath he had been holding. They were gone, ascended in the elevator.
He stepped out into the corridor, eyeing the display panel above the elevator. The display was dim, just barely illuminated. Kane watched as it rose through the building, stopped at the top floor. Then he knew where they were taking Grant. But why the top floor? What would they want in the Magistrate archives?
Without pausing, Kane was back in the stairwell beside the elevator door, taking the dark steps two at a time as he hurried up to the topmost story.
“Hang in there, partner,” he said to the darkness. “I won’t be long.”
* * *
“THERE YOU ARE,” Brigid muttered, eyeing the door into the mat-trans area. “Who says women are no good with directions?”
She tried the door, knowing full well that it would be jammed, just as it had been when Grant had tried it earlier. She held out some sliver of hope that the door might have been locked from the outside, that there might be some catch that could be released from out here, but the door held, the handle turning and turning with no effect. She looked more closely at it for a moment, noticed a nasty dent in the door lock and the wall where something heavy had struck against it in the damp corridor—the tattered remains of a security touch pad. It looked as if the lock had been forced at some point, and now it wouldn’t work at all.
Brigid turned back to the dim corridor, recalling the ruined wall beyond the mat-trans chamber itself. She felt confident that she could climb out of a window and work her way around without too much trouble; she just needed to find another room from which she could access some windows. As she turned she saw someone waiting in the corridor, standing amid the pooling water that ran down the walls. “Daryl,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Quit bothering me.”
The figure continued to watch her from the shadows. He was standing between Brigid and the next door, the obvious one to try, a line of rubble behind him. Brigid knew he was a hallucination, just the way Kane had described, knew she could overcome him. He had tried to kill her in the video room, had persuaded her to blow her brains out. Only Kane’s intervention had prevented that. But Brigid could be strong. There’s nothing to fear, she told her hammering heart.
Brigid began to walk toward the next room, trying to ignore the figure waiting there. But as she did so, the figure moved toward her, raising its right hand. It held something there; Brigid saw metal glint in the darkness. Gun.
Brigid’s body reacted even before she had consciously realized it, ducking down as the man’s blaster bucked in his hand. The bullet went overhead, wailing in that unforgettable scream in the manner of the Magistrate’s guns. The bullet struck the wall where Brigid had been standing, kicking up plaster and fractured paint as it drilled its shrieking path there.
It was not a hallucination, Brigid realized as the breaking plaster dusted in her hair. Nor was it Daryl; it was one of the strange Magistrates, hidden from her by the darkness of the corridor. She was in trouble.
Chapter 26
The hospital wall exploded as another bullet struck inches from Brigid’s head. She moved, hurrying back down the corridor as the Dark Magistrate chased her. His lumbering steps were heavy and robotic, balancing like a machine. The Mag’s Soul Eater pistol boomed again, sending another of those hideous, shrieking bullets toward her in an ear-splitting scream.
Brigid leaped around a turn in the corridor, ducking her head down as the bullets crashed against the wall behind her. All the while she was cursing herself for her own stupidity. The earlier hallucinations had fooled her; she had become so convinced that this was just something in her mind that she had let her guard down. And almost paid the ultimate price for it.
Brigid slipped in the pooling water as she turned another corner, regaining her balance in an instant, picking up speed as she tried to create some distance between her and the Magistrate. Behind her, Magistrate East edged around the corner, the devil skeleton glinting atop his helmet, leveling his Soul Eater and reeling off a triple burst of screeching fire. Three bullets howled down the corridor, squealing like stuck pigs as they sought the living flesh of their prey.
Turning, Brigid slammed her back against the wall, swinging the Mossberg shotgun around in a one-handed grip. She squeezed the trigger as the Dark Magistrate appeared in the corridor, sending an angry burst of lead in his direction. The Magistrate staggered, the blast missing him by a foot. Brigid didn’t wait to see what he would do next. Already she was working the handle of the nearest door, disappearing into the room beyond like a wraith.
Inside, Brigid crashed into something at waist height, sending metal bowls clanging to the floor and something heavier striking after them. It was a gurney, she realized as she jumped over it, recovering in an instant. She was in a recovery room, dark, but with a window at the far wall. The window was wide, looking out on the ville and the dark sky lit only by the sunken sun.
Window, Brigid thought.
She didn’t even bother to stop. Flipping the shotgun around, she blasted the smoke-streaked glass out of the window, taking most of the frame with it as she ran at the window.
A moment later, Brigid was clambering through the broken remains of the window, bringing the shotgun around once more as the Magistrate appeared in the doorway to the room. Without a second’s remorse, Brigid pulled the trigger, sending another ugly burst of fire at the Magistrate. The Mossberg replica held five shots, plus one in the barrel.
Brigid still had three bullets left before she would need to reload. Enough, if she was careful. There was no time to reload now, she had to get out of here, find her way back to the mat-trans a half turn around the building’s facade. As Magistrate East ducked out of the recovery room, Brigid secured the radio in her belt and swung out of the window, her feet searching for a ledge on which she could balance.
Brigid’s long legs stretched down beneath her past the window’s ledge, toes nudging the brickwork as she sought somewhere to tread—a ridge, anything. Out here, the swirling winds were howling like wolves through the artificial canyons of the streets. She dangled there for a few seconds, precariously balancing the shotgun as she gripped the window, feet scrabbling to find purchase. Then, almost as far as her body could stretch, her toes found an indentation in the wall’s surface. Powder crumbled as the pointed toes of her boots kicked the loose stone, finally finding a ledge that ran a few inches above the windows of the story below.
Brigid’s heart was racing, but at least she was safe from the Mag. It was at that moment that she heard more screaming bullets cut through the air, as the Magistrate’s support unit spotted her climbing on the face of the building.
“Crap!”
* * *
WITH A SCREECH OF STRAINING cables, the elevator shuddered to a halt. Grant watched from the rear of the cage as one of the Magistrates who accompanied him opened the pull-back door. The Magistrate stepped aside to allow Baron Trevelyan to step through first, followed by Roger Burton.
Grant stumbled, shoved in the back as he followed them. He grunted, the world still swimming a little around him. His earlier dunking had left his senses reeling, and he could not quite shift the sense of seasickness he had. He knew now that Trevelyan had tried to poison him with guilt. Tried—and failed. Grant took a deep breath and held it, working through the sense of mental disorientation.
The par
ty continued to walk, but with each step Grant was taking careful note of his surroundings. Again, water darkened every surface, permanent dark patches blotching across the floor. Even unlit the layout was familiar. Grant knew this place, or one like it. It was a Magistrate Hall of Justice; he was sure of it now. He had not been able to say for certain while he had been in Burton’s cell—one cell was much like another. But the corridors, the placement of the freight elevator—it all fit. It was a mirror image of the Mag Hall he knew in Cobaltville, but otherwise it was a perfect match.
Made sense, Grant told himself. All these Mags around, of course we’re in a sector house.
Grant trudged on, mind racing as he puzzled through how this knowledge might help him. If he could orchestrate some diversion he might be able to break free, despite the darkness of the building’s interior. But with his hands now bound behind his back in the plastic cuffs of the Magistrates, there was no way he could do that. He needed to find some way to trick them into releasing him, just for long enough that he could sow the seeds of confusion and bug out.
* * *
KANE HURRIED UP THE UNLIT staircase to the top floor. He met a couple of Magistrates who were using the staircase to get down to the basement level and stepped aside to let them pass, his head down. It was very dark in the staircase but the Magistrates did not seem to be affected by that.
A few steps after they passed Kane they halted, scenting the air. Kane had begun his ascent as they started twittering, strange discordant tones emanating from their throats. Disguised as one of them, Kane hurried on, boots clattering on the cold steps. They had noticed something was wrong. He would need to stay alert.
Reaching the top floor, Kane pressed open the door and warily walked through. The staircase opened on the hooked recess of a corridor behind the service elevator, granting Kane some shelter before he stepped into view.
Confirming that the corridor was empty, Kane made his way down it toward the double doors at the end. As he recalled, the top floor of the Magistrate Hall had been dedicated to the archives. Paper reports were filed and refiled here and it also held the main servers for the Magistrate computer system.
Kane pushed himself up to the double doors, pressing his face against one of the cool glass panels there. The glass was streaked with dirty water. What he saw there made Kane regret not acting when he first saw Grant down in the basement level. Kane had expected to see the regimented shelving units of the archive, but instead the shelves had been removed, leaving one vast room the size of an aircraft hangar.
Although underlit, the room was bright thanks to the glowing apparatus at its far end. There were Magistrates patiently lined up along the walls and more working at a variety of unfathomable tasks in the vast room. All of them showed signs of decomposition, their flesh colorless and rotting. His eyes hidden behind the Magistrate’s visor, Kane blinked quickly; for a moment he had seen not Magistrates in the greenish light but women, girls—the dirty-blond tresses of Helena Vaughn on two-dozen helmeted heads. He closed his eyes, willing away the vision, then opened them again. “Leave me alone,” he murmured.
Grant stood with his back to Kane, close to the doors, along with several dark-clad Mags and two other figures. The first of these was a brown-skinned human with what appeared to be some kind of dialysis machine on a wheeled frame beside him. The apparatus was connected to the man through a thick tube in the base of his skull, reminding Kane of a hookah pipe. Beside this man was a shorter figure with a narrow-shouldered frame, his long spindly arms waving elaborately in the air. The figure was dressed in a white tunic, its lines carefully pressed and somehow at odds with this dirty ville. Kane recognized what the figure was instantly—it was a hybrid, one of the old barons who had ruled the villes. But they were all dead, weren’t they?
Kane peered through the glass, trying to make sense of the illuminated thing at its far side. It looked like a showman’s ring, the kind one might see at the circus that a lion would jump through. Just like the showman’s ring, this one glowed with a fire, albeit a fire made of electrical sparks with the blue glow of a burning acetylene torch.
Standing upright, the ring was taller than a man. Kane guessed it was twelve feet in height, almost scraping the ceiling. The ring sat on a thick base of elaborate machinery, with power hoses running to and from it in great cords like sinew. Magistrates worked diligently at these machines, running diagnostic checks through eight computer terminals positioned in a semicircle around the left side.
Kane saw dark windows behind the ring, placed high in the building. The windows were open, showing the deep indigo darkness of the night sky.
For a moment, Kane was paralyzed, the sight overwhelming. There had to be seventy Magistrates in that room, perhaps more. He patted at the pocket of the greatcoat, feeling for the handful of grenades he had stashed there. No, the odds weren’t good.
Warily, Kane slipped into the room, his helmeted head down as he walked toward the gathering Magistrates. The hybrid was talking, his voice a grating whine echoing in the vast chamber.
“Humans,” the baron said, speaking the word like a curse. “So simple to manipulate, all that guilt locked away inside their monkey shells.”
Grant glared at him defiantly, straining at his bonds. There was a Magistrate standing to either side of him, two more close by and ranks of them all about.
Kane walked past the group, positioning himself a little way back from the baron where he could watch proceedings without drawing any obvious attention to himself. Grant looked tired, standing before this wretched, pale-skinned hybrid.
“I was born to rule them,” Baron Trevelyan continued, pacing a small circle before Grant. “More than that, I was specifically evolved to rule them. But there are so many of them that a leader must make decisions. If you or your kind had any notion of what real leadership is you might understand.” He glared in disdain at Roger Burton for a long moment, where the man stood humbled with his feeder unit.
“Humans have such capacity for resolve,” the baron continued, “that it makes things tricky sometimes. But the one thing man cannot conquer is his own guilt.
“I set things in motion—weaponized guilt,” Trevelyan continued. “In the water, an additive that plucked at human emotions, working like a depressant. It infiltrated the reservoirs and, from there, the water cycle took over. Before we knew it, it was in the crops, the seas, the rain. While it worked in the ville, the efficient natural system took it outside, into the world beyond. My world.”
Listening to this, Kane realized what had happened out in Quocruft to both himself and Brigid. They had been plagued with visions from their own pasts, nagging worries that kept coming to them, tugging at their consciences. For him it had been Helena Vaughn.
The hybrid baron was shaking his head as if contemplating an impossible task. “So many humans to rule, and me their master.”
“What about the other barons?” Grant asked.
“Other barons?” Trevelyan repeated, bemused. “What other barons?” He looked disturbed at the thought, a chess master finding himself tricked by a move he had not anticipated. “There are no other barons.”
* * *
OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF THE hospital, the winds were moaning like the restless dead. Night had fallen now, and it was dark outside the brutal building, the sky painted a deep shade of indigo touched with purple where the sun nudged beneath the horizon. High above the ground, the masonry felt cold against Brigid’s face as she pressed along the tiny ledge, feet scraping warily to retain her balance on the narrow lip that ran above the window frames of the second floor.
Bullets streaked the air all around her, their hideous screams moaning like a prisoner being stretched on the rack. Brigid took a deep breath, shuffling along the precarious ledge. They could not see her, she realized—not well, at least—and their weapons were a poor choice at this distance. That was so
mething; she was hidden from the Mags below, and if they hit her it would be by chance rather than superior aim. Not very reassuring, though, not when at least a dozen bullets were cutting the air around her as she hurried along the narrow ledge.
Brigid scuttled on, clutching the Mossberg as she worked her way along the outside of the building, three stories above the road. She could see the corner of the building up ahead, a dark and solid absence against the night sky. She needed to get around that corner, out of the immediate line of fire, and also around to the side where the building had collapsed to expose the room with the mat-trans.
A bullet clipped the masonry close to her ear, and Brigid reared back automatically, without thinking. Suddenly she was slipping backward, reaching for the wall ahead before she tumbled from the building’s face. Her right arm thrust out, the shotgun still clutched in her hand, jabbing into the slick reflective surface of a window. The window clinked and held, the toughened glass repelling Brigid’s stabbing Mossberg.
Brigid’s other arm windmilled for a moment, her feet skidding along the ledge as another hail of bullets shrieked past close to her face. The world seemed to spin around her as she reached out desperately with her left hand, grabbing for the wall or the ledge. For a moment she was falling, everything spinning. Then her bare fingers found the rough surface of the wall and she clenched her hand, grabbing the lintel of the window she had tried to break.
For a moment she hung there, her breath coming in thundering gasps. Then another bullet struck the wall close to her breast, and she came out of her trance, forcing her shaking body to move.
She peered back as she walked ahead, saw the Magistrate clambering out of the same window she had used not two minutes earlier. He must have been waiting there, confirming that she was not poised to shoot him the moment he appeared. He poked his head out, demon baby glinting on his helmet, his weapon aimed and ready, face emotionless in the darkness. Brigid saw the Soul Eater flash as another of those awful, screaming bullets popped from its muzzle and streaked toward her. She clung tightly to the edge of the building, holding her breath as the bullet zipped past, clipping through her lion’s mane of hair as it went.