Sins of the Father

by Mitchel Scanlon

  Immortality. Such was the prize his money would buy him.

  The doctors had explained the procedure to him in extraordinary detail. Through various arcane scientific methods he did not even pretend to understand, his consciousness would be transferred wholesale to a younger and more healthy body. He had been assured that nothing of his mind would be lost: in his new body his memories, personality and desires would be perfectly intact.

  And why stop at one transplant, after all? When he wore out this new body, he would simply transfer to another one, and another one, and another one. He would be beyond mortality. Beyond morality. He would endure forever, free to indulge his special pleasures as often as he wanted. Entire new worlds of pleasure lay before him.

  Roderick Lowe could hardly wait.

  For Leonard, it was beginning to look like it might be the day he was going to die.

  He had been hurt badly by the Judges' bullets. He could count twelve different wounds in his body: four in the chest, three in the stomach, one in the groin, one in each leg, and two in his left arm. He was tough, and he didn't hurt easy, but he knew he had lost a lot of blood. Enough blood that he was starting to worry he might not make it to tomorrow.

  It was not the idea of dying in the sewers that bothered him. After the Judges and the gunmen had attacked them, he and Daniel had had no choice but to seek refuge there. Nor was it the idea of dying, in and of itself, that caused him concern. No, it was the thought that he might die without ever seeing his mother again that really bothered him. To Leonard, the very idea of it seemed like the hardest thing he had ever had to bear.

  It was Daniel who had come up with a solution. The boy had been quiet for a long time, lost in his own thoughts as he brooded over the things Leonard had told him earlier.

  Finally, Daniel had offered him a bargain.

  "Kill one more bad man, Leonard," Daniel said. "Kill one more, and I'll tell you where your mother is."

  At first, Leonard was suspicious. Their recent arguments had diminished the sense of trust between them. He refused to spill any more innocent blood. This time, though, Daniel said things were different. This time, Daniel knew for sure that the man he wanted Leonard to kill was a really bad man. He was the worst of them all, and Daniel had planned on leaving him to last. But now, the bad old man had found a way to escape him. If they didn't kill him tonight, it would be too late.

  The boy kept offering the same bargain to Leonard, over and over again. Eventually, he wore Leonard down. Desperate to find his mother, Leonard agreed to Daniel's terms.

  "All right, Daniel," Leonard said, finally. "I'll kill the bad old man. Cross my heart, I'll make him die."

  For Anderson, it was a day of insights and revelations.

  Having been reunited with Lang as more Judges arrived as backup in the wake of the slaughter at City Bottom, she and Lang had joined a new tac-team as they tracked the blood trail left by the giant. Aided by a PSU spy-bot equipped with an electronic nose that allowed it to function as a hi-tech bloodhound, they had followed the trail into the sewers. It was clear the mutant was badly wounded, but even as they gained on him the mutant kept on going.

  "Psychic possession," Anderson said. She had already told Lang about her encounter with the child. "It's the one thing that explains all the anomalies in this case. The mutant Lenny must be a spirit medium, while the boy is a psychic entity who Lenny's been channelling. That's why the victims always saw the boy's face when Lenny was strangling them. It's generally accepted that people become more psychically sensitive at the point of death. What the victims were really seeing was the boy riding Lenny through psychic possession, but they perceived it as the boy's face on the giant's body."

  "So you think the kid is some kind of ghost?" Lang asked her.

  "Probably," Anderson said. "It could be he's some other form of psychic entity and he only looks like a child. But if he's a ghost that would explain a lot of things. If he's some kind of restless spirit, still stuck on Earth because he has unfinished business here, that could explain the motive for the murders."

  "How so?" Lang asked.

  "Think about it," Anderson said. "On one hand, we have fifty-year-old recordings of children being abused. On the other, we have a series of murders somehow linked to the abuse. Maybe the boy was one of the victims and he's trying to even the score by killing his tormentors."

  "But he doesn't kill the abusers, he kills their children," Lang said. "How do you explain that?"

  "That's just it. That's what makes me think the kid is a ghost. In a lot of hauntings, the ghost will act as though nothing has changed since they died - they'll walk through a wall because there used to be a doorway there, or they'll walk up staircases that haven't existed for hundreds of years. In general, hauntings are linked to traumatic deaths. Maybe the trauma of their death is so bad sometimes, the ghost blots the whole thing out and doesn't even realise that he or she is dead. In this case, maybe the kid is going after the abusers. But he doesn't realise fifty years have passed and most of the original abusers are dead. So instead, without even realising it, he makes the giant kill the children of the abusers, punishing them for the sins of their fathers. But again, the kid doesn't know he's doing this. He may even perceive the abusers' children as the abusers themselves. Like I say, he's blotting out anything that proves he is dead."

  "It's a nice theory," Lang said. "Hell, it's a great theory. So how does Gruschenko fit into all this?"

  "There I'm really guessing," Anderson replied. "It could be Gruschenko was part of the abuse ring. Or, more likely given his criminal activities, he could have been procuring children for them or helping protect the abusers in some way. Maybe they even planned on making the meme-encoders into a commercial enterprise and they hired Gruschenko for his know-how. What we do know is that, unlike Joseph Kapinski's father, Gruschenko was still alive. That meant the boy could take vengeance on the man himself rather than one of his descendants."

  "It fits," Lang said. The rookie Judge seemed subtly impressed. "So you're assuming Miriam Joyce is also the child of an abuser."

  "I am," Anderson said. "It could even be she was abused herself. But that's a question for later. Right now, we have to concentrate on bringing down the giant before he gets wherever it is he is going. Otherwise, it's probably only a matter of time before he kills again."

  TWENTY

  MONSTERS

  The moment Leonard emerged into the sub-level basement of the building, he knew at once it was a hospital. There were medicinal smells all around him. Idly, he wondered if it might be possible to get one of the doctors to tend to his wounds. Still, he could leave that until later.

  First, he had an old man to kill.

  "This blood looks fresh," one of the tac-team Judges said as they made their way from the underblock maintenance tunnels, through a ripped-open access hatchway, into a building sub-level. "We're gaining on the creep. He must only be a few minutes ahead of us."

  "Check," Anderson said, as she stepped through the hatchway behind him. "All right, assuming the perp is still in the building, I suggest we fan out. If anyone catches sight of him, make a report ASAP. Whatever else happens, nobody is to tackle Lenny on their own. And especially not without Psi-Judge backup. You saw what he did to the Judges back at City Bottom? Well now, we're working on the assumption he is in the company of some kind of psychic entity. All of which only makes him more dangerous."

  "Grud! Anderson, look at this!" Hearing Lang call to her, Anderson followed her fellow Psi-Judge over to a storage rack that was piled high with cartons of bleach and other cleaning products. Lang pointed to the side of one of the cartons. "Look at the label on this container. 'Property of the Don Siegel Medical Centre'. We're inside a hospital!"

  "So we're in a building full of sick people with a mad dog killer on the loose?" Anderson said. "In that case, we have to find Lenny and fast. Everybody spread out. We'll search the entire hospital if we have to. We need to find him n-"

  Suddenly
, they heard a distant scream. A woman's voice from the sound of it, screaming in terror from somewhere up above them.

  "Forget what I said about spreading out," Anderson said as she raced towards the elevator. "I get the feeling if we want to find Lenny, our best way is to follow the screaming."

  Prendergast heard the scream as he stood watching Mr Lowe's operation outside the observation window to Surgical Theatre One. At once, he turned to the bodyguards standing beside him.

  "Two of you come with me," he said, as he jogged off in the direction of the noise. "The rest of you stay here with Mr Lowe."

  Leave her, Daniel said. They had just turned a corridor when they had run into a nurse pushing a med-trolley before her. The woman had screamed, then fainted, her head making an awful cracking sound as it hit the floor. She lay unconscious on the floor, blood seeping from a wound at the back of her scalp to stain her white nurse's cap red.

  I think she's hurt, Leonard said. I didn't mean to scare her.

  Leave her, Leonard. Daniel was insistent. The bad man's guards are coming...

  Edgar Tavish, a professional bodyguard with fifteen years' experience to his credit, was the first to die. He rounded a corner with a gun in his hand, Prendergast and another of Mr Lowe's bodyguards lagging just behind him. He saw a huge and hideous mutant move towards him like quicksilver lightning, followed by a terror-magnified close-up of Leonard's fist the instant before it smashed through his skull.

  An instant later, he was dead and he saw no more.

  "Drokk!"

  Prendergast heard the second bodyguard yell out a shocked oath as the first one died. The mutant was on them so swiftly. The creature's hand shot out, hitting the surviving bodyguard in the stomach, the force of the blow causing fragments of the man's ribcage to explode out of his back. His own reflexes boosted to superhuman levels by certain expensive treatments Mr Lowe had paid for, Prendergast managed to draw his gun and put three manstoppers into the mutie's chest at point blank range.

  Screaming in pain, the mutant lashed out with a backhanded blow, catching Prendergast hard enough on the jaw to snap his head back and break his neck. His gun falling from shocked fingers as he slumped against the wall behind him, the last thing Prendergast saw was the mutant's back as the monster turned to head in the direction of Surgical Theatre One. With his last coherent thought, Prendergast opened the hidden catch in the signet ring on his left hand and pressed the button beneath it. Aided by a powerful miniaturised transmitter concealed inside, it sent out a fifteen-nanosecond burst of encrypted computer code. To anyone without the proper systems to decipher it, the signal was designed to seem meaningless. But to those for whom it was intended, it contained a terse series of commandments that outweighed all other considerations.

  "Imminent Threat Override: Omega Level Three. Initiate Deterrence Protocol Five-Zero-Five. Protect Mr Lowe at all costs. Collateral damage is not an issue."

  Then everything went black for Nathan Prendergast.

  By the time the Judges had identified the fifteenth floor as the source of the disturbance, gunshots rang out across the hallways as hospital staff fled in terror. Emerging from the elevator with Lang and some of the tac-team members, Anderson grabbed the nearest panicking med-tek in search of some answers.

  "Where's the mutant?" she said, shaking him by the shoulder when at first he seemed too much in shock to respond. "Who's doing all the shooting?"

  "Mutant? What mutant?" the man looked at her as though she was speaking gibberish. "It's Mr Lowe's bodyguards! They've gone crazy! They're shooting anyone who goes near Surgical Theatre One!"

  "Then where can I find Theatre One?"

  Releasing the man as he pointed her in the right direction, Anderson sprinted down the hallway with the other Judges beside her. Finding two black-suited bodyguards standing on sentry duty at the end of the corridor, she levelled her Lawgiver and ordered them to surrender.

  "Psi Division! Drop the weapons and keep your hands where I can see them!"

  Moving with almost inhuman quickness the bodyguards whirled to shoot, only to be cut down in a withering fusillade of bullets as Anderson and the other Judges fired in unison.

  "Drokk, this is crazy," Anderson said once the shooting was over. "Doesn't anybody surrender anymore?"

  "They're cyborgs," one of the tac-Judges said. He stepped over to one of the bodies, and pointed to a buried metal plate peeking out through the scalp wound left by the bullet that had bisected its owner's skull. "Looks like they're carrying some kind of neural wetware. Probably explains how come they moved so fast. If we hadn't had the drop on them, they probably would've been the ones doing all the shooting. Still, I don't see why they were trying to shoot at Judges."

  "It's probably some kind of Threat Override setting," Anderson said. "I've seen it before. They have a neural chip hardwired into the brain stem and limbic system. In extreme threat situations, somebody presses a button and they turn into automatons, shooting at anybody who doesn't have pre-programmed clearance. Right now, that includes us, a bunch of sick people, and a whole lot of innocent bystanders."

  "I thought Threat Override settings were banned?" Lang asked.

  "They are," Anderson answered. "Whoever this 'Mr Lowe' is, it seems he takes his security very seriously." She turned to face the other Judges. "All right, we're dealing with an unknown number of hostiles who will shoot at anything that moves, not to mention our old friend Lenny. Somebody call for backup. In the meantime, we break off into teams of two Judges each and we clear this floor hallway by hallway. The priority is to get any remaining bystanders out of the line of fire and contain the situation. Lang, you're with me. Let's get going before things get any crazier and the robo-bodyguards turn this entire hospital into a bloodbath."

  There he is, Daniel said.

  Leonard had killed a dozen men to get them to this place. They were standing by a window looking down into an operating theatre. Below, Leonard saw two men lying unconscious on gurneys, hooked up to all kinds of strange machines, while doctors in green gowns fussed around them.

  It's him, Daniel said. The old man down there, lying on that table. He's the one, Leonard. He's the bad man. Kill him!

  Leaping through the window with a crash of shattering Plexiglas, Leonard landed in the middle of the operating theatre as the doctors recoiled from him in horror. Leonard was exhausted. His body hurt all over. He was slick with blood; his own and other people's. But it was nearly over now. While the doctors ran away in terror, he advanced on the old man asleep on the gurney and put his hands around his throat.

  He began to squeeze.

  For years to come, Anderson would always blame herself for what happened. It added to the weight of her nightmares, joining all the other rattlebag terrors that troubled her sleeping mind. Her father, Judge Death, the suicide of her friend Corey. At times it felt like her life was one long string of tragedies and horrors.

  It made it no easier that she could have done almost nothing to prevent it. She blamed herself anyway. She was the senior Psi-Judge and Lang was the rookie. It was her job to protect her.

  Not the other way around.

  They had been advancing down a corridor together, Anderson in the lead while Lang guarded her back. They had passed the bodies of three men lying dead in the hallway; all apparently the bodyguards of the mysterious Mr Lowe. A single glance was enough to tell Anderson their deaths had been Lenny's handiwork. One of them had a fist-sized cavity where his nose should have been; another looked as though his chest had exploded; while the third man lay slumped against the wall, the unnatural angle at which his head rested making it clear his neck had been broken.

  Incongruously, she had noticed the third man was wearing a hospital issue nametag pinned to his jacket. His name was Prendergast. She had glanced at it only a moment, but the name had an unusual, old world quality that caused it to linger briefly in her mind. His nails were neatly trimmed and manicured. His suit was expensive. His hair was immaculately styled.
He had the look of some high-level business executive rather than a bodyguard, though she supposed that was entirely the point. In the years to come these facts would haunt her. She had noticed all these details with barely a glance, yet somehow missed the most important one of all.

  The cyborg bastard was still breathing.

  She had walked past and her back was turned towards him when he suddenly came back to life. Her first and only warning came with a shout from Lang behind her.

  "Anderson! Look out!"

  She had turned, too slowly, and seen the cyborg rise to lift his gun towards her. The microcircuitry grinding in his spine as it tried to compensate for his damaged vertebrae, his lolling head jerking with rag doll slackness at every movent of his body, the gun an extension of his arm as he was compelled with one final desperate effort to adhere to the commandment hardwired into his nervous system. She had tried to bring her Lawgiver to bear, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as she realised she was as good as dead.

  It happened so quickly. The cyborg fired. Lang leapt forward into the path of the bullet. Anderson unleashed the remainder of her magazine on rapid fire, sending the cyborg careening back into the wall in a mad puppet dance of blood and splintered bone.

  By the time the gunsmoke cleared the cyborg was dead. Anderson was on her knees beside Lang's fallen body. She saw Lang's eyes staring up at her blindly, a finger's-width hole in the centre of her forehead.

  A bullet in the head.

  It was over very quickly.

  Leonard squeezed, tightening his hold on the old man's neck. The body began to jerk and spasm beneath his grip. He was choking the life out of the man while Daniel, for once, watched it happen in silence. The boy looked down at the face of the man he hated above all others, observing his death throes with detachment. The old man's spasms grew wilder. A rattling noise came from his throat. Then, the sounds and the movements stopped. Nearby, a machine began to make a continuous trilling tone. Leonard had done his work.